Friday, February 20, 2009
 | Current mood:  blah Let's start with the Lost. Still entertaining on a week to week basis as far as the writing of dialogue, the self referential nods and the overall pacing of the show and creation of a unified feel. (Now, on with the polemic.) But...how do I put this...when did this show turn into fucking Doctor Who? Yes, time travel was cool in those Desmond episodes. No, it is not cool that the whole show is fundametally the same thing. How do I put this...OVERUSE OF TIME TRAVEL AS A STORYTELLING DEVICE WAS INTEGRAL IN THE DECLINE IN QUALITY OF HEROES. I get it that from a writerly stance it is always better to show in lieu of telling. And yes, it's cool that the characers are playing an active role in the storied island backstory that we have been waiting for 5 years to get, but it gets tiresome when it is used 5 times an episode. But this ties into my main problem with the overarching story of the show. This is that theory: The show's endgame and major plot points were formulated in the break between seasons 2 and 3. As in, the creators did not have a concrete plan except for vague, loosely supernatural elements, until the start of Season 3. But Bryan where's your evidence? Simple. It can be found in the miniseason that started season 3. The proof: Jin, Sun and Sayid's discovery that the Others had built a fake shanty town, were purposefully wearing tattered clothes and fake fucking beards. That simple bit is an example of the sloppiest and cheapest cop outs I have ever seen. It is an afront to the intelligence of the audience, and a testament to the skill of the creators that they made it fly...sort of. And the simple fact that so many elements that were prominent in Season 2 were totally dropped. Where's Kelvin? What about the all important black light map? What about the statue? Also, why would they get Dharma food drops if every last Dharma member, pretty much, had been dead for 15-20 years? Charles Widmore goes from minor character, in Season 2, to driving force on the show? All of the tailies, except Bernard, died? (I know that one was based on real world logistics, but still got to throw it in.) Henry Gale running the show? (Yet again, I know it's because he's awesome and tests well and has really given the show legs.) The other proof: the wildly varrying theories about Lost. Granted, good writing is always open to interpretation and speculation. And Lost is a damn good show. Wouldn't be writing about it if I didn't enjoy it so much. But, points of diergence when reading Flannery O'Connor is usually looked at as going to route A and B. Lost theories went all over the spectrum. And that is because at it's heart for the first two seasons the show was, at it's heart, an engaging character driven show with vague supernatural undertones. What I'm saying is that the authors left things vague intentionally so there could be a way out, no matter which direction they went in. And yes, the defenders always say, what about the skeleton's in Season 1? But, at the same point the conjecture that they were pre-existing characters. It had never been explicitly stated. There was no real inkling of time travel. And in fact, the only character who really addressed these phenomenal issues was the faith based Locke. As there was no character to represent the psuedo-scientific the fact that the show went so far in that direction seems a departure. (Yes, most of the theories are based on actual quantum physics, but we don't have time machines so I'm going to call it psuedo-science, also because things I don't fully understand frighten me.) More to the point, time travel didn't really come up in Seasons 1-2. We had mysterious viruses. We had some hatches and some mysterious virus that was brought up, but that didn't effect the castaways and went back into the ether. Granted one could say it was the time traveling virus, but...THERE WAS A VACCINE. But, at the same time, it could be argued that the inital plans of the creators are being honored through the time travel arc. As in they had these overarching plans involving the Dharma Initiative and its characters. They realized that wouldn't be compelling for a full 3-4 seasons. So, they found the most entertaining way to stretch it out to reach a potentially similar ending. So, yep, that's really it. But, at the same time, one has to applaud the character's for making it all work as well as it does. Few shows have sparked this rabid a fanbase in years. Few have taken a serialized drama with an ensemble cast, supernatural bent, real world logistics and created a product that holds together as well as the show does. So, yep, I'm just saying that I think things changed drastically between seasons is all. And rightly so, the original character's didn't have more then 2 seasons worth of juice to pull off entertaining flashbacks, with the exception of John Locke and Hurley, kind of. (Wait, Sawyer is pulling off a con, but in the end his heart and inate decency win out. Kate is on the run and it spells doom for those around him, but saving those around her is why she is on the run in the first place. Jack's perfectionism and need to solve problems lead to his own undoing...) Still one of my all time favorite shows. Just saying. Oh, and as for Season 5 theories...I don't even know anymore. Locke's obviously coming back. Ben is probably going to kill Penny. Desmond's going to have to go back to the island so he can go back and save her. (Because the rules don't apply to Desmond, as repeatedly stated) Also, one does have to wonder about the logistics of Ms. Hawking, the ring shop and her being an actual person with a son instead of some temporal being as originally posited by most. Kind of wonder why they got a guitar (probably Charlie's), Christian Shepard's shoes, a federal marshall and the rest, but neglected to get, you know, Walt. Who was on the fucking plane. (yet again, real world logistics I'd imagine.) I mean because Ben can get Hurley out of prison in 24 hours, but can't get a kid away from his grandmother. I'm just saying. Good show, I get there are real world concerns, just felt like pointing something out that I noticed. And now me bitching about comic books. Good day Lost fans. Okay, so I noticed something last week. Amazing Spider Man #583 is going to be the best selling book of the year hands down. It stole the tunder from Batman dying, sort of. It's got five printings of Obama variants. It is alsohandily one of, if not the, worst books of the year. Seriously, the back up story is writen for an 8 year old. And not a bright 8 year old at that. I don't know says a lot about the direction of the industry if you ask me. The other thing I noticed was this: The worse the event book the better the pay-off. Think about it the main Civil War book is hands down a better read then Secret Invasion in every sense of the word. The pacing is better. While I like Leinil Yu a lot I fucking loe Steve McNiven. And while Secret Invasion had some good moments and a great first issue: Civil War held it together for all seven issues. But, The Initiative fall out of Civil War got stale after 5-6 months. I mean it pretty much just followed the Civil War formula in every book of pro and anti reg talking about the other side's position being flawed. Dark Reign, on the other hand, looks to be pretty darn entertaining until 2011's Darker Reign. Moses Magnum, M'Baku, T'Challa, Cage, the Gauntlet, Storm and the rest form the Cluminati and take over things. Yes, I made a DJ Clue joke, go look him up, he was pretty big in the late 90's. If that's case though the new Ultimate line up should be awesome. Because the main Ultimatum book is kind of ass. Good, art, decent moments here and there, but it really just seems to be floating by on David Finch, staid writing and the shock value of offing so many prominent characters. Aside from that it's really nothing new. Magneto threatening the world with a pole reversal end game has been done two times, and better, in the last ten years (New X-Men and Ultimate X-men). I mean, I'm assuming that the endgame is pole reversal because it always is when it is a big Magneto story. Quick comic notes: Stop charging 3.99 for books when the book is half (title character name) Saga. It's misleading. And it encourages people to go through the whole book in the store to make sure that they're getting a full issue of new content. Yet another mild slap in the face of the loyal fanbase, business is business, nature of the beast, stop internet bitching, make your voice heard with sales, which will never happen, misplaced male aggression typical fanboy shit, I know . Final Crisis should have been longer, and I don't believe the line that there weren't massive re-writes to the last issue. Firstly, Mandrakk shows up in the Superman Beyond 3D and like the last ten pages of the book. Aquaman, seriously, he takes up probably a whole of 2 pages in the whole book and it is pretty much a simple "Oh, and Arthur Curry is back too" kind of thing. It started very strong and just fell apart at the end. It felt rushed. And it seemed to be massively re-written. Mainly because of the total drop in cohesion from issue 1-7. Mainly 5-7. Should have been like 9-12 issues. Secret Invasion should have been 6. That Savage Land shit got stale pretty quickly. And, no, nobody was fooled by Skrull Rogers. Stil, fantastic first issue. People actually called in to the store to talk about it. Kick-Ass: the Bollywood version. It's going to happen. I have sources. Indian sources. Less gay prostitue subplot (don't fly in India) more singing and dancing. Dark Wolverine ongoing. Terrible idea. Daken is a weak, me too, kind of character. Like we didn't have a good 30 some years of brooding fly off the handle regular Wolverine. Also, I'm still pissed that Sabretooth got killed off after he became entertaining again in Mike Carrey's X-men. Spider-Man. Dropping the fucking ball again. Character Assasination is easily the worst arc in recent memory. Harry Osborne's girlfriend...Menace...really. Jackpot...some chick...really. I don't know, more misses then hits lately. But, it's fucking Spider-Man and...what am I really expecting here? Reason I don't bitch about the indies is well...you can buy the one's you want. They're self contained. Typically...better. And have more casual swearing and ultra violence to distract you when they aren't that great. God, I need to start working more again. Peace. |
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