Mr. Whedon and the Conclusion of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

MAJOR SPOILERS

So, if you're on top of things at all you will have hopefully seen the third and final episode of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. May I remind you again that this post contains Major Spoilers, although I'll try not to spell it out so if you're skimming it over you won't see it. There are also very vague spoilers for all of Whedon's work, so if you want to experience the full effect, don't read this post.

Joss Whedon is one of my favourite writers. I think he's a pretty special guy, especially in his own genre: television. His characters- villains and heroes both- are vivid and unforgettable, each stealing the show as he or she and very occaisionally 'it' passes through, be it for an extended period or simply for one episode. His dialogue is always witty and funny and I think he makes it easy for other writers to write the same witty, funny dialogue for his characters. His plots are gripping, hilarious, surprisingly deep and moving and- on many occaisions- horribly tragic.

However, that doesn't mean that he does have his foibles. Many of Whedon's most ardent fans are able to peg down his style, knowing when he is likely to kill off a beloved character. Like all writers- like everyone in the world- he has a tendency to walk the same path again and again.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog captures Whedon in all his glory. Including, and here's the spoiler, the tragic ending. I have a love-hate relationship with Whedon's tragic endings. By far, the most moving episodes of television I have watched have been Whedon's. I know the traditional Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode to name in this context is The Body, but I put forth The Wish for equal consideration. And then there's of course the final episode of the Buffy television series, among many others. In the Buffy spinoff, Angel, there are a similar number of tragic episodes. And finally there's the movie Serenity which was the capstone of the short-lived but fabulous tv series Firefly, that I have on good authority makes strong men weep.

So Joss Whedon likes to make us cry. What of it? Why am I writing an entire post about this?

Whedon is very cruel to his audience. He knows what the worst case scenario is. He knows who and what we hold dear. Although many of his fans, as I mentioned before, have learned to expect the tragic conclusion or shocking (also tragic) twist, he still manages to surprise us and break our hearts.

It is what brings us back again and again that interests me. Whedon is very dark, but he's more of a realist than a pessimist. People die; Whedon's 'tragedies' acknowledge this, but he's not pessimistic about it. Whedon's deaths, especially the ones that have no episodes following them in which to heal the wound, often have twists that follow them that allow us to look through the tears and smile about it in the end. Think of the end of Serenity, the ultimate end of Buffy and- here in particular interest- the end of Dr. Horrible. Instead of leaving us down and destroying our faith in all that is good and holy, Whedon turns the end up just a very little, and gives us a little hope.

It has been noted by watchers more astute than I that whereas at the beginning of the 'blog' Dr. Horrible is expressing himself through the blog and the public figure is the mousy Billy, this is reversed at the end of the show. Dr. Horrible is very much the public figure and Billy, shown in the last scene, is expressing himself through the blog.

The final line of the show is, "I won't feel a thing." Whedon and his Dr. Horrible comrades have Dr. Horrible, garbed in red, conscience-free, boldly sing, "I won't feel..." then cut beautifully to a very sad, unconvinced Billy facing the camera in his video-blog position, who finishes the sentence with "... a thing." The sentence is complete, but the musical phrase does not end in a satisfying manner.

Not only does the Billy side of Dr. Horrible, however beaten, get the final word, he gets to say it in a way that makes it very clear that he does feel. He feels it very much so. His conscience is still there, crushed but present and, because of that incomplete musical phrase. And that is the little smile at the end of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, betraying the inner core of optimism that keeps us, Whedon's beleaguered but adoring audience, coming back- able to come back- for more.

Now go watch it all again.

Review: Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (Act I)

Joss Whedon is changing the world. Well, television. Well, internet television.

In a moment of madness brought on by the writer's strike, Whedon- the writer of such beloved shows as Buffy, Angel and, relatively recently, the tragically murdered Firefly- along with a few friends and relatives, decided to turn their sights on low budget internet media far too silly for real television. The result was Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. That link is to a fan site. Why? Because at the time of this post, the real site is down due to the huge numbers of people attempting to watch Act I which was released early this morning.

Dr. Horrible is a three-act of fifteen-minutes-an-episode musical show that is almost, but not quite, as silly is as it sounds. The main character is a wannabe super villain (Neil Patrick Harris) and the antagonist a superhero (Firefly's Nathan Fillion). It's hugely adorable. Despite being only fifteen minutes long, the first act is so full of stuff that it feels much longer. It's got loads of funny, romance, action, science fiction and yep- songs. It's better than any show like it.

But as Whedon and interviewer C.A. Bridges note in this interview, there isn't really anything like it. Dr. Horrible is something new. It is internet media written and acted at the same calibre (above the same calibre) as anything on the major television networks. It doesn't need to conform to any standard rules, and so it's not only very good, it's fresh in a delightful, hilarious, adorable way.

Although the official site is down, you can get it from iTunes or pirate it directly- with a few audio/video errors- from a torrent site. (What!? How am I going to get into the Evil League of Evil if I don't cultivate my skills?)

Tell your friends.

On Absent Parents

This entry contains very mild spoilers for the movie Spiderwick.

So, I just watched Spiderwick, which is a well-made, reasonably well written, funny kids’ fantasy movie (I’ve not read the book- shockingly- so I can’t tell you how it measures up). No, it hasn’t got the depth or startling newness that other fantasies have, but it’s certainly worth watching.

However, this is not the focus of this entry. After watching the film I headed over to rottentomatoes.com, which for those of you who do not know (!) collates reviews from various sources and, based on what the reviewers say, gives each movie a rating. It’s a good source of all kinds of reviews.

Because I enjoyed Spiderwick, I was more interested in the negative reviews. Most were along the lines of it being fairly run of the mill as far as plot goes. However, one by Cynthia Fuchs focused on a different problem. She writes:

“As Spiderwick keeps time with the notion that kids’ fantasies must feature bad, absent, or otherwise troubling parents, it also offers precious little in the way of clued-in adults or even adults with a modicum of competence in dealing with their children’s fears or worries.”

She’s right, of course, that children’s fantasy contains many bad or absent parents. Think of the Narnia series, of many of Diana Wynne Jones’ books, of A Little Princess, of Roald Dahl and of Harry Potter. Parents are dead, missing, lacking in some way or simply unimportant. Even when parents and family are present and important, such as in Susan Cooper’s Dark series, they are rarely part of the adventure.

But why is this the case in so many of the most beloved series?

Any child knows the answer. Parents, of course, are the barrier between children and the adventures they imagine they would have without them. Parents put their children to bed on time, make them eat their vegetables, make them go to school. Without parents, there are dragons and demons and all kinds of nasties and wonderfuls waiting just around the corner. A child alone is a child on the brink of adventure: they must be brave, and clever, and resourceful, even noble and powerful.

(Not in reality of course, but in fiction and imagination, which is where kids and authors- hopefully- live.)

A child in a fantasy world most often knows things the adults around him or her do not know, or can see things that adults cannot see. This secret knowledge is central to children’s imagination, even if they tell the nearest ear all about it. Even if the knowledge is very mundane, pretty much all children think they know things better than adults. Adults are, in a child’s viewpoint, constantly thinking about the time, and work, and the next thing, and oh-my-god-what-am-I-going-to-cook-for-dinner-tonight. Their minds, in a child’s view, are too busy to perceive the magic going on all around them. Almost every fictional series has the younger members of the group believing- and seeing- first. Think of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door: it is Charles Wallace who sees the ‘dragons’ in the vegetable garden. And the Murray family is hardly a normal family.

Adults not believing kids is part of this, which is why so many of these stories have a scene where the truth is revealed. The child is right. The adult is wrong. No, it’s not a reflection of reality. Only adults want to read books where there isn’t really a drove of dragons in the vegetable garden.

In this age, where kids are never far from adult supervision, it’s not really all that surprising that orphans thickly populate the pages of fantasy fiction.

Is this such a problem as Cynthia Fuchs thinks it is? In my view, no. Decidedly, no.

The only people who might mind about the portrayal of parents are parents themselves. Children aren’t reading these books and watching these movies and thinking “Hm, parents obviously are supposed to be absent and mean. What are my kind, caring parents who visit me in the middle of the night when I think I hear something go bump doing wrong?”

And nor is it teaching children that parents are wrong. Most books don’t contradict the normal things that parents say (eat your vegetables, it’s bedtime). Children know that what is happening in the book is complete fiction. It’s a different child, in a different world, with different parents.

If anything, stories like these give children the opportunity to not only dream about adventure, but also the independence they will some day have to embrace (that is a lot more complicated than even the trickiest story describes). Characters in these books are brave, kind and ingenious; the stories are often about finding your true strength in the absence of the protective shield that exists most of the time in the real world. It’s not a bad thing for a child to mentally practice that kind of independence and moral behaviour in complete safety.

And if by chance there is a child who does experience this kind of trauma, what better chance to escape than to a world where the child is powerful and can escape from evil forces? Most of these children find wise, kind parental surrogates who guide them in their adventures. Even happy children can relate to that kind of outsider validation.

All in all, the absent parent does no harm, except to over-anxious and less-absent parents. It sets up the ideal dream adventure world for the reading child, and maybe even helps them on the all-important road towards growing up themselves.

Review: Wanted (2008)

Summer movies are like Coca Cola. Drink it carbonated, and the bubbles hide the less-than-inspiring flavour and the cloying sweetness. Drink it flat… well, how many people do you know that drink (and like) flat coke?

Wanted, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, is a perfect example of a carbonated movie. Drink it bubbly, full of fights, violence, bullets and explosions, pretty people (James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie), hero moments, reasonably good acting, lots of CGI, and a few interesting plot points, and it is a good summer movie.

However, drink it flat, and you’re left with a bit of a mess. In Wanted, the laws of physics are not only absent they are ludicrous, you see the ‘twists’ coming a mile away, the guiding principle of the movie is more ludicrous than the physics and the characters are ambiguous in their motivations.

Wanted marches boldly beyond normal action movie amorality into a kind of blind amoral madness that is only emphasized further by the movie’s premise. This is so stringent at the end of the movie that I was wondering if the movie was more supposed to be a kind of reverse morality like this Berenstain Bears book (“This is what you should NOT do.”) A little research proved this theory correct, in a manner of speaking: the script is an adaptation of a comic book series of the same name (by J.G. Jones and Mark Millar) which boldly embraces the ludicrously amoral main character.

Sadly, this clarity of vision is lost in the screenplay- perhaps by mistake, perhaps by design. Instead, we are left with a character who asserts morality in fits and spurts, apparently following some inner moral compass that is in reality mostly (but not entirely) ignored. In all… a bit of mess that is carried off solely by carbonated bubbles of gunfire.

Needless to say, Wanted (rated 18A, entirely for violence) is pretty bloody. It’s bloody in slow motion! It’s bloody in real time! It’s bloody for extended periods dedicated entirely to blood! Luckily, there’s a plot device to allow large amounts of gore in a short time without having the characters wind up in a hospital bed for a couple of months.

So, if you’re looking for something carbonated, something a little amoral (but not deep or thoughtful about it), something without the laws of physics or logic, and something a lot gory, Wanted is your ideal summer movie.

Review: Leverage (Pilot)

There’s nothing more adorable than television crooks, and the new show Leverage has the most adorable crooks I have ever seen. Like Fringe and the US Life on Mars, the available episode of Leverage is a pre-air pilot, presumably released to spark interest. However, where Fringe and Life on Mars have had respectively prompted a mixed reception and an entire remake, Leverage seems to have done what it set out to do.

I’ve been complaining a lot about character development in these new pilots, but Leverage doesn’t have any of the problems that Fringe and Life on Mars exhibited. Instead of fumbling with poor dialogue, the writers of Leverage go (Dean Devlin, John Rogers) directly to the point of the characters, providing a snapshot of a moment that tells you who the person is.

This technique wouldn’t work for every show, but it works for this one because Leverage is a lighthearted, funny show that allows for that kind of thing. However, the characterization doesn’t stop there. The characters act and speak in ways that are consistent with their established personalities, or personalities that become more apparent as the show goes along.

And does it ever go along. If Leverage does have a few weaknesses it gets away with them by being slick, speedy and funny. When we are laughing, we are too delighted with the joke to poke holes in the show. When each scene is just as long as it needs to be, and reasonably fat with content, we are not languishing around, we are on the edge of our seats. A tight show can get away with a few flaws.

All shows have flaws. In Leverage, Beth Riesgraf, playing a character who is supposedly insane, does not quite manage to capture a woman who doesn’t quite have her marbles. She more seems as if she is pretending to be insane to get away with being slightly different. The result is that Riesgraf is almost, but not quite, perfect for the role (there are moments that are great). I feel that if the intention of the writers and directors is to have her be genuinely unhinged, it will not take much to get the actress there.

The other characters, as I mentioned above, are adorable. I’d seen a younger Christian Kane in Angel before, and he was perhaps better in Leverage; his role fit him like a glove. Gina Bellman and Aldis Hodge were great and immediately loveable. Timothy Hutton was immediately charismatic as the ‘Danny Ocean’ character, and when depth was required in an otherwise lighthearted show, depth he had.

My main fear for this show is that it will not manage to keep itself together. I love the lightheartedness of it, and it has great episodic Chuck-like potential, but I’m worried that it will be too happy-go-lucky for its own good. It calls itself a drama, but it was more of a comedy-with-serious-bits. (I forget who said that). Hustle, a great British show which is very, very similar to Leverage (Life on Mars US please take note), also makes good use of the comedy inherent in the situation of criminals, but managed a gravitas that never quite crossed all the way over into heavy drama to lose the show’s greatest strength- the humour. I think Leverage must aim for this same balance between the drama masks or risk becoming all fluff.

Backstory tragedy is not enough. If the final scene of the pilot was an indication, I think the writers might have a chance to go a CSI-style route to emotional growth, exploring the individual characters through their interactions during the episode.

What I want to see is stakes for the characters, even if they are small incremental ones. We already love the characters, now let’s see them get caught, be wrong, and grow while retaining at least some of that adorable glow.

Otherwise, if you’re looking for something with a low emotional commitment to lighten your mood, the pilot of Leverage is an excellent 56-minute ride into the totally unreal, adorable world of television criminals.

Review: Life on Mars (US) - Pre-Air Pilot

I loved the UK Life on Mars so when I heard there was a pre-air floating around of the US Life on Mars, airing this fall, I snagged it immediately. I thought it would be fun to watch the two together and compare them.

This has minor spoilers on what I consider well-known facts about the show, and a few vague dialogue and character references.

I’m afraid that compared with the sparkling UK show, the US one loses much and adds (almost) nothing to make up for it. The result is a lacklustre copy that leaves you wondering exactly who thought it would be such a good idea to remake, and what exactly they had in mind when they suggested it.

I’ve heard that two of the cast, Colm Meaney (of Star Trek: TNG fame), playing Detective Gene Hunt, and Rachelle Lefevre playing Annie Cartwright, are going to be recast. I’m not sure why this is happening, since they were not the major problem in the episode. The writing was poor, the directing was lacking and Jason O'Mara, playing the main character Detective John Simm, was by far the weakest of the cast.

First of all, if you’re familiar with the UK version, you’ll recognise the plot of the US version. All of the major plot elements are the same, down to, in many cases, the physical attributes of the characters. The setting is LA, rather than Manchester.

However, the US Life on Mars has lost the sharp, slick writing, plot, character development and attention to detail that the UK show immediately demonstrated. In the UK show, which is a whole eight minutes longer than the US version, it takes six or so minutes to get to the moment Sam Tyler time-travels. The US version takes almost twice as long. What is in this extended period of time you ask? Talking about what they’re going to do before doing it. Shoddy conversation presumably intended to develop character. Longer, indistinct fight scenes.

This delay characterizes the pilot in general. What the writers appear to have done is lost details and certain interesting bits of the plot and instead of replacing them with country-appropriate moments of interest, it simply skips them. In order to get up to an average American pilot length (51 minutes), events are slowed down, conversations are longer, scenes flow together in a more languid way. Contrary to popular belief, fight scenes do not build excitement.

For some reason, the dialogue and character development has suffered peculiarly. Although of the dialogue has survived somewhat intact, it is often it is modified or given to another character. In a previous post I argued that this is a good way to adapt, but in this case, the same scene with the same characters exist but the dialogue is exchanged, resulting in less well or re-defined characters. For example: Instead of the main character Sam Tyler being wrong, he is instead made right and the girlfriend (with the tinned characteristic of “spunky”) gets to be wrong. Instead of her getting herself into danger, he sends her into danger. Presumably this is intended to give the character more guilt over what happens, but him being right and then also being responsible for her wholly undermines her character.

This switching of dialogue roles occurs again later on, again resulting in a bit of a muddle. Generally, the main character is given more ‘hero’ moments, instead of being complicated, and showing his intelligence in using other people’s expertise. The character of Annie Cartwright, supposedly the woman in a men’s world who is allowed by the more modern Sam Tyler to show her intelligence, is reduced to spinning camera and romantic music while Detective Tyler gets to answer the question again. (This very much annoyed me.) The choice of actor doesn’t help: Jason O’Mara is a bit of a slab, without the bright-eyed intelligence and nuanced performance given by the less-hunky John Simm.

Two characters from the UK version- the rookie and the enemy- are missing from the US version, and their absence makes the show even sparser. The only new character was an embattled lawyer, who actually introduced a little interest to the show, but his appearances were minimal.

And then there’s the modification of dialogue. Compare these two lines, occurring at the same point in the story, when seeing a familiar music store:

SAM TYLER: I used to come here. I bought my first… Gary Numan. ‘Cars’.

SAM TYLER: I used to get all my CDs here.

The first line is the UK pilot, and John Simm is peering through the stained record shop window in delight (the camera inside the store behind dirty glass, Annie in the background and records in the foreground visible). The second is delivered by Jason O’Hara while crossing the road after seeing the store.

I don’t even know where to start with these two lines. The first is precise, human, delighted with the memory, evocative, and harkens back to another era, if not quite this one. It reveals detail about the character.

The second is boring, entirely uninventive, vague, and perhaps refers to the very first years of the 21^st century, when Sam bought ‘his CDs’. I understand that the choice of artist might need to be different, as may the language used to express the sentiment, but that doesn’t mean that a slick, fat line can be replaced by a shoddy thin one. The lines were there for the adapters (Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Scott Rosenberg) to see. They turned a fat line into one there purely for plot purposes.

It is also the director’s fault. His work is also un-evocative. This show is a chance to lovingly reproduce an era that many of his viewers may remember. It might be a chance to bring a new generation into his audience. And yet he does not deliver with this nostalgia. I’m surprised, because the director, Thomas Schlamme, is one who was heavily involved in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The West Wing, both of which I like very much. Thinking about it, both of those shows required much indoor shooting- corridors, rooms, offices etc. Life on Mars is more scenic and those scenic moments is when I noticed the directing lacking.

All in all, I found comparing these two shows a fascinating opportunity. The same plot, reproduced with different writers, cast and crew? Delicious. Sadly, the comparison was not a positive one for the new Life on Mars. Almost every aspect of the US pilot fared poorly. The writing was slow, empty, thin and confused. The directing did not make use of the era, and was not as slick as I would expect. None of the actors shone, although perhaps they were held down by the shoddy dialogue and character development. O’Hara was particularly uninspiring.

What I would like to see: A slicker, wittier, more evocative, far more compact, more detailed and more nuanced performance from the writers and cast, and more expansive, scene-sensitive work from the director.

Review: The Golden Compass (2007)

The Golden Compass, controversial work of Philip Pullman, adapted for the screen this last December by Chris Weitz, who also directed. Rotten Tomatoes gives this film 41% Fresh, which I think is pretty darn right on.

I realize December was six months ago, but there are certain movies that elicit from me a reaction that explodes into a long rant that emerges every time I think about the film in question. This is one of these movies.

There are a few spoilers but nothing remotely major. Apologies for length.

I found The Golden Compass what I'm going to call "enjoyable". Frankly, I expected worse, possibly explaining why I actually rather enjoyed it. The strength of Pullman's wonderful story managed to struggle through the failings of the film, against tough odds. The art direction and costumes were stunning, the acting was good and (although I generally pay little attention to such things) I'm told the animation was excellent.

Sadly, in the areas where it really counts, The Golden Compass was weak. These areas include writing, directing, adaptive inventiveness/imagination and plot logic, so pretty much the things that make a film really good instead of 59% heading-towards-a-new-life-form. A great cast dressed in great costumes wandering aimlessly around a great set cannot quite carry a film by themselves.

I’m going to discuss writing in detail, because it’s what strikes me most. Interestingly, the writing has an odd story. The script was originally written by Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) and, although I haven’t, was allegedly slow and ponderous. I can well believe it. Stoppard is brilliant but as far as my experience with his work goes, far too thoughtful for what boils down to a children’s adventure film.

According to the internet, Chris Weitz wrote a fourty-page treatment of the story and was subsequently hired, despite the script already existing. His passion is admirable. The excitement in his script undeniable. According to a New York Times blog the initial Weitz draft, although long, was much better than the finished product. The blog complains that the movie’s trimming ruined the original Weitz adaptation, but I disagree that shorter necessarily has to get so thin and ludicrously cliché as the final product.

Nobody denies the complexity of the plot and characters of this book. Some simplification and modification is inevitable and necessary. The film managed to somewhat do this, reversing the order of elements to give it a more natural, watchable flow of events. However, within the basic framework, the film finds itself weighed down by explicit (as opposed to implicit) exposition and resorts to cliché dialogue, poor logic and tired plot elements.

Part of the problem is caused by simple lack of inventiveness and imagination. In order to modify a well-loved, complex story in such a way to have it fit onto movie-sized screen, some imagination and thought is required. I think this is especially true of fantasy films, where it is necessary to quickly establish an entirely new world in a few minutes. Although I know many people are not huge fans of the Lord of the Rings adaptations, they are nevertheless a good example of an inventive and imaginative adaptation that beautifully conveys a sense of each people it visits without hitting you over the head with a large club. The LOTR books are much longer and yet even the Theatre Releases were bristling with plot. This was not the case with The Golden Compass.

An inventive adaptation expands the basic story down and up, rather than lengthwise. It layers each scene to provide more information than you think you are getting. This is not only using layered dialogue, this is using setting, body language and action to convey plot, character, mood etc. For example, the movie begins well, with the children’s clay-throwing fights described in the second chapter of the book, and yet almost nothing is revealed about the world in this scene that is useful to us in the coming two hours; there’s plenty of time to build Lyra up and all it takes is a well placed clod of clay to make us like her.

What we really need to see is the world and given the way the movie unfolded, what would have been nice would be to set this clay-fight along the river and the gyptians’ longboats. It would have given us a sense of their importance, their culture, could have introduced us to important characters such as Ma Costa. Her calling ‘Billy’ into the dusk would be enough to establish her as a maternal character, introduce the existence of Billy, and, as her voice fades away as we watch Lyra streak towards Jordan College to the next scene, set up a sense of ominousness that did not require the obligatory dark shadow. (Which, if I remember correctly, was employed in the film).

An inventive, thoughtful screenwriter can turn a thin scene into a fat one. They unravel the story and mine the details to put it back together. They should not only provide a competent play-by-play of the plot, but also provide depth, even if that requires shuffling of dialogue, setting and even plot.

This said, I think that one ‘rule’ to think of when writing an adaptation is to not use a new line or scene when an old one will do, even if it’s patched in from the description or another character. Many of the best adaptations make use of the language of their source material liberally interspersed with the new material.

To some extent, Chris Weitz followed this ‘rule’ that I have just invented. However, there are certain instances where his deviations are bizarrely unnecessary. At one point, the little girl Lyra says to another character after a scary moment, “I thought I lost you”, a line that anyone who has read or seen more than a couple of stories knows is far too overused to be used again. Aside from being tired, does anyone really say that, let alone the character Lyra? Here’s what she says in the book: “Let me help you - I want to make sure you e’nt too badly hurt…” We do not need to be told the line “I thought I’d lost you”; the actress was good enough to show us her fear, the original line truncated is enough to show us her concern and, more than that, it reveals things about her character. Her need to do act, rather than talk, for example.

As it stands “I thought I’d lost you,” conveys exactly one thing, and it not a good one.

In all, I disagree with the assertion that a longer script would have been tons better. If the scenes and dialogue were left as-is, with simply more of them, it would have continued to be thin and cliché, if not quite so illogical as before. What the script lacked most was not length, it was depth. Little more than one thing was occurring at once. Ideas were introduced consecutively rather than concurrently. Exposition was clunky, taking up a vast amount of the early dialogue that could and should have been employed much more efficiently.

An adaptation is a challenge not only to trim and rearrange, but also to imagine, to think and to delve. ("When is he going to start delving? I asked myself." - This one's for you, Mr. Stoppard.)

These same ideas apply to the directing. The director can produce a thin film, or he can produce a fat one. It is up to him or her to look beyond the script and pull out things from the book that are not written there. Perhaps it was a bad idea to let Chris Weitz, however competent and passionate and excited he was, to both write and direct alone. A director can bring new ideas to a writer’s script. A director-writer is only bringing to life what he or she wrote. This can work brilliantly, but I feel that in this instance, with a complex story and world to bring to life, the movie would benefit from two separate minds with two separate imaginations.