Monthly Archives: January 2010

Ultimate X-Men: Sentinels

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I have observed with some degree of interest how I have changed the way I interact with shorter types of external stimuli, such as movies and graphic novels. By no means is it that they have fewer themes, nor ones that are necessarily smaller in scope; just that with the limited amount of time and space for presentation, the themes are usually more compact and immediate, which means that I not only have to be prepared to pay closer attention finding them, but that they also can require more ability to read between the lines. Like, with a 20-50 hour game or a 300-1000 page book, I can just let my mind wander and see what bubbles to the surface as I go, but in the couple of hours I spend on these shorter media, sometimes not treating it like a treasure hunt for nougaty thematic goodness means I won’t have anything to say when I get here.

And then there are stories like Sentinels, which are simultaneously so muddled and so scattered that I have no idea what just happened, try though I might. There are two and a half plots in progress, at least two timelines to keep track of, an inexplicably large number of drive-by characters who show up for one scene or issue only to vanish forever, and far more needless overt sexualization than I’ve seen anywhere in the Ultimate line before now.[1] In what I’m going to assume is the plot that matters, a new group of X-Men has formed in the wake of the original group’s disbandment to focus on the “school” aspect of Charles Xavier’s school for mutants in upstate New York, that disbandment coming in the wake of the events of the previous book. And said new group fights off the return of the mutant-hunting robot Sentinels, while the people at the school go off in search of underground mole mutants and deal with the ever-present portentous foreshadowing about Jean Grey’s fated transformation into the Phoenix. I think if they’d used the same amount of space to tell either story individually, it wouldn’t have felt rushed and full of annoyingly fast cuts between scenes that weren’t related by plot, theme, irony, or even art. I can’t help but feel like, in response to my recent thoughts that a series-level climax is drawing near, they suddenly found themselves out of time to tell the stories they had left and were forced to rush.[2]

Still, I shouldn’t complain too much. The use of a new artist for each of the 2.5 storylines means that at least I wasn’t stuck with the horrible first guy during any of the needless sexualization scenes.

[1] I mean, I’m kind of a fan of needless sexualization, but not when it takes me out of what ought by rights to be a good story.
[2] If so, I have no sympathy, because they could have used the space taken up by the worthless Magician storyline to tell these ones right.

Avatar (2009)

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Avatar has been an interesting phenomenon to me. Because I watch the previews of it, and it of course looks really pretty, plus I know James Cameron makes good sci-fi[1]. But then again, I watch previews of it and it makes me think it will be Dances with Wolves in space.[3] And I didn’t hate that movie the first time, but it grows more awful with each subsequent viewing, and eventually it has retroactively become the moment at which Kevin Costner stopped being a respectable human being actor.

So, after all of that spinning around in my head for a month, I expected it to be pretty, yes, but still mostly terrible. I didn’t see it in the IMAX that the tagline suggests, though it was in 3D. I suppose I’ll get to that before too terribly long, though. Because, IMAX or not, expectations or not, Dances with Wolves and all? It was still really good. (And, yes, very pretty.) And if the message was perhaps bludgeoned in, it is not a message with which I have no sympathy. I guess I should ought to find a hardcore conservative and find out just how much they hated it. But really, even if you are allergic to hippie granola, I think the prettiness of the film will get you past most of the relevantly crunchy scenes.

What impressed me most, though, was the uncanny valley effect. Or, rather, it’s lack. Far short of the giant blue Na’vi people looking just subtly wrong enough to hurt my eye, the time rapidly came when it was the actual actors who started to look slightly wrong, and every scene back among humans had me itching to get back to the part of the movie I cared about. Which, okay, the whole point of Dances with Wolves is to throw off the trappings of the Western World, so it makes sense this movie would want me to be there. But when he can manage it even on a physical CGI level? Kudos, Mr. Cameron. I daresay you deserved the full theater and applause you got on even this third weekend of theatrical release.

[1] Seriously, that’s kind of his Thing, blips on the radar like Titanic[2] notwithstanding.
[2] Hey, now there’s a piece of irony.
[3] And then I watch South Park, and they point out that in fact it will be Dances with Smurfs, and Giovanni Ribisi will be an unobtanium-hungry Gargamel, but really that’s still Dances with Wolves.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Knights

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I maybe already mentioned this, but in case you’re wondering: after I noticed that I was getting spoiled for my Spider-Man stories in Ultimate X-Men, I’ve started reading the Ultimate series in graphic novel release order, and I had a bit of catching up to do on Spidey. So, that’s why so many of these in a row. So that’s that. Luckily, the Ultimates and Fantastic Four cross over with the rest of the continuity less often, or this would have been a problem much sooner, and probably when I could have done less about it. As it is, though, hooray, all’s well now.

The upshot being, I just read Ultimate Knights. And… okay, even though I knew it would be another 5-star story, I also knew there was no possible way it could live up to the jaw-dropping splendor of the Clone Saga. I’m not going to sit here and tell you it did, either, because I meant that about no possible way. Yet, at the same time… Bendis took a book that should have been breathing space from one major revelation after another, things that will likely have repercussions for years down the line if the series continues (as I very much hope it will), and he made it about a collective effort, organized by Daredevil, to take down the Kingpin. And what I’m saying is, it worked as breathing space, an arc that under any other circumstance I would have considered a major turning point in its own right! But as fantastic as I have found these various rounds with the Kingpin to be, what I think I liked best about the book[1] is that it really was breathing space. It’s nice to see Peter Parker have a good day every so often, and this was one of those.

[1] Please don’t take this to be a spoiler about the outcome of that Kingpin confrontation; I wouldn’t do that. Separate thing here.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

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I should admit off the bat that, although I have read two out of the three of my volumes of the complete Sherlock Holmes as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I am not an obsessive fan of the type that I know exists. People who argue these books up and down the way people I know (and, okay, also people I am) used to discuss the minutiae of Robert Jordan’s books, only since there’s no new Doyle forthcoming, I think the Holmes fans are a bit more hardcore. My point is, I like the guy, and I want to reread the books I’ve read, plus certainly read the final volume that I haven’t ever done. And I know, from my perspective of entertained reader rather than fan, there’s all kind of reasons that I perhaps should have to hate the new Sherlock Holmes movie which have managed to elude me.

Luckily, those reasons did elude me. Because this was a fun, intelligent romp through Victorian England, full of action sequences that were not nearly as out-of-place as the previews hinted, deductions galore, and, surprisingly, apt sexual tension to boot. The plot is pretty good, but I’ll leave it to be discovered on its own. What I loved were the characters. Holmes is exactly the kind of broken man I’ve come to expect from between the lines, a genius in his element but completely lost outside of it, always waiting with barely (if that) concealed desperation for the next case, the next chance to come back to life. And his relationship with Watson… I can imagine thinking it’s just a little too boisterous and funny for the period, but really, I think this is a matter of between-the-lines too. People are people, and I doubt that Victorian propriety as conveyed in the fiction of the time was really as accurately staid as they wanted to believe of themselves. Whatever the case, this interpretation worked for me.[1]

I just hope that it’s accessible enough for the sequel that they all but promised; there was almost never a moment when the script slowed down enough to hold anyone’s hand. As it should be, I think; but like I said, people watching it enough to give me that sequel would be pretty alright too. Anyway, I already said it was fun and smart, right? So go see it already![2]

[1] I feel less qualified to comment on the portrayal of Irene Adler; although I know who she is, I think I’d have to be one of the hardcore fans to really concur with or dispute her place in this movie. But I did appreciate Rachel McAdams nonetheless.
[2] It’s not that I’m above misleading my audience about the objective quality of a piece, if it will get me something (in this case, that sequel) out of it. Because I’m almost certainly not above that. It’s more that in this particular case, I don’t need to mislead anyone, as I’m right about the quality. So why are you still here?, is my point.