Two Books, Worlds Apart (A Note on John Carter and The Hunger Games)

Some people in the entertainment industry seem somehow surprised that John Carter flopped as hard as it did while The Hunger Games far surpassed analysts's predictions for its opening weekend.  I'm no expert, but the reasons have seemed painfully obvious to me.  Having seen both movies (and having admittedly only read The Hunger Games and not A Princess of Mars), let us discuss what seems to have gone so right for Ms. Everdeen and oh so wrong for Mr. Carter:

John Carter (2012)
Based upon a series of books that began exactly a century ago, this is an intriguing tale of a Civil War vet jaded by the reality he found when he returned home.  When asked to fight again for his country, he flatly refuses, and while on the run a series of events transpires that beams him to Mars, where he is also asked to fight for a country and a cause he does not necessarily believe in.

From the trailers alone, I had absolutely no desire to see this film.  I understand that it's popular right now to blame poor marketing for the failure of John Carter, but I believe it really is true.  Disney spent an estimated $100 million on this film's marketing campaign, but all I could tell you from the trailers was that some human with super strength had infiltrated the Geonosis scenes from Star Wars Episode II, sans jedi, which of course are the only reason to see any of the Star Wars prequels.  It wasn't until my wife found a paragraph online detailing the premise of the film that I became interested.  Had the marketing department actually focused on showing off the story's plot and its excellent characters then perhaps the film wouldn't have bombed as badly as it has thus far.  This was a good, fun film with some interesting twists and turns and characters I honestly liked, but none of that translated in the previews.

The Hunger Games (2012)
Conversely, I knew exactly what I was getting into with The Hunger Games.  Set in a dystopian future, where a Capitol rules twelve districts with an iron fist, this is the story of a young girl who volunteers to participate in a gladiator-style fight to the death with twenty-three other teenagers - one boy and one girl from each district - until only one is left standing.

I'm not really sure this film even needed a marketing campaign.  I know a number of people who teach in middle school, and all of them say that every one of their students has read the entire trilogy.  I read them two years ago and had been eagerly awaiting film adaptations ever since, but with the end of Harry Potter and the near-end of Twilight, it was only a matter of time before the next major teen franchise found its way into theaters.

They were smart enough to make sure that the brilliant author, Suzanne Collins, was involved with the screenplay, so of course the writing was good, the casting was perfect (ignore the racist idiots who didn't like that Rue is and has always been black), and the artwork for the sets and costumes and everything else were spot-on.

It was a good, good movie... when you could see it.

Perhaps you have heard of a camera effect in use these days called the "shaky cam".  Fun side note: I know a guy named Cameron, and this is the term he uses for himself when he's had too much caffeine.  Anyway, "shaky cam" is when the camera moves around as if it is being held by someone in the scene.  You can see its effects in "handheld camera" films like The Blaire Witch Project (1999), Cloverfield (2008), or the recent Chronicle (2012) (which was excellent, by the way).  Perhaps its best usage was in The Bourne Identity movies, where it gave each scene a certain gritty appeal that worked all too well for Matt Damon & friends.

I understand the concept behind its use for a film like this.  The filmmakers were certainly in a delicate position: how do you make a movie about teenagers killing each other and keep it under an R rating?  If your core audience can't even see the film, then how do you expect to turn a profit?  The shaky cam allows you to sort of fudge your action scenes so that you can show action without explicitly showing the action, so I understand.  However, there were several non-action scenes, such as the opening one depicting quiet scenes around District 12, where the shaky cam was used, and not only was it used but it was used to such a degree that a shot of an old man sitting on his porch looked like it was taken by someone doing jumping jacks in his bushes.  There was no reason for it, and the shaking was so extreme that it pulled me right out of the movie and left me wondering just what in the hell the cinematographers were thinking.  There were a few instances of this, not so many that I ended up hating the movie but enough to seriously annoy me.  The director claims he used the shaky cam to "reflect protagonist Katniss Everdeen's point of view".  Since the book is written in first-person from Katniss' POV, this should make sense, but when the film shows a number of scenes where Katniss isn't even present, that kind of argument holds no weight.

It was a tricky situation into which they placed themselves, and where the camera was concerned I don't believe they succeeded.


John Carter vs. The Hunger Games
So, back to the difference between John Carter and The Hunger Games.  Both had great casting and overall were both good movies.  I think I was more impressed with John Carter simply because it was unexpected - like the marketing sucked on purpose so that the five of us who actually went and saw the film would have a great time since our expectations had been lowered so far - with the exact opposite happening for The Hunger Games, which all too often felt as though there was a better movie going on than what you were seeing.  I could have told you after seeing the first trailer for each film which would do well and which wouldn't: John Carter's is far too old a story to draw in the kinds of crowds that The Hunger Games has.  If I'm not mistaken, HG made about as much on its midnight showings alone as JC has in its two weeks of release.  That's a pretty hefty imbalance between what are essentially both good movies, but it just goes to show what kind of effect public demand and expectations can have on a film's success or failure.

Harry Potter and That Guy (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 Review)

I have a confession to make.  For every Harry Potter film to hit the theaters so far, I've been that guy.  You know that guy.  You know him all too well.  Just before the movie's release, he reads the corresponding book so that he'll know exactly what was changed for the theaters.  He was very pleased with the first two films, horrified with the third, and increasingly annoyed with the fourth, fifth, and sixth.  Yes, I was that douchebag.  I was at my worst with the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where the movie ended on a Cliff's Notes version of an outstanding action sequence that blew me away the first time I read it.  I was the guy who complained about the omission of Hermione's "S.P.E.W." organization in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, even though I didn't even like the subplot in the book.  I was the guy who could taste stomach bile in the back of his throat when the Rastafarian shrunken head first graced the screen on the Knight Bus at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I thought about seeking therapy.  I thought about boycotting the movies and clinging desperately to the moments of pure awesome found on the pages but not at the local Cinemark.  I reread key scenes, like the huge fight sequence at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and memorized the names of important characters who never made it into the films (here's looking at you, Charlie Weasley!).  I considered personally petitioning Chris Columbus to come back to the helm and right the ship.

Karma came back and gave me a nasty turn by sending me to the hospital with what turned out to be mono literally half an hour after grumbling my way out of the theater of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  It was after that that I started to wonder if maybe being that guy wasn't such a good idea after all.  Upon seeing the first trailers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, my buddy Professor Goodtimes explained to me that he actually hated the first two films and has loved the rest, and he hates it when people compare books to their movie adaptations because you simply cannot compare items from two different forms of media.  I happen to disagree - we got into a few rather heated arguments over this - but it did make me think.  Movies cannot be word-for-word translations of a book.  Books simply have different pacing than a movie.  They can explain in a sentence what would take several minutes of film.  Humorous scenes in a novel can fall horribly flat on the big screen.  Comparisons between a book and its movie counterpart can be interesting studies of media, but they shouldn't make fans feel cheated out of certain superfluous scenes or characters, as I had long felt.

And so it was that, for the first time ever, I did not reread the corresponding book for the corresponding Harry Potter film.  My first steps down the path of redemption had begun.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 picks up right where HP6 left off.  Right from the getgo, HP7.1 is dark.  Very dark.  Dumbledore was killed by Severus Snape.  Harry has learned that Voldemort split his soul into seven pieces, with each piece encapsulated in something called a "Horcrux", which could be any old item like a diary, locket, teddy bear, etc.  The wizarding world is at war.  Hermione "obliterates" all traces of her parents' memory of her to protect them.  The Dursleys are forced to leave their home, and when Harry does the same, he is accompanied by an honor guard of no less than about a dozen major characters (including the hastily-introduced Bill Weasley and his hastily-explained werewolf scratch and his hastily-explained engagement to Fleur, the attractive French girl from the fourth HP film).  They get Harry to the Weasley's house and prepare for the wedding of Bill and Fleur, but all hell breaks loose when the Ministry of Magic is overrun by Voldemort and his Death Eaters, and as the wedding gets crashed, our three heroes escape to London and begin their quest to hunt down the Horcruxes and destroy them.

This film will feel pretty different from the last few because they made the wise choice of splitting the book in half.  Regardless of how I feel about the books, movies 4, 5, and 6 were very fast-paced and rarely, if ever, gave you any down-time to stop and think about what was going on.  Subsequently, HP7.1 may feel slow for some.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione spend the movie away from Hogwarts, their friends, and their families, and while their character development and group dynamic was interesting, it does take a dedicated viewer to really enjoy two-and-a-half hours centered almost exclusively around the three kids.  One of my personal favorite characters in all the films and books is Hogwarts itself.  The school has such a unique personality to it that you come to feel like it is a character in its own right, and its exclusion, while necessary for the plot, is a huge letdown, though of course that's not the movie's fault.

That being said, this was probably the best Harry Potter film to come out in a long time.  The three kids are those characters, and the rest of the casting is so spot on that you would think Rowling had those very actors in mind when writing their parts.  The special effects are of course as top-notch as can be, and the settings are varied enough to keep your eyes interested while the characters sit around talking about Voldemort's creepy self-soul-mangling.

The only problem I had with HP7.1 - and this is me retaining a little bit of my "that guy" persona - is that it wasn't set up well enough by the previous movies.  There were too many instances of "oh by the way I'm so-and-so and I'm suddenly important", most notably the two-second introduction of Ron's elder brother Bill and his utterly out-of-nowhere engagement with Fleur Delacour AND his encounter with a werewolf at some point in his life that was only bad enough to give him the occasional craving for raw meat.  I understand that the filmmakers didn't want to include the big fight at the end of HP6, as it (SPOILER ALERT!) would have born too close a resemblance to the big fight at the end of HP7, (END SPOILER ALERT!) but the fight at the end of HP6 was a huge part of setting up this all-important wedding, so from a storyteller's perspective, not from an anal HP fan's perspective, that was simply sloppy moviemaking on their part.

Also sloppy was their dealing with Harry's and Ginny's relationship.  Harry knows that he has to leave Hogwarts, track down Voldemort's soul shards, and most likely die in the process, so in the books he forces Ginny away to protect her, even though she was strong/badass enough to never really believe him.  But in this film the two enjoy a nice little makeout session just prior to the wedding, and as Harry spends the rest of the time touring England, he never once mentions her or gives the slightest inclination that he actually cares for her.  Sloppy moviemaking, regardless of what has ever happened in the original material.  From the film I can only assume that Harry doesn't give a grindylow's ass about this girl, which makes me like Harry a bit less.

Mostly, though, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is nothing more than one enormous setup for Part 2, so go into this one knowing that you will have almost no resolution until next July.  Don't take your kiddos - I am a firm believer that you should be at least Harry's age per film/book before viewing/reading.  The filmmakers have set themselves up for some outlandishly high expectations, and I can only hope that Part 2 delivers.  I hereby solemnly swear, though, that I will NOT attempt to reread the seventh book prior to Part 2's release.  I am that guy, no more.

BONUS!  We saw the movie at Alamo Drafthouse, which, among other things, introduced me to this excellent Youtube video from Tobuscus.  Enjoy, and be sure to check out his other one about TRON: Legacy, which I will almost definitely post in my upcoming review.

YELL AT IT! (How to Train Your Dragon Review)

I bet I know what you're thinking. "Hey, I really liked that movie. Hiccup was perfectly voiced by Jay Baruchel in a wonderfully dry, humorous manner, and Toothless the dragon acted like a weird but lovable combination of my neighbor's cat and Stitch from that Disney movie. But his eyes!  Toothless' eyes were SO emotive!  The dynamic between Hiccup and Toothless was so powerful that neither of them had to speak a word in order to communicate.  I went home and downloaded the soundtrack as soon as I could because it was so amazing, and boy were there some funny moments!"

I completely agree with you, but I'm actually here to review the book, not the movie. Go see the movie though. Please. Not including Pixar films, it's the best non-live-action thing I've seen since... well... Shrek 2 at least, and probably earlier than that.

That being said, the book is something entirely different than the movie, which can only be described as a "loose" interpretation, looser than (I'm assuming) the Dante's Inferno videogame version of the old poem written by some Italian man suffering a mid-life crisis. I'm not saying for a moment that How to Train Your Dragon - the book! - is bad. In fact, it's quite good, but don't expect anything even remotely resembling the movie, which to me was a CGI version of what Eregon should have been and in every way wasn't.

Sorry, had to get my weekly dig at the Inheritance Cycle there. Whew, glad that's over.

So what's the HTTYD book like, exactly? Well, for starters, I suspect that it was written with, say, 10-11 year-old boys in mind. The narration is simple and straightforward, and it is lightly funny, though rarely at a level higher than that grasped by a prepubescent male. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is the young son of Stoick the Vast, who is the leader of the Hairy Hooligan tribe of Viking warriors. Hiccup is not like the other Vikings, who are aggressive and loud and generally enjoy killing things and/or throwing them a great distance. No, Hiccup is small, and thoughtful, and is the only Viking around who has read enough books to have learned Dragonese.  Dragons in this world are dog-sized pets captured and trained to serve primarily as food-gatherers, not mounts.  Vikings are instructed that the louder you yell at your dragon, the better it obeys.  When Hiccup and the other boys go out to the caves to capture their dragons, he winds up with Toothless, a tiny, "terrier-sized" dragon of the most common variety. Now Hiccup has just a few months to train the whiny, singularly uncooperative Toothless for the initiation ceremony, or he'll be expelled from the Viking tribe forever.

This was, first and foremost, an enjoyable book.  Many of the adult Vikings (most prominently the boys' trainer, Gobber) have more dialog set in ALL CAPS than not, since they are always yelling.  Given the target audience, there aren't as many poop jokes as you may think, but there are some (and let's face it: boys don't really grow up when it comes to this subject.  I giggled my pants off during these scenes).  On at least every other page there is an adolescent-style sketch of a character, or a scene or item or something, as though Hiccup himself drew on the pages to give you a better idea of what his friends really looked like.  The scenes go quickly, and it is an incredibly fast read.  I must have finished it in about three hours, tops.  As it turns out, this book is part of a seven-part series that chronicle the life of Hiccup, a great hero in the fictional history of these Vikings.  I had no idea.

It has all your typical young fiction elements: teachers who don't understand, bullies, unorthodox friends who stick out even more than the protagonist, oblivious parents, happy endings.  It's predictable, but not cliche.  You can tell the writer had fun with it because you'll have fun reading it.  I recently learned that the writer is British, which doesn't at all surprise me.  They have a certain wit about them when they write.  Try reading something by Neil Gaiman, like Stardust, which, much like this current story, involves an absolutely fantastic movie and a pretty good but incredibly different book.

I'd have enjoyed HTTYD more were I only 10 or 11, or even up to perhaps 14.  That's pretty much the age group for whom I'd recommend it.  It's lighthearted, and the ending is indeed satisfying, but where the movie touched me deeply (one IMDb reviewer says that it won the "Heartland Truly Moving Picture Award" in Indianapolis, and I believe it), the book just sort of skims the surface.  I would still recommend reading it because of its British humor and fun story, but if you're looking for a moving, human experience, stick with the movie.  I don't know if I'll ever read any of the other books in the seven-part series (the other books have titles like How to be a Pirate, or How to Speak Dragonese, in case you were wondering), but I'll let you know if I do.


Speaking of how to speak Dragonese, that was definitely my favorite part of the book.  At one point it offers a few key phrases, so that you, too, will be able to tell your dragon "No poo-ing inside the house, please" (Nee-ah crappa inna di hoosus, pishyou) or "my mother does not like to be bitten on the bottom" (Mi mama no likeit yum-yum on di bum), or my personal favorite, "let's try that again" (Doit a wummortime). This was only topped, perhaps, by Hiccup's mother's name - Valhallarama - and the fact that her bra is eventually used as a weapon.

A Paltry Inheritance (Eregon, Eldest, and Brisingr Reviews)

I started writing my first book when I was sixteen. Seems like ages ago now, both in years and maturity. More has happened to me since then than I could possibly describe. Suffice to say, nowadays my writing is almost as different from its old self as I am.

So it was with a certain degree of understanding that I took to Christopher Paolini's The Inheritance Cycle series, in which he, by means of his parents, self-published the first book, Eregon, when he was but 19 years old. In this I truly do have to commend him. He took Eregon around to over a hundred local libraries and schools and spoke about writing while simultaneously providing copies of his book, and eventually, a major publisher took it up, and away he went. The second book, Eldest, came out three years later (2005), and Brisingr was another 3 years after that (2008), meaning that odds are good that the fourth and final book in the series will arrive sometime in the Fall of 2011, though that's purely a guess.

So what is The Inheritance Cycle about, exactly? A young farmboy, Eregon, discovers a dragon egg in the forest near his home and soon must flee the soldiers of the evil King Galbatorix, who have burned down his farm and killed his uncle. He is led to a secret base of rebels by the old storyteller Brom, who, as it turns out, was actually a Dragon Rider himself before Galbatorix and the "Foresworn" killed his dragon and practically ALL of the other Riders in existence. During his journey, Eregon must learn magic and what it means to be a rider if he wants to have any chance of toppling the evil king, for he is the last of the free Riders, and if he falls, King Galbatorix will surely take over the world and enslave all humanity (and elvenkind and dwarvenkind and probably hobbits, too, though as of the end of the third book I haven't technically heard the word "hobbit" mentioned).

Does this sound a little familiar? Let me put it this way: I very nearly called this post "Star Wars: Attack of the Cloned Plotline". Just change around a few names (Eregon-Luke, Galbatorix-Emperor Palpatine, Dragon Rider-Jedi, Brom-Obi-Wan) and you're good to go. And is it really such a coincidence that Paolini has released all of his books so far 3 years apart... just like the Star Wars movies?

Inheritance Episode IV: A New Hope

I made the great mistake of purchasing the audio book version of Eregon, for at the time I frequently drove between Dallas, my hometown, and Austin, my college town, which is 3 hours and 15 minutes south along I35, and while I love my music selection, I needed something a bit more stimulating to keep me awake for the drive. So it was in Waco, Temple, Troy (minus the horses), Hillsboro, Belton, and my personal favorite, Waxahachie, that I first heard Paolini's initial foray into the wide world of novels. I say that buying the audio book was a mistake for two reasons: 1) it was much more expensive than the book, and 2) the narrator was pretty atrocious. His "voice" for Saphira, Eregon's dragon, is a baritone impression of Yoda, and his voice for Solembum - a werecat whose purpose still eludes me - actually IS an impression of Yoda. Thinking about it still makes me cringe, and I understand that the audio tape for Eldest wasn't any better.

As for the book itself, it's a mixed bag. Eregon is a young adult adventure of middling quality, full of lengthy history lessons of the world of Alagasia and very, very predictable stereotypes. I don't entirely mean that as a bad thing; it is what it is. This is a story written by a young man not yet old enough to drink; the advantage here is that he is close to the same age as his inexperienced protagonist; the disadvantage is the very same fact. You get the sense that Paolini not only was influnced by J.R.R. Tolkien but wanted to be him, but, as he was only 19 and had never before written a full novel, there was no chance in hell that he would fully pull it off, But believe me, he tried. There are random moments of poetics that don't flow as smoothly as they should; I understand the usefulness of a well-placed simile or metaphor, but when every single tear or body of water is described as a "diamond" or "pearl" or some other crystalline entity, the imagery falters. His attempts at lyrical brilliance just fall short; frankly, each and every passage that contains one would have been better without it.

I really mean it when I say that these books are the plot of Star Wars plopped down, like fresh buffalo chips, into the Lord of the Rings universe. Alagasia may as well be called Middle-earth (for instance, Middle-earth has the Haradrim Desert. Alagasia? The Hadarac Desert). The Dragon Riders even carried special swords with blades to match the color of their dragon, which sounds suspiciously like lightsabers to me (especially when you have a blue dragon, as Eregon does). Dragon Riders can use magic, which is a huge focal point for the entire series, and this is a good thing, because Paolini's magical concepts are generally far better than his plot.

Inheritance Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

It's clear in these books that the actual storyline of The Inheritance Cycle is little more than a vehicle for Paolini's imagination: the use and history of magic, dozens of pointless legends and tales of old, and an endless stream of rituals. Characters constantly talk Eregon's ear off, which is okay for him, because he's "always asking questions", as Brom puts it, but it wears on you quickly.

Eldest picks up right after the finale of Eregon, during which the rebel base (Farthen-Dur, which I call Yavin IV) comes under attack by Urgals (Uruk-Hai from LOTR). The good guys won, of course, though at considerable cost. But when one of the primary leaders suddenly gets whacked hardly five pages into the book, things begin to change (that particular scene reminded me of the second Mortal Kombat movie, where Johnny Cage gets his neck broken by Shao Kahn about 3 minutes in. Hated it then, and I hated this, too).

Eldest is easily the weakest of the series (though, optimist that I am, I'm hopeful about Book 4). In Eldest, you receive chapters from the point of view of two other characters, Roran - Eregon's cousin - and Nasuada - the leader of the Varden (aka Rebel Alliance). This was a good move on Paolini's part, partially because certain plot points wouldn't have made sense without their views, and partially because Eregon's plotline in Eldest is, shall we say, less than exciting. He leaves the Varden and journeys to the Elves to train with an old, hidden Dragon and his Rider, Yoda. Actually, it's Oromis, but you get the idea. Meanwhile Roran, his characterless love interest Katrina, and their village come under attack by the Empire, while Nasuada experiences the difficulties of leadership. I was disappointed to learn that Roran never got encased in carbonite, meaning that Paolini only has one book left to make his Star Wars analogy complete.

It's hard to say much about plot because there is so little of it after the end of Eregon. Where Eregon spent most of its time in human cities, Eldest is almost entirely set in Dwarven and Elven lands, and believe me, Eregon makes it a point to learn as much as he can, whether you want to hear it or not. Human cities didn't require pages and pages of history and explanation. Dwarven and Elven cities, apparently, did. A fundamental shift happens between Eregon and Eldest; it's as if Paolini changed sub-genres of fantasy from young-adult adventure to... I don't know, exactly. Young-adult high fantasy, perhaps, only I feel like that gives it too much credit. For some reason, characters begin to speak in a more eloquent manner than they did in Eregon. This is particularly obvious with the Carvahall villagers and Roran, who all speak as though written by a 15-year-old told to imitate Shakespeare without over-using "thou" and "thee" and other lovely relics from the English language's past. But then, out of nowhere, you get one of the most mind-boggling moments I've yet experienced in a book, where one villager, when told that they must use a few barges as a means of escape, exclaims, "Barges! We don't want no stinking barges!" I wish I were joking.

Anyway, the first half of Eldest is pretty painful. Eregon takes over 250 pages to reach the Elves and begin his training with Yoda Rider, and Roran uses that time to get pissed off at everybody and receive similar sentiments before, out of nowhere, dishing out a stirring speech that rouses the entire village into action. The second half picks up only slightly, with Eregon training (you'll learn more about magic than you ever wanted) and Roran fleeing to the Varden with 300 villagers in tow.

Though the two protagonists had always been as brothers to each other, the circumstances of Eldest begin to push them wider and wider apart on the morality scale, as Eregon becomes a vegetarian with the Elves while Roran - oh noes! - has to kill a few innocent guards in a town to ensure the survival of his own. The separation here is predictable, but not terribly played out.

The biggest problem with Eldest, though, is its romance, or, to be more technically accurate, its lack thereof. For reasons unknown, Eregon continually pursues Arwen - excuse me, Arya - even though the elf makes it abundantly clear that she wants nothing to do with him romantically. What baffled me was that Paolini never gives me, as the reader, a good reason to care for Arya myself. Sure she can kick ass, and I've little doubt that she's very pretty, but I just can't figure out why Eregon would care so much for her. I just don't see it. Roran has the same problem: he is utterly obsessed with Katrina (though thankfully she loves him back, unlike Arya), but the reader is given absolutely no reason to feel the same way. It's like the author just expects us to love these women because his characters do and leaves it at that. Katrina does nothing but fuel Roran's actions and look pretty; when she finally gets kidnapped (as we all knew she would) I was actually relieved because I knew that now the plot was going to do something. Sure enough, Roran & company packed up and left town in practically the next chapter.

I wouldn't exactly have so much of a problem with this if it didn't play such an integral part of the narrative: Roran thinks of nothing but Katrina and the number of men he's killed (he literally keeps count until he kills so many that he loses track). His obsession with Katrina is later remarked as legendary by other characters, but without Katrina herself showing some personality, he may as well be obsessed over a dog, or a basketball, that the Empire has taken from him. Perhaps Paolini meant for him to be a sort of kickass, rugged, manly man like so many action heroes of the 1980's. The author tries to play him gruff, but when he still speaks and thinks with this awkward high-fantasy attempt at speech that has a tendency to go on for paragraphs at a time, "gruff" ceases to be an apt term, if it ever was to begin with. If Roran's meant to be an ideal of manliness, then culture as we know it may be in for some rough times.

Inheritance Episode VI: Return of the Dragon Riders... Part 1

I debated whether to continue reading the series after Eldest, which concluded with a plot twist so irritating, so utterly jaw-dropping, that I actually recall muttering, "Seriously? Seriously" when I read it. Let's just say that for all of Eldest I feared a "Luke, I am your father" moment, for you know so little about Eregon's proper parentage all this time, and here at the end of Eldest: The Empire Strikes Back, I got it. I can't particularly tell you why I bothered to read Brisingr. Maybe it was because my wife owns it and hasn't read it yet (making this practically the first book EVER that I've read before her).

Mercifully, Brisingr isn't as bad as Eldest, which is kind of like saying that dying by falling off a cliff doesn't sound as bad as drowning in a sewer. In Brisingr, both Eregon and Nasuada (who, aside from Saphira, seems to be the only female character worth reading about) are almost perpetually bogged down in politics, meaning that while you aren't treated to quite so many pointless legends and myths, you are instead forced to slog through endless debates by people who have the uncanny ability to make their points in at least three different ways before letting someone else speak. Maybe it's a cultural thing in Alagasia. Believe me, though, the legends and myths are still there. I've never encountered a book series with so many characters who love the sounds of their own voices before, and I've read all of the Song of Fire and Ice books to date. Everyone discusses every possible course of action before taking it, but the only one who really sees any sort of direct fighting is Roran, and even then he suffers through some mindnumbingly predictable plotlines, mostly in the form of "here's your new leader, Roran. He's a jerk, and he'll invariably order you to do something that will get everyone killed, so you'll have to choose between insubordination and death." "Cake or death," I can hear Eddie Izzard saying. "Um, cake please." Roran's scene of insubordination involves an action sequence so unbelievable that, again, I very nearly put the book down and gave up on the whole affair. It affirmed my suspicion that the author views Roran as some kind of ubermench.

Or, as my friend who wishes to be known as "Professor Goodtimes" sometimes refers to himself as, the "manliest of all mans".

Essentially, Roran kills so many people that he fights atop a hill of corpses that grows and grows until all enemies are defeated. In all, he slays something like 197 (one of the other soldiers in his troop aparently had nothing better to do but sit there and count the number of morons who aparently didn't know how to shoot a friggen bow). It was stupid and amazingly unbelievable, and this is from a guy who plays Dynasty Warriors religiously.

The best part of the book actually came from a few chapters told from a whole new point of view, which I won't spoil for those of you who wish to go against my will and read these books anyway. Those of you who fit in this category, though, beware: there is a chapter, called "Mind Over Metal", which captures the very essence of what I'm trying to tell you about Paolini's writing. In it, Eregon forges a sword. That's the whole chapter. He forges a sword. That doesn't sound too bad, you say? Try this: the chapter is 16 pages long. That's about 6000 words, or 3 full-length essays for your average university. As I read, I kept waiting for the punchline, for something relevant to happen, but it never came. When I finally finished the chapter, I felt like I'd been mugged. Paolini had just stolen 16 pages-worth of my life, and I wanted them back, but there's no way. I can't turn back time and undo this atrocity on my life that Paolini has caused. I read somewhere that the chapter was inspired by something called The Craft of the Japanese Sword. I say it was inspired by the little-known book - written by Paolini, I shouldn't wonder - called How to Lose Your Audience.

Yet, I'll probably read Book 4 when it comes out. It's like watching a train wreck, or a soap opera, or Catwoman. I know it's terrible, but I just can't help myself. Read these books only if you really, REALLY have nothing better to do and have somehow read every single other book in the store, even Moby Dick and those crapfest prequel novels to the Dragon Age videogames. I won't say that the books of The Inheritance Cycle are some of the worst books that I've ever read, nor even that they are the worst fantasy novels (the winner there goes to this vampire... thing... that I encountered back in 2004. I promise I'm not talking about Twilight; it's just that I don't remember the name and probably burned the book after I read it). But know that if you're looking for, oh I don't know, plot, then try something else. Anything.

Oh, and the character Angela the Herbalist should be shot. Immediately. She's an "eccentric" person who talks to Eregon at considerable length about her theory that toads (or frogs; I can't remember/care which) don't actually exist. You constantly look for some semblance of truth in the random things she says, but I really don't think it's there. I think most of what she says is the author's meager attempt at humor, like the "We don't want no stinking barges!" line (which is on page 413 of the 2005 Knopf hardback, if you don't believe me). I hated her so much that I actually had a hard time being around a friend of mine named Angela for fear that I would take my anger out on her.

Homer, Meet Rick Riordan. (Percy Jackson & The Olympians: Sea of Monsters Review)

I realize that my previous post was also about Percy Jackson, and that it was unbearably long. Well, sorry 'bout that, but here's another. I promise that it won't be near as long, as there's not a movie to accompany this one. I'm going to assume that you've either read The Lightning Thief, seen the movie, read my previous post, or just don't care about a few plot spoilers. M'kay?

Anyway, the timeline of these books so far is a bit of a reverse-Harry Potter, in that the action takes place over the summer, while the school year tends to be quiet. Sea of Monsters (hereafter known as SoM, for my sake) kicks off on the last day of school, after a school year in which Percy has pretty much had no monster problems. Half-Bloods, you understand, give off a scent (a plot point to which I can relate), and monsters are drawn to it like crazy, but for some reason no one's bothered him... until now. Long story short, some monsters attack during a dodgeball game, in which they use explosive bronze balls to try to kill Percy.

See, this is precisely why I love this series. A group of cyclopes try to kill Percy by playing dodgeball. Even better? Part of Percy's ultimate plan of escape involves luring the monsters into lobbing one of the cannonballs at the doorway that leads to the boys' locker room, where the cannonball mixes with the "build-up of gas" in there (another plot point to which I can heartily relate) to cause a particularly large explosion. It's childish, it's hilarious, and it works. I can't imagine how obsessed I would have been with this series had it come out when I was half my current age. Heck, I love it now, and I'm in my mid-twenties.

There are some definite changes from The Lightning Thief to this book. One of Percy's best friends is roaming the world on a quest, but never fear, for there is a replacement. I had been curious about something during the first book, and I had wondered if Riordan would actually tackle the fact that Poseidon often sired monsters, such as the cyclopes, and boy did Riordan answer that with this book. Here you meet Tyson, Percy's new bunkmate in the Poseidon cabin. Tyson is a cyclops, but he's the "gentle giant" type, so it's alright. However, he is technically a monster, so this doesn't go over so well with the other campers. Ever had a friend who got picked on all the time, or didn't quite "fit in"? The Tyson storyline nails this home and gave Percy the opportunity to be a jerk or a hero in a whole new way. The centaur-teacher Chiron, meanwhile, has been fired because the camp has come under attack so many times recently (the gods blame him for poisoning the tree/demi-god who protects the borders), and for some inexplicable reason, he has been replaced with Tantalus. This is the guy who got so pissed off at the gods, he killed his own children, invited the gods over for dinner, and served them up some Junior Pie. For that, he has to spend eternity ever out of reach of food and water, and Riordan plays that up perfectly here. Tantalus is nasty, he hates the good guys and loves the badguys, and he generally makes life as hard as possible for Percy. Now that I look back on it, I have a firm believe that Matt Stone and Trey Parker had this guy in mind when they wrote the "Scott Tenorman Must Die!" episode of South Park.

Otherwise, the book follows a fairly similar pattern to its predecessor. Percy and friends leave for a quest to find some way to restore their camp before it dies and seriously lessens the gods' chances at combating the looming threat from the Titans. Kronos' minions, meanwhile, actively seek out support as they prepare a way for Kronos to escape Tartarus. Each chapter is dedicated to a different mini-adventure that usually involves monsters/people from the old Greek myths coming back in modern form. I was impressed at how well Riordan places his myth references while maintaining a perfectly coherent plotline throughout the whole book. You never once feel as though things have strayed off-course, or that any references are forced. To make things even better, this book is funnier than the first. This is the first series since Inheritance where I can remember laughing out loud (though in Inheritance it was always at points that weren't supposed to be funny). Maybe I'm just immature - in fact, I know I'm immature - but gosh darnit this series just makes me happy.

I'm pretty sure that Riordan kept Homer's The Odessey near him at all times while writing this one. SoM particularly focuses on the creatures and events from Odysseus' 10-year journey home, and to excellent effect. If Odysseus faced it, it's probably in here. "But!" you may say, "Didn't Odysseus sail through the Mediterranean?" Yes, you are quite right, but this series keeps up a lovely little plot device that I guess you could call the "Flame of the West", which started in Greece, moved to Rome, and eventually ended up in America. The Sea of Monsters used to sit smack in the middle of the Mediterranean, this is true, but now - you guessed it! - it's the Bermuda Triangle. All of the myths shift location to match the soul of the West, and right now, at least in Percy's world, that's America. What kinds of dangers await our hero in the Sea of Monsters, you may ask? Let's just say that one of the main monsters in store for Percy bears a fiery hatred for Nobody. If you know what the hell I'm talking about, then we should be friends.

What surprised me the most, though, is how well the main characters are fleshed out. I mean, I rather expected everyone but Percy to be a bit static and unchanging while Percy grows around them, but SoM proved me soundly wrong, and I'm the happier for it. Annabeth in particular reveals so much more of her soul than she did in The Lightning Thief, so that by the end of SoM you feel as though you know her as well as you do Percy, even though you spend the entire time in Percy's head. That's a pretty impressive feat, if you ask me. Even Tyson, the simple-but-loyal cyclops half-brother to Percy, shows some charming, if slightly predictable, moments of intelligence, bravery, and growth.

From what I understand, The Lightning Thief was Rick Riordan's first published book. Pretty darn good, if you ask me, though I would mostly just recommend that one to kids closer to Percy's age (12, not 11, as I erroneously reported in my last post). Mr. Riordan grew tremendously as a writer between books. Percy remains the same narrator, but he's funnier, the plot is better, and the characters are more well-rounded. SoM is all-out better than TLT, to the point where I would actually recommend this to anyone, not just kids. Riordan's already gotten to the point where you don't have to be of the same age and maturity level of the main character to appreciate what he's going through. That takes skill beyond that of many writers, particularly the author of the next series that I shall be reviewing, but I'll get to him later. Don't miss out on this series. I've already gone out and bought the third, The Titan's Curse. Percy Jackson & The Olympians has everything you could ask for: good writing, plot twists you didn't see coming, great characters, familiar setting, hilarious and clever narration, bravery, loyalty, courage, heart, cunning, swordplay, monsters, and, most importantly, love. I know that sounds cliche, and it most certainly is, but it's true. I'm hooked to these characters and must know what happens to them next. I can't wait to plough through The Titan's Curse.

Oh, and Hermes is totally my favorite god to show up so far. When you see the modern version of his caduceus, you'll know what I mean.

A Note on Books and the Movies Spawned from Them (Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief Review)

My opinion of movies based on books has changed over the years. I believe the first movie I ever saw that was based off a book that I had read beforehand was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone. Perhaps that was not the best first example, for it remains the most literal, straightforward adaptation that I have ever seen. There were pretty much no extra scenes added, and hardly anything was omitted from the book. I even went back and skimmed through the book after seeing the movie and found a huge portion of exact lines scattered throughout the pages. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was much the same way, though since the book was longer than the first there were a few more omissions. By now I had begun to establish a sort of status quo for movies that were based on books: the movie adaptations were meant to be as direct and literal as possible. All the filmmaker had to do was make the book his/her screenplay, and s/he was good to go.

But then the director, Chris Columbus, left the Harry Potter movies to go off and do who knows what (write and produce Christmas with the Kranks, apparently), so they got someone else. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had long been my favorite book of the series, so I was anxious to see it on the big screen, but from the moment the movie started I knew that disappointment was in store. This new director (Alfonso Cuaron) decided to steer away from the literal translation of the books and spice things up a bit. New scenes were added. New characters were added (what the crap was the deal with the Jamaican shrunken head?). Key plot points in the book were treated as arbitrary or left out entirely. Soon after, they announced that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a mammoth of a book that was rumored to be made into two movies, was now going to be condensed into a single film. With each of the movies since then, I've been one of those annoying people in the theaters who nitpicks every little detail that's different between the book and movie. There were scenes that I was glad got left out of the movie, and still I complained about them.

I think part of the problem was that I made it a point to re-read each book before its respective movie came out, so the details were fresh on my mind. With each scene that I read, I would think "Ooo, I wonder how they're going to show this in the movie," or "Oh, I bet this'll look cool". When those scenes failed to show, then, I felt cheated, as if the filmmakers had somehow promised these things to me and then denied them at the last moment. It is to them that I must apologize.

I'm not sure what changed my mind. Perhaps I started to read more. Perhaps I saw a perfect example of a literal adaptation that simply did not work as a movie (I'm looking at you, Dune). Perhaps I just grew up. A big moment came when I read The Count of Monte Christo after having seen the movie. In case you haven't experienced both book and movie yourself (though you should), the two are wildly different after a certain point, so different that it almost becomes a new story entirely. And that blew my mind.

Enter Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (by Rick Riordan, 2005). I had hardly heard of the book series prior to seeing the first poster and trailer for the movie, but immediately I began to hear of fans complaining. I couldn't understand why; the trailer looked pretty cool. I had already decided that I wanted to go see it, and see it I did. Allow me, then, to give a brief review of the movie.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is a PG film about a boy of around 17 years named - you guessed it! - Percy Jackson. From the first time you see him you know that he's not entirely normal, as your introduction to Percy is a shot of him sitting peacefully at the bottom of the pool for a duration of time that surely would have killed me. When he finally surfaces, his goofy friend Grover (hilariously played by Brandon T. Jackson, the "What do you mean 'you people'?" guy from Tropic Thunder) comments that Percy stayed under for over 7 minutes! Anyway, Percy runs into a bit of trouble at his school when one of his teachers turns into a nasty, flying Fury and tries to kill him (don't know about you, but I'm pretty confident that a few of my teachers were Furies), and he has to flee with his buddy Grover and his mom, Sally. They're attacked along the way, and after his mother is taken by a monster, Percy arrives at Camp Half-Blood, where he learns that his father is actually Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea (and technically the earth as well, but it doesn't seem like the movie OR the book go into that little detail). The subtitle "The Lightning Thief" comes from the fact that someone has stolen Zeus' master bolt, and somehow Percy is the primary suspect. It is up to him, Grover, and Annabeth, a daughter of Athena who seems suspiciously similar to Hermione Granger, to find the true culprit behind the theft before Zeus and Poseidon come to blows in what would become World War III.

Let me start off with 3 general comments.

1) The cast is supurb. Really, every character was well-cast, and no actors felt out-of-place (though Uma Thurman's Medusa was a little over-the-top). The kid playing Percy (you'd have seen him in 3:10 to Yuma, if you were smart enough to have seen that movie) was likable and fresh. The girl playing Annabeth looked exactly how you would expect the daughter of Clear-Eyed Athena to look), Sean Bean as Zeus was fun, and Pierce Brosnan as Chiron, Percy's centaur-teacher, was just rugged enough to pull it off.

2) This was your standard "Heroic Journey" plotline. Percy's normal world is threatened; he must go forth to try to fix it, and along the way he discovers more about himself.

And 3) Though it is rated PG, there are some parts that feel very, very mature, mostly in terms of sexual content. If you are a parent and your child wants to see this movie, just know that, while there's nothing specifically implied or shown, there's a lot of underlying tension there, such as Grover's constant desire to seek out and be around beautiful women (he's a satyr, though, so you can hardly blame him).

This brings me to an important point. Remember earlier when I said that fans of the books were angry with the movie? Here's one of the biggest reasons: In the movie, Percy and friends are about 17, but in the books? They're only 11 or 12. That 6-year difference is huge. Much of the movie involves traveling across the country, for instance, so a 17-year-old is going to have a much easier time (since he can drive) than an 11-year-old. This is a 6th grader vs. a junior in high school. Developmentally, there's such a gap there that 11-year-old Percy and 17-year-old Percy may as well be two completely different characters. Why the filmmakers made this change escapes me, though I have heard rumors that they were trying to avoid looking too much like Harry Potter - not a poor sentiment, I suppose, but terrible execution, since Harry is 16/17 in the latest movies. The filmmakers must have thought that it was still 2001 outside.

Not knowing all of that during the movie, I can easily say that it was an enjoyable experience. The three kids (and I use that term loosely, as the guy playing Grover turned 26 shortly after the release of the movie) were extremely likable, the quest was not only interesting but understandable (Percy is trying to clear his name as well as save his mother, who was taken hostage by Hades), and the special effects added some nice flash that one would expect from a movie about a camp for the modern-day Heracles. With a movie like this, it'd have been easy for the filmmakers to simply bank on the hopes that fans of fantasy and of the book would come out in droves to see it regardless of the reviews, but I feel like they honestly did their best to keep the film engaging. You find yourself wanting Percy to succeed and set things straight. You want the true thief to be found out and brought to justice. You experience Percy's and Annabeth's pain at being ignored by their Olympian parents; you wonder, as they do, "couldn't Poseidon/Athena spare even a moment to talk to their child?". Despite the parents being gods, there's a human connection there; how many real-life children who were abandoned by one or both parents have felt the same?

After seeing the movie, I went out and read the book. It's told in 1st-person by Percy, an 11-year-old with a great, if adolescent, sense of humor (the first chapter is called "I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-algebra Teacher"). The shell of the plot remains more or less the same as the movie, but everything that fills it in is largely, if not entirely, different. Where the movie has three primary "events" during the journey that lead up to the climax, the book has at least half a dozen. I wouldn't call the writing great, but it's really fun and funny, and Percy has a great knowledge of Greek mythology, making this series, if nothing else, a fantastic introduction to Greek myth for youngsters. The myths are explained well and incoporated so seamlessly into the narrative that readers should be able to recall a significant portion of the myths just by thinking of Percy's adventure. And, since the kids are only in 6th grade, there's no sexual tension to be found. It's very kid-friendly, but I as an adult (ha, that's a good one) still thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps my favorite thing is seeing how the Olympians have adapted to today's society - you certainly won't find them in togas in the book. In particular, Dionysus (god of wine), as the disgruntled, demoted-from-Olympus head of Camp Half-Blood was brilliant, being forced to drink Diet Coke instead of alcohol and generally bearing ill-will towards this job that he's been forced to do as punishment for his own excess. Very funny, yet still, somehow, very kid-friendly. How the author managed to pull off a kid-friendly alcoholic god is beyond me, but there you go.

I can certainly understand why fans of the book could be disappointed by the movie, as the latter is a Hollywood-ized, loosely-based adaptation that easily missed the point of the book. I know I would have loved to have seen the disgruntled, tiger-print-shirt-wearing Dionysus or the Harley-riding Ares come to life on the big screen, and yet I'm not disappointed. I can still see them, written there on those pages for me to visit whenever I wish. What works in books often simply does not work on the big screen, and vice versa. The Lightning Thief movie would have been a pretty terrible book, but as a movie it was tons of fun. I happily recommend both, but for completely different reasons. Where the book should cater mostly to middle-schoolers and kids (and immature adults such as myself who seem to have a passion for young-adult fiction), the movie can appeal to pretty much anyone who wants a family-friendly version of the upcoming Clash of the Titans remake.