American Gods

I've started re-reading American Gods, partly as a weird way of dealing with something I'm not going to get into now, and doing what I've been doing with books since high school - imagining them as movies. I have a lot of views about the complexities of adapting a book into a good movie, and don't you dare ever tell me the book is always better because it's all just different ways of telling a story. Even a "true" adaptation of a book into a movie is just the interpretation of one person, or more likely a group of people. Anyway, this isn't going to turn into a lengthy rant about my views, this is about my American Gods movie, or particularly, the cast.

I started with Mad Sweeney. I want him to be played by Leonardo DeCaprio. He's just kind of perfect for a drunk, belligerant leprechaun who doesn't sound at all Irish. The bit about the accent reminded me of David Boreanaz, who, as Angel, also lost his accent (thankfully) by being stateside for so long. I decided I wanted Boreanaz to play Shadow. He can do stoic angst very well, and is perfectly huge for the intimidating but gentle ex-con. Also, if I can't get Leo for Sweeney, I can always get David's bff Christian Kane (played evil lawyer Lindsey on Angel) to do it.

Then, Laura came back from the dead kind of, and I realized I had set my cast perfectly to include Sarah Michelle Gellar. You could say I'm just fanboying at this point, but you'd be wrong, because even though I'm a big fan of both Buffy and Angel as television shows, I kind of dislike them as characters and the Buffy/Angel relationship is the most annoying one of all time. Still, they've got chemistry and experience with supernaturally awkward relationships. Wonder if she'd actually accept it, though. Still, I'm more likely to get her than anyone else, when you compare all their current carreers.

Haven't gotten around to casting Wednesday, yet. Maybe Gary Oldman, and that way I could keep him around as Baron Klaus Wulfenbach. Gary Oldman never gets treasure.

More if I keep doing this.

MY CABBAGES!

Before I express my grief over the tremendous failure that this movie was, I'd like to let all you folks that I grew to love the show with that I wish we could have shared this moment. We could have bonded over it, like Babel. Only the twins will get that, but that's probably for the best.

First, no I-told-you-so's - I knew it was going to be bad. I had low expectations for M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, but Shyamalan's got some kind of crazy limbo skills. It's as though the writers didn't so much watch the show as read the synopsis of most of the episodes of the first season and possibly some of the Wikipedia entry. Clearly not all of the Wiki, however, it's quite extensive. Every minute reminded me of when I read about M. Night learning about the series: from his daughter. The whole thing smacked of a story that a parent tried to piece together from what his child told him. Kind of like that video of 5-year-old telling Star Wars, only in reverse and considerable less adorable. In short, the Ember Island Players did it better.

I recall the hubub over casting; It could be coincidence, but I'm pretty sure the response to the outrage over casting was to retroactively Kill The Black Guy First by casting Damon Gupton as Monk Gyatso. Still, I was kind of over the whole ethnic thing, it can be hard to find people that look the right ethnicity, do complicated fight choreography, and act, but I kind of expected them to be able to do at least one of those things. I can forgive Iroh for being English and not at all fat, for example, because he did what he could with the awful writing and, in my opinion, was the closest to the original character. Zuko was alright. His scar was difficult to see and the hair was wrong, so we lost some symbolism there, but he was among those doing their best with the crap they were given in the form of a script. Fire Lord Ozai and Admiral Zhao, along with the Fire Nation countryside, looked very French/Italian and not at all intimidating. They did alright with their lines, but I just could not take Zhao's whiny voice seriously, when he was such a hot-headed bad-ass in the show. The Fire Nation Army seems to be less competent than Imperial Storm Troopers.

Poor, poor, Sokka. Jackson Rathbone is another guy who seemed to have a grasp on his character, but powerless against the writers. He was doing his darndest to make sure that we knew that there was some kind of comic relief going on somewhere off-screen. The animated character once described himself as "Sokka, the meat and sarcasm guy." Jackson had that, along with the serious side that the only main character that isn't a bender tended to have. He did good, and I commend him. Nicola Peltz's Katara, however, was more annoying than Dawn. I guess it's tough, hopeful optimism is harder to build up realistically than meat-eating sarcasm. Noah Ringer was just as annoying. I'm guessing they got the first kid who could swing a bo and was willing to shave his head. I should probably give them both some slack, as the greenest members of the cast, and the people who really failed here were the writers.

The show read like a badly-translated foreign film, where you could kind of gather that somewhere in here was a great story that got muddled up some how. As a sort of montage of the entire first season, the film managed to be both too fast AND too slow. They lacked the fast-paced dialogue that would have made such an undertaking possible, and dragged out terrible bits that ended with things like "we believe in our beliefs." That is not an exaggeration, that was a line just before Sokka's first girlfriend dies and becomes the moon. Sorry, the becoming the moon bit doesn't so much happen in the movie, they probably thought it was hokey.

In place of good dialogue, there were lots of scenes of Aang and Katara doing Tai Chi, and notably NOT BENDING ANYTHING. While a lot of the bending that actually happened looked kinda cool, you could see a lot of cheating going on, like close-ups with sound suggesting that elements were moving around somewhere. Oh, and for some reason, Iroh's the only guy who can make his own fire. Everyone else needs it to already be there. And speaking of close-ups MY GOD THE CLOSE-UPS. We get it, the make-up crew is good at hiding these kids' acne. Very impressive. Seriously, at least 75 percent of the crappy dialogue, as well as the 5 minutes of not crappy dialogue, occurred while the camera was right next to the character's face, but I digress.

The writers seemed to smack what they thought were the important episodes together by pasting the end of each one in a sort of cohesive super-plot. Unfortunately, none of the endings really benefited from the build-up that would have come from the rest of the episode it was ripped from. Like I said, probably working with synopses without actually watching any of the show.

I'm running out of steam here, so a few more things before I go to sleep. Momo was kind of scary and not really cute at all and sort of reminded me of Barbosa's monkey, Appa was perfect but I wanted more of him, and the cabbage guy made no appearance. One cabbage cart destroyed would have redeemed the movie for me, but this film was devoid of Easter eggs. All the cool bending that didn't happen in the movie was put into the closing credits.

That said, if by some depressing miracle this movie makes enough money that they actually make the other two, I will still see them. I have a problem.

a response

Classic. This is how it always ends, isn't it? You categorically deny any positive impact I ever may have had while I was part of your life and insist you are better off without me, while simultaneously lashing out at me in any way that's subtle enough to be concieved of as a coincidence. All this really just proves that you are in complete denial of the truth of the matter which is that you never really cared about me for my sake, only for your own. All you wanted was to possess me, a fact which hurts me more than the guilt of any pain I caused by breaking things off or any more that I might have caused if I let this go on any longer. Your reaction only enforces the reasons I left.

I don't know, maybe I'm full of arrogant indignation and am completely full of myself to assume all this, maybe I truly never made you happy, but why would you have ever wanted me if I didn't? Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe you haven't grown at all.

another haiku

I've been reflective, lately. came up with this after a talk with someone with whom I hadn't really conversed in quite some time.

A talk with her was

like sitting by an old fire

discussing the ash.