An entire genre--two genres even--has developed all because of the popularity of the Matrix. 1st, the live-action anime. 2nd, the comic book film. Granted, comic book films have been around since the first Batman in 1989 or Superman in 1978, but it wasn't until recently that comic book films have caught fire in the film industry.
The logic goes like this: comic books already have an established audience. They already have an artistic style and costumes and even camera movements can be seen in the way that the artist draws their panels. Turning popular books into films has been around forever because it's easy to market them, and it's a little easier to produce them because a lot of the creative decisions have already been made. All of this just means that it's easier. Easier, easier. They already know what the audience expects from them before they get to the theater.
Live Action Animes. Well, let's see, there is the Matrix, Sin City,Ultra Violet, Resident Evil, Aeon Flux, (I suppose I should include Transformers) &c. &c. They're starting to become more and more popular with western audiences and we will no doubt see more and more of them into the future.
The future. That's an interesting concept. It's something that all anime movies are about. --I'll admit to watching a few animes. I'm curious about this genre so I've seen a few of the most popular series, Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Escaflowne, Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Berserk, and a few others. I can see a lot of potential in the genre and I've been impressed by all of the works of Hayao Miyazaki, including Panda! Go Panda!, but overall the anime genre is tainted by the least creative plot lines, too overthetop characters, and in-coherent themes.
The problems with animes aren't their ideas. They have brilliant ideas, such as a man with a bounty on his head on a desert planet where there is a mixture between modern technology and western era technology--steampunkeque (trigun). Or how about In a fantasy world, a good king is overthrown by an evil one and his son has to get revenge and save the country using only a giant mecha suit (Escaflowne). In the future on mars, a bounty hunter sets out to capture the ultimate criminal (sounds like a Bruce Willis film, but no, it's Cowboy Bebop). The ideas are solid, it's the implementation of those ideas that flop.
I think it centers around the themes of Animes (anime? is that the plural of anime?). They try too hard to make a dramatic point about life or the environment or about good and evil. The worst storytelling I have ever seen was in Escaflowne, where for 3/4 of the series everything is outstanding, but then it all goes downhill when they introduce the fate machine. A machine that controls fate. I think they even called it Deus Ex Machina--I have to give them credit, it is correctly titled, and unless you have something to say about poor storytelling you should never center your story on an actual deus ex machina. --I'm not kidding, and neither were the makers of that anime. It was really terrible because it at the 3/4 mark the main character had killed his main opponent and his conflicted older brother, who was working for the enemy, was still alive and starting to feel guilt, and the boss of the main characters' foil character (who he had just killed) was still alive, and you assumed at the 3/4 mark that he would make amends with his brother and kill the SOB who brainwashed his brother into being evil. --Yes, that's how it ends. But to justify all of that, they include the 5 or so episodes about how they had built a machine that could predict the future and that they could change fate by correcting anything that opposes them.
Why did they do that? Why didn't they just conclude the series by making it obvious that the main boss was a wicked genius and good at persuading people to follow him, and then have the MC do what he needed to do?
OR how about in Trigun, where Vash (anime are full of funny names for their characters), the MC goes around haphazardly helping all of the towns folk and what not and isn't a bad character he's just been labeled as such (every nerdy anime lover's dream come true, a character they can relate to). Nearing the conclusion (I think in this one it happens just before the climax), it is revealed that Vash is actually a superior alien race and that the planet is a new colony for humanity, but that his antagonist is actually his twin brother. Why do that? They had an amazing story until that point, all they needed to do was let the two characters have a showdown at high noon and then have Vash be declared a hero and retire?
In Berserk, the story shifts from being about a band of outlaw mercenaries who make a respectable life advancing to the thrown, to suddenly being about a magical token that the foil character carries around with him that grants him wishes and is actually evil... We don't find out about that until the last 4 or 5 episodes.
Introducing details so late in the story just ruins the story.
Pokemon at least did things right: It's ALWAYS about catching pokemon or beating trainers--preferably both in one episode. You know what you're getting into when you watch it, just like you know that the Simpsons will always start out on one path and end in another, or a character in Family Guy will do something completely ridiculous and stupid and have to correct that throughout the course of the episode. Pokemon's problem is that the characters are TOO over dramatic. Then again, twelve year old boys leaving home is always going to end in an over-dramatic mess...
Comic Book movies are the same way though... The Quirky Tony Stark invents a suit to help him--battle evil. Turns out that his partner steals his suit idea, has him fired, and then they have to duke it out suit against suit, but...turns out there are other bad guys out there and Stark will have to team up with other super heroes (with real super powers) and eventually the x-men in order to save the world
There is nothing wrong with this I suppose, but you'd think they would at least put it in the distant future, not the present.--ten years from now these films are going to be so dated--dated like the matrix using a 56k modem noise for the first time Neo goes out of the matrix.
Going to a movie, comic book or anime, I expect the world to not be believable, just like I do in a sci-fi. I expect the world in it to not be believable, but I expect the maker of the film to make a case that it is believable. These days, comic book and anime films compensate for the implausibility by setting them in the present day--transformers in 2007, no way!--you mean there is a secret school for genetic mutation humanoids in which they train their powers and use them for good? You mean this reality is not this reality, it's the matrix?
Come on, you don't need to do those things to have an enjoyable film, Metropolis and Gotham doesn't have to be New York city or Washington D.C. or anywhere else, just set them in an alternate, Marvel universe and we'll be perfectly happy.My point is, we have changed so much over the last 10 years that now EVERYTHING has to be set in the present day in order to be interesting. I think they're trying too hard to sell their movie. Eventually, I suppose we'll reach a point where people realize that they want to approach movies with the understanding that it's not the real world and things don't work that way in real life. If the mass of society (The ones who are so attached to super hero films) doesn't realize this, then we'll probably see a breed of weirdos that are commonplace, just like anime weirdos are so...weird. In fact, we're already seeing them: people dressing in super suits to combat villains on the streets--and the crowd of people who endorse such behavior...
No comments:
Post a Comment