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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: Pride and Prejudice

Disney and Star Wars?

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Film

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Tags

Cthuhlu, Disney, Eliza Dushku, elizabeth bennet, entertainment, George Lucas, horror, Jane Austen, Joss Whedon, Megan Fox, Michael Bay, Nathan Fillion, pirates of the carribean, Pride and Prejudice, Serenity, Sigourney Weaver, Star Wars, videogames


Today, on this hallowed day that celebrates horror in all its forms, the internet is abuzz with news of a horror beyond even the worst imaginings of your average geek.

No, it is not that the stars are right for the rise of Great Cthuhlu from the vasty depths of R’lyeh. Despite what the great Mayan practical joke would have us believe about the end of the world being nigh, Cthuhlu is not likely to be rising anytime soon as he forgot to set his alarm clock before he went to bed.

Mitt Romney before his morning cup of coffee

And no, it is not the news of a new version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice directed by Michael Bay and starring Megan Fox as Elizabeth Bennet and Sigourney Weaver as a modern, lesbian take on Mr Darcy with more explosions, car chases and giant robots than any previous version of Pride and Prejudice…*

It’s not even as horrific as the possibility of a new version of Babylon 5 written by Stephenie Meyer with a new concept for Vorlons which has them as ‘sparkly’…

No, the true horror that has gripped geekdom this Halloween is the news that Disney has bought the rights to Star Wars…

People are rightly concerned. They see Disney as a twee insititution which whitewashes over stories to make them far less dark than they actually are. They also look at John Carter and consider what a mess was made of that film. They quake in fear at the possibility of an animated Star Wars with a big goofy dog instead of a wookie and jedi with large ears and squeaky voices… and the joke memes are already coming in thick and fast.

Me, I am optimistic… While Disney is indeed guilty of the crime that was John Carter, other voices on the internet have spoken up and said such things as ‘But what about Pirates of the Carribean? And what about Avengers?’ Yeah, what about them? Disney is as responsible for those two success stories as they are for John Carter and, frankly, I think two phenomenal successes totalling two excellent films and 2 sort of OKish sequels to one of them make up for one failure.

And amidst all the discussion one possibility has arisen which has got many excited. The name Joss Whedon has crawled its way out of the lamentations… Disney got him to do Avengers, are hiring him again for the sequel… what if they also attached him to the Star Wars project?

Think about that for a moment, revel in it. A new Star Wars film, written and directed by Joss Whedon. Could it get any better than that? What would such a film likely include? Well, here are my predictions…

1) A kick arse female jedi. One thing the Star Wars films have always lacked was female jedi. They exist in the universe, there are even books that include them as characters and some of the computer games also have them, but they have never really been seen on the big screen. Whedon is known for his kick arse female characters – Buffy and River Tam being his main ones – and he even managed to give Black Widow some Buffyesque moments in Avengers. I think Whedon would take this step and make the female lead a jedi instead of a constitutionally confused princess in a republic. That or make one of the bad guys a kick arse woman in black leather. Possibly played by Eliza Dushku…

2) Smugglers. One thing I always felt the prequels lacked was the presence of a smuggler style character. A Han Solo to Luke’s clean cut farm boy, a Jack Sparrow to Will’s clean cut blacksmith. The relationship between the morally dubious Han Solo and the rest of the cast in Star Wars was an integral part of the character dynamic which was lacking in the prequels and made them so flat as a result. I think Whedon would insert such a character because he knows only too well the importance of there being friction between the characters. Now, in the ideal dream world, this smuggler character might well be played by a certain Mr. Nathan Fillion, who would no doubt leap at the chance, but that may depend on whatever other projects he is working on at the time… and at this point you have to ask yourself the very important question: Exactly how tempted would Whedon be to make Star Wars VII as close to Serenity II as he possibly can without anyone noticing?

3) Story. Joss Whedon understands how stories work. He has an almost innate grasp of structure and knows how to insert tension and plot to keep a film interesting for the viewers. The prequel trilogy seemed to drag in places, Whedon would make the story jump and move.

4) One liners. Another thing Whedon is good at are pithy one liners that get geek juices flowing. His characters quip and joke and worry about ordinary day to day things – not everything is all about the plot.

I could go on, I could regale you with endless points discussing at length the things that Joss Whedon would bring to the Star Wars franchise if someone let him get his greasy hands on it. But I think you have got the point already and I am aware that many of you may well have stopped reading at point 2 above and are currently sitting there with a dreamy expression and sighing the words ‘Nathan Fillion’ over and over again and therefore lost to any further eloquent arguments. So I will end there with only a final entreaty to Disney… MAKE THIS HAPPEN! Please…

*Note to Hollywood, just in case you do want to make this film, you can buy the rights off me. I’ll do you a good deal for it. I think the world is ready for a lesbian Miss Darcy. Have your people call my people… well, maybe wait a bit so i can acquire some people then call them or maybe just call me direct. If it helps I can pretend to be my own people and go through the rigmarole of pretending to put you through various departments until you get me. i’ll even do the voices.

Terry Pratchett: Tracing the evolution of a writer

24 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Captain Vimes, developing as a writer, Discworld, Fafhrd, Fritz Lieber, Havelock Vetinari, Jane Austen, Lankhmar, Pride and Prejudice, Publication, Rincewind, Snuff, Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic, The Gray Mouser, The Patrician, traditional publishers


This is something I have been thinking about for a while now. In fact, I’ve been thinking about this ever since I started reading fantasy and science fiction. I have been pondering the ways in which a writer develops. Not particularly thinking about how they improve their writing to the point where they become good enough to be published but rather considering what happens to your writing after you get published.

After all, none of us are static. No one is born a great writer and it is ludicrous to assume that the progression of the writing craft simply comes to a stop once the first novel hits the shelves. Instead a good writer is always looking to improve on what they did before and this is what I want to discuss today. To do this, I am going to use the example of Terry Pratchett.

Now, for those of you who have been in a cave for the last 20 years or so and don’t know who Terry Pratchett is, I suppose I should enlighten you. Those already up on Britain’s most popular and prolific fantasy comedy writer may feel free to skip this paragraph altogether and move onto the good stuff later…

Terry Pratchett is the writer of far far too many to count novels set in the  Discworld – a fantasy world which sits on the back of four elephants who are sat on the back of a turtle. As a world with such ludicrous metaphysics, naturally strange things happen there (many of them powered by that elusive element never found in the real world – Narrativium) and this leads to comedic situations. Pratchett has also written a number of novels set in other worlds – Strata, the Bromeliad trilogy (Truckers, Diggers and Wings), Nation and, of course, The Carpet People (his first publication in 1971). He has an OBE, a Knighthood and a number of publishing awards to his name. He is largely considered to be a very prolific writer with an average speed of one book a year. In 2007 he announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzeimers and, as well as making generous donations to various charities for that disease he has also stated his support for the right to die. He has stated that he intends to take steps to end his own life before his disease progresses to a critical point.

So, brief biographical information out of the way. If you want to know more, feel free to look him up on his Wikipedia page Time for the real meat of this piece. How has Pratchett developed as a writer since his first publication?

In order to keep things simple, I am not going to discuss The Carpet People or any of the non-Discworld novels. I am keeping thing solely in the province of his best known creation. The first Discworld book was entitled ‘The Colour of Magic’. It was published in 1983 – which totally blows my theory about the origin of its name being due to either a pun on the title of the novel, The Color of Money (published 1984), or the Robert De Niro film of the same name (released 1986). The Colour of Magic introduces us to the Discworld as a vibrant and chaotic fantasy realm and takes us on a travelogue which spans a significant part of the disc. We meet one of Pratchett’s most memorable characters – the cowardly wizard, Rincewind – and are introduced to a plethora of characters and plotlines, each of which parodies an element of fantasy literature. For example, the character of Hrun the Barbarian is your typical  musclebound thug of an adventurer, the classic Conan the Barbarian stereotype, while Bravd the Hublander and the Weasel (two characters who have brief appearances in the story) are clearly derived from Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. A part of the intention behind the Discworld is also to subvert many of the fantasy cliches and so Rincewind, our main hero for the first few books, is a wizard who is neither brave nor capable of casting spells. Admittedly, the last one is due to him being unable to learn spells due to one of the eight, great spells that helped create the universe being stuck in his head, but even after he later gets rid of that impediment he still has a major problem actually using any magic. We also later (in the sequel, The Light Fantastic) get Cohen the Barbarian, the ludicrously wonderful subversion of the Conan schtick in the form of a barbarian hero who is still adventuring well into his eighties.

From these parodies in the early books, there slowly develops a complex and involved world. As the series develops we see more and more of the world and meet more characters. For many of the early books there is still the sense that Discworld is a parody of a fantasy realm and that Ankh Morepork, Pratchett’s fantasy city, is a play on the concept of Lieber’s Lankhmar.

At some point, however, things change. It is a slow change and a subtle one, taking place over a number of novels and with the development of several storylines and characters. I think it begins properly with the first Night watch book, Guards! Guards!, as Pratchett clearly needed a grittier and more realistic setting for the somewhat noirish adventures of Captain Vimes and the members of the Night Watch. This series takes the ruler of Ankh Morepork, the Patrician, and turns him into a more rounded character by planting him in the position of the ‘City Mayor’ as popularised by many a US cop show. It also rounds out the city, letting readers see the seedier side of the streets and goes into more detail regarding the role of the Thieves Guild in enforcing the law. At some point between Guards! Guards! and the latest offering, Snuff, Ankh Morepork ceases to be a parody of Lankhmar. Instead it becomes something more akin to a strange hybrid of Lankhmar with London and New York of the early 19th Century. The characters take on a decidedly Regency cast to them, something which is emphasised in Snuff’s parodying of Austen’s Pride and Prejudce, and there are themes inherent in the storylines which harken to concepts of the industrial revolution and the social, political and economic changes which eventually led to the Victorian era. These issues are especially apparent in the Moist books – Going Postal, Making Money and the soon to be released, Raising Taxes – where Vetinari is seen to be actively in the process of modernising the city and such issues as mobile phone companies and the gold standard are challenged with satire.

In other words, Discworld represents Pratchett’s evolution as a writer from someone who only wants to poke fun at the fantasy trends of the time to someone with the confidence and ability to tackle serious, real world issues by poking fun at examples from literature and history.  I believe that all writers undergo this process of maturation. Initially, in a desire to get published, many writers are conservative about what they want to write about – seeking popular topics which may allow good sales. However, post publication, they begin to gain more confidence and feel as if they can stretch their muscles more and be experimental in what they write. In Discworld, Pratchett gives us the opportunity to see that process in action in a way that is not possible with many writers. We have 28 years of books, all set in the same world by the same writer, to show it.

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