I must have missed the memo

[trinityvixen]

So, a few weeks ago, I went with some serious Muppet-loving friends to see the Jim Henson exhibit at The Museum of the Moving Image. Despite not being overly in love with the Muppets, I am a fan of Henson's works post-Muppets. I grew up on Sesame Street, and I grew into adulthood watching Farscape, for which the Henson company did all the puppet work. In a world lousy with CGI, it's amazing how much more presence a puppet can have in a movie. I am a big fan of The Neverending Story, and Falcor still looks pretty awesome to me. (Compare him to, say, Jar-Jar Binks, a character created at vastly greater expense, and more recently, who looks as dated as the effects from the un-altered Star Wars.)

The exhibit is fun, and, although I admit to being much more in love with Henson's non-puppet stuff after seeing it (his posters! gorgeous!), I left wanting to see more of his stuff. To that end, I'm very much interested in seeing Jason Segel's update of The Muppets, and I was even motivated to watch, with my roommates, The Dark Crystal. The former still looks promising, the latter...

I'm going to have to admit that I don't get the appeal. I also recently watched Labyrinth for the first time, and the appeal of that movie escaped me as well. I'm guessing that having seen them in formative years, before the advent of better puppets might leave one more in awe/fond of those movies. I found The Dark Crystal completely baffling. I got the story--I checked with Wikipedia to make sure I had--it just doesn't make sense. Why it and Labyrinth have remained cultishly popular is beyond me. They're so obtuse, and not in a good way. I don't even have more to say about it than that. I watched the movie, it was ponderous, slow, and despite the creativity that went into making most of the puppets, fairly unimaginative. That's all the there that was there.

The saving grace of those movies, of course, is that someone tried something other than a reboot and did it with a metric ton of puppets. Which is good. I just wish these supposedly seminal movies were actually important after the fact. I realize that I have this problem a lot. Some movies remain important long after they have been made irrelevant--tonally, visually, etc.--by films that owe them a lot of credit. I'm told that The Godfather is one of those movies; I hated it, but supposedly it is the basis on which gangster movies ever after were fashioned, and the good ones (yeah, right, what were those again?) all are due to it. I wonder, though, whether that's fair. There are plenty of movies that pioneer effects, tones, etc. that go on to be used in better movies and we don't hold them up as all that extraordinary. I mean, The Matrix borrowed its signature effect from technology last seen in a GAP commercial and a wardrobe stolen from Wesley Snipes' Blade. Oh lord, I'm gonna hear about that from the Blade-lovers out there.

But I think Blade is a perfect example. It is decidedly not a great film. It's passable enough--like tougher version of Underworld, minus the werewolves (although not necessary without them, as some deleted scenes from Blade 3 would suggest)--and undoubtedly stylish. Otherwise, it's a fairly hollow narrative, based on a caricature better represented in several other characters. The stoic, violent anti-hero who struggles to resist becoming his enemy? Been there. It's still the reason we got X-Men made, and, subsequently, the renaissance of the comic book movie. That doesn't make it great or even necessarily worth watching. (The parts with the fat vampire being baked and Tracy Lords, just in general, make my case for me.) I think there are probably many movies that fit that profile and that people don't generally admit to not liking.

Or maybe it's just me.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I've never liked Dark Crystal. It seriously wigged me as a kid. My seventh grade English teacher had us learn about story structure with it (earning me brownie points for knowing what it was), but it still weirds me out.

I don't see how you can not like Labyrinth, though. David Bowie! And Jennifer Connelly's fantastic wardrobe! And I've read some analyses of it as a feminist movie--and I have to say that's part of why it spoke to me so much as a kid. Her final statement, you have no power over me, that's important stuff for a thirteen-year-old girl.

(And as one who has hated other classics--Alien and The Shining both bored me--I do see the genius in Godfather.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I am a woman who both likes David Bowie and feminist movies, but who felt that Labyrinth reflected poorly on both. The heroine is a mess and a useless lump. Her "empowerment" is akin to that of horror movie heroines: if you spend most of the movie being a scared/useless ninny, you don't immediately get props for managing to survive to the end.

I agree with you on Alien--next to the frenetic pace and truly terrifying Aliens, it is ponderously slow and merely creepy--and, to a degree, The Shining (some parts of that are okay). But The Godfather is two hours of MEN BEING MEN: THE MOVIE. There's some interest, in that Michael Corleone is clearly a somewhat tragic figure--someone who is trying to stay above the bad but is too good at it, too necessary to escape--but other than that, it's MEN MEN MEN, BEING MANLY, AT OTHER GUYS. (To that movie's credit, it doesn't read as gay as so many others of that genre do.)

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Also creeped out by The Dark Crystal.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

But not by the things you're supposed to be. The Skesis are fine. The Gelflings will haunt my dreams.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

They're, um, not really fine, exactly...

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

When it comes to the Godfather, it's just you. :P

And I thought the Matrix borrowed a lot more, both stylistically and thematically, from Ghost in the Shell. Your garish attempts at tarnishing the reputation of great films, aside...

...I think you have a point about how influencers tend to pick up points for nostalgia through the lens of what came after. I thought about what you're talking about with The Dark Crystal, and you're right, I can't actually consider the film *good*; what I really remember as amazing was the puppetry.

I think it's like fortune-telling; people have a tendency to remember the good bits and forget the bad bits, even when the bad bits are much more numerous.

Ghost in the Shell is a good example, actually. It's a very, very uneven film that had enormous influence on later cyberpunk stuff.

[negativeq.livejournal.com]

I am very surprised you had NOT seen Labyrinth until recently, being a David Bowie fan. Weren't you there when CUSFS screened it? Or was that before your time? (omg I'm ancient.)

I think I was 8 when I saw Labryinth. I liked Sarah, and I still do. She's a kid who made a mistake, and rectified it. She did solve her own problems and got past the various obstacles on her own. The goblins scared me. The stench REALLY scared me, and I will never forget that peach. (This was shortly after I was traumatized by Neverending Story.) I thought David Bowie was entertaining and funny, and 8 year old me didn't notice his crotch at all. (20-something year old me didn't either. 30-something year old me knows because I was told to look. I'm blind.)

Dark Crystal - Even as of last September, I still turn away when those little creatures get their souls sucked out. The Skesis still creep me out. I do think the ending doesn't hold up - it is too neat that the victims are restored, yet this IS ultimately a children's movie. I didn't realize how useless Jed(?) was until the most recent viewing. I don't mind, since it is so rare to have female characters who are more useful/competent than the male, and remain that way for the duration of the story. Note how quickly Trinity gets shunted to supporting role for Neo ...

Blade - I agree completely. Looks fantastic, but is so hollow and without substance. It didn't feel worth watching.

Ghost in the Shell - I agree here, too. It took me (and Labrat) several attempts to see the movie to completion. It was too slow-paced, and we would doze off during the Major's swim. But no one can deny its influence. And the TV series is brilliant and not slow at all.

I can't recall the Godfather ... weird ...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Ghost in the Shell is another one that I never really cared for, though it was at least different enough to keep my attention for a while.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

I enjoy Labyrinth. Sarah sucks and I had never realized until the re-watch how unbearably whiny she is, but her adventure remains interesting. There are a lot of really clever little puzzle things (the door being flipped around, the stairs, etc.) that she stumbles across, I like the ballroom scene at the end, and it's just visually interesting. And David Bowie is obviously having a good time. But it's not a good movie.

The Dark Crystal was just terrible. You're right, it's actually unimaginative, despite everything.

I like Blade...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I didn't enjoy Labyrinth, I think, because the story didn't engage me enough and the effects on the side didn't interest me enough to offset the deficiency of either. Expectations may have also played a factor--I'd been told it was great and expected more from it as a result, I suppose.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

MirrorMask is an interesting (recent) Henson production.