FACES OF FANTASY: 'Signs,' with Mel Gibson (left) and Rory Culkin, opens this weekend. FRANK MASI/TOUCHSTONE
Posted on 08/04/2002 5:00:20 AM PDT by 2Trievers
Congrats again kiddo! &;-)
Yeah, but Jackie Chan can do things that computers can't!!!
FACES OF FANTASY: 'Signs,' with Mel Gibson (left) and Rory Culkin, opens this weekend. FRANK MASI/TOUCHSTONE
Books are still a superior vehicle for bringing fantasy to life. I doubt that movie-making will ever close that gap.
I have read books all my life and I probably spend six hours a day on average reading (including my time here on Free Republic). Not just fantasy and science fiction books (which make up just a small portion of what I read, but books on history, social sciences, and any other subject that interests me.
Most people in this world do not read. Over the years, many people have asked me why I waste my time on books. To them, I am wasting my life away. Bear in mind that these are people who have spent countless hours every night watching inane sitcoms on TV like "Seinfeld" and "Welcome Back Kotter" and insipid dramas such as "Murder She Wrote" and "Eight Is Enough." This steady diet of low-brow fare has made them very poor conversationalists. The average person does not know enough about history to discuss it intelligently. They do not know about Thomas Jefferson or why the Civil War was fought or even how our nation came about.
I think books are one of mankind's greatest achievements. With a library of books, one can visit exotic places, revisit historical events, learn about the world around him, and speculate on what the future may bring. It is even better than being there. For example, many years back, I visited Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee. I learned there about the great Civil War battle that took place around there in 1863. But the information didn't really sink in at the time. It was just a tourist trap to me. But then I read several books about that battle and when I visited it again earlier this year, the place came alive for me. I could see Missionary Ridge and from Lookout Mountain, I could see the little peninsula on the Tennessee River in which Chattanooga was held under seige. In other words, the place meant something to me because I had read so much about it.
Same with the area I live in. I live not too far from Concord and drive past the North Bridge every morning for work. So everytime I go to work, I imagine that cool April morning when Redcoats were marching up to the bridge and were confronted by an angry band of colonists. I drive right by the Old Manse where Nathaniel Hawthorne once lived and through the old town square in which the British burned some houses down. In fact, practically right in my backyard is the path that Chelmsford Minuteman took to get to the battle that morning. None of this I would know if I didn't read books. (None of my neighbors seem to know or appreciate this.)
Well sorry for running off on a tangent. Back to fantasy.
I think fantasy books (which include science fiction) are also beneficial and not the waste of time many feel them to be. Epic battles of good vs. evil such as LOTR is great for people to read. It forces them to confront difficult questions and the characters in these books can serve as good role models. It would be a good thing for a child to think, when faced with adversity, "Now how would Gandalf handle this situation?" It is not too far of a stretch to say that these books can impart wisdom. Not just fictional character but historical characters as well. For example, reading about people such as George Washington and Winston Churchill and how they handled adversity inspire me and have affected how I act in everyday life.
You are well-spoken on this point and I agree. It crossed by mind too. We have a HUGE dilemma in America ... that our kids (generally) cannot read. That bothers me so. And reminds me of this great Ray Bradbury quote ...
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
Sounds as if your taste in books is as fine as you taste in liquor. &;-)
If we're talking movies, even ones like "Blackhawk Down" can be considered fantasies. The movie simulates, to a greater or lesser degree, something that acutally happened. But it is filmed to put us inside the action, and has fictional characters that somewhat resemble the real ones. When it's highbrow, we call fantasy movies "drama".
Fantasy is as old as man's tradition of storytelling, which started out as oral, and only later made it to the written word, and the recorded image. Some fantasies document historical events, some attempt to teach important lessons, and some are just relief from life's daily grind.
Movies are a subset of fantasy. They use technology to get the message out to more people, and allow the message to be stored, and preserved, for later viewing. The ancient bard would be amazed that scribbles on paper could store and disseminate a story he spent his whole life learning, and speaking to sparse audiences. Today, a writer can marvel at how his scribbles are turned into lighted images in darkened rooms. The audience gets wider, but often more shallow. It's one of those double-edged technological swords.
The interesting thing about a fantasy like LOTR is that different people bring back totally different things from it depending on their backgrounds. A hippie reading that book in 1969 read into it something totally different than a grunt in Vietnam in that same year. For me, the wonder and magic in the book was not as strong as the views of the main characters, who spent most of their time cold, scared, and hungry, with the prospect of utter destruction not only threatening them, but the worlds they knew and loved, too. It's a condition faced by soldiers, but not necessarily warriors, throughout history.
I read a lot because books are more portable, and do not make the claim for exclusive time from me that movies do. I will certainly go see a movie that I think will live up to what I expect from it. MIB gives me some laughs without much thought behind it, and therefore is worth the price of admission. LOTR, however, required work on my part in even watching it. It was well worth the effort, because it showed me that someone who respected the source material as much as I did could pull it off with enough money, resources, and respect.
As a book, "Lord of the Rings" beats even this big-budget movie. But the movie beats the pants off any other "fantasy" movie by putting on the screen images I though could only exist in my mind.
 Ring Ping!! |
Frodo lives!
Well it wasn't entirely killed, if you remember "Spartacus" and "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" ("Gladiator" was a remake of this). But neither of them was a real moneymaker. The old epic movies, like DeMille's, could not be made with the increasing value of labor, but once the programming is done, CGI extras work for free.
HairOfTheDog's post outlines the increasing reality of these CGI characters. Even without this sophistication, the CGI armies in Mel Gibson's "Patriot" made the production of this film more affordable. Now picture's with 1000's of extras, which essentially vanished after "Cleopatra", can again come to the forefront. In a few years, perhaps we can also look forward to CGI lead characters, so that the arrogant Hollywood Alec Baldwins can look forward to permanent unemployment.
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