Staring at the sky…

So, I saw “TMNT” today. No word on what the Iranian government thought of this movie, but I personally enjoyed it.

I spent far too much time prior to the release of the movie, wondering why it as called “TMNT,” and not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It’s one of those questions like, why do they call it KFC now, instead of Kentucky Fried Chicken?

Well, it’s not specifically said, but I’m pretty sure that the Turtles depicted in the movie have gotten older. The plot, and the characters really don’t fit the age they were formerly depicted as being. Granted, I suppose that the first argument against this is that one would have to have a serious mental problem to dwell too long on the development rate of anthropomorphic cartoon turtles, but I would counter with, “shut up.”

I have to admit that when I was younger, the Turtles were huge to me. I seriously got sucked into the whole phenomenon. I even owned the novelizations of the first 2 movies. Wow, the mental problem theory seems to be winning out.

The first movie, to this day, is one of the best comic book films ever made. It sounds crazy even to people who agree, given that it was cheaply produced at the height of the Turtle’s popularity, to cash in on that popularity. But it was a film that told the story in a direct but interesting way.

The second and the third, were, shall we say, less successful, artistically. The 3rd one, in particular, was painful watching, even when I was just a stupid kid. So, I felt a bit burned by it all, and was a bit annoyed when I saw that a new movie was coming out. No amount of nostalgia kept me from groaning — I hadn’t read anything about it, or even heard about it, I just happened to see the preview pop up on apple one day.

That got my attention.

One of my biggest complaints about computer animation has always been that people use it to be too flashy. Because the character or model is always perfect, once created, people feel like they need to make certain you see it, as clearly as possible, from every angle. Reality isn’t like that. My favorite computer animate scene is still the scene in Jurassic Park with the Gallimimus flock - which moves so fast you never get a good look at them, so it looks real.

TMNT has several sequences that move at the same breakneck speed, and the animation is fantastic. Imagi who produced the film is also hard at work on another one of my personal favorites — Gatchaman (G-Force or Battle for the Planets for most Americans), and after seeing what they did here, I’m cautiously psyched. The animation is stylized, like a Pixar film (the humans reminded me of the design of “the Incredibles”), but darker.

The plot is a bit harder to talk about. There’s a lot going on, and it probably should have been simplified. Many characters could be removed, without any change to the overall story. And so much could be expanded on. We start out with a very matter of fact introduction, which sets up a lot of plot points which we only graze off of in the big picture. 13 monsters, of which 2 actually impact the plot. The new foot clan leader, who mainly plays comic relief. The history of Max Winters, a Vandal Savage type character, which deserved a half hour on its own.

All the same, the story doesn’t pander, and I appreciate that. The villains, and heroes don’t feel the need to explain their motivation at great length, and while the film connects all the dots, it doesn’t wallow in it. Granted, there are a few groan-worthy lines here and there, followed by gratuitous posing. In the end, you discover a few weird surprises about the motivation of the new characters, you get to see Splinter fighting (he truly is the Yoda of the film).

And the casting was pretty good, too. Sarah Michelle Gellar as April O’Neil was an interesting choice, especially. And of course, Mako, who passed on last year was always a fantastic addition to any cast.

Patrick Stewart plays a 3000 year old Central American warlord — perfect casting, when one considers that 3000 years ago, in central America, everyone spoke fluent English with a British accent, much in the same way that all ancient Greeks, and ancient Biblical characters did. Perhaps, his character was the one who taught the Fuedal Japanese how to speak English for the 3rd film… good job, filmmakers, that continuity is cleaned up nicely…

At any rate, will this bring back interest in the Turtles? Who knows, who cares. No property should be that successful, though (Mr. Eastman, Mr. Laird, I’m very happy for you, but hopefully you are both rich enough to admit that, too), so I hope not. I would not mind another one, though, as it was a pleasant afternoon, and some great animation.

Ann and I saw “300″ this past weekend, and we enjoyed it a great deal. As a huge fan of Frank Miller’s (I even enjoyed “Dark Knight Strikes Again”), I’m really glad to see him finding success in Hollywood, and more to the point having people attempt to emulate his work.

Much like the graphic novel, which was painted to look almost like Greek pottery, the film looks amazing. I can’t think of another film at the moment that looks that distinctly beautiful, and definitely can’t think of another film containing multiple beheadings, that I would call beautiful.

I do however have a problem with the film itself, that bothers me more after the fact than while I watched the movie, so I wouldn’t say it will affect anyone other than a professor of Greek studies, who likely will have a great many other problems with the material that I didn’t notice.

My problem is the role of Queen Gorgo. The role was an admirable attempt to create a strong female character in the story. The problem was that by comparison to historical Spartan women, she was portrayed as being very weak. Women in Sparta owned a great deal of the land (Wikipedia estimates it as being about 40%, but I’m not confident enough that the professor of Greek studies mentioned above was the one who wrote that article to print that here without mentioned where it came from), and had a great deal of power. They were also, based on a documentary I watched on the topic a few years ago, pretty well trained in the practices of making war, as well. There’s some doubt on the entire view of adultery in the society, which prized children, and had a very egalitarian view of women. So, basically, based on what little I’ve been able to cobble together, I believe that Gorgo would have let her voice been heard, strongly, and likely would have removed Theron’s head from his body shortly after he began sarcastically clapping.

And while the Greeks did invent sarcasm, Wikipedia also informs me that clapping was actually invented by Chuck Norris in the early seventies, as a way to destroy professors of Greek studies from a short distance without getting blood on his shoes.

The story itself is an amazing one. For anyone who’s reading this, and unaware, 4000 Greek soldiers lead by the 300 Spartans held off an army that was somewhere between 200,000 and 2 million for 2 days. It’s the ultimate underdog story. All in all, 1400 Greeks died, and 20,000 to 80,000 on the Persian side. And this is historically unquestioned — it was simply one of the most amazing battles in the history of human kind. I say this as someone who has always viewed themselves as a pacifist.

The way it’s been portrayed, of course, has upset the Iranians, as 2500 years ago, their country was the Persian empire. Although, and this point is worth considering, it was populated largely by a completely different group of people — besides the religious and societal differences of the time, everyone who did live there has been dead for roughly two and a half thousand years.

And, yes, the movie, and the book do not waste time on building depth in the Persian characters. I’m sure it would be interesting if it did, but the particular angle from which the story is told, makes that pretty much impossible.

A quick lesson in fictionalized portrayal for those who were upset:
1) The strongest anything will usually not be viewed as the under dog.
2) People will side with the under dog, because it’s human nature.
3) Hollywood is generally in favor of making money, so they will typically be more likely to start a film trailer with “against all odds…,” rather than “With everything in their favor…”

The film was also told from the perspective of Dilios, who was using it as propaganda, and had one eye. The concept of depth was pretty much lost on him by the time he started telling the story.

Now if you take something like “Alexander,” that should have clearly focused on the Persian’s strength and depth more, as it was supposed to be documentary in nature. And there definitely could and should be a more even handed account which focused on everyone on either side. “300″, though, is not supposed to be that film. “300″ is meant to read like a story told around a campfire encircled entirely by Spartans.

Anyone who complains this shouldn’t be used in a history class misses the point. Also, they have a far more liberal policy on films that can be shown in history classes than I had growing up in rural North Carolina.