“*UPDATE
I accidentally read this twice. Didn’t even realize that I’d read it before until I went to put it here on Goodreads. It should be noted that I have a TERRIBLE memory. In case you weren’t sure.
I guess it says something about the book. If you don’t remember some of the details, that’s one thing, but to not even remember THAT I read it? That’s not a good sign.
But there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just one of those quick here and gone stories. Nothing super intense or memorable?
Damn, I just blew the inscription I had planned for my tombstone. Oh, well.
*Original Review
Well, it’s impossible. Mark Millar went for the Last Action Hero story.
For anyone who was…I don’t know how you wouldn’t know about this movie even if you weren’t born yet. I feel like people who died before its release still know about it somehow. But for anyone who doesn’t know about Last Action Hero, the premise is basically that Arnold Schwarzenegger comes out of the movies and into real life. So Arnold plays an Arnold-like action movie character who is summoned into the “real world” by a golden movie ticket, at which point we see some stark contrasts between the action movie world and the real world.
Most would probably consider Last Action Hero a fairly spectacular failure. I mean, the premise was definitely stupid. Arnold considered it the beginning of the end of his film career, although he actually decided to launch an advertisement for the movie INTO FUCKING SPACE, AS IN SPACE WHERE THE PLANETS LIVE, so I can’t hold him blameless. That said, there were some good moments.
Most of them provided by Lt. Decker, the movie-in-the-movie version of the police lieutenant who shouts about taking people’s badges away and where’s that goddamn paperwork. You’ve destroyed 14 cruisers in as many days. That kind of stuff. One of my favorites:
“I’ve got the chamber of commerce doing cartwheels in my cocoa factory!”
Ah, Lt. Decker. Check it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ8EnaGClRs
In Marvel 1985 Mark Millar decides to go ahead and try to Last Action Hero the Marvel universe, basically. Baddies start showing up, and a boy has to go into their universe to bring the heroes through. There’s a little twist in there, but I’ll leave that to you if you decide to read it.
I’m not really sure why this idea is so compelling, the Last Action Hero premise. Something where a character exists in comic books within the comic books, movies within movies, or video games within video games, and then that character is sucked into the “real world”. I use quotes there because even the real world is the movie version of the real world. Which means everyone is about 50% hotter and 75% more athletic. And they all tend to be in the right place at the right time.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Last Action Hero, Superman: Secret Identity, there are lots of examples where the story is based around the idea of the fictional world encroaching on the “real world.” There’s gotta be a Doctor Who episode based around this, right? I feel like they’ve done enough episodes at this point where someone must have done this on some level.
I get the appeal. At least from a writing standpoint. You get to do some cute stuff. When the kid from Marvel 1985 enters the Marvel Universe, he finds that he can basically escape danger via Deus ex Machina every time. And although things seem to be left to chance, it’s a world where people are lucky over and over again. “Thank goodness I had my webshooters on!” That kind of stuff.
The first problem, for me, is that this cuteness wears off fast. I’m probably alienating some people here, but the first season of Mad Men. It seemed like they were almost obsessed with reminding us that it was the 50’s, and isn’t it wild how people would let their kids play in dry cleaning bags? That stuff is fine and all, but it doesn’t really create much in terms of story. There’s no characterization in that stuff other than informing us that this person exists in the 50’s. It’s cute and it’s clever, but I don’t really dig cute and clever.
Here’s the other thing. I’m up for a stupid premise if it gets us somewhere good. In the last 5 or so years Dan Slott has introduced at least 3 premises that sound extremely stupid when you try to explain them out loud. “Oh, Doctor Octopus swapped his mind into Spider-Man’s body.” Good. Then him and Gilligan and the Skipper managed to get the Harlem Globetrotters back to the mainland?
What Dan Slott does, and what I like about what he does, is he lays it all out, then we accept the premise and move on. The story isn’t focused on convincing the reader of the plausibility of an implausible premise. Instead, the premise is made clear as the tool that gets us to the story.
In other words, the bizarre premise is in place because it gets us to good stories. Not as a story in and of itself.
Um. Also, I don’t want to sound like an unfeeling asshole here, but if we could put off stories where the magic lies in the heart of a young boy who has turmoil in his personal life, I would appreciate that. Yes, it was very fun to be 13 in that the boundaries between reality and magic were still just the tiniest bit blurry. And I know that a child is more likely to be open to the possibility of comic book characters invading the real world. But come on. How many times do you have to see MODOK leading people to drowning in a swamp during your adult life before you accept that rinsing off your face isn’t going to solve anything and something fucked up is going on?”