But some things aren’t opinion.  Some things are simple facts.  And, from what I’ve heard, I have no interest in the robot gore and dark unpleasantness of the film.  No one else seems to really mind it, but it’s just not my thing.  Maybe I’m just an old man now, and if so, I shake my old man fist to an indifferent universe.  Because I’m frankly kind of sick of all the bloodshed.

I’m not against gore in general.  It fits fine in the right genre.  And I’m not against darkness.  Also fine in the right stories.  I didn’t particularly enjoy Kick-Ass, but it was thematically consistent.  And watering down the violence would’ve been both unnecessary and silly because that’s the kind of film Kick-Ass is trying to be.  So while I might not enjoy the film, I certainly don’t fault it for its violent imagery and unpleasant aspects.

But Transformers shouldn’t be Kick-Ass.  I don’t need to watch as robots are painfully disemboweled, as their metallic flesh is ripped from their bodies, as their heads are sliced in two in slow motion.  I know that I’m not supposed to feel that way because they’re robots, but there’s just a gruesomeness to the entire affair that I find repellent.

It’s not that I’m even against violence in a Transformers film.  The classic animated film is full of death and destruction.  It begins with the death of an entire planet.  The death of Iron Hide is probably one of the most powerful cinematic moments in my own personal experience.  It shocked me at the time, and it still shocks me.  It’s pretty rough stuff, and I still shudder when I think of Megatron, smirking, saying “Such heroic nonsense” before he blows up Iron Hide just out of frame.

Robots are beaten and battered and destroyed like mad in the film.  It just doesn’t feel the need to give us a close up of robotic intestines spilling out across the battleground.  And certainly there’s no extended scenes of Transformers begging for their lives, only to be killed, execution style.

Yeah, that’s a big pass for me.

I’m reminded of Pirates of the Caribbean 2, where within the first five minutes we’re treated to a pirate getting his eye ripped out by a raven.  And this is a Disney movie.  A Disney movie based on an amusement park ride.  It seems strange to me that nobody seemed to notice or care.

So it is that if I’m going to watch a movie about alien space robots based on a line of toys, I’m not really interested in gore and bloodshed of this type.  I don’t mind watching Autobots and Decepticons die.  But I’d rather not turn it into some strange form of PG-13 gore indulgence.  And I know that the Transformers are waging a war, but I have no interest in seeing it treated as one in any genuine sense.  If I want to see the horrors of war, I’ll go see Saving Private Ryan.  If I want to watch unpleasant violence, I’ll rent Hostel.  And if I want to see a strange mix of the two, I don’t think I want to see it in a movie about alien robots.

But that’s just me.  I am wrong.  I loved Green Lantern because I found it fun and charming and appealing to the kid in me.  But I’m wrong.  Because it’s obvious the audience would rather watch mechanical evisceration.  And that’s their right.

But if this is what passes for “mindless fun”, I guess I have a different definition than most.

It’s no wonder that I’m considered a fluffy writer because I’m just not interested in this stuff.  And definitely not in my fantasy adventure fiction.  If the levels of torture and gore are so entrenched in our entertainment that we can’t even allow space robots to be relatively broad in its portrayal of violence and the struggle of good VS. evil, then I have no plans to rise to that challenge in my own work.

It’s a logical turn of events.  I am almost 40.  So it’s only natural that I should find standards of taste passing me by in mainstream entertainment.  Still, it’s frustrating to watch it happen, but that’s life.

We all get old.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Next topic:

Writing is weird.  I just noticed that five of my novels are available on Audible.com.  You’d think I’d be up-to-speed on this sort of thing, but I’m not very good at keeping track of it.  So I listened to samples of the books, and if there’s anything weirder than getting paid to make up stories, it’s hearing someone get paid to read the stories you make up. 

I’ll admit that I still get confused by this sometimes.  I am a professional writer, a novelologist.  When I sit down at my computer and write a scene where a robot detective punches a mutant in the face, I’m doing my job.  It’s how I pay my bills.   It’s what makes me semi-sorta-almost-famous-ish.  And it’s doubtful you would be reading this right now if I wasn’t a writer who managed to catch a lot of lucky breaks.

At times, it’s like being the guy who tastes ice cream for a living.  I’m sure it’s not always a great job.  I’m sure there are times he just doesn’t feel like tasting ice cream.  And, like any job, if you’re going to be good at it, you have to take it seriously.  But in a world where so many people have jobs because they NEED them, not because they WANT them, even a lousy day of tasting ice cream beats the hell out of most anything else.

Thanks for letting me be the ice cream guy, gang.

Next topic:

If there are two things I love in this universe, it’s robots and tentacle monsters.  My wife even bought me a T-shirt with a robot fighting a tentacle monster on it.  And it is awesome.

This is how I can tell how much I disliked the last Transformers film.  Because the new one might have a dinobot in it, and yet, I don’t care.  Yes, the live action Transformers film has done the impossible.  It’s made me apathetic about dinobots.  And that’s quite an accomplishment.

Speaking of robots fighting robots, have you seen the trailer for the new Hugh Jackman film Real Steel?  I have no idea what the plot is about.  All I know is that it’s something about giant boxing robots.  So that’s really all I need to know.

Of all my books, the one I’d most likely write a sequel to, given my druthers, would be The Automatic Detective.  I like the world, the characters, and, of course, our robotic protagonist Mack Megaton himself.  Not that I plan on writing a sequel to that anytime soon.  And when I do finally write a sequel to something, it’d probably be with something with Orbit.

Oh, yeah.  Just in case you haven’t heard, Divine Misfortune is out in mass market paperback.  If you were waiting for that, you should buy it.  And my new novel Chasing the Moon comes out at the end of May.  It’ll be hardcover, but if you don’t have the patience to wait for mass market, you should buy it.  You’ll be glad you did.

What’s Moon about?  It’s complicated.  The basic premise is that Diana ends up with an apartment of monster roommates.  Reality is an illusion.  Everything we believe is wrong, and that a vast and uncaring universe doesn’t make sense to anyone.  Not even monsters from beyond.

It’s a fun read.  Really.  I promise.  Odds are good that if you’ve read one or two of my previous books, you like what I write.  So I feel confident in saying you’ll probably like this one too.  It does have a tentacle monster eating the moon, and as previously established, tentacle monsters are wicked cool.

It’s also my eighth book.  And that’s weird.  Is it too soon to have a retrospective of my career at this point?  It still feels strange to even use the term career.  Yet novelology is my career, and it’s doing good by me so far.  I don’t know where I’ll be in five years.  Maybe I’ll still be plugging along in my obscure little corner of tentacle monsters and giant fightin’ robots.  Or maybe I’ll be an international sensation, beloved by millions, flying across the world in my private jet with my solid gold robot butlers.  Who knows?

All I can say is that I’m glad to be here.  And when you can say that, you’re ahead in the game.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s late, and I need to go to bed.  Catch you later, gang.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Wouldn’t a WAR OF THE MONSTERS! be awesome?  Nothing says the future is here like a giant ape fighting a giant grasshopper atop the Chrysler Building.  If that ape should be a robot, so much the better.

A guy can dream…

 I really like giant monsters.  Have I mentioned that lately?  Skyline wasn’t a great movie.  But it did have giant alien monsters, which was almost enough for me.  I also enjoyed that it was directed with quiet competence.  There was none of that shakey camera nonsense that directors seem to love so.  I don’t know when we decided that being able to follow the action wasn’t ”edgy” enough, but if you’re going to have a giant alien stepping on cars, I want tobe able to see it.  My biggest gripe with the live-action Transformers movies is that Michael Bay seems to believe that framing a shot with the subject in the center is beneath him.  Well, that was my biggest complaint about the first film.  Let’s not get into the many flaws of the second.

My biggest complaint about Skyline is that the entire film ends up being little more than a prologue.  This is annoying because if the movie is not a success then all you sold me was a really pricey movie pitch.  It’s also annoying because I ALWAYS skip prologues.

I never read them.  If it’s important to the story, then it’s labeled Chapter One.  I don’t mind prologues because they are clearly labeled as something I can skip, but it makes me wonder why they are there in the first place.  Tradition?  To beef up the page count?

One of my books almost had a prologue.  I considered writing one for The Automatic Detective because there’s a cool scene I wanted to write, but, while it’s an important moment in Mack Megaton’s life, it just seemed irrelevant.  People (and robots) have lots and lots of important moments in their lives.  If it’s not important to the current story, why bother?  That sort of reasoning is why I’ll probably never win a Puliltzer.

Probably.

Hey, you never know.   Maybe the committee will decide they’ve read enough stories about people dying tragically.  Maybe they’ll decide that it’s time to give space squid “Doc Savage” types a chance to shine.  Maybe not.

One last thing:  I’ve just finished reading Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph T. Hallinan.  A great book about Terran fallibility.  The book deals honestly with our tendency to screw up and, even more importantly, our tendency to overlook or dismiss these screw ups.  We like to attribute our successes to our brilliance and our failures to dumb luck.  We focus on the inconsequential, ignore the important, and are oblivious to most everything going on around us.  It’s a fantastic book, and I highly recommend it.

Of course, I’m also reading How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard, which is making a compelling argument that reading books is something of a waste of time.  Or at least not necessary to understand and enjoy them.

Except for mine.  Read mine.  You’ll be glad you did.

But if you just want to buy them and act like you’ve read them, that’d be okay with me too.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Amen, brother.

But onto the topic of this particular post.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve always liked things that, for better or worse, most people think of as ridiculous and silly.  I love monsters the size of skyscrapers, killer robots, and superheroes.  You really don’t have to read many of my books to realize this.  Whether it’s cannibal witches, robot detectives, or fat werewolves, I’m a guy who likes the absurd, the bizarre.  I’d much rather watch Mega Piranha than Precious.  If a story has a dinosaur fighting a vampire, I’m all for it.

The problem though is that I don’t, as a general rule, like “camp”.  Camp to me is apology.  And I won’t apologize for thinking robots are cool or that Superman is awesome.  These things are absolutely true, and anyone with an ounce of sense should already realize this.  But if you haven’t, that’s your problem, not mine.

Yet there is an apology culture when it comes to this stuff.  Even people who like it try to excuse it.  Or, even worse in my opinion, they’ll knock it down before anyone else gets the chance.

The trailers for the new Jonah Hex movie look promising.  Hex is a comic book cowboy character.  You’d think that would get comic fans excited about his move to the big screen.  Yet I see far too many fans of the medium already eager to dismiss the film.  Sure, the trailer is full of explosions, one liners, and has horse-mounted gatling guns.  But isn’t that a good thing?  Do we really need another action film that takes itself dreadfully seriously?  Are those are only two options as a culture?  High art and dumb fluff?

NBC has a new show called The Cape.  It looks like a superhero show that dares to actually be about a superhero, unlike Heroes, which was so determined to be serious that it robbed every bit of joy from the superhero genre.  The Cape, on the other hand, shows promise as a cop, framed for a crime he didn’t commit, adopts a costumed identity to fight for justice in a corrupt city.  Isn’t this what superheroes are all about?

I don’t know.  All I know is that I refuse to believe that things can either be smart and boring OR stupid and fun.  I refuse to believe that a story with a robot or talking duck is automatically unimportant and unintelligent.  I don’t think boring always equals deep, and I don’t think there’s anything innately wrong with a killer elevator story.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Honestly, I don’t know the answer to any of those questions.  Writing is weird like that.  I write things.  I get paid.  Even if it doesn’t prove I’m good at it, proves that at least I can keep a roof over my head doing it.  And I get positive feedback on this blogging stuff.  Of course, that’s kind of a self-selecting audience.  Very few people take the time to post a comment telling me how obnoxious I am although I’m sure those folks are out there, too.

But ignoring those people and going by the checks that go into my bank account and the positive comments on my blogs and even the occasional real life person who says they read something of mine and liked it, I’ve got something going on here.  Some, dare I say it, talent.  (I dared.)

I hate that word though because it takes my job and makes it seem magical.  When really all I do is sit down in front of a computer and make up stories.  Anybody can do it.  Not anybody can do it well, but that doesn’t prevent a lot of bad writers from getting paid and getting paid well.  (Insert your favorite successful, untalented writer of choice here.)

That’s something I never forget.  No matter how good a writer I think I am, no matter how many people adore me (and while it’s not really that many people, it sure is a lot more than I ever expected), I could stink on ice.  I could be one of those bad but financially viable writers I make fun of.  Irony can be a real pain in the ass, huh?

Oh, and don’t bother telling me how great I am.  While it’s nice to hear, I’m not fishing for compliments.  Also, you might be one of those people with really bad taste that help encourage bad writers.  Either way, I thank you for indulging me because I’m a great writer, an adequate juggler, and a generally cool dude, but I’d probably be loading boxes on the night shift at UPS right now if it wasn’t for you.

Moving on . . .

So in addition to being a (disgruntled) comic book fan.  I’m also a game player.  I don’t know exactly when it happened, but somewhere, I crossed the line from hobbyist to full-blown enthusiast.  I know game companies the same way people know car manufacturers.  I even follow some game designers the same way movie afficianados follow directors.

(FYI:  Bruno Faidutti has yet to make a bad game.  Ad Astra is a current favorite among my small gaming group.)

If such a thing is even possible, game designers are even more obscure than novelologists.  While everyone has heard of Stephen King and Daniel Steele, who knows the name of the guy who designed Sorry?

Even the hobby is difficult to explain.  When people find out that you play games, they usually get this perplexed look on their face and say “Like Monopoly?”  Then I close my eyes and shake my head.

“Kinda. . . ”

I’ve pretty much given up on trying to explain it because unless you’ve experienced the joy of Heroscape, Monsterpocalypse, or Citadels, you just ain’t gonna get it.

And finally . . .

Godzilla would totally kick King Kong’s ass.  Don’t try denying it.  One is a huge, city destroying, radiaoctive, fire-breathing dinosaur.  The other is a big ape that couldn’t even climb a single building without getting shot down like a chump.

Biplanes?  Seriously?  That’s weak.  So until you get laser vision or the power to regenerate, Kong, you should probably stay out of the big leagues.  Just a suggestion.

And on that controversial note, I bid you all a good night.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

I don’t know if my regular readers have noticed this or not, but I tend to spend an unusual amount of time bemoaning the quality of modern comic books.  A big part of this, I’ll admit, is simply coming from a different era.  Everybody tends to like things they grew up with more than is reasonable.  But it’s also because comics are kind of lame now.

Let’s be fair though.  When I complain about modern comics, I’m actually complaining about modern superhero comics because those are what I like.  Those are what I prefer to read.  There are some great non-superhero comics out there, but, honestly, I’m just not interested most of the time in these.  I hear the accolades for Fables, The Walking Dead, 100 Bullets, etc, and while I don’t dislike them, I find nothing particularly appealing about them.  Nope.  For better or worse, when I think of comics, I think of superheroes.

And when I think of superheroes, I think in broad terms.  Good versus evil.  Surreal.  Melodramatic.  Inventive.  (Things I prefer not to think of but tend to pop up:  zombies, morality plays, rape.  But I digress.)  While there’s no reason for a lack of subtlety, there’s also nothing wrong with remembering that these are stories about people in strange costumes fighting other people in strange costumes, usually employing bizarre powers and signature gimmicks.  And, yes, Batman fans.  This applies just as much to your vaunted “realistic” superhero as anyone.  Unless you happen to know of any clowns in purple tuxedos who have access to a gas that makes you laugh until you die with a permanent smile left on your face.

But enough of my redundant, overstated comic book criticism.  Let’s actually get to the review.

REVIEW BEGINS HERE:

Green Lantern: First Flight is a terrific animated film.  While it is indeed a bit bloodier and grittier than I generally prefer, it never panders and always entertains.  I am not a Green Lantern fan.  I like the idea, like his powers.  But in comics, I just haven’t read a Green Lantern story that thrilled me.  But First Flight makes me realize that he can be awesome.

Superhero stories should be defined by action.  Anyone who says otherwise has no truck with me.  Superheroes and supervillains are not about talking.  They’re about leaping into adventure and kicking butt.  First Flight soars on this level.  The action is fantastic, thrilling, inventive, and just plain cool.  Green Lantern is one of those characters that thrives with clever writing.  And when you watch Hal Jordan pound a giant orb of death with an even more giant glowling green baseball bat, you know you’re watching something incredible.

Of course, writing is important.  It’s not just about punching bad guys in the face.  The writing in First Flight is rock solid.  The story isn’t groundbreaking, but it doesn’t need to be.  Too often, “subtle” writing is just a code word for “overly complicated” and “dull”.  But First Flight manages to keep its story going while investing in its characters and world.  Sinestro is a bizarrely sympathetic, ruthless, and classic villain.  (He’s like Tai Lung from Kung Fu Panda in that way.)  You aren’t going to like Sinestro, but you are going to respect him.  And when he is finally defeated (hope that’s not giving anything away that the bad guy loses), you are glad to see him get his just desserts.

Can I also take a moment here to mention how fantastic the animation is in this movie?  It is unbelievable.  From the body language and character design to the thrilling action sequences and quiet moments.  This is quality from top to bottom.

Also, Kilowog is in this, and Kilowog will always be the best Green Lantern in my universe.  (P.S. If you’re ever looking for someone to write a Kilowog min-series, DC, you know where to find me.)

First Flight is a solid sci fi superhero adventure.  If you’re not familiar with Green Lantern, you don’t need to be.  And if you are a Lantern fan . . . well . . . hard to say there.  I’ve heard some fans complain about the film, and I’m not one myself (as previously noted) so that’s a toss up.

Listen, I think we can all agree that I’m a great writer and therefore, must have great taste.  So check out Green Lantern: First Flight.  Watch space cops with magic rings fight evil alien crime lords for the fate of the universe.  And if that doesn’t sound cool to you . . . I gotta say we live in very different worlds.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Can’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’m glad you enjoyed my “fun” little stories about robot detectives and country-fried vampires.  But did you listen?  Did you heed the warning?  No, you did not.  But everyone will have probably have noticed by now that slime monsters and horrible consuming beasts are a recurring element in my stories.

The byproduct of an obsession with weird creatures and kaiju movies?  

The prophecies of an unappreciated visionary?

Pure, dumb luck?

Even I can’t say for sure.

But I welcome our new oozing overlords, and advise all of you to do the same.  While many of you will be fed to the nameless gods of the depths, it shouldn’t be long before our benevolent dinobot masters come to free us.  Oh, the glorious war of the oozing death and the laser cybersaurs shall be glorious to behold.  And from the ashes…a new empire will rise.  One of peace, prosperity, and equality for all.

Until those damned Inhumanoids come and ruin it for everyone.

You have been warned.