beccastareyes

Heard on the radio that they're doing a Rock of Ages movie version. That being the only show I've seen on Broadway, I'm fond of it. On the other hand, they seem to have changed the antagonist from a German father-son team who want to gentrify the Sunset Strip into the same Moral Panic Wife/Mother that's the antagonist in every movie about rock music.

A lot of the other changes seem to kind of make it into 'every movie about rock music: 80s rock version'. Which... the original musical had the basic 'boy meets girl, boy and girl are dumb teenagers and hurt each other, boy and girl eventually gain some emotional maturity from Life Lessons, talk things out and ride off together'. But I guess it feels like the movie summary filed off all the hard edges. Which... I mean, it's a musical with a happy ending, not a George R R Martin book*; it's not like there's that many hard edges.

* Though if someone wanted to make a A Game of Thrones: The Musical, I might actually watch that. Something about bloody civil war plus eldricth magic plus showtunes tickles my funny bone.

Oooh, bonus points if it's a rock opera or musical!

I'm reading Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, specifically the final book. And I got to thinking about the structure of trilogies. It seems like, even if each book in the trilogy has a plot, the trilogy itself has a pattern of the first book ending on an up beat, and the second on a down beat.

( Some examples to explain what I mean )

So, I wonder if this is inherent to the construction of a trilogy. I can think of counter-examples: N. K. Jemisen's Inheritance trilogy doesn't quite have a downbeat second book, but I might have to reread it as a trilogy, rather than as a series of stand-alone novels. The Lord of the Rings... well, I have to go back and see where Tolkein cut the story, since the films changed things up. And discussing the differences there might be a post into itself. I can think of plenty of trilogies that do do this -- even darker stories, like

seanan_mcguire's Newsflesh trilogy have a more upbeat first book end than second book end.

Day 16 - An anime classic that simply doesn’t work for you: Akira

( It could be because Akira was one of the first anime things that I saw. )

Day 8 - Most epic scene ever: Climax, Princess Mononoke

Another hard one. I don't have a strong memory for moments in anime, as I mentioned in the ship meme about kissing. I am more likely to remember 'that was cool' right after something cool happens. I mean, last Saturday I was watching Utena and there was a scene where Nanami had given Athny a dress that would decay in water, then had someone spill champagne on her. Utena insta-changed from the dress she was wearing to her duelist's uniform, grabs a conveniently-placed tablecloth and quickly-yet-artfully drapes it over Anthy to make a wrap-dress, then asks her to dance.

Or I could just answer Gurren Lagann or something, which seemed to make it a quest to go for as many fuck yeah! moments as it possibly could, purposely aware that that made it kind of silly.

But I'm going to answer something a bit stranger. Well, not as strange as all that, but something earlier.

( When I was a kid, I used to have reoccurring, unsettling dreams about the ocean. )

Saw Avatar with Ben today. Now we will get needlessly confusing, since we have the movie with the blue aliens and the cartoon with the kid with the blue arrow. I saw a review that describes the plot as Dances With Wolves meets Fern Gully, which is fair enough -- a predictable plot, but it was a pretty, pretty movie and an interesting setting.

Does make me wonder about something. See, the plot of the movie is basically 'guy goes Elsewhere, guy is adopted by locals, guy discovers he prefers the locals* and his bosses are jerks**, guy helps his new friends kick his old bosses' butts'. It's not a new plot. But there's always a guy -- okay, maybe a gal. What I mean is that we never get the aliens (or, indigenous humans, for that matter) without a human with them. Especially in visual media -- I can maybe think about a book example.

( Rambly, and this might not even make sense. )

... The scenes with the Enterprise in Titan's atmosphere showed Titan at the wrong inclination angle with respect to the rings. Titan orbits in the ring plane, so they'd not get the visuals. If they wanted a moon that had a good view, Iapetus would be my choice (plus, you could do a 2001 reference).

( Now that I got the requisite Saturn fanwank out of the way, I have thoughts on the movie besides that. Spoilers here. )

On a fandom side, I think 11-Spock has moved into my head, so expect fanfiction on Invoking Urania. I also have been enjoying a familiar-yet-different world to play in. Also Spock-Prime and 11-Scotty just introduced transwarp transporters. That's going to have Ramifications.

In a bit of coolness, the movie's science advisor was Carolyn Porco. For those of you who don't keep track of these things, she's the head scientist for the Cassini Imaging Team. In other words I know her -- we've only spoken twice, but my advisor knows her pretty well, since he's head of one of the spectrometer teams, and both he and Carolyn are scientists who work on rings.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Look Into The Air-Explosions in the Sky

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On Trilogies

30DoA.16: An anime classic that simply doesn’t work for you: Akira

30DoA.08: Most epic scene ever: Climax, Princess Mononoke

Why do we need Jake Sully?

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