(FYI: Spoilers, obviously.)

So… yeah. It’s okay. It really doesn’t deserve the critical beating it’s taking; it’s certainly more entertaining than, say, Daredevil (which has a Rottentomatoes score nearly double that of Green Lantern) or Ghost Rider (three percent higher) or Spider-Man 3 (forty percent higher). Ryan Reynolds gives a strong performance, as expected; Mark Strong is a very good Sinestro (despite his disappointing amount of screen time), Geoffrey Rush is simply charming as the voice of Tomar-Re (making him a clear audience favorite), the effects look much better than they did in the trailer, and the direction and editing is as professional as one would expect from Martin Campbell, who makes easy-to-follow-with-your-eyes action movies and was largely the reason The Mask of Zorro was as good as it was.

But it’s not especially good either, and I think the reason it’s getting such a critical drubbing is because instinctively we all recognize one thing: Green Lantern is, from a writer’s perspective, slow-pitch softball. Of all the DC heroes, the only superhero with an origin story that lends itself to film so smoothly is Batman – even Superman doesn’t have as simple and easy-to-write an origin story as Green Lantern does (because Superman’s powers are part of who he is rather than something that happens to him, which makes all the difference in the world). Guy gets ring, guy is exposed to wider universe because of ring, guy has adventure with ring. Done.

But Green Lantern isn’t happy to play at that level; instead, it makes this movie about Hal Jordan overcoming his fear in order to save the day, which is terminally lame. Quick, count the number of times Indiana Jones expresses self-doubt in Raiders of the Lost Ark – that’s the level we’re playing at here. Seeing Hal whining onscreen about how he’s not brave enough (and make no mistake, this is the greater part of the movie we’re talking about here) doesn’t make him relatable; it makes him a pussy. People have to deal with all kinds of real-world crap: cancer, unemployment, having cancer while being unemployed, whatever. Hal Jordan has a magic fucking wishing-ring and watching him complain about it takes the audience out of the movie, because nobody in the world thinks “yeah, if I had a magic wishing-ring and got to fly through space, I would totally freak out like a loser wimp.”

And beyond that, the movie is simply stupid in a number of ways, most of them tied to Parallax being the movie’s villain. (In the movie, he’s a former Guardian who decided to try out the energy of fear as a weapon and was corrupted by it.) Before the movie begins, Abin Sur traps Parallax in “the hidden sector” – in a prison that only takes some folks stumbling on it by accident for Parallax to escape, so apparently Abin Sur was kind of stupid, I guess. The entire movie hinges on the Green Lanterns and the Guardians not realizing that you can overcome fear, so having Hal Jordan come in and lecture these immortal beings about a concept a third-grader could explain is just silly. And the post-credit reveal (Sinestro donning the Fear Ring and getting his Sinestro Corps costume) is similarly terrible, because the entire movie has negated the point of Sinestro doing that in the first place: he wanted to use the Fear Ring because he was afraid standard Green Lantern rings couldn’t handle Parallax, but this comes after Hal smokes Parallax, so… why is Sinestro doing this?

(The movie also has a lot of Explainer’s Disease, which makes sense given that Geoff Johns was so involved in it. The entire concept of the Green Lantern Corps, Oa, and so forth is explained in a voiceover at the beginning of the film, which takes all the Green Lantern stuff and makes it blase by explaining it a second time for Hal’s benefit. Show, don’t tell – how is this hard?)

Anyway. It’s not bad, although the 3D version is a complete waste of time. It’s just not great, and this one, especially with the talent involved, definitely had the capacity to be great. That’s the fault of the script and nothing else.

Ghostbusters: No matter how big and wild and crazy and wonderful a job sounds, it’s probably just a job to the people who do it.

Night of the Living Dead: The biggest threat in any crisis isn’t whatever’s going wrong, it’s the stupid ways people react to it.

Up: What’s important in life isn’t whether you achieve what you set out to do, it’s whether the things you did were worth doing.

Memento: Revenge is an ultimately hollow and meaningless pursuit that makes you into a monster.

The Limey: It still beats not getting revenge.

Star Wars: Adventure reveals people’s hidden talents.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie: If you’re stuck in a bad situation, it helps if you can keep your sense of humor.

Labyrinth: If you make a mistake, you have a responsibility to make it right no matter how hard it is.

Logan’s Run: It’s easy not to care about a problem until it becomes your problem too.

Blade Runner: Anyone who tries to divide the world into “us” and “them” is probably trying to justify the terrible things they do to people.

The Little Mermaid: You have to let your kids grow up, even if it means they make some really dumb mistakes.

The Wicker Man: The protections of civilization do not extend beyond civilization’s boundaries, and you forget that at your own peril.

The Ring: Just because bad things happened to someone does not automatically make them worthy of your sympathy.

The Princess Bride: Love is worth everything you have to go through for it.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Obsession can be a very dangerous thing. (Actually, this could be the ultimate message of just about every story ever.)

Aliens: Imperialism has consequences.

Spider-Man: Being a hero requires sacrificing your own personal happiness.

Donnie Darko: Being a hero requires sacrificing your own personal happiness.

Pulp Fiction: The path of wickedness might be glamorous, but it’s ultimately poisonous and destructive.

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Part of growing up is dealing with the crazy fucked-up world your parents left for you.

The Birds: Sometimes bad shit just happens and all you can do is deal with it.

The Wedding Banquet: Your parents are always going to be smarter than you are.

Doctor Strangelove: People in positions of authority are no less likely to be crazy and/or stupid than the rest of us; in fact, they’re probably moreso.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Greed and selfishness are ultimately the root cause of all of society’s problems, even the ones that seem minor and unconnected.

Transformers: As long as you cram enough giant fighting robots that turn into cars and planes into your movie, it doesn’t have to mean a goddamn thing.

Actually, she’s almost five and a half, now. And she loves superheroes. In the mornings, on the way to school, she is frequently Batgirl who changes into Spider-Man Girl who is, in turn, secretly Green Lantern, and that’s when she’s not being Violet and assigning members of the family their identities as Mister Incredible, Dash, Elastigirl, and “the nice Syndrome”. (There was a point, I think, where she watched ‘The Incredibles’ every day for a solid month.) And so when she told me she wanted to watch ‘Spider-Man 2’, I wasn’t really a bit surprised.

But here’s the funny thing about what everyone considers the best of the Spider-Man trilogy…she couldn’t finish it. She didn’t even get halfway through before she said, “Daddy John, I don’t think I want to finish this,” and we swapped DVDs to ‘A Bug’s Life’ instead. And when she did? I wasn’t a bit surprised then, either. Because while it does do a lot right, it’s only when you watch it with a little kid that you notice…

1. It takes a long time to get going. After the great opening sequence where Spidey tries to deliver a pizza, which held her attention pretty well, there’s a long stretch of wandering around and hearing about what a failure Peter Parker is. We don’t even see Otto Octavius until twenty minutes in, and he doesn’t become a villain until a little over the forty-minute mark. To an adult who sympathizes with Peter’s struggle at juggling all the different elements of his life, there’s a lot of compelling stuff going on. My daughter? She was asking, “Where did Spider-Man go?” a lot. Which reminds me…

2. There’s not much Spider-Man in it. Admittedly, part of this is because she didn’t stick with it through to the end, where there are a couple of big Spidey set-pieces…but again, this is a kid. Time dilates when you’re five and watching an Amazing Spider-Man movie and all you keep getting is people standing around and talking. This movie is front-loaded with people having conversations about money, grades and emotional commitment, three things guaranteed not to be nearly as interesting as the prospect of Spider-Man fighting Doctor Octopus. Generally, the second movie of a superhero series is a lot more exciting because they’ve gotten all the origin stuff out of the way and can get straight to the action, but ‘Spider-Man 2’ spends just as long on set-up as the first movie did. And worse…

3. It’s repetitive as all hell. The movie opens with Aasif Mandvi telling Peter that he’s coming off as sloppy and irresponsible, and Peter knows but can’t say that it’s because he’s trying to be Spider-Man on top of everything else. This is followed, immediately, by Jameson telling Peter that he’s coming off as sloppy and irresponsible, and Peter knows but can’t say that it’s because he’s trying to be Spider-Man on top of everything else. We then get Curt Connors, Mary Jane, Otto Octavius and Peter’s landlord all chiming in on the same theme. (I’ve never watched the deleted scenes for this film. Presumably, it features Betty Brant, Robbie, Aunt May, Harry Osborn, and that guy in the elevator all explaining to Peter what a loser he is.) Oh, yeah, and…

4. It makes Spider-Man out to be a total loser. This is something that it’s hard to blame Sam Raimi for completely. He’s working in a different medium. A movie doesn’t have time to do just a little bit of Peter’s personal life here and there and develop a theme; if they want to show that it’s hard to balance Peter Parker’s life with Spider-Man’s, they only have two hours to fit it in along with a whole plot about a supervillain, too. Even so, I think the movie misunderstands the point of the Spider-Man series. It’s not that being Spider-Man and Peter Parker is hard, it’s that being Spider-Man and Peter Parker is hard but Peter manages anyway. The original “Spider-Man No More!” storyline wasn’t about Peter giving up being Spider-Man; it was about Peter resolving to give up Spider-Man and failing completely because the first time he saw someone in danger, he couldn’t stop himself from helping out. (Something the movie completely botches, sorry.) Peter has trouble making rent, he misses the occasional date, his grades could be better, but he doesn’t totally fail at life. Movie Spidey spends a lot of time wearing his “but! but I! but!” face and getting chewed out.

So while it does have a 93% fresh rating on the Rotten Tomato meter, ‘Spider-Man 2’ completely failed the “Can it enthrall my daughter?” test. (As opposed to the first ‘Spider-Man’ movie, which she called “the best movie ever.” This apparently supplants her previous “best movie ever”, ‘Toy Story 3’.) Now of course, some of you will point out that Sam Raimi wasn’t making that movie for kids, that he was making a serious and mature Spider-Man film for grown-ups and I have no business showing it to a little kid and expecting her to be entertained…but before you do, take just one minute to think about the implications of trying to argue that kids should have no right to watch a Spider-Man movie and be entertained by it. Okay? Okay.

If you can get past January Jones’ horrible Emma Frost, this is the best of the X-Men movies; if you can’t, it still is.

One of the perks of this gig is that now when I have a lengthy response to an MGK.com post I can just post it here.  Convenient!

Truth be told, I knew I was going to have to challenge Bird on this matter even before yesterday’s post, because the other day he was complaining about Green Lantern’s mask.  I don’t see the problem, seeing as:

1. They decided to make a Green Lantern movie.
2. Green Lantern wears a mask.
3. They used the same mask in the movie.

To me complaining about the mask is like arguing that there shouldn’t be a monkey in Speed Racer.  You can debate the merits of Speed Racer as a film, but of course there was going to be a monkey in it, because it’s frigging Speed Racer.

Anyway, I think my liege raises valid concerns about comic-book movie adaptations becoming overly faithful to the source material, at the expense of presenting new ideas.  I just don’t think those concerns are nearly as big a problem as the alternative.

Bird offered some fine examples of Richard Donner, Tim Burton, and Christopher Nolan introducing concepts in their movies that are now gospel in the Superman and Batman mythoi.  That’s great when you can get it, but it cuts both ways.  Donner’s vision of Superman was so influential that it’s become difficult for filmmakers to think of Superman in any other way.  (Coming soon, Superman fights General Zod!  Again!)  Joel Schumacher’s Batman basically ensured that nobody else’s Batman would be in a movie for eight years.  Tim Story presented a groundbreaking new take on Doctor Doom wherein he didn’t use anything anybody ever liked about Doctor Doom.  And so on.

These decisions matter because they have a lot riding on them.  Consider the perspective of a comics fan who dreams of seeing the next big superhero movie.  You wait for years, perhaps decades, for your favorite hero to emerge from development hell.  At last work on the film starts and suddenly Hollywood is casually dismissing heretofore unquestioned truths about the property.  The people working on the project talk about the character and the comics in the past tense, like they’re relics from the 1950s that nobody cared about until now.  You whine on the internet and everybody calls you a geek for even caring so much.  Finally the movie comes out and you just have to make do and hope it doesn’t suck.  Because if they got it wrong, that’s it–you might get a reboot several years later (Incredible Hulk), or maybe nothing at all (Constantine 2: Yeah Right).

I don’t mean to overdramatize the unwarranted entitlement of fanboys, but you can see why they have a lot more at stake in a particular comic book film than anybody who’s making it.  For the mainstream, superhero movies are a dime a dozen, but each hero has fans who consider him their personal Superman, and they demand their own personal Superman: The Movie.  For me that was Steel, so as you might imagine I’m not surprised that the hardcore base prizes loyalty to the comics canon above all else.  By now it’s an easy choice–everybody can generally agree upon the canon (that’s why they call it “canon”) and nobody knows what kind of stupid crap the director is going to conjure up because he’s never read a comic book in his life.

None of this is to say that I want comic book movies to be 1:1 adaptations.  I figured that out when I watched Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four and noticed a) it was astonishingly close to the comics and b) it sucked sour frog ass.  So yes, Filmmakers need to have the room to, y’know, make films and all that. Nevertheless, if I have to choose between a faithful movie like Thor and something more innovative like Spider-Man 3, I’m going to take the safer bet.  In a perfect world, I’d have a third option that is both an awesome movie and an acceptable adaptation, but I won’t hold my breath on Steel Returns.

So Thor is… pretty good, all things considered. And this comes from someone who is avowedly not a fan of Thor comics, so for once I was approaching this more as a general moviegoer than somebody with the Fuck Yeah _____ t-shirt on. It has decent performances, fun enough action, some pretty decent dialogue and plot, gorgeous visuals and solid editing. It was a perfectly decent superhero movie.

That having been said – some critics have accused it of being bloodless or soulless, and although I don’t agree with them I can see where they’re coming from, because Thor really toes a line that’s been bothering me more and more vis-a-vis superhero movies. Thor in many ways feels like a different sort of exercise than what moviegoing should be like: what bothers me, however, isn’t the “this is the obvious Piece X in the set of pieces to make the Avengers movie happen” aspect of the film (which is certainly prevalent).

What bothers me about Thor is that, although it doesn’t quite cross the line, it definitely comes right up to it in that Thor feels like the balance between “let’s make a really good and faithful adaptation of some comics that were good” and “let’s make a good movie.”

When I talk about this I’m not talking about something like Watchmen, which is a slavish imitation of the original comics and way way over the line. That’s certainly an example of the problem, but a hyperbolic one. What I’m talking about instead is that Marvel’s movies – and looking at Green Lantern it appears DC is following the trend – have started to get a really slick, corporate feel to them. I know that sounds like an odd complaint (“wait, you’re saying that enormous movie studios are making corporate product? Shut your mouth”) so let me explain.

Basically, the filmmaking process for superhero movies is starting to feel less organic. Fans have praised Thor for being visually and thematically faithful to the Kirby vision of what Thor comics could be, and to that my response is “why is that faithfulness de facto praiseworthy?” Granted, after years of things like Nicolas Cage as Ghost Rider movie or Ang Lee’s Hulk1, I can see why comic fans might want to encourage filmmakers to stick closer to the existing ideas behind comics. But Fantastic Four, on the other hand, demonstrates that staying reasonably close to the existing formulae doesn’t necessarily mean a good movie either.

And the current crop of super-faithful movies don’t advance the characters or their overarching story: you only get that when you let filmmakers tinker a bit with the ideas. Superman wasn’t a Kansas farmboy until Superman: The Movie established that Smallville was in Kansas. Gotham City wasn’t the dark, nightmarish Gothic city that’s dominated the comics for two decades until Tim Burton and Anton Furst got their hands on Batman.2 If you want a smaller-scale example of how this can work, think about how the Blade franchise turned a Z-lister into a really cool bunch of B-movies, which is no small accomplishment when your main star is Wesley Snipes.3 Or how The Crow turned what was, let’s be honest, a pretty lousy comic into a pretty great movie.4

Thor is fun, but there’s no really new ideas to it: the closest you get is the exercise of making certain elements of a superhero mythos that might not work in a two-hour movie palatable for a mass audience, referenced as callbacks for nerds. Most of the modern crop of Marvel movies fit into this mold (the first Iron Man is an outlier, mostly because of Robert Downey Jr.’s performance). When critics complain about superhero movies becoming soulless, that’s what they mean. These movies don’t advance the story: they’re about “let’s make a Thor movie that’s just like what the comics would be if they were a movie!” And that’s kind of a shame.

1. Yes, I know people have tried to reclaim it as a secret success. Those people are wrong. [↩]
2. And then Christopher Nolan completely ignored what had become the standard and plainly portrayed Gotham as Chicago in his Batman movies, which again goes to show how a fresh take on a character can creatively rejuvenate a franchise. [↩]
3. He used to be a big star at one point! [↩]
4. Which then had pretty lousy sequels. [↩]

Everything about the Green Lantern movie looks awful. And this is completely dysjunct from the talent involved. I mean, I like Ryan Reynolds. I like Mark Strong. I like Peter Sarsgaard. I even enjoy Blake Lively as an actor (she was great in The Town). Even the smaller cast details are perfect: Geoffrey Rush voicing Tomar-Re, for example, or Angela motherfucking Bassett as Amanda Waller. I’ve always liked Martin Campbell as a director – I mean, come on, The Mask of Zorro! And although I dislike Hal Jordan as a character intensely, the movie seems to be playing him more like, well, Kyle Rayner, which was always the way to go.

But it still looks absolutely awful, right down to Hal’s domino mask (which straight-up needed to get tossed). They’re spending millions of dollars at the last minute, apparently, to make the CGI not un-terrible. Every action scene in the trailer looks like a mediocre video-game cutscene: the characters don’t feel real in any way, mostly because they aren’t. They’ve taken a loyalist approach to the comics, which in the trailers looks like a terrible, terrible idea – this is a property that needed some serious visual imagination and inventiveness to work as a movie, and instead it looks like they’ve just puked up the comics onscreen and said “okay, good enough.” They even use the Green Lantern oath in the trailer, and if ever there was something that just doesn’t work outside of a comic book, it’s the Green Lantern oath.

I can’t be the only one who thinks “oh my god this is crap,” can I?

(Between this and Thor – on which I am decidely lukewarm – it’s looking like Captain America is going to be the only promising superhero movie this year. Which is funny, because of the three, I think that would have been the one most fans would have said would be the least slam-dunkish.)

NOTE: This was the first of these, written back for my Livejournal back when I was still on Livejournal. However, it does not appear to have been web-archived, and besides, I might as well rewrite it now. So this is a revamped version of the original article.

Still Crazy came out in 1999, did mediocre box office at best (I checked Boxofficemojo and it made less than half a million dollars in the USA, and not much more in the UK), got good reviews and a couple of Golden Globe nominations (for best comedy/musical and best original song) and then faded into relative obscurity. This is a pity, because Still Crazy‘s main sin as a movie is that it apparently came out at the wrong time.

After all, it has Bill Nighy in an extremely Bill Nighy sort of role, but five years before Bill Nighy really broke through as Bill Nighy in Love Actually (and whatever you may think of that film, it let Bill Nighy be Bill Nighy), and in Still Crazy Bill Nighy basically plays the same character as in Love Actually except this time he’s not a cariacature. It’s about 70s glam rock, but came out one year after Velvet Goldmine, a wildly overpraised and overly serious take on the same subject. (Still Crazy also has original songs – and good ones – rather than a pastiche soundtrack that sounds like somebody’s mixtape.) It’s a comedy about getting old, maybe six or seven years before Boomers really started realizing that they were getting old and made Nancy Meyers rich as a result.

And it’s really a great little movie, chock-full of great performances from Nighy, Stephen Rea, Timothy Spall, Juliet Aubrey and Billy Connolly. See, Strange Fruit were really big in the 70s, but twenty years later, like so many other bands, they’re a musical footnote, just another band which feuded endlessly and collapsed under its own weight. But when a nostalgic music exec who’s putting together a memorial show of a famous 70s concert – the concert where the Fruit broke up permanently – spots Stephen Rea’s former keyboardist Tony working in a resort, he suggests an appearance by the Fruit at the memorial concert, and of course that means Getting The Band Back Together.

Except, of course, it’s never that simple in real life, and one of the nice things about Still Crazy is that although it’s got plenty of the requisite old guys’ reunion/on-the-road wacky comedy, it never lets things be simple or cut and dry. Brian, the former lead guitarist, is missing and presumed dead, so the band has to recruit a new young guy to replace him because Ray, the lead singer, can’t really both sing and play lead guitar at the same time. Tony’s been carrying a torch for Karen, the former roadie and now manager, for practically ever, but she’s still in love with the memories of Brian and can’t shake them. Les, the bassist, still resents Ray because Ray came over after the band’s original singer Keith died of an overdose, and because Les never got to sing any songs back in the day. Les and Beano, the drummer, are still both nostalgic for Keith and can’t shake the idea that the band died with him. Ray’s quietly terrified that, despite being the richest of the Fruit thanks to a reasonably lucrative singles career, he’s only ever going to be a musical footnote. Oh, and Beano is being pursued by the revenue service for unpaid taxes, because it is still a wacky comedy.

And throughout the movie, death is an omnipresent force. These guys are old now, in their minds if nothing else – they’re on the road trying to rock out in their late forties and early fifties. They can’t help but feel slightly ridiculous, and worse they’ve got dead bandmates hanging over their shoulders. They’re grabbing desperately at their one last chance for real musical relevance and to be remembered, and they know it’s desperate and they’re doing it anyway, because it really is their last chance, not just to be musical stars but to grow old on their own damn terms, which is something many people never get to do at all. And because this is something we all want for ourselves in our own way, that’s why it’s good –

– along with the songs, which are excellent.

– and the performances, which are great.

– and the gags, which are really funny without being forced.

Okay, follow along with me here. It’s well-known that George Lucas was a big Kurosawa fan during his formative years as a film-maker, and that he cites ‘The Hidden Fortress’ by Kurosawa as a key inspiration for ‘Star Wars’. Some have even described Lucas’ movie as a science-fiction remake of ‘The Hidden Fortress’, much the same way as ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ is a Western remake of ‘Yojimbo’. Which leads me to wonder, what might have happened if Lucas had been inspired by a different Kurosawa film? What if it wasn’t ‘The Hidden Fortress’ that shaped the direction of his classic film?

The Seven Samurai: Tatooine moisture farmer Luke Skywalker stumbles upon information that his insignificant homeworld is about to become the crux in the Empire’s plan to destroy the Rebellion. Princess Leia of Alderaan, a key figure in the Rebellion, is coming to this distant world to exchange vital information with Rebel spies; little does she know that the Empire has already learned of her mission, and has set a trap for her with a hidden garrison of Imperial troops…a garrison led by the Emperor’s personal enforcer, Darth Vader. Skywalker longs to help the princess, but he’s only one man, and an untrained fighter at that; he needs help if he’s going to save her. So he recruits a rag-tag band to help him: An exiled Jedi Knight named Ben Kenobi, a smuggler with a heart of gold named Han Solo, a bestial Wookie named Chewbacca, a grizzled bounty hunter named Boba Fett, and a Rebel pilot named Wedge Antilles. The six of them rescue the princess from the initial ambush; and together, the seven of them retreat into the Tatooine desert, where they use Ben’s knowledge of the terrain to slowly winnow away the Empire’s advantage of numbers. In the end, although Ben and Boba die in battle, Leia succeeds in her mission and (possibly) begins the end of the Empire.

Yojimbo: In the distant galactic backwater of Mos Eisley, Ben Kenobi (a former Jedi Knight who fled to the Galactic Rim after the fall of his order) becomes embroiled in the middle of a war between rival gang lords Jabba the Hutt and Xizor. He hires himself out first to one, then the other, playing both sides against the middle while he secretly works to clean up “the most wretched hive of scum and villainy.” The end features him dueling against Jabba’s top enforcer, Boba Fett. (The scary thing is, this requires only minimal changes to fit into continuity…)

Rashomon: In the aftermath of the death of Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi at the hands of Sith Lord Darth Vader, we see differing interpretations of the event from Vader, Kenobi, Leia, and finally the droid duo of C-3P0 and R2-D2. In the end, though we see many versions of the final battle between the two, the truth remains elusive and unknowable.

The Lower Depths: Owen Lars and his wife, Beru, run a small flophouse on Tatooine for scoundrels down on their luck. Among them is Han Solo, a smuggler and thief, and Ben Kenobi, a mysterious wise old man with a troubled past. Han is having an affair with Beru, but his growing friendship with Beru’s nephew Luke makes him consider breaking it off. At the same time, his admiration for Ben makes him think about finding a better life. When he discovers that Owen and Beru beat Luke, he breaks into their house to defend his young friend, only to wind up inadvertently killing Owen. Beru claims that he did it to continue their affair, which ends his friendship with Luke, and Ben flees when Imperial stormtroopers come to arrest the smuggler. In the end, Beru is arrested as well, leaving Luke without guidance and support.

Ran: Emperor Palpatine’s ambitious plan for his succession backfires on him when he delegates power to three of his most senior advisors, Grand Moff Tarkin, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and his apprentice and “son” created through Jedi magic, Darth Vader. Vader questions the wisdom of splitting the Empire between so many ambitious men, and is disowned and banished along with his droids. But Vader is proven right when Tarkin and Thrawn go to war over the Empire, and both of them try to put the Emperor out of the way as a potential obstacle; with his Royal Guard slaughtered, the insane Palpatine is left to wander the countryside. There he is discovered by R2D2 and C3Po, two of Vader’s droids that have remained loyal to the Emperor. They take refuge in a peasant’s hut on the swamp world of Dagobah, only to find it occupied by Yoda, Palpatine’s old Jedi foe who he had ordered to be blinded.

Vader discovers what happened to Palpatine and gathers an army to find him; this is viewed as an attempt at conquest by Tarkin and Thrawn, who send their own armies to stop him. In the final battle, the three armies weaken each other to the point where the Rebel Alliance is able to overthrow them; it’s revealed, in the end, that this was the ultimate goal of Tarkin’s wife, Mon Mothma. Tarkin kills Mothma, but is himself killed when Rebel ships blow up his Star Destroyer. Vader finds Palpatine, but is killed by Boba Fett, an assassin sent after him by Tarkin before his death. Overcome with grief, Palpatine dies, marking the end of the Empire. The film ends with a shot of Yoda, blind and alone on Dagobah, the only survivor of the film’s events.

(And by the way, before anyone thinks to comment on it, yes, I know ‘Ran’ came out after the trilogy was finished. If I can postulate an alternate universe where Lucas based ‘Star Wars’ on other movies, I can postulate one where he did it a decade later.)

As good as Moon was – and Moon was goddamn excellent – Source Code makes it look like a noob director’s first uncertain work, assuming you can get past the scientific handwaving necessary to make the plot work.

I genuinely have every confidence that Zack Snyder will eventually make a classic for the ages – his technical skill is steadily improving with the addition of actual craft, and he’s learning to work with actors greatly – but lord, this ain’t it.

Arguably, the measure by which any body that recognizes talent can be judged is to look at their track record over the years. Anyone can hand out an award (although it takes a very special type of person to get someone to hand one out to Pia Zadora…) but awards cannot dictate the judgment of history. Classic movies might not win awards, but they remain classics; some movies might be lauded with Oscar upon Oscar at the time, but wind up forgotten a decade later. And while a quick glance at the Oscars over the years has shown that they generally have a pretty good set of standards as compared to the taste of audiences over the decades (especially considering how hard it is to compare good movies–how exactly does one decide whether Jaws is better than One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?) But there have been a few notable missteps. Here, presented chronologically, are a few examples (as judged by me, a viewer) of times when the Oscars got it wrong.

1) 1941. Of course, 1941 should have won Best Picture easily. It had Christopher Lee and John Belushi in front of the cameras, and Steven Spielberg directing it. But audiences…hang on. Wait. Sorry. Wrong 1941. I’m actually talking about the year 1941, when the John Ford film How Green Was My Valley won Best Picture. In any other year, this wouldn’t have been a bad choice; John Ford is a legendary Hollywood director, and the film is a classic by most standards. But unfortunately for the Academy, it was up against Citizen Kane, the movie now widely considered to be the best picture not just of 1941, but ever. (“Widely”, of course, not “universally”. I, for one, will always wonder how Hellzapoppin’ didn’t even get nominated.) In all probability, the campaign waged by William Randolph Hearst against the film, which hurt it critically and financially, also damaged its chances of getting an Oscar.

2) 1952. Has anyone ever heard of The Greatest Show On Earth? Students of bad cinema, perhaps; it’s widely considered to be the worst movie ever to win Best Picture. And it’s not like it didn’t have solid competition, either; sometimes it can happen that Hollywood has a weak year overall, and films that wouldn’t make the cut wind up getting an Oscar (**cough** Gladiator **cough**), but this schmaltzy story about the Ringling Brothers Circus was up against classics like High Noon, The Quiet Man, and even films that didn’t get a nomination like Singing in the Rain. Cecil B. DeMille must have been passed over a few too many times in previous years, necessitating a “make-up” Oscar;  there’s really no other explanation as to why this undeserving candidate won.

3) 1956. Okay, look. I’m not going to suggest that Around the World in 80 Days was a terrible movie. It’s a fun popcorn flick, a blockbuster movie from an era before Hollywood really made blockbuster movies. But in a year when we saw The Court Jester, High Society, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Hollywood has never respected horror as a genre), Lust for Life, and The Searchers…the thought that none of those was even nominated, while Around the World… won, it doesn’t really sit well. (To say nothing of the films that were nominated but didn’t win. The King and I? The Ten Commandments? It’s a hard case to make that Phineas Fogg has stood the test of time better than those two.)

4) 1998. This was, of course, the year that the Academy took a lot of flack for the way it had allowed certain studios to lobby for their pictures. An Oscar had come to mean a lot of extra money for films still in the theaters and those just coming to DVD, and Miramax had gotten good at exploiting that; they released a “prestige” picture in late December, usually in a few markets to build word-of-mouth and make it eligible for an Oscar, then pushed hard for it with the Academy and rolled it out nationwide right around the time the nominations were announced. Then when it got an Oscar, they’d put it out on DVD with the words “Best Picture Winner” on the packaging, and an otherwise undistinguished romantic comedy like Shakespeare In Love suddenly became a major seller with only a modest financial outlay. But when it beat out such obviously superior candidates like Saving Private Ryan, the Academy found themselves with a bit of egg on their faces. They’ve since been a lot more guarded about letting the studios lobby for their pet films.

5) 2008. This is the one that inspired this column, actually; I imagine some film student, a hundred years from now, watching WALL-E for the twentieth or thirtieth time, marveling as always at the brilliantly daring choice to open up the film with only a single character on a dead world. They take notes on the way Pixar uses subtle shifts of movement to give astonishing amounts of personality to EVE and WALL-E, the way that their romance develops almost wordlessly, the way that WALL-E’s presence on the ship creates all sorts of tiny knock-on effects with huge consequences. They study the classic physical comedy, the attention to detail, and once again find themselves lost in the magnificence of a ground-breaking and timeless classic. Then, once again, they try to remember the film that beat it out for Best Picture. And once again, they break down and look it up because it just doesn’t stick in their minds. “Oh, that’s right,” they say, when they finally check Future Wikipedia. “WALL-E only won Best Animated Picture. It wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture that year. Something called Slumdog Millionaire won.” Then they shrug. “Never heard of it,” they say, before going back to watch WALL-E again.

I’ve been saying for a while now (ever since “Toy Story 2”, if memory serves me right) that we are living in the kind of golden age of animation that we thought had long since gone by. Pixar’s animated films, with their emphasis on story, their intricate visual brilliance, and their sheer magic, are the kind of things that people will remember as classics in a century’s time. Basically, they’ll think of Pixar today the way we think of Disney in the 1930s and 40s.

But since this is the Internet, it’s not enough to make a sweeping declarative statement: We need to turn it into a pointless, absurd comparison! (Woo, Internet!) So let’s go ahead and pit the Disney films of their classic era against the Pixar films of today, and see who comes up top.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves vs. Toy Story: On the one hand, Toy Story is a more densely layered, intricate story with more sophisticated narrative techniques. On the other hand, Snow White is sweeter, as the rivalry between Buzz and Woody is almost too intense at times to be “enjoyable”. And Disney, even in his first animated feature (actually, the first animated feature) already had a compelling grasp of imagery that made for some of cinema’s most iconic sequences. I think that I’m going to give Disney the edge here, even though Toy Story would probably beat most other entries.

Pinocchio vs. A Bug’s Life: Not even a contest in my mind. When it comes to orthoptera, Kevin Spacey’s mesmerizing Hopper easily beats out whiny, preachy, mealy-mouthed Jiminy. As to the rest of the movie, while Pinocchio does have some of the all-time champion scare-the-shit-out-of-little-kids sequences (Monstro the Whale, the kids turning into donkeys) it’s hard to actually root for the obnoxious little wooden dummy. The characters of A Bug’s Life are far more sympathetic and entertaining, and the plot holds together better than the “string of incidences” plot of Pinocchio. Pixar for the win here.

Fantasia vs. Toy Story 2: This is actually a very tough one for me. Both of these are among my favorite animated features (I’m watching Toy Story 2 as I type this) but one of them has to be better. Toy Story 2 earns major points for being a sequel with something to actually say rather than simply rehashing the incidents of the first film, but Fantasia was something never tried before (or, with the exception of Fantasia 2000, since.) It’s a dazzling feature, perhaps one of the purest expressions of art ever attempted by a commercial studio, and I have to love it a little bit more than Toy Story 2 for that. Plus, “Night on Bald Mountain”. Disney wins.

Dumbo vs. Monsters, Inc: Admittedly, Monsters, Inc isn’t one of the strongest Pixar films. Billy Crystal grates as much in animation as he does in live-action, and the sheer irritation factor of his character single-handedly knocks a great film down a notch or two. On the other hand, the crows in Dumbo? Much, much, much more than a notch. I realize that it was a different era, but still…wow. Pixar hands-down.

Bambi vs. Finding Nemo: Eerie parallels here, as both films are about single-parenting in the unforgiving world of nature. Disney’s expertly hand-animated forest is done as well in its own way as Pixar’s CGI coral reef, but I’ll give Finding Nemo the nod for its more involved story and the fact that its ending has not traumatized generations of small children. Those of you who believe that traumatizing small children is, in fact, part of what children’s films are for might choose the other way, but I’m picking Pixar here.

Cinderella vs. The Incredibles: I might be inviting controversy here by skipping films like Saludos Amigos and Melody Time, but I think that this should remain feature vs. feature, and so the Disney anthology films get a miss in favor of the full-length stories. Not like it matters, because this is The Incredibles we’re talking about, and pretty much any Disney movie is going to be steamrollered by it. I remain a comics fan, this remains one of the best super-hero films ever, and compared to it, even a sweet little Disney princess gets booted to the back of the line. No glass slipper for you, Cindy; it’s Pixar for the win here.

Alice In Wonderland vs. Cars: I know that Cars has its fans, but I actually feel like this is comparing two of the weaker entries in their respective canons. Disney’s Alice in Wonderland has the thankless task of adapting a story with almost no narrative drive whatsoever, while Cars is about car racing, a sport so boring that fatal accidents are actually welcomed as a brief respite from the monotony. Under the circumstances, I will choose the blessedly Larry the Cable Guy-free Alice, and give Disney the win on this one.

Peter Pan vs. Ratatouille: It’s interesting, but Ratatouille doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact the way that some other Pixar/Brad Bird films have; sandwiched between the immensely popular Cars and the ground-breaking WALL-E, it’s become sort of a forgotten Pixar film. And sad to say, it continues to get short shrift here, because Peter Pan is one of Disney’s best adaptations, Captain Hook one of its best villains, and Tinkerbell one of its best-loved characters. Which means that in this case, Disney wins. Poor little rat.

Lady and the Tramp vs. WALL-E: Did I say earlier that I gave Fantasia bonus points for trying something new, different, and artistic? Then I have to give WALL-E bonus points, too; not many films have the guts to open up with no human characters, no voices, and still be one of the most heart-warming and affecting character studies in years. Compared to the fantastic animation, the powerful story, and the overall quality of what could be Pixar’s best film, Lady and the Tramp is bound to come up short. Pixar by a country mile, and that’s nothing against Lady and the Tramp.

Sleeping Beauty vs. Up: On the one hand, I do have to give Sleeping Beauty points for what some consider to be the best villain in Disney’s canon, Maleficent. She’s got style, she’s got panache, and she even swears in a kid’s movie. But it also has a dull, passive heroine, a bland Prince Charming, and I’ve never been a fan of the animation style in this one. So it loses to Up on style points. Fair? Perhaps not, but I’m giving this one to Pixar.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians vs. Toy Story 3: Sorry to say, but at this point the rot was beginning to set in at Disney. The budgets were getting lower, the animation was taking short-cuts…even the films were getting shorter (One Hundred and One Dalmatians clocks in at just 79 minutes.) Pixar, on the other hand, seems to be getting stronger with every release; they’re finding more confidence, they’re learning how to do more with computer animation as processing power gets cheaper and graphics rendering becomes more powerful, and they’re established as the top dog at Disney and not worried about interference with their proven system of generating classics. This is where the picks start getting easier, and I suspect it’ll be a while before Pixar loses another head-to-head.

The final tally: By a final score of 7-4, Pixar wins! (I’m sure John Lasseter will covet this far more than the Oscars.)

A younger friend of mine saw this and inquired as to what Tombstone was. I naturally had to beat him with a shovel.