Riffing off of my last post: a request

[trinityvixen]

moonlightalice and I had an interesting, if depressing conversation following our viewing of The Wolfman about werewolves in movies. She, like me, prefers the psychology and pathos of the werewolf/wolfman story to that of the vampire narrative. There is something so much more relatable in the story of the werewolf/wolfman. For one thing, the werewolf is, quite aside from a few days in the year, human. Increasingly, the werewolf's unnatural strength and superhuman senses carry over to the human side, but for the most part, a werewolf is a human with a problem. Versus a vampire who is another creature entirely and is no longer human at all. It is easier to relate to someone who suffers a curse beyond his/her control than it is to relate to an undead creature that stays beautiful and powerful forever.

And yet the vampire story is the more successful one, especially in film. We wracked our brains trying to think of one well-done, well-told, interesting werewolf/wolfman movie. Wolf happens to be a favorite of mine, with the idea that you have to be literally cutthroat to make it ahead in business. But it's barely a werewolf movie for all that posturing. I've seen plenty of werewolf movies, but none of them have been very good or taken the werewolf pathology to a very interesting end. (Books have done better, and Buffy did all right--at first--with its werewolf character.) Werewolf movies of late have depended on a sort of rivalry with vampires to sell them--Twilight, the Underworld series. Where are the examinations of man versus monster, the recognition that man is the monster and that being a werewolf is just something that allows him an outlet for his monstrosity? Why, oh why, did we get An American Werewolf in Paris instead?

Maybe I'm missing out on something good. So here comes the request: I would like anyone who has a suggestion for a good werewolf/wolfman movie to send that title my way. I'm happy to try any and everything. (I am the person who stocks her Netflix queue off of lists of the the worst movies that others can think of, so clearly I am not picky.) Send him here. I'll take 'em all.

Comments

[avram]

Well, not never. One of Rowling's strengths is her ability to cleverly hide bits of setup which she then delivers on.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

And some of those things she buries far too freakin' well, like those horcruxes, only one of which (the diary) was, at all, noticeable.

But, no, I gotta say she fails to deliver as much as she lays up and sinks the basket. She never does anything with prodigiously-good-at-chess Ron. Neville, though badass, never takes down Bellatrix Lestrange....and so on.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Ahem. Neville? That would be the one who slays the Big Bad's Second Soul with an ancient sword he produces magically from nowhere while ON FIRE?

He is obviously the awesomest character in fiction.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Neville is awesome, that was never in doubt. His story just didn't have a dramatically unifying end, is all.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

This is true, but I waited seven books for him to fight Bellatrix, and that never delivered.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree. Her strength--which is a real strength--is the ability to create a compelling world and interesting, engaging characters. She also has a very readable narrative style. She doesn't cleverly hide bits of setup, however, so much as she pulls plot devices out of her butt with no warning, then claims they were there all along. Not that she's unique in that--see Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, etc. But Rowling's are pretty bad. I did eventually learn how to predict her plot twists--I'd ask myself "what makes no sense and has no setup here whatsoever?" and that would be it.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

What makes it particularly frustrating is that a lot of those out-of-nowhere devices might have been really cool with a little more planning. I keep coming back to the horcruxes, because they were incredibly important....and mentioned only in the sixth book onwards. And there was really only one that we could readily identify as such--the rest were either last-minute "I need a thing to be a horcrux!" type deals or exaggerations on semi-important things. That's ridiculous.