I don’t always get out to see movies these days and I’ve missed some this summer that I wanted to see. My Mary and I had a chance to sneak in a film this week and we chose to catch How To Train Your Dragon 2 before it disappeared from the movie theaters. We had seen the first one and I had been impressed: good story, good animation, and a sense of things having consequences.
I liked the sequel even more.
I should note that sequels can be notoriously difficult to pull off well. You’ve already told your story. What else do you have and, if it’s any good, why didn’t you tell it first? Mind you, there are notable exceptions to the rule. Godfather II is not only better than the first film, it’s often described as one of the best films of all time. The Empire Strikes Back is also a better film than its predecessor and, for many Star Wars fans, the best of the bunch. The Dark Knight was, for me, the best Batman film thus far.
However, you have others that just don’t live up to the original. Iron 2 was rather sucky, for example. Superman 2 was not as good as its predecessor. Babe is a favorite film in our house; Babe 2… rarely watch it. Once upon a time Warner Bros considered making a sequel to Casablanca. Fortunately, they never got around to it.
The problem with a lot of sequels is that they exist, not because the creators have a new vision but because the studio, seeing how much money the first one made, wants another bite of that apple. Sometimes, all you get is a refried version of the first movie.
So – what makes How To Train Your Dragon 2 even better than the original? (Mandatory spoiler warning now issued. If you haven’t seen it yet – and you should – you may want to avoid the rest of the column. I’ll be as circumspect as I can.)
Lately, I’ve become a freak. That is to say, a fan of the Freakanomics Podcast. Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt like to take a topic and ask the questions no one is asking. They also like to start from the opposing side of the common problem in order to find potential solutions. As such, I figured I would let their methodology bleed into my brainpan. I want to tackle a question I’ve had lately and approach it from a different perspective than I’m used to. The problem is simple: With all the more lucrative business ventures that exist for the largest publishers of marketing licenses (that’s DC and Marvel, kiddos), why produce comic books?
Because I’m not an economist and I don’t have the will power to sift through sales data, I’m going to opt to go out on a limb instead. I believe that it’s safe to say that the revenue that comes in for a blockbuster comic book movie – and all the associated merchandising and licensing revenue associated directly to said movie – outweighs the revenue generated from the parent comic book in levels of magnitude that’d astound even Lex Luthor. That in turn would make the common man scoff. Why would Marvel and DC, peddlers of the most recognizably licensable properties, waste any money chasing the paltry profits that stem from their publishing arms, and not just opt to make movies and television? It’s time to freak out.
If I were Mr. Dubner, I’d likely start with the history first. Obviously DC and Marvel have dabbled in non-comic book ventures nearly as long as they have been printing funny books. Look to the Superman serials, radio shows, TV series, et al. And Marvel, too, had their run of crappy movies, TV shows, and odd proto-motion-comic ventures to boot. In their time, perhaps these alternative media led new eyes to the products. More likely though, those models in the past never doled out the bankroll like todays modern day media. At the heart of all those aforementioned side projects though, one would argue that the real crux of content being produced was driven by the rags on the racks. And therein lies the answer to the original question.
Beyond the likely-break-even nature of comic book publishing, the actual process of producing the product establishes worth beyond simple dollars and cents. Because a great comic book story may give birth to an amazing storyline, a new character, or an inventive design. Where might Jon Favreau’s Iron Man franchise be if not for Adi Granov’s ubiquitous model? Would the pockets of the Warner Bros be as full without the library of reproducible stock art for any number of merchandising ventures? Would the House of Mouse’s motion picture business be as entrenched in the zeitgeist today if not for the decades of source material being produced on a weekly basis? And if we’re thinking to a brighter future… How much credit is owed to ComicMix’s John Ostrander if Amanda Waller ends up becoming the Phil Coulson of the new DC movie franchises? Suffice to say on all counts… the sunk costs of producing sequential fiction is a pithy particle when compared to the opportunity cost you’ll gain for making it.
Even if a comic doesn’t sell well – or even is a loss – the final product exists for eternity thereafter. If I as a fan pick up that long forgotten issue of Slingers and pitch it to Marvel in a new and fantastic light, and my relaunch of the title captures the attention of the niche masses of comic book fans, then the thru-line exists that the new book may lead to a new licensable property – like a new character on a cartoon, a subplot to be used in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., or its own Netflix spin-off. The simple math says the loss having to pay for even six issues worth of ink-and-paper (including the per-page costs of the creative team, the salaried cost of editors/administrators, as well as the actual material and distribution costs) may eventually balance out through the usage of the intellectual property that then sits in the archives of the parent publisher. A bad batch of Coke II will never mint Coca-Cola a fortune. And in a few weeks, D-List book will likely net Marvel hundreds of millions of dollars in repeating revenue.
When you think of it that way: why would you ever notproduce a comic book?
I suppose Marvel decided to call its evil super-corporation Roxxon, because the name sounded like real-life super-corporation Exxon, but not so close that it would get them sued, and because, back in 1974, the Comics Code wouldn’t have let Marvel call it Roxxoff. And now, having gone for the cheap laugh, let’s move on to a discussion of Roxxon and Thor: God of Thunder# 19.
Roxxon’s history is as checkered as a table cloth in an Italian restaurant. And twice as dirty. It’s reputed that back in the day, when it was called Republic Oil, Roxxon had Tony Stark’s parents killed. Its scientific R & D subsidiary, The Brand Corporation, routinely creates super villains to fight for Roxxon’s interests through such socially uplifting tactics as industrial sabotage. It covered up the disaster when a technology it was developing to beam solar power by microwave transmission went out of control and killed all 200 people in Allantown, Iowa. It tried to find alternative energy sources by kidnaping and studying super heroes. It hired the super villain Flag-Smasher to engage in a murder plot at the United Nations. And that’s just what I learned from Wikipedia. Imagine what I could have found out if I’d had the time to read all of Roxxon’s prior appearances in the comic books.
Kronas was a front organization for the Red Skull, when he was inhabiting the body of former KBG general Aleksander Lukin. Its goal was destroying the democratic capitalist system in general and the United States in particular. And it had ties to terrorist organizations that were being investigated by the United States government. I can’t imagine that era in Roxxon’s history did much for its public perception.
But now, as we learned in Thor: God of Thunder # 19, Roxxon was the “all-new” Roxxon Energy Corporation. It was, once again, its own master and not under the control of the Kronas Corporation. According to its new CEO, Dario Agger, Roxxon was trying to establish itself as a new and benevolent super-corporation. After all, “Roxxon is the world’s wealthiest and most powerful super-corporation. If we don’t know what’s best for the people of this planet, then … who does?” I haven’t heard such uplifting words of public conscience since General Bullmoose.
Roxxon’s first step in its program to prove its benevolence to the world was to supply the planet with much needed drinking water by mining icebergs on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, and exporting them back to Earth. Water mined on a moon of Jupiter and shipped back to Earth for human consumption? Assuming the government didn’t immediately quarantine the aqua Eurpoa until it could verify that it didn’t contain lethal alien toxins – assuming Roxxon could actually sell it to the world – well what was that going to cost? That stuff would make Kona Nigari Water look like plain old Evian by comparison.
Now we long-time Marvel readers have learned not to trust Roxxon or its previous CEOs. So it’s understandable that we’re skeptical of Mr. Agger and whatever his agenda for Roxxon truly is. Especially when you consider Agger’s nickname in business school was “The Minotaur” and the cover to the comic shows an actual Minotaur on it. I took English, I studied foreshadowing and that can’t be good.
Moreover, we’re not alone in not trusting Mr. Agger. Neither does Rosalind Solomon, an environmental field agent for S.H.I.E.L.D. Difference being, while we suspect Agger and Roxxon are up to no good – mostly because we haven’t had a chance to read Thor: God of Thunder# 20 yet – Ms. Solomon is quite vocal about her suspicions. “If Roxxon gets caught breaking the law, they simply pay to have the laws changed.”
You know, Roz, Roxxon may be good at being bad, but it’s not that good.
There are many things Roxxon could do with its lots of money to avoid being convicted of the crimes it commits. It could bribe juries to find them not guilty. It could bribe prosecutors or members of the Justice Department not to bring charges. It could bribe judges to rule key evidence was not admissible. It could even become such a super-duper super-corporation that the Justice Department would deem it “Too big to jail.” The one thing it couldn’t do, and hope for any degree of success, would be to bribe lawmakers to change the laws, after they’ve already broken them. Because it doesn’t matter what happens to the laws after you break them.
If you do something that, at the time you did it, was illegal, you broke the law. It doesn’t matter that the law gets changed after you broke it. If it was against the law, you can be prosecuted. If the law got changed after you broke it and what you did is no longer a crime now, you still broke the law. And you can still be prosecuted.
People in Colorado who were convicted of possessing marijuana in October of 2012, didn’t suddenly become non-criminals in November of 2012, when the state voted to decriminalize possession of marijuana. Oh sure, Colorado’s governor might pardon the people who were convicted before the law changed. After all, if Colorado doesn’t deem that behavior to be criminal any longer, pardoning prior offenders would be both a good-will gesture and a way of easing prison overcrowding. But absent something like that, the people convicted before November, 2012 would still be convicted criminals.
In the same way, if Roxxon gets caught breaking some law and pays to have said law changed after it got caught breaking that law, it still broke that law. It can still be prosecuted.
In stating that Roxxon gets away with things, because it pays to have the laws changed after it gets caught breaking those laws, Agent Solomon was showing the same sort of legal acumen demonstrated by the biblical king with whom she shares a name. You know, the guy whose greatest legal triumph was ruling that a baby claimed by two different women should be cut in two because, he assumed, only the false claimant would consent and say, “Yes, I’ll take half a dead baby, please.”
It’s that time of year again. All the cool kids are getting ready to go to the San Diego Comic-Con. And by “cool kids,” I mean people who are younger, stronger and more patient than me.
Every year, I kvetch about Comic-Con. And every year, I kind of want to go. I mean, not go to the Comic-Con that will actually take place. I want to go to the Comic-Con of 1993, when I was an important part of a major publishing company and everyone kissed my ass and I could get a table at the restaurant of my choice at the time of my choosing.
I would also like a unicorn, but that’s another column.
Anyway, this year, what I mostly regret is the opportunity to meet my future husband, Chris Hardwick, who is podcasting his program from San Diego all week. Not only would I enjoy meeting him, but I’d like to see the look on his face when he realizes we are fated to be. Either delight or horror, it would still be a treat.
Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to a subject that has concerned this column all year: The changes women make to pop culture, and the way pop culture is adapting to women.
You may recall my previous columns on the subject (here, for example), that women at comic conventions have a problem with sexual harassment. By which I mean, men and boys harassing them. It’s a big enough story that even non-comics news sites cover it.
Many people want SDCC to prominently post its policy on sexual harassment on signage around the convention, so that offenders cannot claim they didn’t know they were doing something wrong. Others would like to make the policy more specific. Here’s what it currently says, according to the website:
“Attendees must respect common sense rules for public behavior, personal interaction, common courtesy, and respect for private property. Harassing or offensive behavior will not be tolerated. Comic-Con reserves the right to revoke, without refund, the membership and badge of any attendee not in compliance with this policy. Persons finding themselves in a situation where they feel their safety is at risk or who become aware of an attendee not in compliance with this policy should immediately locate a member of security, or a staff member, so that the matter can be handled in an expeditious manner.“
For more about the various arguments, here, in a nutshell is the debate.
Now, I love David Glanzer with all my heart and soul, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is completely devoted to making Comic-Con a fun and educational event for all who attend. I understand that he wants to make everyone who comes to the show comfortable, and this includes families with young children, who might be spooked if they see signs warning about sexual harassment. He might also think it puts ideas in the heads of kids who want to show how great they are at this rebel stuff.
Still, I respectfully disagree. I think it’s entirely appropriate to say that, because of incidents at other shows, SDCC wants to assure everyone that they are committed to a safe and friendly show. And I’d make a big deal about meeting with law enforcement before the show starts, so that if crimes are committed on-site, there is a system in place to get rid of the criminals who assault women and others. For all I know, they do this already. Still, I’d make sure everybody knew.
And, as I’ve said before, I’d have more women as special guests and expert panelists. It’s not easy to stop people in comics from seeing women (real and fictional) as simply sex objects. One step to fix that would be to feature them as talented professionals.
Which brings me to the next huge show on the horizon, New York Comic-Con. It’s still a long way off in convention time, but they’ve started to announce guests, which gives us a hint as to what the programming will be. So far, they have announced a dozen guests in the comics category, and two of them are women. That’s better than last year, when only ten percent of the guests were women, but not by much. I should note that there is also one literary guest announced, and that is Kim Harrison, who is female.
Not enough, but a step in the right direction.
So, if you’re going to San Diego, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. Wait, wrong city. Be sure to have a great time. Bring me back stories.
We bet you didn’t know that the Tweeks are not only native San Diegans, but hard-core Comic Con vets having been attending since they were babies. In this week’s video they bring you their kid’s guide to the con featuring where to go, what to eat, which panels to see, and where to visit if you weren’t able to snag a pass for all 4 days.
Our pal and faithful columnist Dennis O’Neil is taking some well-deserved time off. We really don’t think he’s fishing out by the pond; Denny’s a vegetarian and fish doesn’t grow on trees. Well, not yet.
This aside, Denny will be back in short order. Until then, track down this comic book (pictured to your left) and enjoy.
As comics and popular culture fans we’ve got a hell of a year ahead of us, and this time it’s in front of our friendly neighborhood teevee sets.
As you know, Arrow and Agents of SHIELD were picked up for their third and second seasons, respectively. DC has no less than three new shows on three different networks: The Flash on the CW, Constantine on NBC, and Gotham on Fox.
The pilots to Flash and Constantine have appeared courtesy of the usual suspects – except this time, I strongly believe The Flash pilot was leaked by Warners or the CW (note: the last time I paid attention, Warner Bros owned only about 45% of the CW) and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the same was true about Constantine… which, by the way, was leaked right after we all had our chance to go nuts over The Flash. Hmmmm.
Both pilots were worthy of attention. The Flash was better than I suspected; the supporting cast is excellent and I’m very happy to see John Wesley Shipp playing Barry Allen’s dad. Whereas the Constantine pilot features a female lead who will not be the female lead of the actual ongoing series (and that’s too bad), I’ll give them serious points for showing us Doctor Fate’s helmet. A policeman named Jim Corrigan, a.k.a. The Spectre, should show up sometime around Thanksgiving.
The pilot I’d most like to see is Gotham. Everything I’ve heard, read and been told has my Bat-sense tingling, and the few people I know who have seen it are quite positive about the series: each one said he or she thought it was superior to the other two pilots.
The new Daredevil mini-series is already being shot out here in New York; location shooting includes the real Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. The subsequent four Marvel Studios mini-series in The Defenders quintet (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist preceding The Defenders team-up) will follow.
But here’s the bird’s eye lowdown on the next television season (and, yes, I’m taking the broader view of “season” as that term is no longer relevant in its original form). We will have Gotham, Arrow, The Flash, Constantine, and Agents of SHIELD plus an Agent Carter mini-series presumably in the middle of SHIELD’s season, all on broadcast television. And we’ll have The Defenders quintet on Netflix.
That’s 11 shows. Being a fan of Community and Doctor Who, I have no problem with 12 episode seasons. Looking at cable originals, I think writing a dozen episodes per season results in better television.
Getting back to my admittedly vague point, I can’t name 11 comic book-based ongoing prime time television series prior to Arrow. Superman (several versions), Smallville, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, The Hulk, The Flash, Birds of Prey… I’m sure I’m missing one or two, but I said I couldn’t name 11, and I can’t.
Of course we’ve got all these cool Marvel Studios movies, and Warner Bros is at least trying to follow their lead with their Justice League movie run-up. I despair only for Fantastic Four mach 2 and any future iteration of Spider-Man mach2.
I’ve liked what I’ve seen thus far. To be honest, I’ve liked these shows more than I’ve enjoyed their published DC and Marvel counterparts in recent months. For the first time in the 100-year history of superheroes on film and digital, it’s the comic books that now have to catch up.
Or, more coherently: on Sunday, my Twitterfeed suddenly started filling up with references to what, in honor of Holmes and Watson, we’ll call “The DashCon Disaster Mystery.” The first mention I encountered was from the Baker Street Babes, an all-female Sherlockian fan group well known and respected in Sherlock Holmes fandom. After reading about their experience participating as guests at the con, I started looking around to try to determine what the hell had led to what has emerged as a huge debacle from a con-planning perspective. And the more I read, the more I couldn’t believe what I was reading. In disaster terms, this con was like a plummeting airplane that exploded into a nuclear mushroom cloud of flames and failure. But to back up a little – you might be wondering what DashCon even is, and that’s fair, as, despite having co-founded a successful fan convention, helped to run several, and attended and reported on many, I’d never heard of it before it imploded.
So: to the Google! The internet is amazing, and sometimes I don’t mean that in a good way. A quick Google search for “DashCon” today pulled up “about 678,000 results in 0.22 seconds,” and I’m sure that number is growing. Even if your mom won’t ever know or care about what happened at DashCon, the internet, I assure you, does, and what’s more, itwill never forget. Witness the fact that DashCon has already made it to Know Your Meme,, with one of my favorite bits of the whole disaster, the “ball pit,” as its highlight. (Apparently, when things started going wrong at the con, the organizers began offering “an extra hour in the ball pit,” a small children’s pool filled with colored balls in an otherwise fairly empty industrial-looking room, as an appeasement. Really the only thing I have to say to that is: LOL.)
Anyway. There has been a lot of good coverage already regarding what DashCon was supposed to be, but in brief: the plan was to host a gathering of Tumblr users (not sponsored or officially affiliated with Tumblr), focusing primarily on the sorts of users who post repeatedly about various Tumblr-popular fandoms, including Sherlock, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Supernatural, Teen Wolf, etc.The con planned to have panels on these fandom subjects, and also aimed to address mental health issues posted about frequently on Tumblr, e.g. depression and anxiety. It also appears to have planned a number of panels focusing on gender roles, shipping (favored pairings of fictional characters), BDSM, and other romance or sexuality and sexual identity-related topics.
Planning for DashCon started in 2013 as planning for “Tumbl-con USA” (though Tumblr later made them change the name), with an IndieGoGo campaign to raise $5,000. The campaign raised over $4,000, although reportedly perks for pledging have still not been sent out. Moving right along, what appears to be a fairly large and decentralized group of con-runners started planning in a grass-roots fashion that was hilariously disorganized, according to the following accounts from someone who was actually involved in planning, outlined here and here. There appears to have been no strong leadership or guidance, and committees sound like they were formed haphazardly and given contradictory directions at various times. I can’t disagree with the poster’s evaluation that it was “a clusterfuck.” There really is no other word for what she recounts. Also, apparently a number of the people attempting to run this con were teenagers, and it appears that a fair number of the ones who weren’t were college-age.
Eventually the effort coalesced a bit more and there were two “co-owners,” at least one of whom is going to school to learn how to run conventions. Things moved along and the co-owners advertised the con with predictions of 3-7,000 attendees. Pretty ambitious for a new con right off the ground that wasn’t offering any major media stars, but hey – there are a lot of passionate people on Tumblr. You never know, right? Tickets were available for a slightly steep $65, or $80 at the door, with additional ticket purchases needing to be made for some popular panels. (New York Comic Con, with an attendance of 133,000 in 2013, sold its four-day pass this year at $95, and Awesome Con D.C., which had over 30,000 in attendance this year, is offering its 3-day pass for 2015 at $75, to give you some perspective. Both cons host numerous big-name comics, media, and genre fiction guests).
And lo, this past weekend, the time of the con arrived. Immediately things began to go wrong. There were complaints about the hotel and the con (like no WIFI, a really lame game room with literally one console, and under-eighteens being let into the over-eighteen panels). There was much lower attendance than predicted (1,000- 1,500 attendees in actual attendance). And then <a href=”
this happened. Although the post referenced in the video is now deleted, there was originally a post that went up on DashCon’s site, asking attendees, who had already paid to attend, to raise another $17,000-20,000 immediately or the hotel would not allow the con to continue (the number appears to have been originally $17K, and then they raised it to $20K after getting $17K). This was followed with an in-person plea to all attendees, as shown in the video. The DashCon site post stated that, “We suspect the demand for more money is due to the fact that upper management doesn’t like the people at the con.” No, seriously. Also, apparently DashCon thought it was a good idea to ask successful or famous genre creators for help, via Twitter. And then the con-runners and attendees actually managed to raise the money right there, encouraging donations and celebrating with a Hunger Games three-finger salute and various fandom-related victory songs, followed by “We Are the Champions.” The play-by-play of this part of the whole debacle is pretty hilarious, while also being pretty saaaaad.
Of course, despite money being secured, legitimate guests who had been invited to the con with promises of costs being covered and/or compensation became very uncomfortable with the whole shebang (as referenced in the Baker Street Babes post above), and ultimately the folks who were probably the biggest draw of the con, Welcome to Night Vale, had to withdraw from their planned appearances due to non-payment of the funds promised. They weren’t the only ones who got stiffed – the BSB did as well despite having fulfilled their promised obligations, and as of now have still not been reimbursed despite being told they would be; as did Noelle Stevenson, author of webcomic Nimona. And that’s where things stand now, except that the convention’s official explanation for the impromptu fundraising insanity is here and sounds completely insane.
Listen: here’s the thing about founding a convention and convention-running: it’s freakin’ hard. It can also be fun, and depending on what kind of con you’re running, even profitable; but it’s not like baking a box-mix cake.
When done right, it’s more like researching all the other cakes that have been made or are being made by observing how they came out of the oven, tasting them, and trying to talk to a variety of sometimes really helpful but sometimes eccentric or secretive or exclusionary or proprietary bakers about the ingredients they used on the icings and layers of their cakes and how much the ingredients cost and where they came from, and how long and at what temperature the cakes were baked and all those other little details of making a cake from scratch. And at the same time trying to obtain or even create your own ingredients on a strict budget and through a series of negotiations with ingredient suppliers, and find a small fleet of master bakers to help oversee the various layers and icings and decorations (and inevitably ending up with more bakers-in-training, like yourself, than experienced chefs, which of course means more oversight and direction is necessary). And at the same time trying to start making the actual cake because the prep work for a really good cake can sure take awhile. And then eventually mixing the ingredients together in different bowls simultaneously, paying attention to every part of the process at once, and carefully layering them together. And then when it’s finally time to bake the cake, keeping a closer eye on every angle of the cake to ensure it doesn’t burn or even go up in flames. And then decorating the cake and presenting it artistically to the hungry customers. And then, after all the cake has been eaten, cleaning up all the dishes and washing of the countertops and ensuring every dish is in its proper place before turning off the light.
That’s what founding and running a convention is like. It takes a lot of research, and a lot of preparation, and a lot of dedication, hard work, and coordination. And I’ve been a part of all that, in both good times and not-so-good. So I get it, you guys. I really, really do.
So when I say, “DashCon -seriously, what the hell??” I’m not jumping on the bandwagon of mockery (amusing though it may be) or being malicious. I am genuinely asking: how could this con have possibly screwed up so epically? It doesn’t seem possible for it to have happened without gross mismanagement. I mean, yes, some of the issues, like a disappointing game room or under-attendance compared to what was expected, are not completely disastrous and could possibly happen despite good effort being put in to planning. But as someone who has helped to found and run cons and has negotiated hotel contracts, I can tell you at least this much: a hotel or convention center that has a contract with a con suddenly asking for $17-20,000 that the con didn’t expect to have to pay at that time is complete bull. Either the conditions of payment were in the contract and the con-runners didn’t read or understand those conditions when they signed, which is appalling negligence on their part; or there is something dishonest going on. And given this post, well, at the very least the con-runners claimed to have a handle on their agreement and contract with the hotel as of eleven months ago.
Whatever actually happened, I hope that at the very least, the guests who attended the con and the people who gave money on Friday night in what really amounts to extortion (give us your money or we take away your con) are reimbursed as much as possible; and that everyone who was involved in planning this or who is considering organizing a con takes away a valuable lesson in how not to do things. Because DashCon promising a fun con when they must have realized at some point beforehand that they could not deliver and then serving up a mediocre weekend funded by last-minute extortion is like a baker promising a hungry room full of diners forty cakes while knowing that Lex Luthor stole them all when no one was looking. And that’s terrible.
But so as not to end on such a grim note, I shall leave you with the best thing to come out of <a href=”
English: Andy Serkis at the Comic-Con 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes could have easily fallen in to the trap that many genre movies fall into of simply being competent. They scarcely have particularly original or surprising stories (and Dawn is no exception on this front) but they usually get by through skillful execution. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes does a masterful job of being a good tense thriller but what elevates it to something special is Andy Serkis as Caesar. He takes a mediocre script and turns it in to Shakespeare without having to actually be on the screen.
“And his name is The Doctor. He has saved your lives so many times and you never even knew he was there. He never stops. He never stays. He never asks to be thanked. But I’ve seen him, I know him… I love him… And I know what he can do.” – Freema Ageyman as companion Martha Jones
My geek is in overdrive.
Doctor Who’s premiere is on August 23rd on BBCAmerica this side of the pond (that’s the premiere date for much of the rest of the world, too) I’ve been hitting BBCAmerica’s website for news and sneak peeks. I’ve binge watched Matt Smith’s last seasons as the Time Lord. I’ve held off doing something else – like raiding the refrigerator or even going to the bathroom – during commercial breaks while watching the channel in case there’s a new teaser. And I switched my ringtone from Buffy The Vampire Slayer to the show’s opening music.
I was one of those who was sincerely pissed off and sincerely mourned the passing of the torch by David Tennant to Matt Smith – Tennant was just so superb (and sexy!) as the Time Lord; he brought so much to the role; humanizing (if you’ll excuse the expression) the alien. I wasn’t ready for him to leave – and as Tennant so brilliantly played his regeneration scene, it was obvious that his Doctor wasn’t ready to leave either. When he said, “I don’t want to go” in “The End of Time – Part 2,” I parroted (along with millions of fans, I’m sure), “I don’t want you to go, either.”
And to be honest, Smith’s premier episode, the one with the “fish and custard,” really didn’t do anything for me; Smith was so different, and the whole “going through this kid’s refrigerator” scene felt forced, not funny. But of course, Matt more than proved himself to me, so much so that I still feel that his Doctor was cheated out of a truly emotional regeneration scene – well, okay, Karen Gillian’s cameo as Amelia Pond (“Raggedy Man, good night.”) was brilliant and definitely teared me up, but overall too much time was wasted on destroying the Daleks…again snnnnore. Smith – and the fans he brought in, fans who made the show a truly worldwide phenomenon – deserved so much more.
But I did love Peter Capaldi’s first words (“Do you happen to know how to fly this thing?”) and Jenna Coleman’s – as companion Clara Oswald – horrified “what the fuck?!” look.
I didn’t know that much about Peter Capaldi – not that it bothered me, because I didn’t know Tennant or Smith either before their respective runs as the Time Lord. Well, let me rephrase that. It was more one of those “I know I know Peter Capaldi, but from where?” type of deals. Meaning that I didn’t recognize him as the actor who played the British Home Secretary John Forbisher in Torchwood: Children Of Earth. I didn’t realize that was he playing Caecilius in the Doctor Who season 4 episode, “The Fires of Pompei.” And it took a Google search to discover that he had been in one of my favorite films, 1983’s Local Hero, which starred Burt Lancaster and Peter Riegert. But I have been watching and mucho appreciating him as Cardinal Richelieu in this summer’s The Musketeers on BBCAmerica (Sundays at 9:00 P.M). In fact I think he’s brilliant in the role, and it’s whetted my appetite for his debut as the 12th (13th?) Gallifreyan.
So I’m ready to love Peter Capaldi, if no other reason that I don’t want the show to go away, to be cancelled, to end.
But I don’t know how the younger fans, most of who came in with Matt Smith’s Doctor, will react to him. Will the show lose that part of its fan base? My niece Isabel’s first words about Mr. Capaldi after seeing him for those few moments as the end of “The Time of the Doctor” were quote “He’s so old!” unquote.
Isabel will be fourteen in August.
I remember Mike Gold saying to me once, “Everybody loves their first Doctor best.” Or something like that. And it’s true. My first Gallifreyan was Tom Baker (I thrilled and tingled when he made a cameo appearance at the end of “The Name of the Doctor.”) My first companion was Elisabeth Sladen. (I loved her return as Sarah Jane Smith during Tennant’s run, and how she immediately recognized him despite his changed appearance,) It took me a long time to “catch on” to Jon Pertwee, who, although he came before Baker, was my second Doctor. (It took me even longer to get hip to a new companion – not until Billie Piper. That’s a long time.)
So I get it, Iz. Matt Smith was your first Doctor. And he was cute and funny and resourceful. You’ll always have a special place in your Whovian heart for him. You’ll naturally feel some resentment to Capaldi for daring to take the controls of the TARDIS.
But remember, Iz, without regeneration, you and me, and a whole generation or two, would never have even met the Doctor, never would have traveled in the TARDIS, never would have known Sarah Jane Smith or Rose Tyler or Amy Pond and Rory Williams, never would have known the Daleks or the Cyberman or The Master.
And remember, Iz, like I told you that day, and as I reiterated here, I didn’t like Matt Smith at first. But I grew to love him.
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I don’t always get out to see movies these days and I’ve missed some this summer that I wanted to see. My Mary and I had a chance to sneak in a film this week and we chose to catch How To Train Your Dragon 2 before it disappeared from the movie theaters. We had seen the first one and I had been impressed: good story, good animation, and a sense of things having consequences.
