okay, we're gonna jump right into this b/c i can't think of anything funny to say uwu
we start right where the other chapter left off, but instead of being with the captain, we're in clark's head. finally! eight chapters in and we're in the main characters head. there are good descriptions of the scene peppered with weird and dumb shit, like the author constantly reminding us that clark isn't like other guys. the first half of this chapter is mostly clark running through the building and saving people.
there's a line near the middle of the chapter where the author says 'his vision shifted along the electromagnetic spectrum so that he could see through the steel walls...'. is that how that works? something about that doesn't make sense to me, but maybe it's because i know nothing about that. i'm also not used to reading or writing about characters that have x-ray vision.
clark does a hell of a job getting the guys out, even though he's set on fucking fire. i know he's superman, but he's set on fucking fire. cool as hell. there's also the part where he stops this big thing from falling over and crashing into a helicopter that's really cool too.
before i go on, though: 'copter? really? just say chopper.
after getting the thing out of the way he falls into the water with it, and there's a really nice part where it describes the polarity between the world above and below the water. the tone goes hella somber though, and it starts talking about how he just wants to disappear into the depths. and then the whales come. i like the idea of clark floating in the water with the whalesong a lot! that sounds beautiful, but for the whales to actually come along is a bit hokey. just a bit.
and then, ruining everything, is another flashback. i don't understand why this movie wasn't just presented chronologically. is nolan incapable of writing an origin story not told in flashback? it's especially annoying in this, where the writer insists on tacking them onto other chapters. this one's a bit better placed than the last, since the chapter ends when it ends, but still.
so in this flashback, we go back to when clark is in fourth grade, and he starts to get his x-ray vision. i actually like this one better than the last; it's really sad, and you get a good sense of how horrifying this was for clark back then, even around the author's usual tropes. it's heartbreaking to see clark get made fun of because the kids don't understand him, and see him go bolting out of the classroom because, to him, it's full of walking skeletons. i really feel bad for this kid!
there's that one part that's in the trailer where martha's telling him to imagine the island, and i was kind of taken out of the story when the island he imagined looked like krypton. how does he even remember that? but it doesn't really take away from the sadness of the scene, especially right before this, when he finally opens the door of the closet for his mom and he can see into her too. the chapter ends with clark asking 'what's wrong with me, mom?' and that's painful.
so, another good chapter! the content and emotion won out over the holes the author tends to fall into. the arrangement got to me too, but i'm able to look around it one more time. if this happens next chapter i'm done, though. either way, this kind of gives me hope, because maybe i won't have to trudge through the rest of this like i did the first six chapters.
the original long blog. now on wordpress.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
man of steel chapter 7
WE'RE FINALLY TO THE MODERN DAY GUYS!!!! can u believe it? i can't. let's jump right in.
so we begin on a ship called the Debbie Sue in the middle of the Bering Sea. we're in the pov of the captain of the ship as he looks over the deck from the wheelhouse, which is a convenient way to justify all of the paragraphs about what crabbing is like up near the arctic circle. they're actually pretty well written too. the narrator takes particular pains to mention how dangerous it is, which is a good lead in to the part where he mentions that everyone is an experienced veteran, except for one.
that's right, everyone, baby is all grown up!! and he's a cast member on the deadliest catch, apparently!!! yay!!!
the captain is worried because the 'greenhorn' kid (that word is used, like, six times) is, well, green, and this trip is particularly dangerous. clark is just winding up ropes out of the way of the big business though, so he's okay. OR IS HE??? because he almost gets smashed by a falling cage. some guy pushes him out of the way, though.
the captain is confused because, after almost dying, clark just goes back to his lines. completely reasonable. he wonders why he signed clark on in the first place, seeing as dude never talks and knows nothing. that captain wonders where he came from anyway.
and then there's a flashback.
we rewind to 1981, when martha and johnathan kent take baby to the doctor because he hasn't stopped crying since they found him in baby ship. the doctor says it's colic, and tries to do a routine check up, but when he puts one of the machines into baby's ear and clark fucking shrieks and breaks every glass surface on the street.
now, i like this flashback, because it's a good preview into the problems of adopting an alien, but why is it here, in the middle of another chapter?? that's not how you do flashbacks!! flashbacks should be relegated to their own chapters (see batman begins for the way to do this right).
after some ***, which are used correctly this time, we're back on the ship. it's getting late, but the ship still has a quota to fill so they gotta work it. the captain gets a radio that there's an oil rig on fire and they have to stop anyway to go help. the scene as they approach the rig is written well; i especially like the description of fireballs blooming from the upper levels. the captain tells clark to get his binoculars, but when he turns around he's gone. !!!!
so, it seems like what we have here is the best written chapter so far! the arrangement is a bit off, but still, good writing! if there is one thing to come out of the flashback, it's that it forced the author to use the *** properly. hopefully the next one will go this well.
so we begin on a ship called the Debbie Sue in the middle of the Bering Sea. we're in the pov of the captain of the ship as he looks over the deck from the wheelhouse, which is a convenient way to justify all of the paragraphs about what crabbing is like up near the arctic circle. they're actually pretty well written too. the narrator takes particular pains to mention how dangerous it is, which is a good lead in to the part where he mentions that everyone is an experienced veteran, except for one.
that's right, everyone, baby is all grown up!! and he's a cast member on the deadliest catch, apparently!!! yay!!!
the captain is worried because the 'greenhorn' kid (that word is used, like, six times) is, well, green, and this trip is particularly dangerous. clark is just winding up ropes out of the way of the big business though, so he's okay. OR IS HE??? because he almost gets smashed by a falling cage. some guy pushes him out of the way, though.
the captain is confused because, after almost dying, clark just goes back to his lines. completely reasonable. he wonders why he signed clark on in the first place, seeing as dude never talks and knows nothing. that captain wonders where he came from anyway.
and then there's a flashback.
we rewind to 1981, when martha and johnathan kent take baby to the doctor because he hasn't stopped crying since they found him in baby ship. the doctor says it's colic, and tries to do a routine check up, but when he puts one of the machines into baby's ear and clark fucking shrieks and breaks every glass surface on the street.
now, i like this flashback, because it's a good preview into the problems of adopting an alien, but why is it here, in the middle of another chapter?? that's not how you do flashbacks!! flashbacks should be relegated to their own chapters (see batman begins for the way to do this right).
after some ***, which are used correctly this time, we're back on the ship. it's getting late, but the ship still has a quota to fill so they gotta work it. the captain gets a radio that there's an oil rig on fire and they have to stop anyway to go help. the scene as they approach the rig is written well; i especially like the description of fireballs blooming from the upper levels. the captain tells clark to get his binoculars, but when he turns around he's gone. !!!!
so, it seems like what we have here is the best written chapter so far! the arrangement is a bit off, but still, good writing! if there is one thing to come out of the flashback, it's that it forced the author to use the *** properly. hopefully the next one will go this well.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
man of steel 4, 5, and 6
in today's episode i'm doing three chapters because i want to get this krypton shit over and done with. i'm gonna do things a little bit differently today, and keep the recap short, since i'm doing three whole chapters.
so, chapter 4:
edit: just in case you were wondering, the codex still isn't explained. :/
so, chapter 4:
jor and kelex go into battle and try to fight off zod's men. they do good for a while until a) jor gets trapped under some debris, and b) a whole ship full of dudes lands and unloads in the time it takes for him to get out. kelex does another badass move and suicide bombs them with plasma guns to buy the baby more time. even so, zod actually gets into the house and sees what they're doing and that they had a baby naturally and he's fucking pissed so he kills jor but he can't stop baby!! and they're all caught just as baby leaves the planet's atmosphere.chapter 5:
the whole chapter is just zod and his folks getting arrested and sentenced to a bajillion years in the phantom zone. he screams at lara that he's gonna find the baby when he gets out and stuff. nothing else really happens this chapter is really short.chapter 6:
we're with lara as krypton comes to an end, just like jor said it would, of course. the whole chapter is just her floating around despondently before she goes out onto the porch to watch the world end. the very last part, though, is baby ship entering our solar system and landing on earth.so, things!:
- chapter 4 goes through three perspective changes before it ends (jor, then lara, and zod) and that's interesting, mostly because we've been stuck with jor for most of this, but weird because we're only with lara for a tiny bit.
- we finally got a stake that hindered jor!!! why did it take that fucking long???!!!
- there's more of the zod/jor friendship in this, and we got to see lara from zod's pov, which was really interesting, brief objectification aside. he actually, like, cares about her! like, when he realizes that jor and lara had a baby, like, the original way he's terrified that jor raped her or s/t. and, like, that gives very little credit to lara's free will and mind, but it does show that he's worried about her well being to some description, which is a good way to humanize the villain.
- speaking of that, it's been six chapters, and the only character i was really interested in was zod. that's a damn shame, because, if you recall, we've been following jor since chapter 1. that's not good!!
- WE'RE FINALLY GETTING TO SUPERMAN NEXT CHAPTER. seriously, the civil war and stuff on krypton is interesting in concept, and i'd be lying if i said that i wasn't invested in the jor/zod relationship, but god dammit that went on way to long. how the hell did they manage to take something that should have been prologue and stretch it out to six chapters??? i'm so glad this is over.
edit: just in case you were wondering, the codex still isn't explained. :/
Friday, September 20, 2013
man of steel chapter 3
in today's episode, we prepare the baby ship.
but first we start right where the last chapter left off, with jor flying home on h'raka. i know it seems like this is redundant, but i've never read a book that was written conventionally where the chapters take place this closely. i know it's way too much writing to be one chapter, i think, but it still feels like it should be. this might be nitpicking, but i still find it weird.
anyway, the battle over the city continues and has moved closer to them, and h'raka gets hit with a plasma beam. she manages to get to the house before she dies, which doesn't take that long, i think, but it feels like it does because the author takes the time to explain the history of the house of el as they approach it. i'm not sure about the placing, but i do like some of the descriptions. the color of the sun is mentioned again too.
there's a really weird sentence here that says "He ran straight to the observatory, where he found in all readiness". i can't figure out if he meant 'which' instead of where, or if there's a 'her' missing. hm.
either way, we get a description of the baby ship, which looks like a heart and has a state of the art phantom drive unit. fancy shit! lara's in there feeding the baby when he comes in, and she's all happy to see him but he tells her zod's on the way because of the codex. he asks if they found 'the world' and the other robot says that they have. the descriptions obviously identify it as earth, but it's during the last big ice age, apparently, so i've really underestimated how much time it took baby supes to get to there. also, why does she call him jor-el? that's her husband, why is she saying the surname too?
it seems like lara's stalling because she's all like 'what if the natives don't except him', which is a really legitimate fear, but jor's all like 'don't worry it's cool he'll be like a god to them'. obviously jor has never read the bible or seen thor. lara still doesn't want to do it, which is reasonable because come on he was born, like, two hours ago, but jor is like we have to he's our only hope, even though he sorta feels her. i have to say, though, how is he the last hope? if he's the last one alive it's not like he can bring back his race or anything. assuming kryptonians are genetically compatible with humans, like in the comics, years of breeding into the human population is gonna breed out any powers he might pass on, eventually. or maybe i should just wait until i learn the plan. hm.
also, i'm not sure how to feel about lara at this point? like i'm sad for her, but she's been characterized to his point as bone-breakingly beautiful and unable to part with the baby and that's... sexist. like way to squeeze an alien into our narrow, heteronormative gender roles guys! do you think she'll have time to make kal-el a sandwich before launch?
that being said, i do like that jor isn't characterized as thinking she's stupid of needy or overemotional for being that way. actually, he feels the same way, but he's hiding it because someone has to, or they'd never get anything done. i just wish his wife was more than a porcelain doll of female objectification.
jor gets into some kind of robot thing as the helper robot puts the baby in the ship, and then the other robot uploads the info on the codex, which i didn't know was possible, and then transmits it into the baby. this is really important, but what the heck is the codex?? how did a fossil turn into pure information? how can you upload pure information into a baby? there's science that could do this, but how can you do it without some kind of implant in the baby? and how do you upload a fossil???
none of my questions are answered as jor exits the robot and grabs a key and puts it in the ship. it's not the key for the ship, and it's described as if it's important to the story, but it's never explained what it does. what's new?
there is a touching moment where, as he watches the ship close and fill with baby juice, jor thinks about the fact that he'll never touch his son again. it's also a nice echo of when lara was saying how they'll never see him walk or hear him talk. mr. cox is really good at this emotion thing. along with that, my favorite line so far is said as he's looking at the sleeping baby.
the chapter ends with jor telling lara to ready the launch so he can go fight off the people who are attacking the house, complete with overlong descriptions of the armor and whatnot. there's another weird line where jor is like 'it seemed that his old friend had come calling' and like... yeah you just told lara he was coming ten minutes ago! he's acting like 'i don't know what i was expecting' but you knew exactly what you were expecting! why is this here?
and that's it. after one left over false stake from last chapter, this chapter goes on to raise a whole barn full of new questions that won't get answered until way later in the story, hopefully. this chapter was more about the emotion, and i dig that. that's just a breath of fresh air to see all of this put into a work written by chris nolan, especially without me having to do it. the only other complaint i have is WHEN DOES THE STORY ACTUALLY START JUST LAUNCH THE BABY. see you next time.
but first we start right where the last chapter left off, with jor flying home on h'raka. i know it seems like this is redundant, but i've never read a book that was written conventionally where the chapters take place this closely. i know it's way too much writing to be one chapter, i think, but it still feels like it should be. this might be nitpicking, but i still find it weird.
anyway, the battle over the city continues and has moved closer to them, and h'raka gets hit with a plasma beam. she manages to get to the house before she dies, which doesn't take that long, i think, but it feels like it does because the author takes the time to explain the history of the house of el as they approach it. i'm not sure about the placing, but i do like some of the descriptions. the color of the sun is mentioned again too.
there's a really weird sentence here that says "He ran straight to the observatory, where he found in all readiness". i can't figure out if he meant 'which' instead of where, or if there's a 'her' missing. hm.
either way, we get a description of the baby ship, which looks like a heart and has a state of the art phantom drive unit. fancy shit! lara's in there feeding the baby when he comes in, and she's all happy to see him but he tells her zod's on the way because of the codex. he asks if they found 'the world' and the other robot says that they have. the descriptions obviously identify it as earth, but it's during the last big ice age, apparently, so i've really underestimated how much time it took baby supes to get to there. also, why does she call him jor-el? that's her husband, why is she saying the surname too?
it seems like lara's stalling because she's all like 'what if the natives don't except him', which is a really legitimate fear, but jor's all like 'don't worry it's cool he'll be like a god to them'. obviously jor has never read the bible or seen thor. lara still doesn't want to do it, which is reasonable because come on he was born, like, two hours ago, but jor is like we have to he's our only hope, even though he sorta feels her. i have to say, though, how is he the last hope? if he's the last one alive it's not like he can bring back his race or anything. assuming kryptonians are genetically compatible with humans, like in the comics, years of breeding into the human population is gonna breed out any powers he might pass on, eventually. or maybe i should just wait until i learn the plan. hm.
also, i'm not sure how to feel about lara at this point? like i'm sad for her, but she's been characterized to his point as bone-breakingly beautiful and unable to part with the baby and that's... sexist. like way to squeeze an alien into our narrow, heteronormative gender roles guys! do you think she'll have time to make kal-el a sandwich before launch?
that being said, i do like that jor isn't characterized as thinking she's stupid of needy or overemotional for being that way. actually, he feels the same way, but he's hiding it because someone has to, or they'd never get anything done. i just wish his wife was more than a porcelain doll of female objectification.
jor gets into some kind of robot thing as the helper robot puts the baby in the ship, and then the other robot uploads the info on the codex, which i didn't know was possible, and then transmits it into the baby. this is really important, but what the heck is the codex?? how did a fossil turn into pure information? how can you upload pure information into a baby? there's science that could do this, but how can you do it without some kind of implant in the baby? and how do you upload a fossil???
none of my questions are answered as jor exits the robot and grabs a key and puts it in the ship. it's not the key for the ship, and it's described as if it's important to the story, but it's never explained what it does. what's new?
there is a touching moment where, as he watches the ship close and fill with baby juice, jor thinks about the fact that he'll never touch his son again. it's also a nice echo of when lara was saying how they'll never see him walk or hear him talk. mr. cox is really good at this emotion thing. along with that, my favorite line so far is said as he's looking at the sleeping baby.
"Sleep well, my son," Jor-El whispered. "Our hopes and dreams travel with you."mr. cox is really good with this emotion thing! this is really moving! i don't ever feel like i get this much emotion out of a nolan movie when chris has the reigns but this guy's got it! i just wish the rest of his writing wasn't so problematic.
the chapter ends with jor telling lara to ready the launch so he can go fight off the people who are attacking the house, complete with overlong descriptions of the armor and whatnot. there's another weird line where jor is like 'it seemed that his old friend had come calling' and like... yeah you just told lara he was coming ten minutes ago! he's acting like 'i don't know what i was expecting' but you knew exactly what you were expecting! why is this here?
and that's it. after one left over false stake from last chapter, this chapter goes on to raise a whole barn full of new questions that won't get answered until way later in the story, hopefully. this chapter was more about the emotion, and i dig that. that's just a breath of fresh air to see all of this put into a work written by chris nolan, especially without me having to do it. the only other complaint i have is WHEN DOES THE STORY ACTUALLY START JUST LAUNCH THE BABY. see you next time.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
man of steel chapter 2
and we're back! in today's chapter, jor-el commits grand theft skull! yay!
so, we start right where we left off. no, i don't think you understand: the chapter literally starts with 'tor-an carried out zod's orders'. this dude really doesn't trust us with figuring out that time has passed, does he? anyway, they strip jor-el of his cape and shit before they lead him off to wherever they're taking everyone.
jor-el looks back to see zod in the throne room, not looking all happy like he thought he would, and thinks about how much of a shame it is that the war zod's starting is for nothing. you know, i really do like this relationship they've set up between zod and jor. it's suitably sad and heartfelt, even if it is a rip-off of grindelwald and dumbledore. i don't think i've mentioned it here, but one thing chris nolan movies are always lacking is platonic relationships, especially between two dudes. cox did this in the tdkr novelization too, adding in the connection between nameless dude #1 and bane during the plane scene. i'm sure this relationship is in the movie, but i doubt it's seen this in depth. good move, mr. cox.
the moment is kind of ruined by a line reminding us that jor-el has 'plans', though. sigh
everything has gone to shit now, and there's a huge battle raging outside. zod's dudes are cut off in the hallway by jor-el's one robot, kelex, and jor-el is able to make his escape when kelex fucking blinds everyone. as badass as that is, this is such a dues ex machina; we don't find out that kelex was there until he shows up in the tunnel. this could have been avoided with a single line in the last chapter, so that's big points off, man.
as jor is running away from zod's dudes before they can get back up, he skypes lara and tells her what's up. there's a nice moment when he's too busy thinking and she's like 'behind you!'. that was cool. however, that's ruined by the part where the author mentions lara's 'flawlessly rendered' lips as she starts to argue with jor-el about the baby ship. i shit you not, this is the point where i officially threw out any headcanon i had of her and she just became liv tyler as arwen. what the fuck dude? she's just some kryptonian lady, not a model or a doll or something. jesus, i'm dreading what he'll do when we reach lois lane.
now, having said how much i like the relationship between jor and zod, i hate his relationship with his wife. like, yeah it's obvious that they love each other, but they're so boring. and it's the fault of the author, because he paints lara as two dimensional and plain. she's basically edward cullen with bella's lack of conviction and personality. jor-el isn't much better, but at least we have a sense of history about him.
this next section begins the numerous mentions of the color of the sky, all of which are unnecesary, as he said it last chapter and that was enough. it wasn't like it was changing or anything. another dues ex machina happens, saving jor-el from a crashing ship that was headed towards him when he exited the tunnels. lovely. somehow this guy finds a way to remind us that superman is a boy while reminding us that jor-el has 'plans'. how would we forget that??? man is in the title - we know the gender of the child dude!
jor-el is still standing on the terrace above the shitstorm when he calls on his animal-airship thing, which is called h'raka and i literally cannot envision in my mind's eye. she's not described well enough - he doesn't even mention how many legs she has - for me to come up with anything. think of you're favorite non-avian flying type pokemon and imagine that instead, i guess. i know this is adapted from the screenplay, but i have such a hard time believing this is in the movie. it feels so out there, even for an alien planet like krypton. it really takes me out of the story. also, why wasn't she mentioned before? see, this is what happens when you ***. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS.
but anyway, he flies her over the battle toward this building called the genesis chambers, giving us some time to see the carnage up close. there's a lot of the unnecessary paragraph breaks here and it's annoying as hell. like, i know the method of breaking for poignancy, i've done it before too, but when you do it more than once on the same damn page the effect is lost.
we get another *** (there was one right after he spoke to lara) and homie is at the genesis chamber, which is basically the literal tree of life. the place is unguarded because of the war going on, which is lampshaded by jor, and dude lands and dives right in. literally. the tree is filled with fetuses and their robot nurses floating around in amniotic fluid, which is kind of cool but mostly gross. jor's looking for the codex, which is another thing i don't really get and isn't explained well, even though i read ahead a chapter. there's a fun moment before this when kelex tells jor where the codex is, and starts to warn him of the legal action that'll be taken if he breaks in, and jor is like 'no one cares anymore, kelex, the world is ending.' i'm there dude.
in this part we also learn that krypton has, apparently abandoned the 'recklessness' of sexual reproduction for the much more controlled method of test tube babies in a tree. so superman isn't the first baby born on krypton in ages - he's the first baby born out of a vagina in ages! he gets more and more special by the minute! if it turns out that he's never going to age once he gets to earth he really will be the new renesmee!
after almost getting caught because he accidentally kicked one of the baby bubbles (i'd say that'd have a lasting effect, but the world is ending), jor gets to the codex, which is a fossil covered in writing hanging right above the pool he came out of. he doesn't even have to get out of the baby juice to grab it! how nice! getting the skull sets off the alarms, so jor has to get out of dodge while the nurse bots chase after him and bite his ankles. he's not hurt though, because he's wearing an advanced skinsuit to protect himself - so, basically, under armor. i hope you all didn't think he was running around naked, or in his underroos! oddly, this is the only thing that avoids being a dues ex, but it's so much easier to mention these things as the story demands instead of establishing they exist prior.
one of the robots manages to get him as he's getting out of the water and he loses the codex for a moment, but it was already established that these robots weren't built for fighting, so he's able to kick it off and get it before it rolls off of the branch. he came out through the wrong one in his haste, so dude takes the most literal leap of faith ever and is, thankfully, caught by h'raka before he falls to the ground. the chapter ends with him directing her home.
this chapter is full of imaginary stakes. things happen that should hinder jor significantly - zod's men, the falling ship, the codex rolling toward the edge - but they don't because of course they don't. there aren't any real stakes outside of the world ending in a week and the civil war happening. i feel like i just read a padding chapter, and the retrieval of the codex is hella important. it doesn't help that we have no idea what the codex even is yet, and i feel like we won't learn until much later in the book. we get over-explanations of everything else, but we can't get a small hint at what this is? i smell a mcguffin, everyone.
so, we start right where we left off. no, i don't think you understand: the chapter literally starts with 'tor-an carried out zod's orders'. this dude really doesn't trust us with figuring out that time has passed, does he? anyway, they strip jor-el of his cape and shit before they lead him off to wherever they're taking everyone.
jor-el looks back to see zod in the throne room, not looking all happy like he thought he would, and thinks about how much of a shame it is that the war zod's starting is for nothing. you know, i really do like this relationship they've set up between zod and jor. it's suitably sad and heartfelt, even if it is a rip-off of grindelwald and dumbledore. i don't think i've mentioned it here, but one thing chris nolan movies are always lacking is platonic relationships, especially between two dudes. cox did this in the tdkr novelization too, adding in the connection between nameless dude #1 and bane during the plane scene. i'm sure this relationship is in the movie, but i doubt it's seen this in depth. good move, mr. cox.
the moment is kind of ruined by a line reminding us that jor-el has 'plans', though. sigh
everything has gone to shit now, and there's a huge battle raging outside. zod's dudes are cut off in the hallway by jor-el's one robot, kelex, and jor-el is able to make his escape when kelex fucking blinds everyone. as badass as that is, this is such a dues ex machina; we don't find out that kelex was there until he shows up in the tunnel. this could have been avoided with a single line in the last chapter, so that's big points off, man.
as jor is running away from zod's dudes before they can get back up, he skypes lara and tells her what's up. there's a nice moment when he's too busy thinking and she's like 'behind you!'. that was cool. however, that's ruined by the part where the author mentions lara's 'flawlessly rendered' lips as she starts to argue with jor-el about the baby ship. i shit you not, this is the point where i officially threw out any headcanon i had of her and she just became liv tyler as arwen. what the fuck dude? she's just some kryptonian lady, not a model or a doll or something. jesus, i'm dreading what he'll do when we reach lois lane.
now, having said how much i like the relationship between jor and zod, i hate his relationship with his wife. like, yeah it's obvious that they love each other, but they're so boring. and it's the fault of the author, because he paints lara as two dimensional and plain. she's basically edward cullen with bella's lack of conviction and personality. jor-el isn't much better, but at least we have a sense of history about him.
this next section begins the numerous mentions of the color of the sky, all of which are unnecesary, as he said it last chapter and that was enough. it wasn't like it was changing or anything. another dues ex machina happens, saving jor-el from a crashing ship that was headed towards him when he exited the tunnels. lovely. somehow this guy finds a way to remind us that superman is a boy while reminding us that jor-el has 'plans'. how would we forget that??? man is in the title - we know the gender of the child dude!
jor-el is still standing on the terrace above the shitstorm when he calls on his animal-airship thing, which is called h'raka and i literally cannot envision in my mind's eye. she's not described well enough - he doesn't even mention how many legs she has - for me to come up with anything. think of you're favorite non-avian flying type pokemon and imagine that instead, i guess. i know this is adapted from the screenplay, but i have such a hard time believing this is in the movie. it feels so out there, even for an alien planet like krypton. it really takes me out of the story. also, why wasn't she mentioned before? see, this is what happens when you ***. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS.
but anyway, he flies her over the battle toward this building called the genesis chambers, giving us some time to see the carnage up close. there's a lot of the unnecessary paragraph breaks here and it's annoying as hell. like, i know the method of breaking for poignancy, i've done it before too, but when you do it more than once on the same damn page the effect is lost.
we get another *** (there was one right after he spoke to lara) and homie is at the genesis chamber, which is basically the literal tree of life. the place is unguarded because of the war going on, which is lampshaded by jor, and dude lands and dives right in. literally. the tree is filled with fetuses and their robot nurses floating around in amniotic fluid, which is kind of cool but mostly gross. jor's looking for the codex, which is another thing i don't really get and isn't explained well, even though i read ahead a chapter. there's a fun moment before this when kelex tells jor where the codex is, and starts to warn him of the legal action that'll be taken if he breaks in, and jor is like 'no one cares anymore, kelex, the world is ending.' i'm there dude.
in this part we also learn that krypton has, apparently abandoned the 'recklessness' of sexual reproduction for the much more controlled method of test tube babies in a tree. so superman isn't the first baby born on krypton in ages - he's the first baby born out of a vagina in ages! he gets more and more special by the minute! if it turns out that he's never going to age once he gets to earth he really will be the new renesmee!
after almost getting caught because he accidentally kicked one of the baby bubbles (i'd say that'd have a lasting effect, but the world is ending), jor gets to the codex, which is a fossil covered in writing hanging right above the pool he came out of. he doesn't even have to get out of the baby juice to grab it! how nice! getting the skull sets off the alarms, so jor has to get out of dodge while the nurse bots chase after him and bite his ankles. he's not hurt though, because he's wearing an advanced skinsuit to protect himself - so, basically, under armor. i hope you all didn't think he was running around naked, or in his underroos! oddly, this is the only thing that avoids being a dues ex, but it's so much easier to mention these things as the story demands instead of establishing they exist prior.
one of the robots manages to get him as he's getting out of the water and he loses the codex for a moment, but it was already established that these robots weren't built for fighting, so he's able to kick it off and get it before it rolls off of the branch. he came out through the wrong one in his haste, so dude takes the most literal leap of faith ever and is, thankfully, caught by h'raka before he falls to the ground. the chapter ends with him directing her home.
this chapter is full of imaginary stakes. things happen that should hinder jor significantly - zod's men, the falling ship, the codex rolling toward the edge - but they don't because of course they don't. there aren't any real stakes outside of the world ending in a week and the civil war happening. i feel like i just read a padding chapter, and the retrieval of the codex is hella important. it doesn't help that we have no idea what the codex even is yet, and i feel like we won't learn until much later in the book. we get over-explanations of everything else, but we can't get a small hint at what this is? i smell a mcguffin, everyone.
some words on the objectification of women
- naked woman =/= objectification. this is misogyny at its most subtle, everyone. the idea that any woman with her clothes on is unfair to two groups: 1) the woman, because it implies that the female body cannot be viewed as anything but an object for sexual pleasure, and 2) men, surprisingly, because it assumes that all men are drooling idiots. both of those ideas are bullshit, and you're not helping anybody by implying that the only way to show a woman respectfully is with her clothes on. the framing of the scene/shot/panel is more important than the content, so before you complain, really look and see if the author/illustrator/whatever actually meant for it to be titillating.
- objectification doesn't have to be sexual. this is one i ran into while reading man of steel. you're not jumping out of the box because you're not mentioning how 'sexy' she is, okay? the more times you mention how earth-shatteringly beautiful this girl is, the less relatable she becomes. not even kidding, every time gary cox mentioned how warm and exquisite and 'beautifully rendered' lara was, the more i imagined her as arwen from lord of the rings, because she wasn't just a regular person anymore! instead of turning her into a sex object she's turned into a porcelain doll or a marble statue - she's not a person either way, and both are just as bad as the other. if she's pretty, just say she's pretty - using the word pretty is fine - and leave it.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
review of a chapter: man of steel novelization
so i got around to reading the sample of the man of steel novelization that i downloaded on my kindle, and i start this with a few claps for greg cox? i gotta say, dude totally stepped his game for this one! he makes a lot of the same mistakes as before, but those mistakes are better written and more engaging, so that counts for something! i actually, like, want to read this thing. wait, was that supposed to come at the end? oh well.
anyway, ONWARDS!
i remind you again that i haven't seen the movie for this, so i'm judging the book strictly as a book. that being said, was the destruction of krypton a prologue in the movie? because it feels like it should have been. one thing i do know is that superman's back story isn't told chronologically, and i already typed out this protip yesterday, but this scene taking place thirty-three years before the events of the movie that isn't a flashback should be a prologue!! if this isn't a prologue in the movie either, than boo on you chris nolan and david goyer! get it together!
okay, so, to the actual story. the book jumps right into the action with the birth of superbaby. the first line of the book is jor-el telling his wife lara to push. i actually like this, because at least now i know that mr. cox doesn't start all his books the same way. very good. points of for using the word cranium again, though. what's up with that??
it's worth noting that the design aesthetic of krypton is very basic sci-fi stuff. it's the same mix of organic and futuristic as, like, the chitauri in the avengers and the predator planet in predators. that's not the fault of the author, i think, but i haven't read the script so i don't know.
now onto the thing that bothered me the most in this chapter. i've noticed a trend in male writers to mention how attractive the attractive female character is too much. Lara Lor-Van is called beautiful at every turn, with every synonym. it's not just this guy either: joss whedon does it in the script for the avengers, and the guys who wrote pirates of the caribbean do it any time elizabeth has a costume change. what gives, guys? i know lara is beautiful, you told me once already, you don't have to tell me every single time. also, stop describing all attractive women like they're angels! you don't need to mention how 'exquisite' her features are. there isn't this much energy spent on telling us that jor-el is attractive; hell, as far as i know he's plain as hell! all we know about him is that he's fit and has a beard. this is similar to the problem of only mentioning a char's skin tone if they're a person of color, and just like how that's racist, this is sexist. say it once, don't wear it out.*
so, anyway, lara gives birth to little supe, the first baby born on krypton in a long time, because of course he is. i got nothing wrong with superman being special, that's why he's superman and not batman, but god dammit can't he just be the last surviving member of the race? he has to be the first baby born in a really long time too? if they keep this up he'll start bordering on renesmee-levels of ~specialness~, and that's not good at all.
a weird thing happens here, where the author puts a
***
and then the scene changes slightly. see how weird that feels? three asterisks it the writing equivalent of a dissolve: it's meant to show the passing of a significant amount of time. i would be okay with it**, but this is not that long after the first part of the scene. she didn't even leave the room, she just moved to the couch. what gives?
there are things i do like in this part, though. i like that the author eludes to the house of el's sigil and tells you what it means without telling you it's an S. i like that superbaby's space ship is mentioned without telling you what it's for. it's nice to know that he trust us to put two and two together that way.
a this point jor-el has to leave and go yell at the council members because everything on krypton is ruined and he's trying to pitch a back up plan before it all goes to shit. he's sad because he has to leave his son and wife so soon (more proof that the *** was unnecessary), but he has to because,as i mentioned, if he doesn't everything will go to shit.
another *** happens and then we're at the council chamber. there's a short description of what krypton looks like on the outside, and you really do see why he's so desperate to get them to listen to him: the surface of the planet is completely uninhabited because everyone lives underground, where they can mooch off of the planet's core for warmth because their sun is shitty and red. in turn, mooching off the core is what's ruining them, so the situation is pretty dire. they've got a few weeks before shit goes down, but the stodgy old council is all 'we've submitted the plan for peer review', like they've got time for that shit. is it just me, or is there any story where the council isn't stodgy and old? mass effect is the only one i can think of.
just as jor-el is explaining to the council how they can use the outer space resources to help themselves out, general zod comes crashing in with his folks to stop him from being so damn genre savvy. we're introduced to his team as well, and, once again, we come crashing head first into some sexism.
remember how i made a whole post about how the good/bad dichotomy in the tdkr trilogy and inception was false? yeah, well gary cox busted in and made sure it existed in this story. faora-ul is directly compared to lara. how bullshit is that? why do we have to bring her into this? also why does faora have to be a femme fetale? why can't she be a burly soldier boy type? i'd vouch for a tiny feminine thing but people with that type of body don't usually exist in military settings, regardless of gender. also, speaking of that, why does krypton have the same gender roles as we do? aren't they supposed to be super advanced aliens? gender shouldn't even exist on that planet anymore.
zod pulls a cutler beckett on these guys and says that the council is dismissed, and they're all fired. he kills the head one for daring to ask who's authority he had, and the rest of the old coots are tied up and taken away. jor-el steps in, and the story reminds us for the third or fourth time that he and zod used to be bros. zod is the grindelwald to jor-el's dumbledore; i'm not even kidding, their friendship has the same origin, minus the unrequited gay love (or does it???). jor-el tells him he's going about it all wrong, zod says he's tired of all this shit, jor-el silently agrees, but then comes the kicker: zod asks jor-el to join him. this would be pretty basic, but it's kind of heartfelt? and by that i mean that zod's not asking for his help simply to get himself ahead. he wants to save the planet as badly as jor-el, but he's racist, and jor-el wants nothing to do with his third reich eugenics bullshit, so he declines. good move, dude. however, zod gets offended, because he didn't get the memo that they didn't like each other anymore, and has him taken away.
and that's it!
so, for this book, the verdict is that this is also okay, but i want to read more of it and see what happens, because the sample cut off during chapter two. the good thing is, i can buy this now! and i wanna do chapter by chapter reviews! yay! so i guess this will be a thing now. yay!
* the only real exception to this is if it's written from the pov of someone who's really in love, in first person or third person limited, and even then just find a strong synonym and use it once
** on a personal note, i'm not a fan of *** in general, though i have seen it used okay. i feel like it promotes the disuse of transitions, which are really easy to use anyway.
anyway, ONWARDS!
i remind you again that i haven't seen the movie for this, so i'm judging the book strictly as a book. that being said, was the destruction of krypton a prologue in the movie? because it feels like it should have been. one thing i do know is that superman's back story isn't told chronologically, and i already typed out this protip yesterday, but this scene taking place thirty-three years before the events of the movie that isn't a flashback should be a prologue!! if this isn't a prologue in the movie either, than boo on you chris nolan and david goyer! get it together!
okay, so, to the actual story. the book jumps right into the action with the birth of superbaby. the first line of the book is jor-el telling his wife lara to push. i actually like this, because at least now i know that mr. cox doesn't start all his books the same way. very good. points of for using the word cranium again, though. what's up with that??
it's worth noting that the design aesthetic of krypton is very basic sci-fi stuff. it's the same mix of organic and futuristic as, like, the chitauri in the avengers and the predator planet in predators. that's not the fault of the author, i think, but i haven't read the script so i don't know.
now onto the thing that bothered me the most in this chapter. i've noticed a trend in male writers to mention how attractive the attractive female character is too much. Lara Lor-Van is called beautiful at every turn, with every synonym. it's not just this guy either: joss whedon does it in the script for the avengers, and the guys who wrote pirates of the caribbean do it any time elizabeth has a costume change. what gives, guys? i know lara is beautiful, you told me once already, you don't have to tell me every single time. also, stop describing all attractive women like they're angels! you don't need to mention how 'exquisite' her features are. there isn't this much energy spent on telling us that jor-el is attractive; hell, as far as i know he's plain as hell! all we know about him is that he's fit and has a beard. this is similar to the problem of only mentioning a char's skin tone if they're a person of color, and just like how that's racist, this is sexist. say it once, don't wear it out.*
so, anyway, lara gives birth to little supe, the first baby born on krypton in a long time, because of course he is. i got nothing wrong with superman being special, that's why he's superman and not batman, but god dammit can't he just be the last surviving member of the race? he has to be the first baby born in a really long time too? if they keep this up he'll start bordering on renesmee-levels of ~specialness~, and that's not good at all.
a weird thing happens here, where the author puts a
***
and then the scene changes slightly. see how weird that feels? three asterisks it the writing equivalent of a dissolve: it's meant to show the passing of a significant amount of time. i would be okay with it**, but this is not that long after the first part of the scene. she didn't even leave the room, she just moved to the couch. what gives?
there are things i do like in this part, though. i like that the author eludes to the house of el's sigil and tells you what it means without telling you it's an S. i like that superbaby's space ship is mentioned without telling you what it's for. it's nice to know that he trust us to put two and two together that way.
a this point jor-el has to leave and go yell at the council members because everything on krypton is ruined and he's trying to pitch a back up plan before it all goes to shit. he's sad because he has to leave his son and wife so soon (more proof that the *** was unnecessary), but he has to because,as i mentioned, if he doesn't everything will go to shit.
another *** happens and then we're at the council chamber. there's a short description of what krypton looks like on the outside, and you really do see why he's so desperate to get them to listen to him: the surface of the planet is completely uninhabited because everyone lives underground, where they can mooch off of the planet's core for warmth because their sun is shitty and red. in turn, mooching off the core is what's ruining them, so the situation is pretty dire. they've got a few weeks before shit goes down, but the stodgy old council is all 'we've submitted the plan for peer review', like they've got time for that shit. is it just me, or is there any story where the council isn't stodgy and old? mass effect is the only one i can think of.
just as jor-el is explaining to the council how they can use the outer space resources to help themselves out, general zod comes crashing in with his folks to stop him from being so damn genre savvy. we're introduced to his team as well, and, once again, we come crashing head first into some sexism.
remember how i made a whole post about how the good/bad dichotomy in the tdkr trilogy and inception was false? yeah, well gary cox busted in and made sure it existed in this story. faora-ul is directly compared to lara. how bullshit is that? why do we have to bring her into this? also why does faora have to be a femme fetale? why can't she be a burly soldier boy type? i'd vouch for a tiny feminine thing but people with that type of body don't usually exist in military settings, regardless of gender. also, speaking of that, why does krypton have the same gender roles as we do? aren't they supposed to be super advanced aliens? gender shouldn't even exist on that planet anymore.
zod pulls a cutler beckett on these guys and says that the council is dismissed, and they're all fired. he kills the head one for daring to ask who's authority he had, and the rest of the old coots are tied up and taken away. jor-el steps in, and the story reminds us for the third or fourth time that he and zod used to be bros. zod is the grindelwald to jor-el's dumbledore; i'm not even kidding, their friendship has the same origin, minus the unrequited gay love (or does it???). jor-el tells him he's going about it all wrong, zod says he's tired of all this shit, jor-el silently agrees, but then comes the kicker: zod asks jor-el to join him. this would be pretty basic, but it's kind of heartfelt? and by that i mean that zod's not asking for his help simply to get himself ahead. he wants to save the planet as badly as jor-el, but he's racist, and jor-el wants nothing to do with his third reich eugenics bullshit, so he declines. good move, dude. however, zod gets offended, because he didn't get the memo that they didn't like each other anymore, and has him taken away.
and that's it!
so, for this book, the verdict is that this is also okay, but i want to read more of it and see what happens, because the sample cut off during chapter two. the good thing is, i can buy this now! and i wanna do chapter by chapter reviews! yay! so i guess this will be a thing now. yay!
* the only real exception to this is if it's written from the pov of someone who's really in love, in first person or third person limited, and even then just find a strong synonym and use it once
** on a personal note, i'm not a fan of *** in general, though i have seen it used okay. i feel like it promotes the disuse of transitions, which are really easy to use anyway.
Monday, September 16, 2013
a review of a chapter: the dark knight rises
i'm back already, and i'm here with something completely different (dog bless)
so in an endeavor, which i'm still not sure will be worth it, i decided to read the novelization of man of steel to see if i would like the story even a little bit. i haven't seen the movie, and, quite frankly, i'd rather spend six dollars on an ebook i'll never read again than twenty making a bet on a movie i'm already feeling iffy about. i also decided to take a peek at the novelization of the dark knight rises too, because it's by the same author, and why the heck not. that's the one i read first, so that's the one i'm talking about (as the title says)
so i downloaded the sample to my kindle last night, which includes the prologue and a chapter and a half? i think. it said i was 70% of the way through it on the first page of chapter two so i'm gonna pretend that's absolutely correct. while i do this, i'm gonna try to avoid mentioning my fic of the same story, mostly because this is a review, not a comparison, though i should mention that was sort of the other reason i wanted to read this book anyway. so, ONWARDS!
the prologue in this book is the scene where jim gordon is talking at harvey dent's funeral, nicely getting the time setting out of the way without having to mention it in the text, though they're probably going to mention it in the text. in the movie this is more like an epigraph more than anything, though it's hard to apply terms like that to a movie because it's not a book, you know? but here it's used as the prologue.
the narrator (this is written in 3rd person omniscient) kindly reminds us that harvey dent wasn't actually killed in the line of duty in the third sentence, which would be okay, maybe, but it's written in clumsily. that could have been it's own sentence, honestly. also, this author has a problem with using paragraph breaks properly. like, it's kind of a rule to break for every line of dialogue by a new speaker, but he breaks the last line of gordon's speech from the dialogue tag before it for no reason. that's one of my top pet peeves about writing, and while reading this it drove me crazy.
i'll be honest, i'm not a fan of this author at all. this stuff is readable, but he's just kind of amateur?? i feel like i'm being narcissistic when i say this because i'm really only comparing to myself, but i write better than this guy! that's not cool! i've only been doing this for ten months! not cool.
anyway, back to the prologue. it ends with gordon rushing out the words "i believed in harvey dent" and getting the heck out of dodge because he can't stand to praise the man who tried to kill his son anymore. completely understandable. what's funny, though, is that he's written as thinking this:
is this nitpicking? maybe, but nitpicking gives me life, so this'll have to do. ONWARDS!
so, chapter one!!! in this book is what was the prologue to the movie. writing hack: if you have a random scene that takes place six months prior to the timeline, presented chronologically instead of as a flashback, it should be a prologue, friend. it doesn't matter if it's long enough to qualify as a chapter - read game of thrones if you're worried about something like that. not a fan of the presentation, but okay whatever let's get to the goods.
one of the thing i realized while reading this is that it's written word for word from the screenplay (which i know because i own the complete screenplays for the dark knight trilogy. i really do like this batman stuff, i promise you). if this were any other screenwriter it wouldn't be a problem, but i can tell you from experience that writing a chris nolan scene without some rearrangements is bullshit. he writes his fast cuts right into the script, and if you don't make up for it it makes the writing choppy and hard to follow sometimes. i kind of don't want to fault the author for this, but i feel like i have to because it's his job to accommodate the change in medium, you know?
so, in this chapter we're introduced to dr. leonid pavel, the man with two first names, or so everyone tells me. they're a-speeding through the country side of Unnamed Eastern European Country #12 towards an airstrip outside of a city that's the front for some war that's going on, the likes of which we aren't privy to because it doesn't matter to us - which is fair enough. we learn a lot about dr. pavel, such as the fact that he's unsure of what he's doing, that he doesn't look like the actor that played him in the movie, and that he's apparently racist. there are other people in the car, but they don't matter, save for the three dudes in the back seat with bags over their heads - it wouldn't be a tdk trilogy movie without at least one person with a bag over their head. these paragraphs are pretty alright, except for a sentence that literally says 'other sounds began to be heard' as they near the war zone that's bugging the heck out of me because really?? really????
anyway, this is the part where they get out of the car and meet the cia agent played by the dude who plays petyr baelish on game of thrones. the book doesn't make moves to distinguish the driver from any of the other peripheral characters in the car, but i assume it's because that character is only named in the credits of the movie and we don't really have a reason to know that the driver of the car is important, because he kind of isn't. seriously, dude has approx three lines in the movie, but he seems important because he shows up everywhere bane is. that's another reflection of the script, but not one i'm faulting the author for.
the cia agent takes the doctor on the plane, as well as the three bag heads because driver told him that they worked for bane and cia dude is like 'yo that's what's up'. pavel is upset about it but he doesn't say anything because they're saving him and it's not ike his opinion matters anyway. i love the way the author goes out of his way to remind us that cia man is plain. like, nondescript and unmemorable are used in the same sentence to describe this dude. this is a personal thing, but when characters are plain i don't think you should spend even that much energy picking out synonyms to use. but that just might be me, so moving on, there's a thing i like!!! wow!! i like that bane is described as a mystery with a body count, it's actually a pretty succinct description of the char in general, which is nice to see in this.
also, adding to the plain, cia dude's name is Bill Wilson. like.. that sounds like an old man that lives next door to you, or your grandpa. i love it. agent wilson and co. board the plane and begin their flight over some mountains as wilson thinks about how he's gonna get a promotion if he can get the scoop on bane, since dude has eluded the cia pretty well. we also get that great scene where agent dude interrogates the guys by hanging them out the door and pretending to shoot them. fun stuff.
bane gets his first lines in the next paragraph, and, quite frankly, i'm mad the author didn't take the opportunity to describe the way his voice sounds. i guess it wasn't as important in the script or s/t. however, in this version bane is wearing a leather jacket, and that's cool as hell. bane, who is still one of the mystery bag heads at this point, hints that he's bane, and wilson flips out internally. i gotta say, agent wilson has got to be the dumbest dude i've ever seen. do you know how many times bane is equated with blood and death and destruction in this chapter alone? according to pavel, dude is nearing voldemort levels of name-being-synonymous-with-terror-ability in that part of the word, but agent wilson is hella excited! he ain't scared of no bane!
so the bag comes off and tada! he's here!! and i hate the way his mask is described!!! it's not scary at all, or even a little intimidating because it's too excessive. the description in the script mentioned that it gripped his head like a vice, and that's about it. that's intimidating. this long ass paragraph isn't. if he'd pared it down and kept the part where he mentions that it made his face look like a skull it would have been fine. also, using cranium as a synonym for head is generally a dumb move unless you're talking science.
in the conversation that ensues after the de-bagging, wilson actually gets scared of bane, but only after he threatens to kill him, which i can't help but find a little unreasonable, seeing as this is bane. then again, maybe i'm just projecting myself into the situation, because bane is truiggery as hell for me and even reading some of this is hard. either way, now wilson is starting to get nervous about the sitch at hand, though he's trying not to show it.
now, this is the part where following the script exactly gets iffy, because this is when the bigger plane shows up. as cool and complicated as the plan is, i think it would have been better to keep the perspective in the plane for this part, just to make it easier to follow. hopping in and out of the plane is a bit disorienting. also one of the random soldiers gets name dropped here and i don't know why, seeing as he isn't mentioned again after this. can we talk about how wilson's last thoughts are "this can't be happening! i'm in charge here!" really dude?
the narrator switches between telling us what's happening inside the plane and outside as everything goes to shit. pavel has tons of thoughts that make bane seem like satan, or death in the final destination franchise. i'd mock him for being so down during this but a plane is falling apart around him so i can't fault homie for that. they do the thing where they give him a corpse a blood transfusion with his blood and that's not as gross as it could have been but that's really nitpicky i think. however, i love the part where the one dude gets left on the plane in this one! it's so much more involved in this version, and you really see how much these dudes care about this stuff, especially bane. like, it actually looks like he cared about the guy that got left behind! whoa!
of course, the chapter ends with the plane being dropped onto the mountains and pavel and bane carried off. pavel screams bloody murder in this version, which is only funny because the narrator mentions before that he's a distinguished scientist and engineer before hand.
so... this was okay. like i said, it was readable, but i don't like the author's style. the prose is also really formal, which is hilarious considering who the movie is by. i am curious to see the rest of this though, and how he handles man of steel, which i also have a sample of on my kindle. maybe i'll do chapter by chapter reviews if i'm able to purchase the whole book. idk. but, for now, all i'll say is that the author would benefit from a creative writing class. it worked for me.
so in an endeavor, which i'm still not sure will be worth it, i decided to read the novelization of man of steel to see if i would like the story even a little bit. i haven't seen the movie, and, quite frankly, i'd rather spend six dollars on an ebook i'll never read again than twenty making a bet on a movie i'm already feeling iffy about. i also decided to take a peek at the novelization of the dark knight rises too, because it's by the same author, and why the heck not. that's the one i read first, so that's the one i'm talking about (as the title says)
so i downloaded the sample to my kindle last night, which includes the prologue and a chapter and a half? i think. it said i was 70% of the way through it on the first page of chapter two so i'm gonna pretend that's absolutely correct. while i do this, i'm gonna try to avoid mentioning my fic of the same story, mostly because this is a review, not a comparison, though i should mention that was sort of the other reason i wanted to read this book anyway. so, ONWARDS!
the prologue in this book is the scene where jim gordon is talking at harvey dent's funeral, nicely getting the time setting out of the way without having to mention it in the text, though they're probably going to mention it in the text. in the movie this is more like an epigraph more than anything, though it's hard to apply terms like that to a movie because it's not a book, you know? but here it's used as the prologue.
the narrator (this is written in 3rd person omniscient) kindly reminds us that harvey dent wasn't actually killed in the line of duty in the third sentence, which would be okay, maybe, but it's written in clumsily. that could have been it's own sentence, honestly. also, this author has a problem with using paragraph breaks properly. like, it's kind of a rule to break for every line of dialogue by a new speaker, but he breaks the last line of gordon's speech from the dialogue tag before it for no reason. that's one of my top pet peeves about writing, and while reading this it drove me crazy.
i'll be honest, i'm not a fan of this author at all. this stuff is readable, but he's just kind of amateur?? i feel like i'm being narcissistic when i say this because i'm really only comparing to myself, but i write better than this guy! that's not cool! i've only been doing this for ten months! not cool.
anyway, back to the prologue. it ends with gordon rushing out the words "i believed in harvey dent" and getting the heck out of dodge because he can't stand to praise the man who tried to kill his son anymore. completely understandable. what's funny, though, is that he's written as thinking this:
With any luck, people would think that he was simply overcome with emotion. God forbid they should guess what he was really feeling.and like??? who's sitting at harvey dent's funeral service wondering if he really got killed by the batman except maybe the odd investigative reporter? i just find it funny that that's what gordon's thinking about at the moment. there's also an odd part where the narration refers to batman as 'gotham's true dark knight', which is strange, seeing as harvey was gotham's white knight. there is no other dark knight.
is this nitpicking? maybe, but nitpicking gives me life, so this'll have to do. ONWARDS!
so, chapter one!!! in this book is what was the prologue to the movie. writing hack: if you have a random scene that takes place six months prior to the timeline, presented chronologically instead of as a flashback, it should be a prologue, friend. it doesn't matter if it's long enough to qualify as a chapter - read game of thrones if you're worried about something like that. not a fan of the presentation, but okay whatever let's get to the goods.
one of the thing i realized while reading this is that it's written word for word from the screenplay (which i know because i own the complete screenplays for the dark knight trilogy. i really do like this batman stuff, i promise you). if this were any other screenwriter it wouldn't be a problem, but i can tell you from experience that writing a chris nolan scene without some rearrangements is bullshit. he writes his fast cuts right into the script, and if you don't make up for it it makes the writing choppy and hard to follow sometimes. i kind of don't want to fault the author for this, but i feel like i have to because it's his job to accommodate the change in medium, you know?
so, in this chapter we're introduced to dr. leonid pavel, the man with two first names, or so everyone tells me. they're a-speeding through the country side of Unnamed Eastern European Country #12 towards an airstrip outside of a city that's the front for some war that's going on, the likes of which we aren't privy to because it doesn't matter to us - which is fair enough. we learn a lot about dr. pavel, such as the fact that he's unsure of what he's doing, that he doesn't look like the actor that played him in the movie, and that he's apparently racist. there are other people in the car, but they don't matter, save for the three dudes in the back seat with bags over their heads - it wouldn't be a tdk trilogy movie without at least one person with a bag over their head. these paragraphs are pretty alright, except for a sentence that literally says 'other sounds began to be heard' as they near the war zone that's bugging the heck out of me because really?? really????
anyway, this is the part where they get out of the car and meet the cia agent played by the dude who plays petyr baelish on game of thrones. the book doesn't make moves to distinguish the driver from any of the other peripheral characters in the car, but i assume it's because that character is only named in the credits of the movie and we don't really have a reason to know that the driver of the car is important, because he kind of isn't. seriously, dude has approx three lines in the movie, but he seems important because he shows up everywhere bane is. that's another reflection of the script, but not one i'm faulting the author for.
the cia agent takes the doctor on the plane, as well as the three bag heads because driver told him that they worked for bane and cia dude is like 'yo that's what's up'. pavel is upset about it but he doesn't say anything because they're saving him and it's not ike his opinion matters anyway. i love the way the author goes out of his way to remind us that cia man is plain. like, nondescript and unmemorable are used in the same sentence to describe this dude. this is a personal thing, but when characters are plain i don't think you should spend even that much energy picking out synonyms to use. but that just might be me, so moving on, there's a thing i like!!! wow!! i like that bane is described as a mystery with a body count, it's actually a pretty succinct description of the char in general, which is nice to see in this.
also, adding to the plain, cia dude's name is Bill Wilson. like.. that sounds like an old man that lives next door to you, or your grandpa. i love it. agent wilson and co. board the plane and begin their flight over some mountains as wilson thinks about how he's gonna get a promotion if he can get the scoop on bane, since dude has eluded the cia pretty well. we also get that great scene where agent dude interrogates the guys by hanging them out the door and pretending to shoot them. fun stuff.
bane gets his first lines in the next paragraph, and, quite frankly, i'm mad the author didn't take the opportunity to describe the way his voice sounds. i guess it wasn't as important in the script or s/t. however, in this version bane is wearing a leather jacket, and that's cool as hell. bane, who is still one of the mystery bag heads at this point, hints that he's bane, and wilson flips out internally. i gotta say, agent wilson has got to be the dumbest dude i've ever seen. do you know how many times bane is equated with blood and death and destruction in this chapter alone? according to pavel, dude is nearing voldemort levels of name-being-synonymous-with-terror-ability in that part of the word, but agent wilson is hella excited! he ain't scared of no bane!
so the bag comes off and tada! he's here!! and i hate the way his mask is described!!! it's not scary at all, or even a little intimidating because it's too excessive. the description in the script mentioned that it gripped his head like a vice, and that's about it. that's intimidating. this long ass paragraph isn't. if he'd pared it down and kept the part where he mentions that it made his face look like a skull it would have been fine. also, using cranium as a synonym for head is generally a dumb move unless you're talking science.
in the conversation that ensues after the de-bagging, wilson actually gets scared of bane, but only after he threatens to kill him, which i can't help but find a little unreasonable, seeing as this is bane. then again, maybe i'm just projecting myself into the situation, because bane is truiggery as hell for me and even reading some of this is hard. either way, now wilson is starting to get nervous about the sitch at hand, though he's trying not to show it.
now, this is the part where following the script exactly gets iffy, because this is when the bigger plane shows up. as cool and complicated as the plan is, i think it would have been better to keep the perspective in the plane for this part, just to make it easier to follow. hopping in and out of the plane is a bit disorienting. also one of the random soldiers gets name dropped here and i don't know why, seeing as he isn't mentioned again after this. can we talk about how wilson's last thoughts are "this can't be happening! i'm in charge here!" really dude?
the narrator switches between telling us what's happening inside the plane and outside as everything goes to shit. pavel has tons of thoughts that make bane seem like satan, or death in the final destination franchise. i'd mock him for being so down during this but a plane is falling apart around him so i can't fault homie for that. they do the thing where they give him a corpse a blood transfusion with his blood and that's not as gross as it could have been but that's really nitpicky i think. however, i love the part where the one dude gets left on the plane in this one! it's so much more involved in this version, and you really see how much these dudes care about this stuff, especially bane. like, it actually looks like he cared about the guy that got left behind! whoa!
of course, the chapter ends with the plane being dropped onto the mountains and pavel and bane carried off. pavel screams bloody murder in this version, which is only funny because the narrator mentions before that he's a distinguished scientist and engineer before hand.
so... this was okay. like i said, it was readable, but i don't like the author's style. the prose is also really formal, which is hilarious considering who the movie is by. i am curious to see the rest of this though, and how he handles man of steel, which i also have a sample of on my kindle. maybe i'll do chapter by chapter reviews if i'm able to purchase the whole book. idk. but, for now, all i'll say is that the author would benefit from a creative writing class. it worked for me.
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