A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 39

Old Soldiers (short fiction)

The original models could take a beating, and this one had seen plenty of action. It wasn’t going to last much longer. Had maybe two more tours in it. They didn’t build them like this anymore. The newer bots were disposable. Most of them were lucky to come back from the battlefield at all. But this old fellow was still ticking, though the damage to its right leg put a hitch in his step.

“We should just scrap it,” said the supervisor.

Jerry measured the countless scars on the old model’s chassis. “He can be fixed.”

“Why bother?” The supervisor snorted and walked away.

Jerry worked on the leg. The robot stood silently. These old models were from back when they made them humanoid. Now, the battle robots came in more specialized designs. Machine guns on wheels. Flying rocket launchers. All-terrain scout units. It made sense. Humanoid robots, even clunky old ones like this one, reminded everyone that war was hell. Now it was all a video game played with inhuman machines.

Nobody died now, and it was better that way. When they replaced the flesh-and-blood soldiers with bots, the military and the civilians alike protested. Robots made to kill made everybody nervous. Then everyone realized nobody would have to send another son or daughter to fight in some godforsaken place for reasons people said were important. It was hard to argue against that.

The robots weren’t perfect, and there’d been a few friendly fire incidents when people were still out there on the battlefield. Once the soldiers were withdrawn, everything ran a lot smoother.

People didn’t die now. Wars could go on as long as both sides had enough continues. And both sides had a hell of a lot of continues. The current generation of disposable robots just made it worse as everyone threw endless waves onto the Earth’s surface while humans stayed above it all on the moon.

Up here, the human race got along because they had no choice. Resources were too scarce. Conflict was too dangerous. The old nations existed only as lines on a map on an irradiated, ruined planet no one could even live on anymore. They fought over it anyway for no other reason than they’d been fighting over it for so long, and this old model had probably been there from the beginning, destined to end up on a scrapheap.

Forgotten.

Jerry patched up the leg and loaded the robot into the transport personally. He wrote down the robot’s serial number in his notebook, a record of all the machines he’d put back together or sent off for recycling. There would be no monuments to this war that would last until the end of the human race. Maybe longer if rumors of the automated robot factories were true. He’d always kept a record of names he’d seen fallen, and when those names became numbers, he kept on keeping it.

Jerry rubbed his shoulder. It ached still, and there were times he could swear the bullet was still in there. He rapped the robot on its dented head and, one old soldier to another, wished it luck out there.

Influences

Someone on Twitter once asked me about my influences.  I said I’d get back to them when I had some time to think about it.  Then I promptly forgot about it and was distracted by life.  Sorry about that.  Now I’m here and ready to share those influences that have shaped me as a writer.

But, first, I think an apology is in order.  I would love to give credit to Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, or Robert Asprin because those are the writers I am most often compared to.   Nope.  Not those guys.  I do enjoy their work now and then, but none of them would rank among my favorites or even people I think of when writing my own stuff.  I am not a big Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Diskworld fan.  I read the first three books of Hitchhiker and three or four Discworld books.  Good books.  No complaints about them.  Very enjoyable.  But they do not inspire me.

That’s always been one of my problems as an artist.  I am clearly a designated “funny” writer, and yet, I don’t find inspiration and influence in the books of funny writers.  No criticism intended, but I’ve never been especially enamored of “funny” stories.  That’s weird, especially considering the way most people look at my stories, but it is true.

No, my favorite writers have always been creators of larger-than-life adventure tales.  Most prominently, and the writer that still continues to influence everything I have ever written in one way or another, is comic book writer Walter Simonson.  Specifically, Simonson’s run on Thor remains the definitive example of spectacle, superheroics, and character driven adventure.  There’s a hell of a lot to love here, but what always strikes me about the series is how unapologetically fantastic it is.  Far from hiding from the absurd, larger-than-life adventure, Simonson dives right in.

Amid all the spectacle, Simonson is sure to take time to ground his characters in believable motivations.  If you like Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you have Simonson to thank for that.  He took a generic evil sorcerer god and imbued him with life and personality.  Superheroes and supervillains have had a hate / love relationship before, but never has the conflict between two characters been as interesting.  When the obligatory team up and betrayals happen throughout the run, they never seem manufactured.  Plus, at one point Thor, Odin, and Loki team up to take on Surtur for the fate of the universe, and it is such a crowning moment of earned badassattitude that Simonson makes it look easy.  The run has been collected in a series of trades entitled Visionaries:  Walt Simonson, and it is, hands down, the storytelling that continues to define the art of storytelling for me.

It isn’t very funny though.  It has some humor now and then, but Thor isn’t a funny character and not many of the characters around him are funny either.  At the same time, it’s joyful, bombastic, and never mistakes melodrama for substance.  It’s melodramatic.  It’s hard not to be with stories involving gods, magic, and aliens for the fate of the world, but that melodrama is tempered by an understanding that characters should be more than pawns of the plot and that a character need not be excessively flawed to be deemed interesting.  Thor is always bold, solid, and heroic.  He’s always eager to throw himself into the fray to help people, and as powerful as he, he never shies away from foes more powerful than himself.

Also, he gets turned into a frog at one point and helps the other frogs save New York City from a plot by rats to poison the water supply.  It’s epic, amazing, and just plain cool.  And as weird as it is, it’s not played for comedy.

After Simonson, the next biggest influence in my writing would have to be Edgar Rice Burroughs.  His most famous creation is Tarzan, and I make no apologies for loving those stories.  They’re from a different era, and it shows.  Burroughs isn’t the most poetic writer, and he’s not above employing coincidence and contrivances to get his heroes out of trouble.  But he’s also a writer of unlimited imagination.  His Mars novels featuring John Carter are masterworks of Sword and Planet fiction, and who cares if his Mars doesn’t make a lot of sense as a sustainable world.  It’s a place of unlimited adventure.

Where Burroughs excels is in creating interesting ideas and playgrounds of the mind.  Tarzan is a great character.  Completely unbelievable, but great.  John Carter is mostly a heroic blank, but Barsoom is such a fantastic realm of imagination that he probably couldn’t compete with it anyway.  And then there’s Tars Tarkas and Woolah and all the great creatures and peoples of Mars.

Again, not very funny.

Another pair of great influence, both in the comic book arena again, are Marv Wolfman’s Tomb of Dracula and the many bizarre Man-Thingstories written by Gerry Conway and Steve Gerber.  While both comic books that are part of the larger superheroic Marvel Universe, neither was about superheroes but horror tales (for Tomb) and surreal fantasies (for Man-Thing).  Both still have a lot of influence in how I look at stories.

All these influences have one thing in common.  They don’t shy away from the absurd, and they don’t hesitate to go strange.  Gerber created and introduced Howard the Duck in the Man-Thing title, and for a title featuring an unintelligent plant monster as its primary hero, Howard fit in just fine.  Tomb of Dracula sticks to mostly classic horror elements until, suddenly, the Silver Surfer or X-Men show up to spice things up.  It’s a terrific, anything goes world, and it works precisely because of that attitude.

Not many of these influences are funny, but it’s obvious how they’ve planted a love for epic fantasy adventure that colors everything I do.  I’ll never be compared to these writers, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re the ones that have laid the foundation for what I do, and I’m very cool with that.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Coffee and Jealousy (short fiction)

As he looked at the remnants of the cellphone on the floor, he realizes the squishing noise behind the counter had started again.

The thing behind the counter that had once been his favorite coffee barista gurgled at him. They’d always had this chemistry, and while it was a harmless fantasy, he still liked to flirt now and then. It was just something people did. It was nice to know you were still attractive and that, optimistically, you had options.

The thing that had once been Jenny, though he supposed it still was Jenny, set his soy latte on the counter and croaked. She had never been exceptionally pretty, but cute and cool. Now her face was a giant green mask of slime and warts.

“Here’s your coffee, handsome” she croaked. Then she smiled, drool dripping from her lips, and winked one yellow eye.

“Yes. Thanks.”

He picked up the remains of his cellphone. Even though it was broken in two, it rang. He almost didn’t answer it, but that would only make things worse.

“How’s Jenny?” asked Aphrodite.

His mother had been right.

Never marry a goddess.

The Truth about Magic (short fiction)

“There is something you need to know about magic,” said Sean.

“I know,” replied Gary. “It always has a price.”

“What? No. Who told you that?”

“Everybody,” said Gary.

“Well, everybody is wrong.”

“But what about the laws of thermodynamics?”

“If magic followed the rules of thermodynamics, it wouldn’t be magic, would it?”

“But surely there must be some grounding in physics,” said Gary. “Maybe quantum physics?”

“Quantum physics only works on a tiny scale. If you were going to conjure a teacup the size of an atom, then maybe quantum physics would apply. But who the hell would want to do that?”

“All right,” said Gary. “So throw thermodynamics, physics, all that out the window. Got it. What’s it going to cost me? Do I have to sell my soul? Do I have to give up part of my life force? Does it only work if I really, really believe it?”

Sean laughed. “What have you been reading?”

“Oh just every story ever written where someone used magic.”

“That’s fiction,” said Sean. “This is the real thing.”

“Okay, so what do I need to know about magic then?” asked Gary.

Sean snapped his fingers and a small dragon materialized beside him. It curled up in his lap, swishing its tail contentedly as he scratched it between the horns.

“Magic is fucking awesome.”

Belly of the Dragon (short fiction)

With all my negative criticism of late, I thought it’d be nice to break things up with a piece of very short fiction.  Probably because of my foul mood of late, this is a fairly dark story (especially by my standards).  It was inspired by a writing prompt on the website Reddit.  Hope you enjoy it.

“Vikings.”

Dr. Grant, the only other person in the exam room, checked his clipboard as he pushed his glasses up his nose. “Yes, you already said that. Is there anything else?”

“Dragons and wolves the size of jumbo jets,” I replied. “It’s all in the report.”

“Yes. Yes.” He paced from one end of the room to the other. “Are you quite certain of this?”

“Doc, you sent me to see what was there. I’m just telling you what I found.”

“And what did you find again?”

“It’s in the report,” I said.

“Please, tell me again.”

I glanced at the mirror on the wall. No doubt, a team of doctors was watching us from the other side. But I wasn’t crazy.

“It’s Ragnarok, Doc. On the other side of death, it’s nothing but an endless, bloody battle between Odin and the forces of darkness. All day, every day. Brutal and gruesome and glorious war.”

“You understand why we’re concerned about this then?” asked the doctor. “When we first screened you for this assignment, you assured us you had no belief in the possibility of a post-mortem existence.”

“I didn’t.”

“But now you’ve come back, and you’re telling us that there is an endless battle involving antiquated gods that no one even believes in anymore.”

“Sorry, Doc. That’s just the way it is. Turns out everybody was wrong except the Vikings. They figured it out. The other side isn’t angels and fluffy clouds. It isn’t some next stage of higher existence. It’s just war.”

“Yes, but war for what purpose?”

“I didn’t get a chance to ask. I’m not sure there is a purpose. Other than to sate the bloodlust of the gods.”

“We’ll have to run the experiment again. We’ll send others.”

“You’ll get the same report.”

“Yes, most likely.”

“I’m not the first, am I?”

He didn’t answer, but his silence was all the answer I needed.

“They all say the same thing, don’t they?”

“More or less.”

I laughed. “Funny, isn’t it? All this time we’ve been wondering what happens . . . if anything even happens . . . after. Only to find out that the next world is even more screwed up than this one. We seek answers, a divine plan. It all ends up being about practice for killing each other and fighting monsters.”

“Yes.” The doctor smiled, but it was a hollow smile. “Amusing.”

“Do you think we should tell people? Do you think they want to know? I’m not sure I want to know. It changes things.”

He clicked his pen and scribbled on his notepad. “Tell me how it changes things.”

“Better yet, Doc. I can show you.”

A grabbed him by the collar and punched him in the face so hard, his eye popped out. Then I did it again two more times. Then I slammed his head onto the edge of a stainless steel table. His body dropped to the floor, spilling blood everywhere. It coated my hands and my shirt.

“Relax, Doc,” I said. “Dying in battle is looked upon with favor where you’re going.”

The door burst open, and a team of security guards ran in. They were covered in riot gear and armed to the teeth. The project had sent others before, and they came back with the horrible truth. Life wasn’t about anything other than dying in the most glorious way possible. Heaven was for warriors, and even those warriors would only end up in a dragon’s belly for all eternity once the gods were done with them.

Howling, I charged the guards. Their bullets ripped me apart. Death came as a welcome end to this illusion, and when I opened my eyes again, I stood on the fields of carnage.

Doctor Grant handed me a battle axe, and with a mad cry, we charged into the fray.

The Stupifying of Story

I understand that most people don’t actually care about story.  They might think they do, but it’s only in the broadest, most obvious terms.  It’s not such a surprise.  As a fiction writer, I’ve been thinking about story for a long time, and while I’ll agree that story and plot isn’t the most important part of telling a good story, it should be somewhat important.  Characters and memorable moments count for a hell of a lot, but if the story itself doesn’t hold together, shouldn’t that matter?  Not to most people.

That’d be fine if they understood that.  If someone tells me they don’t care about the story, then we’re free to move on.  Once the parameters of the debate are established, I’m fine with discussing it on those terms.  Instead, people most often equate plot (good and bad) with whatever elements of the story they like or dislike.  They pick and choose, based on whatever they’ve already decided, what works and what doesn’t work.  For most people, the definition of a plot hole is a part of the story they didn’t care for.

Story is so unimportant to people that we have had a string of non-story films that have nothing approaching story logic.  What is story logic?  It’s pretty dry, but it comes down to this.  Every scene in your story should have some relevance to the characters and / or plot.  Scenes should have consequences and connect, and what happens in Scene One should have some effect on not just Scene Two, but Scenes Three through Ten and so on.  For a surprising number of blockbusters, this just isn’t true anymore.

What’s important here is that I’m not talking about whether the story is good or not.  I’m speaking purely from a mechanical perspective.  It’s not the most glamorous element of storytelling, and once you understand how it works, it’s not that hard.  The exception is often found in “literary” fiction and non-genre, independent films, but putting aside those weird exceptions, it’s pretty simple stuff.

Which is why it’s so damned galling to me that it no longer seems to apply.  Major motion pictures by major studios are being released with such a disregard for the basics of storytelling that it’s mind-boggling to me that they continue to get away with it.  I get that people don’t care about this stuff, but there’s a point where it should matter.  Otherwise, every story is just a series of events with no purpose.

But moviemakers have become proficient at the appearance of purpose.  The current blockbuster model is an imitation of a good story without actually bothering with the story.  It is all just so superficial and empty.  There are exceptions, but those exceptions are often lumped together with broad disdain.  The Avengers has a solid story structure.  Every scene has relevance, and the overarching plot arc ties together.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier has a coherent plot.  Pacific Rim has one.

Star Trek: Into Darkness does not.  Godzilla does not.  Skyfall does not.

Since Godzilla is the hot film at the moment, let’s take a look at that.

Nothing in Godzilla has any relevance.  In the end, this is a story about a giant monster fighting other monsters, and nothing the humans do matter.  Some people have been arguing that this is a common problem in kaiju stories.  My response is that this is simply bullshit.  Even in the original Godzilla, more of a horror movie than an action flick, the central story revolves around a scientist as he debates whether to unleash a terrible weapon to save Japan from a rampaging monster.  Godzilla might lurk on the periphery of the story, but he’s still central to the story and the choices the human makes (to defeat the monster and sacrifice himself in the process) is the entire point of the story.

‘Zilla spend a lot of time with its human cast, all of whom have clear goals, relationships, and motivations.

In the Gamera, Guardian of the Universe trilogy, there is not just a plot arc for Gamera’s relationship with the humans in each film, there’s an arc to the trilogy itself.

Most kaiju films make the humans relevant in some way.  Heck, even Godzilla 2000, where the humans mostly exist to explain the plot and motivations of the kaijus, takes the time to create a relationship between these characters that makes them more than set dressing.

Godzilla ’14, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to know what to do with its characters.  It doesn’t seem to know what they should be doing, and it isn’t clear that they know why they’re doing anything either.  All of that takes a backseat to them appearing relevant without being relevant.  This is evident from its choice to include a character named Dr. Serizawa, named after the original scientist at the heart of the original Godzilla.  But where the original Serizawa was the heart of the struggle in the film, this Serizawa serves only to appear serious, make serious pronouncements, and not contribute to the plot in any way.  His actions have no bearing.  His character has no arc.  He could be removed entirely from the film and his absence would make the film shorter, but have no other effect.

That’s just bad plotting, folks.  No two ways about it.

Nothing any character does has any real consequence, and that might be acceptable if they had anything approaching a sensible character arc.  Ford Brody, our most prominent protagonist, wanders from scene to scene.  The military itself is neither hero nor obstacle in this battle of titans.  There are scenes where generals discuss blowing up the monsters, but it’s all empty chatter.  It’s never relevant to the actual story.

Here’s where the art of imitation reigns supreme.  Every kaiju flick is required to have a scene where the military discuss things.  So the movie has that scene.  That the scene is irrelevant is apparently unimportant.  It just has to have the scene.

Our hero has a tragic backstory where his family was torn apart by a monster attack because that’s required too.  But is it actually important to anything he does?  Does he swear revenge on this monster that destroyed his family once he discovers this?  Does he dedicate himself to destroying this monster to keep it from doing the same to any other family?  Does he take his father’s dying words to heart and fight his way back to his family to save them from the monsters’ rampage?  No.  He does none of that.  He just wanders from scene to scene like a puppet of the screenwriters.

Our hero has a family.  That family contributes nothing to the story, nor his own character arc.  It only exists to give him something to kiss before the credits roll.

This is basic storytelling, and it’s just not that hard to get right.  Or at least not get wrong.  But let’s assume that it’s irrelevant to this discussion and that Godzilla is simply a big, dumb blockbuster.  I’ve never found that to be a good defense, but, hey, it’s one I’ve heard often enough.  The film still doesn’t bring anything new to the table.  Of course, that’s probably why it works.  People like what they’ve seen before, and if there’s one thing Godzilla excels at, it’s looking exactly like the type of respectable Godzilla movie people are allowed to enjoy.  It even has Bryan Cranston acting dramatic because everyone knows that Bryan Cranston is the best actor ever (this week)!

We only need to compare this latest offering to the previous American ‘Zilla film to see what matters to the audience.  It’s not story.  It’s whether Godzilla looks like Godzilla.  It’s how melodramatic the acting is.  The illusion of a “serious” arc.  It’s entirely superficial, and I might even be okay with that in the right context.  But like most superficial people, this Godzilla is convinced it has something interesting to say.  And because it looks right, because it has the appearance of depth, it gets away with it.

Even “big, dumb blockbusters” should be held to a higher standard than this.  We can do better, and perhaps most importantly, we should certainly be asking for better than this.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

 

Fighting the Good Fight

One of my personal philosophies as an artist is to try not to make many enemies.  I don’t pick fights, and while I’ll write a negative review of something now and then, I’ll very rarely say something is outright terrible.  There are a lot of reasons for that, but chief among them is that I’m an obscure little writer with obscure little books in an obscure little corner of the internet.  Head-to-head against anything pop culture, I don’t have the muscle, popularity-wise, to win those battles.  Plus, it’s not for me to decide what’s good and bad.  We’re all different people with different emotional and storytelling needs.  No reason to get into pointless circular debates about whose needs are more valid.

I’m here to official announce an end to that policy.

I realized the other day that by choosing to withhold my stronger opinions (believe it or not) that I’m choosing to not take part in the larger cultural debate going on right now.  Not only does this limit what I can and can’t talk about, it’s also a retreat from the very thing I’m most invested in talking about.  Storytelling is my job.  By not discussing popular storytelling with honesty and sincerity and, yes, criticism, I’m conceding ground in the arena where I have chosen to work.  I thought it a matter of prudence, but not picking fights hasn’t given me any benefit.  I’m still an obscure writer, and, frankly, at this stage in my career, I can’t think of a reason I should give a damn about trying to be agreeable.  It hasn’t really worked.  It’s only allowed all the bullshit and nonsense that people spout to take center stage.

If you thought I had strong opinions before, you might want to brace yourself.

As you might have guessed, this is due to the most recent Godzilla film, a movie so startling uninteresting that watching it is almost like taking a nap.  After watching the dreary rebirth of James Bond, the empty explosions of Star Trek, the blandification of Robocop, the corruption of Superman, the final sacrifice of The King of the Monsters to the altar of dullness and mediocrity is just too much to bear.  Congratulations, popular culture.  You’ve broken me.  But I’ve put myself back together, and I’m coming out swinging.

Each of the above reboots are so terribly uninteresting, so poorly constructed, and such dreadful works that I don’t doubt for a moment that everyone would realize this if they didn’t have unearned goodwill attached to them simply by stealing it from much better ideas.  As a writer and as a (sorry to get pretentious here) artist, I’m really tired of watching people clapping blankly at logos and action figures.  We have become a culture devoted to brand loyalty, and while that’s always been true to some degree, it has never been capitalized on with such bald-faced abandon as it has of late.

Add to this that we’ve become a culture of “grown ups” who are too cool for our childish toys (but refusing to give them up) but determined to destroy anything fun about them.  Godzilla was the latest in a long line of hollow spectacles, created by people who are all style, no substance.  And it hurts me to say that, but damn it, it’s true.  Godzilla has the appearance of a sophisticated movie, but it isn’t sophisticated.  It’s just dull and remarkably determined to spend as little time with Godzilla as possible.  It’s an imitation of a good movie, and most people will be fooled by the imitation because they’ll never look beyond the surface.

Star Trek has become a generic action adventure in space where plotting and characterization take a back seat to artificial drama and science fiction so inconsistent in its rules and function that you have to wonder if a chimp with a short attention span wrote the script.

James Bond, far from evolving into a complex exploration of what it might mean to be basically a killer for hire, is instead about a guy who can’t do his job and feels bad the whole time NOT doing it.

Superman is a killer because the writers never thought how a disregard for life takes a “boring, invincible” character and only makes him more invincible.  But he does get to cry more.

The TMNT are giant, mutant, muscle monsters because bad writers with bad ideas were given something cool and unique and told to make it as generic as possible.

And not one interesting, memorable thing happens in an entire Godzilla movie.

It’s time for this to stop.  I don’t have any illusion that I’ll be the one to stop it, but I can at least talk about it, maybe get the ball rolling so that more influential and important people will take it and run.  The advantage I have in being an obscure little writer is that it can’t really hurt my career.   Even if it did, I’m not so sure I care anymore because a world where this sort of empty tripe is considered worthy of anything but disdain is not one where I expect to have much of a career at all.

So expect me to get downright inflammatory and enraged in this blog as time goes on.  I doubt I can stop a damned thing, but I’m not going down without a fight.  For a long time, I’ve ended these posts with the promise of fighting the good fight and writing the good write, but today is the day I start fighting for real.

It’s time to make some enemies.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

 

 

Godzilla, King of the Snoozers

Saw the new Godzilla today.  Short review:  I didn’t care for it.

It’s tempting to compare and contrast the film to other kaiju films, both recent and classic, but I reject that choice.  I think such comparisons are completely fair, but they also muddy the waters.  I could hold up classic Godzilla films, Pacific Rim, and (my personal favorite) the Gamera, Guardian of the Universe trilogy, and I could explain why each of these films are superior to this non-starter of a blockbuster, but I think Godzilla fails rather spectacularly on its own so there’s no need to get into such debates as “Who did it better?”

The short answer is that EVERYONE did it better.

Everyone.

I’m hard pressed to find a kaiju film that I find more uninteresting than this latest offering.  I could fall back to Godzilla’s Revenge, which is mostly a clip movie, or Godzilla versus the Sea Monster, which rank among my least favorite.  But even these films, for all their flaws, understood that I was there to see Godzilla.  Strangely, the movie bearing his title seems damned determine to hide its title character at every opportunity.  That might even work if the movie eventually had a payoff, but it doesn’t.

Before I get too deep into this review, a few disclaimers.

DISCLAIMER ONE:  It’s just one opinion.

Yes, I have a very negative opinion of this film.  You might not.  That does not make us mortal enemies.

DISCLAIMER TWO:  I am territorial.

Yes, Disclaimer One acknowledges that we are all different people with different tastes.  Nonetheless, as a lifelong kaiju fan, I have a lot of time and energy invested in the genre.  As such, I’m going to talk like I’m an expert.  I’m going to tell you why what I believe is right, and while you are certainly free to disagree, I will tell you that you’re wrong.  Because kaiju and Godzilla mean a hell of a lot to me.

Right there, I know a lot of you are going to say you like Godzilla too, but unless you can give me a rundown of the monsters in his universe, a synopsis of the various films, and an understanding of how all the different series fit together, it’s safe to say you’re a dabbler in the kaiju genre.  And that’s okay, but I’m here for deeply invested reasons.

If you’re looking for an argument, you need not read further.  I’m always up for a healthy discussion, but so far, there’s no argument that’s convinced me this is a good film.  It is an unremarkable blockbuster at best and a dreadful kaiju film at worst.  Maybe someone will come along and convince me otherwise.  Good luck with that.

DISCLAIMER THREE: It doesn’t offend me.

I’ve written a lot on some really bad movies the last few years.  I have a deep seething dislike for Star Trek: Into Darkness, Skyfall, and Tron: Legacy.  I am still morally repulsed by Man of Steel, a movie that was an actual serious blow to my faith in humanity.  I’m not saying that as a joke either.  I still get enraged when I think about the dragging through the mud of Superman as a concept and a character and how that film managed to strip every worthwhile element of Superman in favor of a generic carnage-fest that is more horrifying than any horror movie I’ve ever seen.

Godzilla, on the other hand, is just a dull, average movie.  It disappoints me, but it doesn’t enrage me.

With those points clear, let’s get to it.  How does Godzilla fail?

FAILURE ONE:  It’s a tease with no payoff.

Much has been made of the film’s deliberate coyness when it comes to Godzilla’s presence.  The movie is very slow to introduce our hero, and when it does, it often pulls away just as things get interesting.  This is a deliberate choice, and sometimes, it works.  There’s no reason to pull out the big guns immediately, and the traditional structure of such stories is to tease the audience.  I wasn’t irritated the first time the story turns away from Godzilla.  Or the second.  Or the third.  But by the fourth, my patience was nearing its end.  By the fifth, it became clear that the film simply wasn’t interested in Godzilla.  He wasn’t merely a supporting character in his own movie.  He was a distraction.  If the filmmakers could’ve inserted a faceless tornado in the middle of the proceedings, they would’ve been happy to.  Any indifferent natural disaster could be jammed into the kaiju hole in this plot, and it wouldn’t really make a damn bit of difference.

I equate this as the worst sort of failure.  Strangely, if the film had elected to just have Godzilla rampaging through the city, it might even have worked.  If the story was about people trying to survive as a monster walks among them, then Godzilla is a less interesting by design.  He’s an obstacle in such a story, not a character.  But this film chooses to cast him as some sort of savior figure, a heroic monster determined to defeat the villains.  As such, his conflict should be given some attention.

Imagine if The Avengers cut the scene every time our heroes were assembled.  Instead of watching the Hulk punch a space dragon, we’re treated to a view of a television watching that punch from a helicopter.  When Iron Man wrestled a nuke through a portal, we cut to a group of civilians staring up at the sky.  We’re told, through second and thirdhand sources, about the awesomeness that’s happening.  But we don’t ever get to see it.  Not really.

This is a movie where we get perhaps five or six solid punches from Godzilla captured in frame, front and center.  We see Godzilla charge his foes on multiple occasions.  We see monsters clash.  We never get to actually see the payoff though.  We know that somewhere out there, kaiju are engaged in titanic struggles, but this is never real.  It’s always at a distance, and because we never see it, Godzilla’s battle and triumph come across as merely an afterthought.  Godzilla wins.  Movie’s over.

I keep trying to create other genres where such a violation would be seen as interesting.  A martial arts flick where every time our hero gets into a fight, the scene ends.  A love story where every time the characters are about to demonstrate their affections, the film cuts to a scene of butterflies.  A space adventure that takes place entirely on earth, where the spaceship battles are always just out of frame.  This is the reason that EVERY OTHER KAIJU MOVIE EVER MADE is better than this one.

Granted, this is how we seem to like our stories now.  We’ve grown out of enjoyment for the fun elements and are all too eager to substitute the dull because we mistake it for sophistication.  This is why James Bond has lost his gadgets (and his competence), and Spider-Man runs around fighting vague villains with vague goals but also is sure to feel bad a lot so that we’re reminded it’s okay to enjoy this as “adults”.

But there should be a point when there is a reward.  Eventually, Godzilla should deliver a spectacular showdown.  It doesn’t.  I’m hard pressed to find a memorable moment for The King of the Monsters.  The movie attempts to deliver these moments now and then, and it only stumbles every time.  For me, the crowning moment of disappointment is when Godzilla first employs his atomic fire breath.  The movie dramatically unveils his glowing spines with an almost reverential grace.  It was at this moment that I was still ready to believe there was something here.  Then he spits out a little bit of blue butane flame, and his enemy doesn’t disintegrate or get blasted across the city.  No, the bad guy just shrieks and moans a little.

Like all great stories, memorable moments are what make or break a film.  The classics, even those films that are admittedly dated and silly, have something that’s worth remembering.  Every great Godzilla movie has a moment, many usually, where you can say this is WHY this film exists.  The culmination of the story, and everything that we’ve been working for.  When Godzilla kills the first MUTO, it’s so sudden and uninteresting that I honestly didn’t think it could be that simple.  One strike?  That’s it?  This is what I’ve been waiting for?

I’m hard-pressed to remember any interesting action between the kaiju in this flick.  Sure, Godzilla collapses at one point, looking exhausted, and I can only assume that he’s down because of the battle he’s taking part in.  But there’s no moment when you see that damage.  When Godzilla rises at the end of the film and heads off into the ocean, we’re supposed to feel some sense of triumph.  Yet he doesn’t seem to have any wounds, and his triumph took place almost entirely off screen except for a few final seconds we are privy too.

FAILURE TWO: Boring Monsters

I wasn’t expecting to see Gigan, the cyborg space chicken with a buzz saw in his chest, or Orga, evil alien parasite.  I knew that the MUTO’s were far less likely to be interesting characters because if they were truly memorable, they’d have been featured more in the advertising.  It isn’t surprising that a film so disinterested in its monsters creates such uninteresting monsters.

First, there’s Godzilla himself.  We don’t see him nearly enough to make him interesting, and when we do, it’s only fleeting glimpses.  It’s something of a standard in kaiju flicks for the monster to stand revealed in all his majesty, brimming with unstoppable power.  Here, Godzilla is a tail, a foot, a neck.  He’s a collection of parts and camera angles.  He never seems like anything more.

One side note:  In Japan, they consider the new design to be “fat”, and while I wasn’t sure I agreed, I realized I simply didn’t see it at first because the film is so reluctant to show Godzilla as a whole unit.  When we finally do get a long shot of the big guy (and the very, very end of the movie), he is indeed a round beast.  It doesn’t bother me because I don’t care how fat or not-fat Godzilla is.  It bothered me because it illustrated just how little there is of Godzilla in this movie.  We often hear people complaining about CGI and special effects substituting for character, and this couldn’t be more true.  Godzilla isn’t a character.  He’s a CGI shot, out of focus, to the side.  His motivations are unclear.  His attitude is blank.  Is he mad?  Is he merely following programming?  Does he care at all about killing these monsters, or is it just something he does because the writers were too lazy to give him an actual motivation?

Seriously, it’s not that hard.  Godzilla’s motivations are incredibly simple.  He’s here to kick ass.  Maybe it’s because he seeks out conflict (Godzilla 2000).  Maybe it’s because he’s looking for a safe place to lay his eggs (‘Zilla).  Maybe he hates Japan because he’s the embodiment of all the angry Japanese soldiers’ restless spirits (All-Out Monster Attack).  This movie doesn’t even give him that much.

Worse than Godzilla himself, there are the MUTOs.  There are two of them, but they aren’t given any distinction beside one being smaller and flying.  Their heads are incapable of portraying any semblance of expression.  Their bodies are gangly and uninspired, and they have nothing to convey how they might fight or behave.  Say what you will about King Ghidora, but the guy knows how to make an impression.  He charges into battle with his three heads, spitting lightning, and destroying everything in his wake.  Hell, even Mothra has her singing twins and tendency to die and respawn in cocoon form.  What do the MUTOs have going for them?  Nothing.  They’re blanks.  They have no distinct powers, no special abilities.  They don’t employ interesting tactics.  They seem to be rock stupid.

That stupidity is a strike against them as characters, but also makes their inevitable defeat all the more uninteresting.  Their lack of personality means that Godzilla (a virtual blank himself) is fighting against two other complete blanks.  It’s as exciting as watching three guys you don’t know pushing each other around for five minutes.  Except, again, you don’t actually get to watch.  You’re too busy looking in the other direction, watching people who are watching.

FAILURE THREE:  Almost nothing in this movie matters.

By treating Godzilla as a subplot, the movie ends up making us spend a lot of time with people and scenes that don’t add up to anything.  This isn’t a damning objection in itself.  Many a kaiju film (especially kaiju versus kaiju) have the human cast as filler between battle scenes, but they don’t mistake it for anything else.  For all the complaints ‘Zilla gets leveled at it, the human characters matter.  Their actions have a direct effect on the plot and to remove them would change the course of the story significantly.  Other movies like Godzilla 2000 have the humans there mostly to explain the complexities of the plot that monsters can’t really do without human help.

The humans are set dressing in this flick.  They accomplish squat.  The only possible exception is near the very end when our central human protagonist destroys the MUTOs’ eggs, thus possibly distracting one as they gang up on Godzilla.  This is subjective, and a better movie would make a stronger point about this.  But this is a movie where giving clear story beats is against the rules.

When the story takes time to make a scene seem important, it drops the ball consistently.  When a tram is attacked by a monster, our human protagonist is there to save a little boy.  There’s an awful lot of build up for that, which doesn’t add an ounce of drama to the scene.  As if we’d be perfectly fine with watching a boy (or anyone for that matter) fall to their doom if we didn’t spend five minutes with them beforehand.  And when the boy has served his purpose, he’s tossed away without much concern.

We see the female protagonist running to shelter.  She’s never in any danger.  To its credit, the film doesn’t seek to put our protagonist’s wife or son in contrived jeopardy, but then we’re left asking why the hell are we watching these people?  Even the protagonists IED expertise exists merely to  justify his presence in the final scene, but he doesn’t actually do anything interesting.  Anyone could’ve finished the job.

The movie is filler, and every time it’s almost NOT filler, it always turns away toward more filler.  It’s something of a cliche to watch nameless hordes of people fleeing from a rampaging monster, but that’s ultimately all this movie is.

Is Godzilla a terrible movie?  No.  It isn’t guilty of equating realism with sophistication (i.e. Skyfall).  It doesn’t have nonsensical, artificial conflict and contradictory plotting simply in the service of false drama (i.e. Into Darkness).  It isn’t a corruption of character (Man of Steel) or concept (Tron: Legacy).  It is chiefly guilty of being an empty confectionery made by people who really should know better.  It’s got talent behind it, but no soul.  And that’s a real shame, but not terribly surprising.

But it didn’t have to be so damned determine to be boring about it.  It didn’t need to take the King of the Monsters, a cinematic icon, and create the most bland, generic version of him to do so.

Welcome to the world of Extruded Movie Product.  Hope you enjoy it more than I do.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Covered

It’s time to dip into the A. Lee Martinez Action Force mailbag once again.  If you have a question, comment, or compliment you want to send my way, you can e-mail me at HIPSTERCTHULHU@HOTMAIL.COM.  All e-mails will be read, and some will even be responded to if you’re very, very lucky.  Or if I’m really bored, which happens more than you might imagine.

Charlie asks: I was perusing your author page on GoodReads.com and noticed the huge differences in the covers of your books between the English and German editions.  This got me to thinking that, as author’s have little control over cover art what your thoughts were about the covers to your various books (in any language).  Any favorites, pleasant surprises?  Unpleasant surprises?  You’re right, Charlie.  As a writer, I don’t have much control over what my covers look like.  Nor do I believe I really should have much control.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned from checking out self-published book covers, it’s that cover design is a specific skillset.  Just because you wrote a book that doesn’t mean you know the best way to package or market that book.  After a decade in this job, I can say I don’t really “get” cover design.  I don’t get what people like.  I don’t get why they like it.  And I don’t know what catches people’s eye. Something like the cover for Monster, with its bright yellow tone, is bound to draw a passing person’s attention.  Bright colors stand out.  Not terribly complicated or difficult to understand.  But if it was simple as that, every color would be a single bright color, and then the cover that wasn’t would be the one to draw attention.  So a good cover should stand out from the crowd, but the crowd will naturally gravitate toward successful covers, making it a constantly evolving process. Just take a look at your favorite genre.  You will see a heck of a lot of copycatting going on.  Part of this is necessity.  If you want people to realize you’re book is like other popular books, brand it in a similar manner by imitating the cover.  That’s why there are so many urban fantasy novels with kickass sexy heroines posed on the cover art.  It becomes a cliche, but it also works.  Until it doesn’t work.  Every acceptable cover choice eventually becomes undesirable through imitation. Fantasy fiction covers were once filled with dragons and bare-chested barbarians.  Now putting those things on the cover is the surest way to not be taken seriously.  Strangely, romance fiction is one of the strongest genres, and it revels in its cliches.  Perhaps originality is overrated.  Perhaps the best thing to do is to find what works and sticks with it. But you’re question is How do I feel about my covers? Those feelings are mixed.  Some I love.  Others I find bland.  I don’t hate many of the covers, but there are some I’m not a fan of. My chief complaint with most of my covers is that they don’t have a lot to do with what’s actually going on in the book.  Especially once I moved to Orbit, who decided (not without good reason) to try and market me alongside Christopher Moore.  If you put an A. Lee Martinez cover beside a Christopher Moore cover, you’ll see the Moore influence.  I’m not a huge fan of these types of covers as they all seem a bit bland to me.  But then again, that’s the style that seems prevalent at the time.  It’s minimalist, and it seems to work for a lot of people.  It isn’t always bad.  I love the covers  for Chasing the Moon and Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest, both of which use minimalistic art to good effect.  Regardless, it’s the way covers are now, and I’m fine with that. But I almost always prefer the German covers.  They tend to have more life to them.  Even when they have nothing to do with the book (A Nameless Witch), they’re still energetic and colorful.  I don’t know enough about the German market to say if that’s the general style, and I don’t have much to compare them to, but they’re just more eyecatching to me.  They’re full of personality.  My American covers can’t compete in that category. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about covers.  I don’t control them, and I don’t want to control them.  At this stage, I’m not usually surprised because I don’t give it enough thought to be surprised, one way or the other.  I trust the publisher’s marketing and art department to know what they’re doing, and I’m not going to second guess them.  But since you asked: FAVORITE COVER: The Automatic Detective is hands down my favorite cover of all because it manages to capture the feeling and style of the book so well.  One glance tells you that it’s a retro sci fi crime noir tale.  It’s also a solid piece of art in itself, and one I’d be happy to hang on my wall. LEAST FAVORITE COVER: In the Company of Ogres wins this one easily.  I just don’t like much about this one.  It’s bland, dull, and the ogre on the cover looks nothing like I imagined my ogres to be.  He’s also not doing anything interesting on the cover.  Just standing there like a lump. MOST DISAPPOINTING COVER: The first printing of the hardcover of Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain had the tagline “With great power, comes great hilarity”, and I hated that.  I hated it because I don’t like being labeled a funny writer (though I know that’s a battle I lost long ago).  I hated it because it promises not just a funny book, but a hilarious book.  That’s a tall order.  And I hated it because it’s not even the right use of the phrase because Emperor Mollusk has nothing in common with Spider-Man.  Later printings corrected it to “He lives, He Squirms, He Conquers” and I’m much happier with that. LEAST SURPRISING COVER: Chasing the Moon depicts some tentacles sweeping up to eat the moon.  When writing the story, I imagined something similar.  In my head, there wasn’t a fork, but instead a bite taken out of the moon.  This cover (one of my favorites) was pretty much everything I expected. MOST SURPRISING COVER: Probably goes to In the Company of Ogres again because I really liked the cover on my first novel, Gil’s All Fright Diner.  I wasn’t expecting to.  So when the Ogres cover came along, I wasn’t ready for how disappointed I was with it. STRANGEST FOREIGN EDITION COVER: This is a tricky one.  The Italian language edition of Gil’s All Fright Diner has an eye staring back at the view and could easily be mistaken for a straight up horror novel cover.  But the Russian version of Gil’s is a touch weirder.  It has a cowboy on it.  Probably makes sense when a Russian audience thinks of the American Southwest, but still a little odd. (Oh, and just for the record, Gil’s doesn’t take place in any specific state, but it’s far more likely to be set in Arizona than Texas.  Just FYI.) Thanks for the question, Charlie.  If you have a question for the Action Force Clubhouse, send ‘em my way.  You know where to find me. Keelah Se’lai Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write, LEE

Meaningless

This blog doesn’t matter.

This blog doesn’t do much.  It doesn’t reach a lot of people, and those people it does reach are almost all fans of mine already.  I don’t dislike posting these things, but I don’t fool myself into believing it accomplishes much.  It doesn’t.  It doesn’t matter because nearly all of social media, in its multitude of forms, doesn’t matter.  How many words are typed onto the internet, how many idle thoughts, personal revelations, random musings, etc. are shared in an average hour, and how many of them really mean anything?

For all the changes the internet age has bestowed upon us, it hasn’t changed certain immutable facts.  Most human communication doesn’t add up to much, and we are all rallied around a few powerful voices.  Release a photo of the new Star Wars cast, and everyone will see it.  “Leak” a rumor about the latest twist in a TV show and watch as the world scrambles to decode it, eager to engage in meaningless debates about something designed to provoke meaningless debates in service of keeping people interested.  These are the new power brokers (same as the old), and we happily play along, oblivious to our own puppet strings.

I’m just a guy who writes books, and I don’t imagine a lot of people are randomly dropping by here.  Odds are good that you’ve read one or two of my books already, and that you like me enough to stop by and see if I have anything interesting to say this week.  Happy to have you.  Happy to share some thoughts.  But it doesn’t accomplish a heck of a lot beyond reminding you that I continue to exist.

I’ve considered how to reach a wider audience, and the hard truth is that I can’t do it.  I can post Youtube videos, but there are already millions of talented people doing that.  Those people aren’t getting noticed either.  I can blog.  I can Tweet.  I can broadcast my voice in a hundred different ways, and nobody will notice.  That’s not a call for sympathy.  It’s a struggle we all face here in this electronic realm.  We jump into the social media ocean and hope we don’t drown.

In the real world, I am fortunate enough to have collected family and friends that all listen to me.  I’m not on social media trying to scratch that itch.  I’m here, strictly, as a writer trying to get noticed.  It ain’t easy.  Statistically, among the factors that lead to people buying books, social media is basically irrelevant.  We all want that platform from which to broadcast our wisdom with the hopes that the whole world is listening (or at least a significant portion of it).  For all the electronic chatter, we are still physically social creatures.  A smile and a kind word from a stranger can often mean more than a long string of texts with a close friend.

The old world isn’t dead.  The future hasn’t changed things nearly as much as we like to believe.  I’m not one of those people who thinks social media is useless.  I rather like it.  It’s great for keeping up with real world friends who you don’t see as often as you’d like.  It’s handy for reminding fans and readers that I exist.  Put me down as a fan of the internet when it helps bring out the best in us, and as a guy who accepts that it sometimes brings out the worst too as a price for that.  But it hasn’t replaced anything important.  Not yet anyway.

As a writer, I need you to help spread the word.  A single recommendation is worth a thousand blog posts, and all your help is always appreciated more than you’ll ever know.  This isn’t about me though.  It’s become something of a cliche at this point to say that we’ve become disconnected.  We have, but I don’t think it’s any more than we ever have been.  We are both incredibly social creatures but also, shy and confrontational and easily confused.  We tend to stick with what we know, and we risk only as much of ourselves as is required to get by.  We play it safe, and whether it’s finding those comforting corners of the internet where everyone already agrees with us or hiding away from the real world for our fears of being rejected, we accidentally and intentionally put up walls.

This blog doesn’t matter, but I do.  And so do you.  I know it’s only the words of a stranger who writes weird stories about space squids and vampires, but for what it’s worth, there they are.

Now stop reading this and go find someone in the real world to talk to.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE