Ken and Kate Talk Film & TV

by kateelliott on Sep.25, 2009, under Kate Elliott and Ken Scholes

KEN:

I’ve mentioned earlier the importance of television and movies in my Story Addiction and how they were the gateway drug into reading. Since so far, we’ve really not found much to debate or argue about, being such agreeable souls, that maybe this could reveal the seedy underbelly of contention we’ve not yet discovered between us.

So, first off: Star Trek or Star Wars? Why?

I’m ambi here and I came to Star Trek first but Star Wars wooed me utterly and while I love both very much, if I ran into both in a bar and could only go home with one, Star Wars would be my pick. The first trilogy. The second has some moments I liked but ultimately, IV, V and VI were life-changing experiences for me when I was a kid.

KATE:
Star Trek.
I loved the original Star Wars movie, and I loved The Empire Strikes Back even more (although the third was a disappointment–I mostly wanted to nuke to the Ewoks). However, I found the second trilogy unwatchable (I never saw the third of that set) for its leaden writing and cliched plotting. Overall, I enjoyed IV and V as a fabulous story, but they felt like a story, not like a real place.

Star Trek, on the other hand, is a great mimetic future that I think some people can imagine themselves in. It feels bigger and more complex to me, therefore more interesting, and I liked the characters more. Although, really, it is hard to beat: “Luke, I *am* your father.”

KEN:

Second: Which Dune? SciFi Channel’s version or David Lynch’s? I’m a David Lynch guy though I felt the SciFi version was more faithful to Herbert’s vision.

KATE:
Eh. Dune. Who cares? (No offense intended to Herbert’s classic novel.)

KEN:

Now that we have those out of the way, how about recent movies that you loved or hated? Me, I loved District 9. I also liked Sunshine quite a lot. And most recently, I saw the Time Traveler’s Wife and thought it was a decent adaptation of one my all time favorite books. In the big scheme of things, I liked the re-make of The Day the Earth Stood Still more than the original though I recognize the original’s place in the canon of classics. And I was fascinated by The Knowing. I also liked Abram’s take on Star Trek.

KATE:
Sunshine: Got bored. Did not finish.

District 9: I have mixed feelings. I thought the mockumentary aspect was brilliantly done. The last part of the film turns into a typical chase/shooting plot, which while zingy got predictable. Also, while I understand there may be a sequel, I did not feel the world building and situation were thought through deeply enough, so that disappointed me on several levels, but this isn’t really the place to discuss that. A good try, in some ways deeply flawed and in some ways well done.

Abrams’ Star Trek I thought had a very appealing cast, but gosh, it was so retro that it made me sad. Forty years later, and there wasn’t a single cutting edge social idea in it? And the same lame (and very very dated) jokes about Chekhov’s Russian accent (which has no actual reason to still exist)? Young white rebellious rule-breaking dude unrealistically jumps the chain of command? The gorgeous Eric Bana wasted in an under-written and generic villain role? I was hoping for an actual reboot; man, they couldn’t even make the Orion girl an important character–that would have been interesting!–or tried something, anything, different with the otherwise redundant Chekhov. The single intriguing detail was in Dr. McCoy’s bad divorce (although why, in the future, she would have “gotten all the money” I don’t know; that begs the question of whether the writers imagined that marriage and divorce laws worked no differently 200 years from now than they work today, so while it was funny it also struck me as poor world-building). I guess I was hoping for something more in the vein of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica (whatever its flaws), not that it had to be darker but just re-visioned. So, no, the Abrams’ Star Trek did not work for me. Maybe he’s got better plans for the sequels. We’ll find out.

The other three I haven’t seen.

As for me, I loved the first two X-Men films and hated the third one which struck me as horribly misogynistic (Bryan Singer, why did you abandon us?) and also badly plotted.

I watched and enjoyed the first two seasons of the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and overall liked it a lot for its diverse cast and its attempts to tackle difficult questions.

I adore the late and lamented Firefly (I must have watched the series 3 or 4 times, which is unheard of for me), but while Serenity was well done as a film it ultimately didn’t work for me because it should have been 12 episodes, not 2 hours. The character interaction that is the heart of Firefly is lost in the film because it doesn’t have time while it is racing through its plot. Oh, well. At least Whedon tried to bring some closure to a great series.

KEN:

I’ve enjoyed most of the comic book movies of late. The third X-Men film wasn’t my favorite. Iron Man and the Spider Man films pleased me greatly, I loved Ed Norton as Bruce Banner and the top prize goes to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight — both exceptional in my opinion.

I’m with you on Firefly. It’s on our shelf and we’ve watched it many times. I liked Serenity well enough though I agree there wasn’t enough time to tell the story well and I would’ve much rather seen them reboot the series for another season or five. Firefly and BSG and Lost were all heavy influences in the drafting of LAMENTATION. We also have the entire run of Battlestar Galactica. I really enjoyed the re-imagining of it.

KATE:

Interestingly, the tv series that had the most influence on Traitors’ Gate was The Wire (HBO). Not fantasy, but a study of people and a place. That’s kind of what I was trying to accomplish.

And our next guests are…
Thanks again to Paolo for joining us on Babel Clash. For the second time in Babel Clash’s short history, we have two featured authors joining us for our next geeky debate. I’m very pleased to welcome Kate Elliott and Ken Scholes. Kate is the author of the Crossroads and Crown...
On Influences
KEN: Moving from junkie to dealer in the genre has been a hoot for me. Over the last few years, I’ve had the great gift of meeting and chatting with some of the influences that were instrumental in me moving from a reader and consumer of Story to a writer....
On Writing the Series, Part 1
KATE: Ken, I had a lot of trouble while writing my Crown of Stars series with the story growing  longer and longer and turning, eventually, into a seven book trilogy, as I sometimes  jokingly call it. There are a lot of good things in that series that I’m really fond...

3 Comments for this entry

Adam
September 25th, 2009 on 7:43 am
Not much to say, but I will step in and defend District 9. I’ve been a sf/f fan my entire life, and there haven’t really been very many quality sf films recently, especially since fantasy - good and bad - is supplanting the genre in terms of popular following. But! I don’t know if I exactly agree that the worldbuilding in D9 wasn’t thought out thoroughly, as Kate said, but rather the victim of a different perspective. The setting is used as just that - the setting. It’s a situation that’s not explored because we’re getting most of the story through a deeply selfish and cowardly character. True, they could have taken the mockumentary aspect and deepened it, made Wikus’ story part of the background and bring the setting and unique situation out in the storytelling, but who knows what would have happened then? I enjoyed the movie for its filmographic prowess (WETA digital made some of the most brilliant looking special effects in any movie in the past decade on what amounts to a shoestring budget), for the ballsiness of having such an everyman for the everyman main character. Sure, the story at the end devolved into a tried-and-true chase, and left some of the other story-building aspects by the wayside, but honestly, I loved it. I loved it for its potential and for what it delivered. There were flaws for sure - the main villain was just an empty, evil random bad guy, but still, I loved it.

And woo Firefly! Have either of you seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog? I would recommend it. Nathan Fillion is in it, as Captain Hammer, a douchebag-cum-superhero, the arch-enemy of the titulat Dr. Horrible. It’s on Hulu. Watch it now if you haven’t.
Alyssa
September 25th, 2009 on 6:55 pm
I agreed with the world-building comment about District 9, mostly because I feel like they didn’t make the aliens’ plight easily understandable. Maybe that will come with subsequent movies, but right now I’m left wondering why they bothered to stop at Earth at all if, as we saw at the end, the ship was perfectly capable of leaving and sustaining at least 2 people on the return voyage.

As for Firefly, I don’t want to get into a pissing contest with Wheadon fans. (Of which I am one, as I loved Buffy and Angel.) But I am of the strong opinion that while the character stuff may be good (and I’ll grant that’s Wheadon’t strength, one of the reasons Dollhouse disappoints me so much is that his character building is by necessity curtailed by his premise) that the rest of that series wasn’t a particularly imaginative take on the idea of space as another frontier to conquer. You can evoke the Wild West without dressing your characters in actual gingham, putting them in covered wagons and having TUMBLEWEED blow by while they escape from cattle rustlers and speaking with Texan accents. Either make a Western, or make a space show, but.. it was a huge disconnect for me, the scenes on the ship and the scenes on the planets. Two series who did similar premises were the anime Cowboy Bebop and Sci Fi’s Farscape. Both which I felt evoked the feeling of the sorts of ungoverned frontiers you might find out in the bowels of space while still making it feel like a future society. I just can’t imagine that a society where he’s clearly laid out a merging of Western and Chinese society would regress to such a faithfully rendered version of the American Wild West. That being said, it is a shame they gave Firefly so little time on air. Sometimes I think that shows have to go on for a little while before they find their groove. Farscape, which is one of my favorite series of all times, kinda sucks for the first half of the first season. It’s cheesy and weird and a little too serious. They find their groove eventually and the next few seasons are pretty high quality, which I think you can only get away with as a cable show anymore. So I do wish networks were willing to extend a little more time to series that show some promise.
kateelliott
September 26th, 2009 on 1:37 am
Adam, I thought there was much to like with District 9, and as I said I thought the mockumentary aspect was very very well done (Wikus is a well drawn character, although no one else really is). If there is a sequel, as I suspect there may be, I will definitely go see it to see if some of my other questions are answered.

Alyssa, I think that is a completely reasonable critique of Firefly. I liked it because I accepted it as a mash-up. My biggest beef with Firefly is that they posit a Chinese dominant upper class but then we never see them, not even (I think) in the episode Ariel where if they had simply made most of the background characters of Asian descent (or more specifically Chinese, but whatever) you would have gotten a sense of that. So - yeah. But I do love the characters and the dialogue.