Thor Syndrome

Hi.

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?  I can explain, baby.  Wait.  Wait!  WAIT! OH GOD NO THAT’S MY GRANDMA’S URN DON’T THROW OH NO YOU DID THROW PHHBBT PTOOEY AUGH DEAD RELATIVES ARE IN MY MOUTH AND I CAN TASTE HER MANY YEARS AAAAAAAHHHHHH.

…but yes, I actually do have a couple of good excuses for not having written something in a bit.

Mostly because I’ve been writing other things.  The Skybound Sea has pretty much entered the final third of its first iteration, so that’s good news.  I guess you could technically say it’s almost done.  But it’s worth noting that there are a few “almost dones” on an author’s timeline.  There’s “almost done” (almost finished the first draft), “almost done” (at the very end of the first draft), “almost done” (going through editing), “almost done” (tail end of copy editing), “almost done” (pretty much finished), “almost done” (author has soiled him or herself).

So, it’s definitely in one of those.  My other time has been occupied with something special that I will share with you when the time is right.

But for now, let’s talk about movies.  Specifically, let’s talk about movies that I talked about some time ago.

I have just seen Captain America.

I’m always reluctant to say I didn’t like a movie that everyone else has liked, mostly because I secretly fear turning into a neckbearded, balding-except-for-a-ponytail, greasy fellow who will some day unironically use the phrase “yeah, Krull was pretty good, but the extended edition is better.”  And given that I haven’t shaved in awhile, this is a pretty legitimate concern of mine.

That said, though, I didn’t like it.

I certainly wanted to like it.  I certainly thought I was going to like it.  The first half of the movie did nothing to dissuade me from this idea.  To remark upon positive notes: its style is incredible.  The blend of futura/world of tomorrow super science with gritty, gray World War II bleakness made for a real interesting blend that I was totally in love with from the moment I saw it.  The first half of the movie seemed to really follow in this vein of making a name of its own.  A lot of the movie’s character revolved around subverting, twisting and expertly blending action movie tropes.

We got a lot of humor from the villain throwing a kid into the river to make his escape and Captain America looking over only to have the kid scream back: “It’s okay, I can swim!”  But at the same time, we got a lot of the sappy romance, near brainless heroics, and nostalgic adoration for the traditional superhero.  Captain America is played as kind of bland and straight, but that’s pretty much who he is and it eases things…to a point.

The movie, for an impressively long time, manages to walk a really incredibly fine line, occasionally dipping its toes into new age gritty and sarcastic before it dips another foot into just enough cheesy action movie cliches to satiate fans of the Indiana Jones movies.  This works for half the movie.

After that, it looks to the subtler, more humorous side and says “fuck that” and proceeds to jump into a motorcycle and do a flying, flaming ramp jump into action movie territory where it quickly falls into a sea of mediocrity and drowns a horrible death in a slew of lame action lines, stupid action scenes and shitty action cliches.

As I said, some of this can be forgiven.  Captain America is an action man, which is slightly different than a superhero, and he pretty much is a goon sans neckbeard and grease.  Awkwardness and hokiness could be forgiven more than a little in this movie.  But what’s important is not what the movie plunged into, but rather what it hopped off of.

For the second half of the movie, Captain America simply has no soul.

The one-liners are played perfectly straight and delivered like a Mad Libs for badasses (“Okay, (noun), time for us to (verb), because (shitty line you said in the first half of the movie that is incredibly awkward and only tangentially appropriate here)”).  The romance turns shitty in a hurry.  The action turns from clever dynamics to fist-fights that would be interchangeable in any 1980’s action movie.

Pretty much the same thing that happened in Thor. I had high hopes for Thor, too, after I had heard positive reviews.  I didn’t bother blogging about that one because it really left me feeling kind of unimpressed.  In many ways, Captain America echoes its Norse brother, though, in that it starts strong, falters and promptly shits itself.  Hence the title of this post.  I’m sure there’s an actual disease with those symptoms, but fuck if I’m going to go look it up.

I was talking it over with my friend Carl and he put it pretty squarely for me: creative direction seems to end with the origins story.  Those are parts of the superhero that are most nebulous and open for interpretation, so that’s where people get to do stuff.  Once Thor finds his hammer, once Captain America puts on his helmet, it all tends to be totally downhill, as everything at that point becomes pretty easy to just interchange with any action movie.  Fistfight, romance, fistfight, awkward romance, fistfight, Stan Lee cameo, fistfight.

This is kind of the problem: too many directors, executives, whatever seem to think that creative direction with the myth will hamper the story and that the story will speak for itself.  You want to know why Captain America likes this girl?  He’s Captain America, duh.

The superhero movies that succeed at this (Batman, Iron Man, Spider-Man) are the ones that actually take the time to develop motivation and character and then maintain that character throughout the story after the mask goes on.  I know people sometimes criticize Iron Man 2 for being weaker than its predecessor, but I found it to be even better and not just because I own a Don Cheadle mug.  It was a movie dedicated almost exclusively to character development.  Hell, The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 2 had the same thing, really, and they’re recognized as stronger movies because they had better villains.

But my point is this: the movie is supposed to be a story about the superhero, not a story with a superhero in it.  You can’t just vomit out a vague description of canon and hope that appeases the nerds.  Well, I mean, you can, since tons of people will pay for it anyway, but it’s that one thing that will make the difference.  Thor and The Dark Knight will both make a lot of money, but when someone says “hey, remember Thor?” you’re going to say “yeah, that was a good movie.”  When someone says “hey, remember The Dark Knight” you’re going to give that breathless, shamelessly-nerdy “awwwwww” sound you make when you remember something that really stuck with you.

You know you make that noise.

I’ve seen it.

Basically: Captain America is a case study and, since this is Sam Sykes’ blog, something to be aware of for fantasy writers.  It’s trying very hard to adhere to something that it didn’t create.  It’s trying very hard to be something that is someone else’s standard.  In its adherence, it gave up originality.  In its rigidity, it gave up character.  In its desire to be truly epic, it gave up its own soul.

It’ll still make a shitload of money.

Ain’t no one gonna “awwww” that thing, though.