Film Novelizations

The Search for the book that's better than the film

[filmnovelizations]

Rocky IV

Rocky was impervious to it all. He and Drago were toe-to-toe, silently assaulting each other with psychological weapons. If looks could kill...

This book is bad. I’ve never been terribly familiar with the Rocky movies. I watched Rocky IV for the first time right before I started reading this masterpiece. The film is a somewhat baffling mess, and some of that mess is weirdly fixed by this book. There are so many minor and major differences between the book and film, it’s hard to believe Sylvester Stallone wrote them both. On the other hand, I haven’t found evidence of a ghost writer, so why not?

So, having finally watched the film, the first thing I wanted from the book was any small attempt to make sense of the fucking robot. There is none.

A robot walked through the door. It was about five feet tall and rolled on wheels. In its outstretched arms it held the flaming birthday cake. A perpetual “Have a nice day” smile was painted around the microphone box on its face. A pink ribbon was tied decoratively around its square head.

So, the description is a little different from the actual robot, but that’s the least of my concerns. They give the pathetic, lonely, alcoholic Paulie a robot as a joke because he doesn’t have any friends. At first he’s annoyed, then he uses the skills he must have learned at the slaughterhouse to reprogram the robot to talk with a breathy female voice while on a constant mission to supply him beer. In Las Vegas, he’s sad he didn’t bring the robot. After he loses all his money on slot machines and blackjack, he talks to a prostitute but laments losing all his money gambling, and he’s sad he didn’t bring the fucking robot. You can just go ahead and assume he’s jamming his dick into some part of that robot. 

While Paulie is losing all his prostitute money gambling, Stallone supplies a perfect example of the kind of bad writing that loads up this short book.

A chair opened up at the table. Paulie decided that a change of games would help his luck. He sat down and bought twenty dollars’ worth of chips. If you’re gonna do it, might as well splurge. He put a two-dollar chip in front of him. The dealer drew the cards out of the shoe. Paulie got a ten and a king.

What table? Yes, I suppose a change of games would at least make a more interesting time than cheap slot machines. Is twenty dollars splurging? How broke is Paulie? Wait, how does he make money? If you’re gonna do it, you might as well cliche. A two dollar bet is not a splurge. Oh, it’s a blackjack game. You could have called it a blackjack table in the first sentence instead of “the table.” This is a major casino in Las Vegas, not an illegal casino in the basement of a bar.

And so Sylvester Stallone’s writing is filled with paragraphs like this. Sometimes pronouns are not clearly defined, because they’ll switch who they refer to or they just won’t clearly refer to anyone. There are so many cliches I should have kept count.

A few hookers loitered in front of the bar, but Rocky didn’t recognize any of them.

So, after the robot nonsense, the next most obvious thing I wanted from this book was the book version of the montage. This film is notorious for its use of montage. I timed the montages. There are four montages in the film. After fighting with Adrian, Rocky has a driving montage. There are two separate montages when Rocky is training in Russia. And then there’s the montage to skip twelve rounds of boxing in the Rocky-Drago fight. I think people might think of the James Brown music video in their estimation that this movie is overloaded with montage, but it’s really not a montage. It’s a music video.

Anyway, the four official montages amount to fifteen minutes and seventeen seconds. The end credits roll at eighty-four minutes. If you take out or just severely reduce the length of the montages, the movie is just less than seventy minutes long. If you want to argue that the James Brown music video counts because it is unnecessarily inflating the film’s runtime the same as the montages, go ahead and cut off another two minutes and forty seconds. Either way, this film is short enough without discarding fifteen-eighteen minutes. In the book, James Brown is absent. Apollo Creed’s entrance is a normal paragraph.

Suddenly the band started playing again. It was a lively, raucous tune. A side door to the ballroom opened and a troupe of scantily dressed chorus girls holding small American flags entered. They were followed by Apollo with Rocky at his side. Behind them were Duke and Paulie. Apollo was dressed as Uncle Sam in a red, white, and blue suit complete with a top hat. The ballroom thundered with applause. Well-wishers tried to swamp the group as they made their way to the ring, but the polite, yet firm security men kept them at bay. Their job was made harder by Apollo. He kept reaching out to shake hands. When he reached the bandstand he jumped up and down in time to the music. The applause became so loud that the band itself was drowned out. Rocky shook his head in wonder. Who says you can’t go home again? Apollo was doing it.

After that, the driving montage is completely replaced with actual story. Rocky doesn’t drive around thinking about the shit that happened in the first three films. He tries to convince the United Boxing Federation to allow him to fight Drago, and forfeits his title when they refuse. Paulie wrecks Rocky’s car. The mayor of Philadelphia pays to restores Goldmill’s Gym so Rocky can train somewhere familiar. Two officials from the State Department try to convince Rocky to cancel the fight. They have statistics that prove he can’t win. Shitty Paulie tries to convince Rocky to hit Adrian regularly so she’ll learn some respect. It’s not all good story, but it’s so much better than the driving montage.

The only montage that really makes it into the book in a way that feels like a montage is the training-in-Russia montage. The film breaks it into two by having a short scene when Adrian joins him. The montage just eats up most of the penultimate chapter and it looks like this:

This is the book version of a montage. Even with Stallone’s basic writing, it works.

Rocky turned into the camera’s glare. “Get that light off him!” Duke grabbed the man by the belt and jerked him away from Rocky and Apollo. Rocky cradled Apollo’s head in his arms. “Hold on. You can do it. I know you can. Just hold on.” But Apollo let loose and flowed into legend.

I am still so very confused by some of the differences between the film and the novel. The first thing I need to address is a bit tricky. In the film, which as I said rolls credits at about 84 minutes, Apollo Creed dies at about 32 minutes. The novel is 156 pages long, and Apollo dies on page 101. This means that 2/3 of the story in the novel is contained in the first 1/3 of the film. This would almost explain the abundance of montage in the remainder of the film if it weren’t for all the story Stallone left out of the film but still put in that part of the novel. The novel tells a far more even story and I would sincerely like to know what went wrong when Stallone filmed the damn thing. He clearly thought about the gaps in the story and filled them in with the novel. Even accounting for the montages after Apollo’s death, how did he get more runtime out of the last 1/3 of the novel with objectively less story?

Would you like to know more about Ivan Drago? It’s in the book. Read up on his background and how he started boxing. However, there’s also something in the book that would probably have him in jail. In the film, Apollo’s death doesn’t look like deliberate murder. When the fight is technically over, Drago stops punching and starts reciting the English he’s been told to recite. It’s sort of chaos. The book, however...

Rocky grabbed the towel and quickly threw it in the ring. Drago was still punching. Apollo rocked savagely with each blow. It was amazing that he could still stand. “The ex-champion is out on his feet. He’s being pounded without mercy. Balboa has just thrown in the towel!” White yelled gratefully. As soon as he saw the towel the referee stepped in and tried to separate the fighters. Drago paused again to look at his corner. Rimsky nodded grimly. Drago pushed the referee aside and delivered a final blow that could be heard over the din of the crowd.

Murderer. The fight is over and he pauses to look at his handler before punching Apollo one last time. It would be hard to argue that Drago wasn’t ordered to kill Apollo, what with all the cameras around. The rest of the story would be quite different then.

I want to address one last thing that I think gets lost in the James Brown and montages and Ivan Drago, and that is Rocky Jr. Unlike Die Hard, no one thinks of this film as a Christmas movie. You should add it to your Christmas viewing, honestly. The final fight takes place on Christmas Day. That’s enough. But what about Rocky Jr.? Think about the story from his perspective. For his entire life, Apollo was Rocky’s best friend. He probably called him Uncle. He watched Uncle Apollo get murdered. Then his dad is going to Russia to train to fight the same person that murdered Uncle Apollo. And that fight is going to happen on Christmas Day. Then his mom left to join his dad in Russia. Who’s taking care of him? It’s the housekeeper you barely see in the movie, not that either film or novel mentions it. Stallone didn’t think to address the fact that Rocky and Adrian abandon Rocky Jr. at Christmas. In the film, you see a few shots of him watching the fight with a couple friends and Paulie’s robot. The novel at least has the housekeeper instead of the robot. This is, by far, my favorite Christmas story now. Who are the friends that watch the fight with Rocky Jr.? How did that get set up? “Hey, I know it’s Christmas and your parents probably want to spend it with you but do you want to come over and maybe watch my dad get murdered by a 7 foot tall Russian?” In the novel, Rocky doesn’t even say “merry Christmas” to Rocky Jr. at the end of his speech.

Rocky Junior couldn’t take his eyes off the television set. Was this really happening to his dad? Was this what boxing was about? It was horrible. He wanted it to end. He wanted his mother and father home. “Your dad’s getting smashed,” a friend said quietly. Rocky Junior blinked, but the picture didn’t go away. It was real, not a nightmare.

Yeah. This book is bad and you should absolutely read it.

Also, Adrian is pregnant in the book, and Rocky tells Paulie this right after Paulie tells him to hit her to teach her respect. Her pregnancy is entirely forgotten after that though, and it is not an issue when she travels to Russia to watch her husband possibly get murdered. It just isn’t mentioned again. Just something to think about. What a Christmas story. Buy paintings so I can buy more paint to paint more paintings

[filmnovelizations]

Harry and the Hendersons

That night, sitting at his drawing table, it occurred to George that maybe he didn’t care quite so much anymore. The house was almost paid for. The kids were healthy and happy. He and Nan had been married for a lot of years and still loved each other. That was more than a lot of people could say. So what exactly did he have to prove?

I was going to write this book off as a total waste until chapter 15. The book begins before the movie, giving a lot of backstory to the Henderson family. It’s a little unnecessary, but couldn’t you say that about all novelizations and then what the fuck am I even doing here? The highlights of this backstory involve George’s shattered art school dreams because of his asshole father, and Sarah’s six month protest of the family vacation, which is in the same spot at the same time every year because it’s the only thing George wants to do on the only week his father will reliably allow him a vacation.

Sarah. That was another thing. At her fifteenth birthday party, with her first orchid pinned to her shoulder, she looked like one of those dolls she used to play with when she was little. What were they called? She looked just like a Barbie.

So, as I was saying, I was ready to call this book a total waste. The narrator is weirdly inconsistent, like in the above quote where omniscience doesn’t immediately recall one of the most consistently popular toys of all time. Something the omniscient narrator does enough to annoy me is kind of hard to explain. It sort of picks someone to be the main character for any number of pages. So like, everything will sort of be from Ernie’s persepective, and the only way this is really conveyed is the way the narrator will refer to other characters. So like George and Nancy would sometimes be called “his dad” or “his mom.” It’s annoying in the way that it’s annoying when someone’s telling you a story about people you know but they don’t use their names, always saying things like “my brother” or “my friend,” like you’d be too confused otherwise. Having said that, however...

It had taken Harry a while to understand that the male was full-grown, he was so small. But the other members of his group treated him with respect. The female with the shining hair was full-grown, too. She was the mate of the male, the mother of the others. The young male who played with him and the young female who growled at him were immature. Together they made a family. There were no elders.

For chapter 15, and occasionally throughout the rest of the book, the omniscient narrator makes Harry the main character. It is fantastic. I wish the whole book was written from this perspective. He considers being able to learn human language, or maybe the humans learning his, at least enough to communicate simple ideas. He reflects on myths his elders tell about humans that are exactly like the myths humans tell about Bigfoot. Seeing old people get into a hot tub confirms their myth that humans eat their elders. He mistakes money for leaves and eats it. The parts written from Harry’s perspective make the book worth finishing, but also just make the rest of the book a little more disappointing, because why is the rest of it not written like this?

“Wrightwood’s voice rose and his face grew red. “There are no abominable snowmen. There are no Sasquatches, and there are no Bigfoots.”

The book includes a few deleted scenes that were deleted for a good reason. You know how they wash Harry in the neighbor‘s pool and that’s only shown in the movie by a pool cleaner and hair dryers? Well, be glad you don’t get to see the youngest Henderson bathing Harry and urging him to wash his own genitals. You can also read more details about how young Ernie Henderson came to sleep on the floor of the living room with a bigfoot and an old man who dedicated his life to finding bigfoot and is also almost entirely a stranger to the Henderson family. It’s super questionable.

Twinkies, a Sara Lee cheesecake, a bag of M&Ms, a couple of Ding Dongs and two packages of Nerds. She hit the whizzer and turned it all into one giant sucrose cocktail. Straight out of the shaker, she took a long swallow and immediately felt the welcome rush. AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The annoying, nosy, racist neighbor Irene is even worse in the book as well. Or maybe she’s the same, but you see more of her. But her scene where she attacks her gardener is definitely a little more racist than the movie. I mean, here’s just a piece of that...

Irene screamed after him. “Come back here, you Third World rose killer!” Mr. Kimchee did not turn back. Shaking his head, he climbed into the cab of his pickup. “You blew it, mister.” Irene yelled at his exhaust. “I gave you a chance to be Japanese.”

So, yeah. In the movie, the gardener corrects her when she calls him Kimchee because his name is Kim Lee. He’s just Mr. Kimchee in the book and he’s Korean but she insists he’s Japanese. He’s also called “oriental.” It’s bad.

Finally, there’s an epilogue that wraps everything up. After a slightly different ending (Harry introduces his family to the Hendersons) we learn what all the character got up to because of everything that happened. LeFleur and Wrightwood become good friends and build a cabin near where the movie ends. The Henderson family also builds a cabin there. George returns to work for his father part time to pay the bills while working on his art, eventually becoming a known painter. Nancy takes a part time job to also pay the bills while he’s working on that. The kids do things that, really, who cares? It’s all nice and neat and unnecessary.

Harry is known among his kind as The One Who Left the Forest. He is glad to have gone, and glad to be back home. Now he has the best of both worlds. Except perhaps for eating, there is nothing Harry enjoys more than watching his mat and his friend’s mate gather flowers in the meadows, or his son and his friend’s son running together through the woods, or of an evening sitting with his friend beside the lake.

I just really wish the whole book was from Harry’s perspective. That would be the kind of novelization I’m hoping to find. It would be enough of a different experience from the movie that I could justify actually recommending you read it. Like Howard the Duck. Read Howard the Duck.

THESE PAINTINGS AREN’T GOING TO BUY THEMSELVES

[filmnovelizations]

Hook

A pirate named Tickles pumped wildly at a concertina while cannons exploded in sheets of fire and the cheers of the pirate crew rose to new heights.

This is a good novelization. It’s as well written as you could reasonably expect from a novelization, and it expands on enough aspects of the movie to make it less of a waste of time. The movie is far from perfect, but mostly gets away with its imperfections on the strength of its cast. They both have a problem that still thoroughly bothers me though...

The story starts at a school play. Peter’s daughter is playing Wendy in Peter Pan. During the play, he gets a call from work and they need him for an urgent meeting. The next night his family is flying to London for a very special event in Granny Wendy’s honor, so he schedules the meeting for the A.M. The problem with that is his son’s big baseball game. It’s apparently the last game of the Santa Series. When they get to London, the Darling house is decorated for Christmas. There is no payoff to this apparently necessary Christmas setting. The whole setup is cliche with the school play and the busy father missing the baseball game, but it doesn’t make sense. The school play in December isn’t a bullshit holiday celebration. It’s Peter Pan, which is considerably more dangerous than any school is likely to perform with kids her age because of the rope-flying. And maybe little league baseball is different from where I grew up, because I played little league baseball and I never played a game within three months of December. Literally no one thinks of baseball or Peter Pan as related to Christmas but here we are shoehorning Christmas into a story that has nothing to do with it.

The only justification I can imagine for the Christmas setting is the rather blatant uncredited theft of Ebenezer Scrooge’s story arc. Maybe there was an earlier draft of the script that was more of a Christmas Carol version of Peter Pan and it was too convoluted so they trimmed it down and changed it but kept the wholly unnecessary Christmas setting anyway. I don’t know, but it bothers me. It’s still essentially Peter Pan as Ebenezer Scrooge, and I was hoping the novelization might at least acknowledge that influence somewhere. It had the perfect, simplest opportunity to do it too. There’s a moment where Captain Hook’s private library is mentioned, and Sir James Barrie is called out as his favorite author. As the book (and movie) had already mentioned J.M. Barrie twice, and as it’s weird for Barrie’s own character to be a fan of the writer that’s famous for making his life miserable, it seemed a perfect opportunity to throw Dickens out there. I can see Captain Hook being a fan of Oliver Twist in the sort of misunderstood way that villains have to misunderstand reality to be villains. He’d read Oliver Twist and be delighted by the criminal treatment of orphans. Mistreatment of orphans is literally his greatest joy. Instead, he’s supposed to have loved J.M. Barrie’s books where he’s the villain that never wins. Nah.

“Poop Shoot--five thousand!” Ace cried jubilantly, cocking back his top hat. Don’t Ask propelled Thud Butt and the point chart up beside him. “Nope. Butt Tick---two hundred.”

As for something that I’m glad the novelization explained, look at Peter’s daughter Maggie. As a kid, I never thought twice about her part of the story, but she basically gets tossed aside and forgotten. She’s not immediately receptive to Captain Hook’s attempt to brainwash her, so he has her taken away. Later, we see her inexplicably singing a lullaby that briefly reminds her brother of their mother and makes all the pirates cry. And then she’s screaming for help during the final battle. In the novelization, after she’s taken away from the brainwashing session, she’s locked in a cell with some Lost Boys that Captain Hook keeps as slaves. They count his treasure. It’s talking to them, and explaining to them the basic idea of a mother, that results in her singing the lullaby. She sings from the cell too, not wherever the fuck this is...

And as for where the novelization does Jack better, look at the death of Rufio. In the movie, Rufio dies saying he wished he had a father like Peter. Jack’s like, “I’m sorry, dad.” And from then on, he’s completely forgotten the apparent years of neglect. Here’s the book version of that moment.

There was a momentary hush as Jack stared down at the fallen Rufio. He felt as if his stomach had been turned to stone. For despite being outwardly a replica of Hook, Jack was decidedly something else inside, where it matters. The thrill and excitement of being a pirate had long since disappeared. The anger and disappointment of being Peter Banning’s son had evaporated. His dad had kept his promise this time, he had come for Jack and Maggie. And Jack’s memory was stirred by the keeping of that promise--his memory of home and family, of quiet evenings playing board games at the kitchen table, of being read to and reading back in turn, of words of encouragement and wisdom offered when life got a little tough, of all the things that were good and true about his parents.

I don’t think this would have been difficult to portray in the movie. It’s very quick flashbacks, similar to the way we see Peter’s quick flashbacks when he remembers he’s the Pan. We saw Wendy at three or four different ages there, but we can’t see two or three quick, very simple happy memories that Jack experienced with his father? The movie makes it look like he’s always been a shitty father but focuses on a brief moment in his life where he’s being shitty because of work stress. With no reason to believe he’s behaved any different, Jack’s turnaround at Rufio’s death doesn’t make much sense, even in Neverland. Worse than that, this happens moments after his father tells him it took three days to realize his kids were his happy thought. That’s supposed to be, what? Heartwarming? For three days, a fairy and a team of children struggled to remind you what made you happy and you remembered numerous business deals before your own kids, and you want your kids to be happy about that? Would’ve been nice if you’d remembered their existence makes you happy three days ago when Captain Hook said you could take them home if you just flew up to them and touched them.

Thud Butt wrapped himself into a ball and the Lost Boys rolled him down the ramp, scattering the pirates like tenpins.

As for Terry Brooks’ writing, I enjoyed it. I have minor complaints that are nitpicky at best. I became increasingly annoyed by one of the Lost Boys’ speech impediment, and by Brooks’ preferred use of “about” instead of “around”. For example: Then he set them both down, picked up a startled Moira, and whirled her about as well, lifting her off the floor as if she were a child. It’s not wrong at all. It’s just a nitpicky thing that I’m surprised happened enough to bother me. There’s also the part where the Lost Boys shave Peter. It’s creepy and I’m glad the movie left it out. The movie just has the immediate aftermath where they also put warpaint on him. He’s standing there without a shirt and you maybe don’t realize Robin Williams doesn’t have body hair, but it’s because the Lost Boys stripped and shaved him.

If you want the paintings, go here.

[filmnovelizations]

Space Jam

Okay, so this isn’t really a novelization. The title page calls it a storybook, which is sort of redundant. I was at Goodwill a few weeks ago, looking for shitty novelizations, like you do, when I came across Space Jam. Typically, I don’t bother with books like this, but I also kinda want to occasionally make a shorter post about some of the other shitty book versions of movies that get released. I have some comic book adaptations I’ll cover eventually, but right now, it’s Space Jam. I bought this book because I opened it to this page...

I was never a fan of this movie. I watched it at least once a long time ago and promptly forgot it. I think this is exceptionally weird. I don’t think I was too old for it when it was released. I have been a huge fan of Looney Tunes for as long as I can remember. I’ve never really followed basketball, but you didn’t have to follow it to be a fan of Michael Jordan, or the rest of the basketball stars in Space Jam. I actually got to see Michael Jordan play baseball. There was never a chance I’d get to see him play basketball, but holy shit, his baseball team is playing nearby and my dad got tickets. That’s about all I remember about the game now. After watching the movie tonight (twice, while I painted, scanned, edited...) I have many questions. First, this movie was released in 1996, but takes place in 1993 when Jordan retired from basketball to play baseball? In the press conference at the beginning, he says, “the one good thing that comes out of this, is that my father had the opportunity to see me play my last basketball game, and that means a lot to me.” The reality of this is far too grim for me as an adult, because his father was fucking murdered and that played a part in his first retirement. But this was released after he’d started playing basketball again. His father didn’t get to see him play his last basketball game. It’s fucking weird that they had him say this, because his father didn’t have that opportunity and they all knew it. Maybe he said that in the real press conference when he retired, I don’t know, but like...damn. Why do the Monstars get to injure all of the Tune Squad players? There are two points where the Tune Squad is down to 4 players and they have to use Wayne Knight and then Bill Murray to avoid having to forfeit the game. Why is that rule, that you must have 5 players, the only one that’s enforced? Like I said, I don’t follow basketball, so maybe I’ve lived my whole life until now unaware that most games are actually just huge battles where each team tries to injure enough players on the other team until only one has enough players that are still physically able to play the game. I don’t know.

This scene made me unusually happy. It is my second favorite scene from movies released in 1996 starring basketball heroes, where a person gets turned into a basketball and dunked. Kudos to Space Jam for making the hero be the basketball, but Kazaam has you beat. Jordan just rolls out of his ordeal, slightly disoriented. Kazaam crushes the villain of the movie into a ball and dunks him into an air duct of a building that is currently on fire. It is far more awesome, because Kazaam murdered a guy and that movie refused to acknowledge it.

One thing I love/hate about this book is the use of half-finished pictures. You’d expect they’d just use screenshots from the movie, but a lot of the pictures are actually production photos combined with new drawings and half-finished or no background. I’m fine with the assumption that I’ll never know why they did it this way.

This page was doing pretty great with that Stan-cake joke, but went out of its way to insult Wayne Knight (the actor playing Stan), so I fucking hate it. Wayne Knight doesn’t deserve your shitty jokes about how someone like him doesn’t quite look human, especially while he’s surrounded by anthropomorphic cartoon animals and aliens. This is why he was the painting for this post. I salute you, Wayne Knight.

(based on this Jordan rookie card)

Another huge fault in this book is the total lack of Bill Murray. Also Larry Bird. Jordan plays golf with both of them in the movie, but in this dumb book he just plays with his friend Larry (not specifically Larry Bird...just Larry). Bill Murray doesn’t play in the big game. I guess the contracts for both of them didn’t include being mentioned in any books based on the movie. In the end, fuck this book. If you must read it to your child, please go out of your way to explain the details of the murder of Michael Jordan’s father. His father isn’t mentioned in the book, but you know...some context explaining Jordan’s antiquated popularity and the details surrounding his premature retirement from basketball might help your child understand why he suffered this total mental breakdown known as Space Jam. Also, why is it called Space Jam?

[filmnovelizations]

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Odd, this human need to continually rub this and that part of their bodies together, particularly since humans conducted it while fully rational, sometimes even intermixing it with conversation, which was certainly far from any definition of passion by Vulcan standards. I was fairly excited about this when I found it. It seems so weird to me that Gene Roddenberry wrote the novelization of a screenplay by Harold Livingston based on a story by Alan Dean Foster. This chain of writers is completely backwards. Anyway, I rather enjoyed Gene Roddenberry's writing. "Shit!" It was an expression that a very young Jim Kirk had learned from Grandfather Samuel. It seemed to fit this moment exactly. I might actually prefer the book to the movie. The movie is somewhat slow and feels like it's trying to be the fuckchild of 2001 and Star Wars. I don't think it's bad, but it could be a lot better. This book actually works the way I think a novelization is supposed to work. There are a lot of aspects of this story that need more explanation than a movie can easily provide. They introduce a new species to the Star Trek universe, she has a history with one of the crew members, and one of her first lines is about her oath of celibacy. There's a lot going on there, and the movie would basically have to become an alien sex ed film to really explain it. No one on the Enterprise is unfamiliar with her species, so why would anyone explain why all the men on the bridge now have boners? Books obviously leave more room for that type of exposition, and that's how Roddenberry made the book better. "I was never aware of this lovers rumor, although I have been told that Spock encountered it several times. Apparently he had always dismissed it with his characteristic lifting of his right eyebrow which usually connoted some combination of surprise, disbelief, and/or annoyance. As for myself, although I have no moral or other objections to physical love in any of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms, I have always found my best gratification in that creature woman. Also, I would dislike being thought of as so foolish that I would select a love partner who came into sexual heat only once every seven years." Throughout the book, there are footnotes that address things that are wholly unnecessary. The above quote comes from an editor's footnote explaining that the Vulcan word Spock called Kirk, in his own private thoughts, can mean brother or lover. After explaining this adequately, we get the quote from Kirk where he says he likes to fuck women, especially if they like to fuck more frequently than once every 7 years. I'm pretty glad it's there though. I don't know the Vulcan language, so I wouldn't have assumed that Spock was thinking about Kirk as a lover, but now I get to live the rest of my life thinking about the implications of a species the prides itself on its extreme logic using the same word for both brother and lover. It took the young security officer a moment to force his eyes away from the Deltan nakedness. Kirk knew how difficult it was. He had just realized that the pointing of those two breasts toward himself had simply meant that she was turning to look toward them. I wish I had taken notes of all the unnecessary sexist thoughts that run through Kirk's mind throughout. Unfortunately, my notes are total shit. I just remember thinking a few times that he seems to put a high value on the attractiveness of females whether it is relevant or not. It doesn't really come up much though. Accordingly, although there may be many other ways in which this story is told or depicted, I have insisted that it also be set down in a written manuscript which would be subject to my correction and my final approval. This is that manuscript, presented to you here as an old-style printed book. The book begins with a couple of pretty great, by novelization standards at least, prefaces. The first preface is supposed to be James Kirk and he's rambling about his name and how Starfleet chooses officers and how everything in the following pages is an accurate representation of his experience. The second preface is the author's preface and it's good but I still want more Kirk preface. "It's opening like a maw!" This from Sulu, being forced out of him in shocked surprise. There's a dumb moment right after V-ger starts pulling the Enterprise into itself where Kirk is trying to keep his crew from panicking. He really focuses on Sulu's use of "maw," thinking everyone will freak out because of a primal human fear of being eaten by something larger than themselves. It's just weird. If the crew is going to freak out, it's because the impossibly large, impossibly powerful ship can destroy them at any second and has total control over where they go and what they can do. That is already enough to cause a panic. But yeah, sure, just make sure they don't think about being eaten and they won't panic. Another scene that deserves more explanation than it receives is the one where the transporter fails and kills two people. It just doesn't make any sense and there's no good explanation for why it happened. I know it happens to make Kirk feel unfamiliar with the Enterprise, because he does feel responsible when his reaction is delayed for a split second as a result of the ship's redesign. However, why the fuck were people being beamed onto the ship while they were still working on getting it fully operational? This is minutes after Scotty personally picks Kirk up in that little shuttle thing. Kirk isn't beamed to the ship. It's like they assumed everything must be working properly now that Kirk is on board. Should we maybe talk to the ship and see if they're ready to accept people via transporter? Nah, fuck it. Send 'em! This is like playing catch with someone and hitting them in the face with the baseball because they were tying their shoes, except they feel responsible because their shoes weren't tied. It's not at all your fault for throwing the ball at them without looking to see if they were ready to catch it. "Jim," Decker said, "it wants an answer." "An answer?" repeated Kirk. "I don't even know the question!" Has anyone compared this story to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? It's more apparent in the book, but basically V-Ger has traveled across the universe to find its creator. When it gets to Earth, it sends a signal to tell its creator (NASA) that it has accomplished its goal. NASA doesn't exist anymore, so there's no response. Once Kirk and the crew realize that V-Ger is Voyager 6, they know who the creator is and they have a conversation about how V-Ger isn't going to like the answer. Then their answer is the equivalent of 42. V-Ger is about to destroy all carbon based life on Earth, essentially destroying its Creator, and then some of that life, which V-Ger refuses to even recognize as life, is going to say, "oh yeah, we uhh...we created you. Well, not us specifically. Some people like us 300 years ago, give or take." It can't comprehend what that even means. Then there's this... "'Is this all I am?'" Spock said, quoting the essence of the emptiness he had felt. "'Is there not more?'" V-Ger is looking for the answer to life, the universe, and everything. It was on a mission to record everything it possibly could about the universe. In the process, it became sentient, and more powerful and knowledgeable than any other life form in existence. Then it turned to its creator and asked, "is that it? But why?" I find it's amusing that, in the story of Hitchhiker's Guide, Earth was created to figure out the question to the answer, and after Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass, the mice want to get their question out of Arthur Dent. But he rather likes living (for some reason. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that living has not been kind to him) so they don't get to cut him up or whatever they were going to do to him. In Star Trek, V-Ger almost destroys Earth, or at least the life on it that would provide the questions and answers it seeks, and a human willingly sacrifices himself to merge with it so it can finally understand all of its otherwise useless knowledge and find its own purpose. It's like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy if it was totally different, but you get what I'm saying? By the way, the ending of this is total garbage. After Decker merges with V-Ger and becomes some new form of life, everything is shit. Enterprise is a few crew members short (2 if you're watching, 3 if you're reading) and it's orbiting Earth. Kirk knows that his success with this mission means he can demand whatever he wants from Starfleet and what he wants is permanent control of Enterprise. Starfleet wants to know the status of the mission. They report the lost crew members. In the book, Starfleet also wants Kirk and the main crew to stop in for a debriefing and Kirk says, "no." Everyone's like, "meh, okay," with a smirk. Then Kirk suggests they give Enterprise a proper shakedown. When asked where to go, he just says, "out there. Thataway." In the movie, he gives a dismisses wave like it doesn't matter where they go. I get they wanted to wrap up the story, but basically they just stole the ship. They stole the ship and they're flying out into wherever without a proper navigator. Because that's what one of the missing crew members was. Ilia was the ship's navigator, and yeah, they got someone to fill in for her, but presumably that person already had a job and now no one is doing that job. As much as Kirk wants to stay on Enterprise until he dies, I also think he wants a properly staffed ship and also to gloat in everyone's dumb fucking faces for doubting him, even though he would have failed miserably without Spock. I would have ended this story like Star Wars: A New Hope, but with Kirk giving himself a medal in front of everyone at Starfleet Command, televised to the entire planet because he just saved their asses. "You didn't die like those punk ass bitches on Alderaan. That was because of me. You're welcome."

[filmnovelizations]

Hulk

“What,” gasped out the security guard, “was that? It--it was some sort of...” “Of hulking monster,” said the old man, and in the darkness of the shadows where he was lurking, no one could see the smile playing upon his lips. “A hulk. That’s what he was. Tell everyone”--he raised his voice--”that a monstrous hulk is out there.” This was not a good book. Peter David is a good writer, but he’d be better if he took shit scripts like Hulk and just threw them in the trash. I don’t know what his obligations are though. If he just took the general plot of the movie and wrote his own version of that, the book might be better but he might not get paid. I don’t know. The problem with this book is that it tries to explain all the nonsense and plot holes in the script instead of being entirely different. It’s a frustrating, long read. By the time Hulk finally shows up, Peter David has already written an entire book about a military contractor trying to buy out a lab at a Berkeley college that is not UC Berkeley but you know...it’s supposed to be. The military contractor, Atheon, has been spying on their lead researcher since he was a boy. When David Banner killed his wife and blew up a top secret military base, his son was adopted by a couple that were working for the military and their mission was to make sure he followed in his father’s footsteps. This shit isn’t in the movie, and don’t worry about the fact that it doesn’t make any damn sense. It’s basically covering for the movie, because why wouldn’t the military keep an eye on Bruce? They know what his father did and you’d assume they’d want to make sure the son was alright, if not turned into some sort of genetic monster that might explode or something. But then there are the plot holes that you can’t explain, and Peter David, to his credit, doesn’t bother trying. Like, why was David Banner released in the first place? When he’s arrested in the movie, he’s just taken away in a straight jacket. It’s a fucking weird assumption that he’s insane. He was a criminally unethical research scientist, then he blew up a military base and murdered his wife because he was mad that he was fired from a project. He would be in jail for the rest of his life. But no, he’s just written off as insane and set free at some point because, and I’m just going to quote the movie here, “they couldn’t keep me forever. After all, I’m sane. They had to admit it.” So, after being kept in a mental institution for 30 years, they finally admit he’s sane, and they just let him go. No need to follow up on that. He’s sane. *brushes hands and smiles at a job well done*

...and pouring copiously through all the images is blood, his blood, thick and viscous and red, except it’s glowing and shifting from red to a dark shade of green...and fury, huge, smashing, rending, through the wall, feel it collapse, feel resistance vanish beneath strength, fury pounding animal snarl muscles knotted power surging bottled up exploding release, yes, good smash pound smash smash smash...

When Hulk finally shows up, I like the way Peter David handles him. It’s probably the best part of the book. Also, as he did in Spider-Man 2, he mentioned Hank Pym. Because I love Ant-Man so much, he gets bonus points again. If I actually had a point system for rating these books, the bonus points wouldn’t help much. Maybe I should work out a point system. Another thing I appreciated was the fact that they do start calling him the Hulk. In the movie, Bruce mentions it once. Thunderbolt Ross calls him “Angry Man” a couple of times, but he’s otherwise nameless. It’s acceptable, I guess. I mean, it’s not really necessary that the last 40 minutes of the movie involves everyone talking about the Hulk problem by name. It easily has the potential to be overdone and shitty. In the book, Ross sort of refuses to call him Hulk though. It’s kind of amusing. “Hulk,” snorted Ross. “That’s what they’re calling him, isn’t it? Me, I call him ‘Angry Man.’ Helps to remember just what it is that gives your enemy his power.”

It’s like...his fucking nickname is Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt doesn’t want to call Hulk Hulk because he likes names that reflect the individual’s source of power? Really?

Really? Luckily, there’s a line in the book that totally explains his nickname. And then his face darkened to storm-cloud intensity, thereby confirming the aptness of his nickname.

Well there you have it. Angry Man and Thunderbolt, together forever or whatever. This book is what I was trying to read two years ago, when I stopped updating this blog. I apparently read 17 pages and lost interest in this whole endeavor for 2 years. If you were, for some reason, thinking about reading this book, maybe think about that instead.

“You know,” he mused, “I’m going to write a book. I’m going to call it ‘ When Stupid Ideals Happen to Smart, Penniless Scientists.’”

This is my favorite, shittiest line. This is Glen Talbot taunting Bruce Banner. It sucks in the movie. It sucks in the book. It’s confusing. Is it supposed to be funny? Is this line supposed to be so painfully clever that Bruce Banner should be mad about such a sick burn? Go ahead and write that fucking book, Talbot. Buy Paintings

[filmnovelizations]

Alien

“Jones the cat was sitting in front of a port. He found the storm exhilarating and had evolved a frenetic game of swatting at the larger particles of dust whenever one struck the port’s exterior. Jones knew he could never actually catch one of the flying motes. He understood the underlying physical laws behind the fact of a solid transparency. That lessened the delight of the game but did not obviate it. Besides, he could pretend that the dark fragments of stone were birds, though he’d never seen a bird. But he instinctively understood that concept, too.” There’s really not much for me to say about this. After the first chapter, I just wanted to finally read something by Alan Dean Foster that isn’t a novelization. I can’t say I loved this book or anything like that, but it’s not like it’s boring or riddled with shitty writing like your average novelization. It’s a well written version of the movie that has all the scenes that were deleted from the film for time or pacing, or weren’t filmed because of technical or financial limitations.

I’m sorry this painting doesn’t make sense. The Autodoc would not utilize such pregnancy tests. There’s one thing that sort of barely annoys me about the writing. Foster has a way of leaving out conjunctions occasionally.

“Ripley glanced sharply at him, said nothing.”

It took me a few minutes to actually find a simple example to use here, so it’s not so prevalent that it’s really a problem. I don’t even know or care if it’s grammatically problematic. It’s a style choice that I don’t particularly care for, though I probably use it myself on occasion.

“On the bridge, Lambert was amusing Jones the cat with some string. The string supposedly was on board solely for Jones’ enjoyment, but the cat knew better. It was occasionally incumbent on him to entertain the humans. They seemed to derive considerable pleasure from his poking and swatting at the white cord as they manipulated it in their clumsy great paws.”

I wish there was more Jones the cat. I’d read the story again from the perspective of Jones. He’s smarter than the humans at least. How much effort did Jones put into hiding from the alien? How fucking annoyed was he when the humans came along and shocked him out of his hiding spot? What did Jones think of the facehugger? I have so many Jones questions, but this book was written by Alan Dean Foster, not Lilian Jackson Braun.

Meanwhile, the humans are dumb. When they’re exploring the derelict, the humans are especially interested in finding anything that will net them more money. Facehugger Kane is especially obsessed with the idea of finding diamonds. There’s no reason to assume “diamonds” is just a placeholder for anything valuable instead of literally diamonds, but either way I wanted him to shut the fuck up about diamonds. Humanity has mastered traveling through space faster than light, and they have done so to drill other planets for oil and maybe find diamonds hopefully. Their priorities are fucked. If you like the paintings, please buy one?

[filmnovelizations]

The Condemned

      “Killers, thieves, racists, and rapists. Your crimes vary, but you all have one thing in common--you are the condemned,” he opened dramatically as his cameras rolled.       “Fuck you!” shouted the Nazi, continuing his diatribe in German. A guard nearly shattered his kneecaps with a baton.       “Careful,” Breckel scolded the guard. “He needs to be able to walk. At least at the start.”       Giangrasso let his gums flap next, obviously learning nothing from the Nazi. “Amico! I fuckin’ have-a rights! You letta me make-a call or I no participate in this fuckin’ concórso! Who the fuck you think you--”       A baton jab to his gut shut him up. This book is total garbage. Additionally, fire is hot and will burn you. Water is wet and you will drown if you try to breath it. Roller coasters are fun unless you are pregnant or have a heart condition. If someone tells you they have an allergy, take their word for it because it won’t kill you if they’re lying about it but you could kill them if you think you should test their claim. An erection lasting more than four hours needs medical attention. So yes, a novel based on a movie produced by WWE for Stone Cold Steve Austin is unsurprisingly total fucking garbage. And it really is so much worse than the movie. The movie is bad for different reasons. It’s not as if the basic premise is unworkable. The fight-to-the-death tournament isn’t a unique plot and it’s not bad because it’s not unique. It’s bad because the music is bad. The action is poorly shot. The script is so dumb I don’t think it’s fair to say the acting is bad. There are so many reasons the movie is bad but I’m not here to talk about the movie. The book is repetitive. I guess Rob Hedden couldn’t come up with a way to effectively portray every character’s reaction to an event without basically retelling the event from another character’s perspective. You get to read the first fight where someone blows up. Then you get to read it again from the production booth as the crew watches. Then you read other characters hearing the explosion and trying to deduce which of their opponents has died. Later, once Stone Cold Steve Austin’s character’s girlfriend starts watching with her friends at a bar, you get that perspective added and it is all very tedious.

I don’t know how to address the racism in this book. Like...the racist characters are obviously portrayed as bad, but then there’s casual racism sprinkled throughout the whole thing. All the characters are some sort of stereotype. Deciding which quotes I would photoshop onto my paintings was difficult, but l realized I highlighted a few pretty good examples of the casual racism directed at the Japanese character, Go Saiga.

”Saiga did a series of cartwheels and flashy kung fu moves. The Englishman deadpanned him. His Japanese mate was just a little bit too gung ho.” “Saiga understood enough of it with the help of McStarley’s gestures. He responded by slicing the air a few times.”

“McStarley heard the noise and turned. His comrade was shouting in Japanese as he came at Conrad, slicing his knives like a crazy sushi chef.”

I imagine if this were a Japanese movie/book, the Japanese version of McStarley (an absolutely terrible name that I can’t get over) would have to express himself in particularly British ways because he doesn’t speak Japanese. So, I don’t know, he holds up an imaginary cup and saucer and mimics sipping some tea. Yes, I’m sure his Japanese counterpart would understand that! 

This book took longer to read than I expected, and that’s mostly because I kept falling asleep while I read it. In my notes, I wrote, “this book is boring! Hard to stay awake! !FOCUSED!” That was after only 68 pages. A long time ago, I had a problem with letting my mind wander while I read. I’d be thinking about something else entirely, not really paying attention as I read through a paragraph or a page and then I’d realize I was lost and find where I got lost and start over. This hasn’t been a problem for me for a long while. Obviously, this happened a lot while I read this book or I wouldn’t have just explained this. There’s one thing I wish I had anticipated. If I was reading The Condemned again, I would keep track of all the references to plasma screens. Everything happens on the plasma. Everyone watches the action on the plasma. In the control room, people are working independently on their computers, but when something happens they watch it on the big plasma. Everyone in the bar can’t crowd around the laptop so the bartender hooks it up to the plasma. I think it’s funny because if feels like “holy shit plasma tvs are amazing and shouldn’t all tvs be plasma from now on? Nothing is better than a good plasma.” It really dates the book in a weird way. It was released in April 2007. At the time, a plasma tv probably would have been the best option for quality high definition rendering of the mostly low quality cameras the crew had to use to be able to film the reality show in The Condemned. Plasma tvs are practically obsolete now though.

I was going to do a third painting where Stone Cold Steve Austin was reading The Condemned to a bunch of children in a classroom, but I really can’t be bothered. I’ve spent enough time on this book already and I’m not even going to try to sell the two paintings I’ve already done because I think it will be a waste of cents to list them on Etsy. If you actually want one of these paintings for whatever reason, send me a message. If I had painted the third painting, here is what Stone Cold Steve Austin would be reading to the children.

“Back home, he would have sicced his posse on the motherfucker or probably just done the job himself. That guard would be lying dead in some alley right about now. But not here. This was not Inglewood. He didn’t have a posse or tickets to a Lakers Game or a table waiting for him at the Brown Sugar strip club. Couldn’t buy off anyone, couldn’t trade dope for favors, couldn’t cap his way out of this. By his own estimation, he was fucked up the ass.”

Indeed.

[filmnovelizations]

The Empire Strikes Back

“To an observer, it may have seemed that Threepio grew misty-eyed, but then it wasn’t the first time he had gotten a drop of oil clogged before his optical sensor.”

I love Star Wars, but I don’t know what to do with the novelizations. They’re not outright bad. They’re not great. I am sometimes impressed with the author’s ability to describe some nonsense and sometimes baffled by a description of a thing I’ve seen in the movie so many times I have to remind myself that this was only the second Star Wars movie and book. I haven’t read any Star Wars books aside from A New Hope, Attack of the Clones, and Empire Strikes Back, but I have to assume that the expanded universe books often take advantage of an assumed level of knowledge and so the authors don’t feel like they have to come up with descriptions of common items and people and droids. If I was writing a Star Wars novel right now, I don’t think I’d bother describing a lightsaber. If I was writing the novelization of the second movie, I’d try to write something better than... “a stout hand-grip unit with a pair of small switches and a surmounting metal disk” ...but I’d probably fail. I could complain about the author using “laser sword” more than “lightsaber” but I think I probably would have done the same thing if I was writing this book in 1979/80. One thing that bothers me most about Star Wars novelizations is the droids. When I have to read paragraphs dedicated to describing their conversations and emotions and personality, it forces me to think about how absurd they are. I think it is weird when R2D2 is assigned masculine pronouns. It is a genderless trashcan. C-3PO at least has a male voice and is built to look like a human male mannequin, but not R2D2. 

“The communication from the robot was even more carefully put forth than before--one might even call the whistle-sentences tactful. It seemed Artoo had no intention of offending the human to whom he had entrusted himself. But wasn’t it possible, the robot calculated, that the human’s brain was slightly malfunctioning?”

This is when Luke is flying to Dagobah and he has a short conversation with R2D2. During this scene, I finally had enough of the fact that R2D2 can’t just speak fucking English. The author has to go through all this description of R2D2 making noises to indicate that it is speaking, and then Luke has to read a translation of what the droid said on a monitor. R2D2 has personality. It carefully considers what to say. It worries when Luke doesn’t make it back to base. It worries about Dagobah. On Cloud City, it has trouble concentrating over all the noise of the battle with the storm troopers. So basically, they can program R2D2 to express all of these emotions while somehow being masculine, but they can’t program it to speak the common language spoken by almost everyone it needs to communicate with very frequently?

Now I just imagine that if R2D2 is speaking, it is complaining about its speech capabilities. Its complaints are translated incorrectly. Meanwhile, C-3PO is “fluent in over 6 million forms of communication.” It’s not like they can’t program R2D2 to speak. It’s just that they won’t. Fucking whistle-sentences.

In the book, Yoda is blue. Apparently he was blue in the early concept art. I don’t know why his blueness wasn’t changed in the novelization.

I’m glad he’s blue in the novelization. I think that’s all I’ve got. You don’t need to read this book. Just watch the movie again and change the color settings on your TV so Yoda is blue and then you let me know what color every other character ends up being. Buy Paintings Here

[filmnovelizations]

Independence Day

“They’ve said it about a hundred times: they’re not falling objects! They’re moving too slowly. And some of them have started moving sideways. They’re flying. They’re fucking flying saucers and this is the fucking invasion of the earth, okay?”

This is an interesting waste of your time. It’s seems to be a rare type of novelization. I’m not sure how to put this better, but it’s like the writer actually tried to make it like a normal book. There’s so much more in the book than the movie, where usually novelizations stray very little from the script. They usually don’t take much time to really describe scenes or provide more character backgrounds than what’s in the movie. This one does, and it feels like a lot of wasted effort because we’re talking about a Roland Emmerich movie. Independence Day is a film that is entertaining enough if you don’t think about it too much. It is total garbage, but that cast is great. In the book, you get an obese, overbearing boss named Marty. In the film, you get Harvey Fierstein. You can have one forgettable scene where Will Smith’s friend tells him to dump his stripper girlfriend Vivica A. Fox and kiss ass so he can become an astronaut, or you can read about his character agonizing about his love for her conflicting with his desire to become an astronaut. You can have drunk Randy Quaid say, “I can fly. I’m pilot,” before getting revenge on the aliens that apparently ruined his life, or you can read his character seeing one of the aliens and realizing they aren’t the aliens he thought experimented on him.

“’Walk to the window. There should be a window right in front of you.’ Reluctantly, she looked around. Sure enough, there was a window only a few feet away.”

This sort of bad writing happens occasionally and it is amusing. It makes it sound like she’s walking around the White House with her eyes closed. Ugh, fine, I’ll open my eyes, but I swear to god if there’s not a window, I’m hanging up! During the first attempt to attack the ships, Steve tells his men to launch their missiles at one mile, and the omnipotent, third person narrator takes a moment to let us know how dangerous this idea is. “One mile? That’s a comfortable distance when you’re standing still, but when you’re streaking along at four hundred miles per hour on a collision course with something a hundred times larger than the Superdome, it doesn’t leave much margin for error.”

My favorite moment you should never put in your book occurs after they come up with the plan to disable the aliens’ shields with a computer virus. Secretary of Defense Albert Nimziki scoffs at the idea and calls it bad science fiction. It’s just a thought away from pointing out this whole book/movie is ripping off War of the Worlds.

Speaking of the Secretary of Defense, he is my favorite character. Or rather, he is such a poorly constructed character that his actions make no sense. He does things because someone had to, I guess, or whatever. Like, he keeps insisting on launching nuclear weapons at the ships after they’ve tried and failed on one ship. He thinks maybe launching more than one nuclear weapon at a ship might work. What’s his argument in favor of this idea? Nothing. He could at least argue that there has to be a limit to the power of the shields, but nope. It’s just the only thing he can think of and the virus plan wasn’t his idea so how could he benefit from that? Apparently, he has aspirations to higher office. It doesn’t matter to him if he makes the planet unlivable to human life as long as he can take credit for killing all the aliens and ride that credit straight to the presidency. What does he gain from arguing against the virus plan? It’s not like they only have that one option. If the virus plans fails, then they can still try his nuclear weapons plan. If his nuclear weapons plan fails, well, too bad because the planet is an irradiated wasteland and isn’t it unfortunate that the aliens have the means to leave and colonize another planet but the humans don’t? Hmm, oh well. Oops.

So, I’ll leave you with this: Secretary of Defense Albert Nimziki has a nickname. The movie barely mentions his name, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t even know who I’m talking about. He was played by James Rebhorn. His nickname is only mentioned once, and it made me think he’d be set if he decided to get into professional wrestling. Or, if he was the main character of the movie, the movie would have to be named after him.

The second half of the movie would be completely different. After the humans mostly wiped themselves out under the brave leadership of The Iron Sphincter Albert Nimziki, the aliens would start setting up the planet for their intended use, by first using some bullshit advanced technology to clean up the nuclear fallout. The Iron Sphincter himself would then lead the resistance by immediately sucking up to the aliens in charge to try to regain a position of power. ---------------------

So, you hopefully noticed I did some paintings for this post. If you didn’t, wh...how? I’m going to try doing this from now on, and I’ll be selling the paintings on Etsy. Well, they’ll be listed for sale on Etsy. Whether I actually sell any of them depends entirely on people’s desire for extremely esoteric paintings, like don’t you want to explain to friends and family The Iron Sphincter? Put that on your wall and baffle them.

Tweenusland

[filmnovelizations]

Getting Even With Dad

“’One point five million,’ Timmy said aloud. He was smart enough to know that that was the same as one and a half million.” I hate this book. It’s not the writer’s fault, really. The story is a crappy assembly of cliches. I don’t remember this movie when it came out. As far as I know, I watched it for the first time last night. It has a weird look to it, like it was actually made about 10-15 years earlier than it was. After I watched it, I checked out its page on IMDB hoping to find any sort of explanation. Instead, I have more questions. Someone added this to the trivia page: “Macaulay Culkin was given time to let his hair grow out in order to play Timmy Gleason. But as soon as filming was done, Culkin wasted no time in getting his hair cut back to the way it was.” If this is true, it is fucking hilarious. His hair...

...in this...

...is the...

...fucking worst.

I hope it’s true they made him grow it out as if it was really important to his character. It’s like, “we need the kid to look like he’s been completely neglected by adults.” I guess if that’s what they were going for, they succeeded. It’s still completely unnecessary. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with the book, which doesn’t even bother to describe him as having a terrible haircut.  I picked this book this time hoping it would be like Good Burger 2 Go. Junior novelizations are usually quick reads that I can laugh at for an hour or so, then sit here and drunkenly relay my laughter to you. I know I’m too old to be the intended audience for junior novelizations now, but Good Burger 2 Go proved that they can be worth anyone’s time. This one was different though. This one is tedious. All the characters are annoying. There’s mild sexism throughout. Everything is so terribly predictable, you wonder why you continue reading. I only ever felt like reading a chapter or two at a time, and they are all rather short chapters. So, two weeks ago, when I actually started this book, I thought I’d be done on the same night, and I’d be able to start another novelization. I’d probably be writing about whatever that novelization would have been right now if it weren’t for this awful piece of shit. Isn’t it weird to find a kids’ movie where you don’t want any of the characters to succeed? That’s not how this should go. Incidentally, if you cut off the last two chapters, the book ends perfectly. It would end with Timmy’s dad and former partner being arrested. Timmy, after his dad finally chose him over crime (seriously, how was this a hard choice?), would have to go back to live with his aunt and new abusive uncle. Timmy’s father would go back to prison, and so would his shitty, unreasonably impatient, shithead former partner. It’s everything I wanted. Instead, the book continues and ruins all the work I put into reading it. You find out Timmy switched the bag so the cops arrested them for nothing. Timmy set it all up so he could have his dad and the bag of coins was returned. It’s awful.

[filmnovelizations]

Face/Off

“From inside his pants, Archer felt a strange, yet familiar sensation. He was sure that inside his boxer shorts, a thousand topless French women, the size of ants, were erecting the Eiffel Tower.” I don’t know where to begin. We all know Face/Off is awful, right? This is a movie we’re all watching for a laugh. And to see Nicolas Cage and John Travolta acting like each other. The plot is so preposterous, the whole face-swapping surgery seems plausible by comparison. The movie, and by extension the book, pins logic to the ground and repeatedly farts in its mouth. The whole story works on the assumption that “because!” is an acceptable answer to the question, “why did that happen?” The most obvious example of this is, “why were so few people in on the plot to give Archer the terrorist’s face?” Because! If more than three people know, the bad guy can’t get away with taking the good guy’s face. “Archer searched for the men’s room. Once in the booth, he wasn’t sure if he should drop his trousers or fall to his knees since he was throwing up on both ends.” A few of my favorite parts of the book aren’t even in the movie. I don’t know if they came from an earlier draft of the script or if Clark Carlton added them to try to fill some gaps. First, after Archer gets the bad guy’s face, he has to train to act like the bad guy. This is sort of implied in the movie during the first prison fight scene. In the book, they make this big deal about how the bad guy is left handed, so Archer has to learn to instinctively do things left handed. He has to learn to enjoy smoking and drinking the bad guy’s preferred brands. This makes the whole thing so much more absurd. With such a limited amount of time to find the bomb, the good guy has to spend part of it developing a taste for mescal. What if Archer goes through this radical surgery and someone in the top secret, maximum security prison offers him a bottle of mescal and he doesn’t eat the worm? Oh my, then everyone will know he’s not the real Castor Troy and the jig is up! Naturally, someone in the prison does exactly that almost immediately, so it’s a good thing he spent a little time getting drunk in preparation for this mission. Second, after Archer escapes, he makes a few stops before going to Castor Troy’s friends for help. In the movie, he escapes and goes right to Castor’s known associates, which is of course a good way to get caught. In the book, he makes a couple stops before this questionable decision. One of the places he stops, mainly for some sleep, is Castor Troy’s mother house. Her name is Helen. Helen O. Troy. She is obese and a hoarder and her criminal mastermind sons have neglected her terribly. She offers him a pork chop, and though he’s starving, he declines because of the sanitary conditions of the obese hoarder’s kitchen. He just wants to sleep. He lays down in a bed and this happens... “‘Take your socks off,’ she said, and popped the lid off the tub. Archer did so, as she dunked her fingers in some white goo. ‘Mother will rub your feet with some sour cream and you’ll fall asleep in a jiffy.’ Archer grinned again, in spite of all that had happened, and allowed her to massage his toes with some Jerseymaid.” This is not something you should do with sour cream. Google tells me that people apparently use sour cream for some skin treatments, but from what I can tell they all involve washing it off soon after. If you rub it on your feet and fall asleep, you are going to wake up with feet that smell like rancid sour cream. Third, throughout the book, Archer keeps stealing or taking advantage of or destroying things and making mental notes to make up for it once he gets his identity back. He tells one of the prison guards, “I’m going to have you fired.” After breaking out of prison, he gets some crappy food and clothes from a homeless shelter. At some point, he steals a work truck from some landscapers. At the end, he makes up for it by making a donation to the shelter and hiring the landscapers to mow his lawn and also making sure the FBI pays them for their lost wages and equipment or whatever. He tells the President about the conditions in the top secret, maximum security prison and all the guards and scientists working and committing human rights violations are arrested and held in the prison until trial. The best “making up for it” though is something that’s completely changed from the movie. At the end of the movie, Archer introduces Castor’s son to his family to get them to agree to adopt him. It makes sense as both of his biological parents are dead and with the movie you might as well assume he has no biological grandparents or extended family to live with. It’s kind of creepy and weird as fuck to adopt your enemy’s son to replace your son that he killed, but that’s the movie. In the book, “he arranged for Adam Hassler to be adopted by a South Dakota rancher and his wife.“ He doesn’t do anything to improve Helen O. Troy’s situation and he doesn’t see if maybe she would like to adopt her grandson. So you’ve finally convinced your wife that you are indeed her husband and the man with your face is actually the man that murdered your son. What do you do now? Do you get her to help you convince the FBI of the truth so you can ambush him? If you don’t, things will just get needlessly complicated when they try to stop you. Wait a second...why are you still not telling anybody? Did you learn nothing? Oh, you’re just going to try to shoot him in public and then hope your FBI buddies won’t shoot you before you can explain? But why are you doing that? Because! For his part, Clark Carlton does a fair job, often describing thing in such bizarre, amusing ways, like the description of an erection I included at the beginning of this post. Toward the end, I noticed a few instances of sentences beginning with “somehow” and I wondered if he was doing this all a long as a sort of “I know this is impossible or doesn’t make sense, but I have given up trying to give reason to it.” This is what I would do, if I had to adapt a script for a John Woo film into a novel. Too many sentences would begin or end with “somehow” or “for some reason.” It would be terrible. Finally, the book contains a paragraph that needs to be put out there. I know it’s technically already out there in the book, but really if I don’t include it, no one might ever read it again. Right before Archer finally kills his enemy, there’s this small setup for the later paragraph: “for a moment, he imagined he saw his son riding a winged unicorn. Michael was looking down, as Archer’s finger rubbed the trigger.” And so, here it is: “As the chopper flew through the canyons of clouds, Archer thought he saw his son again. The unicorn was resting, chewing on a cloud. Mikey saw his father and waved. The boy no longer had a red balloon, but an all-day sucker. ‘Good-bye, Daddy,’ he said, mouthing the words so Archer could read them. ‘Good-bye, Mikey,’ Archer mouthed back and waved. Archer was crying now as he watched the unicorn turn tail and his son disappear in the mists. Buzz and Wanda looked at Archer as tears spilled over his cheeks. They looked out the window and wondered what he was waving at.”

[filmnovelizations]

Highlander

[filmnovelizations]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"'The death toll now reaches twelve and a half in the tragedy of Hemery High School. It was at the senior dance five days ago that the school was beset by a roving gang of crack-crazed gunmen. Survivors say some two hundred of the ruffians laid the school gym under a kind of siege, claiming several lives in the process.'"

This should be short. I really don't have much to say about this one. I started reading, I consumed 2.5 beers. I finished reading. According to IMDB, the movie is 86 minutes long. According to me, that seems about right for the book, if you read like me (which is not very fast at all). I only really have 3 questions: 1. Why is it called the senior dance and not senior prom? Regional colloquialism or did the use of "prom" really take over after 1992? 2. The cover shows the villain playing a violin. Never happens in the book. What gives? 3. Twelve and a half people died?

The book is very 90's, with all the girls' dialogue being mostly a mixture of gibberish and sarcastic vapidity. What's more important than training to fight vampires? A makeover for the old, poorly-dressed man, obviously. It's basically Clueless with vampires. I guess it was funny at the time.

I can't decide if this is the best or worst novelization. It's not poorly written and it's not very interesting writing. It just is. It's the most "this is what reading this movie would be like" novelization I've read, if that makes sense. I guess that makes it a good novelization and a terrible book. Whatever.

[filmnovelizations]

Good Burger 2 Go

"From behind his dingy fast-food counter, the young employee stared at his customer through large brown eyes. The customer stared back at him from behind the thick pair of bifocals that balanced precariously at the end of his pointed nose. His bald and ancient face hung slack with an expression of shock and horror. The Good Burger employee was used to this look; he could handle it. He was calm. He was cool. His name was Ed, and he wasn't wearing any pants." Okay, so I found this book at a Goodwill yesterday and immediately thought, "fuck it. This counts." If they had made a second movie, this would be it. So I bought it, and imagined it would be terrible and that I would just pretend it's the greatest book ever written to be funny. But actually, Good Burger 2 Go is just pretty funny. It's certainly the best book I've ever read about two fast-food employees chasing down a wealthy customer and accidentally ending up in Paris where they meet a mime and get kidnapped to Germany where they escape and steal a hot air balloon that they crash in Egypt then get arrested for kidnapping the wealthy customer. Don't worry though. They were just framed by the wealthy man's nephew. They just wanted to return 18 cents to the wealthy man. He had left Good Burger without his change.

The plot, as you can see, has 90's kids' movie sequel written all over it. It's goofy and preposterous, and it's just an excuse to put the characters in different situations so they can make some obvious jokes. However, Steve Holland goes beyond that pretty often. When I started reading the book, I had a strange thought that if I had to write this book, I'd put random footnotes throughout to make little jokes. 21 pages later, Steve Holland did exactly that. It might have freaked me out a little. So, for example, the second footnote was on the sentence, "Paris, the city of lights." The footnote adds, "also, but slightly less well known, the city of French people." There's 8 completely pointless footnotes throughout this short book. It made me happy. As I mentioned earlier, they meet a mime in Paris. The mime is always described as beautiful, as she's Ed's love interest throughout. Where he normally has trouble understanding people because they're talking, he understands her perfectly because she's miming. Anyway, I want to share my favorite paragraph, from the part where she is introduced. "Mimes have had a long and troubled history ever since they set off to perform on street corners and parks and children's birthday parties to prove to the world that they were more than just silent clowns, they were artists. They failed miserably, and it didn't take long before mimes became the most used punch line in all the world."

Shortly after they become friends with the mime, they run across a Le Good Burger and I had to take this picture to share with friends immediately.

Now, if you're the type that likes to get drunk and read ridiculous things, this book is perfect. You can get it for a penny on Amazon. You'll pay $3.99 for shipping, but you'll end up spending more than that for the beer you'll be drinking, so what's the problem? You don't have $4 to throw away on a novel sequel to Good Burger? Bullshit. If you're not the type to get drunk and read ridiculous things, then I'm sorry I have wasted your time. I don't know what you're doing here.

[filmnovelizations]

Catwoman

"That night Patience fell into a troubled sleep of confused dreams in which the moon raced across a violet sky and small, swiftly moving creatures only half-glimpsed, leaped and fought mock battles at the edge of a sluggish river where cattails and tall reeds rustled in the night wind." Bullshit. This book is bullshit. I started reading this book in early December. Before that, I was reading these novelizations relatively quickly (relatively!), but this one is fucking torturous. I've read one of Elizabeth Hand's novelizations already, and I should have read my review before I started this one, but I'm a little glad I didn't. For reference, 12 Monkeys. Now... 1. In the previous review, I complained of being so exhausted by the writer's style that I quit reading for at least a month. This time, I quit for about 3 months. So... 2. I don't always keep track of an author's use of "myriad" because some authors don't use the word. I usually keep track of something a writer uses more frequently than I think is normal (and I swear, one day I will reread the Song of Ice and Fire series just to mark all the uses of "small wonder" because it rivals the death), so I think it's funny I kept track of "myriad" again. Again, she really didn't use it that much for a 275-page book, but that's my hang-up. 3. I didn't notice a lot of sentence fragments, so Hand stopped doing that or I stopped noticing it because I'm getting accustomed to it.

As for the book, it's at least 49 pages too long. And the prologue is completely useless. Including the prologue, there are four sections in the book that are just old bullshit cat stories. The second one, which consumes 20 pages and 98% of chapter 17, is where I first got stuck for months. Basically, Patience Phillips receives a book from Ophelia Powers about cat lore, and though she has urgent shit to deal with, she just sits down and reads the book. 3 times. And each time, the entire text of what she reads is in the book, so I read it too. And none of it adds anything that would be missed. Let's destroy the pacing of the story to start at the beginning of another story three fucking times! Because why not? Will the main character learn anything or even acknowledge the stories she read in the book from the old woman? No? Even better! Everything about this book is terrible. The story is absurd, even forgiving the woman being brought back to life by a cat and gaining cat powers because this is Catwoman. The characters got their names from the George Lucas school of pulling a name and an adjective out of an over-sized foam cowboy hat. Patience Phillips. Tom Lone. Ophelia Powers. Fuck that. There are cliches on every page. The one-liners are abundant and not amusing. Of course the female comic book anti-hero takes on a cosmetics corporation.

Elizabeth Hand can't be blamed for all of the problems. She can only be blamed for taking an obviously terrible script and not making fun of it for less that 200 pages. Why does it have to be taken seriously? You read the script, you see the names, plot, and terrible one-liners, and you don't just make a joke of it? Why would you take your job so seriously if your job was adapting Catwoman into a novel? Have fun with it. No one will notice for at least 10 years.

[filmnovelizations]

Howard the Duck

"Certain parents would claim Howard the (of all things) Duck capable of corrupting their children and advancing the cause of Satan in the modern world. Yes, that Satan!" I love this book. It has its problems, which I'll get to in a minute, but first I can't wait to say this is probably the best film novelization you are likely to find. I haven't read them all (yet), so I throw that "probably" in there to leave room for challengers. As it is, Ellis Weiner is just a funny writer who recognized a terrible script and just did whatever the hell he wanted with it. There are several rambling tangents that he goes on whenever he feels like it. Some of these are marked off as "Coverage In Depth Inserts" where he will ramble about politics and government waste or why a character dresses the way he does for several pages, and they are mostly funny. Other times, he will go into the entire backstory of a character for several pages, but the character is just an Extra in the film. He might have one line in the script, but there's several pages dedicated to who he is as a person in the book. The first chapter might be the greatest first chapter ever written. It starts with The Universe, or God, or whatever you want to call it, talking IN ALL CAPS. Soon, the narrator interrupts and basically insults God for trying to be Carl Sagan in a Howard the Duck book. The narrator argues with GOD/THE UNIVERSE for a few pages, before deciding to ignore it and get on with Howard the Duck. GOD/THE UNIVERSE'S interruptions into the Narrator's story become less frequent throughout the chapter, which is a decent introduction into the life of Howard the Duck, of Duck World. As Howard the Duck is mysteriously transported to Earth, he comments on how lonely it is in space. GOD/THE UNIVERSE responds and they have a brief conversation about this unfair bullshit that is happening to Howard. It's fucking bizarre and I love it. In the middle of the big climax, after the female lead has been kidnapped by the scientist possessed by The Dark Overlord of the Universe, there's an entire page dedicated to her thoughts on celebrity names, like "what the hell kind of name is Sigourney?" and "how could there actually be a guy named Armand Hammer? Was that supposed to be some kind of amazing coincidence, that an oil millionaire was named after a box of baking soda? Were his parents kidding, or what--" The book is full of these ridiculous little tangents about anything. There are multiple jokes about the book itself as well. There's a point near the end where Ellis Weiner points how implausible the whole plot of the book is, then for good measure puts, "THE ENTIRE STORY OF HOWARD THE DUCK COULD BE SAID TO LACK A CERTAIN DEGREE OF CREDIBILITY." Seriously. In all caps. My favorite example is his mockery of standard film/tv tropes. At the aftermath of the diner scene, he mentions all the police, ambulances, fire trucks and tv reporters, and then has this wonderful paragraph about a certain trope you should be familiar with... "Also on hand, pointing in wonder and shielding their children on cue, was a crack squad of Para-Bystanders. Their job: to gather in a cluster and looked (sic) appalled or fascinated whenever ordinary bystanders were unavailable. At remote locations. In inclement weather. Whenever a public event required an innocent group of observers and secondary victims, the Para-Bystanders were there. It is to them, in sincere appreciation for their dedication and skill in the cause of bystanding, that parts of this book are gratefully dedicated." Now, my problems with this book are pretty much limited to the duck/bird puns, which are abundant. Some of them are funny. The best use of them is in one of the "Coverage In Depth Inserts" where he talks about the books that Howard read that shaped his personal philosophy. But the only reason I like them here is because of the one that isn't changed. First the was The Fountainhen, then Hatcher in the Rye and Hatch 22. And then there's just One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I wish I had counted the puns as I read. I imagine it almost averages out to one per page. I get the appeal and desire to make these jokes. Sometimes they are mildly amusing. But it bothers me that there's a parallel universe that appears to be pun-centric. I'm okay with a parallel universe where ducks evolved into the intelligent, dominant species, and the world is just like Earth. But then everything has a duck pun in it. James Bond is James Pond. United States of America is United Drakes of America. philharmonic is billharmonic. Macanudos are Quackanudos. So on. If humans were prone to naming everything, literally everything, with some sort of ape pun, I might find this more amusing, as a way of mocking our tendency to name everything with a pun. We don't do that. Neither should the ducks. It might have been funnier if some jackass kept making duck puns at Howard and was put in his proper jackass place for his assumption that everything on Duck World involved puns. To his credit, Ellis Weiner pretty much does just that on page 73. Some jackass makes a duck joke at Howard, and the narrator says, "he was starting to get a little tired of the duck jokes. Who isn't?" But there's still almost 160 pages after that full of duck puns, so I don't know how tired he was of writing duck jokes. So the puns aren't nearly annoying enough to dismiss the book. Ellis Weiner is funny enough that the puns don't really matter. If the puns were the only jokes in a more strict novelization of the script, I would probably write hate mail to the publisher. Finally, there's two things I want to share with you. First there's this paragraph in the climax, which I scanned because...

And second, there's a point in the book where Howard buys children's clothes at a Goodwill using money from Duck World. Now, I bought this book at a Goodwill using money from Earth. Coincidence? Obviously. You should probably read this, or maybe something else Ellis Weiner wrote. I'll probably order another of his books before I go to sleep tonight, because I'm drunk and fighting the part of my brain that knows I already have too many books I haven't read yet. "What's one more, really? Plus, you have to get the latest John Swartzwelder book anyway." I won't let you know what wins, because it doesn't matter.