Sunday, July 09, 2006
A Creepy Special Rant: Bryan Singer
OK, look....
The comic-reading world has gone ga-ga over Bryan Singer for "everything he's done for the comic movie genre."Don't credit the director of a movie with the rise of an entire genre, it's not his doing. You're just thrilled that comics are doing so well in the theaters right now... and rightly so... but don't be laying credit for that at the feet of someone whose big achievement here was essentially being in the right place at the right time. The comic genre was already on its way up when Singer became director of the first X-movie. Look you clowns, someone was going to direct that thing. The ball was already rolling too fast to stop. The producers had committed themselves to doing it and putting an assload of cash behind it. Many many directors could have produced an equally half-assed movie. And X-Men 1 was indeed half-assed. Beginning here, and with every super-movie he did afterwards, Singer's message seemed to be "I can do this better than the people who made it popular, so I'm going to." Witness the vast liberties taken with the X-Men's history and characters. It can't be denied and it can't be excused. The original X-Men cast... something that's fairly important and not casually brushed aside... was Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Beast, Angel, and Iceman. They were the first group Charles Xavier put together. And in the comic book world, they're all adults now with long, detailed histories of their own. But not in Bryan Singer's world. Bryan has decided that Iceman is now just a young student in Xavier's school, and we're not even going to get around to discovering Angel for 2 more movies. Singer obviously read a little about the characters themselves, and decide to weave his own tale using them.... basically because he had to use them. I'm sure somewhere in the back of his head he wished he didn't have to be saddled with these characters and could just create his own from whole cloth, perhaps stitching the recognizable names onto them (which was very close to what he did). He has no respect for the established mythos and no business writing/directing it. Bryan! It's ok to use the original story as written! We've waited for years to see what it would look like in movie form! You're not spoiling anything for anyone here by giving them something they're familiar with! Superman Returns is the best thing that could have happened to X-Men 3. After Bryan dumped X-3 to do SR, the replacement producers brought more respect to the table and it really showed in the results. I liked X-3 much more than its predecessors.
People's Exhibit B: Superman Returns. ...And I'm going to give away a little of the movie's story here (though not the big thing), so if you'd rather be surprised, skip down a paragraph. First, the smaller gripe which displays my issues perfectly. All of you go ahead and strap yourselves in for what is surely going to sound like an irate comic fanboy moment, or just close the page now. I don't give a shit. It's a serious, valid complain when you talk about making respectful comicbook movies. Let's talk about Kryptonite, shall we? Here's how it works... When exposed to kryptonite, Superman becomes weak and begins to die. Period. That's it. There's no "pushing past the pain" which was so flagrantly shown in SR. First we see Superman finding himself standing on a kryptonite-laced island and unexpectedly getting his ass kicked by Lex Luthor. Then we see him pushing the entire island into space while the spooky green kryptonite crystals are literally growing menacingly towards his face. Nope, sorry Bryan, no force of will is going to let him push past this vulnerability. The second he's exposed to that much of it, it's pancake time. That's the rule. And I was all prepared to buy it too, when it seemed like he'd dug far beneath the artificial island into the bedrock below to shield himself while he hauled it all into space. But then you had to go for the rule-breaking "wouldn't it be cool!" moment and have all the rocks fall away around him exposing the kryptonite, which shattered things. And then there's that big huge fucking spoiler I can't really talk about because it's such a bombshell in the movie. No writer with any respect for the Superman comic would ever throw something like that into something as important as the long awaited Superman movie no matter how high the self-proclaimed "wouldn't it be cool!" factor is. Some things you just don't do. This is one of them.
The other issue I have with Singer is how extremely superficial his writing and directing are. Everything is about look and feel and nothing is about substance. Bryan.... dude!.... Yes, comic books are a graphic genre, but it's not all about the visuals! There's significant substance to the stories which only someone who's faithfully read them for years can appreciate enough to want to respect in making a movie. You obviously haven't and don't. The visuals may grab us, but it's the stories that keep us reading these things for years and years. It's all facade and window dressing in Singer's super-movies... producing cool visuals and "moments" but with little depth. Even when you decided to drop [giant huge spoiler] into Superman Returns and committed yourself to using it for one grand (HA! Puns!) shocking moment, you still backed immediately away from it, fearing to use it again where it now would logically have to be used, and maintaining a "maybe yes, maybe no" feel even after the cat has been dumped uncerimoniously from the bag. Give us stories, Bryan, not "moments." We deserve complete movies not a series of spectacular and titilating visuals strung together on an afterthought plot thread.
Some writer/directors have the ability to make movies, and some have the ability to tell stories. Bryan is, sadly, the former thrust into a genre (that only real fans realize) demands the latter. I believe Bryan wants to make a good movie. He just doesn't want to make a good comic book movie. Please, Bryan... for the sake of the genre... go back to movies you can have more freedom with and leave the comic books to the real fans. ¶ 4:50 PM
The comic-reading world has gone ga-ga over Bryan Singer for "everything he's done for the comic movie genre."Don't credit the director of a movie with the rise of an entire genre, it's not his doing. You're just thrilled that comics are doing so well in the theaters right now... and rightly so... but don't be laying credit for that at the feet of someone whose big achievement here was essentially being in the right place at the right time. The comic genre was already on its way up when Singer became director of the first X-movie. Look you clowns, someone was going to direct that thing. The ball was already rolling too fast to stop. The producers had committed themselves to doing it and putting an assload of cash behind it. Many many directors could have produced an equally half-assed movie. And X-Men 1 was indeed half-assed. Beginning here, and with every super-movie he did afterwards, Singer's message seemed to be "I can do this better than the people who made it popular, so I'm going to." Witness the vast liberties taken with the X-Men's history and characters. It can't be denied and it can't be excused. The original X-Men cast... something that's fairly important and not casually brushed aside... was Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Beast, Angel, and Iceman. They were the first group Charles Xavier put together. And in the comic book world, they're all adults now with long, detailed histories of their own. But not in Bryan Singer's world. Bryan has decided that Iceman is now just a young student in Xavier's school, and we're not even going to get around to discovering Angel for 2 more movies. Singer obviously read a little about the characters themselves, and decide to weave his own tale using them.... basically because he had to use them. I'm sure somewhere in the back of his head he wished he didn't have to be saddled with these characters and could just create his own from whole cloth, perhaps stitching the recognizable names onto them (which was very close to what he did). He has no respect for the established mythos and no business writing/directing it. Bryan! It's ok to use the original story as written! We've waited for years to see what it would look like in movie form! You're not spoiling anything for anyone here by giving them something they're familiar with! Superman Returns is the best thing that could have happened to X-Men 3. After Bryan dumped X-3 to do SR, the replacement producers brought more respect to the table and it really showed in the results. I liked X-3 much more than its predecessors.
People's Exhibit B: Superman Returns. ...And I'm going to give away a little of the movie's story here (though not the big thing), so if you'd rather be surprised, skip down a paragraph. First, the smaller gripe which displays my issues perfectly. All of you go ahead and strap yourselves in for what is surely going to sound like an irate comic fanboy moment, or just close the page now. I don't give a shit. It's a serious, valid complain when you talk about making respectful comicbook movies. Let's talk about Kryptonite, shall we? Here's how it works... When exposed to kryptonite, Superman becomes weak and begins to die. Period. That's it. There's no "pushing past the pain" which was so flagrantly shown in SR. First we see Superman finding himself standing on a kryptonite-laced island and unexpectedly getting his ass kicked by Lex Luthor. Then we see him pushing the entire island into space while the spooky green kryptonite crystals are literally growing menacingly towards his face. Nope, sorry Bryan, no force of will is going to let him push past this vulnerability. The second he's exposed to that much of it, it's pancake time. That's the rule. And I was all prepared to buy it too, when it seemed like he'd dug far beneath the artificial island into the bedrock below to shield himself while he hauled it all into space. But then you had to go for the rule-breaking "wouldn't it be cool!" moment and have all the rocks fall away around him exposing the kryptonite, which shattered things. And then there's that big huge fucking spoiler I can't really talk about because it's such a bombshell in the movie. No writer with any respect for the Superman comic would ever throw something like that into something as important as the long awaited Superman movie no matter how high the self-proclaimed "wouldn't it be cool!" factor is. Some things you just don't do. This is one of them.
The other issue I have with Singer is how extremely superficial his writing and directing are. Everything is about look and feel and nothing is about substance. Bryan.... dude!.... Yes, comic books are a graphic genre, but it's not all about the visuals! There's significant substance to the stories which only someone who's faithfully read them for years can appreciate enough to want to respect in making a movie. You obviously haven't and don't. The visuals may grab us, but it's the stories that keep us reading these things for years and years. It's all facade and window dressing in Singer's super-movies... producing cool visuals and "moments" but with little depth. Even when you decided to drop [giant huge spoiler] into Superman Returns and committed yourself to using it for one grand (HA! Puns!) shocking moment, you still backed immediately away from it, fearing to use it again where it now would logically have to be used, and maintaining a "maybe yes, maybe no" feel even after the cat has been dumped uncerimoniously from the bag. Give us stories, Bryan, not "moments." We deserve complete movies not a series of spectacular and titilating visuals strung together on an afterthought plot thread.
Some writer/directors have the ability to make movies, and some have the ability to tell stories. Bryan is, sadly, the former thrust into a genre (that only real fans realize) demands the latter. I believe Bryan wants to make a good movie. He just doesn't want to make a good comic book movie. Please, Bryan... for the sake of the genre... go back to movies you can have more freedom with and leave the comic books to the real fans. ¶ 4:50 PM
