(no subject)

[trinityvixen]

Stupid Entertainment Weekly putting Pirates of the Caribbean on the cover. I want to read it--I desperately do--but I have to not. I've already seen the one-two sentence summaries on Google News and the like, and I have an idea what the critics think, but I'm trying to remain open-minded. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: reading reviews ahead of seeing the movie biases my brain to think like the reviews. Hence, whatever they don't like, I'll notice and be supremely annoyed by. Anything they thought was funny or clever, I'll be expecting so it won't be. And bastards like Ebert just plain ruin the endings of movies (I hope he gets heart cancer, or cancer where his heart should be, the soulless bastard), so there's that.
ETA: jethrien informs me that Ebert is actually in the hospital with cancer. So, yeah, that ended up sounding a lot more harsh than I meant. Really, I don't wish cancer on anybody. I wish him a really bad hangnail and many, many papercuts.

And now I'm hyper aware of the fact that in about thirty hours, I will be seeing Dead Man's Chest. In about a day and a half, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl won't be the sole text in the fandom, and that's weird to me. The first Pirates movie was so wildly, unpredictably, eclectically wonderful, I am already worried about the sequels' power to maintain that level of romping energy, surprise cleverness, and notable acting.

As it stands now, The Curse of the Black Pearl is the only canon text. That means, for good or for ill, I could never see Dead Man's Chest and forever think of the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow as ending with him sailing off on his hard fought-for ship, humming "A Pirate's Life for Me." Tomorrow night, I won't be able to do that. For good or for ill. Tomorrow, I will see Dead Man's Chest, and the canon, much as I liked to bark about ignoring the parts of it I don't like, will be forever shaped by the sequels.

This is not always a good thing (The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions, Batman & Robin, X-Men: the Last Stand?). I just never really thought about it this way before. Most of the time, I'm a slobbering fangirl mess before I get into the theater for a sequel. Not that I haven't been with Pirates, but, as I'm not seeing it opening night or at a screening earlier in the week, I'm forcing myself to delay that much longer and leaving room for more introspection.

What if I didn't see Dead Man's Chest? What if fandom as a whole decided what it would or wouldn't accept as canon, regardless of what the studio put out? Since it's nearly impossible to banish things like Episodes I, II, or III, supposing instead we'd gotten wind of what Lucas was doing and said, "No. George, put down our universe. You are kicked out of the clubhouse. The Force is not with you"?

I suppose you can do something like by just exercising the power of denial (as teneda espoused just yesterday with regards to the Schumaker Batman films), but doesn't it sit in the back of your brain that the fandom really lived and then spectacularly impaled itself on its last, worst texts? I can't even watch The Matrix without griding my teeth. All that seemed new and special and quasi intellectual about it now seems packaged, a trick, a gimmick to sell a franchise that really didn't have the steam to make it past film one. The Mummy had the same thing happen--a delightfully self-mocking B-movie got turned into a yuk-yuk wangst-fest. Star Wars...well, okay, Star Wars has always had terrible acting, the irritating character or three, and an oversimplification of the good/evil divide. But damn it, Lucas ruined my ability to enjoy the first three. It will take years of not watching any movie in the SW universe before I can forget the prequels enough to not try and see how the fuck they resulted in the triology and book series I've enjoyed that come later in the timeline.

In essence, how do you train yourself to forget bad chapters of canon that ruin your enjoyment of the rest of it?

Comments

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

I don't have much to add here but I offer this as a curiosity: Bruce Campbell's cult classic Army of Darkness was released in the US and the UK with different endings. I suppose the US ending was seen by more of the world than the UK ending but to those in Britain I have to assume that the ending we all believe to be the "real" ending is to them the "alternate" ending. So what happens if they were to make a fourth film?

As for The Matrix I didn't loathe the sequels even though they were far inferior. Keanu needed to lose the sunglasses and more time should have been devoted to the script, but the movies as they are still have some good ideas in them, they're just not fully developed; victims, I think, of a studio system that simply can't sit still waiting for the filmmaker (or filmmakers) to deliver another surefire blockbuster (as usual, to a film they never expected to be a hit in the first place). Plus I think the initial audience reaction to Reloaded would have been ENTIRELY different had they kept Agent Smith a secret somehow.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on the Matrix sequels. There could have been something good done with that--I am one of few who liked Reloaded better than Revolutions, and I could see the cliffhanger and mysteries of that movie (where the rug is pulled out from under everyone) being wrapped up (or not!) very differently (aka well). But it was to be a "blockbuster" not anything else.

That's why X-Men: the Last Stand blew goat chunks. They had several ideas and threads running through it that, properly developed with better timing and plotting, might have produced something magical. The Phoenix was too complex and not built up well enough in the previous films to really take off in this one, plus studio politics decided Hugh Jackman was more important (and James Marsden was on their shit list for going with Singer to Superman Returns) so they trumped up a love story out of nowhere. The mutancy cure is a dead fascinating study because there are so many mutants at Xavier's alone that would see real improvements to their lives if they took it (Cyclops, Rogue, et al) that there would be room to have serious debates between what is ethically right versus personal choice versus setting an example (they really dropped the ball with Cyclops, here, because he's a teacher and he's supposed to be a counselor and guide and he would benefit from the cure, but he's supposed to show the kids that being a mutant is a good, normal thing..).

This is my problem. Suppose a sequel could do that? Why would anyone want to see them any more?

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Well, also, if you didn't know, Fox studio head Tom Rothman apparently never liked Singer and when Singer bailed Rothman took the opportunity to "prove" essentially that his ideas were "right" and "better than Singer's" by changing the third one away from what Singer intended, at least, that's what I heard, and while it's probably been blown out of proportion I can believe it, studios are dumb.

I wouldn't quite say they trumped up a love story (you mean Jean and Logan, I assume), since the threads were in place in the first and second, just VERY recessive. But it did suck, mostly, in my opinion, because nothing stuck -- (if anyone who hasn't seen it is reading, stop now...)

...is ANYONE actually changed? Did ANYTHING happen in the third one besides some monuments breaking and Jean going bonkers? We don't find Cyclops' body, so he's probably going to show up later, Magneto still has a bit of his powers despite taking a quadruple dose of antidote (and therefore it will undoubtedly wear off of Rogue too), and then on top of all that if you watch past the credits Xavier's not dead either. The mutant cure was an intriguing idea, especially the way you put it, but the movie decided to approach it in almost the same ways the first two did, and it felt like a rehash (mutants and politicians STILL don't mix, what a surprise).

And no, nobody would want to see a mutant movie with no mutants. So instead the movie just PRETENDED they got demutanized.