OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN

So here’s the thing about action movies: ever since Die Hard, Hollywood has been trying to make another Die Hard. They’ve done every variation of hostage situation including several more office buildings, they’ve done every type of non-American villain except Canadian, and they’ve given every macho leading man from Harrison Ford to Alec Baldwin (in 1990) a shot at the title. But even Bruce Willis as John McClane fighting Russian terrorists in A Good Day to Die Hard couldn’t recapture the magic. Now it’s Antoine Fuqua’s chance to direct, and Gerard Butler’s chance to play the hero. Are the elements that make up the bones of Die Hard present? Yes. Do they work? No.

Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Butler) is kicked off the President’s detail when he fails to save the First Lady from a car crash. Eighteen months later and he is working at the Treasury Department on the day that the South Korean delegation is visiting President Asher (Aaron Eckhart). Then a gunship bomber flies over DC and starts shooting at anything and anyone, tourist groups turn out to be heavily armed infantry, and part of the South Korean delegation turn out to be the bad guys. The fact that one of them is played by the diamond-faced villain from Die Another Day could have been a clue.

With the President and VP taken hostage and the White House occupied, the government is handed over to Speaker of the House Morgan Freeman. He has a character name, but all you need to know is he’s Morgan Freeman, which is good because that’s all the filmmakers give you. Party affiliations and character development have no place in action movies.

Something I hadn’t considered in my excitement to see Die Hard at the White House was that the whole “lone hero” scenario requires removing the other heroes. Washington DC has a lot of possible heroes to remove, and this means that the debut siege is a bloodbath. This sequence is one of the most original in the film, and it feels like the part that got the script the green light, but it resembles Saving Private Ryan more than anything from the Nakatomi Building.

It may be unfair for me to constantly compare this film to Die Hard, but I can easily see Gerard Butler’s character going home to watch the Bruce Willis classic and saying, “Why doesn’t he just shoot them in the head? He should just shoot them in the head. Do you think he considered just shooting them in the head?” I didn’t even try to count how many Full Metal Jacket brain splatters were the result of Butler firing a perfectly-aimed shot.

An essential part of the lone hero action film is the hero’s motivation. It’s not good enough that he wants to be a good guy and save everyone. John McClane would have left the building if his wife weren’t in the hostages. The same goes for Harrison Ford in Air Force One. Gerard Butler’s only motivation seems to be doing his job, which is fairly weak as far as action movies go.

But, at the halfway point, the film did not deserve much scorn. It succeeded in delivering what the trailers promised, which was a lot of action in the relatively new setting of the White House. However, in the second half, there is a device introduced that rises to Dr. Strangelove levels of stupidity solely for the purpose of raising the stakes higher than they needed to go. Nothing is easier to mock than a ticking clock, and a couple of plot contrivances leading up to it doesn’t help the believability.

As far as action movies go, there have been plenty worse, and if you don’t mind blood this was a worthy popcorn flick. It’s not challenging or particularly well-crafted, but it does what it set out to do.

By the way, if Olympus Has Fallen sounds interesting, but the theaters drop it before you get a chance to go, don’t worry. Roland Emmerich is remaking it with Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx. White House Down opens June 28.

OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

The great debate over 3D rages on, and Oz the Great and Powerful is the latest battleground. The critics are split; some say 3D should be innocuous and intended to build on quality storytelling, but some say that 3D should remember its roots as a 1950s novelty and throw things out of the screen. Oz falls into the second category with spears, flying monkeys, carnivorous trees, and bubbling fog all flying out to the audience. I decided to save a few bucks and went to the 2D, which may have been a mistake. From the animated credits it was clear that Sam Raimi was playing to the 3D crowd next door. Also it was an afternoon show, so my seat was being kicked and a small blonde child was practicing the hundred meter dash in the aisle (I thought I should mention that in case my review sounds bitter).

The movie opens in black and white Kansas with the frame cut off at the old 4:3 ratio. Oz (James Franco) is a magician working in a traveling circus. He is selfish, deceitful, and as much of a womanizer as children’s films allow. Plenty of great films have sleazy leading men who see the error of their ways, but this opening sequence is missing any kind of villain to contrast with the charming hero. When Rick first appears in Casablanca we like him not because he’s a sharp-tongued rogue, but because he’s a sharp-tongued rogue outwitting Nazis. Here, Franco is just the least honest man in a room of nice country people, and the intro sequence suffers as a result.

When Oz’s hot air balloon is tossed around by a tornado the visuals kick in. Broken fence posts stab at Oz through the floor and wagons crash into the screen as the noise rages on. Finally calm air returns and the screen transforms into panoramic colour. One thing that cannot be faulted is the film’s production design. The look of the original 1939 film is recreated and expanded very effectively. Although the movie is claimed to be based on the books, it is clearly inspired most by the original musical.

References to The Wizard of Oz imagery are everywhere. Rainbow arcs appear in clouds and tree branches through the whole film to the point of overkill. In one respect Raimi did hold back, which is referring to the original film’s trio of characters. A lion makes a fun appearance, and we meet a man who makes scarecrows, but other than these little nods the film is mostly concerned with the love triangle (or square?) of Oz and the three witches.

Michelle Williams is the bubble-powered Glinda, Rachel Weisz is the uncomplicated evil witch Evanora, and Mila Kunis is the naive Theodora. The relationships of these three with Oz appear a little one-sided, and are only marginally better than Twilight in terms of inspiring female role models. Also, since this is essentially a prequel, the original film’s ending is given a depressing new twist with Oz abandoning Glinda to return to Kansas with a younger woman. But, all that aside, the three leading women are all great actors and they are performing in the slightly exaggerated style that classic Hollywood and children’s films demand.

When Glinda brings Oz into her protected kingdom there is a sequence where a bunch of townspeople explain exactly what they do; someone sews, someone makes bread, someone builds scarecrows, etc. Unfortunately this is not the only scene where people voluntarily say exactly what they do. The script is filled with exposition where characters simple state their intentions. If this weren’t aimed at children I’d say it was criminally lazy writing, but I have to remind myself again that this is targeted at kids who have recently hit the age where The Wizard of Oz is first experienced. Clarity is expected.

Without the dazzle of 3D I was left to look at the quality of the story, the script, and the acting, none of which are the film’s strength. It’s worth looking at for the visuals of the production design. I wouldn’t say that it is a terrible otherwise, since it easily outdoes other revisitations of children’s classics (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory comes to mind), but it isn’t great, and unless you’re under 10 it isn’t powerful.

Thinking Inside the Box

When film studios introduced the larger Cinemascope screen, artist Jean Cocteau said, “The next time I write a poem I’ll use a big sheet of paper.” Lately it seems filmmakers have forgotten that bigger is not always better, and that Cocteau was being sarcastic.

Clear and concise stories told in a limited space have, it seems, gone out of fashion. At least for the big names. I love the work that Christopher Nolan is doing, but every film he makes is bigger in every way it is possible to be. He uses more characters in more settings, and he even uses IMAX cameras. It is a perfectly acceptable storytelling form (one that Hollywood will continue using as blockbusters become their main income), but it should not be the only one. Storytellers should remember the power of the confined setting.

Die Hard. The Shining. Jaws. These are classic blockbusters, and each one includes drastically confined settings. An office building. A hotel. A three-man boat. To expand beyond these settings would spell doom for the narrative impact. In the Die Hard sequels the filmmakers face diminishing quality as the single building was traded in for an airport, a city, and then a state.

Take for example one of the finest directors in history, Alfred Hitchcock. In Rear Window he confines the main character, a photographer, to a wheel chair and points him out his apartment window. Dial M For Murder also takes place within a single apartment, and so does Rope, which Hitchcock filmed with only 11 shots to create the illusion of a single take. Hitchcock’s masterpiece of confined setting is Lifeboat, which he convinced John Steinbeck to write the story for. After a German U-Boat sinks an Allied ship in WWII, survivors in a lifeboat rescue one of the German crew and must decide his fate. These confined settings build tension and drama in the same way as many stage plays. Hitchcock understood conflict is stronger when characters are unable to avoid it.

Most of my examples have been thrillers, but the power of a confined space to drive people crazy can be funny as well as horrifying. It just depends where the writer takes things. Consider The Odd Couple, Arsenic and Old Lace, Oscar, or Noises Off, which are very funny films based on very funny plays. Film has the same opportunities for comedy as the stage, and sometimes more because of the opportunity to do a second take. Non-play adaptations like The Breakfast Club, The Terminal, Clue, and The Ref use the confined spaces of a school, an airport, a mansion, and a suburban home to take conflict to hilarious new levels.

Filmmakers have not forgotten this entirely, and many young filmmakers (working with limited budgets) have taken advantage of this. Kevin Smith began a very successful career with Clerks, which spends most of its time in and around a convenience store. Duncan Jones made Moon, which focuses almost exclusively on Sam Rockwell and Sam Rockwell in a lunar mining facility. Director Rodrigo Cortés and writer Chris Sparling made an impressive debut when they convinced Ryan Reynolds to spend the 95 minute runtime of Buried inside a coffin.

Buried is an interesting example of how limited space can be taken too far. They should have considered the power of 12 Angry Men, where the limited space builds tension as director Sidney Lumet moves the cameras lower and closer to the characters stuck together in the hot jury room. When the claustrophobia reaches unbearable heights the film hits its climax, and then, in the final shot, the audience is treated to the relief of the wide open streets outside the courthouse. This was where the makers of Buried failed to take advantage of their hard-earned claustrophobia; instead of building to an exhilarating release, they bury the audience along with the main character. Part of the power of a limited space comes from contrasting it with its opposite.

Perhaps the best recent example of limited space is Life of Pi. The film’s most powerful sequences involve the isolation of Pi and Richard Parker in the middle of a mirror-smooth ocean. The contrast of the infinite space with the rigid confines of the boat makes us feel Pi’s isolation, and the tiny set allows for an examination of detail that would be missed in a larger location. We come to know the physical world that Pi is confined to in far more detail than we will ever know Pandora from Avatar, no matter how many sequels James Cameron makes. As a result of our detailed understanding, we are more connected to the characters and their struggle.

In terms of film narratives, bigger is not always better. As long as film is limited to the four corners of the frame, no grand worlds can be shown in full. But, if focus is brought down to the level of small things in small places, it is possible to see something in its entirety, which can have powerful results.

Old Dog, New Tricks: The Case of ELEMENTARY

CBS chose to update Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes to the modern world by placing him in New York City with a female Dr. Watson as his guide. This twist on an old standard allowed gender politics and trans-Atlantic culture shock to take Doyle’s original formula in a new direction, and to play with the fish out of water scenario faced by a Victorian detective who is cryogenically frozen until the 1980s; this was The Return of Sherlock Holmes, a CBS TV movie that aired in 1987. Six years later CBS tried again with Sherlock Holmes Returns, which saw the detective awoken from suspended animation by an earthquake in San Francisco. In both cases, the modern world is presented as the real world, where Sherlock Holmes has been made famous by Doyle’s writing. Neither were successful, and modern-set Sherlock Holmes took a backseat to more traditional adaptations, such as Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars (2007) starring Jonathan Pryce. Sherlock Holmes (2009) starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law brought a new angle on the character by turning him into an action hero at the heart of a Hollywood blockbuster, but the Victorian setting remained. It was Sherlock (2010-), a BBC series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, that first brought the characters into the modern world in a way audiences wanted to watch. The success of the BBC inspired CBS to give it one more try. Lucy Liu followed Alec Baldwin’s lead to reinvigorate a waning film career by headlining a television series, and CBS chose Cumberbatch’s Frankenstein co-star Jonny Lee Miller to play their take on the modern detective. Dr. Watson is an American surgeon. Holmes is a recovering addict. Cryogenics and meta-fictional Arthur Conan Doyle are nowhere to be seen. In Elementary, series creator Robert Doherty has taken the bare bone structure that has allowed these characters to endure and injected the dark humor, liberal politics, and five-act plots of other CBS procedurals like CSI. The result is the entertaining illusion of new material, or what the tagline for the premier summarized as, “New Holmes. New Watson. New York.” (IMDb)

An American one-hour drama, like Dexter or CSI: New York, adheres to an act structure, as all mainstream drama does. Stage plays favor two acts. Many Hollywood films contain three acts. Elementary is divided into five. Act one (a few minutes shorter than the rest) establishes both the mostly-serious main plot and the sometimes-comical subplot, and it ends with the title sequence. Act two expands on the details of the main plot, ending with a complication. Act three repeats the structure of act two. Act four deals with the fallout of the complications and ends with either a surprise reveal or another murder. Act five wraps up the main plot via Sherlock’s outside-the-box thinking and Watson’s medical knowledge, and the subplot is resolved with a relationship-building moment between Sherlock and Watson, which sometimes reveals details of Sherlock’s mysterious personal history. In this way the predictable act structure reinforces expectations of character development, and establishes a pattern for the writers to develop the characters over the entire series. When questions about Sherlock or Watson remain at the end of the episode the audience does not feel cheated like they would at the end of a film because they know that the pattern will repeat in the next episode. The predictable act structure is central to the dramatic language writers use to communicate stories to audiences, and Elementary follows that tradition in every way.

A second key to dramatic language is in character archetypes. Sherlock Holmes is a character that the audience can instantly recognize; he is intelligent, witty, highly capable at logical thinking, very good at his profession, and has one debilitating personal flaw. Like an act structure, he is a familiar form that the writers can hang new ideas on. He can be written to be a bitter doctor (House), a rule-driven serial killer (Dexter), an obsessive-compulsive former cop (Monk), an empathetic FBI investigator (Hannibal) or a recovering-addict detective. Part of the Sherlock archetype is the relationship to Dr. Watson. Joan Watson is an upstanding professional, she is an expert in her field, but she is often baffled by the thought processes that drive Sherlock Holmes. She is an accomplished surgeon, which is often key to her part in the solution of a mystery. During the series’ lighter moments these two characters operate as a double act, like George Burns and Gracie Allen or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. In terms of archetype, Watson is the “straight man.” The comedy element of the series is given more or less weight depending on the seriousness of the main plot. In “Possibility Two” Watson is tested by Sherlock by being sent to a shady laundromat, and her lighter story balances the relative seriousness of the main plot. In many ways the comedy of Elementary is based on the absurdity provided by Sherlock’s personality and methods being reflected against Watson’s “normalcy.”

Absurdity, at least in dramatic narratives, can fall into a gray area for believability. Rabid fans of a series or filmmaker sometimes forgive awkward plotting, contradictions, and deus ex machina endings, but venomous critics pounce on the same moments to dismiss the work as amateurish. In the case of a deus ex machina, where a sudden reversal of fortune comes as if by “an act of God”, the audience will feel cheated unless there is a value in ignoring it. Screenwriting lecturer Robert McKee calls the deus ex machina an “insult to the audience… because it is a lie.” (358) But these contrived plots can be made palatable in a few different ways. Jurassic Park, for example, ends with the T-Rex appearing from no where to save the main characters from a velociraptor; had it not come at the end of a very tense action scene with spectacular CGI, the audience would have cared about the absurdity.

Elementary uses the established genius of Sherlock Holmes to hide absurd plotting from the audience. In "The Deductionist," the fifth act confrontation is reached when Sherlock tracks the killer to his hideout by triangulating radio signals he heard in the background of the killer's call to the police. Comparing signal strengths and recognizing a "microbroadcaster" Sherlock is able to deduce the exact location, where he lays in wait for the killer to return. The fact that the killer was scanning radio stations while talking to the police is explainable and ironic; he was trying to cover up background noise that would betray his location. The fact he was near to a "microbroadcaster" was convenient, but not unreasonable in New York City, which has 112 registered broadcasters (radio-locator). However, the fact that Sherlock was able to recognize and triangulate the stations is only an acceptable solution because Sherlock Holmes is an established genius. In “The Red Team” Sherlock allows himself to be taken hostage by a military advisor who is planning to murder his former colleagues who know the details of a dangerous plan. In the climax Sherlock confesses that he has already written down the details of the plan, which makes any attempt to cover it up through murder pointless. It turns out that he was bluffing, and only through his super-human intellect did he manage to figure out the plan himself while being held captive. The absurdity in this episode is that Sherlock is able to calculate in a few minutes the top secret military strategy that took several experts months to invent.

With the plot structure of CSI and the archetype characters of Arthur Conan Doyle, Elementary is a revitalized, “new” take on old material, and it is part of a current trend in television. Bates Motel takes the narrative established in Robert Bloch’s Psycho, made famous by Alfred Hitchcock’s film, and sets the originating events in motion in the modern world. Hannibal takes the novels of Thomas Harris and elaborates on the previously unwritten story of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter’s relationship before Red Dragon. House of Cards is an American adaptation of a British political series. Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome is a prequel series to the remake of Battlestar Galactica. All of these new shows have recycled some or all of the characters, structures, and plots of previous work. This is not surprising, but it is indicative of a larger issue facing the film and television industries.

When television made multiple channels of visual media available to an audience in their living room, the film industry was forced to respond by creating theatrical experiences that television could not match. The technicolor boom of musicals followed by the breakdown of the Hayes Code regulations meant that movie theaters could offer content that was both visually more impressive and thematically more adult. (Cousins 223) New media based on internet streaming has further expanded television’s reach to the audience, and the film industry has responded with expanding on digital technologies like motion capture and pushing for more content in 3D.

Alongside the film industry’s reaction to television stealing its audience, the television industry is faced with a pressure to meet the needs of its larger audience. Living room access demanded constant new content, and the existence of different channels multiplied the demand. Now that internet streaming has made on-demand television content available on every smartphone and tablet, the content requirement has increased. Filling the demand depends on the industry’s creative side, which comes up against the reality that creating a piece of original programming, marketing an unknown actor, and keeping the audience’s attention are difficult obstacles. Removing one or more obstruction by recycling “old” concepts, casting established actors, and falling back on reliable plot devices increases a series’ chance of success. Elementary has succeeded because it does all three.

Few established dynamics are as familiar as Holmes and Watson. Arthur Conan Doyle first introduced Sherlock Holmes in 1888, and he has been adapted and rewritten ever since. (Milos-Plunket) Lucy Liu has 78 titles on her IMDb page going back as far as 1991, and was paid $5.5 million for her role in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. She was an established film star when she took the role of Joan Watson, and she follows other established actors like Ashley Judd (The Missing), William H. Macy (Shameless), Glenn Close (Damages), Jeremy Irons (The Borgias), and Dustin Hoffman (Luck) in moving to television. And the plots of Elementary, although tailored to fit the characters, are standard television mysteries that could have appeared in any of the other series fitting the amateur detective-duo mould.

The idea to take old concepts and give them “new” twists is as old as storytelling; the ancient Greeks retold the same stories in different ways; Shakespeare based several plays on past works; even Alfred Hitchcock remade his 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much with Jimmy Stewart in 1956. (IMDb) The BBC reinvented Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson for the modern world in 2010, and CBS has followed their lead, which has resulted in one of the most popular new shows of the 2012 Fall season (Huff Post). In “Snow Angels,” Doyle’s Miss Hudson is re-introduced as a transgendered woman; this is only the most recent example of how the series is combining current trends, such as including LGBT characters, with established forms. Until the television industry is so flush with talent and original content that the audiences don’t have enough hours in the day to take it in, there will be a pattern of rewriting old forms, attaching new performers to the surface, and reciting old plots. And the television industry will never be that flush with talent. The upside, from a critical point of view, is that even working within these “old” forms, creativity can present the entertaining illusion of something “new.”

Works Cited

Cousins, Mark. The Story of Film. London: Pavillion Books, 2006. Print.

Huff Post. Elementary’ Renewed For Season 2 Along With 13 Other CBS Series. Huffington Post. 28 March 2013. Web. 10 April 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/elementary-renewed-season-2-cbs_n_2965937.html>

IMDb. Lucy Liu (I). Internet Movie Database. April 2013. Web. 10 April 2013. <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005154/bio>

IMDb. Sherlock Holmes (Character). Internet Movie Database. 2013. Web. 10 April 2013. <http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0026631/>

Jurassic Park. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough. Universal, 1993. DVD.

McKee, Robert. Story. New York: Harper-Collins, 1997. Print.

Milos-Plunket, Andrea. The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate. Andrea Milos-Plunket. 2000. Web. 10 April 2013. <www.sherlockholmesonline.org>

“Possibility Two.” Elementary. Dir. Seith Mann. Perf. Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu. CBS. Global, Vancouver, 21 Feb. 2013. Television.

Radio-Locator. Radio Stations in New York, New York. Theodric Technologies LLC. 2013. Web. 10 April 2013. <http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/locate?select=city&city=New%20York&state=NY>

“Snow Angels.” Elementary. Dir. Andrew Bernstein. Perf. Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu. CBS. Global, Vancouver, 4 April 2013. Television.

“The Deductionist.” Elementary. Dir. John Polson. Perf. Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu. CBS. Global, Vancouver, 3 Feb. 2013. Television.

“The Red Team.” Elementary. Dir. Christine Moore. Perf. Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu. CBS. Global, Vancouver, 31 Jan. 2013. Television.