Blade Runner vs. Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 1982

versus

Blade Runner 2049

IMDB users rate Blade Runner 2049 at 8.2 out of 10. Pretty heady rating for IMDB. I’m aware that anyone who preferred the original gets dissed as an ol’ fogey. I fall into the old category, but don’t admit to the fogey part. Nevertheless, I will go on record as preferring the original. (Both films scored 8.2)

My reasons are from a different perspective than most. Admittedly, film is an art form and presentation certainly plays into the craft. From a visual perspective, I might even give Blade Runner 2049 the edge. It paints a dystopia world with deft precision. Where it falls behind the original is the crux of good storytelling. Bad guys gotta be bad.

In the original movie, Rutger Hauer portrayed Roy Batty with relentless malevolence, yet managed, in the end, to elicit compassion for his character. Batty was a worthy rival, who transitions into a sympathetic victim. A fine piece of acting, that.

Luv vs. Roy

On the other hand, Sylvia Hoeks plays Luv like a high school mean girl, and the script resorts to clichés to portray her evilness. For example, when Luv stomps on K's mobile projector to kill Joi, it reminded me of a B-movie where the antagonist kicks a dog to convey dastardliness.

And then when Luv finally dies, we think, oh good, it’s over. When Batty dies, we weep.

I’m prejudice, of course. I believe the art in storytelling requires an antagonist that presents a heavy challenge to the protagonist. Heroes need villains to be heroic. We want the protagonist to win, but he or she keeps losing until just before the curtain falls. The tension comes from uncertainty. Even though we’ve seen story upon story, each time we are transported to another place and time where the villain might actually win. Sometimes, we get a reveal at the end that turns the protagonist’s victory poignant. A neat trick, when done right, and the original Blade Runner pulled this off with panache.

And that’s why I prefer the Blade Runner 1982.

Raymond Chandler's 10 Rules for Murder Mysteries

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler is one of my favorite authors. I even wanted to buy a house he owned in La Jolla. I wanted to buy it, but I couldn’t afford it. In fact, I couldn’t afford the property tax on the house, which was over sixty thousand a year. I need to sell a lot more books before I get there. 

Beyond great novels and screenplays, Chandler wrote about Hollywood and writing. It would be an understatement to say he disliked English murder mysteries. Chandler liked realism, not puzzles. Here are his 10 rules of mystery writing. I tried to follow them in Murder at Thumb Butte, a murder mystery that just happens to occur in the Old West.

1. It must be credibly motivated, both as to the original situation and the dénouement.
2. It must be technically sound as to the methods of murder and detection.
3. It must be realistic in character, setting and atmosphere. It must be about real people in a real world.
4. It must have a sound story value apart from the mystery element: i.e., the investigation itself must be an adventure worth reading.
5. It must have enough essential simplicity to be explained easily when the time comes.
6. It must baffle a reasonably intelligent reader.
7. The solution must seem inevitable once revealed.
8. It must not try to do everything at once. If it is a puzzle story operating in a rather cool, reasonable atmosphere, it cannot also be a violent adventure or a passionate romance.
9. It must punish the criminal in one way or another, not necessarily by operation of the law…. If the detective fails to resolve the consequences of the crime, the story is an unresolved chord and leaves irritation behind it.
10. It must be honest with the reader.

Honest Westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Related Posts

What makes an appealing hero?

Writers in Hollywood

Hero or villain?

Several book reviews have criticized Steve Dancy as barely better than the bad guys.

Seriously?

I believe vile villains make a story work, so I've invented some highly reprehensible characters. There has to be some tough-as-nails criminal around for Dancy to dispatch or he couldn't be a hero. Now, I also prefer flawed heroes, so Dancy is certainly not perfect. Besides being a tenderfoot, he can be a dunderhead when it comes to romance. He is especially ill equipped for the lawless frontier until he has survived a few nasty episodes.

So, what gives? I can think of only two reasons why people would think ill of Mr. Dancy. First, he is rich and prefers to buy his way out of trouble. It’s unusual for a western hero to be wealthy. Most fictional frontier gunmen own a saddle and a horse, and part of the mythology is that their lack of possessions makes them free. But surely readers don’t hold Dancy’s wealth against him. After all, television's Paladin lived pretty high on the hog, and he earned his piles of cash by less than reputable means. Dancy, on the other hand, came by his wealth honestly—he inherited it.

Gunsmoke TV series Opening Sequence

So if it's not the money, it must be something else. I suppose it could be that Dancy has never had a one-on-one stand-up duel in the middle of the street. When faced with a gunfight, Dancy always searches for an edge. He wants the other fella off balance, unaware that he is about to be shot. Now, that’s closer to how it actually was in the Old West. I remember reading about a study that concluded that most gunfights during that era occurred inside of three feet and most often in a saloon. The epic one-on-one gunfight did occur, but it was not the norm. (The stand-up duel may have faded from popularity after our United States Vice President killed a former cabinet member on the shores of New Jersey.)

Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson were two famous Westerners that lived long enough to die of old age. Both were cautious when it came to gun trouble. Earp liked to sneak in the back door of a saloon and coldcock a troublemaker from behind. The practice even got him fired once from the Dodge City force for “police brutality.” Masterson counseled that if you got in a gunfight, you should shoot your opponent center chest … and more than once. 

Steve Dancy has numerous gunfights in every book. It’s the nature of the genre. I like him and most of my readers like him as well, so I can’t let him get shot dead. After all, I need him for the next book.

Slice of Life vs. Bigger Than Life

Superheroes are the polar opposite of a slice of life. Killing lifeless zombies, evil vampires, extraterrestrial aliens, or bad witches is not a slice of most people’s lives. At least, not people I know. Popular culture has a hard time seeing that Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird makes Gerry Lane in World War Z look like a wimp. Our heroes live in a fantasy world because heroics in real life are make-believe.

Hollywood is especially prone to fantasy. Sherlock Holmes was a cerebral detective until reincarnated by Robert Downey Jr. as a martial arts action hero. Hansel & Gretel kill witches with weapons a gamester would love. The Lone Ranger wields guns and fists like a superhero and can even leap tall buildings in a single bound. The trend is to go extreme, the more extreme, the better.

Comedy has become unworldly, as well. Real people are not that outrageous, uncouth, or ill mannered. The problem with being edgy is that you have to continuously venture ever closer to the precipice. Would On Golden Pond, As Good as it Gets, or When Harry Met Sally get green lighted today. Probably only if they added some never-before-seen shocks. (Okay, shoving Simon’s dog Verdel down the garbage chute probably qualifies.)

Am I arguing for a return to slice of life stories? Not really. I like action/adventure, clever dialogue comedies, and especially mystery/suspense stories. And I write Westerns. None of which fit in the slice of life genre. I would prefer, however, more variety in contemporary fiction and film. Fiction is not as big of a problem because good books stay around and there are thousands still waiting for me. Movies are different. When I look at a theater listing and six out of eight films are about men and women that can deflect a bullet with a sword, slice a monster’s head off while leaping six feet off the floor, or throw a paralyzing blow from a piece of stick, I usually end up staying home to watch yet another permutation of CSI. 

3:10 to Yuma—Make and Remake

I bought the original version of 3:10 to Yuma because I wanted to compare it with the Russell Crowe remake. I liked both. Crowe played a great bad guy, but Glenn Ford, normally cast as a good guy, appeared to enjoy playing a rogue. (3:10 to Yuma is now my favorite Glenn Ford movie.)

I won't discuss specifics, but there were several plot or character improvements in the new version, however, I preferred the ending in the 1957 film. In fact, the contrast in endings tells a lot about Hollywood’s reluctance to embrace traditional heroes. (Elmore Leonard's short story has yet another ending.)

Production values were certainly better in the later version. It's also fun to watch the two trailers back-to-back to see how selling movies has advanced in the last fifty years.

Link to Ford Trailer

Link to Crowe Trailer

If you're a film student, movie enthusiast, or just like Westerns, both versions are great additions to a private library.

Characters Matter

Frank. A true black hat villain.

Characterization is a crucial aspect of fiction. We know this because it's drilled into us at school, in workshops, and in all the how-to books and journals we read. The protagonist must come across as real and interesting enough to pull the reader all the way through to the end of the story. A common mistake, however, is to focus too much attention on the protagonist. When you read a great book or watch an outstanding film, it's usually the antagonist that lifts the story above the ordinary.

Steve Dancy Tales -- Kindle Bargain

 

                   The Steve Dancy Box Set

Books provide hours upon hours of entertainment. If you're looking for rousing fiction, consider the Steve Dancy Kindle Box Set. The set includes The Shopkeeper, Leadville, and Murder at Thumb Butte, all three for $8.99, which is five dollars less than buying each book individually. Together, the three Western novels have 790 Amazon Customer Reviews for 4.4 stars and 1,878 Goodreads ratings for 4.0 Stars.

The Mythology of the Old West

For me, there are three major elements of good western. The first is the romance of a new beginning, the second is the battle of good versus evil, and the third is the lone warrior who sets things right.

Hopalong Cassidy
 as illustrated by Frank Earle Schoonover, 1905 

• The old west represents a fresh beginning in a new place away from home - the shrugging off of disappointments and a chance to start all over again. Emigrating to a frontier means you get a do-over in a land with no rules, no referees, and no fences. 

• The mythical old west is a black and white world. Good fights evil and good usually triumphs. In stories of the Old West, ordinary people are capable of extraordinary heroism. 

• But raw frontiers are dangerous, so even courageous pioneers need help. No civilization means no restraints on bad people doing bad things. Help comes in the shape of an idealized hero, a paladin who risks his life to save the day and asks nothing in return.

These themes have been a part of storytelling in every society since the first cave drawings. You'll also find these elements dominate fantasy and science fiction. The frontier in these genres can be the future, outer space, or a make-believe land. The gunfighter has a simple solution on his hip, while Frodo has the ring and Harry Potter the magic wand.

You can read my article "Is the Mythology of the Old West Dead?" by following this link.

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Mark Twain on Heroes

“Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.” 

What Would the Founders Think? Reviews Murder at Thumb Butte

Best does a great job of weaving historic Prescott into the story with accurate depictions of well-known features like Whiskey Row, the court house, Gurley Street, and other famous locales in the historic town.  It’s clear he’s been there and mapped out his story accordingly.  The great thing about this is that this part of Prescott looks much the same as it did then. The story itself is as good, if not better than the first two books in the series.


Book Page at Amazon
Book Page at Barnes & Noble

Read the entire Review

A Great Tribute to Westerns

Westerns Forever by MarkmBonner

New Book Trailer for Steve Dancy Western Series

New Cover for The Shut Mouth Society

For a long time, I've wanted to change the cover of The Shut Mouth Society. Although the story has strong historical elements, it's a contemporary thriller. The old cover looked like a historical novel, or even a non-fiction book on Lincoln. With the completion of Murder at Thumb Butte, I was able to dedicate some time to work with a designer on a new cover.

The Virginian—The Inspiration for The Steve Dancy Tales

The Virginian was published in 1902, by Owen Wister (1860-1938). The novel received critical acclaim and was a huge bestseller, eventually spawning five films, a successful play, and a television series. The Virginian was an instant success, selling over 20,000 copies in the first month, an astonishing number for the time. It went on to sell over 200,000 copies in the first year, and over a million and a half prior to Wister’s death. This minor classic has never been out of print. Beyond the multiple works that carry its name, The Virginian has inspired hundreds of stories about the Old West.

The Virginian is a story about people, people who happen to have been transplanted from a more civil society to the frontier. It’s basically a fish out of water story. The narrator of this classic was Owen Wister himself. As I read this book, I thought how cool would it be for the Easterner to be more than an observer. What if he became personally involved in the adventures of the Wild West? And that’s how The Virginian inspired the Steve Dancy series. As homage to the original, the first scene of The Shopkeeper opens with a whist card game—the same game Wister's cowboys play in the bunkhouse.

This link will take you to my book review of The Virginian.

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Characters Matter -- Part 3

In a previous post I said that novelists should pay close attention to the personalities of minor characters. Cardboard secondary players make a dull story. That said, the most important element to engage readers is the character of the protagonist and antagonist. Antagonists are fun, and come in many varieties, but in this post, I'll discuss the protagonist.

Protagonists can be an action heroe like Dirk Pitt or the bride from Kill Bill, or cerebral like Sherlock Homes and Nancy Drew. Most of the time, however, protagonist fall between these two extremes, like Philip Marlow or Emily Pollifax. Even though protagonists are distributed along an unbroken and endless continuum, I classify them generally as wholesome heroes, flawed heroes, and antiheroes.

For wholesome heroes, think Roy Rogers, Luke Skywalker, Jefferson Smith, or any superhero before Hollywood started jerking them toward the dark side. Today, we seldom see wholesome heroes. Some see this as part of society's new-found cynicism, but I attribute it more to the demise of the standards boards that used to rule television and movies. In truth, a flawed hero is a more real character and certainly more interesting.

The flawed hero has ruled fiction since Odysseus, and has always been my favorite. When I was a child, Gene and Roy didn't appeal to me. I preferred Paladin and Josh Randall, the gun for hire and bounty hunter respectively. Flawed heroes come in many varieties, but they all struggle with something personal as they engage their adversary.

Recently, the popular media has become infatuated with the antihero. Antiheroes run the gamut, with many finding redemption as they sacrifice to save the day. The epitome of this trend toward increasingly nasty antiheroes would be Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. This reprehensible character is engaging, but not sympathetic. In the end, he is not redeemed, nor does he feel remorse. Walter Hartwell "Walt" White in the television series Breaking Bad is another example of Hollywood's facination with antiheroes.

The key to a good protagonist is an emotional connection with the reader or viewer. The audience must care whether the protagonist succeeds in his/her quest or endeavor. Wooden heroes need not apply. That's why the flawed hero dominates fiction. People identify with their failings and imagine that they too can overcome their internal misgivings to rise to the occasion. We all need heroes, and we all want to think that if the situation presented itself, we could indeed be heroic ourselves.

Are Heroes a Fantasy?

A review of Hollywood productions and published fiction might lead the casual observer to believe that the traditional hero is dead. The antihero now reigns supreme, and even the antihero is moving further and further toward the dark side. (The flaws of James Bond, Batman, and Spiderman are etched more deeply in recent films.) Protagonists are increasingly nasty characters that you would seldom invite into your home. What gives? Are the publishing houses and movie studios just giving audiences what they want?

I don't think so. The public is still drawn to traditional heroes, despite the fact that the creative class has relegated them to fantasies. People flock to Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker, and Superman. John Wayne's continuing popularity shows that traditional heroes endure across the years and generations. Hollywood and publishers attribute the popularity of fantasies and old style westerns to blind escapism. The filmmakers and publishers have come to believe that art must depict the mundane everyman or a sadly decayed society. Meanwhile, the public is forced to search out heroes where they can find them.

Are heroes a fantasy? No, they exist in real life and we admire them not just their deeds, but for their selflessness. Every civilization in ascendancy honors and depends on their heroes. And one way to honor heroes is with our stories, whether around the campfire, in print, or on celluloid. Good fiction lifts and inspires us.

Wouldn't it be great if everyone aspired to be heroic.

Hollywood Celebrates the Anti-Hero

In 2008, USA Today ran an article titled "The good, the bad, and the anti-hero." The lead sentence claimed that, “Heroes are old hat.”

Are old fashioned heroes a thing of the past? They were in the selection of 2008 Oscar-worthy movies. The public might disagree. The four anti-hero films nominated for Best Picture grossed less than $190 million combined. (The fifth nomination, the indie film Juno grossed $126 million all by itself, primarily from word-of-mouth.) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford domestic box office was less than $4 million, despite starring Brad Pitt. 3:10 to Yuma did better, grossing a little over $53 million domestically to barely cover it’s production cost.

(3:10 to Yuma came the closest to portraying a traditional hero. In the end, however, Hollywood couldn’t help itself, so it killed the Christian Bale heroic character and Russell Crowe rode off to rule the unruly West. The anti-hero once again won.)

The USA Today article actually classifies Chigurh in No Country for Old Men as an anti-hero. In my mind, an anti-hero is a morally handicapped individual who overcomes his or her dark side to perform a heroic deed. As the article points out, we have a long tradition of celebrating the anti-hero and the anti-hero certainly deserves a solid place in literature and film. The Javier Bardem character, however, never veers away from his villainous role. He is scary evil from start to finish. Chigurh is a fascinating character, but he is not an anti-hero. If anything, he’s an anti-villain.

In the USA Today article, under a heading, "Rising out of the Vietnam Era” Lisa Dombrowski, associate professor of film at Wesleyan University said, “Most people will date the rise of the anti-hero to the 1960s, when the entire cast of Bonnie and Clyde and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf were nominated. There was a shift to embracing characters that are highly flawed yet compelling.”

Maybe it’s time we shook ourselves free of the sixties. Society needs heroes. They exist in the real world and we need them in fiction to serve as role models.

What happened to the Western?

Westerns were hugely popular for over a hundred years and then the genre suddenly fell into disfavor. Not only were Westerns popular in the United States, but the whole world devoured them. The Western was a staple of fiction, Hollywood, television, and daydreams. What happened?

The Western genre became a niche market because it abandoned traditional Western mythology. Westerns aspired to be art.

In recent decades, art has tended toward cynicism. The creative classes insist that true art illuminate our sins and our despair. The literati hooted, heckled, and hissed at the uplifting mythology of the Old West. Rather than a virtue, the talents required to tame a frontier became vices. Man killed—and man killed all the beautiful things. Bad stuff happened to good people, and for no apparent reason other than that life was unfair. The fashionable wanted art to reflect their world view, and the fashionable were in a funk.

And exceptional art did happen. Sergio Leone, an Italian enamored with the Old West, took the negative perspective and made it mainstream. His Dollar trilogy were his experimental etchings and Once upon a Time in the West, his masterpiece. A host of copycat films solidified the fashion and Westerns were henceforth required to portray the Old West with all of its faults and transgressions.

This fashion appealed to the elite, but a funny thing happened on the way to the movie theater—the public veered off in another direction. The general populous found it increasingly difficult to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys and the stories didn’t make them feel good about their ancestors or themselves. But they found a solution. They just quit coming.

What makes an appealing hero?

I asked myself this question as I tried to figure out why the Western genre had been relegated to a couple of obscure shelves in most bookstores. I tried to noodle this out for myself until I came upon Raymond Chandler’s 1950 definition of a hero. He was describing a detective hero, but it fits nonetheless. Here is my abridged version of Chandler's hero.

Raymond Chandler

“…down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

“He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.

“The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”

When publishers and producers abandon their penchant for off-putting antiheroes and return to this model, the Western will leap back to prominence.

People want heroes they can admire and long to emulate.