By my count, I've consumed approximately 80 titles so far this year. Those titles include podcast series, narrative-based video games, audio books, comic books, and novels. I include the narrative-based video games because they're lengthy and textured enough to give me a lot to think about. Because video games have different ludological goals, I don't include every title (like, how would I ever "finish" a game like Overwatch?), and there are only a couple of them, but I feel like they're an important part of the narratives that I consume in order to improve myself as a person and a writer.
I don't count movies, though. Maybe I will next year, and amp up my goal from 100 titles in a year to something more like 150. Film has been pulling me in more and more lately, in part because of its compact nature (though some long-form storytelling, like Netflix's Stranger Things is hardly compact). It takes an investment of only a couple hours to get the whole story. That's appealing.
As I mentioned before, watching movies is part of the cultural lexicon. I don't get to do it a lot, because I have children, so this year's crop has been surprising: Wonder Woman, Ghost in the Shell, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2, Kong: Skull Island, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Assassin's Creed, Suicide Squad, Ghostbusters, and then a handful of rewatches thrown in there. For some people, what I've listed is, like, a week's worth of work. For me, it's rare to have this many films in a single calendar year.
When my family and I go up to the cabin, we always take a couple of schlock movies with us. Why? I don't know; it's a tradition. It lets us appreciate the better entertainment we get, but we also get to indulge in the intellectual junk food that is schlock. This year, we took up Sing and the new Power Rangers.
Both surprised me at their quality.
Sing and Power Rangers was trying to do a similar thing, actually. Both had ensemble casts with the leader as the ostensible focal point. Both dramatized teams using their unique skills to help pull them through the difficulties before them. Both had massive structural damage as part of their choices. Both looked at how parenting can be a hard thing to do, though Sing looked more at the parents and Power Rangers at the teenagers/children of the family.
Despite making a few strange narrative choices--as well as a wholesale departure from the campy tone of the TV show (which, I easily admit, I loved in its earliest incarnations)--Power Rangers told an important kind of superhero story. It wasn't about any one of them; indeed, the obstacles to succeeding in their mission to defend Earth from Rita's (admittedly stupid) plan could only be overcome through teamwork and self-sacrifice. There were a lot of moments where it was the fraternity (or sorority, if you'd rather) that became the most important part of the film. As a result, there was very little Power Rangering in the movie called Power Rangers.
Maybe this is part of its poor reception. [Spoiler] The team doesn't get their armor until the final third of the show, just in time for the climactic battle. [End spoiler] As far as superheroes go, they don't do a lot of heroic stuff. Additionally, story elements that needed more time--particularly the relationship between Jason and his father--are given the short shrift. This is unsurprising, considering the fact that there's an obvious expectation of greater action throughout, but the fact that filmmakers were even attempting to incorporate real character growth and motivation is admirable.
The acting was...about what you'd expect. Much better than the TV series, of course, and I don't know how I feel about putting Billy in as autistic--"on the spectrum", as he calls it. I love that they made him autistic, don't get me wrong. But the portrayal could be seen as insensitive, if only because it's a not-on-the-spectrum actor playing someone who is. What I do really appreciate is that Jason, Billy's main foil, never winks at the other characters, cuts Billy off cruelly, or acts as though he isn't a valid, contributing member of the team. We could do a lot worse than see more of that sort of sensitivity on screen.
While the protagonists work pretty well as a group, I would say that the scenery-chewing Rita wasn't as much fun as her campy performance maybe was going for. She was tonally so different from the rest of the story that her menacing behavior (and whitewashing) fell flat for me. She was probably the worst part of the film, aside from their version of Goldar.
So, this isn't to say that Power Rangers is a hidden gem that people overlooked. I think it took some serious risks and, when they paid off, they did so really well. The rest of it...well, I don't think anyone was looking at this film as Oscar-bait.
I don't count movies, though. Maybe I will next year, and amp up my goal from 100 titles in a year to something more like 150. Film has been pulling me in more and more lately, in part because of its compact nature (though some long-form storytelling, like Netflix's Stranger Things is hardly compact). It takes an investment of only a couple hours to get the whole story. That's appealing.
As I mentioned before, watching movies is part of the cultural lexicon. I don't get to do it a lot, because I have children, so this year's crop has been surprising: Wonder Woman, Ghost in the Shell, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2, Kong: Skull Island, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Assassin's Creed, Suicide Squad, Ghostbusters, and then a handful of rewatches thrown in there. For some people, what I've listed is, like, a week's worth of work. For me, it's rare to have this many films in a single calendar year.
When my family and I go up to the cabin, we always take a couple of schlock movies with us. Why? I don't know; it's a tradition. It lets us appreciate the better entertainment we get, but we also get to indulge in the intellectual junk food that is schlock. This year, we took up Sing and the new Power Rangers.
Both surprised me at their quality.
Sing and Power Rangers was trying to do a similar thing, actually. Both had ensemble casts with the leader as the ostensible focal point. Both dramatized teams using their unique skills to help pull them through the difficulties before them. Both had massive structural damage as part of their choices. Both looked at how parenting can be a hard thing to do, though Sing looked more at the parents and Power Rangers at the teenagers/children of the family.
Despite making a few strange narrative choices--as well as a wholesale departure from the campy tone of the TV show (which, I easily admit, I loved in its earliest incarnations)--Power Rangers told an important kind of superhero story. It wasn't about any one of them; indeed, the obstacles to succeeding in their mission to defend Earth from Rita's (admittedly stupid) plan could only be overcome through teamwork and self-sacrifice. There were a lot of moments where it was the fraternity (or sorority, if you'd rather) that became the most important part of the film. As a result, there was very little Power Rangering in the movie called Power Rangers.
Maybe this is part of its poor reception. [Spoiler] The team doesn't get their armor until the final third of the show, just in time for the climactic battle. [End spoiler] As far as superheroes go, they don't do a lot of heroic stuff. Additionally, story elements that needed more time--particularly the relationship between Jason and his father--are given the short shrift. This is unsurprising, considering the fact that there's an obvious expectation of greater action throughout, but the fact that filmmakers were even attempting to incorporate real character growth and motivation is admirable.
The acting was...about what you'd expect. Much better than the TV series, of course, and I don't know how I feel about putting Billy in as autistic--"on the spectrum", as he calls it. I love that they made him autistic, don't get me wrong. But the portrayal could be seen as insensitive, if only because it's a not-on-the-spectrum actor playing someone who is. What I do really appreciate is that Jason, Billy's main foil, never winks at the other characters, cuts Billy off cruelly, or acts as though he isn't a valid, contributing member of the team. We could do a lot worse than see more of that sort of sensitivity on screen.
While the protagonists work pretty well as a group, I would say that the scenery-chewing Rita wasn't as much fun as her campy performance maybe was going for. She was tonally so different from the rest of the story that her menacing behavior (and whitewashing) fell flat for me. She was probably the worst part of the film, aside from their version of Goldar.
So, this isn't to say that Power Rangers is a hidden gem that people overlooked. I think it took some serious risks and, when they paid off, they did so really well. The rest of it...well, I don't think anyone was looking at this film as Oscar-bait.