Back to the Future. Escape from New York. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Saving Private Ryan. Even in a cultural media vacuum, what narrative fundamental do the titles to those movies tell you about their respective plots?
They are goal-driven.
Goals can be an invaluable tool to establish suspense, propel a plot, and create an active protagonist. But, like any storytelling appliance, they are an elective, not a mandate. In the movie business, insecure creative execs will insist on their inclusion in every screenplay—a silver bullet for any plot that fails to effectively engross (which relates to an industry-wide problem I addressed in my first post: the misapplication of craft).
Last week, we looked at the Joker as portrayed by Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s 1989 blockbuster Batman and analyzed his five traits:
Criminally, murderously sociopathic
Wickedly macabre sense of humor
Grandiose/theatrical
Artistic/aesthetic
Egomaniacal
This interpretation somewhat varied from those that had come before it: He was certainly more lethal than Cesar Romero’s Clown Prince of Crime from the old Adam West series, and artistic is such a singular Tim Burton peculiarity—a signature he left on the crazy-quilt mosaic that comprises the Joker in his ever-evolving mythic totality; in American Idol’s clichéd parlance, Burton “made it his own.” His Joker shared an undeniable DNA strand with the arch-villain created by Jerry Robinson, Bill Finger, and Bob Kane in 1940, the one later personified by Romero in the sixties, as well as then-contemporary comic incarnations as envisioned by Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns), Alan Moore (The Killing Joke), and Grant Morrison (Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth), despite the markedly different aesthetics within which each of those varied interpretations were realized.
Because where is the line drawn, really, between a reinterpretation and an altogether different character? How does an artist (in a vocationally general sense) redefine a folkloric figure to reflect his own personal idiosyncrasies, the sociocultural conditions of the day, or both, while still working within the recognizable parameters of a time-honored fictional creation?
To commemorate his seventy-fifth anniversary, the United States Postal Service recently released a sheet of stamps featuring an illustration of Batman from each of the four culturally designated periods of comic-book history: Golden Age; Silver Age; Bronze Age; Modern Age. In light of Entertainment Weekly’s recent observation that we seemed to have reached peak Batman saturation, I can’t help but feel a nostalgic longing for the Batman of my youth. My Batman. You know the one I mean: The Batman that hopped behind the bubbled windshield of the Batmobile, an earnest Robin riding shotgun, fiery thrust of the afterburner blasting my heroes from the Batcave…
Hmm. That could’ve been several different Batmans—even in those more innocent times (for him and me)—now that I’m thinking it over. My first exposure to the Caped Crusader came in the form of syndicated afternoon reruns of the old Adam West series (which had ended its run over a decade earlier); at some point, my not-yet-literate mind recognized a correlation between the show’s splashy opening logo and repetitive choral chant that accompanied it, and “Batman,” to my mother’s surprise and delight, became the first word I could read and write. (She was, mercifully, apparently either unaware of or unconcerned with the admonitions of Fredric Wertham a quarter century prior.) Batman also had a strong animated presence at the time, appearing concurrently in a Filmation series that served as a de facto sequel to the ‘60s live-action show, as well as the long-running Super Friends franchise from Hanna-Barbera. (That these aired on competing networks, something that would never happen today, only serves to illustrate how comic-book characters have gone, in my lifetime, from licensed-property afterthoughts to tightly leashed, billion-dollar corporate assets. But, that’s a topic for another article…)
Here I am—intrepid screenwriter—gearing up to embark on a dizzying new adventure in my writing career: my first full-length novel—a work of historical fiction (with supernatural twist, of course—the change in venue isn’t indicative of revamped storytelling sensibilities on my part!). In a plot convenience straight out of a first-draft screenplay, Writer’s Digest recently hosted a novel-writing conference here in Los Angeles; among the seminars offered was a “Historical Fiction Boot Camp”—taught by no less than bestselling author David Morrell, who introduced the world to Rambo in his inaugural novel, First Blood (1972). I’d have likely attended the workshop regardless, but given that on my most recent vacation I lazed on the beach and read three Morrell novels in a row, the happenstance of it all seemed too providential to dismiss.
During both his seminar and keynote address, Mr. Morrell spoke with endearing candor about his life’s experiences and path to becoming a writer, much of which you can read about—if you haven’t had the pleasure to hear him speak in person—in his 2012 essay Rambo and Me: The Story Behind the Story. If the man feels in any way that he lives in the shadow of his first—and most iconic—creation, one wouldn’t suspect as much from chatting with him, which I was lucky enough to get a chance to do. As a child of the eighties, Rambo holds profound nostalgic significance for me; I went through a phase (as my dearest childhood friend can lamentably attest) in which a plastic jade Buddha amulet dangled totemically from my neck and I responded to any conversational overtures with nothing more eloquent than a sneering curl of my upper lip. Mr. Morrell was gracious enough to answer my Rambo-related inquiries—with a smile; not a sneer!—and recounted some of his experiences on the development of the third and fourth films of the franchise. The behind-the-scenes history of the storied movie series has been well-documented in the thirty-odd years since the first entry’s initial release, but to hear tales of the productions from the horse’s mouth was a thrill to rival any of Rambo’s breathless derring-do.
Given that this summer marks the thirtieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries, respectively, of Ghostbusters (enjoying a limited theatrical rerelease this week) and Ghostbusters II, I recently took an opportunity—the first since screenwriting on a professional basis—to re-watch them. This can be something of a perilous exercise—bringing my experienced analytical eye to a movie that carries such personal nostalgic weight for me—but I almost always walk away with an enhanced appreciation for the film in question, be it a newfound recognition of its merits or clearer grasp of its shortcomings.
Much has been written about Ghostbusters; much less about Ghostbusters II. In the years since its release, the latter has come to be considered the bastard, redheaded stepchild of the franchise, which includes the highly regarded animated series The Real Ghostbusters (1986–1991). When discussing Ghostbusters, the sequel typically merits an obligatory, passing mention, though often with a discernible tenor of embarrassment; even series director Ivan Reitman offered this vague and somewhat apologetic assessment of the follow-up in a recent retrospective published by Vanity Fair: “It didn’t all come together. We just sort of got off on the wrong foot story-wise on that film.”
Other appraisals of Ghostbusters II are equally nonspecific. Other than a general consensus that “it wasn’t as good as the original,” I’ve been hard-pressed to find a critique that adequately identifies why, as Vanity Fair notes, it “failed to generate the passionate enthusiasm spurred by the first film.”
I’m going to venture a suggestion that flies in the face of over eight decades of Hollywood tradition: Movie monsters are not fundamentally franchisable.
Did the sequels to Psycho or Silence of the Lambs inspire the sheer terror of the originals? The more we knew about Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter, the more comfortable, oddly enough, we became with them. What about Jaws and Child’s Play? Seems to me the shark got faker and Chucky got campier as those went along. Sure, the body counts were higher and the death scenes more elaborate (a provision of scary sequels so concisely articulated in Scream 2), but did any of that make the follow-ups scarier—or merely distract you from the fact that you weren’t as scared?
“Someone has taken their love of SEQUELS one step too far”
This is the first in a series of posts on characterization, in which I reverse-engineer a psychological profile for an established fictional character.
Four years ago, the clock ran out on 24, the groundbreaking “real-time” television drama starring Kiefer Sutherland as indefatigable counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer. A writer on Lost once told me how much he loved 24 for being such an immersive entertainment experience: It made him completely forget, as he watched it, that he was both a television scribe and a liberal! Indeed, the series remained so reliably entertaining throughout its initial eight-season run that its often outlandish plot twists never seemed to irrevocably strain the audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief, nor did its occasionally controversial depictions of both Muslims and the use of torture overshadow its legacy as an evolutionary pioneer in serialized television.
A 21st-Century Superhero
From the outset, 24 was a bit of an anomaly: a high-concept television series in a medium predicated far less on concept than on character. Speaking broadly, feature films exploit a premise to elicit our interest; there’s an implicit What would you do? embedded in a movie’s central conceit that compels us to engage in its finite dilemma and vicariously explore the ramifications. Television, by design, isn’t finite—it’s open-ended; a foundational premise needs to be built to last—across multiple seasons, ideally—rather than burn through all of its permutations over the course of two hours. In TV, concept supports character: We come back week after week to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital to check in with Meredith and McDreamy, to Downton Abbey for a visit with the Crawleys. 24 is no exception. And the only character to have appeared in every episode—or even, more generally, every season—is Jack Bauer: He’s the common denominator—the reason we keep coming back. The innovative real-time format is why we came to 24 back in 2001; Jack is why we’ve stayed with it through 2014.
More than even its nonelliptical narrative, Jack is the show’s key component, as 24 fits firmly in the Superhero mold. For the uninitiated, a Superhero story need not be strictly about a costumed crime-fighter; Blake Snyder defines it as any tale about a character with a special power (Jack is the country’s foremost counterterrorism expert), a nemesis (in the case of 24, the literal villain du jour), and a curse (on account of the reliable efficacy of his superpower, Jack is solely and repeatedly called upon to do the dirty jobs and make the personal sacrifices to save the day, day after day). Jack is what Snyder defines as a “People’s Superhero,” like James Bond and Olivia Pope.
Jack’s Back
“Jack, simply getting your life back isn’t gonna change who you are… and you can’t walk away from it. You know that. You’ve tried it. Sooner or later, you’re gonna get back in the game.”
Secretary of Defense James Heller in “Day 6: 5:00 a.m.–6:00 a.m.”
Superheroes are routinely called back into service for the greater good—such is their calling and their curse—and Jack isn’t immune: He’s blazed back into action in this summer’s limited-run revival series 24: Live Another Day. Though the threats he faces have changed with the times—it’s drones and hacktivism now—all the time-honored tropes that made 24 such crackerjack entertainment are present and accounted for: Infiltrations! Exfiltrations! Mass-casualty detonations! Botched undercover operations! Presidential assassinations! Traitorous machinations! Everything we loved, just as before.
Also exactly as before: Jack Bauer. He has been one of the most consistent protagonists of any contemporary long-running series. Not predictable, mind you—an analysis of his five governing characteristics shows him to be a deceptively unconventional hero—but consistent. Let’s deconstruct him, a trait at a time.
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