Plot Threads If They'd Continued X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

A recent episode of Myopia Movies is about the 2006 film X-Men: The Last Stand. It's the third and last present-day X-Men movie of the early 2000s before the franchise was rebooted with the 1960s-set X-Men: First Class and its historical-fiction sequels. 

I was not a participant in the podcast but I did listen. Here are my thoughts:

*Much of the film revolves around how a "cure" for mutation was discovered. Rogue (Anna Paquin), whose life-draining mutant abilities have essentially ruined her life, ends up taking it in order to interact physically with her boyfriend Bobby Drake (Shawn Ashmore) without risking hurting or killing him. However, the ending strongly hints the cure may only be temporary, with a theoretically de-powered Magneto shown able to slightly move a chess-piece. Nic seemed to think this made the whole film pointless, but this has some interesting implications.  

If a mutant who wishes to be "normal" has to undergo the procedure repeatedly, this means they're basically living with a chronic illness in terms of expenses. Who paid for Rogue to be "cured" the first time and who will be paying for it if she has to undergo the procedure every few weeks like, say, chemotherapy? Owing to Rogue's age, she was either in high school when her powers kicked in and she ran away from home (high school dropout) or had recently finished (that trip she and her boyfriend were planning in the first film could have been a graduation trip). With that level of education she's going to have a hard time finding a job that could pay for continuous treatment, and that could make her vulnerable to bribery.

(In the comics, Rogue was a originally a villain aligned with Mystique, so her doing increasingly desperate things for money--possibly including betraying the X-Men--because she is absolutely terrified of losing her normal life would make sense. And if she does something so bad Bobby breaks up with her, that emphasizes the tragedy of her situation.)

Also, nobody knows the cure isn't permanent. Imagine her life-draining powers coming back at the absolute worst possible time--say she's making out with or having sex with Bobby and he ends up in a coma like her boyfriend from the first film. Assuming he wakes up, her guilty feelings might lead her to push him away, he might break up with her out of fear, or she might refuse to leave his bedside until he revives and that takes her out of the game when she might well be needed.

*Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) transferred his consciousness into the body of a brain-dead man, who awakens at the end of the film. Xavier is in a new body, which potentially means a new actor who'll need to mimic Patrick Stewart's mannerisms and might "speak" telepathically with Stewart's voice, and for the first time in decades is able to walk. This is going to be a very big deal. Also complications--with Xavier legally dead, how is he going to get his money and the school back? There's no real legal precedent for "my body was destroyed but my consciousness is in a new body," so Xavier's enemies in the political realm could take advantage.

*Per politics, the film establishes there's a Department of Mutant Affairs, headed by Beast (Kelsey Grammar). Per one of the Wikis, apparently it is the successor to the villainous William Stryker's anti-mutant paramilitary force. Placing a mutant in charge of a government agency assigned to deal with mutant-related issues reminded me of how the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, previously corrupt as hell and prone to mistreating Native Americans, eventually became largely staffed by Indians.

*With Xavier apparently dead, Storm (Halle Berry) is now in charge of his school and presumably of the X-Men. How will she handle the new responsibilities? And she does have a bit of an attitude problem--something that annoyed me is how she lectured Rogue about how she doesn't need a cure. Storm is so powerful her people back in Africa worshipped her as a weather-controlling goddess (and if you count Age of Apocalypse as something that happened in the past, Apocalypse made her one of his Four Horsemen back in the 1980s), but Rogue literally cannot touch people without hurting or killing them. Storm is blessed beyond imagining, but Rogue's life sucks. Although Beast does tell her how flat-out stupid her attitude is, one wonders if the lesson will stick.

*Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who was forced to kill love interest Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) after she was totally possessed by an alternate personality called "Phoenix," is going to be a complete mess emotionally. If you've read the X-Men Origins: Wolverine comic, this is not the first time a pretty redhead he's in love with has died because of him. Combine this with my earlier Bobby/Rogue scenario and that's three X-Men who are "out of the game" so to speak.

*Mystique (Rebecca Romjin) had lost her powers and after being callously abandoned by Magneto (Ian McKellen), went over to the government and spilled everything she knew about the Brotherhood. Any members at large after their defeat at Alcatraz, assuming they figure this out, are going to want to KILL her. And without her shape-shifting abilities, she's more vulnerable. Assuming the cure is temporary she might well regain her powers, but until then the Brotherhood might think her an easy target. Key phrase--might think. After all, she's still a skilled martial artist, and I can imagine the overconfident Brotherhood finding that out the hard way. Unless she's in the best witness protection program possible, she might well be safer in prison.

(TVTropes claimed that Mystique was originally supposed to be with Magneto at the end, implying that his "abandonment" of her and her defection to the government were all an elaborate charade. But with the Brotherhood scattered, Magneto's devotees might not get the memo.)

*Magneto has been de-powered, but might be regaining his abilities. He's vulnerable now, and a hunted man. Mystique may well be coming after him--and if her powers return she's once again the perfect spy and assassin--so I can imagine him becoming super-paranoid. And Pyro (Aaron Stanford), if he escaped Alcatraz as well, might challenge the weakened Magneto for leadership of the Brotherhood much like Fabian Cortez attempted to overthrow Magneto in the comics.

*The mutant cure has been weaponized, much like Magneto feared. Having some kind of strike team with plastic guns carrying cure-darts makes sense for dealing with dangerous mutants, which in turn means there's less need for the X-Men. Per my above comment about Xavier and politics, the government might decide now is the time to deal with how he's basically got a private paramilitary force he staffs with the teachers and even students. And an anti-mutant military unit could be misused--"cure" mutants and then kill them.

*If the mutant cure is temporary, captured Brotherhood members jailed in ordinary prisons might suddenly start breaking out. Given how Pyro is the most developed of the villains, that might be a chance for him to return.

Seriously, there are a lot of threads that could have been followed in this one. Rather than the usual Status Quo is God, the filmmakers went total base-breaking with killing off Jean, Cyclops, and (temporarily) Xavier, de-powering (at least temporarily) Rogue, Mystique, and Magneto, making Beast a Cabinet official, and creating something alternatively a miracle or a dangerous anti-mutant weapon. A pity the movie didn't do as well as the others.

Blast From The Past Movie Review: SILVER BULLET (1985)

When I was in middle school, I can vaguely recall that my school library (Dickerson Middle School) had a copy of Stephen King's illustrated novella Cycle of the Werewolf available for checkout. I think one had to have parental approval owing to the extremely violent illustrations, but I'm pretty sure I read it. When I was in high school, I remember taping the film adaptation Silver Bullet off UPN and the beginning at least being rather scary.

(Despite largely not being interested in horror, my mother seems to be aware of werewolf movies in general if not this one--she asked if it was the werewolf's heavy breathing that did it. I do remember the opening operates on the "Jaws principle" of not showing the monster. All you really see is the broad outline of the monster moving in the trees, all you hear is the breathing, etc.)

Well, the time came for Myopia Movies to do an episode on it as part of our Werewolf Month for Halloween. Here's the episode. And now for the review...

The Plot

It's 1976 in the town of Tarker's Mill, Maine. Although it's the spring and everybody is cheerful, the narrator reflects on this being when the horrors began. Said horrors start with a drunken railroad worker getting killed by something big and hairy, and every full moon the killings come again. The person who first figures out that the perpetrator is a werewolf is young Marty Coslow (Corey Haim), who is paraplegic and uses a wheelchair, and is soon followed by his older sister Jane (Megan Follows). Eventually, so does their comedically-alcoholic Uncle Red (Gary Busey).

But the werewolf knows they're onto them and the cat-and-mouse game begins...

The Good

*The acting is good. Haim and Follows come off as believable siblings (with Jane resenting having to look after the disabled Marty and her parents' obvious favoritism), while Busey comes off so well as the good-natured alcoholic uncle that some of the podcasters wondered if he were actually drunk on the set. Given Busey's issues with addiction, that wouldn't really be a shock. Everett McGill handles Reverend Lowe's intensity well--when he confronts two characters later in the film, he's creepy. And even though Robin Groves as Jane and Marty's mother Nan isn't in the film much, she does believably demonstrate her frustration with her brother who gets sloppy drunk in front of her young son and who lectures her about parenting her children when he clearly doesn't even have his own life together.

(His third wife has left him due to his drinking and he's picking up floozies in bars.)

*Making the protagonist of the story disabled is pretty innovative. Although Marty is a paraplegic and that makes his life more difficult, to quote The Gummi Bears, "Disabled does not mean unable." The kid has got quite a bit of upper-body strength for his age and thanks to Uncle Red, he has a combo go-cart/wheelchair that allows him to get around Tarker's Mill on his own rather than relying on people to take him in and out of their cars.

*They brought in Stephen King to write the screenplay. Although writing a novel and writing a film are two different skillsets, they overlap a lot better than directing a film (King directed Maximum Overdrive and did a legendarily bad job). And King knows that to work as a movie the story needs to be consolidated.

*There are only 13 full moons per year (it turns out there aren't two per month like I'd thought), so a realistic werewolf story (in which the full moon prompts the werewolf's transformation) would take place over a prolonged period. After all, a werewolf might not kill every month and death by werewolf might be mistaken for death by another cause--people think the town drunk was decapitated by a train. Cycle takes place over an entire year, but Silver Bullet takes place over a more condensed period of time--the first killing is in the spring (probably April or May) rather than January and the climactic battle with the werewolf is on Halloween, not New Year's Eve. Some of the novel's kills are eliminated (the herd of pigs) or simplified (the jackass father of a girl who's crushing on Marty). Plus I think they theorize that the werewolf is at their most deranged and inhuman at the full moon, but transforms more often.

*Although the kids think nobody will believe their idea about a werewolf and therefore they have to solve the problem themselves, the town sheriff is TVTropes Reasonable Authority Figure. He tries to warn the townsfolk off a vigilante hunt for what they think is a human serial killer (which could result in, say, lynching some drifter whom they mistake for the killer or the townsfolk shooting each other in the dark) and actually investigates when Red suggests a particular person. Given that this is a small town and everybody knows everybody, he's probably aware that Red is a drunk with questionable judgement but he gives his suspicions credit.

*Although it is common for Hollywood to malign small-town religious types as uneducated rubes or dangerous nuts, the portrayal of Christianity in the town is respectful even if it is oversimplified. Marty and Jane are Catholic and participate in charitable work overseen by the Church of Christ's Lowe (implying harmonious Catholic-Protestant relations, something that's not a given in 1976), the town's Church of Christ is well-attended, there does not appear to be any racism directed at the town's black residents, and with a few exceptions everybody is broadly decent to each other. One character shows signs of religious-crazy, but they might be suffering a prolonged mental-emotional breakdown rather than simply being a wolf in sheep's clothing or a dangerous fanatic.

The Bad

*The mighty Daniel described this film as "the non-union Mexican equivalent to American Werewolf in London" and he's kind of right. The movie's transformation sequences look like they're going for the same style, but the filmmakers didn't have the money or the skill to pull it off. I refer to the werewolf in the episode as "the bear-wolf" because that's what it kind of looks like. Even though especially early on they try to keep its appearances to a minimum a la Jaws, it's still pretty obviously an actor in a suit that resembles a skinnier Gmork from The Never-Ending Story.

*It's not as spooky/scary as I remember it. To be fair, part of that was because I was seeing it with other people (who were talking) rather than alone, but it seems more like a murder mystery with a werewolf rather than a horror-horror film. And we figure out pretty soon whom the werewolf is, so it's not even really mysterious--it's more "who's going to get whom first."

*The movie is narrated by one of the characters looking back on the events as an adult. That means we know that this character at least survived, so they're never really in danger. Plus it came off to me like The Waltons, in which the character "John Boy," now a prominent writer, tells each episode's story as an extended flashback to his youth.

*Stephen King, who grew up as a Methodist but now comes off as something like a Deist and whose daughter is a Unitarian minister, has a much more nuanced and accurate depiction of religion in the novel than in the film. In the novel they differentiate between Marty and his family (Catholics) and Reverend Lowe (Baptist) and how they don't ordinarily interact with each other. However, although Marty and his sister are Catholic (Marty's St. Christopher Medal and Jane's crucifix are important to the plot), everybody seems to attend Lowe's Church of Christ. Lowe dresses like a Catholic or Anglican priest even though the Church of Christ is much less formal, to say nothing of it being Protestant. He also claims suicide is the worst sin, which is historically something emphasized more by Catholics (see Aquinas's notion that suicide is unforgivable because you cannot repent of it). Lowe is also young and good-looking but isn't married, something you'd see more with Catholics than Protestants. Given how King wrote both the novel and the film, I'm wondering how he got this wrong. They could have included an elderly Catholic priest in the opening scene at the luncheon and depicted the two working together on the charity fundraiser, with Lowe doing most of the work due to his comparative vigor.

*How in control of its actions is the werewolf? In beast-mode it demonstrates high-level intelligence by cutting power lines, disarming an individual victim before killing them, ambushing armed hunters rather than just running at them, and is capable of using weapons. However, in human form the werewolf has nightmares about their actions and begs God for it to stop, seems to be trying to justify their werewolf actions after-the-fact rather than necessarily reveling in them, and may have been trying to keep themselves from killing people by locking themselves in their garage. In the novel the conflict and the werewolf's progressing insanity are much clearer, with the werewolf at times going out of its way to avoid people and the final confrontation with Marty is the only time they try to eliminate someone who knows too much.

*The passage of time is a bit fuzzy. Although there are a couple times in the narration where it's stated that the killing came with the last full moon of the spring, a month before school let out, that's easy to miss. It would've been clearer if the scene where we first meet Marty and Jane takes place at a church Easter luncheon rather than just some random community event. If school lets out in May, the first killing would be sometime in April and then you could have Easter afterward. Or if Easter doesn't work due to always taking place after the full moon, maybe make it a Memorial Day event? In Portland at least, schools end for students in June, not May, so Memorial Day would be before the end of the school year. 

*Kent Broadhurst, who plays the father of Marty's murdered friend Brady, simply cannot pull off the man's grief. Given his role in the story--his speech to the sheriff encourages the townsfolk to go hunting the werewolf on their own against the sheriff's orders--that's kind of a problem. Given his extensive work in theater, I'm wondering how that happened.

The Verdict

A good rental, but I wouldn't buy it. 7.0 out of 10. If you want to hear us discuss (and make fun of) the film, here's the episode.

A Friend's Short Stories, Free To Read

A friend of mine is disabled due to an antibiotic mishap and hasn't been able to regularly work since she started getting sick. She's gotten a gig posting these short stories online and she gets paid if you read and like. So here are her first few stories:

"Daffodils"-This one features a police officer responding to a call in a neighborhood of predominately elderly residents.

"Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Jews"-She's not only Jewish, but she's also a convert to Judaism, which is not particularly common. Here are her thoughts on Jewish religion and culture.

"Hiccup"-A woman deals with aging, but it's got an upbeat ending.

"Testify"-Near-death experiences.

Hopefully more short stories will be coming. Enjoy!

After-Action Report: Two Cons, Two Weeks

I know it's been awhile since I posted anything, but these last few weeks have been busy. In particular, I've spent two weekends in a row working conventions here in Atlanta--the horror-themed Days of the Dead and the steampunk/alternate-history AnachroCon final show.

At Days of the Dead, I split the table with Nathan McCullough, whom I know from the Atlanta chapter of the Horror Writers Association and who was selling his new novella/short-story collection Drag You Down. That was a good weekend--I got 35 e-mail addresses for my semi-monthly newsletter and sold 33 books. The Thing in the Woods dominated with over half, but I sold a fair number of Little People, Big Guns and even seven copies of Battle for the Wastelands despite it not being a horror novel. I made at least one sale by comparing it to The Dark Tower, which helped me make a horror connection even though both Battle and TDT series are primarily fantasy.

I also handed out all my remaining Thing note-cards with QR codes for the e-book, which based on my Amazon rankings seems to have led to some upticks in sales. Unfortunately the relatively high table cost, even though I split it with Nate, and the high costs of parking led to a net profit of only around $25. Still, given the large number of books sold, the addition of new people to my newsletter, and advice Nate gave me on how to fix a minor glitch in the first print copies of Battle, this overall was a good experience.

(Going forward I'm thinking of carrying books to and from conventions in a rolling suitcase and taking Lyft rather than driving myself and carrying the original shipping boxes on a hand-cart. With a more stable suitcase, I could even take MARTA even though it's slower and shave off even more dollars. That'll be really helpful with the upcoming Atlanta Comic Con at the Georgia World Convention Center.)

AnachroCon proved more profitable, since I was a convention guest. I appeared in five panels, listed here. The most lively one was the one on tropes--we got into the ones people found annoying like Tragic Mulatto (I brought up Mr. Spock as the rare male example, since McCoy gives him crap about being a Vulcan and other Vulcans think he's too human) and characters getting "fridged." I sold 19 books there (Thing was the biggest seller surprisingly enough, followed by Battle) and since I didn't have to pay any costs, I made $121.50 in profit on 19 books and got 17 e-mails for my newsletter. Although it's unfortunate that this will be the last AnachroCon, the Atlanta Steampunk Expo  is moving to February to take its place next year and I've been in talks with the organizers about attending as a writer.

Time to get "Son of Grendel" revised and posted on Amazon and get working on the sequel to Battle of the Wastelands. :)

How To Improve Original FRIDAY THE 13TH (SPOILERS)

As part of the "Heavy Hitters of Horror" month on Myopia: Defend Your Childhood, we did episodes on the original Nightmare on Elm Street and just recently the original Friday the 13th. Here's the Friday the 13th episode, in which you can hear us griping about how the movie really isn't that good and only spawned the sequels we know and love because it cost so little to make and made so much profit.

Well, criticism is easy. Here are some ways to make it better. Note that there are spoilers for a nearly forty-year-old movie contained herein:

*I'd begin the film in 1957 with young Jason drowning in the lake due to the counselors who are supposed to be watching him off having sex. His mother Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), perhaps sensing something is wrong, comes running from the camp kitchen where she works but is too late to save her son. She loses it, lashes out at the counselors who arrive at just the wrong time (per TVTropes, in the Pamela's Tale prequel comic Jason found the two counselors going at it and the male counselor chased him into the lake, so they're probably close by) and kills them. Then she sets the camp kitchen on fire. The fire spreads, destroying much of the camp, and Mrs. Voorhees gets arrested. She's taken off to jail or a mental institution (I doubt "temporary insanity" was a thing back then, but a newly-bereaved mother of a sickly son who died due to others' negligence is likely to get more sympathetic treatment than a premeditated stabber), but owing to the bad press and destruction of the facilities, the camp is closed. The actual movie prologue didn't really make a lot of sense. In 1958 the counselors sneak off for some lovemaking and get stabbed by an unknown assailant for unknown reasons (although the counselors do seem to know who's attacking them based on their initial reaction to being caught), then a time-jump of 20-30 years.

*The above scenario would deal with one of big problems that I and other members had with the film--Mrs. Voorhees isn't introduced until the last fifteen minutes of the film. If I hadn't already known the first movie's killer was Jason's mother rather than Jason himself, I'd have been in serious Flat What territory. If there needs to be a reference to her in the film's "present day," have the creepy trucker who drives Annie Phillips (Robbi Morgan) to the camp pass by the Voorhees family home and point it out to her and relate to how Mrs. Voorhees is in jail for the disaster at the camp back in the 1950s or was eventually released (two counts of manslaughter or second-degree murder and a couple counts of arson and reckless endangerment--she might've been released in the 1970s after serving 15-20 years) but secluded herself in the home and ultimately died. To cite the almighty Chekhov's Gun, if you fire a gun in Act 3 you need to reveal it in Act 1, and Mrs. Voorhees is neither discussed nor appears until the end of the movie.

*The first hour or so of the film need to be tightened up a bit--we see the camp getting repaired and get a little bit of characterization, but it takes too long. The scene where all six of the counselors kill a snake in the cabin after it startles one of them epitomizes the problem--were they all that bored they all had to pile into the cabin to deal with a snake?

*I was actually impressed by some of the cunning and tactical skills Mrs. Voorhees used. She's basically a 40-60-year-old woman (Pamela's Tale suggests she was pregnant with Jason as a teen, which means she could have been in her 20s when he died) and not a very big one, unlike her 400 pound muscle-mountain son of the later films. Physically overpowering most of the cast is going to be beyond her. So she strikes from ambush or uses lights (the archery range lights, her flashlight) to night-blind people before killing them with knives or other weapons. She also takes pains to cut the power and phone lines. When dealing with an alerted and younger, stronger opponent, she's notably ineffective as a fighter. My proposed new Act III would put this to good use.

*Owing to the spread-out nature of the kills and how nobody seems to be really aware of what's going on until the very end of the film, there's no tension and suspense. To remedy this and put Mrs. Voorhees' tactical skills to good use, I would have the counselors, many of whom seem to suffer from what TVTropes calls Too Dumb To Live, figure out what's going on much earlier. Perhaps when the obnoxious Ned (Mark Nelson) disappears on top of Annie not showing up like she was supposed to, they start searching the camp and find the body of Marcie (Jeanine Taylor) in the bathroom and the corpses of Jack (Kevin Bacon) and Ned in the cabin where they'd assumed Marcie and Jack were off having sex.

That still leaves half the camp staff alive and we can have them trying to hunt the killer themselves (it's ten miles back to town, in the rain no less, so they're basically stuck) or flee the campsite completely. Either way they get attacked in the dark by Mrs. Voorhees, who has just killed the new camp owner Steve Christy (Peter Brower). This would account for Brenda (Laurie Bartram), leading to a siege where Alice (Adrienne King) and Bill (Harry Crosby III) are barricaded in the cabin with Mrs. Voorhees prowling around outside. Mrs. Voorhees, going back to the arson in the new prologue, blocks the main door of the cabin they're hiding in and sets it on fire, killing Bill as he jumps out a window. Alice (Adrienne King) manages to get out of the burning cabin, paving the way for the final confrontation.

*During that confrontation in the actual film, Alice evades Mrs. Voorhees and even injures her multiple times, but Mrs. Voorhees keeps getting up and coming after her. After the second time this happens, even if Alice lacks the skill or inclination to actually kill her after all this crap, she should at least disarm her or tie her up to make good her escape. Perhaps in trying that, Mrs. Voorhees is able to injure her with a hidden second weapon or just hit her on the head really hard, leveling the playing field and putting Alice in very real danger. That would make the final confrontation less laughable and generate more suspense.

*Instead of the "dead lake Jason nightmare" and the hospital scene, end the film with police, fire, and ambulances arriving at the camp (perhaps drawn by smoke from fires Mrs. Voorhees has set) and discovering the injured Alice and the dead Mrs. Voorhees. We see Mrs. Voorhees being loaded up (in pieces) in the ambulance and cut to...

THE DISFIGURED ADULT JASON WATCHING FROM THE WOODS. Although the Wikipedia article about the first movie states the creator didn't like making Jason into the villain of the later films when he was the victim of negligent camp staff, I think the "dead lake Jason" was included as a sequel hook. This would show that Jason is not in fact dead, but grew up into the mute and vengeful machete-machine we all know and love.

You guys like? It keeps the few good parts of the film (Mrs. Voorhees as a tactical genius with a very understandable beef with the camp), but tightens it up and makes it a lot more suspenseful.

Guest Post: T.S. Dann Reviews SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK Movie

Greetings, ladies and jerks.

Apparently, the Matthew Quinn values my opinion enough to ask my thoughts after a recent trip to the moving pictures. The picture show in question is the recently released film Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. 

Why should you care what the hell I have to say about this movie? Well, let’s just say as an almost lifelong fan of the books and current author and artist, they are something I have held very near and dear for several decades. They are ingrained into the psyche of myself and many others of my generation (mid 30s now) and endure to this day for new readers. What’s more, is during the almost thirty years (as of this writing) of these books’ existence, they have survived a Satanic Panic, book bans, and other overzealous idiocy.

With that out of the way, I originally heard there was going to be a movie based on the books in early 2019. I was not optimistic. Another piece of modern Hollywood schlock that would probably be some goofy crapfest with a few haphazard nods to the books here and there. In fact, I wondered how a Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark movie could work outside an anthology of very short pieces. That being said…the part of me infused with an ever-morbid curiosity said, “If I don’t have to pay for it.”

Well, through a series of happy accidents, my girlfriend and I ended up with passes to a sneak preview on August 7 (general release was August 9). Ever the cynic, I went in with very low expectations. Well I gotta say…my pessimistic ass was not only kicked out of the olde tyme hearse, I bounced off the gravelly old road and landed smiling like that big pipe-smokin’ head on the cover of the first volume. I fucking love that guy.

The movie begins on Halloween of 1968 in a rural American town. The tale of three townie kids and an outsider is woven amidst a backdrop of the doomed anxiety of the era. Televisions broadcast about the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon, and other political angst. One of the local jock bullies walks out of a military recruiting center jazzed about going to shoot commies. The three kids navigate adolescent tension with all this as the backdrop. Early in the movie, they end up in a rather spirited conflict with said jock bully and his crew. The rubes chase them to the drive in theater where Night of The Living Dead is playing and they hide in the car of a passing outsider. From there, they convince the outsider to go see a local haunted house. Well, you know that can never go wrong in a horror movie.

Upon entering the house, we learn the sad tale of Sarah Bellows and her high falutin’ family. Apparently poor old Sarah was not quite “normal” and was locked in the basement where she eventually died. Leading up to her death, she would tell stories to kids who would come try to talk to her through the walls. Then weird things started happening…and the whole family disappeared, leaving their Gothic mansion abandoned. The legend goes that if you enter the house and tell Sarah you want to hear a story, she will tell you one. Or…you can find her personally written book of stories in the basement and get locked in there by the local drunken jocks. The problem is Sarah is still writing in that book of stories…despite having died in 1899.

From there, the movie incorporates five stories from the original books into the plot: "Harold," "The Big Toe," "The Red Spot," "The Dream," and ultimately a composite of “Me-Tie-Doughty-Walker”, “What Do You Come For?”, and "Aaron Kelly’s Bones." While not exact adaptations, they are quite faithful to the feel of their literary counterparts. In fact, in the final segment, there is a part where a head and dismembered body fall down a chimney…and it looked exactly the way I pictured it back in the day when I first read “What Do You Come For?” and “Me-Tie-Doughty-Walker”.

The plot and action are actually quite morbid and macabre. The haunting creatures manifested by Sarah’s tales are not only scary, but lethal. This one does not play it safe. They kill high school kids and townsfolk alike per Sarah’s tales, imbuing the film with a sense of foreboding danger. While not particularly blood-drenched, the movie does not shy away from gore either. What is there is used to good effect. There is also a fair deal of profanity and the movie does not shy away from heavy subjects such as racism, widespread anxiety during war, strained family relations, underage alcoholism, and other themes not commonly explored in PG-13 horror.

I really don’t want to blather on too much about the stories for the sake of not spoiling anything. What I will say is as an avid reader of the books and someone who has gone on to own many other books illustrated by Stephen Gammell, is that the effects and atmosphere in the movie do justice to the source material. Elements of some stories are combined, I.E. the hot dead chick illustrated in "The Haunted House" appears as the antagonistic spirit in the movie’s adaptation of "The Big Toe." She’s not a graphite portrait, but the effects used create a strong representation of the original.

If you are a fan of good horror in general or an original fan of Alvin Schwartz’s retold folklore, or even just Stephen Gammell’s immortal illustrations, you will be pleased with the film adaptation of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. I expected the worst and found my old hollow heart slightly filled by this love letter to the tales and illustrations that I fell in love with all those years ago.

-T.S. Dann is a former police detective and forensic investigator from DeKalb County, Georgia. He is currently an author and artist who is working on his second book in the brutally dark Nightmarescape series. He has shared tables with Matthew Quinn at several Atlanta area events, mainly because he likes annoying him between customers. 

You can check out his artwork and books on Amazon, Instagram, and Etsy.

Guest Post: The Heist in the Mulberry Garden By Luis F. Salcedo

The production of silk was one of the closely-guarded secrets of ancient China, as it was a major export item and source of wealth, but a group of Byzantine monks managed to steal the secret by smuggling silkworm cocoons out hidden in their beards. What if the story were told...as a comedy? What if it starred...Seth Rogen?

What follows is the pitch for this movie from Luis "Lou" Salcedo...

The Heist in the Mulberry Garden

It’s The Interview meets the sword and sandal in the Far East. I took some historical liberties with the dates and character but it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Xander (James Franco) and Stavros (Seth Rogen) are two Christian monks leading a mission by the Patriarch of Constantinople to evangelize to the Chinese Emperor and his royal court. Stavros tries to convince the elderly Emperor Wu to convert. Xander meanwhile is busy seducing the Emperor’s granddaughter Liu Jingyan. Xander is caught by the girl’s father Liu Yan. Both Xander and Stavros are imprisoned and sentenced to be executed but luckily escape in the chaos generated by the Eastern general Hou Jing seizing power. The other missionaries under Xander and Stavros’ leadership are not so lucky.

It takes them several years to return to Constantinople in one piece.

The Patriarch of Constantinople is none too pleased. He wants to have them sentenced to do missionary work in Northern Europe (a death sentence!) but the Emperor Justinian (Jesse Eisenberg) gets him to back off when hearing about Xander’s misadventures with the Chinese princess in the mulberry garden. He wants them to go back to China and steal some of the Emperor’s silkworms. Justinian’s marriage to his wife Theodora (Jennifer Lawrence) is on the rocks and there are rumors that she is having an affair and might leave him. The silkworms would come in handy in showing that he is worthy of her love or something like that.

They agree only because the alternative is risking a chance experiencing the blood eagle. The two plan to outwit Justinian and immediately escape to India when the opportunity arises. The Roman emperor, suspicious as he is, puts them under the supervision of his commander Flavius Belisarius (Rupert Friend). They set out from Constantinople, leading an expedition of one thousand, including several hundred Hun mercenaries. They plan on going to China via the steppes.

The Roman expedition is betrayed by the Hunnic commander Dengizich mid-journey. The expedition is additionally almost wiped out by a band of angry Tibetans but Xander, Stavros, Belisarius and part of the expedition reach the border. They are greeted by the general Wu Mingche and his subordinates Pei Ji and Huang Faqu.

The current Chinese ruler, Emperor Xuan of Chen is unimpressed by the Roman expedition and believes them to be spies sent by the Northern Zhou and Qi. Then well…I got nothing else at the moment but you know where this may go.

The final scene would be something along the lines of Seth Rogen and James Franco’s characters sitting alone on a Chinese junk sailing down the Yellow River. Maybe the whole junk is filled to the brim with silkworms.

TENTATIVE CAST

James Franco as Xander
Seth Rogen as Stavros
Jesse Eisenberg as Emperor Justinian
Jennifer Lawrence as Empress Theodora
Ian McKellen as Patriarch Menas
Rupert Friend as General Flavius Belisarius
Daniel Henney as Dengizich
Hasan Minhaj as Ramagupta
Kevin Hart as Rosco

James Hong as Emperor Wu
Henry Golding as Emperor Xuan
Li Bingbing as Lady Qian
Fan Bingbing as Lady Liu Jingyan
Chen Jianbin as Liu Yan
Andy Lau as Wu Mingche
B.D. Wong as Pei Ji
Daniel Wu as Huang Faqu
Liu Xiaoqing as Zhang Yao'er
Jackie Chan as Hou Jing
Ian Chen as Chen Shubao
Chen Shubao

The idea for this movie would be either a giant $100 million dollar money sink that gets torpedoed due to public pressure mounted by a combination of woke social media activists and nationalist elements in the Chinese government who would see the film as insensitive. Expect some whining about cultural sensitivity coming from state media. Or it becomes a moderately successful, acclaimed movie that no one likes to acknowledge except for the rare movie contrarian on Reddit.

Guest Post: Adventures in Amazon's Algorithms

It’s a pleasure to be asked to write about my experiences self-publishing on Amazon. My name’s Dave Schroeder (SHRAY-der) and I’m in a metro-Atlanta-area writing group with Matt.

Amazon’s algorithms can be powerful allies for authors. I’m about to self-publish my eighth novel and so far have sold over 26,000 copies of my books in paperback, via Kindle, as pages read on Kindle Unlimited, and through Audible, so Amazon and its algorithms have been kind to me.

What I discovered with my own books is that it takes time to build a loyal group of fans who eagerly look forward to your books and buy them whenever you release a new one. I work hard to cultivate fans using Facebook, my mailing list, and face-to-face conversations at science fiction and fantasy conventions. My Xenotech Support series of science fiction humor books about tech support for alien technology helped me build a loyal following. Many of them bought The Congruent Apprentice, the first novel in my Congruent Mage fantasy series, on the first day or two it came out, thereby bumping it up high on Amazon’s Young Adult Epic Fantasy sales list.

Once the book was in the top twenty for that category, Amazon’s algorithms started featuring the book in its You May Also Like suggestions. That resulted in more people discovering and liking it, thereby feeding a virtuous cycle that’s led to sales of over twelve thousand copies of The Congruent Apprentice and twenty-one thousand copies of the books in the series total, since the first book came out in March of 2017.

The key, to my mind, is to pick a narrow category and work hard to get a lot of sales of your title right up front, so Amazon’s algorithms are aware that people are buying your book. I expect those algorithms will have a minimum sales threshold that varies by category. Once that threshold is met, the algorithms themselves will do the work of spreading word about your book to wider audiences.

Most self-published authors can’t afford to buy advertising to drive big sales numbers, but we can use less expensive approaches and the power of our fans to have Amazon’s algorithms work for our benefit. For many narrow categories, it doesn’t require a lot of sales to put you in the top twenty in sales. Just over a hundred buyers could be enough, at least in my experience.

Sales of my fantasy series on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited led to a contract with Podium Publishing, a Toronto-based audiobook publisher, who noticed my books’ big numbers and offered me a contract to create audio versions of the Congruent Mage series, which led to even more sales though a different medium. Without my good Kindle sales, they never would have reached out to me. One word of caution—Audible listeners want to get value for their credits, so I’d advise you to bundle your books into at least ten hours of spoken content—typically a hundred-thousand words plus, depending on how fast your narrator speaks.

There’s something in self-publishing known as the fifth book phenomenon, where sales don’t really pick up until you’ve released your fifth (or fourth or third) book, so that readers know you’re “real” and will be sticking around. They don’t like making investments in an author when there’s only one or two books out there. Releasing four or five books somehow gives readers permission to fall for a particular author and indulge in a natural tendency to read everything they’ve written. That’s a lot harder when you only have one or two books out, so don’t feel bad when the sales of your first few books aren’t stellar. Building your audience—and collecting loyal fans who will buy your next book en masse and bump it up in Amazon’s algorithms—takes time. Continuous cultivation of your fans is part of what it takes to be successful in today’s small press and self-publishing world. Best of luck in building your own loyal followings. Amazon and its algorithms will repay you for it.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Merlin (1998)

The film podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood that I'm on is doing a dedicated television movies month. Thomas's contribution to the list was the 1998 television miniseries Merlin, which features none other than Jurassic Park alumnus Sam Neill as the legendary wizard. I watched it when it was on TV and could remember a lot of the general beats, so I figured I'd give it a spin.

Here's the podcast, which among other things features me rasping a lot and swearing. And now for the review...

The Plot

It's the 6th Century AD or so and Britain is a mess. Various Christian and pagan factions are at war with each other, while the Saxons invade from Europe. The goddess Queen Mab (Miranda Richardson) and her henchman Frick (Martin Short) attempt to stem the decline of "the old ways"--since if gods aren't worshiped, they cease to exist--in the face of the growing power of Christianity. To do that Mab creates Merlin (Sam Neill) as a sort of anti-Jesus (complete with what seems to be a virgin birth), but Merlin refuses to serve Mab after he discovers just how cruel and unpleasant she is. The supernatural cold war between the two drives the events of the story of King Arthur (Paul Curran) over what seems to be a generation or so.

The Good

*Most Arthurian stories don't take the Saxons into account even though the earliest historical accounts of Arthur are about fighting the invading Saxons. I suspect this has to do with Le Morte D'Arthur and The Once and Future King, which don't feature the pagan continental invaders and focus instead on conflicts among the Celtic Britons. The prologue to the film depicts the Saxons, who respect neither Christian churches nor Celtic pagan shrines, as one of the various problems assailing Britain, which was nice. I'd have liked more of them, but more on that later.

*The acting is for the most part good. After all, they do have Sam Neill, Martin Short, and other talented actors to work with. There are a couple moments of apocalyptic badness (that believe me I make sure to mock in the podcast), but I'll get to those later. Miranda Richardson is raspy and annoying, but she has one really good moment that I discuss in the podcast, since it's spoiler-iffic.

*Paganism is referred to as "the old ways," which however annoying the way they keep saying it is, does make sense. One reason animistic and polytheistic "old religions" tend to fall before proselytizing religions like Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam is that they lack strong organizational structures and in many cases even literature and writing. They're just things people have always done, and that's a pretty weak reed when facing societal collapse (the fall of Rome, the Saxon invasion) or the arrival of a much more organized new faith bearing with it various advancements like literacy (and thus more coherent governmental administration), new crops and farming techniques, etc.

(Yes, I am aware of persecutions of polytheists by ascendant monotheists, but the new faith has to get into a strong enough position to do that in the first place. It took 300-odd years for Christians to persecute Roman pagans; before it was the other way around. And St. Patrick in Ireland was a straight-up slave.)

*When Mordred makes his move, he goes into battle wearing the sun-god image on his armor that's associated with the film The Wicker Man. Considering he's paganism's last champion against oncoming Christianity, that's a nice bit of detail.

The Bad

*For a being of such great power, Merlin comes off as extremely weak and passive. He takes no action (other than to berate Arthur about it) when he learns that Morgan has slept with Arthur even though he's sure a child will result due to Mab's scheming. Even though he knows Morgan is laired up in Castle Tintagel with the young Mordred and Mab getting up to who knows what, all he really does is beg her not to raise Mordred in the "old ways." He doesn't attempt to kidnap or kill Mordred or Morgan despite knowing the threat they represent (and the Vortigern plot shows Merlin is capable of physical violence if he wishes), nor does he have Arthur attempt to take control of his son or attack Tintagel with his armies if Morgan objects. One could argue that this could provoke the wrath of Mab, but Mab is not omniscient or omnipresent. Merlin could pull a fast one and Mab wouldn't be able to prevent it.

*Per the above, so many bad decisions made by so many other people. We're talking Matrix Revolutions levels of stupidity (listen to the podcast in which I discuss that) among people who should know better. It's a lot harder to enjoy the movie when people who are supposed to be such great heroes are all a bunch of morons.

*Per my earlier comment about Mordred, when he enters the picture as an adult, nobody seems able to deal with him. He just walks into Camelot, claiming to be Arthur's son, and starts stirring up trouble. Even in The Once and Future King, it takes years for him to build the support base to challenge Arthur and he's more conflicted about doing it. And once he makes his violent intentions clear, all Arthur does is slap him and he knocks around some soldiers who try to arrest him. That would've been a very good time for a Zerg Rush, since however skilled he is he's just one man.

*Mab's voice is weird and annoying. She's supposed to be an otherworldly being and I know what they're going for, but they could have done something else than have her rasp and screech. Mab also has got too much eyeliner and looks like she's BoToxed to hell. Is this supposed to be a metaphor for her refusal to accept her own obsolescence? She's not super-duper impressive as a villain.

*There are two scenes where Merlin and Mab face off and Neill, for all his acting chops, just comes off as really goofy and ridiculous. "I WILL BEAT YOU MAB! I WILL FIND A WAY!" or something to that effect. If Mab were more genre-savvy, she should have just slagged him right there before he gets powerful enough. Someone really needs to read the Evil Overlord List. And in another scene, Merlin is all like, "ARTHUR WILL HEAL THE LAND!" Excessive drama aside, heal the land from what? The previous king Uther Pendragon is shown to have...issues...but the situation hasn't reached Vortigern-level issues of tyranny or (large-scale) civil war.

*Although Frick is one of the film's more amusing characters, there's a scene later on where he comes off as really passive and foolish. Life lesson: If someone you know is extremely powerful and capable of doing really bad things to you with magic does something bad to someone else, use your own powers (and he has them) immediately rather than just yell at them and give them a chance to hammer you down. This person is someone he knows very well, so he should know just what they're capable of. Idiot.

*The passage of time in the film is really wobbly. Nimue seems to be a trainee nun (or just hanging around an abbey) for one or two decades and however much the Church emphasizes hospitality, at some point they're going to tell her to shit or get off the pot. Arthur is gone hunting for the Holy Grail long enough for problems to result, but the Holy Grail is supposed to be in Britain itself. He'd basically be riding around his own kingdom and could probably check in at Camelot fairly regularly.

*Speaking of the Holy Grail, there's very little foreshadowing about it. Apparently there's a deleted scene explaining that when Frick had the young Morgan put a stone in Arthur's crib (that scene stayed in), it was supposed to curse him with impulsiveness, but that scene really should have stayed there. Knowing Arthur's impulsive behavior is of supernatural origin would explain both some of the good and bad decisions he makes.

*The Saxons aren't mentioned at all after the prologue--the story is super-focused on the "Summer Kingdom" and how it ended, but it was Arthur's unification of the various post-Roman Celtic factions to defeat the Saxons that made the SK possible. There should've been at least one battle against the Saxons--who BTW look like a bunch of central casting Vikings complete with horned helmets--in addition to the various British warlord-types.

*This ties in with my last major problem--the movie is way too long for what happens in it. Yes, it's a TV miniseries, but they should have had a lot more stuff in the allotted time to make it entertaining and less draggy. Per my earlier remarks, making Saxons a larger presence would have been one way--Merlin and Mab could be forced to temporarily work together to help Arthur's Celtic coalition fight off a Saxon invasion, since the Saxons don't respect the Celtic pagans any more than they respect the Celtic Christians, and their victory would be Mab's undoing just as much as the triumph of Christianity. A Nazi-Soviet pact between Merlin and Mab, if you will.

(Incidentally this would deal with my beef with Merlin being so passive and Mab not crushing an obvious threat while he's still weak--he can't move against Mab, nor can Mab move against him, because of the oncoming Saxon invasion. They can snip at each other and impede each other in minor ways, but the apocalyptic showdown simply cannot happen or both Celtic pagan and Celtic Christian civilizations are doomed. Once the Saxons are beaten back, then we move into the endgame.)

During this period of the story, Mab could try to seduce Merlin back into her service (perhaps by offering to heal Nimue's injuries), while Merlin could try to find ways to undermine and destroy her in the process of working with her against the invaders. For example, he could at least try to undermine young Mordred's faith in "the old ways" by explaining that for all her power Mab is ultimately dependent on her worshipers (i.e. she's a parasite and needs them more than they need her) and that she's not even a goddess, but a being from "the land of magic" (i.e. an alien or, as they might understand it, a Fae). Although this doesn't work, the Saxons could still be beaten and Arthur could celebrate the defeat of the Saxons and what appears to peaceable relations with his half-sister with the building of Camelot and the quest for the Grail, only for Mab, Morgan, Mordred, etc. to backstab him before Merlin can backstab them by inciting a coup in Camelot while he's away. If Mordred is old enough to participate in said battle with the Saxons, it could earn him allies among Arthur's supporters that barging into Camelot and griping about Guinevere's affair with Lancelot really wouldn't.

*Finally, is Merlin's guardian Ambrosia a Christian or some kind of non-theist who follows her own conscience? Mab assumes she's become a Christian when Ambrosia tells her to her face she no longer believes in "the old ways," but Ambrosia claims she "follows her own heart." However, she also invokes angels with a dying patient, something neither an atheist nor a Celtic pagan would believe in.

The Verdict

It's not enjoyable enough for the time it takes to watch, especially due to the nonsensical behavior of much of the cast. 6.0 out of 10. Don't bother.

After-Action Report: Days of the Dead Atlanta, 2019

The weekend of January 25 to January 27, I attended the Days of the Dead Atlanta horror convention at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel in Atlanta, GA, splitting a table with fellow dark fiction author T.S. Dann. I sold 24 copies of The Thing in the Woods and six copies of The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2. After running all of my expenses (costs of the table, per-unit book costs, snacks, a Lyft ride) and gross revenue, I made around $180 profit. In terms of single-event profitability, this one places second to the Atlanta Comic-Con in July 2017 and ahead of the Atlanta Sci-Fi and Fantasy Expo I attended in March 2017. This one is a definite go-back, especially once my upcoming horror-comedy Little People, Big Guns is released by Deadite Press in November 2019.

(Considering how there aren't a lot of conventions in December and I've got a lot of RL obligations that month, if Days of the Dead Atlanta 2020 is in January that might be the first event where I sell LBPG.)

In addition to earning money, I also got 31 e-mails for my mailing list, which will come in handy when my military sci-fi novel Blood on the Border, the slightly more science-fiction oriented Thing sequel The Atlanta Incursion, and LPBG come out.

(Only LPBG has a definite release date--Blood will be published independently hopefully sometime over the summer and I haven't heard back from the publisher yet on TAI. However, I've got high hopes for them all.)

Based on attending this convention and previous events, here's my advice for aspiring authors:

*Always split the table at a convention if you can. One reason that I made so much profit (as opposed to just gross revenue, although that too was pretty high) at Atlanta Comic-Con was because I split the table with C.S. Johnson. The table cost at Days of the Dead was high, but fortunately Dann was able to shoulder half of it. If he hadn't been able to attend, I would have barely recovered my expenses--and that doesn't take it into account that some people who came over to check his stuff out ultimately bought some of my stuff instead or as well.

*Take the time to network. I met Jeff Strand and his wife artist Lynne Hansen as well as John Wayne Comunale there. The Strands informed me there's a Horror Writers Association chapter that just formed in Atlanta that, in addition to networking opportunities at meetings, intends to set up a table members can sell from at the Decatur Book Festival. Considering how I sold a fair number of copies at the DBF at the Atlanta Writers' Club booth, another table someone else is paying for that I can put shifts in sounds awesome.

*Have more than one product to sell if possible. 20% of my profit for the event came from the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly anthology, which wasn't yet published when I had my first book signings and convention appearances. As I publish more and more books, I anticipate my revenues will rise. Someone who isn't interested in the Lovecraft-type horror of Thing might like the Dungeons and Dragons and/or Conan the Barbarian type stories in the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly anthology or the ridiculousness and Crosses The Line Twice of LPBG.

*Always bring your lunch. Leaving the table to get food will not only cost you potential sales (since you're not at the table to sell to passers-by), but you'll spend money on the food. Getting a sandwich from the hotel Starbucks at the Atlanta Comic Convention in December 2017 cost me $6.50, equivalent to the profit of selling one copy of The Best of Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2. I'm not recommending being a total cheapskate, especially if there's something new and good to eat at the convention, but remember everything has a cost.

*Always have lots of bookmarks and other swag to hand out. I handed out hundreds of VistaPrint large-size cards (that can be used as bookmarks) that Digital Fiction Publishing designed for me. This cards have a QR Code linking to a page with links to the various places my fiction is available online. People who weren't able to purchase my books at the convention will be able to do so using the QR code on the card--and be able to purchase other short stories, novellas, etc. that simply don't exist in print form. Even if they don't know how to use QR codes or simply don't bother with them, the card has the title, author, publisher, etc. and can remind them to look it up. Handing out the cards could generate additional sales for me for days, possibly weeks, afterward.

Movie Review: Muppets from Space (1999)

Here's another movie review I hesitate to call a "blast from the past" simply because even though it came out the summer between my last year of middle school and my first year of high school (1999), I didn't actually see it. It's Muppets from Space and it's the latest offering of the film podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood. Here's the podcast episode. And now onto the review...

The Plot

Big-nosed Muppet Gonzo (Dave Goelz) is having a personal crisis, unsure of his place in the world or even his species. After he begins receiving messages in his breakfast cereal, he starts to think that he's actually an extraterrestrial. This draws the attention of K. Edgar Singer (Jeffrey Tambor), the head of an MIB-like government agency headquartered in an old cement factory.

Will Gonzo find his alien family? Or will he be captured and have his brains sucked out? And will Miss Piggy (Frank Oz) advance her journalism career? Only one way to find out...

The Good

*There are some moments of surprising poignancy for a Muppet movie. Gonzo's loneliness and angst about not knowing what he precisely are very well done. Meanwhile, Tambor's back-story of being mocked for his beliefs in aliens had real pathos. He made me empathize with the character no matter how much of an a-hole the man objectively is.

*There are some clever jokes here and there. There're riffs on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Independence Day, and Men in Black, among others. I admit I laughed out loud during a karate fight between an MIB and none other than Miss Piggy, a fight that had quite a few double entendres. There are also anal-probe jokes and a whole riff on prison films, including Shawshank Redemption. A lot of the humor works well for adults as well as kids.

*Some of the Muppets I was less familiar with like Clifford (Kevin Clash) and Pepe the King Prawn (Bill Baretta) get their time to shine. I especially liked Pepe. And Miss Piggy was pretty darn funny, especially when she gets rough.

*The movie is relatively short, which is good for kids and good for me considering I didn't really enjoy it that much. More on that below.

The Bad

*Although I did like some of the jokes, the movie gets off to a very slow start. And that's a real problem.

*What's with all the retro soundtrack music? I generally prefer "classic rock," 1980s pop, etc. to modern music, but that doesn't mean I'd give a movie set in the present day so many songs from previous eras. There's "Brick House," "The Gambler," and a lot of stuff from the 1970s or very early 1980s. And the Muppets themselves never sing, not like they do in Muppet Treasure Island where there're good songs like "Shiver My Timbers," "Boom Shakalaka," and "Professional Pirate."

*The movie seems to be a return to the earlier Muppet films like The Muppet Movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and The Great Muppet Caper in which the Muppets are a group of actors or musicians trying to get by in something resembling the real world rather than Muppet Treasure Island and Muppet Christmas Carol in which the Muppets are characters in an otherwise-unrelated work. I liked that approach better, although if they wanted to do a sci-fi story exploring the origins of Gonzo, I'm not sure how they'd do it. The Muppet Men In Black? That might be kind of cool actually. Keep Will Smith as Agent J and have Kermit as Agent K with guns fighting aliens. Miss Piggy can be the eventual Agent L. Or since Gonzo's friends all think he's going insane, perhaps The Muppet Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Or if Gonzo is of supernatural rather than alien origin, The Muppet Hellboy? Kermit would need to be pretty jacked up to play Hellboy and Miss Piggy as Liz seems difficult.

*Although the muppets are fine, the CGI special effects haven't really aged well. It would have probably been better to go old-school on this one.

The Verdict

Meh. 4.0 out of 10. It doesn't even have good songs like Muppet Treasure Island. Go see The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth instead of you want a better puppet movie.