Author: dan

• Spared no expense on everything but story

  June 17, 2015

  

  There are lots of things you can do with collaborators. Build a house, manage some kind of project that synergises all the paradigms, play sports. There are even things you can do with collaborators in film production: set up lights, operate cameras, run cables, produce. I am of the very strong opinion, though, that there is one thing you can’t do as a team: write a script. And if you need an absolute case-in-point as to why this is now indisputable fact: go watch Jurassic World.

  I had very low expectations of this film going in, but there was still a part of me that really wanted to get swept up and then blown away. I wanted to rekindle some of that magic from that moment in Jurassic Park where Alan Grant turns Ellie Satler’s head so she can gawp at the brachiosaurs. The thing with Jurassic Park, though, is that they were restrained by technology. Time and time again, this restriction has led to some of the most innovative — and believeable — filmmaking. The combination of early CGI with models, miniatures, and animatronics, had the audience holding their breath with every T-Rex footstep. The other Spielbergian touch that really worked in the original is the idea of hiding the monster. This is something he started with Jaws (for budgetary reasons), but which ended up being so very effective. If you hide the monster, you can build the script and the characters around that suspense, such that when you do reveal the demon in full, it becomes a focal point: the final conflict, which ultimately leads to resolution.

  This sense of wonder mingled with deft suspense, this ability to suspend disbelief, this logical story progression, was entirely absent from Jurassic World. Instead we get Male (Chris Pratt) off-handedly flirting with Female (Bryce Dallas Howard) while the genetically-modified hybrid dinosaur runs amok in an inexplicably fully-functioning dinosaur theme park. If the story were that simple, the film may have worked (or had a fighting chance). Instead, you’ve also got Kid 1 and Kid 2 embroiled in the chaos, military contractors led by Gomer Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio) wanting to use dinosaurs to overthrow ISIS or whatever, oh, and Male (Pratt) has actually been training velociraptors to do tricks for park visitors. Also there’s 21st century Denis Nedry (played by New Girl guy) and his coworkers in Mission Control at NASA watching everyone die on big screens. Also this film is apparently a subtle dig at consumer culture and the film industry.

  My biggest problem with Jurassic World isn’t the sheer amount of groundless, physics-defying CGI (at one point a velociraptor glides across the ground as though animated by me with my crappy After Effects skills). My biggest problem with Jurassic World is that all these characters I’ve mentioned are supposed to be human beings. They’re meant to have backstories and lives and motivations, and all of these things are meant to be apparent to us as soon as we meet them, because we know we won’t have enough time with all of them across the length of the film. My biggest problem with Jurassic World is that it fails so spectacularly at what Jurassic Park did so well: tell a story with a sizeable ensemble cast, and get you seeing what they see, feeling what they feel, wanting what they want. And so much of that empathy is down to the script. Shoehorning expositional shortcuts into dialogue is not the way to create empathy with characters: showing us how a character we’ve prejudged based on appearance reacts in an extraordinary situation is. To be fair, there are moments in Jurassic World like this, but they’re so few and far between that these actual character development/storytelling ‘bits’ are lost in a sea of hokiness.

  These characters were profiled by committee, and their stories were written by different people in different rooms, and there was no meeting between that process and filming. The clunkiness of the script is even further exacerbated when your film does not have any acts: the audience is left with no time to breathe, and there is no logical escalation of action. Storytelling was farmed off here, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it writ so clearly on the screen. Almost every line of dialogue in the first half of the film made me cringe. I think I only stopped cringing in the second half because the final build-up of action was distracting (and my shoulders were sore).

  The biggest hurdle that Jurassic World faces is that it’s part of a franchise that began with one of the most beloved films of the 1990s. It doesn’t hurt that the original film is one of the finest action-adventure films in cinematic history, with believeable characters, with pacing, and with some of the most innovative visual effects ever put on screen. Jurassic World fails for the very reasons that it attempts to satirise: it ignores its audience, giving them what it thinks they want, rather than attempting to engage them on a meaningful level.

  Suffice to say this new franchise will likely not, uh, uh, find a way.

• I jumped a shark and I liked it

  May 18, 2015

  

  I really liked this film, and it’s really hard to articulate why. I’d seen all the criticism, read all the accounts of the demise of storytelling, character development, and good taste: hell, even the blaming of this movie for the single-handed demolition of the popcorn movie.

  Somehow, though, five minutes in, I forgot all that. I didn’t find the story hard to follow. I didn’t find it particularly dumb (and certainly not intellectual). I enjoyed all the characters, including Ultron. The Romanov/Banner subplot was oddly sweet. Thor was, well, adorable. Hulk was hulkey. And yep, it still hit all the touchstones (pardon the pun) for the next few movies and, yep, I’ll probably go see them too.

  Of course it’s not believable. Of course it’s not pristine storytelling. It’s got lots of stupid action in it for no real reason. There’s no time for real character development.

  Reason? It’s a comic book movie. Go in with sub-zero expectations, like I did, and you’ll have a ball.

  P.S. Fun fact: beyond this blog post, I have no desire whatsoever to write about Age of Ultron, certainly not from any academic perspective. Heh, maybe that’s why I liked it.

• Speed and politics

  May 11, 2015

  

  Cinema is movement. Movement is change. Change is politics — politics regulates change.

  Movement in the frame is thus political.

  The addition of speed amplifies the political impetus of cinema. Movement is cinema.

  * * *

  [It’s okay, I haven’t lost it. These are perfunctory scribblings for upcoming research, that I thought were strangely poetic. Rough thoughts on the disappointingly not-that-disappointing Need for Speed here.]

• Teaching film and media in a neoliberal bubble

  May 8, 2015

  First point: I am a teacher. This is a role that bestows on me power and control over others.

  Second point: I am white, male, heterosexual, educated, and middle-class. This is an identity that inscribes within me a particular world-view.

  Third point: I teach film and media studies. This is a discipline which is inherently linked to the neoliberalist agendas of globalisation, consumer culture, and corporate-political power.

  * * *

  Neoliberalism fosters a complicit and compliant consumer citizenry, and much of this is based on the marginalising of non-dominant voices in the public sphere, and the exploitation of the owners of those voices to perpetuate power structures and the ‘global’ marketplace (Gorski 2008, p. 518). The goal of most protocols or policies concerning multicultural or intercultural education seems to be the furthering of these neoliberalist agenda, at least according to Gorski (p. 519). The other alarming characteristic of most attempts at cultural inclusiveness within education is a lack of awareness of the wider sociopolitical context; in essence, an ignorance of the wider world.

  As educators, both Gorski and Holladay (2013) have worked through a neoliberalist understanding of what multicultural education should be. For Gorski, this involves ‘the facilitation of intercultural dialogue, an appreciation for diversity, and cultural exchange’ (p. 520). For Holladay, it means working with elementary school children through a limited perspective on historical events. Both of these educators, too, have been complicit in allowing the trivialisation of important events to occur on their watch — case in point: Taco Night.

  To reject neoliberalist agenda in intercultural education, Gorski suggests that it is not learning activities or lesson plans that need to change. Rather, an entire intellectual and philosophical shift must occur within the educator. Part of this is acknowledging that ‘cultural awareness is not enough’ and that ignorance of the sociopolitical context further marginalises those already non-dominant voices in the learning space. Holladay takes it further: by infusing multiple perspectives into learning, what the educator is doing is converting ‘consumers’ (the neoliberalist student-subject) into socially-aware critical thinkers. The biggest problem facing both novel paradigms of education, from my reading, is that critical thinking is not seen by the neoliberalist conspiracy as a marketable skill.

  As a media teacher, I am aware that the industry into which I am sending my students is competitive and is also linked to very old structures of power. However, I see that I have a responsibility to ensure that all my students can survive in this world. Part of this is ensuring that they are aware of those structures of power, and a further part is demonstrating ways in which those monolithic frameworks have been defied, or even ignored. The wonderful thing about film and media studies currently, is that many who were long silent now have access to production and distribution technologies. I have a responsibility to ensure all of my students can harness those technologies themselves.

  * * *

  First point: I am a teacher. I have a responsibility to ensure that all my students feel valued, and to offer and encourage them all to share their voices.

  Second point: I am white, male, heterosexual, educated, and middle-class. This does not absolve me from the responsibility identified in the first point; it should, in fact, inspire me to work harder to ensure equality in the learning environment.

  Third point: I teach film and media studies. This is a discipline which has the power to break down perceived social barriers, to allow non-dominant voices to express their views, and to widen a student’s perspective on the world they share.

  * * *

  References

  Gorski, PC 2008, ‘Good intentions are not enough: a decolonizing intercultural education’, Intercultural Education, vol. 19, no. 6, pp. 515-525.

  Holladay, J 2013, ‘Multiculturalism in the modern world: Jen Holladay at TEDxDenverTeachers’, TEDx Talks, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5rKgDOs33U>. [6 May 2015].

  [this text was submitted as an assessment for a professional development course I’m completing on cultural inclusiveness in teaching]

• Welles and the frame

  May 8, 2015

  

  Suffice to say that Orson Welles taught me all I ever needed to know about framing*.

  Happy 100th, old friend.

  * for ‘framing’, read ‘all of cinema’.