What Is It with Rango?

My roommate has a knack for getting sneak preview tickets so on Tuesday we went to see the new Johnny Depp cartoon, Rango. It is difficult to describe Rango. Much like Up, Rango is an exercise in throwing some bizarre ideas around to see where things might go. In the case of Rango, he is a theatrically inclined chameleon, in midst of his own dramatic narrative and trying to figure out what ironic plot twists should befall a hero such as him to make him a more interesting character and allow him to win the heart of his beloved Barbie torso, when the tank, it turns out he was living in, falls out of a moving vehicle onto a desert highway. After a series of further misadventures, Rango makes his way to an old west town called Dirt, populated by animals. Rango, armed with nothing but an ability to weave tall tales designed to sink him even deeper into whatever mess he is trying to talk his way out of, decides to refashion himself as a lawman fighter for justice, capable of taking out seven bad guys with one bullet. Soon enough Rango finds himself over his head fighting an assortment of villains as he tries to solve the mystery of the town's disappearing water supply. This is not a story designed to make much in the way of actual sense. Instead, it relies on a series of brilliantly executed characters to draw an audience into a spirit of "what are they going to pull next." The story is being narrated by a group of four owl mariachi players who interact with the characters and produce a delightful banjo rendition of Ride of the Valkyries to accompany one of the wilder chase scenes. As with most of the best cartoons of the past few years, Rango is a kids' movie that is not really for kids at all. Its plot is a running nod to Blazing Saddles and Chinatown with generous digs at organized religion and Native American political correctness.

As a production of Nickelodeon, there is a strong undercurrent in this film of being counter-Disney. The jokes are certainly more off-color than what one would expect from Disney; it was even a step beyond Shrek. The animals of Dirt have a distinctly gritty and uncuddly look to them as if designed specifically to not be churned out into millions of plush stuffed animals. Personally, I could go for a Jake, a Gatling gun touting rattlesnake. It says something that Rango, a lizard, is the closest to cuddly this movie comes. Instead of going for cuddly, the movie goes for a monster sensibility reminiscent of Muppet monsters, grim on the outside, but delightful characters once introduced. If Redwall ever is to get a proper screen treatment this is the look I would like to see it go for.

While Rango might not be quite in the same league as Wall-E or Ratatouille, it is pretty darn close and certainly worth a watch.   
   

In Memory of Brian Jacques

My sister just informed me that Brian Jacques has passed away. For those of you not familiar with him, Brian Jacques was the author of the Redwall series. It is about mice, squirrels, badgers and hares fighting off rats, weasels, foxes and ferrets with all the blood and gore my child self could have ever asked for. The series now consists of over twenty novels, most of them bad, consisting of telling the same story over and over again, but the first six novels were truly inspired. Beyond those first novels (the only ones I recognize much as I only recognize the original Star Wars films) I owe a debt of gratitude to Jacques for, along with my mother and my grade school teacher Mrs. Kristine Coyne, helping to make me a reader. The Redwall series was my Harry Potter (and to all those people upset with Rowling for not writing more books, I ask you to look at Redwall and ask yourself if you would really want twenty Potter novels).

The Redwall books were not just a personal thing to me, but a beloved series within my family. My older brother was the first to come to them. I first learned about them after he spent an entire Sabbath reading the first novel, Redwall, coming down and drafting me for a role playing game. He would play the hero Matthias the mouse and I was to play Cluny the Scourge with   his whip-like tail. This was a variation of his usual game of him playing Beowulf and me Grendel. You can say this for my brother, he beat me up in good literary taste. Soon after this Brian Jacques came to Columbus for a book signing and my mother took my brother and the rest of us kids along. So I got to meet Brian Jacques, probably the first author I ever met, and he introduced us to starfruit, which he was eating. With such inspiration, it was only natural that I would make a go at the books, despite the fact that I was only in second grade and Redwall was by far the longest book I had read up to that point. (Long before Rowling, Jacques was breaking the unofficial 350 page limit for children's books.) It took me awhile, and by the time I got through it my older sister had also taken an interest.

At this point the series consisted of only three books, Redwall, Mossflower and Mattimeo. We had to wait for the fourth book, Mariel of Redwall to be published in the United States. When our copy finally came in by some agreement I can no longer recall, the reading order was my sister, me and then my older brother. The next morning I got up early snuck into my sister's room and nicked the book while she was sleeping in order to get a harmless jump start on the book. My parents disagreed and as a punishment, my brother got to go ahead of me. Thankfully for me, both my siblings finished within a few days.

Farewell Brian Jacques warrior of Redwall. May you find peace in the Dark Forest.       

A Final Goodbye to Harry Potter

I finished reading Deathly Hallows and am now coming to terms with the fact that this is the end. I feel personally indebted to J. K. Rowling for all the good times she has given me over the years. I got into the series when I was sixteen back in January of 2000. I waited along with millions of others for the fourth book, Goblet of Fire. I endured three years waiting for Order of the Phoenix and another two years for the Half-Blood Prince. Now, after waiting seven and a half years, the story has been told and it has run its course. Voldemort has been defeated and the survivors (the bodies do pile up in this book) go on to build new lives for themselves. As a final chapter, Rowling sticks in an epilogue taking place nineteen years down the road in which some of our favorite, and not so favorite, surviving Hogwarts students are now parents themselves taking their children to King's Cross station 9 3/4 to catch the train to Hogwarts.

I could not think of a more definitive way to end the series, barring going Dr. Strangelove on people. (Speaking of Dr. Strangelove, I would imagine he would particularly approve of Wormtail's fate.) The world has moved on and it is now time for a new generation of children to experience Hogwarts. The story of Harry, Ron, and Hermione is finished. The only purpose to be served by writing more Harry Potter adventures would be for the author to make more money. Not that I have a problem with authors making money. Rowling deserves every penny she has earned. The problem is that writing for the bottom line is seldom going to put out books that authors and fans of a series can be proud of. Look at Brian Jacques' Redwall series. I truly wish that it ended after six books. Instead, Jacques has simply told the same stories over and over again pouring out pale imitations of his first books. (I do recommend his early books though.) While there is nothing further to do with Harry, the wizarding world is a rich one and I for one would love to still explore it if the story is right. I am not sure though what kind of story would work. It would be tempting to do prequels about James Potter at Hogwarts. The problem though is that we already know the story of James Potter and his friends. Furthermore, such stories would lack a Voldemort to keep some purpose to the stories. Without Voldemort the stories would simply be repeats of the first two Potter books; kids at school getting into and dodging trouble.

In truth, I was always much more interested in the wizarding world itself than I was with Harry. In a sense, my biggest disappointment of the final four books was that Rowling did not do more with Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. The story remained firmly about Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I suspect though that Rowling may have done the right thing. Part of the charm of unexplored horizons is that they remain unexplored as unrequited desires.

I would never claim that Harry Potter is the greatest series of books ever written. If one wishes to put them under a critical lens one can find plenty to attack. If you doubt me read Prof. Harold Bloom. That being said, I have never had so much fun reading a series of books as I have had with Potter. I do not even know why this is the case, it defies logical analysis. I suspect people will be debating this issue for decades. What made Potter so special? There are plenty of fantasy writers out there who on the surface would seem to be as talented or even more so than Rowling. Take authors like Garth Nix (Abhorsen Trilogy and Keys to the Kingdom) and Phillip Pullman (His Dark Materials) for example. They both deal with similar types of material to what you find in Rowling and, on technical grounds, one can make a pretty good case that they are stronger writers than her. Neither of them has sold 300 million copies. They have written some great books, which I enjoyed immensely, but neither of them ever grabbed me the way that Potter's universe did.

Goodbye Harry and Thank You, J. K. Rowling.