How John Carter Proves that Hollywood is Broken

Earlier this year, a new record was broken, one which will be extremely hard to break. The release of a particular movie ended the 76 years it spent in what's known as development hell, a long running period where a film is being worked on, but isn't completed or released. The film is based on a book which is this very year 100 years old, and has been influencing some of the most popular and enduring and in their own way influential movies, books, and television series for the last century. It was a long time coming, but the story that was a clear source of inspiration for Star Wars, Star Trek, Dune, Superman, Farscape, Stargate, James Bond, and the single most money making movie ever made, Avatar, finally, finally, was released as a major film.

And nobody saw it.

John Carter, the movie adaptation of the book A Princess of Mars, hugely underperformed at the box office, and I am having an incredibly hard time understanding why.

Let me get this out of the way and say that I loved it. I loved the books; I waited 6 years for the movie to get made (and watched as the project got bounced across three directors and two studios just during the time I was paying attention); I have seen the movie 6 times and I left the theater unable to wait for the sequel, which is now sure to never come. I anticipated this movie so much that I was afraid, very afraid, that when it came out I would be hugely disappointed, and I currently am, but not for the reason I was afraid of. Frankly, it's for a reason that never crossed my mind, that it didn't do well (financially), and that there won't be more of it. And again, I just can't understand why.

Now when I say I don't understand, what I mean is that I just don't get it. There's several reasons why it didn't do well, and I know objectively why they ruined this movie (again, financially). I know the reasons, and while I don't get why the movie was so plagued with them, I can tell you this: this movie's failure is a living example of why Hollywood is so screwed up right now.

Hollywood people hated it before it was even made.

Part of the interesting thing of a movie having a 76 year legacy of not being made is that you can start to see a pattern here. And one huge pattern for John Carter is that in all this time, Hollywood was never quite willing to give it a decent chance. The very first attempt to make this movie was in the form of a cartoon adaptation, co-created by the original author, Edgar Rice Burroughs (then already world famous for his other character, Tarzan), and Bob Clampett, (a successful animator best known for the creation of Porky Pig). What was set to be the first ever full length animated film was a sci-fi epic that at first interested the studios, until they showed some way early test footage to a rural town test audience that reacted unenthusiastically. The plug was quickly pulled, which might have seemed a bad idea a few years later when the sci-fi epic Flash Gordon serials gained huge popularity immediately upon release, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the film that would gain the title of first full length animated movie) was also hugely popular and won Academy Awards. John Carter, the project which was what both of those were before they were made, continued to wallow in development hell.

Fast forward to modern day, just before the movie came out, and there were already analysts predicting failure for this movie. The same second guessing that caused the property to miss out on the successes achieved by Snow White and Flash Gordon pervaded every iteration of this movie, until when it finally did come out, that second guessing was being printed and published for all to see, and judge the movie by, before anyone got a chance to even view it. And lo and behold when enough people in Hollywood started telling everybody that would listen, including (and especially) potential audiences that this movie was going to bomb, audiences avoided it, causing it to bomb.

And you know who was there to tell you all about it? Hollywood was. That's because...

When Hollywood decides it's right, it will never admit it was wrong.

It was decided this movie was going to bomb before it ever came out, and it was likewise agreed that it was a bomb before it was even out of the theater. Hollywood didn't give it half a chance to even generate good word of mouth after its admittedly weak opening weekend, because for every audience member trying to tell their friends, “hey, this was good, you should check it out”, there were two analysts saying “man, this movie is losing so much money it's not even funny, that probably means you shouldn't see it”. Disney waited a full two weeks from its release to announce to everybody that they lost a huge amount of money on it. It earned its own subheading on Wikipedia's page for the term “Box Office Bomb” within a month of being out. High ranking, important people at Disney are losing their jobs in shame, and the movie can still be seen in the major theaters.

We're not hearing about it's good, early critical reviews. We're not hearing about the Facebook petitions to give us a sequel. We're not hearing about how it has a higher user rating on MetaCritic than the money devouring Hunger Games. We're not hearing about how it broke the all time opening weekend record in Russia. Don't get me wrong, it's not doing well, but it's not doing as bad as is being reported. Hollywood told us all before it came out that this movie would bomb, and now that it's out, they're telling us just how bad it bombed.

Still, it's not hard to blame a lot of audiences for not going on account of they had no idea what it was about. That's because...

Hollywood has no clue what to do with a good idea.

Here's the deal. I talked up at the top about how ridiculously influential the book the movie was based on is. If you read it yourself, you can right away start picking out major things that have become more famous in other media that found their origin in this series. Some of them are huge (like almost all of the non-environmentalist parts of Avatar), and some of them are much more subtle (the word Jedi is derived from similar words in Burroughs' Martian language). But beyond just the influence of this book, think about the successes of the things influenced by it. Dune revolutionized science fiction. Superman is easily the most widely recognized superhero in the world. Star Wars can't be even mentioned without making a million dollars. Avatar made all the money, rocketing up the box office despite being three hours of blue cat people trying to save nature, all of which are things that would normally turn audiences off on their own. But what made people go see Avatar were all the other parts, parts which were taken from John Carter. Indeed, some of the most successful and memorable aspects of all of these things were the parts inspired directly by John Carter. And the movie that we got out of it, while it had some updating and “fleshing out”, was overall a very faithful adaptation, putting on the screen an incredibly accurate depiction of the world that inspired countless others.

And then the advertising crew took a look at that world, threw their hands in the air, and said, “We have no idea what to do with this.” Where a preview could have told us how old the property was, or how inspirational it has been to the things that most audiences love, or given us any real indication of what the movie was about, or even told us at some point that this movie takes place on Mars, they instead decided to be as vague about the plot and location as possible, and show us only the most fleeting, nondescript, and typical seeming footage of the action and special effects that they could find. The title of the book, A Princess of Mars, dropped the Princess so as to please all the males who just couldn't take Princess Leia seriously, and dropped the Mars to satisfy any women who still had lingering doubts about this whole sci-fi genre. In the end, they went with the name of the human character as the title, telling no one anything about the move other than that Edgar Rice Burroughs didn't show that much creativity when naming his characters (he spent all that creativity on creating whole planets and alien races and histories from thin air).

The title change is just one part of a whole different problem, namely that...

Hollywood wants to fix what's not broken.

Again, take a look at the provided (and let me assure you, only partial) list of things the original book inspired. Think of the minds that were influenced by this work, and used that influence to make themselves famous with their own stories. You don't inspire that many people and projects of that high a creative caliber and that long lasting an appeal by being a terrible story teller. And while Burroughs had his weaknesses in the character development (and occasionally naming) department, he was by no means a terrible story teller. The covers of his books describe him (quite accurately, in my opinion) as the greatest adventure writer of all time. Ray Bradbury described him as “the most influential writer, bar none, of our century”. You have to understand how much influence Burroughs as a writer had on the genre of sci-fi that was still quite young at the time of his writing, and recognize the influence that he still holds, even if a lot of audiences don't realize he's the one who originated it. Jules Verne and H.G. Welles get all the credit for creating the genre of science fiction itself, but it was Burroughs' works, primarily with the John Carter of Mars series, that really created what we know now as sci-fi. This man's pedigree in storytelling is nearly unsurpassed, to the point that he has two cities in America named after his fictional characters, and when Hollywood got a hold of his magnum opus, it still decided that they had to tweak it.

I definitely enjoyed the movie, but I have to say, it's not my new favorite movie like it was hoping (and like it would be if it was just a little more faithful). Understanding that because of the time period it was written in (and the first person narrative, which led to focusing almost entirely on one character), there was some updating that had to be done, but considering that most stories that are nearing 10 years start to show their date, needing only a little character development and maybe a little more feminine empowerment after a century is quite an impressive feat. What the work didn't need was a dead family back story. The book was the ultimate fun time thrill ride, about a dude who was just generally awesome running around on an alien planet fighting monsters to save the princess, and doing so in the most fun, creative, and genuinely engaging way possible. It was just about the last story that needed a heaping helping of tragedy, angst and general Jason Bourniness. This section of the story remained thankfully small, but it was still there, and it took up enough screen time (at the expense of the romantic development of the main characters) that it fundamentally changed the genre of the story, from Romance (set in a sci-fi adventure) to a Drama (a journey of self discovery set in a sci-fi adventure). This subplot doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the pulpy fun of the movie, and more importantly, it doesn't mesh with the ludicrously amazing movie we could have had if it had remained entirely within the tone of the book.

Why does Hollywood feel the need to shoehorn moodiness where it doesn't belong? It's simple, really...

Hollywood has killed good action movies.

You may have noticed a growing distinction between your typical summer blockbuster action movie and the more subtle, nuanced dramas often found in arthouse theaters. Compare Transformers 3 with, oh say, Blue Valentine. Now I didn't see either, so I can't really say much about the quality of the movies themselves, just that based on the previews I had absolutely no interest in either. What I can say is that Blue Valentine had phenomenal reviews, was nominated for an Academy Award, and has an 88% at Rotten Tomatoes. It didn't do badly in the box office, making a decent 12 times its own budget, so it got away with a nice profit to boot. Transformers on the other hand, has a 35% at Rotten Tomatoes, was nominated in nearly every Razzie category, and has one of the most unintentionally (or quite possibly intentionally) hilarious Wikipedia entries I've ever seen. It also made over $300 million in the US alone, and was at the time one of only 10 movies in history to make over a billion dollars, making significantly more than either of the two Transformers movies preceding it. Like it or not, this kind of money generating ability cannot be ignored by Hollywood, and obviously isn't being ignored, as there is already a Transformers 4 being worked on (reported to be, I kid you not, a reboot of the series, though still done by the same people.)

Notice a difference there? Hollywood has taken the summer tent pole action movie and decided “why bother with any kind of semblance of quality when you can simply throw random crap on the screen, and when it's huge enough, and expensive enough, and explosive enough, everyone will go see it”. And this strategy has been rewarded greatly by audiences worldwide.

And keep in mind, I didn't see, nor want to see, either of these movies. I'm honestly not one to believe a movie is good by either the awards it received or the records it broke in the box office. But Hollywood had decided that there's a distinction between the two, either it will be a low circulation indie darling, or it will be a crap goldmine. Either it's art or entertainment. And this distinction has been picked up and ran with by everyone, audiences included. The constant fight over R ratings vs. PG-13 ratings boils down to this idea, that either it's made for a larger audience and thus is a soulless cinematic turd, or it has artistic integrity and will be a much loved, if low on box office returns masterpiece. They act like these are our only two options, and huge masses of the audiences have decided to agree. They reward the crappiest of crappy with all the money in their pockets, and it seems to be tied exclusively to how much time was devoted to ridiculous special effects in the preview. I really kind of feel that Hollywood has trained audiences to behave like this, creating a Pavlovian response of great excitement when shown mediocre film with huge budgets. They've been taking psychological shortcuts in trying to entice the masses to go to movies, by making exclusively sequels and remakes of easily recognizable properties, by streamlining the budgets to accommodate the most cutting edge special effects and just enough for a passable script, and speaking as much as they can in the only global language, explosions. Audiences eat it up, because this seems to be 80% of the entertainment they give us. They've taught audiences to expect terrible dialogue and gaping plot holes if they want some decent action, and that if they want some intellectual stimulation, they need to pack up and go to the Angelika.

But there's another effect of this distinction between quality movies and entertaining movies.

Hollywood has killed fun movies.

Now it gets worse. I saw Transformers 1 and 2. Yes the second was terrible, and yes the first was only fair to middling. But even while Michael Bay was aggressively attacking my intelligence, I still managed to have a good time. The main reason was that I saw the movies with friends and family, and it did deliver on some explosive goodness and robot fights, and everybody was having a good time together. When a movie promotes a fun atmosphere for audiences to go and have a good time with friends at, it's amazing how fun the experience can be, even when the movie itself is objectively terrible. The whole group I went with to see Revenge of the Fallen had a good time, even if none of us now will admit to liking the movie itself.

But this is no excuse for anyone legitimately trying to make a good movie to scrimp on qualities outside of simply being a fun popcorn romp. When you're working on what you want to be a good script, you want to put as much distance as you can between yourself and Robots vs. Explosions: the Movie. How do you do that?

You make it less fun, is what you do. Crap movies got popular because they still managed to be fun, and somehow because of this, fun has become equated with crap. Now, if you want your movie to be taken seriously in just about any conceivable way, it can't be fun at all. To get an idea of what happens when film makers try to actually make smart action movies, just take a look at the career of Christopher Nolan. Yes, his movies are good; yes, they make a pretty good amount of money and still manage to be critically acclaimed; but have you noticed another similarity they almost all share? At least one love interest isn't making it out alive. The only movie where the main character doesn't have a dead wife or girlfriend is Insomniac, the main movie in Nolan's career I never hear anyone talking about; for all the rest, there will be a dead woman (and the grief her death causes) as a central plot point for the movie. Twice in the case of The Prestige.

This applies to any movie that wants to be taken seriously, whether they succeed at that or not. You want a spy movie that isn't just Roger Moore death quips? Tadaa, you've got Jason Bourne, his shaky camera, dead girlfriend, and everything. You want your Ray Harryhausen mythology monster movies updated for modern times? Poof, toss in a dead family and you've got yourself Clash of the Titans. You want to watch some blue cat people save their jungle planet? Well you've gotta sit through Sam Worthington watching his brother's corpse go through the crematorium first.

You want to see a noble Civil War veteran spend 2 hours saving an alien princess and fighting wicked cool Martian creatures? Well you've got some tragic backstory to wade through first. I'll readily admit, they didn't do half bad of a job creating a version of the John Carter character who had trouble letting himself become invested in a cause because the last time he had, his wife and child had been burned alive in their home. But did they have to? They opted to use the tale to tell us about much of an atrocity war is, and while that's a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with, I also firmly believe that A Princess of Mars is the wrong place and time to be telling us that. If you wanted a story that explained just how bad conditions were in Victorian Era orphanages, you'd read Oliver Twist, not Peter Pan. But because they wanted to adapt John Carter and also make a movie that had heart, soul, and quality, the only way they could do that was to add some tragedy, and lose some fun. Enough of the rest of the movie was fun enough to actually overcome this in my opinion, but I'd have rather it just wasn't there and that they'd instead focused on the budding romance between the two lead characters.

In either case though, the movie came out, it was pretty great, even where it could have been better, and it sadly did pretty bad in the box office. This happens, and even if its failure was the fault of forces beyond its control, it just boils down to an occasional regrettable lack of audience support. It's not like this spells doom for other potentially great movies, right?

Right?!

Wrong.

Hollywood is going to take entirely the wrong lesson from this.

This movie failing means without a doubt other movies like it will not get made, and I'm not just talking about the John Carter sequels that would have been amazing. I mean any movie for a decent amount of time afterward that is in any way similar to John Carter is going to get shot down. If it takes place on Mars; if it's an action film with a love interest who's a princess; if it features a strange tribal alien supporting cast; if it's got Andrew Stanton as the director. Hollywood is going to be taking a long, hard look at any scripts coming its way and if it sees anything that can be construed as a vague similarity, they're going to be very iffy. Hollywood is likely going to be wary of all things science fiction for a while. There's likely movies that have already been canceled because John Carter failed.

This has happened before. Speed Racer came out 4 years ago. It was awesome, but it did badly for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend. Regardless of what those reasons were, Hollywood decided it was because the movie was a family friendly action flick, and made a mad rush to cancel or overhaul any projects they had that fit that description. A Captain Marvel movie was scrapped, and a Johnny Quest remake was canceled.

They do the same thing when a movie does well. When Iron Man became an unexpectedly huge hit, they tried to catch lightning in a bottle once more by recreating superficial similarities in other movies. One of the next major superhero movies to come along was Green Lantern, which featured a character who was brave, noble, and responsible, so much so that he was deemed worthy to be entrusted with an extremely powerful weapon. But because Iron Man did so well telling the story of an immature, irresponsible jerk becoming a better person, by golly, Green Lantern was going to tell the same story. Iron Man's success couldn't have been because of Robert Downy Jr.'s irascible charm or because the character's growth made complete sense in presenting a situation where he logically would reach maturity and at the same time come into a new and untold level of power which he no doubt would have misused earlier, but thankfully doesn't now on account of his own inner changes. No, it's successes were obviously because irresponsible characters combined with super powers is fun to watch, therefore it stands to reason that Green Lantern would be successful if they did the exact same thing with it. And when Green Lantern failed, they figured it couldn't be because the character's arc of being given a mega weapon and suddenly, inexplicably becoming a better, smarter, more caring person made little to no sense, or because the interpretation was painfully inaccurate to the original comics. No, Hollywood decided that it failed because any DC character who wasn't Superman or Batman wasn't going to make any money at all, and promptly responded by reiterating their stance of never making a Wonder Woman, Flash, or Justice League movie.

Hollywood has this uncanny ability to take exactly the worst lesson from a failure or success possible, partially because they refuse to see their own mistake and firmly believe that there is no factor for a movie's success or failure other than audience demand. With John Carter, they're not going to take into consideration any of the many failings they made with the movie. They're not going to reason that it failed because the name was neutered to the point of ineffectively explaining its premise, or because the advertisements were infuriatingly vague, or because they just had to add a tragic backstory where there was absolutely no call for one. They're not even going to look at the fact that it made decent money and that it's the colossal budget that made it so hard to break even. They're going to look at the lack of profit and somehow surmise that audiences don't want sci-fi action epics with likable characters.

And then they're going to order a cancellation on everything like it.

And this is why we're so screwed.

Gimme Some Candor

So it’s closing in on summer and another Transformers movie is heading our way. Now, I've never cared too much for the franchise, and I snickered aloud first time I saw the latest preview, but truth be told, I probably will be seeing it. Being honest, this is mostly because I am, at heart, 12-years-old, and there will always be an itch that only giant robots bashing each other into explosions can satisfy. But a small part, I will say, is the candidness of Michael Bay. You see, the last installment was widely derided for being a montage of mindless explosions. So when it came time for a third movie, no amount of aping the Inception noise for the new trailer would placate the audiences who were starting to doubt that there would actually be a little plot to go along with the robot fight scenes.

To allay our fears, the director was primed to take the stage to tell us that this sequel would indeed be better, but to do that would require admitting the previous one needed improvement. Would he be willing to make that admission? Bravely, Bay did just that when he point blank and without sidestepping, said “that was crap.”

I appreciate that. He’s right, the movie was crap. You know what else was crap? 80% or more of what the rest of the media has been feeding us, completely unapologetically. I appreciate that for once, a director took the time to essentially apologize for what he’d done and promise to do better next time (and have that apology actually be about the movies themselves and not some sort of drunken fiasco). My biggest question at this point is why aren’t there more people doing that?

Seriously, it’s a legitimate question. I sat through Wolverine: Origins, I played Metroid: Other M, I read Brightest Day, and I still have yet to receive an apology for any of those. The time and money I spent on those went off into a black hole of wasted resources, and I have nothing to show for it but disappointment. At this point, I’m not even angry that these things sucked, but that their makers show no sense of reprehensibility for the sucking. I understand sometimes things go wrong. Deadlines need to be met, creative differences arise, certain risks are made that don’t always pay off. I am more than willing to forgive a cook a few broken eggs it means he’ll learn to make the omelet. But I walked away from these instances, and have no indication that an omelet is coming; all I can reasonably expect is more broken eggs and blank looks as to why I’m not enjoying this.

And I’m not the only one who’s hurt by this lack of candor: these makers are hurting themselves. As with addiction rehabilitation, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Without this admission, they will never learn from their mistakes. That’s why honest disclosure is so important. Think about Superman Returns (or don’t, if you prefer). Bryan Singer, who’d been so successful in adapting the mopey, edgy X-Men, dropped that franchise in order to jump to Mr. Bright-and-Shiny superheroes himself, Superman, in what should have been recognized as the most inappropriate pairing of director and material since they tried to get Tim Burton on Superman. As a result, he ruined both franchises.

What we should have gotten:

What we got instead:

If ever an apology was overdue, this would be it, yet when Singer finally addressed the issue, the most he faults the film for is being “a bit nostalgic and romantic”. Seriously, the movie refused to delve any deeper into Superman’s vast mythology than “Holy crap, this guy has super strength”; they cast Lois Lane as a pouty banshee; and they gave the big blue boy scout an illegitimate son that he abandoned, but the most the director said was wrong with it was that it was too respectful to its successful predecessors, and that the big thing he would fix would be to ‘tighten up the first act’? If the fates were to frown upon us and Bryan Singer got another shot at Superman, apparently he would make the same mistakes, just without the exposition.

And here we get to the crux of the matter, the fact that this lack of candor not only can, but has and is still leading to the same mistakes being repeated. Take DC Comics. Once upon a time, they were more than willing to not just admit mistakes, but to take action with the audience’s express desires in mind. When they paired Batman with the much maligned new Robin Jason Todd, they heard the cries of anguish at how terrible a character Jason was. Time kept going, and so did the complaints, so eventually they did respond, and how: the audience was polled on whether this new character lived or died. This was not only an admission of guilt in creating a truly unlikable character, it was offering the audience to be a part of correcting the matter, while simultaneously adding a touching new layer to the Batman mythos. In terms of creative penance, this is the gold standard. Fast forward 22 years, and what do we have? The latest Robin is as unlikable as the original Jason, is the illegitimate spawn of Batman and someone-who-is-not-Catwoman, and also Jason’s been brought back too. (Though to be fair, in a bizarre twist, the story that brought Jason back is actually so good it makes it hard to complain). They’re not just not apologizing for current mistakes, they’re actively taking back previous apologies and seeing how many times they can make the same ones again. Last September, they drastically altered Wonder Woman’s costume and back story to something terrible enough to offend just about everybody. A year later, they still haven’t said they’re sorry, and instead they’re going to do the same thing with every other character (including Wonder Woman, again, for good measure). The costumes are even being designed by the same guy who made the much hated last one; they actually picked the guy who thought Wonder Woman needed a leather jacket with football player shoulder pads, showed him the entire collection of DC superheroes and said, “Do your worst.”And he did.

"And don't come back until you've ruined everybody."

Seriously, Hollywood, and TV Land, and Comics World, enough is enough. I really want to like what you have to give me. Without you I’ll have to spend my free time talking to my family or doing something productive, and neither of us want that. But if you don’t admit your mistakes, then I can’t help you. You’ll keep doing the same things wrong over and over, and I’ll give you the cold shoulder for a while and try to pretend nothing’s wrong. We’ll just keep growing more and more distant until we don’t even know each other anymore. Then one day you’ll wake and look for me, but it will be too late, and I’ll be long gone.

I'm not enjoying this any more than you.

Please Answer the Questions in an Orderly Fashion

The word on the street that I’ve been hearing is there's a remake of The Black Hole coming up. Now, I’d perk up in attention if any movie titled something like The Black Hole was being made, but in this case I’m actually familiar with the original. It was a Disney movie from the 70’s that was basically a vehicle for Maximilian Schell to play the greatest, crazy, space Captain Nemo ever seen, and as much as that speaks to everything in movies that I enjoy, I’ll be the first to admit the movie had some distinct flaws. Sure the special effects are dated now, but they were pretty good for the time; granted they had terrible robot sidekicks, one of which inexplicably had a bad southern accent, but you have to keep in mind it was marginally a kids’ movie. No, the gravest mistake that they made with this film was in the ending. (I’ll go ahead and warn you now: there will be spoilers aplenty ahead.) The movie’s big question throughout is what lies on the other side of the black hole. A daunting question for any film, let alone Disney’s live action department in the 70’s, but the movie builds up that question for 90 mostly awesome minutes. Closing in on the end, the gravity macguffens are failing and the giant mystery space station and its crazy German space captain and his killer robots and hypnotized space crew are being dragged into the black hole, and everything seems so cool that we can’t possibly be disappointed, we find out the answer to the film’s ongoing question, and it ruins everything.

This movie is just one in a long line of films, television shows, books, and other things that belong to a burgeoning new subgenre that I really, really want to like, and thus far have found incredibly few satisfying examples of. As the first person to have noted this (at least without researching the matter further), I take the right to name this discover, and I have called it The Impossible Question. The basic point of any example in the genre is to set up a question, similar to a murder mystery, except that the question pertains more so to the reality in which the characters live (Lost’s “What is the island?”; The Black Hole’s “What lies on the other side of the Black Hole?”; Muppets from Space’s “Where did Gonzo come from?”; etc). It seems like a new form of mystery, mostly a subgenre of sci-fi, though it definitely carries elements throughout of fantasy, horror, maybe even religious, but really anything that adds to the mood and intrigue. While there have been examples of this popping up throughout the history of fiction, as far back as I can tell to Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, it’s suddenly had a resurgence which has made it more popular and common than ever, with several new attempts at the genre coming out within the last few years. And, by and large, all these recent attempts are terrible.

The problem with the Impossible Question is partly due to its own biggest selling point; the questions are really interesting. To make a really cool, cosmic feeling, truly epic and impossible question, you need a fantastic build up. The build up, it turns out, is not that hard; you just keep asking increasingly bizarre questions and having increasingly illogical events happen.

“Oh my God, polar bear attack!”

But that turns out to be something of a problem where the writers in question seem to stand back and look at the situation and say, “Well, that build up was fantastic, it sure got the audience hooked and loving this. Wait, why are you still looking at me? What? Crap, you want more?!” They seem to forget that the more questions you ask, the more complex the answer(s) is going to have to be.

There seem to be three major cop-out answers that writers are willing to give, and have begun to rely on.

First off, and starting with the worst, some people will just not answer the question at all. Like, flat out refuse. It’s almost as if you asked someone on the street what time it was, and then they did an elongated song and dance routine before finally (breathlessly) telling you they didn’t have a watch the whole time. It might have been entertaining at the time, but the entire purpose of the interaction was voided within the last few moments. Take Cloverfield. Anyone who knows me as a person knows that I hate and loathe Cloverfield, and consider it the absolute bottom on my list of movies I’ve seen. And while I have many, many reasons, pretty high among them is the movie’s absolute refusal to answer even the most basic of questions pertaining toward its apparently nonexistent plot. “What is the monster?”; “Where did the monster come from?”; “Why is it attacking?”; “What does the monster look like?”; “Why should I care about any of these vapid, banal teenagers when I went to see a giant monster movie?”; and “Can I see the damn monster now?” are all questions that J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves just opted out of answering, despite the fact that the potential for answers was the absolute only thing getting me through the shaky camera. Another example is the upcoming Vanishing on 7^th Street (it’s not even out yet, but I Wikipedia’d it after an early release). Basic plot is people are vanishing and the literal darkness is what’s taking them. This leads to some very important questions like “What is the darkness, and why is it taking people?” but if you’re going into the movie wondering things like that, you’d best forget expecting an answer because that’s something for another day. The movie ends with everyone in the world disappearing, and there’s no real reason why. If we’re comparing this new Impossible Question genre to the Mystery genre, this is like a murder mystery that you watch for two hours, and then the detectives take one last look at the corpse before calling it quits and deciding they’ll never know who the murderer is, and then the credits roll.

The second option, somewhat less bad, but possibly more groan inducing, is that it’s been a trick question all along. Take for instance the 2009 movie Exam. The basic plot is 8 people on a job interview for a mysterious company, they’re told they have 80 minutes to answer the question, except they're not given a question. As movies who have those little wheat stalks on their posters are wont to do, human emotions swell to the breaking point, and a seemingly simple event becomes a bottle movie of epic proportions which likely shines a light on the darkest aspects of modern man.

Is this what most job interviews are like? I’ve only been on 3.

Well, how can this go wrong, we’ve already delineated exactly what the question for the film is (there’s two, really: “What’s the question again?” and “Psst, guys. Does anyone know the answer to question number 1?”) There’s a mysterious corporation involved, and hey it’s got those little wheat stalks on the poster again, how can this go wrong? Turns out that right before the clock started ticking and the emotions started swelling, the guard that brought them into the interview room asked them “Any questions?”. The one who figures it out responds with, “No.” End of movie. The entire mystery of the film is a trick question. It’s almost like there was no mystery at all, given how trivial and unimportant the answer turned out to be. I’m actually surprised there wasn’t a classic comedy drumbeat and symbol clash. It’s only a couple steps above a pun.

Which is odd, seeing as how puns have turned out so much better in this situation before.

In murder mystery terms, this is like earnestly watching a 2 and a half hour movie before they climactically reveal that the cause of death wasn’t murder at all, but only a tragically placed banana peel.

Lastly, we have what is probably the most common answer: let’s get Meta-Physical. The thing with this one is that it’s secretly what you want the answer to be, it just turns out that you didn’t really think it through that much. When these kinds of stories get really, intensely complex, and they involve these ever growing questions that are so cosmic and profound, you want to the answer to be equally cosmic and profound. But there’s a lot of trouble in trying to make it so. For starters, meta-physical, somewhat spiritual answers deal more in the mystical than in the science fiction realm. This means the answer is going to be kind of a hackneyed catchall, like “this character is special because he is The One”, or “the deal with all the craziness is that this is a cosmic battleground between the absolute forces of good and evil”. Even if they attempt to go for a science fiction backed answer, it will inevitably turn into some kind of catchall answer that is just advanced and misunderstood enough at the time the story is written, like nanites, neutrinos, the super-collider, or electromagnetism. But in either case, they will still be trying to marry the science fiction with the quasi-mystical, and the effect is way too simplistic of an answer to cover the multitude complexities of the questions asked.

Secondly, cosmic is different to every person. Taking into consideration the set of religious beliefs that each audience member subscribes to is difficult, and this difficulty is multiplied by the extremely personal attributes every person ascribes to their set of beliefs on their own accord. To make things mystical and cosmic that work for every audience member, without alienating anybody, means that you have to take what was already a disappointingly one word answer like, “God”, and rework it until it's acceptably faceless, like “an anthropomorphized image of all things good in the universe”.

Someday, we’ll all end up in that big, diverse, politically correct safe haven in the sky.

This is probably the most widespread of all answers to the impossible question today. The Black Hole is one of the earliest that I can think of. Have you figured out what was on the other side of the black hole? Yeah, it’s heaven and hell. 2012 decided that the end of the world was caused by Neutrinos doing something science-magic, and yet it still turned into the Biblical flood, complete with arcs. Though "John from Cincinnati" was cancelled before it managed to tell us what it was about, it was stated by its creators that it was somehow about finding God through surfing. Easily the best example of this was Lost, which basically had everything I talked about up there as their ending. Everyone who ever wondered what kind of an island had so many weird things on it waited 6 years to find out that it was the battleground between anthropomorphized Good vs. Evil, and that electro-magnetism was magic, and that in the end it was all okay because everyone died and went to heaven (eventually).

I’d like to say that the murder mystery equivalent is watching a 3 hour movie to find out that the killer was the Devil, but it doesn’t really matter because the victim went to heaven, except that comparison would be incorrect. It’s really more like watching something for 85 hours, and then finding out that the killer was the Devil, but it doesn’t really matter because the victim went to heaven.

For anyone, like me, who sincerely wants to like this genre, do not give up hope. There are good examples in the past, there are a few good ones out there right now, and that means that there will be some, however few, in the future. By delineating what makes the bad ones bad, and pointing out some good ones, I hope to make a small difference in this genre myself. So here’s some good examples: "The Twilight Zone", and to a lesser extent, "The Outer Limits". The anthology format really allowed you to ask multiple questions, and get a great answer every time, every single episode, and even better, if you don’t like one, the next episode is a fresh start! Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, possibly the progenitor of the entire sub-genre, is one of the first and one of the best. And then there’s "Doctor Who". Old and new, most episodes of "Doctor Who" follow this format, except where they ask a bizarre series of questions, they answer them better than you ever thought possible. I’ll go ahead and give you a small spoiler, the answer is almost always aliens, but that’s the beauty of it: in basing a show in a world where technology and alien species make just about anything possible, the answers can literally be anything, and thus they don’t have to rely on cheap tricks like nanites (and even if they do, there will be much more to it than that.) Not to mention that the British are largely a Godless nation, so you don’t have to worry about the answer turning out to be a literal Deus Ex Machina. So, go out to your nearest (British) video store today and rent all the seasons of "Doctor Who" you can. There are questions to be asked, and they will answer them with aliens.

They also do this a lot, too.

This is Why I Wouldn't Want Cormac McCarthy as my Dad

Every kid imagines what life would be like if their parents had had a cooler job. The thrill of going to school among all the other kids, themselves the spawn of accountants, secretaries, and garbage men, and telling them all about how cool it is to have a mom or dad who is a rock star, astronaut, or motorcycle stuntman. Among the lists of “Most Desired Parental Careers (for Bragging Rights)”, novelist doesn’t appear that often, and believe me, there is a reason. Cormac McCarthy is that reason.

For those of you not familiar, McCarthy is a current, American novelist whose works elicit accolades from critics and tears of a deeply profound fear and sadness from people with souls. Among his best known books are No Country for Old Men, with its crazy assasins and depressed Tommy Lee Joneses; Blood Meridian, chock full of crazy, pedophile, psycho-cowboys; and The Road a delightful romp across an ashen post apocalyptic wasteland speckled with bouts of crazy cannibalism. What does this have to do with kids? He dedicated The Road to his young son, saying it was inspired by a road trip they took together. Now, either that was a particularly messed up vacation, or the McCarthy family’s “father son bonding time” is way different than mine. I’m not saying worse, just way, way different. Given the sparse details he’s told us, the audience, about this vacation, and other fun McCarthy family adventures, we’ll just have to use our imaginations to fill in the blanks. Thus, I give you:
The McCarthy Family Bonding Time…

…On a Road Trip!
Johnny McCarthy: “Dad, are we there yet?”

Cormac McCarthy: “That bored already? I have an idea, let’s play a game of make believe!”
Johnny: “Please, no! I take it back!”
Cormac: “Too late! Imagine this: the sky is raining ash, there’s no sunlight anywhere, and look, those hills are on fire.”

In other words, Toy Story 3.

Wife: “Honey, can’t we make believe something a little nicer?”
Cormac: “Quiet, sweetie, you committed suicide years ago. Now just imagine this, son: we’re traveling down this very same highway, but we’re not in a car anymore. We’re on foot. Every step of the way, we’re heading to an ultimately hopeless destination. Can you feel it? Can you feel the existential dread creeping up on you?”

Johnny: “Is this about me asking if we’re there yet? Look, I get it now the question is annoying. There’s a better way to let me know that.”
Cormac (coughing into a handkerchief, pulls it away to reveal blood.)
Johnny (taking the handkerchief): “Is this fake blood? Do you carry fake, pre-bloodied handkerchiefs just to foreshadow your own fictitious death?!”
Cormac: “You’re not supposed to know about that!”
Johnny: “About the handkerchief trick?”
Cormac: “Alright, it’s true: I’m dying. I wasn’t going to tell you. I was just going to drop dead at the most poignant moment.”
Johnny: “Dad, can we please just play 20 Questions, or road trip bingo, or the Quiet Game, or something?”

Cormac: “No, we can’t. And from now on, don’t call me dad, just call me The Man. I’ll call you The Boy.”
Johnny: “Umm… No.”
Cormac (swerving car wildly): “Look out! Murderous cannibals!”

…On Bring a Parent to School Day!
Teacher: “Okay class, Johnny brought his dad to school today. His dad’s a novelist. Does anyone have any questions for Mr. McCarthy?”
Little Boy: “What do you write about? Ninjas? Superheroes?”
Little Girl: “Vampires and werewolves?”
Cormac: “Oh, nothing so juvenile. I write about our post modern feelings of existential dread brought on by life in this failing, crushing modern society.”

Little Girl: “Do they have a happy ending?”
Cormac: “Ha! Not a one. They normally end with death. Lots of death. You can’t be a good author if you don’t write about death, like, all the time.”
Little Girl: “Doesn’t reading about all that death make people sad?”
Cormac: “I think my Pulitzer can answer that.”
Little Boy: “What are your books like?”
Cormac: “They’re long. And they’re filled with death. And I don’t use punctuation.”
Little Boy: “I like punctuation. I like exclamation marks!”
Cormac: “Punctuation is for sissy writers who’d rather write clearly and with well defined dialogue than write about gritty and real things, like death.”
Little Girl: “My teacher says we have to use punctuation, because it makes it easy for people to read what we’re saying.”

Cormac: “I think my Pulitzer can answer that.”
(Pause)
Cormac: “Does anyone want to hear me read an excerpt from my latest book?”
(5 minutes later, everyone is bawling.)
Johnny: “Yes, Mrs. Henderson, I’m sorry. Next year I’ll just bring my mom.”
Cormac: “I don’t see what’s wrong with a little depression in the classroom.”
Johnny: “Dad, you’re embarrassing me.”

…While Having a Heartfelt Discussion on Girl Problems!
Johnny: “Dad, do you think you could help me? I’ve been having some problems at school.”
Cormac: “Murderous cannibals?!”

Johnny: “What? Jeez, no. Look, I can come back at another time.”
Cormac: “No, it’s okay, son. You know I’m always here to listen to your expressions of existential dread.”
Johnny: “No, wait, they’re not existential, not everything has to be existential.”
Cormac: “Son, when you’ve been around as long as I have, everything is existential.”
Johnny: “I don’t even know what that… It’s about a girl, okay!”
Cormac: “What kind of girl?”
Johnny: “Well, she’s in my art class, and she has blue eyes, and she smells pretty, and I want to ask her to the dance, but I’m not sure she likes me back.”
Cormac: “Well, what you need is a romantic gesture.”
Johnny: “Any ideas?”
Cormac: “Well, cowboys are always good. And running away to Mexico is also a popular choice.”
Johnny: “How do I use that?”
Cormac: “Write her a love letter. Do something romantic, like dropping it off in her locker with a flower, and telling her to meet you somewhere with the flower if she’s interested, and you’ll be wearing something to reveal yourself, like a cowboy hat.”
Johnny: “That actually sounds pretty good.”
Cormac: “Yes, and use plenty of cowboy imagery to reinforce the image she’ll see later, and maybe talk about running away to Mexico together.”
Johnny: “Well, that seems a little drastic…”
Cormac: “And make sure that you have a gang going with you to Mexico. Like, some kind of best friend who’s been with you your whole life, and you’ve got that brother relationship kind of thing down, but humanly imperfect too, like you’d leave him behind if it meant ending up with this girl of yours.”
Johnny: “Wait, this is getting less helpful…”
Cormac (beginning to type furiously at his typewriter): “And then there has to be this one, crazy guy who you pick up on the way, and who’s obviously lying the whole time, but for some reason you trust him anyway and always pick up after his messes. You know, eccentric and untrustworthy, and liable to hurt you guys all the time you help him out. The audiences really love that kind of guy.”
Johnny: “What audiences? I thought this was about my school dance.”
Cormac (typing, typing, typing): “And of course, he does turn out to ruin stuff for you. Like, he does something illegal, and then you get roped into it too, and then they kill him, and then they’re probably going to kill you too, and then your girlfriend gets her family to help you out of prison, but they don’t like you, and then they make her promise to stay away from you if they help you out of prison, and she makes the promise to save you, and then when you’re out you ask her to marry you, but then, against all romantic conventions, she does keep her end of the promise and doesn’t marry you, and then you go off and do something related to the dead crazy guy, which is left open, just to make an otherwise unsatisfying ending vaguely reflective.”
Johnny: “You’re not helping my problem with the girl at school.”
Cormac: “And if there’s any dialogue, make sure you never use quotation marks.”
Johnny: “What do you have against quotation marks? This is exactly why I didn’t want to ask you in the first place.” (storms out)

“Quotation marks killed my parents!”

Cormac: (pause) “Johnny!” (pause) “Johnny!”
Johnny (sticking his head back in the room, sighing): “What?”
Cormac: “It’s okay if you feel an overwhelming sense of ennui.”
Johnny: “Dad!”

Boy, that sounds like a riot. You know, I bet I could get a TV deal out of this if I just slap on a laugh track and ship if off to CBS.

Time to Take a Break

A wise old fortune cookie once told me, “If you love something let it go. If it returns, it’s yours forever, if it doesn’t it was never yours to begin with.” Wise words indeed, but I’ve been thinking recently that this should start applying to things we don’t love so very much; things we have perhaps gotten a little bit sick of. I propose that we, as a world, just stop doing certain things for a while, let them sit, and when the time comes (believe me, we’ll all just know) let them start up on their own again. If these things are truly something to have around, they’ll crop back up eventually, and our love and appreciation for them will have grown exponentially during the time they were away, something about absence and hearts and fodder (again, fortune cookie). If everyone forgets about them during the break, and no one ever brings them up again, then we’ll be able to congratulate ourselves on dodging a societal bullet and never have to deal with it again (much like what I hoped would happen every summer break from school, although this idea never seemed to have caught on.)

This may sound like pretty out there notion, but let me assure you there is a precedent to this sort of thing. Take a look back at Romantic Comedies. They hit a heyday in the times of early cinema, but after the Audrey Hepburn years ended in the early 60’s, they just kind of drifted off the map and everyone forgot all about them. The genre had run out of steam, all the stories had been done and all the clichés had become too commonplace; everyone was bored of Romantic Comedies. So humanity did itself a favor, and just stopped making them. It was a nice long break from the French film Irma La Douce in 1963 until someone decided to make another major Rom-Com, when Woody Allen made Annie Hall in 1977. His new and innovative take on the genre revitalized the public’s interest in Romantic Comedies, paving the way for Matthew McConaughey.

Woody Allen’s fault.

My point is, this has happened before, albeit by accident. What’s to stop us from joining together as a global community, and doing this kind of thing on purpose for the benefit of all mankind? So let’s just take a break from things like:

Romantic Comedies: Boy howdy, what ever were we thinking bringing these things back? I mean, I suppose the genre has its merits when it’s starring the likes of Audrey Hepburn, or even later generations actresses like Goldie Hawn, but it has once again reached a saturation point well beyond the time when we should have stopped making these things. Look at this list of the top examples of Romantic Comedies on Wikipedia. You can see that clear break between 1963 and 1977, but even more importantly, compare the size of the lists before and after the break. Yes, Woody Allen decided the world needed to bring back the Romantic Comedy, but I’m not sure even he knew the floodgates he was opening. Not only are the plots tired and rehashed, but the genre is also a prime breeding grounds of heinous criminal careers like the aforementioned McConaughey and Dane Cook (although, he also has benefited from the “dysfunctional family on vacation in a Vermont cabin” genre , one which is also desperately need in a semi-permanent break). So, it’s time to give ourselves a break and stop this madness for now, or possibly forever.

The “F” Word: Seriously guys, this is one that has gone far enough. Aside from pronouns, articles, and conjunctions, can you think of a single word that pops up with the frequency of the “F” word. One of the first rules of writing is to refrain, as much as possible, from using words like “thing” and “it”, because they are purposefully vague and end up sounding like filler words for when we can’t think of anything else. The “F” word is exactly that as an adjective, except it has become accepted and even encouraged. For instance, if a movie is rated PG-13, it’s merely a commercial project pandering to the lowest common denominator. If you toss in the “F” word enough, bumping it up to an “R” rating, it’s to be taken seriously as an Oscar contender. It’s a vague, often meaningless word, made inane by its overuse and overdependence. It’s barely even a foul word any more, because it’s barely even a word anymore. With such a Brobdignagian vocabulary at our disposal, we can come up with better adjectives for our everyday use, and that is why we should all just take a break from this word, for now, and possibly forever.

Autobiographies: I don’t have that much of a problem with autobiographies themselves, but their biggest problem also stems from their biggest strength: they’re a biography written by the person they’re about. The problem therein is that the person pretty much has to be alive to write it, and right now there’s really no one alive that has led a life that worthy of a biography.

The progress of autobiography readability over time.

The lack of biographable people combined with the public’s continued acceptance of autobiographies still being published has led the massive, dirty autobiography industry to horrible, horrible crimes. Don’t believe me? Three words: “Miles to Go”. And since those three words were so popular, I’m going to revise that to add another two words: “Extended Edition”. Also, since the only thing a person needs in order to be worthy of an autobiography is a pun based title describing the most frequent hardship overcome in their life, this is one of the few genres of literature, where you can actually judge the books by their cover. For this reason, we really have to take a break from this genre of books for now, or possibly forever.

Comic Book Deaths: Okay, this is a big one. This is a problem that has been going on so long that it has its own Wikipedia page. Once people said, “No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben”, but it has become so all encompassing that it has been revised to leave out two thirds of its own original exceptions. The problem is not necessarily it’s own impermanence, but the fact that when it is impermanent it means it shouldn’t have been done in the first place. I have multiple t-shirts with Aquaman on them, and yet someone thought it was a good idea to kill him. When someone decides to bring him back to life, undoing a mistake that should never have been made, the act of solution adds to the ridiculousness of a situation. That is the problem. The idea of a comic book character dying is often employed as a cheap tactic for dramatic effect, emotional heart string tugging, or possibly just shock value. But all of these things rely on the rarity and permanence of the trope, and without them it is useless, thus it continues to exist without any real purpose. My suggestion serves two purposes; it lets us take a break from having to endure these mistakes in writing, and also it allows the trope to rest and regain its meaning for potential later use. I hereby challenge DC, Marvel, and everyone else to set aside a lengthy period of time to just not kill anyone. No casualties, no cannon fodder, no red shirts, no women in refrigerators. Just have everybody live for a while year or so, and see what we think at that point. You might find that we only want to pause this trope for now, or possibly forever.

Vampires: Long time coming. On the one hand, they’re already pretty overdone. But look deeper at what we, as a civilization, are doing with vampires right now. They pretty much fall into three categories: either they’re gory slasher villains, or they’re sexy, sexy bad boys, or they sparkle. It’s those three choices, or nothing.

As a fourth choice, they can sell breakfast cereal.

With all the things you could do with vampires, from a cutting commentary on the members of society who figuratively drink the blood of the innocent all the way to Blacula, the only thing we have to offer right now is the most basic array of sex, violence, or sparkles. No range, no variety, nothing deeper, just those three things. The problem isn’t that we’ve told all the tales there are to tell about vampires, it’s that we’re limiting ourselves to the best portrayals a Middle School mind could come up with. This is why we need to take a break from vampires, for now, or possibly forever.

Reality TV: No explanation needed, just take a break from this. Forever. Period.

¿Qué, Qué, Qué?

I just don’t seem to have a good track record with staying one race, do I?

Ladies and gentlemen, I come before you shocked, outraged, and mortified after having learned a terrible lesson, one I have learned firsthand. Racism’s ugly (splotchy, acne laden, and prematurely gray) head has reared itself once more in this supposedly forward thinking country, and I have experienced this firsthand. Yes, I have felt the venomous sting of racism. Firsthand! The situation has become so traumatizing that the details of the… incident have grown fuzzy. I will try to relate it as best as I can recall. I was sitting at my desk, taking these accursed customer service calls. As per usual, I got one. It didn’t take long for the conversation to become heated (as customer service calls are wont to do). As the customer kept asking me to do more and more for him, and I kept insisting that (as a worthless peon) I literally could not do any of the things he was asking for, he finally snapped, “you {expletive} wetback; go back to your own country!” Then the line clicked off.

I sat there stunned. After hearing what I had, various emotions stirred within my heart. First and foremost, confusion. In case you hadn’t noticed, I am white. Really, just about as white as can be. I come from along line of Danish and Irish folks. I get sunburn from nightlights. I listen to Arcade Fire. I write a blog. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Buddy Holly and 10 being Danny Trejo, I rank about a 2.5.

Although I'm pretty certain I'm more genuinely Mexican than Carlos Mencia.

And I was talking in my normal voice, which includes a verbosity unmistakable for the grammatically obsessed, language arts teacher’s pet I am. I don’t sound the vaguest bit foreign, and if I tried to do a Mexican accent, it would come off as authentic as the Frito Bandito. For me to wonder how on earth this narrow minded fellow confused my voice with that of a migrant worker is only reasonable.

On a related note, I know who I'm going as at my next costume party.

Secondly, I felt confused again. Going strictly by racial stereotypes, aren’t call center employees supposed to be Indian? If I put too many jalapeños in his pico de gallo while working the dinner rush at El Fenix, I could understand getting told to get back to my own country. If I’m calling him over the cable bill and I sound like I might not be from around here, I expect to get a complaint about outsourcing

Coming this fall to NBC!

Finally, I became righteously indignant. How dare he judge me. I braved drowning and dehydration in my quest to get here. I have taken the lowliest job on this totem pole to scrimp and save and earn a living for my impoverished family, while he sits on his butt and watches Jersey Shore until the company disconnects him for non pay. And when that happens, I’m the one who gets to take his anger, I’m his verbal punching bag, and all in the name of braving hardships and breaking my back for a better life for my family. What could be more American than that? You say to get to my own country, well I from what I see, I may not be a legal citizen but this is my country! Also, I am a legal citizen, and this is literally my country.

Although, when you look closer at all the things I think are cool…

...Wait a minute...

Okay, from now on guys, I am Mexican.

Why do I Keep Watching?

I’m going to go ahead and preface this by saying that when it comes to movies and TV, I’m a special kind of snob. I watch what I like, and I like what I feel is “good”, high quality entertainment based on a personal rhetoric of critique. This rhetoric can be very different from most critics and most audiences, but it encompasses the things I enjoy and appreciate; I rarely will admit to liking a “bad” movie, as I almost only enjoy movies I feel are “good”, even when that is vastly disagreed upon by almost everyone else. With that out of the way, let’s continue.

One trend in cinema and television that I am growing restlessly tired of is shortcuts. In what once was a market where capitalism demanded making good movies to achieve audience support, filmmakers have been looking for, and finding, easier ways to get to all that cash. Like professional athletes turning to drugs to enhance their performance, audiences are falling victim to the effects of cinematic steroids. Here I am going to list some of the most insidious examples.

"What Have We Got To Lose?": Probably the oldest and easiest trick in the book is to simply put so little effort into something that the slightest gain results in inexplicable profit. The Scary, Epic, Date, Dance, and Disaster Movies are proof of that. Why hire writers when all you need is other scripts, scissors and hot glue? Why hire actors when all you need is people dragged off the street who maybe look like famous people when you squint. Epic Movie was, economically speaking, a huge success because of its $80 million gain over a comparatively low budget. The very fact that there are more on the way, means this trickery is working.

"Look At Me! Look At Me! Look At Me!": A snappily edited trailer can go a long way into making something not funny look funny:

Some folks just don’t rely on being low spenders. Despite the fact that they actually spent money and effort, they still ended up with nothing but crap, and now they have to sell it. How do you do that? With the trailer, and any other alluring aspects that come out before the film does. Case in point, Year One. With that trailer and that cast, there was no way it couldn’t be hilarious. Yet there I was in the audience, wondering how so many funny people got together and couldn’t think of anything funnier than ample use of the word foreskin. It didn’t take long for people to realize just how bad it was, as it dropped off the charts by the end of its first weekend. But the opening made enough money to be considered a financial success. What put it in that category was the fact that they spent far more time and effort making enough funny bits to look good in a preview, than trying to make a good film. Between casting and trailers, and any other non on screen choices that will trick people into thinking something will be good long enough to make them pay for it, one can still make a success out of the snakiest of oil.

Also, remember this still works on a week by week basis. The revival of “V” has contained a dream sequence almost every episode, the entirety of which manages to be incorporated into every next week preview.

You left your gun in my promo material.

"Indie Darling":

Tricking people with a stunning trailer for a bad film is still strictly small fries, though. The end result will be a good opening weekend with little else; to get a good long run requires tricking people on a larger scale to think something is good even after they’ve seen enough to know otherwise. How to do this? Enter the hipsters. As someone who’s taken three High School art classes, I’ve had firsthand experience with people who think Juno is a legitimate film. Few social groups are easier to trick into liking something ridiculous than hipsters. Anything with the words Indie in it originates from somebody who knows this, and is determined to make money off of them. But what really takes the cake is the career of Wes Anderson. I’ll be the first to admit that the trailer for Life Aquatic looked hilarious. And now that I’m older, wiser, and not trying to impress my art class friends, I’ll also be the first to say the actual movie was very much not hilarious. Wes Anderson, the kind of jokes you’re not supposed to laugh at, who I’m certain has blank parts in his scripts that he convinces his producers are jokes only smart people can see, managed to make a preview that appeared like it was a mainstream, laugh out loud comedy. After the opening weekend crowds realized it wasn’t, there was always the ever reliable hipsters there to back it up for the rest of its theatrical run. Clever, Mr. Anderson, very clever indeed. But when it comes to long running, career spanning trickery, there is truly only one master.

"Looks Can Kill": J. J. Abrams is a genius. An evil genius. For starters, he is the man who made Cloverfield. Cloverfield can be called many things; “good” and “a movie” are not among them. Having taken a camcorder and ran around New York on any given Friday night for an hour and a half, he released it into theatres and told people that if they look hard enough, there might be a monster in there. People didn’t go to see it because it was a good movie, because it wasn’t a real movie. They saw it because of the huge network of viral marketing, and the countless unanswered questions that would all be explained in the film itself. There was more effort put into the advertising; there was more plot put into the advertising. But people ate it up, and still are; just check out the buzz surrounding his newest trailer, Super 8. Basically it’s Cloverfield 2 except with a different blur for a monster, and a different group of presumably attractive teenagers. And also because the Cloverfield 2 is its own thing.

But on the subject of unanswered questions, how can we overlook Lost. He made another claim, slightly less incredulous than saying Cloverfield was a real movie, that Lost was real sci-fi. But it got people watching. And kept them watching for 6 years. Pretty much the best thing to get and keep people watching (that is allowable on network television) is curiosity. Lost had curiosity in spades, and refusing to answer any question asked along the way really just lead to even more curiosity. It filmed in Hawaii, thus winning over all the crowds who would otherwise be watching the Travel Channel on any given Wednesday night. Several main characters (like Kate and Sawyer) were played by former models, and it doesn’t take 12 seasons of America’s Next Top Model to tell you why folks tune in to watch those people. And when all else fails, there was always the good old fashioned soap opera storylines. This is in fact a show where the decision to change the course of history via nuclear proliferation fused with time travel on who was in love with who at the time (a status which changed about 15 times in that episode). When using this conglomerate method of storytelling, it didn’t really matter what actual plot events happened, as nothing actually happened on Lost. This wasn’t plot, this was formula and trickery and every aesthetic choice possible made with the goal of getting people to watch week after week, and never question until it was all over. For 6 years. In perspective, the popularity of Lost outlasted the reign of presidents and the existence of certain countries, despite every episode consisting of attractive people moping in Hawaii, and occasionally some goes out to murder a teenage girl or pregnant woman. Because J.J. Abrams really, really hates pregnant women.

Honestly, audiences, if we keep letting ourselves get bamboozled like this, we deserve it by this point.