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The How To Do It series #1: Dr. Strange (Page 1)
Author Topic: The How To Do It series #1: Dr. Strange
w.c.EDWARDS posted December 04, 2005 04:55 PM
In a way this is an open letter to any producers, screenwriters, and directors, who might drop by here, who are thinking of doing a Dr. Strange film; these are reflections on his origins describing some of the problems facing any screenwriter who attempts a revisionist adaptation. If considered these can make a great Dr. Strange movie instead of a mediocre one. Comments and additions to this post are very much encouraged and welcomed, this is a draft analysis that I hope to revise and expand, so any input used will be cited and credited and I also beg your indulgence for any bad form. As a work in progress I will revise certain section here as long as possible. Perhaps I'll collect them into a book: How to Adapt Comics Into Films (for Hollywood dummies)
Dr. Strange, the Ancient One, and Baron Mordo, are wonderful stock card board metaphors, symbolic representations of common place moral values, cutouts, colorful paper dolls, of good versus evil, yet with subtle potentialities for exploring deeper spiritual and occult themes (history) more realistically, more seriously. If these considerations are ignored, you’ll look at the material and dismiss it as silly and out of date but this would be a serious mistake. Dr. Strange is an outline for something great and magical like those short novellas that were the source of some of Shakespeare’s finest plays, like Othello, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear.
The first problem with the origin story is that like a lot of comics of this era, the character’s transformation into a good guy occurs too quickly, without much psychological realism. He goes from a mean spirited, money grubbing surgeon, to a sudden sense of compassion for the Ancient One, a total stranger, when the sage is attacked by a mysterious evil vapor, Strange discovers the source and saves the day. Strange is snow bound and you could say because the Ancient One allowed him to stay safely in the monastery, Strange, grateful, decides to help him. But this is tepid justification for something done without much thought, it seems to me. It doesn't have much power as transformation into a new personality. Let’s start here then with characterization.
How real do we want Strange to be? And how real do want the Ancient One?
Of course a screenwriter working on this concept looking at this material would find the mean spirited doctor a real thrill to work on, even the actor who will eventually play him, would get a kick out of playing the unrepentant Dr. Strange, so this is worth keeping. Strange is unrepentant until that moment when he comes upon the Ancient One being attacked by the Vapors of Valtorr, by an unseen enemy (we’ll get back to the unseen bit later). And because Strange’s compassion is sudden it strikes me as out of character. How would Stan explain it? It is true the Ancient One said that there was a “spark” of goodness in Strange.
But in the flashback of Strange’s career we learn nothing of where this spark came from, how it got buried in such a selfish man. If we are to believe in this “spark” we have to think of Strange as a fallen man or a corrupted innocent, even in the Gnostic sense. We’ll have to explain how he became a greedy, selfish doctor. What a contradiction and quite a theme? A selfish, uncaring doctor! It may be a cliché of pulps or fiction in general, but it is quite real, isn’t it. We know of Nazi doctors, for example. So this is a bit of realism.
A doctor could indeed behave in this way but when did Stephen Strange become a selfish person? As a medical student or was he this way as a teenager, say. So the origin’s story gives us no psychoanalysis of motivation, his neurosis. We can assume his greed, his cruel selfishness is neurotic. Because it meant nothing further to Lee, in terms of kids comics, Strange’s past however is a true curiosity for anyone trying to flesh the character out with the bones, muscles, and skin of realism. And a screenwriter ought to start here in terms of gaining an understanding of who Strange is and why he would contradict the ideal image of the doctor as healer, someone sworn to uphold the Hippocratic Oath. There is something beautiful and interesting, almost like a parable, in the fact that a crippled, corrupt healer seeks out a holy one to cure him. Also we can use even his vanity to explain why there is no woman in his life at this point. Perhaps his problem is a woman. His mother, his girl friend? His father? His mother and his father? We know nothing about his family. Are his parents dead? Think of some of the best episodes of the Twilight Zone. It is a morality thing, right?
There is a great opportunity here for a screenwriter to explore secret motivations, not only of the Ancient One, but of Strange himself. The Ancient One should know the reasons for Strange’s greed and selfishness that Strange doesn’t know himself. Just as he should be able to read were the evil vapor is coming from. But it is good that the Ancient One is not all powerful. Maybe he doesn’t even know and it is something Strange can work on while staying at the temple, what’s that famous saying “know thyself”. And the Ancient One even intimates that the cure is somewhere in himself. Perhaps the neurological damage to his hand is psychosomatic. That’s one possibility.
Unless we believe that greed and selfishness are natural and acceptable traits, Strange’s vanity, his money obsession is manic, especially embodied in a doctor of all persons, and is indeed contradictory to the ideal, so the accident was perhaps not even an accident, that he in fact wanted to destroy himself? He had everything and nothing? But why? The great thing about a lot of these comics like true myths is that one can revise them, reinterpret them, and redo them, a true source of inspiration and without alternating much of the basic plot.
Now let’s turn to the Ancient One, for a moment, surely one of the juiciest parts any actor could hope for. Where does this figure come from? He is of course the archetype, a figure seen many times before, in many guises in both literature and films. He is the Magician and Strange is of course his Apprentice, so you have the classic duality, student and master. It is recommended that any screenwriter examining this figure should put it to some original and striking use rather than rely on past clichés, with all these Wizards and apprentices about in films today.
In the Strange origin story he is a bit of a cipher, isn’t he? We know nothing about him except that he seems venerable and wise, aged, not physically very strong apparently. Pure. Good. In the context of this issue he is some kind of bastion against the forces of evil and he needs a successor before he can retire from guarding the world from evil. But how does one become such a Buddha-like figure and take on such a burden? A burden not in keeping with the role Buddha played. He is more a Western conception, a medium, a psychic, a sorcerer, rather than a religious holy man per se. As to his possible origins, perhaps reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha would be a good source of inspiration to breath new life into his venerable person, give him a real past, real striving, real enlightenment of some kind.
Power must cost something? In the five page story in which he first appeared, the Ancient One referred to Strange as his son and Strange as someone pointed out is later transformed into a Tony Stark type, losing his almost Asiatic and sinister appearance here. And Kirby’s Strange, by the way, is always the handsomest and least sinister looking of all the Stranges, this type of Strange should be avoided, because there is nothing supernatural in him at all, at least in terms of physical appearance.
Strange perhaps should be a slight person, like his Master, rather than have the muscles of a superhero. He should in fact have no muscles. Perhaps his physique should be that of someone who practices yoga? Ditko certainly doesn’t draw him like a superhero at least in his very first appearance. He has something of a Fu Manchu look to him. He looks foreign like his Master.
Doing a little research I came upon one of the early instigators perhaps of this cultural fascination with fictional witchcraft, Dennis Wheatley, and this novelist, supposedly believed there was an inherent danger in black magic. They said his books sold in the millions, so his works ought to be studied, he is due some respect. I believe it is a rule to know what has been done before and to top it some how or at least tweak it in an interesting way. Of course it goes back to Goethe’s Faust, alchemists and magician/sorcerers, and folklore. But the wise old man, even if he is an archetype, should no longer be a cliché. No more Yodas. The public should be startled by a new wilder, and more daring depiction of such a romantic figure.
His encounter with Strange is also a potential source of intriguing debate, if nothing else, the skeptical Westerner versus the occult adept. Science meets mysticism and mysticism bests science or the two converge? The Tao of Physics? But the Ancient One is a master of black magic, and Mordo, his evil student, wants to replace him; therefore the old man is dabbling in very dangerous stuff indeed. And how is it that he knows of Strange’s true nature but not Mordo’s. Perhaps there is price?
Certainly his age is interesting, he is bent, a haggard figure, truly ancient, and there is something poetic in that, useful. It struck me as I was reading it that Strange had more in common with Mordo than he did with the Ancient One. Here the screenwriter can expand upon Mordo and Strange and their relationship with him, the good student versus the bad. Given short shift, in this slight form. The good student versus the bad student could be the theme of great literature much less a popular film if it has not been done already in the Harry Potter films. I’ve not seen these films nor read the books they’re based on.
But because this is a fable, a slight parable, a very short story, there is little real conflict either internal or external. There is a great lack of suspense here which I’m afraid will allow the screenwriter to feel this origin’s story is only useful as an explanation for Mordo’s hatred of Strange in the present and nothing else. Right here is the germ of a greater and more complex storyline.
The idea, if possible, is to use the original source material, potentialities within its context, even the historical era in which it was written, rather than use these anachronistically for some updated, fashionable, mass audience gambit on making it relevant, in a superficial way by having it set in our time. Its themes and ideas must be relevant in whatever world it is set in, in any case.
The rule in all fiction, filmic as well as novels, is conflict and the pivotal conflict of Strange coming to grips with his bad self is never dramatized, we’re told of it, which violates the cardinal rule, though the art shows it in a way, still this transformation, this miracle, into a good man, if you will, is unbelievable, merely expediency or carelessness or the constraints of the business forced on the creators. Was it really that easy to find the Ancient One? In literary terms it is poor in comparison to the realization of self the boy in Joyce’s Araby achieves.
You could make a whole film dramatizing how someone would or could find an Ancient One. Perhaps there were suspenseful hindrances, and blind alleys, all sorts of difficulties before he could get an audience with the Ancient One. Perhaps Mordo could be behind these. But alas, the easy way, is to use all of this potential as mere back-story, perhaps a shot or two, in flashbacks of a climb up the mountain. No real struggle there. Perhaps Mordo wants to avert his destiny?
Let switch to the setting for a minute, a vague glimpse of a golden temple nesting in some snowbound cliff, hanging on the edge of a Ditko abyss. The setting too is intriguing, in that vague Ditko image is all of Tibet, the lama, the mysteries of Shangri-La, even the yeti—the high Himalayas. And the legend is far richer than what we glimpse here. One would like to ask him what served as inspiration in terms of the unfolding look of the comic, his design of the look of these places, down to the furnishing and strange ectoplasms. And a related question is why many fans in the Sixties saw his images psychedelically as the series developed. Just the LSD making the four color world richer or is there something more to it? Ditko’s depiction of the astral plain and other dimensions is fascinating but this style seems to be emerging earlier and can be seen in some of his Monster comics like The Threat of Tim Boo Ba—it’s truly other worldly and can be useful to filmmakers, in creating a unique atmosphere, if they study it carefully.
It can serve as a truly uncanny, even eerie way to depict the other side, rather than rely on realistic approaches to creating those other dimensions. Perhaps an example of this in terms of a film is George Lucas’ THX1138, where blank, flat spaces were used quite effectively to create an infernal ambience, albeit a dystopian scientific one. There other things about his style of cartooning that can serve to create an interesting mood. Dr. Strange’s world seems ghostly, uninhabited, and lonely. His world is the world of midnight, sundown, mist, shadows, dreams, hypnotism, sleep walking, somnambulists, fog and rain, never sunlight. Autumnal.
Strange inhabits, even, in other dimensions, rooms, halls, chambers, tombs, surrounded by vast spaces. A very clean geometric underworld, the city itself is perhaps not here. And this raises the question of period setting, should it be our contemporary world or another altogether, some other parallel world. If this path is taken the filmmakers will be able to recreate in some way Ditko’s stylizations and achieve a remarkable synthesis, giving his flat, three dimensional surfaces greater filmic verisimilitude. There is something dream-like, puppet-like (perhaps the use of manikins as a drawing aid or learning tool?) in Ditko’s style, and for some reason I think of Kabuki—the masque, the costume ball also comes to mind. The masque sex orgy and threat of rape in Eyes Wide Shut and its use of almost supernatural sounding music could serve the filmmakers well to study in this regard.
The filmmakers should note carefully previous takes on these romantic images of snow bound temples and monasteries, utopian civilizations hidden in a mist shrouded valley and try to top their uses with something more original or ingenious. How does the Ancient One relate to these iconic images from past films and literature? Lost Horizons etc., the Shadow (movie); Madame Blavatsky’s speaks of Secret Masters, the Teacher, the Elder Brother or Adept. Is he one? The whole Western Esoteric tradition can also be a source of ideas and possibilities as well.
One would like to ask Stan Lee what was he reading or what was on his mind at the time or was the concept created from vague memories of hearing or reading about such stuff from the pulps and what of Ditko’s contributions here as well? Perhaps Stan was flipping through a book by Tuesday Lobsang Rampa? I read one of his novels years ago. And this was all before Castaneda, right. Maybe Strange inspired the Don Juan hoax, too, and his crack in the world. Perhaps some of the evil magicians Strange will later encounter are the reflections of people like Aleister Crowley and Madame Blavatsky, these figures should be researched for inspiration and story ideas. The femme fatales sorceresses that later appear perhaps have their true source in Blavatsky.
And I have yet to mention the unspoken source of all this in Lovecraft. More on him later.
Please comment.
Thanks.
Dave Knott
posted December 04, 2005 05:04 PM
whoah....
By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, let the all-seing Eye of Agamotto guide you in your task.
Aaron White
posted December 04, 2005 05:31 PM
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 05, 2005 05:37 AM
Thanks, Dave.
A correction, The Ancient One did know of Mordo’s evil plans saying, “the pupil can have no secrets from his master, but, although he is evil, I prefer to keep Mordo here where I can control him, rather than banish him”. This is better than my careless rereading before but it is still rather weak—I guess I don’t like the all powerful! It just goes to show how our unconscious plays a part in our interpretations, perhaps it wasn't just carelessness.
Seriously, unconscious wishes effects criticism, much popular film and book criticism is merely preferences, for either more complication or simple escape, on some basic level, though there are other variations on this formula, if a work is readable enough, so at some point criticism is useless to any professional or any artist or critic that knows what he’s doing, wants or likes. Boredom in a consumer driven society like ours with so many rides and games, demands far more clever amusements.
The primitive Dr. Strange origin’s story without any attempts at literary embellishment if interpreted as not being complex but simple wish fulfillment is pretty bad, a candy bar, rather than a full course dinner but I have a sweet tooth! I’m not so much criticizing rather I wish to inspire someone. Fat chance, huh? Well, it’s fun for me since I’m a chatterbox, to pass the time, a form of relaxation, taking a break from my own project.
Thanks Aaron.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 06, 2005 07:21 AM
It’s the age of preventive strikes after all and so perhaps the age of preventive criticism and retroactive criticism. I have a lot to say about the Hulk film, and the FF, the X-Men, and Daredevil as well, and other coming attractions, how these ought to have been done in the How to Do It series.
Now Lovecraft.
I’m shocked, absolutely shocked that nobody has yet to jump in to say something about Lovecraft. Maybe there’re not a lot of Dr. Strange Fans here. I which the Journal Message boards had a view counter on each post so I can see how many have read this post so far. I actually checked out some fan sites but they seem obsessed with the power relationships, which is the stronger in a fight--it sounded childish, like a video game site.
What I should do is write to Stan Lee and ask him about what he was reading at the time. I need to borrow those biographies on Stan and Kirby and Lee’s own autobiography and go through them again. I can’t recall any specific mention of sources for Strange. He wanted to be a serious novelist so his disposition to mock this stuff is perhaps evident in some of the magical jargon and mumbo jumbo. In fact if it was drawn in a Not Brand ECHH style maybe the whole thing would come across as a joke. His original compilation of the first issues of these ground breaking comics (what was it, the Origins of Marvel Comics) was pretty slight on information and I can’t recall the details, so I’ve got to do some eye and finger work on that. I don’t recall him mentioning Lovecraft, though. If anyone knows if Stan mentioned Lovecraft as an inspiration of whatever sort for Dr. Strange please post it here.
Did Ditko read Lovecraft? What did he think of Lovecraft? Obviously the spells and demons sound almost like a hokey parody, mockery of Lovecraft, but the art depicts this magical world very seriously, and this brings us to the biggest hurdle really in terms of the mass market filmmakers taking Dr. Strange seriously, the spells and names of the demonic and evil characters will probably strike the Hollywood people as laughable. They'll say this might make a great comedy, starring Eddie Murphy as Dr. Strange! I’m not sure they are funny sounding words.
Well, there is a solution to this but I’ll leave that aside for now to see if anyone reading this can figure it out rather than provide the answer but I will if you don't. You won’t win a prize or anything but you’ll be the first to mention it anywhere and that’s something. It's a pretty neat solution, I think. It’s not the obvious solution, though. No, it’s not doing Dr. Strange as an all out comedy! Should I give you a clue? No. Only if you ask for one.
And another thing, if anyone has posted here at the Journal on Strange in the past and would like to bring those here, it will be greatly appreciated, if you’ve saved those posts. If not, post again. I was reading a fascinating discussion here on the problems and ludicrous aspects of superhero secret identities, and Dr. Strange for example doesn’t really have one, does he? So if you've commented there on Strange please post it here. I didn't get to finish reading there. Any comments, feelings on Strange are welcome. Don't be shy.
While searching for an appropriate Dr. Strange forum in which to discuss a better movie version of the Enchanter, I came across Catherine Yronwode’s THE LESSER BOOK OF THE VISHANTI, A Companion to the Dr. Strange Comic Books, and this is very useful to our purpose here. Actually, I became much more fascinated by her life story than the Companion and forgot all about Strange and began exploring her website. Fascinating woman and life history. I could see a movie in her story. On Strange’s Third Eye amulet she has this fascinating bit of information:
Early issues of Dr. Strange often display this cultural tug-of-war, with Ditko referencing Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese religio-magical images, in keeping with the character's origin story, and Lee bringing in European-sounding names as he scripted over Ditko's stories.
A quick run through though didn’t reveal any comments on the names of the demons and spells being related to Lovecraft’s work at all. Still these names are better than the really awful monster names they used in the horror and scfi-comics Ditko and Kirby drew. Anyone interested in doing a Strange film should check this site out. Perhaps there is no connection but maybe there should be. Perhaps superficially Lovecraftian spells and names, Cthulhu and his evil books, Mad Arabs, and Old Ones were in the air so to speak and were absorbed without much knowledge of the source.
At least the tone seems Lovecraftian. We’ll see. Perhaps later writers of the series were familiar with Lovecraft’s work and incorporated its feel or ideas into their scripts. Anyone remember a later Dr. Strange story in the 70s that was really memorable that struck as Lovecraftian? I used to collect Dr. Strange in the seventies but I can’t remember the stories much, a lot of comics from the 70s weren't that memorable or maybe my memory is not good. I just liked Gene Colan’s art work and the magical weird mood and reality he created. I don't think Dr. Strange made much sense to me. It's really just this simple minded good and evil battle, right?
Well, it doesn't have to be so simple minded, does it?
Aaron White
posted December 06, 2005 09:20 AM
W. C. Edwards, perhaps you should start a blog. I'd read it.
Dan Jacobson
posted December 06, 2005 10:02 AM
Well, surely the Shuma-Gorath stuff was Lovecraft-inspired? I don't see any way that it couldn't have been.
Dave Knott
posted December 06, 2005 10:15 AM
Yes, but Shuma Gorath's first appearances were in Marvel Premiere during the early seventies, in comics scripted by Steve Englehart and illustrated by Frank Brunner (who I've always considered to be one of Marvel's more underrated artists from that era). The original creative team of Lee and Ditko was long gone by that point. Englehart himself took the Shuma Gorath character (at least by name) from Robert E. Howard.
Aaron White
posted December 06, 2005 10:23 AM
If Lovecraft were all he's cracked up to be he'd be William Hope Hodgson. I'm just saying is all.
Mike Johnson
posted December 06, 2005 12:18 PM
Aabsolutely aacurate aassessment,aactually,Aaron. (Sorry, couldn't resist). Nothing Lovecraft ever wrote came close to the power of "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'" or of those opening descriptions of 'The Night Land'. Dr Strange owes not a little to Carnacki,the Ghost Finder.
I think that, for once, Stan Lee is owed some kudos for linguistic creativity. "The Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth","The Flames of the Faltine" and (mirabile dictu) "The Crimson Bands of Cytorrak" are so pervaded with mystery and poetry... A superhero is only as good as his origin; Doc's is first- rate.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 06, 2005 05:08 PM
“And so it began! The days turned to weeks, to Months, to years, as Dr. Strange studied the long-dead mystic arts! Slowly he changed…slowly he prepared himself for the Epic battles ahead, the Battles which could only be won by Dr. Strange, Master of Black Magic!”
Ask yourself what it means to be a Master of Black Magic.
Again, we’re told and not shown this development. For the screenwriter this tells us nothing of how this knowledge affected strange emotionally, we don’t know but we assume the knowledge is profound stuff—but does it come with a price. What does it mean to be Master of Black magic? Consorting with Devils, trapping them in pentacles, overpowering, outwitting them, taming them, manipulating them, deceiving them, and what about it from their end, these Satanic forces, don’t they want to manipulate, deceive, tame and master him as well. But all we see is a kind of bookish Strange, studying an arcane scroll. Strange is only garbed in the costume of the mage. He's a fake.
Even if the forces he’s dealing with has nothing seriously to do with the Christian view of the world, still it plays with demonology, Satanism and these are real issues in the past and today. Excluding all the clichés of popular films and horror novels, what is it really like to become a Master of the Black Arts. Tell something new about this. Here the filmmakers must seek the truth of the matter in real history, the history of alchemists and famous black magicians, practicing sorcerers and occultists of Medieval and modern times.
It seems to be a sinister history. Not something easy like studying an evil book, full of spells. Perhaps what he learned is not nice. Here it is too vague. Strange becomes good too easily. He has not earned his right to be morally superior to the rest of us and Devils. One is assuming here that the Ancient One and Strange are White Magicians controlling the Black Arts but Dr. Strange like a lot of comics at the time are filled with the propaganda of the times while masking a tremendous contradiction—a world in which the good guy always seems to lose and virtue is the weaker force in a world of rampant evil. It might thrill and make a kid, somewhat safe in bed, feel the wonderment of such fantasy, but outside in the jungle of South Vietnam bombs are falling, real killers at work. To bring the mage into this reality, the true reality, rather than false will be quite a task. Not up to it?
In Stan's account, he is presumed to be the winner. When confronted with the falsification of reality in wish fulfillment one is forced to ask is tragedy the only solution. I don’t think so. There are other possible strategies rather than making it tragic—sometimes reality is neither tragic nor comic, merely livable, a tolerable condition. Perhaps Strange is comfortable confronting monsters and demons. What's that like? Naw, that's too easy, too.
Strange should be frightening to us or strange to us? But what does he learn and what did it cost him to learn it, nothing? What ambitions did he give up, what sacrifices did he make. If earned realistically how do you depict this earning of virtue, being right, tempted, having overcome temptation. Consider this.
Harry Potter may, I hear, resort to tragedy to lift itself out of wish fulfillment fantasy and the unreality of its dabbling in black sorcery (or is that white), but realism is not necessarily imposing tragedy on reality—after all we can still laugh even after the Holocaust. Perhaps Strange should know or understand, ultimately what is happening and his dabbling is also a quest to understand forces he is at odds with.
Given our real knowledge of real black magic, this magic must partake of perverse things, even seeming evil acts, either to understand them or see the dualities, or to enact certain rituals, apparently, to attain power over things and people—voodoo—the spirits must be fed etc.—who—you—me? Remember now we want a real scary sorcerer, someone if we met him in real life would make our hairs stand on end, an imposing and mysterious figure.
Can this be captured on film and conveyed to an audience. Can you make me believe in a real Dr. Strange or is Dr. Strange to be a younger, handsomer Gandalf, a beautifully costumed Gandalf who knows nothing of Baal, Molech? Whose or what blood has he drunk? Dare you make him repellant by bringing him close to the truth of being “Master of Black Magic”. Not the Master of White Magic, a tamer form of magic, that calls up God and angels and elemental spirits for help, the magic of Christian dabblers in sorcery? Lies are better than the truth! How satanic of a culture that prefers dishonesty. Christ comes in peace and yet in Revelations he slaughters left and right and damns to eternal torment his enemies. Few believers seem to notice the contradiction.
Obviously Stan Lee didn’t quite understand what Master of the Black arts meant, in the real history of that term. Ditko’s first illustrations of him are sinister in keeping with someone involved in controlling and using demonic forces.
But what do most people know about real black magic, some Christians think that Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven has something to do with devil worship, though some in the band apparently were involved with black magic, but as far as I can tell it’s some kind of anti-materialist lament, {yes, contradictorily} it says all that glitters isn’t gold and the singer’s spirit when he looks to the West “is crying for leaving.” You can’t buy A Stairway to Heaven, I think is the message, though there is still time to change the path you’re on. So tell us what it means to be a real master of the black arts, beyond filmic clichés. I should list all the films in this category and summarize their basic assumptions about black magic. By the way, I’m skeptical of the supernatural and religions, so I’m no advocate of Satanism but it’s fun to {speculate on this} nonetheless and it raises some interesting moral questions.
More later.
David Shortell
posted December 06, 2005 05:13 PM
Mike Johnson: "A superhero is only as good as his origin; Doc's is first- rate."
Is it really? I thought it was something they just pulled out of their ass in the third story, because readers had asked for an origin. Otherwise, they might've kept him Asiatic and mysterious.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 06, 2005 05:26 PM
Thanks, guys. Come on, I like this, this is real dialogue here, instead of my long winded rants, the more other people post here, the more likely I’ll be forced to control my tongue, to have some manners, and be concise and to the point.
I liked Brunner’s art, too. I don’t know if those Gene Golan Strange I collected were reprints, or how long he lasted on Strange but I really liked his style on those and Daredevil, the Submariner, Iron Man. Then finding some older issues of Ditko’s take on Strange, I fell in love with those, too. Ditko looks like he used manikins or something, I dunno. His characters don’t move realistically, but they have the life of puppets. There I go again. Stop me before I…I…I…I speak again!
According to “Hammer of the Gods” playing the song backward reveals “Here’s to my sweet Satan”. It’s possible as a joke or if they believed that Satan was the wronged party and is the reverse of his infamy but the song doesn’t sound like that to me, with the new agey line about all being one. And you have {on the inside cover}the Tarot magician looking down the mountain at the town, this may be some form of neo-paganism but the song (there is another song on it that references Tolkien’s world) doesn’t seem to be specifically satanic, doing evil for evil's sake. I think it is an old belief among some occultists that Satan is not evil, right. Of course how could Stan Lee write seriously or realistically about Black Magic in a kid’s comic in the Sixties with the Devil of the Red Menace about? Not his fault so much as the constraint of the popular culture he lived in but should the filmmakers be allowed to get away with less complex storytelling today?Personally the Goth movement and Satanists strike me as people fantasying and deluding themselves about things that perhaps they don’t understand and that’s probably how powerful the mind is, the unconscious mind, how it works. But I’m no fanatical skeptic of the skeptic's religion. I try to keep an open mind.
“Jimmy (Page) brought Boleskine House in 1970. It was an eighteenth century U-shaped house with a grim history. Over looking the foreboding Loch, home of supposedly extinct reptilian “monsters,” it had previously been the site of a church that had burned with its parishioners inside. A man had been beheaded there, according to local lore, and his head could occasionally be heard rolling around the halls at night. When Crowley moved in after the turn of the century, he styled himself the “Liard of Boleskine,” adopted the Kilt, and began trying to summon demons like Thoth and the Egyptian magical deity Horus. He practiced the dangerous magic of AbraMelin the Mage to contact his guardian angel. Subsequently, the house and terraces at Boleskine became awash with “shadowy shapes”; the lodge keeper went berserk and tried to murder his family and, according to Crowley, the room became do dark while he was trying to copy magical symbols that had to work by artificial light even thought the sun was blazing outside.” from Hammer of the God's
Lucky for Dr. Strange he lives in Greenwich Village, though maybe there are witches there, haha, for some reason I used to say it that way, but it sounds like grenitch, right.
Mike can you say something more about that description from Hodgeson’s book or share some of it here. Do you think the opening scenes in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds has the feel of a Supernatural invasion, for some reason the two might be related, from the little I know of Hodgeson. It’s the best part of the film, that and the {flight} sequence, the ending a granted wish. The Dr. Strange film needs moments and effects like that, totally surprising and unconventional. Maybe less is better with Strange, in several respects. But there I go again.
So gentleman how would you get an actor to use those made up words seriously without feeling silly. I don’t think they are silly myself but I know a way around using them without them sounding silly and making a clever joke of the idea that they are silly at the same time but I don’t want to tell yet.
We can see from Page that black magic in the real world, at least the legends of it, is serious business, not kid’s stuff, unless Crowley and Page were playing as kids in the real world, a form of pretending, make believe. Maybe it’s all make believe, huh.
I'm trying to get a hold of the Dr. Strange Essentials.
Help me, please it’s my fingers, I can't stop! Maybe my hands are possessed and it’s not me! Help.
Oh, no, I've done it again!
Otto Chelman
posted December 07, 2005 10:35 PM
quote: Originally posted by Dave Knott:Englehart himself took the Shuma Gorath character (at least by name) from Robert E. Howard.
It's also during the Fox issues that the series flirts for the flirt time with Lovecraftian imagery and names -- Sligguth, N'Gabthoth, etc.
I don't see muc commonality betweeen the early stories and Lovecraft. The Great Old Ones were neveral motivated by drives as simple as a desire for temporal power. Indeed, one of the key points of the Cthulhu cycle is that the various deities, etc., are pretty much beyond human understanding.
(Also, regarding Strange's sudden moral reformation -- the guy had been a doctor, for crying out loud. There had to be some compassion in there somewhere....)
Otto Chelman
posted December 07, 2005 10:40 PM
w/ a few correction --
Also, I think you're attaching too much importance to the term "black magic."
Allen Rubinstein
posted December 08, 2005 05:25 AM
quote:
Originally posted by David Shortell:Mike Johnson: "A superhero is only as good as his origin; Doc's is first- rate."
I'd be perfectly happy if they made one of these movies and broke with the "origins" formula. Just start with him being a master of the mystic arts. How did he get there? Who gives a rat's ass? There are mystics out there. He's a good one. Get over it.
Mike Johnson
posted December 08, 2005 12:01 PM
Whoa, Nelly-- I'll defend Doc's origin against all comers. The tale of a wise man, a healer, who allows himself to be corrupted before losing it all-- and then has to earn back his knowledge and deserve it, too-- plus the origin sets up a well-motivated foe, Mordo.
No, this is a great origin, and all the more telling in that 'psychic detectives' such as Carnacki, Jules Grandin or Van Helsing never had origins.
Dave Knott
posted December 08, 2005 01:09 PM
quote:
Not to be pedantic, but...
from http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix2/shumagorath.htm
"The name Shuma-Gorath first appears in Robert E. Howard's "Curse of the Golden Skull." In it a dying Lemurian mage, Rotath, swears by "the iron-bound books of Shuma-Gorath.""
Allen Rubinstein
posted December 08, 2005 01:35 PM
Actually, to answer my own comment, Constantine did exactly what I'm recommending. Lousy movie that it was, it didn't feel the need to slog through some tiresome origin story. Mostly because the comics don't serve it up on a silver platter, and the screenwriters didn't have the imagination to come up with one themselves.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 08, 2005 05:44 PM
The history of black magic in films. Weak or rich history?
Off hand, I can only remember a few films that use magicians who may or may not be sorcerers: Harlequin, or Dark Forces, Robert Powell, in supposedly an updated version of the Rasputin story, formerly Jesus of Nazareth ironically--he would make an interesting Dr. Strange but he’s a bit too old for the part now. I don’t recall anything much about this film personally except I loved the feel of it, remembered fondly, the mystery, and its strangeness.
I saw it only once. Most of the details here I got reading a plot summary and some reviews of it online. An online reviewer mentioned how Powell’s nails were painted black and I think I recall that. I saw it years ago on PBS and I’d liked to see it again to see what I think of it now. Bergman’s the “Magician”, I remembered liking, haven’t seen it in years but was impressed by it when I first saw it, as a library video---and then there is the one shot Dr. Strange television episode.
The only supernatural film I saw on television that impressed me enough to want to own decades later was the Fellini episode in “Spirits of the Dead”. I’m also still impressed by Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf for sheer cleverness, the supernatural made on the cheap, while using maybe all of its key iconic figures, or metaphors, from literature and films, in a totally unique plot. It was truly uncanny and weird. And if I was producing Dr. Strange I would insist that the adapters, screenwriters look at these two films.
There is another Fellini film that has a great scary or weird supernatural moment and that’s Juliet of the Spirits, when these ghosts or demons crowd her house, in the kitchen—it’s like dozens of them are in there, all over the place, hiding, looking at her, in this cramped space. That’s a real impressive scene to me in terms of depicting ghosts or demons. Are all these art house horror films? I liked the medium scene in Kurosawa’s Rashomon, that’s still very vivid. I like the 40s Cat People films, though I don’t think they were about sorcery so much as possession and animism.
I can’t recall much more than the sword and sorcery types in some barbarian, dragon, and fantasy films and most of these are secondary characters and most are the villainous, evil types, or the Gandalf type, the wise old man type. I suspect there aren’t any serious films that took the practice of black magic seriously enough to be about just that. Let me know if you know of one. Even Star Wars with its hints of White versus Black new age “magic” fails to explore the life of the Jedi’s cult and practices in depth. They have no real history behind them. Dune, the novel, is still perhaps the best melding of the space opera with the goals of serious literature.
To me the back story around the Jedi is too simple, too easy. Has anyone done a film on Crowley for example? Maybe people have tried and never got the funding. Late one night on television I saw a really fun but flawed film adapted from a H.P. Lovecraft novel “The Dunwich Horror”, but the practices, actual working methods of black magic is still superficial, of the Lovecraftian variety rather than the historical or more realistic.
So what I recall in films seem to be mostly atmospheric black magic mixed up with horror, the grotesque, not the stuff I’ve read about heretics, witches, alchemists, magicians, and would be historical black magicians, or later day spiritualists. So a Dr. Strange film could be the opportunity of a life time to do something great within this genre.
Nonetheless I would view every single film that has some Black magic in it, however poorly done, just to know what to avoid plot wise—I’ll have to settle for just reading about them, however, I can’t afford to buy those films. They’ve been broadcasting the Night Stalker episodes on the sci-fi channel and although these are very well written and acted, they are totally conventional, because actually it’s not about a Master of Black Magic, but the reporter, we only glimpse the paraphernalia of magic, vague voodoo ceremony with chickens, a robed figure performing some ritual at an altar, about to sacrifice someone etc. How do you tell the story from the sorcerer's point of view?
I remembered this 50s horror film, can’t recall the title, maybe “Burn Witch Burn”, that scared the hell out of me as a kid but most kids today perhaps would find this film laughable. Nothing ground breaking or truly memorable in this area, say, like Rosemary’s Baby, in terms of the demonic baby idea, anyway, and that was pretty original at the time and maybe now, and that’s inspired by a novel. I really doubt that we’ve had a serious film about a practicing black magician much less a fantasy version. How to meld the two would be interesting. The question, can we bring a bit of realism to Dr. Strange without losing its ballad-like or folklore-like charm. I love his costume, for example. It won’t be any good for me without the costume. I hate when they try to change the costumes. Perhaps that’s why animation would be best for these adaptations, the bright colors seem to work fine in animation and one can still suspend one’s disbelief.
What I’ve got to do is read the Essentials and see what kind of storyline could be extracted from it that would make any sense with these goals in mind. Borges came to mind, for some reason. More on him later.
It strikes me now that in the Dr. Strange origins story we don’t see Strange being initiated. There should some sort of initiation ritual or trial, as it is for shamans, right. Will the Hollywood screenwriter think about that? Some test, something like what was described vaguely in Norse mythology about Odin and the World Tree. If you’re going to start at the beginning? On the back of Blavatsky’s Studies in Occultism, it says, “Occultism is founded on the principle that Divinity is concealed—transcendent yet immanent, within everything living being”.
Well, that’s interesting, I thought. Mmm.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 08, 2005 06:02 PM
quote:
(Also, regarding Strange's sudden moral reformation -- the guy had been a doctor, for crying out loud. There had to be some compassion in there somewhere....)
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 08, 2005 06:14 PM
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Allen Rubinstein: There are mystics out there. He's a good one. Get over it.
Sorry Otto for not quoting you correctly at the heading.
Allen, there is something to keeping his past a mystery, there is a risk in revealing his origins, it’s true. I think that’s why "Batman Begins" is ultimately, despite the realism, a problematical take for me, they revealed too much, too quickly, but in this case, Dr. Strange, I’m not sure he can be taken seriously without some explanation of his motives. Yes, keeping his mystique is important; something else might have to be mysterious. I'll need to review all of the Essentials to see it there is something else.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 08, 2005 07:34 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Otto Chelman: The Great Old Ones were neveral motivated by drives as simple as a desire for temporal power. Indeed, one of the key points of the Cthulhu cycle is that the various deities, etc., are pretty much beyond human understanding.
This could obsess Strange? How can that be? How it is that evil seems dominant in nature and man? Maybe this is why people settle for the opposite in terms of our culture of escapism. Is evil more widespread than good? Or is the world full of both good and evil and neither tips the scale one way except occasionally like during the Holocaust or Slavery or even now?
It is this feeling that you sometimes get reading or hearing Lovercraft being read that could contribute something interesting to a Dr. Strange film. Has this feeling been conveyed successfully in the comic. But to translate this feeling visually is difficult, but perhaps the characters can express it through dialogue, thus keeping its reality mysterious and free from the limitations of CGI. In some ways too much special effects can rob reality of mystery and that sense of wonder in films.
Too many epic sci-fi (rather than SF) films are overbearing in their awesome realism, hiding the weaknesses in some CGI work behind speed and rapid camera movements. There has yet to be a GCI film that allows you to enjoy the wonders of a scene with some ease—everything is rushed, in most of them. It's funny because when you do see some of the flaws in CGI work, it's more obvious than the older, clunky special effects work from the non-CGI days, because the stuff is so obviously fake from the get go.
A Dr. Strange film should avoid this. Animation is better in this regard, too. We should be able to linger on some magical (special effect) moment rather than have it rush by us. Can the Old Ones ever be captured on film?
This feeling Lovecraft invokes about evil could be translated to the cosmos itself or nature, man, rather than to specific monstrous beings, perhaps that is why it has some psychological validity and is not just fictive. Some of us I’m sure with all the evil about today have wondered if there isn’t something sinister and evil behind it all, to live is evil spelled back words, right. People have said he conveyed this paranoia very well, I think so. His writing has the validly of either a very perceptive individual or an unhealthy mind and imagination--or is it his nightmare?
Otto, you didn’t use evil, so I’m misreading perhaps what you’re saying. The Old Ones beyond understanding would also be beyond good and evil? So man would in someway be excluded. Nonetheless in Lovecraft he and his characters react to them with repugnance and horror, thus imputing to them evil motives, appearances—we perceive them as evil just as ants might us, right? The irony is that if the universe is monstrous, it is a very beautiful and complex monster—while in Lovecraft as the scholarship has pointed out, he references the nastier aspects of the human biology and decay in some way, transferring it to these beings and exaggerating it. They trace this back to family madness and disease, a syphilitic father.
Les Toil
posted December 08, 2005 10:35 PM
There's not much room for humor within this thread so I'll do us all a favor and butt out.
Otto Chelman
posted December 10, 2005 06:20 AM
lovecraft entered the book by way of R.E. Howard and his chief advocate at Marvel, Roy Thomas. In the first revival issue, scripted by Stan, Strange spouts off about "His secret is his power, his power is his secret." The villain in that issue is Nightmare, and when I read the comic new, I thought the mantra referred to him -- but in the next issue, written by Roy Thomas, introduces the Cthulhu motif in a ripoff of Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth." In that story, the writers make it clear that Nightmare was working for (or as a harbinger of), other, more ominous forces. It's in the third issue that they begin expressing concern specifically about Shuma-Gorath, and, as I mentioned earlier, it's not clear whether S-G is intended to be an entity, a place, or a brand of chewing gum.
So. Yeah, Englehart introduces the character, but the name is kicking around earlier, without denoting anything very specfic. Thomas was, as noted, Howard's big champion at Marvel and the company's point of contact with the Howard estate. He was also the editor and close friends with writer Fox, so I think it's safe to lay the name at his door. (He'd previously added Lovecraftian elements to the conclusion of Strange's previous series.)
Whether Thomas had any input into Englehart's early stories is bascially unknonwn -- he was mostly a hands-off editor, but that was some of Englehart's first work and drew upon preceding issues.
(I remain nearly alone among my generation in being basically unimpressed by most of Englehart's writing, which always struck me as being glib and glossy but basically unengaging. His Dr. Strange I liked more than most of his books, but that's not saying much.)
I always thought it was a mistake to incorporate quasi-Cthulhu stuff into the series (and an even greater one when they tried to do the same thing to Thor). Strange was originally light adventure fantasy, with roots in stuff like King Arthur, A.A. Merritt, UKNOWN WORLDS and others*, despite the quasi-orientalist trappings of the Ancient One, Wong, etc. Adversaries were driven by things like imperialism, greed and lust. The non-human amorality of the Great Old Ones never struck me as a very good fit. They just don't accord very well into the good/evil, us/them, defender/invader dichotomy of the feature. (Yeah, I know there's plenty of discussion about Dormammu having his own morality and all that, but, basically, he's the bad guy and Strange is the good guy.)
*Including the early, pre-horror H.P. Lovecraft -- THE DREAM QUEST OF UKNOWN KADATH, for example.
Otto Chelman
posted December 10, 2005 06:28 AM
You know, it's worth pointing out that Thomas (or whoever) may not even have realized he was nicking the name from Howard. That kind of name is not terribly difficult to coin (I wrote a Mythos story for my high school literary magazine) and the "Golden Skull" story is really only a fragment of three pages or so. Thomas might have read it and only half-remembered the name.
Allen Rubinstein
posted December 10, 2005 05:19 PM
quote: Originally posted by w.c.EDWARDS:Allen, there is something to keeping his past a mystery, there is a risk in revealing his origins, it’s true. I think that’s why "Batman Begins" is ultimately, despite the realism, a problematical take for me, they revealed too much, too quickly, but in this case, Dr. Strange, I’m not sure he can be taken seriously without some explanation of his motives. Yes, keeping his mystique is important, something else might have to mysterious. I'll need to review all of the Essentials to see it there is something else.
I wasn't even calling for a "mystique", just changing the tired old formula. I suppose they could show what happened, but at least try to find some other way to tell the story than the plodding step-by-step.
Allen Rubinstein
posted December 10, 2005 05:20 PM
Anyway, these films are just money makers, so it's hardly that important.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 10, 2005 05:24 PM
For a beautifully done site of all things Strange check this site out. It will also help in understanding the storyline. I have some comments to make on what Neil has said regarding Dr. Strange and the variants in terms of his origins but that will be in my next post. It is a wonderful read, check it out. And going to use it as a source to avoid redundancy and will be going through its archive of essays on Strange.
Neilalien http://www.neilalien.com/ A Dr. Strange Fansite : A Comic Book Weblog
Here however is an attempt to justify a non-escapist version of Dr. Strange. Dr. Strange of all the Marvel characters should be the least escapist.
An additional question related to how real you want Strange to be is: are you going to give the public what you think they want or what you think they ought to have. Both involve manipulating the idea of Dr. Strange as a vehicle, either as an entertaining ride with lots of special effects or a journey into actual self discovery that the audience would share in—dare we attempt to invoke in them a desire and curiosity for spiritual experiences? Difficult, complex art places demands on who Dr. Strange is and will become. If he’s not to be either another ride or escape vehicle, realism in this sense requires a confrontation with the audience, a confrontation of three kinds, also manipulative, either alienating or ingratiating, or subliminal deception.
Strange must be someone the audience cannot identify with wholly but is intrigued by or Strange alienates the audiences by regarding their world with contempt or Strange is an absolute mystery that must be puzzled out. The filmmakers, however, more likely than not will choose the easier task of satisfying public wants or imagined wants based on previous working configurations in terms of plot and characters and characterization, relying on formulas however ironically they contradict the striking originality in the source material, the first appearances in the comics (by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby in the 1960s) who, whether accidentally or not, worked against the prevailing comic book conventions and did something new that captured the imagination of children and increased their identification with super-heroes, by their realism, in that decade. I hope the filmmakers, however, would work against prevailing Hollywood conventions, popular but stagnating:
1. The wise old man, (most notably the X-Men, with two, one good, one evil; Spiderman’s uncle perhaps being another—perhaps the wise old man is neither good or evil or is both or good and evil is called into question or is he evil?
2. The element of comedy, either in the dialogue, or a comic moment, or in a comic figure or character. Why do most serious films today always have these comic moments or figures? Was the humor in the Spiderman films the same as in the comic or was the comic, at least in the early days more serious, in terms of his adolescent difficulties, worries. In the film he got the girl too quickly, despite the tease that he might not get her, should he have gotten her at all. In original comic book serial it took him a longer time to get the girl.
Perhaps he should never have gotten the girl and though getting the girl offers hope, doing without the girl could instill in some audience members masculine fortitude (just kidding) unless getting the girl was really for the ladies in the audience? The clever trick of making Peter Parker both nerdy and appealing, by clever choice of actor, at the same time, was pulled off well while Ditko’s Peter is less appealing, at least in the early issues, if I’m recalling right. In the first, he is definitely outside the clique.
3. The love interest—most likely than not this will also be introduced too quickly for Strange as well.
4. The shift in age (as with the X-Men, they started with the older versions of the characters perhaps based on the success of the 80s or 90s characters as young adults rather than confront the difficulties of dealing with teenagers realistically. In Strange’s case they probably will make him younger than in the comic. Just as they made Reed Richards younger than he was in the comic. I say Reed looked like he was in his 40s, and in the really early ones he looked like he was in his 50s, depending on how Kirby drew him.
5. The over riding spectacles, sometimes masterfully integrated into these storylines.
6. But the most significance ingredient seems to be the over riding, unrealistic optimism, blind say, about life, even if one of the secondary heroes die (if they’re not turned into a ghost whose spirit lingers on), despite cliff hangers, few will really believe the character, like us, will ever face death or serious injury or lose a loved one.
And none of these formulas are necessarily bad or useless to a serious or dark filmmaker used within some other context than the plots of these films. How characters are developed in a commercial context is a fascinating process in of itself and if you watched any of the Project Greenlight episodes, you can see it’s not solely an artistic process alone—that there is conscious manipulation to the specific ends of profitability first and the art is reconfigured to satisfy this goal. One is lucky if the two converge. Who is responsible for the seduction, the audience or the whole filmmaking and marketing process?
Well, in terms of Project Greenlight you see that the producers/financiers of a film are seducing you, not necessarily interested in challenging you, though they do understand what appeals to audiences, their strength against self-indulgent artistes, so the audience is not altogether free of responsibility for entertainment being irresponsible escape, but it’s a narcotic relationship, like being addicted to painkillers. To overcome then the constraints of the necessity of profits first, the filmmakers will have to be exceedingly clever in both manipulating the financiers and an imaginary audience. Given the franchise nature of these artificial constructs, that is easier said than done.
These formulas reveal more about audiences sociologically than they reveal about the characters as fictions with a life of their own, for if the film is shaped by mass opinion or even sample audiences, we’re no longer talking about true storytelling here but advertising, for who is it that tells the story, the audience or the storyteller? You can certainly tell a story with reward in mind, but then you will admit that you are subordinating your gifts for gab out of fear or desperation or you’re a hired gun. Mass market entertainment has become a way to flatter people rather than challenge their imagination, as the storyteller would around the campfire, for the sheer joy of scaring or intriguing friends or family, force a confrontation, invoke an imaginative response; most Hollywood films are too diplomatic in manipulating their audiences and thus form a parasitical arrangement, that further erode civic life.
It’s a strange phenomenon when you think about it and threatens, dooms perhaps a unique take on Dr. Strange. These happy endings, for example, that tends to reinforce passivity, not that I favor unhappy endings per se. If people dream at all, man’s nightmares are still however beyond the control of this passivity and can disturb, given the right situations, trauma or frustrations. Perhaps Lovecraft’s originality is not in disease or a sick imagination but in the reality of nightmare experienced in a dream, his Night Gaunts, or the feelings conveyed.
If we can grant that dreams may disturb, we can legitimately assert that films may or ought to do so as well, sometimes, that there should be a balance, if we believe nightmares have meaning or dreams having meaning, have a purpose, significance, beyond earning a living or making money, but provide clues to understanding daily waking events, relationships, unconscious needs and feelings, we can assert their value over mere escape and profits.
If our dreams are not escapist, should our films? If dreams that disturb and puzzle are healthy, they make us think, question, even have psychic purposes, ought not our films? Someone said not dreaming is like death. In the case of films, having the same dream over and over again, of flight, escape from reality, is perhaps not healthy for any society. In a way the greed to escape could be seen in Strange’s greed for wealth and prestige, too.
We should count the value than of such heroic films in terms of their success in inspiring heroism when the movie is over. If they fail to inspire any heroics, we can pass a moral judgment on their value.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 10, 2005 06:24 PM
Originally posted by Les Toil:There's not much room for humor within this thread so I'll do us all a favor and butt out.
Just when I needed a laugh. My favorite shows on television is the Colbert Report and the Daily show. And I plan to catch MadTV tonight if I can. Post it.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 10, 2005 06:42 PM
I’m dreaming aloud, I guess, perhaps what happened with "Batman Begins" could happen to Dr. Strange. If I can make this coherent in some revisions, maybe I can get it to them as a Bible of what not to do with the characters. Maybe they wouldn’t buy all of the suggestions—perfection is not possible, right? In any case, at any time. We're certainly not perfect. The Batman Begins people really cared about how the diehard fans felt about the disappointing sequels and Batman Begins was a better film for it.
Even though I'm not into sample audiences, I think this is a bit different from sampling. They took the criticisms of the previous films into consideration. That’s a knowledgeable fan base of perhaps would be fanfic writers, too. I enjoyed it but I would’ve still done it differently, better I think.
So what would you like to see in terms of a Dr. Strange film? I could pitch all kinds of plots but that’s easy. I could even parody it in something say like a Professor Stranges or Strangeness, Master of White Magic. But it wouldn’t be the same as reinterpreting this iconic figure, there is something folkloric, almost like an old English Ballad in these original stories—there is something beautiful here, in the costume, in this conception—there is magic here—all it needs is something akin to a fine melody to bring it to life--it’s just as you say but one can hope that they will hear that not all of us see these enchanting concepts and characters as just money makers.
I wish I had superpowers of the magical or mutant kind. We could use heroes, though I read a fun post, I think somewhere here, about how hard it would be if they really existed. I know what I would do with it. And who knows perhaps, if superstrings is true, all these comics, are glimpses of things happening in other dimensions.
But I appreciate your responding at all to this, what may seem like a waste of time.
w.c.EDWARDS
posted December 10, 2005 06:50 PM
Thanks for sharing that stuff on Lovecraft, Otto. Interesting stuff. I use to read Howard. He had his limitations as a writer thematically but he was indeed a gifted storyteller and prose writer. I want to comment some on what you've said but I’m burnt out for the night. I’m going to wash the pile of dishes in the sink and see if I can catch MadTV! Sometimes it’s that or C-Span at that hour or internet radio.
Michael Battaglia
posted December 10, 2005 09:15 PM
quote: Originally posted by w.c.EDWARDS:It’s a strange phenomenon when you think about it and threatens, dooms perhaps a unique take on Dr. Strange. These happy endings, for example, that tends to reinforce passivity, not that I favor unhappy endings per se. If people dream at all, man’s nightmares are still however beyond the control of this passivity and can disturb, given the right situations, trauma or frustrations. Perhaps Lovecraft’s originality is not in disease or a sick imagination but in the reality of nightmare experienced in a dream, his Night Gaunts, or the feelings conveyed. If we can grant that dreams may disturb, we can legitimately assert that films may or ought to do so as well, sometimes, that there should be a balance, if we believe nightmares have meaning or dreams having meaning, have a purpose, significance, beyond earning a living or making money, but provide clues to understanding daily waking events, relationships, unconscious needs and feelings, we can assert their value over mere escape and profits. If our dreams are not escapist, should our films? If dreams that disturb and puzzle are healthy, they make us think, question, even have psychic purposes, ought not our films? Someone said not dreaming is like death. In the case of films, having the same dream over and over again, of flight, escape from reality, is perhaps not healthy for any society. In a way the greed to escape could be seen in Strange’s greed for wealth and prestige, too
I found this paragraph to be a “Night Gaunt” in and of itself.
w.c., Are you suggesting that the power and potential of film could be much more when freed from the gravity of commerce, and that a film adaptation of the comic “Dr. Strange” could be just the vehicle to break those shackles?
Just out of sheer curiosity, what do you mean by “have psychic purposes” and “the greed to escape” ?
posted by Magicman at 12:32 PM
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