Skyfall Dissected

***SPOILER ALERT: ENTIRE PLOT AND DENOUEMENT REVEALED***

In my last blog, I wrote about the story ‘templates’ we carry inside us, that we instinctively refer to whenever we watch movies – by which I mean, we have specific expectations of what seems ‘right’ in a story. Whether a film meets these expectations, and – crucially – how it meets these expectations is fundamental to our enjoyment of the movie.

We may know nothing of the film we are about to watch, but even so, I’d argue that our expectations are determined within the first few scenes of the movie. We know very quickly whether we are watching - for instance - a superhero movie, a heist movie, a romance, a tragedy and so on, and we therefore know what to expect from it – if not, the details of exactly how it will develop or end.

However, the James Bond franchise is fairly unique in that we have very specific ideas not just about what should happen but also how it will happen.

We know that there will be an opening action sequence that will try to outdo previous Bond movies, we know that the story will take us to a number of exotic locations, we know there will be two Bond girls, and we know there will be a villain who is intent on world domination who Bond has to stop at all costs.

The elements of a Bond film are so firmly established that they have been parodied many times over, not just in the original 1960s Casino Royale movie, but also in the Austin Powers films – and in numerous Rob Brydon impressions (“We’re not so different, you and I, Mr Bond”)

It’s inevitable that, as more and more Bond films have got made, the newer films have even come to reference the older films – whether intentionally or not. You can’t have a Bond film with skiing without invoking memories of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Any rooftop chase, any traintop fight, any fight on top of an aircraft, any car, motorbike or speedboat chase will invoke memories of the appropriate movie (at least for James Bond nuts like myself!). Even plotlines are being re-used, and as innovative as Skyfall is, you could argue it’s a repeat of the Goldeneye story – former British Secret Service Agent turns rogue, and plots against his former employers.

What I really liked about Skyfall is the way it embraces those traditions, storylines and plot elements and gives some emotional depth and resonance to them. I was interested to hear Sam Mendes talk about this on BBC radio’s Front Row programme, and explain how the writing team set out first and foremost to tell an engaging story, and only later did they add the ingredients we might expect from a conventional Bond film. In other words, the traditional Bond elements were made to serve the story, and not the other way round.

The R&D department in happier times

One simple example is the role that gadgetry plays (or doesn’t play) in the film. Whereas in previous films Bond is given unnecessarily sophisticated devices, in this film, much is made of the fact he is given just a gun and a tracking radio. Indeed, there are two exchanges between Bond and the villain where they both take it in turns to gloat over their use of something so simple as a radio device. Having something so simple as a radio device is seen as ‘old school’ which is a key theme in the film. Bond uses a cut throat razor to shave, and just in case the audience have missed the significance of this, the writers have Eve commenting on this being something very traditional. Later in the movie, Bond drives ‘M’ in the Aston Martin from Thunderball, and then the denouement of the film itself takes place at Bond’s ancestral home, where Bond has only one shooting rifle, and homemade weapons at his disposal.  There’s clearly an agenda going on here – the film-makers are making a not so subtle point about the Bond films not needing to lean on technology and gimmickry for their dramatic impact (even though one could argue that previous Bond films have often done the opposite). They’re recognizing that what Bond does best is real-life stunts and live action chases. And of course, Bond kills Bardem’s villain not with a gadget dart fired from under his wrist, or with an exploding pen, but with a simple knife in the back.

I liked the way that, even when the makers of Skyfall do the standard Bond stuff, they manage to do something a little different with them. Mendes opens the film with a long shot of Bond where Bond walks into focus – which I see as a riff on the famous gun barrel opening of the traditional Bond films (the traditional Bond opening sequence in fact occurs at the end of Skyfall). Then there are the one-liners that Daniel Craig delivers in as humourless a way as he can possibly contrive. His comment ‘A waste of good whiskey’ when the first Bond girl is killed in the William Tell scene is really laced with heavy irony, and is not meant to invite audience laughter. When Craig walks through the train carriage having leapt off the digger he makes a very subtle adjustment of his cuffs – the kind of gesture that occurred frequently in the Brosnan films, but is somehow less cartoonish as acted by Craig. Again, a very small detail, but I also enjoyed Craig’s reactions in fighting in the casino circled by giant lizards. Twice he gestures the lizards to the bad guy he’s fighting, in a way that draws his combatant’s attention to their mutual danger, and (I thought) to the absurdity of the situation. In previous films, Bond (and the audience) wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at something so unrealistic. Craig’s reaction here again serves to make his Bond much more rooted in the ‘real’ world.

Skyfall’s villain does indeed live in a secret base on an exotic island location, but this base is simply a deserted town – but if anything, this creates a bigger dramatic impact for being more realistic and not being, for instance, a rocket complex hidden inside a volcano. The sobriety of this particular Bond is underlined by his lack of a triumphant one-liner when he kills Bardem’s villain.  His comment ‘Last rat standing’ seems to acknowledge that this is in some ways a pyrrhic victory – which indeed it turns out to be when M dies a few minutes later.

 The Bond villain parody - in happier times

Another feature I particularly enjoyed was the economy of the writing. Every scene is used to further the purposes of the plot. When Bond is taking his marksman tests, he can’t fire straight because of the shrapnel in his shoulder. He gauges out the shrapnel in his shoulder with a knife (thus showing this is a tougher Bond than previous incarnations), and the shrapnel is then analysed by the forensics team, which enables them to identify Bond’s assailant from the opening sequence. The last known sighting of this guy was in Asia, so Bond now jets off to Asia. In other words, the writers don’t just send Bond to exotic locations for no reason – they take care to establish a chain of logic that shows why he’s going there.

The economy of the writing can be seen even in the small details – in one scene, Bond is exercising doing pull-ups on a bar, after which he collapses through lack of fitness. In a later scene, Bond has to rely on his upper body strength to hold on to the bar under the elevator.  Without the earlier scene, the audience would assume this is easy for Bond. Instead, the earlier scene provides us with the information that Bond isn’t fully fit, and this therefore introduces an element of risk to the elevator scene as to whether he’ll be able to hold on (this being Bond, we obviously know the answer to that!)

  

Okay, so I’ve talked a lot about the way Skyfall takes the ingredients of a standard Bond film and does something slightly different with them – but I’d argue that this is only part of the reason why the film engages our interest.

I’d say that interest in the film is created by a number of key narrative strands: Bond’s rehabilitation and his attempts to prove he’s not a spent force; M’s attempts to survive the political fallout from the crisis engulfing MI6 and – in the last act of the film – the attempts on her life; and Mallory’s ascendancy to the head of MI6, and the audience’s changing attitudes towards this character. In other words, the film is held together by its character development.

At the beginning of the action, Bond is not just unfit and unproven - he’s assumed to be dead, and it takes the entire film for him to prove he’s got what it takes to continue in the Secret Service - both to his employers, and perhaps to himself.

He spends much of the earlier part of the film unshaven and failing fitness tests – and until the final act of the film, as he admits himself, it’s been the Bardem character who’s been taking the initiative. If we’re talking story templates, this is one of the most powerful there is: where an untried and untested character initially ‘fails’ but eventually rises above the odds to claim victory eg Rocky, The Matrix, 8 Mile and so on.

I’d say that the best way of understanding Skyfall is as a transitional Bond film. Essentially it’s a two hour swansong for Judi Dench as M. I say this, because – to some extent – Bond’s supposed death at the beginning of the film foreshadows M’s death at the end, and prepares us for it (late in the film, Bond’s underwater fight in the icy loch is in some ways a reprisal and reminder of the earlier underwater drowning scene).

So, the film is bookended by two key deaths: Bond’s supposed death, and M’s real death at the end. They’ve written the script so that, in dramatic terms at least, it’s seen as necessary that M does die as she is accountable for the deaths of various British agents and has made some morally dubious decisions. In the opening sequence, Bond wants to help a fellow agent who is about to die, but M orders him not to. Again, it’s M’s decision that Eve shoots without a clear line of sight with disastrous consequences for Bond. M chooses her own interests (the interests of Queen and Country) above an individual agent’s life. For the first half of the film, she’s under siege politically for her handling of the crisis, and it’s only when she’s allowed to speak during the hearing scene (just after the film’s halfway point) that events start turning in her favour.

And it’s at the hearing that we first see Mallory in a more sympathetic light, first, when he interrupts the Chair so that M can put her own views across, and then when he risks his life in the gun fight that ensues – thus proving he’s not the deskbound pen-pusher that Bond suspects him to be.  Mallory then walks in on Q as he’s laying a false trail for Bardem – and tacitly sanctions support for the unofficial operation that Bond is leading. In other words, at the same time the film is giving Judi Dench a good send-off, it’s also busily building up Ralph Fiennes as the next M.

I say that Skyfall can be understood as a transitional Bond film, but I wonder to what extent Daniel Craig’s reign as Bond can be seen in the same way. We are already three films into his tenure –even so, I think it’s telling that right at the end of this film he’s being asked (by the new M) whether he’s ready to start work. It’s also taken three films to establish the new Q (who hadn’t featured in the previous two films), the new M, and the new Miss Moneypenny. It’ll be interesting to see whether they continue with this approach in the next Bond film, or whether Craig Bond film 4 will be the equivalent of the first film with a new Bond.

Lazenby: the ultimate transitional Bond. But what a great movie OHMSS was!

It’s also interesting to note that technically Bond is only a few missions into his career, and yet a big theme of the film – as noted above – was about being too old for the job. I read this as a reference not to the character’s actual age or stage in his career, but as a reference to the Bond franchise. But still, it makes the chronology of Bond quite intriguing and contradictory – in exactly what mission did Daniel Craig’s Bond drive a 1960s Aston Martin? A question for another day and another blog!

The Stories we carry within us: Why there's no such thing as a 'new Story'

It may be stating the blindingly obvious, but I’ve recently been realizing that many Hollywood mainstream films have what I would call a ‘self-evident’ plot structure. What I mean is, when you’re watching a film and you know roughly how it’s going to develop, and even how it’s going to end. Which is rather odd, when you think about it. Why would we watch something when we know (roughly) how it’s going to turn out?

When we watch Batman, Spiderman, Rocky – or even the King’s Speech for that matter – we know that the story goes something like this: First Part: establish character or character’s special power > Second Part: character goes through some kind of crisis > Third Part: Denouement: character is pitted against his nemesis, boxing opponent or stutter, and wins.

If you think about it, it’s odd we should all want to see stories enacted for us, where we know roughly (if not exactly) what’s going to happen. Why would we do this? Again, it may be to state the blindingly obvious, but I think the answer lies in the fact that although we might know what’s going to happen, we don’t know how it will happen.  I think much of our viewing pleasure relies on us having some idea of what kind of story we’re watching and therefore how it might develop. We go into the cinema with a set of story ‘templates’ in our mind which we automatically – and without thinking about – refer to in watching a film. For the Lord of the Rings we might access that part of our story knowledge which covers ‘The Quest’. For the Kings Speech, the story that gets invoked is probably a ‘Battling against Adversity’.

The analogy that I think helps here is to think about how poetry works. There’s (more often than not) a rhythm underlying a poem that we understand as a metre, and the interest of the poem is created by the ways in which the poem either does and does not conform to that underlying beat.

So, while we’re watching or reading The Lord of the Rings we have various in-built assumptions: that good will triumph, that the heroes will prevail – either by being victorious and staying alive, or by giving their life in a cause that’s ultimately successful. I think our expectations give us a structure which helps us mediate our emotional responses. So, we ‘get through’ the times of crisis in the film – as it were – by retaining the knowledge that it will all work out in the end. Such a structure is important, because otherwise stories would be reduced to a series of random events. Without an idea of what should and should not happen, why should we be surprised if it all goes wrong?

I’d say that, in particular, Hollywood mainstream films and kids’ films wear their plot structure very close to the surface. Within the first few minutes, the audience instinctively knows the general thrust of the film, who the bad guy is, and what the main character’s ‘mission’ is. It’s clear when we watch ‘Happy Feet’ that this will be a story about a character being different from everyone else, and finding acceptance – even adulation – within his community. Within the first ten minutes of ‘Finding Nemo’, it’s clear this is a film about reuniting Nemo with his parents – and we instinctively know that this reunion will take the rest of the film to accomplish.  When you think about it, it’s amazing how strongly rooted these templates are inside us. If ‘Finding Nemo’ ended with Nemo dying, or Nemo’s Dad dying, we, as an audience would feel cheated – we’d feel that in some way, this didn’t work. By all means, have one of the characters appear to be dead; by all means, have one of the characters believe that the other character is dead (in fact, one or the other, or even both scenarios are generally essential in these types of stories); but don’t actually have the character die. 

At the very least, the film-makers would have to find some kind of meaning in Nemo’s death – in other words, it would have to be written as a Tragedy, and – once again – we’d actually be aware of this fact right from the beginning of the film. Even if you didn’t know Hamlet as the most famous play in the English language, you would know instinctively that this is a story with an unhappy ending, a story about various wrongs committed before the play began, and which will now be put right at the cost of the hero’s life.

This all goes back to the ‘contract’ set up between the story-teller and the audience which is in place from the moment the film /story /play begins.  When someone starts a story with ‘Once upon a time’ (or its equivalent), our expectation is that this is a story that will be worth listening to.  Our response if a story does not live up to our expectations is not to lose faith in stories or films, but to identify the flaw – quite rightly - within the film itself. We might not even know exactly why it doesn’t work – we might blame it on the actor, on the special effects, on certain parts of the story – but we just know instinctively that the film doesn’t work. 

Conversely, there’s a particular kind of satisfaction we get when we come out of a cinema having seen a really good film – one that renews our faith in film-making, or in humankind or even – by extension – ourselves. I’m not banging a drum for these particular films, but I was struck by the fact that the Kings Speech reportedly had audiences spontaneously applaud at the end. And I remember the same happening when the Full Monty was first released (at least, it happened at the showing I was at). The audience’s experience here is about the film hitting the spot and needing to express that recognition collectively – despite the fact that the actors, director and film-makers are probably many miles away at that precise moment, and can't hear us.

I believe that we all carry around with us a set of story templates which are deep rooted in our emotional lives. These aren’t individual to us, but collective (although we may carry individual ‘variations’ or predilections for certain kinds of stories). The ‘against all odds’ story, the couple get together after  misunderstandings story – and so on. When we are satisfied by a story it isn’t just that the story is gripping or compelling on its own terms; it’s also in the way this individual story gives voice to the deeper story we carry within us. 

To put it another way, the need for stories starts when we are very young, and never leaves us. When we are children we want to hear the same stories repeated over and over again - and perhaps our adult experience of stories is simply a variation on this.

In Praise of Waffle: the danger of editing your stories out of existence

***No plots or denouements were harmed or mistreated in any way in the making of this blog entry (for once)***

Well, I had to, didn't I?

Recently, I’ve been recalling a quote made by Andrew Motion about his time as a Booker Prize judge, where he explained that many of the novels he read for the prize ‘needed a good edit’.  His emphasis was more on the care and support an author’s novel gets (or doesn’t get) from the Publisher: ‘Not nearly enough novels get the editing they need’.

But it made me think about a view that’s prevalent nowadays amongst creative writing circles, that good writing is about expressing something succinctly, with no extraneous word, and every word that’s used contributing towards the whole. In short, that more stories nowadays could ‘do with a good edit’. The style en vogue in creative writing, I would say, is very much the style we might associate with American writers like Raymond Carver. Carver was known for following a particular writing process where he would go over his story draft again and again and pare down the words to the bare minimum.

Six Books in need of a good edit

You can see why a poet like Andrew Motion would make this comment: poetry is all about paying attention to each individual word, and its place within the poem, and using each word to its maximum effect: being alive to the different meanings that might be given by its particular location within a poem. And this isn’t to criticize Raymond Carver either, as I’m a big fan of his work. But at the same time, it strikes me that this is only one view of what good writing should be about. You have only to go back to the great 19^th Century novels, to find a rather different model of writing.

And here comes the History bit....

Dickens is hardly known for his brevity of expression. Indeed sometimes he uses ten words where one will do. And yet interest in him is still very much alive, with 2012 seeing many events that celebrate the bicentenary of his birth.

Herman Melville, one of my favourite writers, was hardly a succinct writer either. Indeed, many of the first readers of Moby Dick would probably have appreciated it had that work been given a thorough edit. A key feature of the novel is that the story is interspersed with chapters that interrupt the main narrative and provide a learned disquisition on different kinds of whales, which – one might say - effectively slows down the ‘action’ of the novel.

But the whole point about Moby Dick is that it’s rough around the edges. It’s not supposed to be clean, and neat. It’s about the smell of sea and rope.

In a letter written after he’d finished the novel, he famously confided: ‘I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb’. The novel is often seen as being about the search for meaning, or as in some way enacting that quest (and the attendant perils) and as such it’s entirely appropriate that it ended up being like the behemoth that is the subject of the story.

If floundering in your argument, invoke the Bard ...

"Words, words, words"

Perhaps the idea of giving something ‘a good edit’ is the kind of comment that’s most frequently made by one contemporary about another, rather than by posterity (posterity often seems much kinder about these things)

Ben Jonson famously wrote down this anecdote about Shakespeare in the papers that were found after his death:

I remember, the players have often mentioned it 
as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing 
(whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. 
My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.

So, Shakespeare, one of the greats of all time, was judged by Jonson as lacking the ability to edit his own work – and as being someone who was too easily satisfied with the standard of the plays he wrote.

It’s a feature of Shakespeare we often forget that his plays actually require editing every time they’re staged. It’s very unusual to see a performance of the complete text: scenes, characters or lines are cut as a matter of course. Witness how unusual it was when Kenneth Branagh released his film of Hamlet which dramatizes the complete script.

Being a photo of a moustache in need of a good edit

We simply accept the fact that the plays work without certain lines, scenes and characters. And yet we don’t, for a moment, hold this against Shakespeare and condemn him as a writer who was unable to polish his own work. Indeed, modern audiences happily do without the long-winded wordplay or comic larking about that the Elizabethans so loved. In a recent documentary on Hamlet presented by David Tennant, one Academic even suggested that the 'bad quarto' of Hamlet (the supposedly unreliable text of Hamlet that didn't reflect Shakespeare's intentions) has a lot going for it in being shorter and snappier than the canonical version.

Time for an analogy...

I would argue that the editing process isn’t just about paring down, removing and deleting. It’s not about cutting the pieces off the rock until we get to the irreducible diamond. For me, it's not about finding the tiny precious gem in the hunk of raw material, and sometimes it's better to leave some bits of the raw material behind.

Blogger in search of a diamond

So what am I saying? That verbosity is good? No. But I think one person's view of what's extraneous isn't necessarily the same as another. In his introduction to Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien explained that he sometimes received letters where readers complained about particular characters, or scenes and he was amused that these characters or scenes were often ones that other readers declared were their favourite. 

So, to use the diamond analogy again, what one reader may dismiss as the extraneous material, other readers value as the diamond. One could take it further, and suggest that the artist or creator of the work themselves aren't always able to discern the gem from the stone. Or rather, that in applying certain subjective (and quite harsh) criterion, the creator can often end up rejecting something that still has meaning and value for others.

To use an example from popular culture, there's an interesting interview with Christopher Lee where he talks about the making of The Wicker Man, and bemoans the fact that the finished film bore little resemblance to the much better film they had scripted. Generations of movie-goers still value the film that they ended up making - indeed it's often ranked as one of the best films of its kind.

At least the Wicker Man was actually released - even if not in the form that was originally intended. Think of Kafka who was ambivalent towards his work to the extent that he didn't even want it to see the light of day, and asked Max Brod to burn his unpublished work after his death (although Brod made it clear that he no intention of doing so).

Rather than think of editing a work as being about cutting something to the bone, I'd like to suggest another model might be equally effective - that of jazz improvision. Not every note of a solo is needed, not every note is possibly as effective as it could be, there are musical phrases that could equally well be replaced by others. There may be times when the musician loses the attention of the listener momentarily (or for longer). The key thing is not that the musician comes up with something perfect and flawless, but that what they create is something that excites our interest most of the time, that sustains our interest most of the time and (if that interest is lost) that recovers it quickly. 

If we're reading a novel and don't like the direction the plot has taken or think a particular scenario is unrealistic, or we don't believe in the action of a character, our interest is still recoverable provided the rest of the novel engages us. But of course, if there are too many unrealistic scenarios or situations that don't ring true, our interest will be permanently compromised.

Couldn't resist this one.......

Susan Hill's 'I'm the King of the Castle'

***SPOILER ALERT: ENTIRE PLOT AND DENOUEMENT REVEALED***

It’s fairly easy to identify what makes a film work, particularly when that film is a mainstream Hollywood movie. In this blog, I’ve talked a bit about superhero movies and how these tend to use a limited number of ingredients. I think it’s not for nothing that a whole language of scriptwriting has developed which refers to some stock devices in films, such as the need for a ‘Third Act’.

Of course, there are many novels that mimic the structure of a mainstream film – some of these one feels that the author has even had half an eye to being adapted for the screen.

But I’d argue that novels are (generally) more sophisticated and complex than mainstream films, and that anyone wanting to unpick a novel, and ask ‘how do novels work’ is in for a tougher challenge than just putting the latest Marvel comics movie under the microscope.

My own opinion is that books are more effective because they stimulate the reader’s imagination in a way that doesn’t happen on film where everything is presented in ready-made visual form to the audience. Indeed, the most effective films are those which still leave something to the audience’s imagination. Think of any effective horror or suspense film.

In novels, the structure is often not so heavily dependent on external events /plot as it is on the exploration or development of character. As an extreme, think of ‘To the Lighthouse’ where the novel focuses exclusively on the interiority of its characters. Virginia Woolf reverses the standard approach by spending most of the novel describing the ebb and flow of her characters’ thoughts during a Summer’s day. Events which might normally serve as the main subject of a novel (a war, the death of one of the main characters) she relegates to a middle section of about five pages.

All of which is meant as a caveat to the following analysis. I can’t really do justice to Susan Hill’s ‘I’m the King of the Castle’, as it’s a complex and subtle work, which – like all good novels- resists attempts to reduce it to its constituent parts. So I’ll try not to take it apart, but rather to suggest a few ways it’s put together.

For those who haven’t read it, it’s about two boys thrown together by circumstances, and the bullying that takes place between them, with Hooper the tormentor and Kingshaw the victim. The novel begins with Kingshaw coming to stay in Hooper’s house accompanied by his mother, who has applied for the job of housekeeper, and the novel ends when the persecution has driven Kingshaw to such extremes that he takes his own life. So there’s a natural span to the action of novel.

The novel is given structure by the rhythms and dynamics of the relationship between the two boys as they get to know each other, or rather as they metaphorically circle each other, and as Hooper finds ever more ingenious ways of getting under Kingshaw’s skin.  The action is mostly confined to the house, which lends the novel a certain claustrophobia  (emphasis is given to the house at the beginning of the novel because we learn that it represents something quite ambiguous for Mr Hooper in its connection with his own father). But the action is also punctuated by various events such as Kingshaw’s aborted attempt to run away, and by a day out to the ruins of a castle and then, near the end of the novel, by a visit to the circus.

The novel charts how Kingshaw’s metaphorical escape routes are gradually but systematically closed off – either intentionally (as in Hooper’s case) or otherwise. Kingshaw can’t run away without Hooper following. To have his own privacy he has to continually evade Hooper, but knowing that Hooper will eventually discover which room he’s locked himself into – and Hooper frequently reminds Kingshaw that he is a guest (or worse) in his house. Kingshaw feels that Hooper will always win, whatever the situation.

What starts as a fixed period of time before Kingshaw can go back to school and be free of Hooper changes into a more dreadful prospect – the decision to send Kingshaw to the same school as Hooper, where Hooper can marshall other bullies to prey on Kingshaw. At the same time, the marriage between their respective single parents changes Kingshaw’s stay to a permanent one, and therefore removes any hope of a change in his situation.

The reader feels it wouldn’t be quite so bad were Kingshaw actually listened to by either of the parents. But the adults either willfully misunderstand him, or lack perception to interpret what is going on around them – dismissing his complaints as just a ‘boy thing’. For a short time in the novel, Kingshaw finds a genuine escape and enjoyment in his friendship with Fielding because this is something that he can keep to himself, only for Kingshaw’s Mum to unintentionally intrude on that as well.

One of Kingshaw’s final acts in the novel is to go into Hooper’s bedroom, tear down the battle plans Hooper is so fond of, take them outside, and tear them up into tiny pieces and burn them. It’s less a decision to act or fight back as it is the ultimate admission of powerlessness in that it expresses a terrible frustration that has no other outlet or hope for relief. Indeed, Hill’s decision to have Kingshaw burn the scraps of paper is effective in that it doubles as an act of provocation to Hooper, and also as an act of concealment – ie burning away the evidence of what he’s done. Kingshaw’s decision to drown himself in the wood is moving – and perhaps inevitable – because the pool of water is the one place he has recently managed to find any sense of freedom.

The tension created in the book is all the more effective because of the moments of reprieve that Hill allows her character. There are moments where Kingshaw thinks things might after all be ok (incidentally mirroring his mother’s expressed hope that they will all be a family, and that ‘things will be ok’). He proves himself resourceful and a clear thinker in the storm that reduces Hooper to a quivering wreck. At the time there seems every prospect that the role reversal in the wood where Kingshaw takes charge will defuse the situation back at home. The fact it does no such thing somehow makes the return to the status quo all the more chilling.

Kingshaw also finds temporary relief in his friendship with Fielding which is formed during the time Hooper spends in hospital. Kingshaw’s initial suspicion of Fielding shows how far Hooper has got under his skin in encouraging a distrust of others. There’s a scene where Kingshaw explains his problems to his new friend, and you really feel that this human contact might be a watershed moment and that Fielding might be able to suggest ways of dealing with Hooper that will defuse the situation. But ultimately Hooper’s influence pollutes this friendship as well.

The relationship between Hooper and Kingshaw has a certain symmetry about it which I think acts as a kind of glue for the novel. It’s not just that both boys have lost a parent, and are grieving about this or are both prey to related fears and nightmares. For instance, in the wood Hooper hits his head and becomes unconscious at risk of drowning in the water nearby, in way that prefigures Kingshaw’s own actual drowning at the end of the book. Also the two near-fatal /fatal events in the novel (Hooper’s fall from the masonry, and Kingshaw’s drowning) although caused indirectly by the other boy, are both self-inflicted.

As an aside, the fall from the castle wall is particularly impressive in that Kingshaw has the thought that he could just push Hooper off and kill him, and is sorely tempted to do so but doesn’t, only for Hooper to misinterpret Kingshaw’s innocent arm movement as a sinister one, resulting in him losing balance and falling anyway. There’s something here that reminds me of Dostoevsky – where a character thinks of a murderous act which he could quite easily have gone ahead with, decides not to, only for the results of that act to occur anyway, and in such a way as to make him look guilty after all. As another aside, it’s satisfying that Hill has this key scene take place at a literal castle, in reference to the title.

And finally there’s an interesting contrast in the reactions of first Kingshaw to Hooper’s supposed death, and then at the end of the book, Hooper’s reaction to Kingshaw’s actual drowning. Kingshaw has the perfectly normal human response of utter devastation at thinking he may have caused his tormentor’s death. By contrast Hooper’s first (and only stated) reaction at the end of the book is to feel pride that it is actually him who has brought about his victim’s death.

This is the same author who brought us ‘The Woman in Black’. So if you’re interested in hearing about her ideas on ghost stories, I”d recommend a Christmas ‘Start the Week’ programme on Radio 4 where she discusses this with Claire Tomalin (among others).

At the time of writing the programme can be downloaded at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018b63r 

Ridley Scott's 'Alien': It’s all about the Cat

*** Warning: Contains Spoilers for Alien, and the sequel Aliens***

Well, actually, 'Alien' is all about the suspense. We’ll come to the cat later.

Much of the appeal of the first film comes from not even knowing what the ‘Alien’ of the title refers to – although it’s easy to lose sight of that fact with the endless sequels and spin-offs that have been spawned over the years, and have made us very familiar with the look (and modus operandi) of the ‘Alien’.

So it takes half the film before we actually catch a glimpse of the Alien, and understand that it’s intending to destroy the whole crew.... a lesson that James Cameron’s Aliens sequel employs to similar effect when he delays the first big on-screen encounter with the aliens until halfway through the film

The opening sequence of 'Alien' makes clear that a danger or threat exists, but without defining the precise nature of that threat. In the first minute or so the camera pans through a seemingly empty (and enormous) spacecraft, and the unsettling music makes it clear that something isn’t quite right. Blinking monitors reflect on the visors of two space suit helmets (is someone inside that suit, we wonder, and if so, why are they not moving – are they dead?), and the ship appears to be running itself seemingly without anyone being on board - a bit like the Marie Celeste. First-time viewers are also presumably wondering whether this is, in fact, the ‘after’ of the story, and whether the rest of the story will be told in flashback.

To boldly go ...

For the first half of the film, I think interest is created partly by the understanding that ‘something is going to happen’ - this film is called ‘Alien’ after all! But also, quite simply, by the re-imagining of space travel. This isn’t pioneer space exploration as we’ve experienced in Star Trek; the crew of the Nostromo are simply doing a job moving cargo through space. The characters on board express no wonder at the technology around them, or at being out in space, or at coming out of a hibernated sleep. I like the way almost every early scene has someone clutching a coffee mug, or eating, or smoking which gives an informality to these scenes. Perhaps the fact these characters are entirely at ease with their space surroundings and each other makes us feel the opposite, and that this is all rather “alien” to us. Even the names of the characters are odd and therefore suggestively futuristic – Ripley, Ash, Kane.

I liked the way we experience the characters as a team at the beginning – to the extent that it’s difficult to keep track of all the different people and what their role is on the ship. It’s certainly not clear that any one of these people is destined to survive and become the hero /heroine of a 4-film franchise!

I always knew Bilbo was an android....

Of course, there are some pointers to the fact that Ripley is likely to survive – or indeed, that she has earned the right to survive. It’s clear that at crucial stages of the drama, Ripley stands firm and makes the correct call when others senior to her do not, and also that she thinks for herself. It’s Ripley who translates the distress signal, and realizes it is, in fact, a warning. It’s Ripley alone who refuses to let the alien on board – a decision that Ash overrides with calamitous results. It’s Ripley who decides they should leave the ship and blow it up, and it’s Ripley who keeps her head, and tries to stop the self-destruct when she realizes the alien is blocking her route to the escape shuttle. But, crucial to maintaining suspense, Ripley’s inevitable survival is only clear in retrospect. Once it’s clear the alien will pick them off one by one, it’s not certain who or how many of the crew will survive.

Which brings us to the cat, Jonesy.

New Alien franchise: Alien versus Jonesy the cat??

The cat performs a number of roles in the story. He’s used as a diversion in an early ‘false alarm’ scene. Ripley and Parker detect motion on their gizmo, only to find it’s Jonesy. When the cat runs off, Brett follows it, thereby separating himself from the group – and inevitably it’s at this point he’s killed by the alien. When Jonesy hisses, initially we think he’s reacting to Brett, when of course he’s reacting to the alien behind him. So, the cat acts as a cipher to the killing.

Jonesy is also used as a plot device at the denouement – Ripley risks her life by going back to fetch him, then runs into the ‘alien’, drops the cat cage, and runs back to try and stop the self-destruct countdown.

But I’d say the cat performs a role that’s central to the emotional journey of the film. Imagine the very last scene, when Ripley has destroyed the alien, but without the cat being there. The emphasis of the scene would then be on the fact all of Ripley’s colleagues and friends are dead, and she is left alone – which might feel like a kind of defeat. But the way the it's actually written, Ripley isn’t alone – she has the cat who, like herself, has survived against the odds. I think of the cat as being a bit like the crew’s mascot, and that therefore for the cat to survive means that Ripley has truly defeated the alien because something of the crew has survived.

And the writers have clearly invested some importance in the animal surviving. When Ripley drops the cat cage and runs off, there’s a great camera shot of the alien turning to the cat and baring its teeth in a grin. The implication is that it’s about to kill the cat too, and so it’s quite satisfying from a plot structure point of view when it turns out that this is not the case, and the animal has, surprisingly, survived.

Not a cat

Enough about the cat!

Ok – so the film might well have worked without having a cat in it. In fact, when I re-watched Alien recently, I realised I’d completely forgotten there’d even been one in it!

But I’d argue that the character of ‘Newt’ in Aliens performs a similar role – much of the drama and emotional impetus is derived from Ripley’s protection and defence of this 11-year old girl (a situation made all the more emotive due to the fact Ripley’s own 11-year old daughter is dead). Again, imagine 'Aliens' without the girl’s character. It would become a much flatter story, and reduce the action to something more like ‘Return of the Living Dead’ where characters are picked off one by one. If you were being cynical, you might suggest these ‘cypher’ characters /cats are introduced simply to simulate an emotional depth that would otherwise be lacking.

But I think the reason why Alien works better than its sequels is partly because there is in fact more emotional depth to the story. Ripley is a character who thinks first about others. She acts in the crew’s interest by challenging Ash’s conclusions about the distress signal; she goes back to rescue the cat at the end; and when she assumes command of the ship, her priority is to make sure the alien is killed and the remaining crew members escape.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that they ‘break contract’ with the audience at the beginning of Alien 3, by killing the entire crew who survived Aliens, just to extend the action to another sequel.

The Killing: Getting away with Murder?

***Spoiler alert: plot and identity of murderer revealed***

The annual Danish 'Who can look the moodiest' competition 

The Killing is such a good piece of TV, if you haven’t watched it already, I would really recommend you read no further.

Twenty hour-long episodes is a long time to keep interest going. So, how do the writers keep us watching and tuning in for next time (or reaching for the next DVD in the box set)?

One obvious technique they use is that they have multiple prime suspects. Well, you don’t need me to tell you that if you’ve watched it! We lose count of the number of times the murderer’s identity seems clear and the crime solved, only for Lund to work out some new angle which casts her previous assumptions into doubt.

We suspect first Nanna's teacher, then Troels Hartman, then the other politician, Jens, then Vagn, then the taxi driver character, and finally Vagn again. And those are just the main suspects.

Crucially both the teacher and Troels remain prime suspects much longer than they need because both have alibis they are unwilling to reveal – indeed, it seems they would prefer to be suspected of the murder, or even arrested, to protect their secret. Subsequently it’s revealed that the teacher was helping someone escape from an arranged marriage, and that Troels had actually attempted suicide on the night in question, and that both men respectively wanted to keep these facts a secret. Neither of these alibis fully account for their reluctance to reveal all. In real life, of course, each suspect would give their alibis much earlier – but then this is just a story, and there would be much less dramatic interest in everyone being up front and honest.

The writers create further dramatic interest with the situations that develop around the respective prime suspects. For instance, Lund being alone with Troels and looking through his diary when he might come back into the room at any second.  Or by having Troels arrested right in the middle of an all-important Council meeting. Or by having the teacher go in to school and being spat at by his pupils. Or when he’s beaten up by the father, egged on by Vagn when we know he’s innocent.

In which I make a spurious reference to a much loved 1980s icon ..... 

The writing is very clever in that it never definitively commits to anything. The writers get away with having their cake and eating it. Someone you felt was beyond suspicion could become the prime suspect; someone who had previously been cleared could be back in the frame. Watching the series reminded me of a Rubiks cube. I felt the writers could take the story this way, or they could just as easily take it that way. The different combinations and sequences of combinations were almost limitless. Is the Police chief hiding something? Is Lund taken off the case because there is some wider conspiracy at work? Is Troels’s girlfriend Rie playing him?

Because a Rubiks cube would have been just too obvious...

No character ever seems to be able to definitively rule themselves out, even though you'd imagine this would be perfectly straightforward for them to do. For instance, Jens does a very good job of behaving like a serial killer when he ties Lund up, and plays games with her – he even ties Lund up using the same material that the murderer used on the victim. Is this really how someone would react when their involvement in a hit and run has been discovered? Just before he’s killed he says something helpfully ambiguous – not ‘I didn’t kill her’ but something like ‘I could never have killed her’.

'What's my motivation again?'

And that’s a key point.At least three of the characters die before the police can get the complete story. Jens is killed before he can be brought in for questionning, the taxi driver character hangs himself, and Vagn is killed after confessing to Theis.  I would argue that it is necessary for the writers to kill off these characters before they’re able to give the police the full story – because this smooths over inconsistencies and implausibility about the details of the story which would come to light in any lengthy confession to the Police.

My reading of the murder is that it was carried out on the spur of the moment for racist reasons. But throughout the series, we were led to believe the murderer was a serial killer. So, we have a serial killer murdering on the spur of the moment acting from a racist motivation – when none of his previous crimes had anything whatsoever to do with race. Hmm… doesn’t quite add up to me.

I would argue that The Killing is best appreciated as a game or as a diversion rather than as a representation of ‘reality’. It’s a game where there are certain rules. The main rule is that the murderer should be someone obvious but not someone we’ve seriously suspected – a difficult combination to pull off. In fact they do this very cleverly with Vagn. The scene where he’s arrested for the murder is directed to make it seem like the police have got the wrong man, as the taxi driver character is busy hiding in the corner looking guilty.  When Vagn is released, the writers create more of a smokescreen by having Pernille and Theis effectively throw him out the house. This engages our sympathies for Vagn in a way that stops us thinking any more about his potential guilt. There’s no better way of diverting the viewer’s suspicions than by having a character arrested, particularly when the arrest happens a few episodes before the end. Besides, this is Vagn! Dopey, reliable, simple Vagn!

Spurious reference to Bill Hicks coming up...

A final thought - it's just a ride..... 

I would argue that The Killing is very good at creating tension and keeping us guessing about what's really going on.  But the feverish excitement generated is never fully matched – can never possibly be matched – by the eventual revelation of the killer’s identity. Then again, I think The Killing should be watched to enjoy the ride, rather than to get to the destination.

Superhero movies: Hit or myth?

The story so far...

Last time I talked about the proliferation of Superhero movies over the last two or three decades, and I suggested that the number of different versions and the number of different actors playing the heroes (and villains) had the unintended effect of creating a modern myth. By regularly re-making the same Superhero films in different styles, and using different directors and different actors, by willfully ignoring events in previous films, a particular story or franchise becomes bigger than any one of its constituent parts – actors, directors or storylines. Batman as we know him isn’t just the latest version, directed by Christopher Nolan. It’s all of the versions (Tim Burton and Michael Keaton; Joel Schumacher and Val Kilmer).  Compare this with, for instance, the Mission Impossible franchise. Rightly or wrongly, this franchise is now wedded to Tom Cruise’s character of Ethan Hunt, and the limitations that brings.

 Last time, I was careful to say that I mean myth in inverted commas, and today I’ll be exploring the limitations Superhero films have when compared with other stories, mythic or otherwise.

Same old, same old

In some ways it’s curious that, on the one hand, there are so many superhero sequels, and on the other hand, relatively few of them are able to develop and continue the preceding themes and stories. It seems we’d rather have the same battles played out again and again between Batman and The Joker, or Superman and Lex Luther rather than have our hero come up against anyone new.

How to make your own Superhero movie ...

Superhero franchises follow a familiar pattern. The first movie is all about tracing the origins of the character – what I would call the ‘origin story’. Actually it’s quite difficult to get this one wrong.  The director spends half the film explaining how Batman became Batman, and pits him against a character we would recognise as his chief nemesis. So, films like (Tim Burton’s) Batman, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, and Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 1 all tend to be strong films (the same applies to non-Superhero 'first' movies like Star Trek and Casino Royale).

The second movie in the franchise is generally a ‘now we’ve got started’ -type film, and is often (though not always) the strongest movie of the franchise – films like Batman Returns, The Dark Knight, Spiderman 2 fall into this category. Why are these stronger? Possibly because the studios often use the same director again. Consequently, these directors have learnt their mistakes in the first film, they have another chance to get it right, and have a clearer idea of where they want to go with the franchise. Also, I’d suggest that it’s the villains who make the more interesting characters, not the hero. And we’ve just spent the first film establishing the hero’s origins – so if the sequel is more about the origins of the villain, it would stand to reason it would make for a more interesting film.

The third movie in a franchise is often more problematic. You’ve used up your strongest villain in the first movie (Joker, The Green Goblin); you’ve then moved on to the other strong villains (Catwoman and Penguin, Doctor Octopus); you’re now left with the secondary villain characters for the third film. My own feeling is that film-makers often make up for the lack of ‘quality’ by having a larger number of these slightly less interesting villains.  So, where The Dark Knight had a single villain in The Joker, The Dark Knight Rises has a plethora of villains.

Going over to the Dark Side

The other interesting feature of the third superhero movie is there’s often a dark version of the hero.  Think of Superman 3 where Kent fights the ‘bad’ Superman; and also Spiderman 3 when Spiderman is covered with the black slime that temporarily turns him into ‘bad’ Spiderman. The slime is transferred to another character, who in turn becomes a sort of ‘bad’ Spiderman in the character of Venom.

In Batman Returns (admittedly only the second of the Burton Batman films), there’s one point when Catwoman describes a plan to turn Batman into what he hates the most – ‘us’ (meaning turn him into a villain).  So, after establishing the origins of the hero, after pitting him against his most evil foe, the next stage in the development would appear to involve the superhero fighting (or resisting turning into) a ‘bad’ version of himself.

What I’m describing here is, in fact, a fairly limited arc. A superhero gets created, fights his nemesis, then fights a dark version of himself. What happens next? Where else is there left to go? Nowhere, perhaps, except to repeat the whole cycle all over again. It’s the ‘Reboot’ phenomenon we discussed last time.

I’m not an expert on the original comics and graphic novels, but I gather that (for example) in the Spiderman comics, Aunt Polly and Mary Jane have been killed off and resurrected numerous times. You’ll probably remember in the 1990s when they ‘killed off’ Superman for good, only to resurrect him once again. So even the comics had to keep generating interest by killing off and resurrecting the different characters.

Movies versus TV

I’d argue that the limitations of the superhero movie have a lot to do with the actual movie format.  Something has to happen. There has to be a beginning, a middle and an end, and audiences have to leave the cinema feeling they’ve got their money’s worth. You can’t introduce a villain and have him /her survive at the end of the film. In the comics, you can have The Joker or The Green Goblin defeated countless numbers of times and re-appear in the next issue. In the film you’d feel cheated if there wasn’t a final climactic showdown at the end of the film. Any suggestion that The Joker survived to another day would seem a blatant gambit by the film-makers to keep their options open for potential sequels.

A big budget movie tends to have a particular structure where the hero and villain lock horns initially, and then climactically as the centerpiece of the movie. When you think about it, this is a very restrictive strait-jacket to fit the characters into. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (though not a superhero film) can’t introduce Moriarty without killing him off at the end. Effectively this reduces one of crime fiction’s greatest characters to two or three set piece scenes.

By contrast, TV excels in continuity. The very fact a story has to be followed over a number of episodes (often many hours of viewing) to my mind makes it often a more satisfying experience. Think of series like 24, The Wire, The Killing, Law and Order, ER. There is massive potential to have any number of cliff-hangers, red herrings, and climaxes that simply aren’t possible in the world of the movie. It’s funny that, having started to watch a series like The Killing, we often end up being more and more gripped and wanting to know what happens next. Compare this with cinema, where we often feel less and less motivated the more sequels come out.

And finally....

I think part of the reason we watch superhero movies is because we enjoy these mythic good versus evil encounters. Why? Because it makes the world a simpler place.  We know who the good guys are and we know who the bad guys are.

I think superhero films touch on our ideas about good versus evil ‘archetypes’ in a way that other more ‘realistic’ movies don’t.

But while I love watching popcorn movies as much as the next person, I invariably leave the cinema feeling slightly cheated, as if the movie wasn’t quite able to deliver what it promised.

But the reasons for that, and what all of this has to do with myth-making, will have to wait until another day and another blog.

Superhero Sequels and Reboots

The Story So Far......

Last time, I wrote about the way movie sequels nowadays are increasingly given a subtitle or name (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) rather than a number (Pirates of the Caribbean 4). My suggestion was that this is mostly a marketing ploy to convince us, the audience, that the film we’re about to see is good enough to stand on its own merits, and to avoid the malaise that is often associated with going to see movies with numbers after the title. For instance, would you rather see ‘Casino Royale’ or ‘James Bond 21’?

One thing I didn’t get around to exploring last time was the way this applies to Superhero films, and – in turn – what this tells us about how stories work over a number of sequels.

"Superhero films down the ages"

In the 1980s the Superman films were simply called Superman, Superman II, Superman III and Superman IV (although this last one had the subtitle the Quest for Peace).

Batman set a new precedent in the 1990s with its sequels called, respectively, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin. Admittedly we did recently have Spidermans I, II and III. But I think those are more of an exception in today’s movie world. There is now yet another new Spiderman film – this one called The Amazing Spiderman, and the new Batman film (Batman III) is called The Dark Knight Rises.

I’d suggest that the naming of today’s Superhero movies owes a lot to the fact they’re all reboots of previously-established franchises. After all, what could they have called Batman Begins: Batman Zero? The new Spiderman movie effectively ignores the previous franchise, so could hardly have been called either ‘Spiderman’ (again), or ‘Spiderman IV’. I wonder if the film-makers considered calling it Spiderman Begins? I suspect they avoided it because they don’t want cinema-goers to think ‘Oh, they’re doing a ‘Batman Begins’ to Spiderman now are they? Typical! Anything to breathe new life into an old dog’

Erm... Spidey. You forgot to wear your hat thing....

Shake that Rebooty!

In some ways I think rebooting is a rather creative way of continuing a franchise. At least it avoids the tortuous explanations required in some sequels for a) continuing a story that was all wrapped up in the previous film, and b) resurrecting a character who was written out or killed off (the previously referred-to character played by Sean Connery in Highlander II). It basically frees you up from, for instance, having to find a way to bring the Joker back to life when he’s been dead for ten years, or from being restricted by any of the developments in the previous film.

As an aside here, I think even these situations can bring out the best in some writers. I love the way Arthur Conan Doyle made a virtue out of necessity, and brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead, explaining his long absence by the fact he was working undercover to flush out Moriarty’s remaining criminal network.

Reboots seem to work so well, precisely because the cinema-goer is aware of the previous versions. I’m thinking of the character of Bond in Casino Royale and the enjoyment that’s to be had watching the emergence of a character that is destined to become the James Bond we already know. There’s good writing material to be had in, for instance, a scene where he orders Martini without his trademark ‘shaken not stirred’. Or when he’s been poisoned and his heart has stopped beating (what! James Bond can’t surely die on his first mission!). Or when he hands in his resignation to the Secret Service near the end of Casino Royale (What! He hasn’t even met Blofeld yet, and he’s already given up being a secret agent!)

…Or watching Hannibal Rising and knowing that this young man is destined to become Dr Lecter

…Or watching the cast of Star Trek assemble for the first time, knowing that the rancorous relationship between Kirk and Spock is destined to become a close and warm one.

… and so on.

Lovely view ... and notice those foot holds near the top of the picture

Reboots v Prequels

I mention these ‘origins’ films together, but actually they are slightly different beasts to what we are discussing. I think there’s a subtle difference between Prequels (The Phantom Menace, Hannibal Rising) and reboots (Casino Royale, Batman Begins, The Amazing Spiderman). Prequels work with our knowledge about later unalterable events (eg the character of 'Magneto' in X-Men: First Class, who is destined to go to the bad); whereas reboots work with our knowledge about earlier versions of the same story or character. With reboots, there’s a sense that things can still work out differently (indeed, in the re-booted Star Trek film, the storyline opens up an alternative reality, and therefore makes possible an entirely new timeline for subsequent Start Trek films).

  

For instance, Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise is interesting in the way it deliberately avoids the perennially dark Gotham City favoured by Tim Burton’s films, and by computer games such as Arkham Asylum. The bat cave is hardly a dark cave – it’s a well-lit functional and spacious basement. The batmobile is more functional and practical compared to the stylish and gothic vehicle of the Burton films.  In Nolan’s films, Bruce Wayne is a spoilt playboy, rather than the reclusive and tortured Bruce Wayne as played by Michael Keaton. And much of the action in The Dark Knight actually takes place in broad daylight. What I suppose I’m saying here, is that when we watch the new Batman films, we’re still conscious of the previous versions – rather like watching someone new play Hamlet or Dr Who, and automatically comparing it to previous portrayals.

David Tennant: Hamlet and Dr Who. Two in One combined. What value!

Creating a Modern Myth?

Let’s make no bones about it. Studios create reboots and sequels for guaranteed box office, and because they are generally not willing to take financial risks with new stories. But this results in an interesting phenomenon. When you cast different actors in the same role (Connery, Lazenby, Craig for Bond; Jack Nicholson /Heath Ledger as the Joker; Michael Keaton /Christian Bale for Batman), you inadvertently create something bigger than just the one version – you create a myth (in inverted commas).

I’d argue that the Bond films – the most successful of the franchises we’ve been discussing – has survived precisely because of its casting of different actors and its willful ignoring of any sense of chronology or ageing. The James Bond in the books is of a particular place and time, rather like George Smiley in Tinker Tailor. But the James Bond of the movie franchise is as much at home in the Cold War as he is on Twitter. And the funny thing is – we, the audience, simply take that for granted. Casino Royale should really have been set in the 1950s or 1960s with Daniel Craig. Instead they had James Bond begin his career in the 2000s when all the subsequent missions we'd seen previously took place during the Cold War and its aftermath!

All these different movies simply become versions of an ‘uber’ story. Batman isn’t just Nolan’s interpretation. It’s Burton’s as well (and Heaven help us, the 1960s camp version). I’m reluctant to use the word ‘myth’ here, but maybe that’s closer to what we’re talking about. Maybe Superman, Spiderman and Batman are an attempt to create a ‘modern myth’, although I’d argue they are not necessarily resonant in the same way that, for instance, Lord of the Rings is (the novel, not the film).

Mr George Smiley, pondering what to put on his Twitter update

And now for the Science ...

A parallel in literature would be, for instance, the Arthurian legend stories.  There are different versions of which knights do, or don’t win the Holy Grail. There are numerous stories of all the quests undertaken by different knights, many of whom appear in each other’s stories – but there’s no attempt to organize these into a strictly chronological order. The proliferation of Arthurian stories by different authors all those centuries ago wasn’t by design, but ended up creating numerous versions of similar or identical events. The point isn't to pick and choose which versions you prefer and ignore the rest; it's that all the versions exist happily side by side, even when they depict utterly contradictory events.

  

If one was getting carried away, one could also cite Greek Tragedy as another example – many Tragedians wrote different plays about the same characters and events like the Trojan War.

And finally ....

I think nowadays we like reboots and what I call ‘origin stories’ because they are reassuring to us. Like hearing the same bedtime story for the umpteenth time. We like the story because we know what’s about to happen.

In fact, it’s no different to what happens in many stories. Although we might not know it, we have an inbuilt template for how stories work. When we watch The Artist, we instinctively know it will all work out for our hero in the end. When we watch Tinker, Tailor, we know that George Smiley will be successful in finding the mole in the Circus.

‘Origin’ stories take this one step further. It’s not just that we sense things will work out in the end; we know they will, because we know that the hero survives this battle for the many future adventures we have already enjoyed.

What's in a name? The Art of naming Sequels

It’s often been commented that Hollywood likes to make movies with a ready-made audience. More and more movies nowadays use characters and stories from comics, books, and TV shows or are sequels to earlier movies. Which means that without needing to spend a single dollar on Marketing campaigns, the studios are already guaranteed a certain audience, no matter how good or bad the movie actually is.

I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie recently, and it got me thinking about brand recognition – chiefly about a trend that has developed over the last few years in the naming of movie sequels.

It struck me that they don’t call it ‘Sherlock Holmes 2’, but ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’. I can see why – it seems wrong to call it SH2, when there are so many other big screen versions of Sherlock Holmes in existence (well, going back a few years, anyway). To call this movie  Sherlock Holmes 2 would be a bit like calling The Quantum of Solace ‘James Bond II’.

Mr Robert Downey Jr engaging in an ill-timed staring competition

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is part of a very modern trend, where a sequel is given its own title, rather than a number. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that nowadays studios seem to go to great lengths to avoid putting a number after a movie title.

Back in the 1980s it was completely the reverse. Granted, sequels often had alternative titles, such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day. But most movies from those days didn’t bother. Gremlins 2 wasn’t called Gremlins go to Manhattan (sounds like a Muppet movie?). Jaws 2 wasn’t called Jaws: Return to Amity. In those days, having a number after the title was reassuring, indicating that you were just getting a bigger bolder brasher version of essentially the same movie you’d enjoyed first time round.

Short Circuit 2: Death of a Franchise?

Of course, we do still have those types of movies. The one that springs most to mind is the Saw franchise. I’d imagine they call it Saw 8 (or whatever) for the same reasons – to reassure the audience that it’s the same as all the others, but bigger and ‘better’ (in the case of Saw, read more gruesome and blood curdling).

So why the change? Well, would you really want to go to see a movie called Pirates of the Caribbean 4? Wouldn’t you rather see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides?

Using a title implies the movie stands more on its own merits. I’d also imagine it’s a good strategy for ensuring a franchise doesn’t stop dead in its tracks if one of the sequels is rubbish.  I mean, Die Hard 7 would be a hard sell if Die Hard 6 turned out to be a stinker.

Using a movie title rather than a number is also imperative if there is any chance of building up a lasting franchise. It handily avoids the judgements we instinctively make with numbers (anything with a 2 after it = excellent to average, anything with a 3+ after it = average, poor or end of franchise).

The bottom line? Sequels avoid numbers nowadays because it means the studios can make more of them, and spin out the cash cow for longer.

One final complication to the sequels rule we haven’t covered – there’s the ‘Part 1’, ‘Part 2’, ‘Part 3’ trend. eg The Godfather, Back to the Future etc.

Generally the ‘Parts’ approach is more difficult to pull off because you need a story that sustains interest over two or three movies. I’d imagine the Studio Execs also avoid it because having a ‘Part 2’ implicitly limits the number of sequels you can do. I mean, if you wouldn’t see Pirates of the Caribbean 5, I’d imagine you definitely wouldn’t see Pirates of the Caribbean Part 5 (‘How come this wasn't all sewn up in Parts 1 to 4??’)

Back to the Future before it was Part 1

So, what’s this got to do with How Stories work?  Well, in the spirit of the subject, you’ll have to wait until my next blog entry to find out. I haven’t decided if my follow-up will have a Title, number or Part – but any ideas welcome.