Apparently I'm a Film Critic Now (Pet Sematary)

I realize that it's been literal decades since blogs went from "online journal" a la Open Diary or Xanga to "pretend journal that is actually a carefully curated, polished online publication."  But don't let that cultural shift fool you into thinking that this is becoming a movie blog...this will cease to be a movie blog (indeed, will probably cease to be a blog at all for a while) once school starts again.

Should be obvious, but just in case: I'm going to massively spoil all three versions of Pet Sematary - novel, 1989 film and 2019 film.  Seriously.  Like, about to dissect all three in detail.

I read Pet Sematary on a whim during Spring Break this year and really liked it.  I'm not a writer by any means, but I feel like it works on a lot of levels.  There's the obvious, surface-level scares like zombie cat, flashback story of the zombie veteran with the demon voice, the Wendigo, stabby zombie kid, etc.  Then there's the deeper level that digs into what I think of as the "secular sacred" - things that people consider taboo on a human level rather than a cultural or religious one.  Obviously no line is truly universal, but I think there's plenty of reverence/fear for the death of an innocent, the bond between parent and child, the oppression of grief and the awfulness of the choice between living with the grief or profaning the grave.  I think those are the things Stephen King was talking about when he referred to Pet Sematary as the book that scared him the most.

I have a lot of feelings about different elements of the novel's plot and how they were handled by both movies.  Try to act surprised.  I've started this blog post several times and decided to organize it by plot element and character rather than by adaptation.

The Doctor

• In the book: Since it's a book, we can see Louis Creed's thoughts and whatnot.  The book would be third person limited, except that toward the end King takes us into his wife's and Jud's thoughts too.  Like lots of King protagonists, Louis isn't set up to be some saint or superman - he's a perfectly normal man.  Sure, every now and then he'll look at a pretty girl, or in frustration with his kids will fantasize about leaving it all and working at Disney, but ultimately he's a decent fellow who loves his family.
• 1989 film - There's an important argument Louis and Rachel have in the book that is completely omitted from this film.  I know you can't put everything from the book in the movie, but cutting that and similar conversations was the wrong choice.  Generally, my gripes about the 1989 film have to do with it trying too hard to adhere to the novel blow-by-blow - it ends up being a highlight reel with little to no character development.  The 1989 Louis has like two facial expressions and one tone of voice right up until the end.  He was Kristen Stewart before it was cool.
• 2019 film - This film spent more time in conversations and relationships.  There's still less than the novel, as there has to be unless it's a miniseries or something, but generally I think the 2019 version made much better choices about what book elements to omit.  The aforementioned argument is combined with other conversations in the novel and it gives lots of depth to Louis and Rachel in a short period of time.  So a better script and a much better actor make the 2019 Louis a more recognizable and sympathetic figure.  He comes much closer to embodying the torture and darkness described in the novel.

The Wife

• In the book - Rachel's big hang-up with death is made clear pretty early on, but the reason for it is revealed slowly.  Like Louis, Rachel is well described and realistic; in her actions, her dialogue and the occasional glimpses into her thoughts, she is made recognizably human and lovable and we are emotionally affected by the compound tragedy in her story.  I did roll my eyes a little at the intimate scene, which bordered on instructive, but I think that's a King trademark. 
• 1989 film - Like the 1989 Louis, 1989 Rachel is a cardboard cutout.  I am a little more sympathetic to this actress' plight because she has like 7 lines total, so she REALLY has no opportunity to give Rachel any life at all.  Since that all-important argument is cut, her hang-ups with death and the reasons for them have no teeth at all.  She has no righteous anger or compelling anxiety...just another scared blonde in a horror film. 
• 2019 film - This Rachel benefits from more screen time altogether, both because of the restored conversations early on and from some straight up abandonment of the novel's plot at the end.  The 2019 film makes the very smart decision to not have Rachel popping back and forth so much, so we get to see her grapple with her Zelda issues alongside the Church storyline so that more ground is covered in less time.  And having her come back and verbalize her feelings about Zombie Kid is just fantastic.  It heightens and further exposes the conflict of death versus reanimation, which is one of the *real* scary things about the story.

The Extended Family 

• In the book - Rachel's parents are kind of jerks, and they for sure don't like Louis.  The Daddy-hates-boyfriend trope is a little worn, but it does add salt to the funeral fight and subsequent reconciliation.  And wouldn't ya know it, soon as Dad starts to care about Louis, Louis needs lots of caring about.  Not that it helped much.
• 1989 film - In the interest of time, the part where Dad bribes Louis to break up with Rachel is cut.  It's just barely alluded to before the Thanksgiving trip and in what I think is a word-for-word transcription of the novel's funeral fight.  But without the preceding history, the fight just looks cartoonish and stupid.  In fact, I think this movie comes close to building some real sadness immediately after the child death, but then the fight happens with literally no warning or obvious reason and all that pathos breaks.  No salt.  Also, Dad's stereotypically Jewish mannerisms in this movie could have come from a Family Guy cutaway.
• 2019 film - Like the other movie, this one also cuts the bribery part.  Know what else it cuts?  Practically everything else having to do with Rachel's parents, including the Thanksgiving trip and the fight.  The ghost (HAHAHAHA) of that subplot remains when Louis tells Rachel how irresponsible her parents were for leaving her alone with Zelda.  Otherwise, they may as well not exist.  To me, that makes way more sense when it comes to dropping elements for a film.  The possible payoff of added tragedy and emotional pain was not worth the sacrifice of pacing and runtime, so they smartly removed it wholesale and spent more time on a smaller circle of characters.
  

The Zelda Subplot

• In the book - Rachel's breakthrough is a beautiful moment in the book.  We've been frustrated and confused alongside Louis for quite some time, so to finally understand what she went through is a relief to him and to us.  The Oz The Gweat And Tewwible thing is used to mess with our brains...it pokes at us like a song stuck in our heads and helps the reader feel unsettled or bewildered when Louis feels that way.  When I re-read the book knowing I was planning to dive into the movies, I thought, "Ain't no way this element makes it into the films.  It's too weird, takes too much explaining, doesn't deliver enough scares and there are better ways to achieve the same effect on film."
• 1989 film - Welp, I was right about Oz.  Rachel's explanation of Zelda is understandably rushed in comparison to the book, but it's also a little breathless and fake.  She doesn't look sufficiently grotesque to me, which might be due to the time period.  I don't feel afraid of her when she's "revealed" or when she threatens Rachel later on.  And when Gage holds a cane and has her dress and hat on, ostensibly to draw a connection between them to make up for the demon-who-knows-your-secrets thing, all I can do is sing, "It's hard out here for a pimp..."  To me, this movie would have benefited more from removing Missy and Zelda and restoring Norma for the first death.
• 2019 film - Oz makes a cameo in one of Ellie's lines - "The great and terrible."  Which, I'll admit, comes across as a weird non sequitur if you haven't read the book.  Similarly weird is the altered version of Zelda's death.  I understand that asphyxiation as described by the book is hard to make look truly scary and that the dumbwaiter creates jumpscare opportunities, but it still reads a little shoehorned.  "I wasn't supposed to use the dumbwaiter because it broke sometimes."  ...wat?  But I will say that Zelda's appearance is much scarier in this version and that the Zelda connection is made much creepier at the end.
  

The Kids Beforehand

• In the book - Standard-issue kids until Gage dies.  It leans too hard into the cheesy father-son bonding in an effort to make Gage's death hurt a little more, but at least there's the vomiting and terrible-twos for a little balance.  Ellie's psychic abilities are well established, if a little heavy-handed.
• 1989 film - The pre-accident kids are handled similarly to the book.  Ellie's lines in particular are a great study in how dialogue in a novel and dialogue in a film sometimes need to differ - what book Ellie says without much of a problem makes 1989 Ellie sound...just weird.  Having said that, the actress playing Ellie does a good job with what she has.
• 2019 film - Just like it's hard to make asphyxiation look scary, it's hard to build a deep relationship between a father and his preverbal toddler son beyond the obvious.  So instead, Gage is more peripheral, save for a brief foreshadowing that he's the psychic this time, and the relationship between Ellie and her parents is established.  This Ellie has fewer "I said this in the book" lines - indeed, fewer lines altogether until she dies - and more mannerisms, like fake ballet and wandering/nosy curiosity.   

That Darn Cat

• In the book - Church comes back janky, not mean.  Also, I feel like the neutering plot point was unnecessary if the cat was gonna get run over anyway.  Like the love scene, I feel like this is Stephen King's personal journal creeping into the book.
• 1989 film - Church comes back mean, and Jud KNEW HE WOULD MANNNN, because so did his dog!  "I had to teach Ellie that dead is better" is an awkward explanation in the novel and it's even worse here.  Also they keep him after he came back mean because....?
• 2019 film - Church comes back mean, so they do the somewhat understandable, if inhumane, thing and "lose" him.  I suppose they had to set up continuity so that when later zombies are mean, it all holds, but I feel like they missed an opportunity with their fancy 2019 special effects to make Church janky in addition to mean.  I guess they wanted to keep it as realistic as possible and didn't want to end up with an obviously CGI cat taking us out of the movie.
  

The Neighbor and History

• In the book - Jud's probably my favorite character in the book.  Like Rachel's story with Zelda, Jud's history with the sour ground is a good slow build to a satisfying conclusion, if you can call slaughter satisfying.  Norma is a little shallow in terms of characters, but I think that's intentional, so that we can feel as separated from her death as Ellie does.
• 1989 film - I'm pretty sure Jud has the most lines in this movie.  Admittedly, that makes sense - he's a major force for both exposition and plot.  By his second scene, I said aloud, "Fred Gwynne is working so hard in this movie."  As I write, I'm trying to decide if that's fair or not.  After all, he does have more opportunity than anyone else to do some acting.  But man, when he and Louis are headed up to bury Church, the juxtaposition between Louis's performance and Jud's is pretty striking.
• 2019 film - Jud is made more distant and creepy rather than a close family friend, although there's a little of that as well.  In the book and the 1989 film, we're meant to trust him from the first and feel for him when he deals with his internal struggle.  In the 2019 film, we always sense that he's a little off.  He's also not the sole source of information about the Sematary, as you'll see later...
  

The "Paxcow"

• In the book - If being in the room when someone dies makes you the recipient of Ghost Advice, Louis should be seeing way more people than Pascow.  He's not a brand-new doctor, man.  Also, "The barrier must not be broken...the ground is sour" and so on is all well and good, but Pascow is a 1980s college kid, so why can't he just say, "Yo, don't bury anyone past this point."  As far as their little hike together, the book does a great job of detailing the panic and rationalization Louis goes through.
• 1989 film - The special effects on Pascow are actually pretty good here.  His head wound is proper grody.  But his sight gag of being on the airplane with Rachel just annoys me, and the post-hike panic by Louis is cut.  He goes straight from muddy feet to the laundry chute with narry a scene.
• 2019 film - I worry that there's some tokenism at work with the casting of Pascow here... particularly when the poc doctor character has been cut for time.  Aside from that, this Pascow is appropriately spooky and we get a truncated, but still palpable, shot of Louis's bewilderment at his muddy feet.

The First Death

• In the book - Norma's death is the hinge point for a lot of things: Ellie's deepening grasp of death, Rachel's continuing avoidance of it, and Jud's modeling of healthy grief ahead of Louis's loss.  Like I said before, she's more of a distant acquaintance, both to us and the characters, so her death is sad but not overwhelming.
• 1989 film - So.  They deleted Norma entirely, choosing instead to beef up the Missy character.  I think they were trying to make her super awkward and off-putting intentionally, creating the knowledge-but-distance the book had with Norma in a different way.  Having her hang herself was an opportunity for what would have been mildly shocking imagery in 1989 that Norma's more conventional death would not have provided.  At first, I think I was just angry that they took Norma out.  In retrospect, I think they just made one choice among many possible ones that just happened not to be the choice I would make.
• 2019 film - Doesn't happen.  Norma's death is moved to before the Creeds move in and Missy is eliminated entirely.  The Pet Sematary conversation contains elements of all of Ellie's understandings of death from the book, and adds the notion that Ellie is vaguely aware of Zelda.
  

The Second Death 

• In the book - Happens while Ellie and Rachel are gone, so they are never aware of a resurrected cat and only vaguely aware that Church is janky.
• 1989 film - Sticks to the book
• 2019 film - This time, Rachel and Ellie are present, but don't see the dead cat.  Louis tells Rachel about it, but Church returns before they tell Ellie.  Rachel then assumes the cat was never dead, joking that she's glad Louis isn't a vet.
  

The Big Tragedy

• In the book - Gut wrenching.  Especially when it details how Louis replays it again and again, only this time he saves Gage.  Oh right by the way - Gage dies in the book.  This is important to remember.
• 1989 film - Another moment that could have been truly emotional, but they stifle it with a campy "NOOOOOOOO" and a too-soon cut to baby pictures and whatnot.  I feel like they were aiming for "overwhelmed by memories" and fell short.
• 2019 film - I'm sure the big switcheroo is foreshadowed plenty of times (the movie poster, for example), but there were two instances I picked up on.  The first is when Church comes back - he knocks over one of the wooden letters that spells "Ellie" on her dresser.  The second is super obvious - Gabe drew the picture of someone bleeding, meaning he's the psychic and Ellie's the zombie.  The way they shot it hits me as almost poetic: Gage sees Ellie and Church and starts running toward the road, but Louis catches him in time.  Just like the novel's Louis played in his head over and over.  But like they said in MIB3, where there is death there must always be death.  So in exchange for keeping Gage, we lose Ellie.

Brief sidebar: I often think that, in the era of Saw and The Human Centipede and whatnot, there's little to nothing that horror movie makers won't depict in detail.  But both adaptations of Pet Sematary approach the death of the child with allusion and subtlety - quite a contrast from the deaths of Missy, Church, and Pascow.  The secular sacred at work.

The Warning 

• In the book - Jud is at war within himself.  He finds the strength to warn Louis not to do it, but the Wendigo puts him to sleep when the game is on.  King's zombies kind of straddle the line between zombie and possession victim - that makes the flashback plenty scary.
• 1989 film - Another example of Fred Gwynne earning that paycheck.  "She knew it was an abomination!" with those wide eyes while Louis sits there looking like he's trying to get a popcorn hull out of his teeth is quite something.  The flashback definitely looks scary, but I was disappointed when it became clear that the movie was dropping the "dead person knows all your secrets" subplot.
• 2019 film - Jud's regret is scooted back to the scenes where Church comes back mean.  Once Ellie's dead and Louis gets the idea, he just drugs Jud to keep him out of the way.  The flashback is reduced to a news-article montage, which is a little hackneyed but acceptable for the greater cause of a decent runtime.  The zombie's various capabilities are therefore all revealed in Ellie later.

The Lazarus Effect

• In the book - King indulges in some nastiness.  Injuries left from the accident, underground things, etc.  Plus, this two-year-old says some REALLY grown-up things all of a sudden.  Resurrected Gage is frightening, obscene and heartbreaking.
• 1989 film - Just as the film averted its gaze when Gage died, so too did it treat his reanimated form with delicateness.  He's a little pale and has a scrape on his head, but otherwise he looks just like Gage when he was alive.  He's not even dirty.  Like I said before, the whole reveal-your-secrets thing is abandoned in this film; instead, like Church, Gage comes back mean and aims to take people out like he's auditioning for John Wick.
• 2019 film - Ellie's level of unsettling lands in between Book Gage and 1989 Gage.  She's not sporting obvious injuries as you would expect based on how she died, but she's not just dusted with white powder and sent on her way either.  She differs from her brothers (lol) in that she is the sole model for how a human reacts to being reanimated and she retains aspects of both prior approaches as well as some gifts of her own.  She knows secret things just like the book zombies, but in her case it's because she met the spirits of other departed people while she was gone.  She's mean and out to get folks just like the book and 1989 zombies, but it's because those people did something to deserve it: Jud did something unspecified to Norma, Rachel secretly wanted her sister to die and also "didn't do anything" to prevent Ellie's death, and Louis brought her back, which she describes as a terrible experience.  Her unique contribution is her ability to reflect on what has happened to her.  She makes it clear that she realizes she is dead and that her reanimation is unnatural.
  

The Climax

• In the book - Gage takes out Jud and Rachel, but Louis manages to stop him.  Does he learn his lesson?  NOPE.
• 1989 film - Again, could have been poignant...when Louis is forced to put the reanimated Gage down, the cry he hears and the expression (HEY I FOUND ONE) on his face create this pure, horrifying moment.  This is his baby that he must relinquish for the second time.  Then the kid wanders off and says "No fair" and I want to put my fist through the TV.  Does Louis learn his lesson?  NOPE.
• 2019 film - Ellie leaves Jud dead, but everybody else gets special treatment...
  

The Non-Novel Addenda

• In the book - She says "Darling" and then it's over.  Obviously the novel leans toward her coming back with all of Louis's terrible secrets (which would include certain marriage-specific closet skeletons) and an axe to grind.  And then put in his head.  But the more optimistic could choose to believe that Louis is right and that meanness comes with the passage of time - Church supports that theory, since he only came back janky.
• 1989 film - Another example of very good special effects for this era - Rachel looks real nasty when she comes back.  (Also another example of how sparing they were with Gage's zombie form).  She says "Darling" and then stabs Louis and then it's over.  Very "Thriller"-esque sinister ending.
• 2019 film - Ellie's mad at her parents, so she zombifies them too so they can all suffer together.  There's still some ambiguity - and according to Andy, a setup for a sequel - in the ending, though.  Over the course of the night, Gage is put in a car for his own protection.  The showdown at Pet Sematary ends with the other Creeds all turned into zombies.  They approach the car Gage is in and you hear the sound of it unlocking, but that's it.  If Ellie's stated reasons for killing fools was that they had each committed some terrible sin, then perhaps Gage is exempt.  Guess we'll find out in 2 years when they release the sequel!

The NONE - A Review and Better Ideas

I'm going to try to avoid spoilers for The Nun for most of this, but (1) it was released almost a year ago and (2) as CorderyFX (hella spoilers in that video) points out, it spoils itself.

I enjoy writing in the same way I enjoy crocheting.  I can do very basic little things, but I don't have a ton of time to devote to it, so I get occasional fits of zeal, do it for a few days, then abandon it for months or even years (have a look at my blog archive...)  I fershure ain't done any fiction or screenwriting and I don't pretend to know more about writing scripts than people who do so for a living.

I *also* enjoy the occasional scary movie, but I have certain tastes.  If horror movies are nachos, then the setting and characters are the chips, the central conflict is the cheese, and accessories like jumpscares and super detailed gore and violence are jalapenos.  "I want you to saw your leg off because it amuses me" or "I'm going to sew you and your friends together because I'm loco bonkers" do not cut it.  Those types of movies are flimsy chips and cheap "pasteurized processed cheese products" - I demand real tortillas and real cheese.  As for toppings...I like some sliced jalapenos on my nachos and I don't mind a few jumpscares or gory parts in my scary movies, but I'm not about to eat an entire plate of just jalapenos and I'm not going to sit through a film that relies on jumpscares or gore exclusively for its' scare factor.


I watched The Conjuring about a year and a half ago and I quite liked it.  Because I hadn't seen The Conjuring 2 or the Annabelle spinoffs, I hadn't seen Valak as depicted/foreshadowed in the other films.  My first encounter with The Nun's marketing came from a YouTube ad that said, "Original ads for The Nun were actually pulled for being too scary, so this painting is all we can show you..."

Girl did you fall from heaven...because I'm pretty sure you're Lucifer.

It was a midroll and I wasn't watching a horror-themed YouTube video, so to have that suddenly staring at me with the creepy voice-over and scary encroaching violins was effective.  I was both repulsed and fascinated.  I'm a little iffy with movies that have Christian content, and with the trailers for The Nun, it was kind of hard to tell how far it veered into Hollywood possession versus genuine possession.  And of course, although I'm less susceptible to scary imagery than I was as a kid, I'm not immune to nightmares or to suddenly visualizing The Nun, The Babadook, or the knife-wielding aggressor from Hush in the shadows as I get up at 2 AM to pee.  

This past spring break, I finally got the guts to do it, figuring that if I got super freaked out, it was ok to stay up all night watching cartoons with the lights on because I was off work all week.  So I watched The Nun at midnight.  A midnight viewing of the alleged "darkest chapter of the Conjuring universe" for which I paid seven American dollars that I will never get back.  Not only did I not get scared...I actually laughed at things that were supposed to frighten me.  Upcoming plot points were so obvious and formulaic that I took to yelling them out and making tiny bets with myself, winning each one.  If we return to my nacho analogy, that movie is like half a burnt chip, unmelted store brand American cheese slices and three jalapenos that have wrinkled with age and neglect.  It is garbage trash and I'll only watch it again if Rifftrax comes along with me.

So here, after a far-too-long introduction, are my story ideas that could have been used for The Nun.  I ain't a writer, I ain't a movie maker, and these ideas ain't original.  But they're (1) equally unoriginal as the real plot of The Nun and (2) WAY MORE ENTERTAINING.  They're also pretty much all abuse-driven, because I can't think of a reason an entity would want to do horror movie things except that hurt people hurt people.

 Better Plots for The Nun

(taking for granted that The Nun is a disguise for or is possessed by Valak, per Conjuring 2)

1. Childhood Horror - the nun was a normal little girl raised by an abusive authority figure whose torture ramps her people-pleasing skills to eleven.  She works harder and harder for approval and denies and suppresses her rage until eventually she snaps, killing the authority figure.  In this raw and vulnerable state, Valak overtakes her and uses her outward appearance as a nice Catholic girl/nun to seek out those who could be similarly victimized (like Irene) and "rescue" them by possessing/empowering them to destroy their abusers.  Irene has to protect her acquaintances from being identified as aggressors and targeted, and herself from being overtaken like the original nun, while also seeking to save the nun's soul from Valak.  The abusive-parent inciting incident is thoroughly trodden in scary movies, but at least it's a plot (cough cough).
2. More Straightforward Possession - the nun was just a nun with a less glaring vulnerability, like a vice she had prior to taking her vows, that Valak uses to possess her.  Valak just happens to be the biggest, baddest demon of them all, leaving in his possession history a line of destruction, depravity and general horror.  Basically The Exorcist with a dash of Oculus.  Irene's status as a novice can be taken to mean she's not really sure about her spiritual status, giving her that weak-but-strong underdog appeal to counteract Valak's strong-just-strong-all-strong.  While we're stealing from other movies, this movie would also need to borrow from the Scream trilogy the death of a major character or bankable actor to sell this one.
3. Social Commentary - like Childhood Horror, except in this version the nun is abused or assaulted from within the church or abbey by someone in power, so she actively seeks out Valak to exact revenge.  This would make Father Forgot-His-Name a target because CHURCH BADDDD and Irene ambiguous because she's a novice...she might take her vows and become Valak's enemy, or she might recant and be "rescued."  Irene's task becomes digging the original nun out from under Valak's shadow and showing her to heal, to react to her abuse proactively rather than destructively, etc. and perhaps also to expose and drive out the nun's abusers.  Again, critical theory premises are old hat in horror, but a plot is a plot.
4. Surprise Bad Guy, Version 1 - Valak was originally just a human and subordinate to the nun in some way, like a student in a school she taught at, and the nun was the abuser.  Valak dies as result of the nun's abuse or neglect and returns to Earth to possess her and cause her to do all kinds of overt sinning so that she feels the shame and anger that he was made to feel.  Irene and Father Forgettable have to (1) suss out that origin story, (2) separate Valak and the nun and (3) save them both from each other and themselves.  M. Night Shyamalan, eat your heart out.
5. Surprise Bad Guy, Version 2 - The Nun is a decoy, an illusion meant to distract the Vatican while the real Valak slips in via...IRENE!  Irene performs "exorcisms" which are actually "transfers" to stronger/more influential persons.  This would also provide an opportunity to connect the Farmiga sisters, because you know who else knows a lot about spirits and demons and is called upon to expel them all the time?  Lorraine.  Irene is suspected by the church and "disappears"...but in fact becomes Lorraine and continues her activities under different auspices in another country.  A story at least as old as Carmilla, but it's not fixing that which isn't broken.

Those are all I can think of at the moment.  Basically (here come the spoilers) I want either the Nun, Valak or both to actually *be somebody* and *have motivation.*  I want there to be real stakes, real danger, real harm.  "We all died because we were afraid of seeing Scary Lady in the mirror" is weak sauce.  "We all died because this thing either possessed our friend and had her kill us or possessed us and made us kill ourselves" is a non-vegetarian The Happening and still way better than The Nun. 

Miss me, ladies?

 

Anybody Can Be Genie

Every now and then, I write posts about movies.

I don't watch a ton of movies - I tend to have very narrow and difficult-to-define preferences when it comes to entertainment.  I hate "wacky misunderstandings", but I love verbal non sequiturs.  I love some of the current pop/rock musicals like Heathers and Legally Blonde, but I hate when the music seems clumsily written (lookin' at you, Fame) or is unnecessarily complicated as a means to show off how "deep" the composer is (lookin' at you, Sondheim.)  I love comedy that lives in good snappy dialogue rather than relying on funny visuals and I HATE romcoms.  Unless it's something that stays light and unserious like Family Guy or Monty Python, if a character behaves in a way I would not tolerate and this behavior isn't checked by other characters, or makes a choice I think is stupid beyond understanding, I can't stomach it.  That goes double for characters who mistreat others and it's forgiven because of sympathy or social convention - I can't watch the exploits of Sheldon Cooper or Emily Gilmore without yelling at everyone else to just drop these self-absorbed buttholes out of your lives.  Characters like that fill me with palpable rage and I am not entertained by that state of being.

Having said all of that...I'm a pretty reliable Disney fangirl when it comes to their movies up until about 1998 or so.  The Disney Renaissance began when I was three and I am well aware that Disney is fully exploiting my age group's spending power with its remakes.  Listen: Walt was no dummy when he decided to use centuries-old sources, like fairy tales, folk tales and Shakespeare, as the basis for his films.  Those stories lasted because they're good - let's don't fix what isn't broken.  The source material for Aladdin comes from a later edition of Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights in Arabic) - it wasn't in the first version, but was added later by European editors based on a story by Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab1.  There are published translations on the market now that make various attempts to both honor the original language and make the stories comprehensible to English speakers unfamiliar with Middle Eastern culture, but the stories themselves and several of their early English translations are in the public domain and can be freely sought and read online.

Point Is!  I'm probably going to like Disney stuff from that era, either in its 90s or remake form, because the storytelling is solid.  Yesterday, I saw the live-action remake of Aladdin and I have thoughts...

***THERE ARE FINNA BE SPOILERS.  If you're familiar with the 1992 Aladdin, that goes double for you - there are differences!  And I'm going to spoil them!***

I've missed a few of the Disney live-action remakes, largely the ones that are pre-Disney Renaissance (which is to say, pre-1989).  Cinderella, Pete's Dragon and The Jungle Book all got revamped, but I feel like I didn't see much promo for them and, although I like the originals, none is my first choice for a rewatch.

But then they went after Beauty and the Beast.  Which I completely adored and which, for me, set the standard when it came to seeing Aladdin.  With Beauty and the Beast, they took everything about the animated version and cranked it up to 11.  Belle's intellect and pluck, Maurice's mechanical giftedness, Gaston's chauvinism, more ornate settings, more detailed costuming, a bigger and thicker orchestration...  For us late 80s/early 90s aspiring Disney princesses, it was a rosé fever dream, a box of chocolates beside a bubble bath, a dance around your living room with your tiny feet shoved into the toes of Mom's high heels.  And of course, Disney took the opportunity to course-correct on a few things.  The origin of the servants and their lost connection to the village was explained more clearly, the Belle/Beast relationship was distilled in an attempt to make it less illogical (however unsuccessfully), and of course there was that one moment when a dude danced with another dude and people who had no problem with a girl falling in love with someone who literally imprisoned her were convinced that the world would end and I WONDER IF THOSE THINGS ARE RELATED IN ANY WAY...

...sorry, another topic for another time.  So going into Aladdin, I was curious about whether they would use a similar approach.  Where for Beauty I was excited about every element, with Aladdin I was mostly excited about the music.  I tend to love everything Alan Menken does (which, incidentally, includes the scores for Beauty, Aladdin and Hunchback, among many fantastic others) and I was ready to (1) sing along and (2) be delightfully surprised when my singing along didn't line up because lyrics or music were updated.  I was ready to see a retread of the original plot with more detail, more magic, more volume.

I was right and wrong and I loved it.

About 90% of the plot is faithful to the 1992 version.  However, in addition to small updates, like Iago speaking in short phrases like a real bird rather than carrying on conversations (no recreation of the Gilbert Gottfried performance) or the cutting-out of Jasmine's introduction and escape (she and Aladdin are introduced in medias res at the end of "Arabian Nights"), there's one major difference that clearly says "This is a 2019 Reboot!" and it's Jasmine.

She's still the princess and she's still under pressure to get married.  However, where in the 1992 version she had to be married to a prince by a certain age and she resisted out of wanting to marry for love, in the 2019 version she has to marry a prince because only a royal male can be Sultan and her father is getting on in years.  She resists because she believes she is more qualified to rule her own people than some rando from another country.  There's a tangentially related subplot involving Jafar's plans to invade a neighboring country and using fearmongering to convince the Sultan to do so COUGH COUGH WAT.  This beefing up of Jasmine's character and motives is reflected both in her dialogue, which paints her as witty, intelligent and compassionate, and in her music - she gets her own song called "Speechless" which is reprised a few times.  I will admit that, although I like "Speechless," I'm not sure it's on the same level as the other songs.  This is probably because I'm a nostalgia addict and am resisting the change and also because this was one of a few new tunes using Broadway lyricists du jour Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.  They ok, but they ain't Howard Ashman or Tim Rice.

Since we're on music!  The delightful thing about the new Aladdin score and soundtrack is that, for me, it is just the right amount of new.  Like Beauty, the original instrumentation and motives are still present; if you're a megafan of the original and hear songs like "One Jump Ahead" or "Friend Like Me" from the new one in isolation, you will recognize them before the actors begin singing.  Unlike Beauty, there are new layers added musically.  Continuing in the vein of correcting past insensitive content, the new Aladdin adds to the original orchestration several Middle Eastern instruments and rhythmic figures that are more authentic to the setting.  And of course, there's a thread of hip-hop percussion throughout, because Will Smith.  It's essentially like going from just deep-fried turkey, which is delicious on its own, to having that deep-fried turkey in a sandwich with all the trimmings you like.  I used to wear out "Prince Ali" because I loved every element - the tempo was fun and danceable, the melody was catchy, the harmony and chord progressions were smooth and engaging, and the instrumentation was thrilling.  The new "Prince Ali" still has all of those things, down to the individual string and brass motives that punctuated the vocals, but a thicker percussion section, a dash of electronic manipulation and a more robust ensemble sound make it even better.

So I liked almost all of what I heard.  Similarly, I liked almost all of what I saw.  Look, I like CGI as much as the next person, and for a character like Genie, we are willing to suspend our analytical/realistic eye in the name of magic...but Abu bothered me.  Why throw out all of Iago's original lines in the service of giving him a few pithy sentences as a real bird, but turn the dialogue-free Abu into a CGI caricature?  Don't tell me it's so we can see him "emote" - the live, trained spider monkey for Ace Ventura did just fine, thank you very much.  Don't tell me it's for Frank Welker's benefit - he could just as easily voice over a live monkey.  And definitely don't tell me that it's to show off Disney's CGI prowess - the resurrection of Peter Cushing for Rogue One was for sure a head-tilter, but it was a far sight more believable than Abu.  He looked good if we're looking at the grand scheme of everything ever animated on a computer, but he did not look 2019-major-production good.

I also took issue with Will Smith's singing.  Don't get me wrong - he can match pitch and either he or his musical director had the good sense to switch him to rapping or urbane sprechstimme when the notes fell outside his range, but next to Jasmine and Aladdin's big voices, he was clearly the weak link.  It is worth noting that Hot Jafar was not given his "Prince Ali" reprise, which gave me a tiny sad because it's one of my favorite songs from the original.  I get wanting a more authentic Jafar and not wanting to put Jonathan Freeman in JafarFace again (he voiced the 1992 film *and* played him in the Broadway adaptation with some, um, interesting makeup choices), but we really couldn't find a Jafar who was Middle Eastern, hot and vocally talented?  I bet he exists.  I bet lots of hes exist.

So Will might not be much of a singer, but he is a great actor and he exemplified something that I think is pretty cool about the Aladdin property as rendered by Disney: the malleability of the Genie character.  "Duh," I hear you say, "a character that can do actual magic is pretty easy to change."  But I think it's deeper than that.  You can see many varied performances of this character and it is still clearly the Disney Genie.  Part of that comes from Robin Williams' original performance - Williams was a master of impersonation and this gave the original Genie a broadness of personality.  They literally animated multiple Genies onscreen to keep up with Williams' frenetic rate of change, meaning that just about any take on the Genie is faithful to at least one of his iterations.  The other part of this, I think, manifests as expressions of respect for Williams' performance by not copying it directly (in the case of Broadway, as he was still alive when it opened) and by paying light homage while still leaving the core of Williams' Genie to the man himself (in the case of the 2019 film, released 5 years after his untimely death.)  Broadway Genie, James Monroe Iglehart, has a more jazz/scat approach to the Genie than his other portrayers because he excels at that style - it's Iglehart at his jauntiest, which is what you need for the Genie.  Will Smith's Genie is effervescently cool and sardonic.  All three have a lot of the same lines and sing the same songs, but each approaches it with his own strengths.  Iglehart and Smith tend to divide speaking and singing similarly to Williams in the musical portions and have similar asides in pieces like "Prince Ali", but the specific pop culture references Williams used, his inflections, his accents...are all respectfully and reverently left alone as Iglehart and Smith explore their own versions of Genie.  In this way, I think Genie is a lot like Leading Player from Pippin.  Ben Vereen played it so dynamically that it made space for literally anyone, any race, any gender to take up the mantle and be themselves while still clearly being Leading Player.  Conversely, although a character like Jasmine can be deepened and broadened as she was for this movie, certain elements are always going to be there.  She will always be youthful, Middle Eastern, conventionally attractive, a soprano...

I guess, in an infantile way, that's been a big draw for me with Aladdin.  Only some girls can be Disney Princesses...but anybody can be a Genie.

1 Wikipedia articles for Arabian Nights and Aladdin

Antisocial

I *hate* when people sanctimoniously announce on social media that they're taking a break from social media.  Every time I see such a status, I think, "Just be gone.  Whom do you think is looking for you that often?"

And then I became that person.  Happy Lent and Easter, everyone!

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.  For Lent 2018, the idea for what I wanted to abstain from (grown up beverages) had been bubbling in my head for about a month.  This year, nothing was standing out super clearly.  On Ash Wednesday, I said as much to a friend, and then as I walked back to my car, suddenly "SOCIAL MEDIA" popped into my brain.  The more I thought about it, the more attractive the idea became.

1. It was the beginning of competition/evaluation season and reading all of the posts and posting my own, however well-intentioned, ignites a base, ugly part of my psyche that wants to compare, critique and basically beat myself and everybody else up.

2. Even at my most voracious, I don't so much jones for social media as meander to it out of habit.  I would rather my idle time be spent on something more enjoyable (looking at Sports Night gifs on Tumblr) or educational (reading about history or news).

3. Let's be really real: although we love our friends and family and we are grateful for a wide variety of viewpoints and celebrate differences, Facebook is notorious for burying the more nuanced viewpoints and putting the vapid fringe flotsam right in your face so that you'll post more, read more, argue more and generally be on Facebook more.

So I quit for Lent.  Here's how my 3 points of attractiveness turned out.

1. I was *way more relaxed* during competition/evaluation season.  Subsequently, I projected a much healthier "let's do our best" vibe rather than my usual "let's be THE best" fueled by seeing everyone else's scores online.  It was also much easier to compartmentalize work and leisure time.  I already had a pretty strict rule about not looking at work email when I'm not at work, but not looking at Facebook (and therefore not being reminded of work) made my evenings, workouts, movie nights with Andy, etc. far more relaxed and less distracted.

2. Obviously, there are those who would argue that my general addiction to my phone for entertainment is still a problem far exceeding any that Facebook posed.  Baby steps, people.  I have found, however, that when I do go to my phone or onto my computer, the thoughtless, unconscious wandering to Facebook was not replaced by something similarly habitual.  I would go to my phone because I was bored and pause for a moment, consciously choosing whether to play a game, read news, read a book on my Kindle app or watch The Great British Baking Show on Netflix.  The answer would change according to my mood...

3. ...Speaking of!  When I'm not regularly looking at inflammatory infographics, clickbait rants, vague complaints about "some people" or thinly-veiled humblebrags, my mood is far more stable.  When I was unhappy about something, I would talk to my friends or look up suggestions/testimonials rather than craft an attention-seeking post.  When something good happened, I savored it with people in my physical presence rather than worked on a post specifically intended to impress people.

My only moment of Facebook-related anxiety was actually today, when it hit me as I put on my makeup that "Lent has ended - I can get on social media again."  I was afraid I'd log in and find a ton of angry people on the other side of unanswered messages and ignored event invitations.

NOPE.  The fact is, I'm just not that important.  I don't mean that in a sad-sack give-me-compliments way.  Rather, I have learned that my overdeveloped sense of duty doesn't apply to social media.  Anyone who *really* needs to get in touch with me either has my phone number or can find my contact information (for work, at least) online.  No one is all that interested in my life, and the minute details of other people's lives are none of my business, even if they're being posted on FB.  If I need to know it, someone's gonna tell me eventually.

You can probably see where this is going: I'm deleting my Facebook.  If there's a really fly meme going around, somebody text it to me.

EDIT: It latterly occurs to me that some of this sounds like I'm talking about all the ways other people do Facebook poorly.  That's not what I meant - when I say things like "attention-seeking" or "impress people", I'm talking openly and specifically about how *I* used Facebook, not about anybody else :D