As far as I can tell from all focus groups, market research, and user data that I’ve seen, the general difference has less to do with whether women relate more to a specific genre, and a lot more to do with the methods that allow us to use our media to reach a state of escape. Science fiction, fantasy, superheroes, vampires, whatever… guys will check this stuff out simply because it’s cool. But most women need a subtler.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised at see the results of this survey taken on women who read comics. There’s a lot of interesting stuff that can be unpacked from the responses, but overall you can see that female nerds are similar to male ones in that they’re looking for something edgy and empowering. But to sell to women you need to give them more than just a hot and hunky hero (although that’s sometimes a good start), and a big fight—you need give them a character that they can identify with (even if it isn’t the protagonist), and tell a story that engages the imagination.

And that’s because the great thing about the female audience is that once you’ve engaged them, they’ll stick around a lot longer. Women are aware that there’s only so much media they’re going to relate to, so they can be pickier about the relationships.

Take a look at Twilight and you’ll see a passionate audience, committed to consuming whatever comes out in that series, whether it’s movies or books. They have a relationship with the story, and they’re not ready to break up even years after the last book has been put on the shelf.

I know I’m making some big generalizations here, and I’ve really only scratched the surface of the female genre fan.

I’d love to hear other people’s opinions on the subject.

There are some good performances from the cast, and the actual ideas could make for a compelling story about the post-origin problems of being Iron Man, if only the resolutions for all then didn’t end up being different versions of Deus Ex Machina. And the metaphors are perfectly timed: after falling for a few seconds near the beginning of the movie, Iron Man doesn’t actually show up for the first half hour, and when the fireworks finally do come they’re mostly medium sized.

(non specific spoilers follow)

The biggest structural problem is that at key points the story gets hijacked by the need to set up a series of films set in a cinematic Marvel universe. It forces the plot to deconstruct itself in incredibly unhelpful ways, such Nick Fury showing up to rewire the plot and hand out cures to the film’s conflicts. He leaves behind a secret agent character who is supposed to babysit Tony Stark, fails at that job, and then leaves the movie entirely only to arrive in an after-credit sequence that is supposed to set-up the upcoming Thor film—except it doesn’t even mention that movie by name. Even the comics have the good sense to tell the audience when a crossover story is actually crossing over.

The second major story problem is that none of the characters seems genuinely motivated, and the stakes aren’t really ever that high. Tony’s life is sort-of in danger for a while, but that’s mostly resolved in a throwaway moment mentioned above. Then the move becomes about Stark’s daddy issues, all of which get resolved before you’ve fully figured out what they’re about. There’s also a rivalry with another arms manufacturer, but he’s played mostly for laughs. Lastly there’s there is Mickey Rourke as the film’s main villain, who never really rises to more than a cartoon threat. By the anemic explosions and rooftop banter at the end of the movie it seems like everyone mostly decided to show up and have a little fun, without ever actually making something truly entertaining.

Even narrative-free blockbusters like Twilight and Transformers get that you need to hit some high points in order to make the popcorn-munchers happy.  Iron Man seems content to coast at a steady pace, pushed by the energy of the first film, and pulled forward by the excitement of the upcoming Marvel movies. Too bad it didn’t end up being more.

Initially the show was shot on a sound stage, with the cast on a set, and a few mildly entertaining “host segments” thrown in along the way. While it worked fairly well, and had some quality laugh-out-loud moments, it never really seemed to rise to the heights of MST3K, or even Rifftrax.

After a long period of no new content, they have shifted to releasing DVDs of their live performances, with their latest—a late seventies sci-fi reject called The Alien Factor—probably the most disappointing outing yet. If your live audience isn’t laughing along with you, it’s probably worth tuning things up before you put it up for sale.

But it’s often in failure where the problems become clear, and in the end it seems that Cinematic Titanic has simply sunk under the weight of having five clever people on-stage simultaneously. For the most part it seems like everyone is content to simply read their jokes at the right moment, and laugh a little when someone screws up, or manages a good bit of improvisation. Like an eighties super-group, it feels as if there may be too much individual brilliance to allow for real synergy, beyond a few solos that remind everyone just how well they can play their instruments when they put their mind to it.

In the early videos, the cast had supposedly been hired to participate in a top-secret research experiment (another take on the “Monitor their minds” wrapper from MST3K). Stripped of that minimal meta-context, the focus is entirely on making jokes about movies. And while most of the comments are funny (if sometimes a little too focused on obscure references to the seventies) what truly sucks the life out of the whole affair is that there’s never any of the banter and goofy running gags between the characters that I think is integral to the success of a great riff.

It’s the personal barbs, and back and forth that makes it feel like you’re hanging out with friends instead of being trapped in some kind of abstract comedic symposium on the structure of bad film The idea that the cast has desires and a point of view not only invites you in, but keeps you hanging on when the jokes start feeling a bit dry or forced, or the movie itself is dull beyond comprehension. Like all good entertainment media, it’s the narrative that saves the day.

It doesn’t help that the cast (with the notable exception of Trace Beaulieu and J. Elvis Weinstein) seems to be less enthusiastic than they were two years ago, and without their passion, it’s hard for me to have any.

I’ll keep my eye on Cinematic Titanic, if only because I’m such a huge fan of the obvious vision and talent of everyone involved, but I’m not sure how much enthusiasm I have left for the actual product.

Once again these reviews manage to do an excellent job of deconstructing the film while being entertaining in their own right.

(Some NSFW language)

What do you think?

But let’s give credit where credit is due: The story is, for the most part, motivated by character, even if that happens in much the same way that a freight train is “motivated” by a massive diesel engine capable of dragging tons of freight up a steep incline. And like this tortured metaphor, Avatar is not only impossible to stop once it gets going, but is also clearly heading towards a single destination that has to be clearly laid out beforehand.

But what struck me more than anything is how Avatar crafts something unique out of the new tools of visual storytelling. Cameron seems to understand that the main danger of using such massive amounts of computer-generated imagery is that it can interfere with our fundamental need to form an emotional relationship with the characters on-screen. It’s clear that  he spent a great deal of time giving his digital characters the ability to emote with enough human subtlety that we can’t help but find ourselves intrigued by them. These may not be humans, but they are, for a few instants at least, the first screen creatures that seem to truly engage our emotions at the most fundamental level. Gollum was a good effort, but he was a monster. He could evoke pity, but he was an animal. He wasn’t a creature that we could engage in with respect.

And that’s why having the Avatars be remotely driven creatures is such an excellent metaphor. These creatures look like the humans that control them, and they have human emotions, although they’re not quite like us. On another level they are also obviously motion-captured from human performances, giving us permission to believe in the gorgeous cartoon panorama that is the alien world of Pandora. And finally they are a metaphor for the audience, as we are dumped into this virtual world that constantly assaults our senses with strangeness and beauty.

The last film that tried to create this realized other-world was King Kong. But by putting that cross-species love story into the horrible and hostile world of Skull Island it ended up wearing its spectacle on its sleeve, and made it difficult to connect with.

As I discussed in my piece on the Spectacular Shift, CGI imagery has a tendency to push us out of our normal method of perceiving narrative media, and slip the audiences into a state where they are open to purely visual stimulation. Although the story is getting a lot of grief for being too simplistic, Cameron’s greatest achievement in Avatar is how he determinedly, and effectively, swims against that tide for most of the movie. His goal is to keep us emotionally grounded even as our senses want to make us float away. It’s a shame that in the third act he seems to give up on this effort entirely, and spends the last hour of the film pummeling us with over-the-top imagery until we are nothing more than an over-stimulated bundle of rods and cones with an alarmingly full bladder. But if we are going to move beyond the idea of a big budget computer-generated move as nothing more than a loosely plotted series of explosions and pretty effects, it seems that Avatar may be showing us the way.

Nothing too deep here, and a little bit of wishful thinking on both their parts, but it’s worth the  read when you consider the impact these two men have had on the effects industry.

The experience of creating a soulful performance is through the eyes: knowing how to rig eyes, how to light for eyes, get the reflections and refractions in the eyes. Of course, we had big-eyed characters, which we did on purpose. We couldn’t accomplish the character we’re doing in Avatar through any kind of makeup means. That’s been explored for 30 years of Star Trek and Star Wars. But I think the thing I hope that the media can convey to audiences is that this is an actor-driven process.

His latest (and greatest) review is an extended takedown of The Phantom Menace. His style is definitely black humor with jokes about murdering his wife, and some serial killer stuff in there, but the criticism is spot on, with a solid understanding of how leaning on character creates a solid cinematic experience.

It’s good stuff, well presented, and I hope he makes more.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Update: Turns out I had posted links to his Star Trek: Nemesis review earlier this year.

IO9 just alerted me that one of my favorites, the HG Wells classic “Things to Come” has slipped into the public domain, making it free for us all to watch and own (or you can watch it on YouTube).

The film basically begins with the dawn of World War II, but in this version it goes straight through to 1980, reducing the world to a bombed out husk, the remaining humans scratching out a subsistence living under cruel overlords. But something new, and more noble, is rising from the ashes…

Full of pseudo-Randian posturing with Raymond Massey delivering the kind of speechifying that only a man who has played Lincoln and been in The Fountainhead can do, this is a classic science fiction story, with some pretty incredible special effects for its day.

Have you ever seen it? Are you still willing to watch a black and white classic, even if we didn’t end up that particular future?

This just looks awesome to me.

What do you think?