Tag: Comic Books

The Matrix vs. Lost – how not to end a story well

It’s not news that I am a huge sci-fi-fantasy-comic-book-alternate-universe story freak. I was watching The Matrix (for possibly the 30th time) the other day when I had a narrative epiphany. Or maybe an epiphany about narratives. Speculative fiction video narratives, to be exact.

Stories have to end sooner or later, in some kind of satisfactory manner – or else the things that excited it us (What do the machines want? Are those people dead? What is the Matrix? What is the Island?) will just start piling up and pissing us off.  So. How do you end it? How do you tell interesting stories – in worlds that must be explained – without either burying the viewers with WAY too much technical information, or else short-changing them?

Different story tellers make different choices. Those who are truly successful balance the world building, character exposition and plot perfectly – so we get most of our questions answered, and give a shit about the characters they happened to. I believe this is more difficult in a story in which one must convince the viewer that the world itself exists, in addition to believable characters and a plot that is both interesting and surprising (but not too).

The Matrix Trilogy vs. Lost

Both were very successful out of the gate. Both were very ambitious. Both asked all kinds of interesting questions and answered a few of them in the beginning. Both had a huge following.

And both of them had a huge portion of their followers HATE the way they ended.

In the Matrix story (I’m sticking to just the three films, here. I know there’s a lot more info in Animatrix and the games and whatnot, but the major thread is contained in the films), the writers/directors chose to explain everything they could: the Oracle, the Core, the Architect, Zion, the machines… on and on and on. An entire cosmology and ideology and history and everything. They knew this world inside and out and they shared it with us. And a lot of people (not me) thought it was boring and lame and too complicated. Like you had to take notes just to understand what was going on. And the characters are not terribly complicated. Good guys and girls, bad guys and girls. Boy loves girl, gets girl. Sketched in histories, lots of emotion but not too much depth.  In the choice between plot and character, the Wachowski  Brothers chose plot. It works well in the first flick, and by the third flick it’s clear that plot is what must sustain us.  For many, it was not enough. Or maybe too much – plot, that is, and not enough character. Time restrictions play a factor here – how long can the film be? (IMHO, their worst mistake – horrible recast of the Oracle. I know the original actress died, but they did a crappy job of choosing her replacement. Ack!)

In Lost, the TV series, Abrams and Lindelhof et.al., chose character over plot. We get histories, alternate futures, heavy interactions and lots of ambiguity. Sawyer: good guy or bad guy? Kate: bad girl or good girl? Who are the Others? And the other Others? They built a compelling but barely explicated cosmology that sacrificed detail for emotional impact. And some people HATED it. How did the smoke monster work, exactly? Were they dead the whole time? Why wasn’t Mr. Eko in the church at the end? For those who cared more about character, the ending was great (at that point, all I cared about was Sawyer and Juliet being reunited). I don’t need to know why pulling that strange stone plug out of a pool underground made the smoke monster mortal. It did, that’s what mattered. For those who wanted to KNOW, they had more questions at the end than ever.

So:
End of Matrix – finally! Who cares if it was the machines or the Architect or whatever. The humans lived. Good. Moving on.

End of Lost – What?! So were they dead? Were they dreaming? So was the island real? Did they die in the first plane crash? What about the smoke monster? Have you ever hated anyone as much as Benjamin Linus?

If you don’t get the balance just right, you will leave half your fan base angry and unsatisfied.

Many successful science fiction movies are set in the future – far enough away that you should expect for things not to make sense to your poor, feeble 21-century brain. With something like the Matrix, you have to explain why the world looks like ours but isn’t, and how it’s going to end, but it’s already ended 5 times before, but this time it’s different. Lost had six years and two timelines of strange happenings, and chooses not to give many details on most of them. But we know A LOT about Jack, and Kate, and Sawyer and Hurley and Mr. Eko and Sayid and Juliet and Ben and Locke and everyone else.

Comic books (and regular book series as well) have the luxury of drawing out the universe, painting it and describing it and making it real and believable and understandable, for years and years and pages and pages, without the obligation to tie all the loose ends or finish every sub plot at the end of each book/year/story arc/what-have-you.  It can create a place, pose 10 questions, answer 3 of them, and then continue on, asking more questions and answering a few here and there.  This freedom from deadline (at least in theory) is part of the reason it is hard to quit reading them.  One story may end, but the universe is still there, having other stories being told all over it.

Okay, so I don’t know exactly what it all means. But it seemed interesting. To me, at least. I wouldn’t presume to speak for all of you.

Bonus epiphany: theme of both Lost & Matrix = Love conquers all. Okay, so it’s a common theme. So what? It just occurred to me, so that makes it a super-amazing realization. And probably the reason I liked both of them. Well, that and cute boys.

Just some of the reading pleasures discovered in June of the year 2010

I’ve once again broken the list of books I read into two posts – scientifically separated into ‘those I’ve typed up’ and ‘those I haven’t finished typing yet.’ Only 13 books read in June, and that’s including two audio books and two I did not finish. In my defense, I was on vacation for almost half that time, so I actually had a social life (but also time to read on airplanes. hmm)

Avram Davidson Treasury. I only read a few of the stories in this collection of horror stories (unsurprisingly recommended by Mr. Gaiman). Not bad, but not really my thing.

The Child that Books Built by Francis Spufford. Most definitely my thing. Spufford examines the books he read as a child – after confessing that he is a devourer of fiction and an addict. Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, most of the books he discusses are books I also loved as a child – and he looks at how they shaped and fed him as a human being and helped make him the person he is now – while never being boring once. Loved it. Need to own this one and read it all the way through in one shot, instead of reading the first half in one week and then the second half two weeks later after returning from vacation.

The Scar by China Miéville. The night before I left on a multi-city, 12-day vacation, I was horrified to discover that I had no books to take with me. And by ‘no books’, I mean only one or two that looked interesting. Unbelievable. I was so worried about making sure I didn’t get fines for overdue books while I was gone that I forgot to stock up!

And then I remembered another of the great things about living in Portland – the bookstore at the airport is POWELL’S! And knowing that, I was able to sleep peacefully. Going to the airport early, as recommended by TSA, is no hardship when you can spend that (unnecessary, in this case) time browsing a good bookstore – with practically a mandate to buy something, since you have exactly two books to cover three days of flying in your 12 day trip. The Scar is one of the two books I bought that morning (Dune being the other – no, I’ve never read it. Yes, I know they can yank my sci-fi card for that) and the one I decided would be good Portland-to-Chicago reading material. And it was. Science-Fi-Fantasy-Otherworld fiction at its finest. It was strange to find that – while I didn’t really like or dislike the main character, Bellis, I could  not stop reading it. A convoluted, elaborate world – that apparently resides in a few other novels by Miéville – full of well-drawn human-people and nonhuman-people – and some very NON-human-nonhumans as well. This book rekindled a desire to read more sci-fi that I have yet to really indulge. But every time I see The Scar on the bookshelf, I want to go to the store.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Saffron Foer. This is the first novel by the fabulous JSF (who I heap praise on here, and who can be heard here) which I bought at the bookstore* closest to my big Sista’s house in New Hampshire – not realizing that I’d read it before (but thankfully did not actually own. Of course, if I’d owned it, I’d likely have remembered that I read it). Not as utterly fantastic as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but still crazy-good by any other standard.

This novel is the story of a girl in an old picture as imagined by JSFoer, and the story of someone, coincidentally, named JSFoer, who travels to Ukraine to do research on said girl, as told by the very-much-not-a-professional tour guide he employs while there. Amazing in its ability to fashion a beautiful story in such a strange way.

*Four books are still not enough, duh. And the Big Sista asked what we wanted to see/do, and I wanted to see and most definitely do the bookstore. It was a pretty good bookstore considering the very small population in the area. It had a big touristy focus that didn’t take away from the other sections, and even a small used-books section that I totally missed on our first trip there. (Second trip was because Little Sista had to return her broken booklight. For reals. Not my idea.)

Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg and Malcolm Jones, III. In the category of ‘the strangest way in which Gaiman has materialized in my life without my seeking him’, I present the appearance of the graphic novel, Preludes and Nocturnes.

After a significantly-less-than-pleasant and not-even-close-to-timely trip from Chicago to New Hampshire, I arrived with both Sistas and one niece at Big Sista’s house at something like 4:30am (scheduled arrival: 11pmish). We were variously tired and lagged and hungry and trying to ready ourselves mentally for sleeping. I wandered into the kitchen because hungry was something I could probably remove from the list rather easily – and what do I find sitting on a side table in the hall? Preludes and Nocturnes – the first eight books of Gaiman’s Sandman series. Belonged to Big Brutha-in-Law, bought for him by a co-worker not long before that day. Trust me, at 5am it was a freaky coincidence. As a bonus, it was a book I had not read (having confused it with Endless Nights, which I had read). People wonder why I’m a little strange on the subject of Neil Gaiman.

This book is the set-up of the character and world of the Sandman (also known as Dream, Morpheus and many other names in time and space). I think I went online and reserved Absolute Sandman 1 after reading it, but it may have been before that. This books is also the reason I was cranky (here) when I finally got AS 1, because I’d read the eight of the 20 stories already and had to wait forever again for AS 2.

The Lonely Polygamist by Barry Udall. Reviewed here.

Avram Davidson Treasury – I only read a few of the stories in this collection of horror stories (unsurprisingly recommended by Mr. Gaiman). Not bad, but not really my thing.

The Child that Books Built – Francis Spufford. Most definitely my thing. Spufford goes through the books he read as achild – after confessing that he is a devourer of fiction and an addict. Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, most of the books he discusses are books I also loved as a child – and he looks at how the shaped and fed his as a human being and help make him the person he is now. Loved it. Need to wont this one and read it all th way through in one shot, instead of reading the first half in one week and then the second have 2 weeks later after returning from vacation.

Alone in a Crowd – The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

The Lonely Polygamist is a strange sort of book. And I mean that in a good way. A man with four wives, part of a Mormon-offshoot sect, who is ineffectual and bumbling. And falling in love with a woman who is not (one of) his wives. Oh yeah, and lonely. Udall treats this “alternative lifestyle” with delicacy and respect (ha! am loving the opportunity to lump this old-style Mormon cult in w/the LGBT community!).  In the end, we are all just humans, shaped and damaged by our upbringing and trying to find peace and happiness in our lives.

I liked a lot of things about this book, and I really liked the way it ended. I did think it went on a bit longer than necessary in some sections.  I loved that we got to know the title character, Golden, as well as one wife, and one child (not of that wife) closely, to give a well-rounded picture of the family dynamics, and some of the many ways you can be lonely in a family w/more than 30 people in it. Because, as we’ve all heard before, it is sometimes lonelier to be with people than it is to be alone.

The Lonely Polygamist also has something to say about the rewards (and possible risks) of taking initiative, owning your responsibilities and pursuing your dreams (not your impulses). The picture of a chaotic family home (whether you have one mom or four) rings true and brings humor to the sometimes-depressing narrative of a man who (of course) must hit bottom before he can see his way clear to make a better choice.

The book made me bawl like a baby at one point (near the end, I won’t spoil it for ya) though in my defense, it was 2 am. If it had been earlier, I may have just bawled like a woman in her 40s.

This book includes a lot of info about nuclear bomb testing in the Utah/New Mexico area for a decade in the 50s/early 60s.  I admit I’d heard of these tests but knew very little about the details. This book shocked me with some of the (google-search verified) historically accurate details regarding the fall-out of above-ground nuclear (!) testing near populated areas. (I was going to say ‘on U.S. soil’, but exactly who’s soil would it be ‘ok’ to test this stuff on?!). Golden’s father made it big by finding uranium in Utah, and several of the main characters were injured in one big test gone bad.

I should probably add – I was thrilled to finish the book, because I’d picked up Absolute Sandman #1 by Neil Gaiman at the library and COULD NOT WAIT to read it.  And it was awesome, and too short (only 20 issues? 9 of which I’d read before? Where is Absolute Sandman #2 already!?).

I’m blaming the book club

I used to be a member of the SciFi Book club – starting in 1991. Every month – whether I bought a book or not – I got a cool flyer telling me all about the new sci-fi and fantasy books coming out. I found tons of books (e.g. The Wheel of Time) I might never have known about. I only stopped buying through them when I discovered used book stores, because used book stores don’t take book club editions (as a rule).  I’m sure it was in a SciFi Book Club flyer that I first saw Sandman comics/graphic novels and thought they looked cool. But, being a broke child, I never did buy one (because the graphic novels were more expensive than the regular books). But I did buy Neverwhere – partly because I’d wanted Sandman, and partly because it was a recommended book that month. Or maybe it was on sale. Neverwhere was my very first Neil Gaiman experience, and there was no turning back.

Fast-forward… 14 years? Now I’m obsessed with his blog. I can’t stop reading it. So far, I’ve read back to July of 2009, then decided to start at the beginning (of the current blog) in September of 2001 and read forward and I’ve gotten as far as January February March 2002 (and this while having intermittent connectivity issues which are DRIVING ME CRAZY). I joined twitter so I could ‘follow’ him. I’m watching interviews with him on the web, and reading his blog at work when I should be working. I’m practically a stalker (but still staying on the right side of the law-dog). I was bored with the book I was reading (A Disobedient Girl) and decided to re-read Good Omens because he was talking about the audiobook (and I’d already re-read American Gods lately). He likes the same people I do (Pratchett, Chabon, Gibson) and seems strangely connected to other creative people I like as well (de Lint, Miyazaki). It’s like proof that the things I like are cool, and that I’m not crazy for seeing meaning where others see coincidence. Example:

I was reading a journal entry of Neil’s (I call him by his first name because I feel like he’s my personal friend. I know it’s presumptuous. But it makes me feel special) about an artist he likes/finds inspiring/collaborates with, Lisa Snellings Clark. I click the links (which – keep in mind – are 8 years old) so I can see some of her artwork. Not much luck with the links, so I do a Google search for her name and find her blog. Above the ‘about me’ widget there is a link that says ‘Lisa explains it all at Stainless Steel Droppings.’

My eyes must have looked like an anime character at that point.

Stainless Steel Droppings is a blog I’ve read just recently that, among other things, reviews books.  A friend sent me a link a few weeks ago to a review Mr. Droppings had written because he was announcing a new Charles de Lint book and she wanted to make sure I knew about it. To recap, that is Neil Gaiman-Lisa Snellings Clark(2002)-Stainless Steel Droppings (2008)-Me(April 2010), and also Friend of Mine-Charles de Lint-Stainless Steel Droppings-Me(April 2010). I’m not imagining things – the world is conspiring to shower me with blessings.

In case all of that seems like it’s just me wasting time:

Reading about all the different projects (my super-close pal) Neil has going on, and the way he works on half-dozen things at a time (apparently) and enjoys other artists’ work in various mediums… somehow it is encouraging me to put more effort into writing, and deciding what to do about the whole writing thing. I’m not a fiction writer, so what kind of (non-academic) thing do I want to be writing? I know that the first rule of writing is to put pen to paper (metaphorically speaking – my handwriting sucks and I can type a lot closer to fast enough when the muse is on).

Write, even if it’s bad, even if it’s garbage. Write. Because if you do it enough, you will get to the good stuff – assuming you have any.  And the bad stuff will get better. Your writing will not get any better by not writing, that is for sure.

I’ve posted a blog entry 6 days in a row now, and have one in the can, and another one started. So thanks, Neil. For being my electronic friend and inspiration; for filling the empty hours and giving me hope for future hours filled with interesting projects.

A slow reading week…

I haven’t read much in the last week or two, and before that was not reading much that really excited me (other what I’ve already posted).  I have allowed myself to become addicted to a television show (Grey’s Anatomy) and have been watching it on DVD – between that, work and having a life, not much reading going on. Pretty unusual.

I saw the movie Watchmen when it was in the theater (the best friend is a huge Jeffery Dean Morgan fan, and I am a big comic book geek).  We were both horribly disappointed and irritated that we’d wasted money and time on such a bloody, violent, depressing and (most important to me) pointless flick. I can do without the blood and violence, but that wouldn’t be enough to turn me off of a movie.  And I am fine with depressing and meaningful, or pointless and fun.  But depressing and pointless – well, that’s a load of crap.  I had been meaning to read Watchmen because it was highly lauded by critics – surprising for a graphic novel.  After seeing the movie, I was compelled to read the book and find out what the movie had screwed up on.

Alan Moore’s graphic novel is much, much better than the movie based upon it (a movie that Moore refused to be affiliated with because he didn’t believe it would work).  But I still didn’t like it very much. I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t seen the movie, I would have had a different reading of the book, but it’s too late for that now.  The book has three or four sub-plots that are completely missing from the movie and added much to the point Moore seemed to be trying to make – that you cannot do evil things and not become evil.  The comic book is as violent and bloody as the film, but in comic-book form, the impact of the violence is more cerebral and less disgusting.  The book was compelling (while the film dragged on) and while still be depressing, at least was not pointless.  There is a lot of irony and contrasting of stories that is completely missing in the movie.  The character of Dr. Manhattan is much more developed in the book, and there is some fascinating stuff about the nature of time and experience that adds much to the backbone of Moore’s concept.  All in all, the book was enjoyable, if not something I would highly recommend.

I also read Kaye Gibbon’s The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster – follow-up to her first hit novel Ellen Foster. Ellen is a girl who’s lost her mother and somehow manages to stay driven and positive in the face of abuse, crushing poverty and racism in the South.  Both books are written in the first person.  I remembered liking Ellen Foster, so I picked up the sequel (written a decade or two later) when I saw it for $3.  TLAAMbEF was not the powerhouse the first novel was, but those who loved Ellen from the first book would probably enjoy seeing what came next.

I recently got a gig reviewing books for a newsletter/website called BookBrowse.com – soon I’ll get paid (a tiny bit of money) to review new books!  My first book is The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt – and it’s due in two weeks, so I had better get back to reading soon!