The Fractal Hall Journal

The rest of this week’s posts will be a little different to usual, but before we get to them there’s something I wanted to mention here.

I don’t write about politics much on the Journal. The count in the column over there on the right tells me there’s 12 posts tagged under that heading, but even then they’re only broadly political and not really about any particular incident or headline. And that’s a deliberate decision on my part. Out in Meat Space you can’t shut me up about politics, certainly not after a couple of beers.

That’s reason one. I know what I get like. If the new Batman cartoon gets me all frothy about the brain, imagine what important things do to me. The Journal is meant to be an enjoyable diversion, for both myself and for you good folks out there. Losing my shit about the latest fuck-knows-what every single day would get pretty depressing pretty fast.

Reason two is that I’m acutely aware that not everything that makes it to your screens is the most thought-out, carefully-worded and insightful passage in the history of the language. Shocking, I know. Now, if I occasionally write something batshit crazy at four in the morning about toy robots, its actual influence on the rest of my life is negligable to say the least. For the moment, let’s put aside the ever-increasing likelihood of a hypothetical potential future employer googling me and then deciding that maybe the guy who gets all het up about the fate of the Tyrannosaur in Jurassic Park III isn’t the competent team-player they’re looking for. An ill-thought-out screed that you don’t really mean about a hot-button political issue, on the other hand, has the potential to seriously screw up your life. And I don’t need that pressure at four in the morning.

Does that mean I don’t think it’s important to have political views? Or to engage in political debate? Of course not. I don’t think a lot of the debate that happens online is always particularly useful, but that doesn’t mean it’s always unimportant. I just don’t really think that’s what the Journal’s for, and believe me if I thought there was something important that I just couldn’t shut up about, I’d bring it up.

Two things have seriously pissed me off recently. I’m not sure I’m able to articulate appropriately why they irritated me so much, but I don’t really want to let them slide without a remark.

The first I found out about via two posts by David Brothers over at 4thletter!, and was also covered in a post by Jonathan Bernhardt at Funnybook Babylon. I have nothing to add but a deep-felt conviction that there are times when the sheer fucking ignorance of my fellow human beings makes me long for the day when the Martians turn up and blow us all the fuck away.

And then the second was the recent rumour that Jake Gyllenhaal will soon be playing the Prince of Persia.

Wow. What great casting.

Perhaps they can black him up for the role. Perhaps he can put on a comedy Asian accent. Perhaps the production company is anticipating that there will be no kind of outcry from the country currently occupying the bit of the world historically known as Persia because they never ever fall out with the Americans, do they?

This is fucking insane. Who thinks this is a good idea? Does anyone not realise that a clue to the ethnicity of the main character is right there in the pissing title?

Bring on the Martian death rays, I say.

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I have no idea where the topic for today’s post has come from. It’s a little bit about the X-Files, I suppose, but it’s mostly about Jurassic Park, which I haven’t seen, read or thought about for ages and ages.

One of the episode from the fourth series of the former has Cancer Man suggesting that Mulder is doing exactly as the Syndicate have anticipated, if not actively wanted. I hate this, the idea that the protagonist of any given story isn’t actually choosing their own path, but being a tool for someone else. It violates the story principle that everything important in a story should come about by decisions and actions taken by the main character. A relation to this is the climax of a film, book or whatever where everything is either resolved by someone other than the protagonist, by chance, by something completely unexpected (deus ex machina, for example), or, worst of all, by the villain. It’s usually only a rung down from “it was all a dream” in terms of satisfaction.

There was a heeyouge buzz about Jurassic Park when it first came out, the first film I can remember staying in the cinema for months and months on end. I loved both the book and the film, and I remember being about as exited for the release as I was for Spider-Man, years later. It was a seriously big deal, and I remember Triggi and me scouring issues of Empire and SFX and even the National Frickin’ Geographic for info on the flick. And hand on heart, it didn’t disappoint. Sure, it’s easy enough to keep twelve-year-old boys happy, and dinosaurs eating people is about the definition of that, but even so I still have a great fondness for the film today. Even now the special effects look way more convincing than in most SF, which is a hell of an achievement.

Robert McKee’s Story (which I’ve mentioned here more than once before) had a section on “deus ex machina” endings, and used Jurassic Park as the best example of this. Which I didn’t quite get at the time. Well, that’s not true. McKee isn’t wrong, not from that perspective. After all, it’s not the humans that save the day but the T. Rex (oh, erm, spoiler warning). But even though I have a loathing for that kind of ending, I just never associated it with that film. Plenty of people do, mind, as it seems every conversation I’ve had about the film since reading Story has someone saying they found the ending unsatisfactory.

It’s only now that I kind of see why, from my perspective (or perhaps the perspective of a twelve year old dinosaur fanatic), I don’t agree with them. Firstly, and most inconsequentially, aren’t there way better examples than the dinosaur film? Lousy boring film lecturer. Secondly, Spielberg has mentioned (in the Making Of book, I think) that part of the theme of the film was nature overcoming the limits humanity places on it, and that he didn’t think having San Neill killing the Velociraptors fitted this. But I mostly don’t care because it’s only an unsatisfactory ending if you’re rooting for the humans.

Look, I didn’t want the kids to die. I certainly didn’t want Drs. Grant and Sattler to buy it. But come on, they’re not the main attraction. I was right there with the thunder-lizards, baby, and there’s no question that the character (literally) chewing up the screen was the Tyrannosaurus. I didn’t think the T Rex saving them was crap. I thought it was the awesomest thing in motion picture history.

Funnily enough, that links in to why I wasn’t as keen on Jurassic Park III. I don’t mind the film, and I might even prefer it to The Lost World, but I did have a couple of problems with it. Firstly, I didn’t like the T Rex losing in a fight with Spinosaurus and I know, I know that’s a stupid reason but, you know, you don’t pay to see Batman being bested by a johnny-come-lately superhero, do you? Do you want the cinematic equivalent of pissing Knightfall? I didn’t. In fact, Triggi will testify that in the queue to see it I said I’d walk out if the T Rex got munched and got a funny look from the other cinema goers. Why should misdirected fan rage be restricted to comics?

And if anything, the ending to the third part was way less satisfying, it being the military turn up and save everyone (oh, spoilers again). That’s a way worse deus ex machina than “a goody dinosaur eats the baddy dinosaurs”, and seriously undermines the “nature wins” theme. You shouldn’t be thinking, “Oh yay, guys with guns will mow the suckers down and keep us safe”, you should be seeing the guys with guns being munched by the big scary monsters with big scary teeth.

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