My generation has a problem with nostalgia.  We’ve never really experienced it.  We are probably the first generation to have near complete access to everything we loved as kids.  It’s an unintended consequence of the information age, but almost nothing from the 80′s onward has ever really gone away.  And if absence makes the heart grow fonder and familiarity breeds contempt, then that’s more troubling than we immediately realize.

Traditionally, nostalgia comes from a longing for something you used to have.  It’s that warm fuzzy feeling we get when we’re reminded of something we haven’t thought about in years.  It’s remembering something, usually through the positive spectrum of faulty memory, in a fond way.  It’s a movie you haven’t seen in over a decade.  Or a toy you threw away when you were twelve.  Or a TV show that you can’t quite remember the title of but you’re pretty sure at some point somebody fought a dragon with a laser gun and that it was the greatest thing you’d ever seen up to that point.

That is gone now.  If you are 40 or younger,  nearly everything you like, everything you held dear, is available for you to watch, buy, or otherwise experience again.  And while that shouldn’t be a bad thing, it’s also time to acknowledge an unintended consequence.

Nostalgia also used to mean you were allowed to outgrow something.  It also meant popular culture would evolve and change as creators and corporations were required to market and sell new ideas, if only to win over the next generation.  This is almost a thing of the past.

There’s really very little “youth” culture anymore.  Everything young is usually either a repackaging of an older idea (and usually not even that old) or aimed at a much wider audience than mere kids.  Aside from purely pre-schooler entertainment like Dora the Explorer and her ilk, there’s little aimed at children.  And even Dora has a bad habit of putting on princess dresses to get the much desired tween buck.

The danger is two-fold.

First, it doesn’t allow us to let anything fall to the wayside.  Once we become  a fan of something, we’re supposed to be a fan forever.  It’s The Firefly Effect.  In the early 80′s, a failed and canceled show like Firefly might be remembered by a few.  It might even sit quietly in the shadows of obscurity for a few decades before getting a reboot.  But it would most probably be a footnote, no different than Manimal or Automan.  A cool idea that just didn’t go anywhere.  Yet in this day and age, when people can watch and rewatch DVD sets a thousand times, when they can just log onto a search engine to find a thousand websites all devoted to not letting it go, when comic book companies can’t wait to ride a wave of undeserved pre-nostalgia toward easy money, a show like Firefly keeps going on.  Even when it should be allowed to just go away and let something else get a shot at being culturally important.

I don’t dislike Firefly by the way.  I just don’t believe it’s earned the rabid loyalty it’s gotten.  It’s a failed TV show.  Yes, the network did screw it.  The networks screw lots of shows.  That’s just the way it works.  Time to move on.

The pre-nostalgia is so common nowadays that it even appears before the show is on the air.  The cult of Firefly was born the moment the idea was first whispered by Joss Whedon.  It was ready to exist before pen was put to paper, before a single character was created, before a single episode aired.  We’re so ready to serve this pre-nostalgic impulse that many of us are actively looking for something to be beholden to, to hail as wonderful and forever awesome, even before we know what it is.

I know this view will be a bit controversial, especially among Firefly fans, but it’s something worth saying because, frankly, I’m annoyed by the entire concept.  Six episodes on network TV do not make a “classic”.  Calling yourself a “browncoat” doesn’t put you on the same footing as a “trekkie” or “trekker”.  Creating a fandom through sheer willpower and desire to have something to be a fan over is an exercise in circular logic.  Firefly is great because it has so many fans.  It has so many fans because it’s great.

Heck, I love Kolchak: The Night Stalker like nobody’s business, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was only on for a single season.  Although it did end up with more episodes than Firefly so I guess I’m more justified. Still, you wouldn’t expect me to call myself a “blue suit” and tell you over and over again about how awesome Kolchak is.  And it is awesome.

The second, more damaging effect of this obsessive nostalgic impulse is that the next generation isn’t really getting any new toys to play with.  Even if we accept (as we probably must) that pop culture will suffer from certain levels of stagnation, we have a deeper problem.  The only thing worse than a generation refusing to let go of childish things is one that expects those childish things to grow up with them.

Kids like dumb things.  Silly things.  Things that require child-like wonder to enjoy.  And most adults simply don’t possess that wonder.  This isn’t a problem when you just admit it and move on, but when you insist on taking silly, wondrous childish things and stuffing them into a “mature” box, more often than not something is lost.

Transformers are a line of toys built on the premise that kids like robots and kids like cars and why not put both together in one package?  There’s a storyline that comes with them, but at the end of the day, it’s about toys.  And it’s stupid.  Do I really need to point out that the notion of alien robots that change into cars, jets, and dinosaurs is about as silly as you can get.  Even on the most forgiving level possible, it’s goofy.  No amount of justification can really make it work.

Or how about an entire military organization whose sole purpose is to fight a single terrorist organization.  Everyone on both sides gets distinctive costumes, code names, and gimmicks.  Oh, and both teams get a ninja because . . . why the hell not?

And then there’s the emerald space cop with the magic ring who makes objects out of green energy.  This is a character designed with twelve year olds in mind.  The biggest mistake the Green Lantern film made was actually being a movie that understood this.  It’s only sin was in realizing just how goofy the entire concept is and still trying to make a film out of it.

In comparison, The Dark Knight takes the concept of a man who dresses as a bat to fight crime and turns it into a maudlin, depressing, unexciting snoozefest.  It does so in the name of sophistication while entirely missing the point of what makes Batman work.  He works because he’s ridiculous.  I know I’m in the minority on this one, but to me, a Batman film that you don’t want to take your kids to is worthy of mockery.  It’s like a Care Bears movie with ritual murder.  It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.

Though my objections to The Dark Knight exist mostly because it represents everything I hate about modern comic book superheroes while Green Lantern represents everything I love and it can be a bit disheartening to see the public’s reaction to both is the opposite of my own.  Not because I care if one gets all the praise but because it’s always discouraging to see something you enjoyed mocked for the very qualities you love about it.

Then again, I could start my own Green Lantern movie fan club, find a bunch of people that agree with me.  It wouldn’t be that hard in this day and age.

I’m not suggesting that we can’t have “mature” superheroes.  Or that our only two choices are shallow fluff or grimdark grittiness.  But I do think that pre-nostalgia is a real cultural problem.  I just don’t have a solution for it yet.  I’ll let you know when I do.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Which brings me to my topic: Movies and how I am so glad I am not making them.

Oh, yes, I have a few books optioned for film, and I am excited about that.  It’s a great opportunity, and I’m hopeful, with a little luck, that they might become good films.  I like movies, probably even a little more than books (if I’m honest), and I have tremendous respect for good movies.  Heck, I even respect bad movies because, when you get down to it, even a bad movie is a lot of work by a lot of people.  And when a great movie is made . . . that’s nothing short of a minor miracle.

I’ve dipped my feet in the Hollywood pool, and I’m only too happy to be invited to the party.  But, at the end of the day, I’m glad to be a novelologist, and Scott Pilgrim is a perfect illustration why.

Moviemaking is rough.  Scott Pilgrim is the #5 movie in the USA.  This qualifies it as “a bomb”.  That still astounds me.  If I had the 100th most popular book in the country, I’d be a success.  If I had the 5th most popular movie in America, I’d be a disappointment.

In addition, this is Scott Pilgrim’s one shot at being a successful film.  It doesn’t get a do over.  It might end up being popular on DVD, Blue Ray.  It might even make a modest profit, most likely will be deemed a “cult favorite”.  But to Hollywood, it will always be a failure, and there’s just no way around that.

I can’t imagine that pressure.  I can’t imagine working in an industry where that kind of pressure is commonplace.  Dabbling in Hollywood is fun.  It’s a great opportunity, great money, great chance to gain gobs of exposure.  But make no mistake.  It is brutal.

When people ask me if I’m “excited” about the prospect of one of my books becoming a movie, my reply is “Of course, I am.”  I would love to have a movie come out.  I’d be a fool not to.  But I also know what that entails, that a movie can sink like a stone through no fault of its own, and that in the space of one weekend, 3 days, a film’s ultimate fate is decided.

I’m sure everyone will have a reason for why Scott Pilgrim didn’t do as well as it should’ve.  I’m sure right now people are saying it’s “too smart”, “too niche”, “too silly”, “lacks starpower”, etc., etc.  But these are just guesses.  It seems to me that where a movie ends up has less to do with its quality and more to do with its competition and fickle moments of fate.  And anyone who thinks they understand how it works, how to beat or control the system, is just fooling themselves.  Otherwise, Hollywood would produce nothing but hit films, and that just ain’t happening.

Scott Pilgrim’s fate is sealed.  A wonderful film destined to be mocked for its box office failings, perhaps loved by a few but otherwise cast aside to the cruel gods of film.  You probably didn’t see it (or maybe you did because if you come to this site, you just might have the imagination and proper attitude to enjoy a strange story with a great deal of heart), but you definitely should while you can.  I don’t say this often, but this is a movie that deserves to be seen on the big screen.  It has some lively set pieces that are really cool.  (My favorite might be The Battle of the Band’s sequence, where music is personified as an ape fighting dragons.)

Check it out.  You’ll be glad you did.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

G.I. Joe was freakin’ awesome!

Do you remember when action movies actually had action in them?  Back before The Matrix created a world where action movies have lots and lots of boring scenes where people talk and talk and talk and then, occasionally, someone gets kicked in the head but then we’re right back to talky talky talk talking.

G.I. Joe is a welcome return to that art form.  All hail the return of the genuine thrilling action adventure film, where the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and shades of gray is for wusses.

And it’s about damned time.

I know that it’ll be fashionable to call G.I. Joe stupid, to say that it’s a ridiculous film built on ridiculous action pieces with two-dimensional characters and an absurd plot out of a Saturday morning cartoon.  The problem isn’t that these cirticisms aren’t valid.  It’s that many will think this is a negative, when in fact, it’s the film’s greatest strength.  Yes, G.I. Joe is based on a line of toys, and the cartoon was often just categorized as a toy commercial.  Rather than hide away from this, the makers of the Joe movie decided to run with it, and the result is more wonderful than words can describe.

Hovercrafts!  Neovipers!  Exosuits!  Blasters!  Ninjas!  Underwater bases!  Doomsday missiles!  Jetpacks!  If this list doesn’t convince you that this movie is awesome, well, save yourself the trouble because it’s clearly too much fun for you.

This was the movie Transformers should’ve been.  A gutsy adrenalin rush of good versus evil tinged with just enough nostalgia to give it a little extra kick.  The movie even improves on the original by managing to make Cobra dangerous.  Though this was more a product of its 80′s origin, Cobra never really seemed a credible threat.  It wasn’t just because they couldn’t kill anyone.  (Death is too often a cheap contrivance in modern adventure fiction.)  More often, their plans were too easily foiled, their schemes so ineffectively executed that they were more like The Three Stooges than an elite secret empire.

But in this film, Cobra proves to be far more effective.  Also, while they are foiled, they aren’t entirely foiled.  In fact, they achieve quite a noteworthy victory.  I won’t spoil the details, but some will undoubtedly think the ending a bit of a cliffhanger.  But to me, it was more of an acknowledgement that the battle between G.I. Joe and Cobra is far from over.  And that Cobra is more dangerous than even the Joes have ever suspected.

I could go on and on about this film, but the bottom line is that you’ll either like it or you won’t.  If the idea of a car chase involving two Joes in supersuits, another Joe on a motorcycle, a souped up SUV with a battering ram, and–not one–but two ninjas isn’t appealing to you, forget it then.

But for those of us who like underwater Arctic bases, doomsday devices, and a dash of Baroness with a healthy side of Snake Eyes, this movie is an instant classic.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee