Roy Batty, You're My Hero
I was watching the making-of Blade Runner documentary Dangerous Days over the weekend (again) and an odd idea hit me: Batty is the protagonist of Blade Runner. He’s the hero. Deckard is actually the antagonist. And that realization only makes me love the movie more.
Let me ‘splain.
Classic story structure demands the protagonist is the person that moves the plot forward through their actions, is the person audiences are the most sympathetic to, and who takes final action in the climax to end the story conclusively. Batty fits all three bills in a way Deckard does not.
Batty is on a quest. He’s a slave looking to find his origins, to live longer — and enjoy the same freedom others have. He takes care of and cares for his fellow freedom-seeking slaves in a very paternal way. Yes, he kills, but in the context of his quest, the killing is justified. His actions dictate the ebb and flow of the story — he is proactive. And in the end, it’s his decision to simply let go and die, at peace with his life — and letting Deckard live.
Deckard, on the other hand, is a wash-out who shoots women in the back. His actions are re-active. And in the end, he impotently sits by while Batty dies.
Making the “bad guy” the protagonist and the “star” the antagonist probably, more than anything, explains why Blade Runner was a flop when it was first released. And, I think, it was perhaps the final giant nail in the coffin of the 1970s anti-establishment film movement, moving us inexorably towards the cookie-cutter Hero’s journey formula movies that have dominated since.
Jonah Hex – or, A Coffin Full of Suck
Ah, Jonah Hex. The movie. Also known as the Crow Goes to the Wild Wild West. Seriously. That’s the plot. Of all the movies to model on, they chose those two?
Yeah, it was bad. Uwe Boll bad? No. But not good.
And this was one of the ones I was sorta looking forward to. I mean, horse with gatling gun, right? Sure that was cool, but it was used once in the beginning of the movie, and then Jonah traded down for some weird dynamite crossbow things. Jonah wasn’t the only one making bad decisions like that in the movie. In front of or behind the camera. I won’t catalog the stupidity — I don’t have all day. I will mention one, though, since it’s a doozy, in terms of setting up motivations. Jonah Hex’s backstory, as presented in the movie, has him killing a superior officer who wanted to burn down a hospital. This the trigger for the rest of the movie, setting everything in motion. But do we see that confrontation on screen? Nope. We are told about it several times. It might have been quite the dramatic scene, but all we get are words, most of them mumbled by Hex. It’s not like they didn’t have time to show it — the movie’s less than 90 minutes long, credits included. It was just lazy story-telling.
The whole thing was that lazy.
But on the bright side, there were plenty of explosions. And a cool (if completely implausible and apparently magic) super-gatling canon. And, at least at the theater we saw it, the Tron Legacy trailer, which dripped with awesome.
Godzilla is My Copilot
Ever since I dove in to writing Sharkasaurus vs. Robo-Twister (SvRT), I’ve been getting re-obsessed with all things giant monster. Been watching Godzilla movies on the Netflix stream, and my writing music of choice the past couple days has been the Godzilla vs Megaguirus soundtrack I picked up over the weekend at Half-Price books for $4. SvRT may have started out as a parody of those bad SyFy mega-monster of the week movies, but the more I plot it out and write, the more it’s shaping up to be like a classic Daikaiju piece. (Which, when you look at it, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus was too, frankly.) Which, in my mind, is all the better.
Sharkasaurus Versus Robo-Twister Opening Scene
[scrippet]
EXT. TRAILER PARK – DAY
Lightning-filled storm clouds ominously roll in from the horizon, throwing the run-down trailers into shadow.
At the edge of the trailer park, the door of BOBBY-JACK-JOE’S TRAILER flies open, and out storms a very pissed-off BRITNEY — 19, blonde, buxom, wearing a wifebeater and cutoffs. She heads for a rusty pickup parked nearby, a twelve-pack of IC Light cradled under her arm.
BRITNEY
And I’m taking my beer with me, you perv!
BOBBY-JACK-JOE
Aww, what’s the big fuckin’ deal, Britney? You said you was up for a menage a trois.
BOBBY-JACK-JOE — 20, lean and greasy — stands in the trailer doorway, pulling his jeans on. Britney puts the beers in the pickup’s bed and rummages in her purse for keys.
BRITNEY
If you meant a three-way, Bobby-Jack-Joe, why didn’t you just say three-way? Why you have to go and use them foreign words nobody understands? Just trying to trick me — I thought you meant that Eye-talian cake that takes like coffee!
The wind starts to pick up.
BOBBY-JACK-JOE
What, you mean tiramisu?
Brittany stops rummaging and turns towards Bobby-Jack-Joe.
BRITNEY
There you go again putting on airs! Who you think you are, Regis Philbin?
BOBBY-JACK-JOE
Aww, honey-bunny… come on. It’s my birthday, the kids are at my Ma’s, and cousin Miley’s only in town ‘till the weekend.
MILEY — 19, brunette, wearing a bright pink peek-a-boo nighty — steps up behind Bobby-Jack-Joe.
MILEY
That’s our busy time at the cat house. — Let her go, cousin. She’s just scarred to be compared to a professional.
The wind’s really picked up now.
BRITNEY
Scarred?
She pulls off her wife-beater. Did I mention she’s not wearing a bra?
BRITNEY (CONT’D)
I’ll show you scarred. No whore can do my man better than me.
Bobby-Jack-Joe slaps his hands together in anticipation.
BOBBY-JACK-JOE
Well, hot damn –
Bobby-Joe-Jack cuts himself off as he sees something really, really frightening behind Britney. Miley sees it too, and screams.
Confused, Britney looks down at her own chest.
BRITNEY
What? The stitches open up again?
Britney looks up just as Miley is pulling Bobby-Joe-Jack into the trailer, Bobby-Joe-Jack scrambling to shut the door behind him.
Britney hears a roar and turns to see the pickup lifted effortlessly into the air by a massive, spinning CYCLONE.
She just has time to scream before she’s lifted up herself, and she keeps on screaming as she’s spun round and round, arms and boobs flailing, with the truck as the cyclone plows into the trailer, ripping it to shreds, and then continues on through the trailer park, turning everything in its path into matchsticks.
[/scrippet]
Chasing My Own Cut-Off Tail
So, after six months of running in circles trying to write a novel (five novels, to be exact) I’ve decided I need a break from the pursuit and the anxiety. Gonna write a another script.
Sharkasaurus Versus Robo-Twister.
Yeah, I know… I’d given up scriptwriting because nobody’s even looking at the stuff I already have out there, and even if something gets bought, the chances of a film being made that resembles what I wrote are remote. But, the novel writing has been me throwing myself at a brick wall, and I’m starting to bruise. Time to step back and just get something on paper — for some reason, screenwriting just doesn’t have the same anxiety for me as novel writing. Probably because I don’t see it as “real” writing — don’t get me wrong, I take it seriously, and its a valid artform… it’s just that my entire life has been aimed at writing novels and there’s all this mental investment in the pursuit. It’s all in the head.
I’ll throw myself back into tilting at the novel windmill after the script’s done, which, if anxiety doesn’t hit it too, should be a month.
I’ll post a scene every now and again for you guys to laugh at. Intentionally, I hope.
100 or Out
I’ve always had this magick number in my head for Arkham Polytech: 100 unique returning viewers a new strip day, for at least two consecutive weeks (without the aid/crutch of a Reddit link). If I can hit that magick number by the end of the year, I’ll consider Arkham Polytech a personal success (if not a particularly popular one) and continue doing it another year (with a new goal of 1000 uniques a day). If I can’t hit that number, then Arkham Polytech gets a final saying-goodbye strip the last week of 2010 and I move on to something else.
Why am I bringing this up now, when it’s only June? Because it’s half-way through the year — half-way through the first year of the strip — and traffic’s been growing nicely since the start (thanks mostly to a whole bunch of nice people on twitter spreading the word daily). In fact, I’ve been averaging about 40 unique returning viewers for the last two weeks. Which in my mind says a 100 isn’t an unrealistic goal. So, kinda happy about that.
So to those 40 or so regular readers, thanks! Now, go tell your friends.
-
INFODUMP
- WRITING:
- - Arkham Polytech
- - RotW: TtAM!
- WATCHING:
- - The Good Guys
- - Archer
- - ATHF
- - Burn Notice
- - Psyche
- READING:
- - Crap Star Wars Novels
-
Recent Posts
-
Archives
-
Links
|
|
