More F Words: Film Franchises and Fighting the Power, The Hunger Games and The Dark Knight Rises

As waves of disillusionment and frustration have swept over a world in economic crisis, it should hardly be surprising that at least two of this year's highest grossing films have been explicitly political in content. More remarkable, however are the corners from which this social commentary has emerged: one a children's film, and the other a comic-book superhero film.

Politics aren't new to either of these genres, of course. In the world of superheroes we've already seen ideologies clash in Watchmen and the damage done in the Middle East by the American arms trade in Iron Man. Claims have also been made for political agendas in a whole range of children's films, provoking both condemnation and praise. For many years numerous kids' films have arguably taken the side of the underdog against greedy, authoritarian or conservative baddies (see, for example, Monsters Inc., or The Hunchback of Notre Dame), and more recently many have begun taking environmentalist stances (see Wall-E or Happy Feet). Nevertheless, it's still relatively rare to find films in either category that engage openly and directly in complex ways with social and political issues - after all, what both obviously share is a tendency towards the fantastic, stories that aim at least in part for a kind of escapism. Perhaps Batman was an odd choice for Chris Nolan, perhaps children an odd choice for Suzanne Collins. Nevertheless, the massive success of both movies has proven them risks worth taking.

After enduring Chris Nolan's first two arduous attempts at a Batman film, actually enjoying The Dark Knight Rises was something of a shock for me. I've frequently expressed my feelings towards both of these earlier films, but for your benefit, here's a summary of what's been said in more detail elsewhere. With its barely coherent structure and paper-thin characterisations, Batman Begins is, in my opinion, the epic low point of in the career of an otherwise exciting, original and intellectually stimulating director. Only marginally less disappointing was The Dark Knight, which at least had two or three memorable characters and something vaguely resembling a plot. Heath Ledger's Joker was definitely well worth all the hype, with the late actor giving one of the most breathtaking performances I've ever seen in a movie. Still, the rest of it was rather slow and dull: I think I'd happily have cut every scene that he wasn't in. Harvey Dent/Twoface was okay I guess, but wasn't really given adequate time to develop as a character. The ending felt cheap and tacked on, and the inclusion of two baddies left a film which might otherwise have had some potential looking just as bad as Spider-Man 3 (and before you argue with me, that film did have its moments - The Sandman was a brilliant, very much underrated character). As a result, I don't really know why The Dark Knight Rises worked out so well by comparison, but it definitely did.

I'm probably going to upset a lot of people by suggesting that even The Dark Knight Rises isn't perfect, much as I enjoyed it. The whole business with Ra's al Ghul was still unnecessarily complicated and confusing, without really adding anything to the story. I didn't like Liam Neeson in the first film and I didn't like him any better in this one. Nor did I care particularly for Marion Cotillard as Miranda/Talia. I didn't buy into her mini-affair with Bruce that seemed to blossom out of nowhere. True, both she and others amongst our hero's friends had been pushing for it for quite some time, but Bruce in his turn had repeatedly expressed his lack of personal/sexual interest in her, and furthermore, his growing feelings for Selina Kyle were by that point already fairly obvious. Yes she had done charity work and yes she was involved in his business projects and yes, perhaps she knew him better than most people, but until that one scene with the rain, there was absolutely no chemistry between them.

Bane was by far the most interesting character, and Tom Hardy's easily the best performance in the film. Much like Shadow in American Gods, I had heard of men who were barrel-chested before, but until seeing this film, I'd had no image to accompany the metaphor. I do worry about these actors and what they're willing to do to their bodies for the sake of an acting role, but I suppose it's none of my business really. I have heard the complaints about him being difficult to understand, but I didn't really have a problem with this myself. Personally, I found his voice far less irritating than Christian Bale's stupid bat voice. Admittedly he toned that down for this film, but it was utterly ridiculous in the first two and, which annoyed me even more, he still used it when talking to characters who knew his secret identity. I've also heard the claims for Michael Caine being the best thing in it. He's good, and there are some incredibly touching moments, but I still liked Tom Hardy more.

So on to what is probably the most fascinating thing about this film. Claims have been made for The Dark Knight Rises following a specific political line from one end of the spectrum to the other. Interpretations of the film's "message" vary wildly depending on who's doing the interpreting, with some critics angrily disparaging what they see as little more than propaganda, whilst others eagerly approve of a story they believe is sympathetic with their own views. The best course seems to me to be to take Nolan at his own word, and hold back from making rash claims that the film means one thing or supports another. Says Nolan,

We throw a lot of things against the wall to see if it sticks. We put a lot of interesting questions in the air, but that's simply a backdrop for the story. What we're really trying to do is show the cracks of society, show the conflicts that somebody would try to wedge open. We're going to get wildly different interpretations of what the film is supporting and not supporting, but it's not doing any of those things. It's just telling a story. If you're saying, 'Have you made a film that's supposed to be criticizing the Occupy Wall Street movement?' – well, obviously, that's not true... If the populist movement is manipulated by somebody who is evil, that surely is a criticism of the evil person. You could also say the conditions the evil person is exploiting are problematic and should be addressed... I've got all sorts of opinions, but this isn't what we're doing here. I love when people get interested in the politics of it, when they see something in it that moves them in some way. But I'm not being disingenuous when I say that we write from a place of 'What's the worst thing our villain Bane can do? What are we most afraid of?' He's going to come in and turn our world upside down. That has happened to other societies throughout history, many times, so why not here? Why not Gotham? We want something that moves people and gets under the skin.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/christopher-nolan-talks-the-politics-of-the-dark-knight-rises-and-more-from-the-films-press-tour-20120724?page=3

Much like Watchmen, then, The Dark Knight Rises represents a clash between extreme versions of opposing ideologies. Abstract theories and beliefs become embodied by particular characters, who come into physical as well as intellectual conflict with each other. Nolan's films have never really been particularly concerned with character - as a director, it's clear that he's far more interested in ideas and pushing them as far as they can go. This does land him in trouble sometimes, of course - sometimes stories suffer through insufficient or unbelievable characterisation. It is worth noting that this isn't the case with all ideas men - Ridley Scott, for example, in Prometheus, or even Watchmen itself. Nevertheless, The Dark Knight Rises is probably far less culpable of this than most Nolan movies. But if we understand his characters as essentially allegorical, things begin to make more sense: the Joker is Chaos, Two Face is Chance or Fate, Bane is the Angry Mob, Catwoman is Disillusionment, having given up on ideologies and people alike, Talia is the Extreme Revolutionary who believes that everything must be overturned before any good can be done, and Batman himself is a kind of conservative notion of Justice, working from within the system to better it. We're not asked to support any of these, but simply to observe and come to our own conclusions. The Dark Knight Rises is ultimately a non-judgmental film, showing us all perspectives and leaving us to decide for ourselves what we think.

The Hunger Games is probably my favourite film released this year. This summer I devoured the book in maybe two or three sittings, in between handing in my dissertation and revising for an exam on Joyce's Ulysses - it was that important to get it read. As I touched on in my last film post, this movie does something different to most literary adaptations, in that rather than attempting to translate the book faithfully onto the screen, it acts as a kind of companion piece, giving us a different perspective on the action and story. Not only does this mean that readers of the novel can't be disappointed by the film being unfaithful, instead being treated to something new that engages them in different ways, but it also makes perfect sense cinematically. The Hunger Games is a fantastic example of self-reflexive cinematography. Because the film is about a hyped-up on-screen entertainment show, we effectively come to share the perspective of the Panem audience of the games themselves. The film pulls us in, manipulating us just enough to make us engage with the games on their own terms, making us complicit with Panem's whole horrific social system and the murder of its children disguised as public entertainment. Much like Panem's citizens, we find ourselves rooting for particular characters, hoping they'll survive - that they'll win - which effectively means that we're hoping that the other kids will die. And, at times, we may even catch ourselves being secretly pleased when one of the "career tributes" gets their comeuppance. But just before we can get in too deep, we're pulled back up, reminded that these are children, reminded how awful the whole thing really is.

Another element of the story that's unique to the film is the "behind-the-scenes" view we get of Haymitch wining and dining Panem's rich and powerful to persuade them to send expensive gifts of food and medicine to his "mentees" in the arena, scenes which remind us of big business deals that happen every day - that could almost be something out of Mad Men. Haymitch has to become an ad-man of sorts, fighting for business against stiff competition. This, I think, serves to make things even more real, bringing the story even closer to the world we know. We also get to look in on the games-makers, designing and creating obstacles and monsters to make the games tougher for the contestants and more exciting for the viewers. This is where we really begin to understand the contest as a game. The games-makers behave almost like computer-games designers, thinking up ways of increasing the difficulty in each "level" of the game, testing "players'" skills and eventually making them fight super-creatures like end-of-level "bosses". Even the little medical and food packages sent in by sponsors will seem vaguely familiar to gamers, closely resembling the first aid kits, "extra lives" or "1ups" that you might collect in a video game world.

A lot of people have argued that the basic concept behind the story just isn't plausible enough, insisting that parents would never willingly give up their children to fight to the death, or if they were forced to, that other people wouldn't watch it or participate in it. Honestly, I think this is a very naive, overly optimistic view of human nature. The horrible truth is that it's no leap to imagine a world like that at all. In fact, I'd argue that all of the essential components of The Hunger Games to some extent already exist in our world today. In this country, mothers and fathers are already quite happy for their sons to join the military at the tender age of 16: an age considered too young to drive, to young to marry without consent, to young to smoke or drink, yet old enough to go out and fight and kill other people, some of them perhaps just as young as they are. 16 is the upper age limit for Hunger Games "tributes" (a term which encapsulates the seductive language already used to political effect in times of war - words like sacrifice and heroism, and the notion that these people are fighting and killing on our behalf, in our name, in order to protect us all), and is the age of both Katniss and Peeta when they take part. Elsewhere in the real world, much younger children are often kidnapped and forced to fight in wars that they cannot possibly understand. All over the world, footage of war zones is beamed directly into the homes of anxious audiences and, while we're perhaps supposed to be appalled by this violence, these days it's never very long before real and terrible wars become sources of fun and competitive gaming. Meanwhile, reality TV shows command ridiculous amounts of attention, and are often highly competitive, evoking visceral emotional responses in their viewers. Though it's not considered socially acceptable any more, public executions and fights to the death between adults or between men and animals have, historically, been treated as sources of public entertainment, drawing a crowd in much the same way as  reality TV contests and event films like The Hunger Games do now. A relative minority of us with consciences would probably like to think that we're past all that now, but you only need to look back to the execution of Saddam Hussein and how the video footage went viral to realise that this is simply not the case - so much of the world is still baying for the blood of whomever its been told to hate. Consequentially, I don't think it's at all difficult to imagine these things colliding and merging to create the kind of terrible monstrosity that Collins has imagined. And as she's said herself, most of her ideas came from watching television.

Nevertheless, it's not quite all misery and horror. Mostly, but not all. Both the film and the book leave us, crucially, with hope. The film features an important discussion of this between President Snow and Seneca Crane that doesn't appear in the books, in which Snow explains just how powerful this can be. I'm not going to spoil anything for those who haven't read the sequels yet, but rest assured, the hope that Katniss's defiance gives to the people of Panem becomes a pivotal part of the story. Unlike The Dark Knight, The Hunger Games does seem to have something of a moral and political message. It serves to show us that we can effect a change: that none of us is truly powerless, and that we always have a choice. In order to do this, it must first convince us of the necessity of acting and speaking out before it's too late, and the film achieves this by showing us just how bad things can get when we don't. To recycle one of my favourite quotations (generally attributed to the philosopher and political theorist Edmund Burke):

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Interestingly, although the real source of this is disputed, there is something that Burke definitely wrote which perhaps fits The Hunger Games even better:

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

F Words: Film and Feminism 2012

So I've made a New Year's Resolution to get back into the swing of regular blogging again but, in the Dickensian spirit of never leaving till tomorrow what you can do today (this is the first quote in the literary diary I got bought for Christmas), here begins my return. What better way to start than with two of my favourite subjects?

Despite seeing the release of a Bond film (this one unusually lacking in a significant “Bond Girl”), a Twilight film, and multiple superhero films, 2012 has actually, I think, been an exceptionally good year for women in film. We've seen the rise of one of the best actors currently alive in Jennifer Lawrence, who starred in four films this year; we've gratefully devoured two major kids'/young people's films starring female protagonists (The Hunger Games and Brave), both of which have actually managed to attract boys as well as girls to see them; and we've been treated to two different versions of the Snow White fairy tale, each in their own way working to reshape the Grimms' and Walt Disney's canonical vision of passive, deathly beauty. Of course, it's a long time since Disney films have been quite so repressive, and this year's feature Brave is a perfect example of how far the company has come over the last 75 years. Perhaps less overtly "feminist", but nevertheless significant, were this year's Spider-Man reboot, which takes Peter Parker back to his pre-Mary Jane days, and Ridley Scott's Prometheus, a prequel of sorts to the Alien franchise, well known for dealing with the issues of sex, sexuality and motherhood in fascinatingly weird and nightmarish ways. Interestingly, this is arguably true of another contemporary film franchise, the final part of which was also released this year, though the Twilight series' attempts at female representation are rather less progressive or exciting than in any of the films I'm going to explore here.

So first off is, of course, The Hunger Games, the movie adaptation of Suzanne Collins' gripping novel which follows the story of one young woman's struggle to survive in a blood-thirsty dystopian future, where a sinister, dictatorial government uses reality TV to control ordinary people's lives - and deaths. The film plays an interesting game by standing apart from the book, working more as a companion piece to, than a visualised version of, the material in the novel. There is a change in perspective - we're no longer seeing solely through the eyes of the main character, Katniss, but instead are granted a kind of omniscience, at times being placed amongst the people of Panem who form the audience for the Hunger Games itself (provoking an interesting and often disturbing kind of self-reflection in the cinema audience - how far are we as viewers drawn into and manipulated by the games themselves?), and at times being allowed a more exclusive behind-the-scenes insight into the game-makers' work. I'll explore this more later in another article. For the purposes of this review, however, what's most exciting about The Hunger Games is that it manages to maintain its focus on a central female character without forfeiting half of its potential audience. Both The Hunger Games books and films have been an incredible cultural phenomenon because they've proven that boys as well as girls can enjoy books by and about women and girls. Furthermore, the franchise's success amongst girls and young women has also proven that girls don't necessarily want to read about girls being stereotypically girly. Katniss is bold and powerful, a fighter to the death. Whilst it may be the influence of her semi-maternal, protective instincts that initially land her in the Hunger Games arena (and later lead her into a partnership with the youngest Hunger Games participant, Rue), she proves herself as capable of being cold and calculating, when necessary, as any of her rivals, shooting another participant and manipulating the hapless Peeta's emotional attachment to her in order to win viewers' sympathies. She's a first class hunter, having been used to acting a sort of dual mother/father role at home, and stands up to authority by refusing to collude in the "game" that she is forced to play, forming a last minute suicide pact with Peeta and thus denying the games-makers their all-important winner. Katniss has mixed motivations, defies expectations, and is just about as complex a character as could be hoped for. Furthermore, the film features a whole range of other distinct, individual female characters, from Effie Trinket to Katniss's sister Prim, all of whom interact extensively with other female characters, meaning that the film easily passes the Bechdel Test.

Another of the highest grossing films this year was Pixar's Brave which, even before its release, managed to generate a lot of attention from feminist bloggers and critics. In terms of positive representation, the film definitely lived up to expectations. Based on a story idea by Brenda Chapman (who also co-directed and co-wrote the screenplay), Brave features three significant female characters, including its protagonist, the headstrong teenage princess Merida, and is principally concerned with Merida's refusal to marry or be "ladylike" and the conflict this creates between her and her mother. On the whole, I really enjoyed this film. With its sublime highland scenery and Merida's breathtakingly gorgeous hair, Brave is certainly a visual feast. I also loved the soundtrack so much that I had to go straight out and buy the CD. "Learn Me Right" even managed to slightly soften my general aversion to Mumford & Sons, who, I think, profited by a little much-needed edge acquired from singer Birdy. Nevertheless, there did seem to be something missing from this film. Perhaps on some level this is an unfair judgement. By any normal standards it was still fantastic, but unfortunately all other Pixar films have been so utterly extraordinary that this seemed to be a slip in both comic and emotive standards for the studios. For me, Brave achieves neither the heart-stopping emotional rollercoaster ride, nor the side-splitting hilarity that we've come to expect of the geniuses at Pixar. The script seemed weaker, the characters less engaging and entertaining, the resolution a little too easy and predictable. And perhaps most problematic of all was that, to any die-hard Disney fan, it all felt a little too familiar: the plot of Brave bears a striking similarity to that of 2003's Brother Bear, which happens to be one of my favourite Disney films.

It seems appropriate at this point to express some disagreement with claims that have been thrown around that this is a bold new step for Disney as a whole. It's may be the first Pixar film to concern itself primarily with a girl (although arguably Boo is at the centre of Monsters Inc., even if she doesn't talk, and there's no denying who is everyone's favourite Finding Nemo character), and it's certainly the first to be so centrally interested in a female-female relationship, but as to Disney films in general, it's been a rare thing for quite some time now to find one that doesn't feature a dynamic, active heroine, usually with at least one significant female friend. Looking back over the years, Disney's very first full-length animated feature was, after all, a retelling of an age old story about a fraught relationship between a (step)mother and (step)daughter in which conflict is resolved with the help of a little magic and transformation. While it may be difficult to argue the case for Disney's Snow White as an aspirational figure, the studios' choice to bring to life this classic fairy tale paved the way for numerous later retellings of other tales, often primarily concerned with young women, and growing gradually more irreverent over the years. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel and The Frog Prince have all been given animated make-overs by Disney, and all feature female protagonists and additional female characters. Each of the Disney heroines I grew up with in the nineties - Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Esmeralda, Meg, Mulan - openly stand up to authority and defy the sexist social expectations that threaten to constrain them. Whilst it's true that few Disney films foreground female-female relationships, it's not true at all that these are absent or even obscure in the Disneyverse. Aurora lives with three female fairies, Cinderella has her helpers in lady mice and her fairy godmother, Ariel has sisters and comes up against a female villain, Belle talks to female teapots and wardrobes, Pocahontas has her best pal Nakoma as well as the wise old Grandmother Willow to refer to, and Mulan has her mother and bolshy granny to contend with. So, does Brave actually break any new ground? Is it really brave or bold? Well, yes. There is something that's crucially different about Brave to all but two other Disney films that I can think of: Brave is about women, but it isn't a love story. Though there have been a number of Disney films that focus more on male-male friendship or male-male familial love than on romantic love (Brother Bear, Toy Story, Cars, Monsters Inc., The Fox and the Hound, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, The Emperor's New Groove, Treasure Planet, etc.), the only other female protagonists in Disney films who don't become romantically involved with other characters are Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Lilo from Lilo & Stitch, and in both cases, these are children who are far too young for that sort of nonsense. In this regard, Brave is still covering relatively untouched ground.

Two more fairy tale films were released this year concerning mothers and daughters, both retellings of the Snow White story. The first of these, Mirror Mirror, is a comic romp, which sees the (not so very charming) prince fail to match up to "Snow" either in intelligence or in fighting skills. At the time of release, the irreverence of this version, with its campy comedy and gaudy spectacle, elicited mixed reviews. For my part, I loved it. It definitely places Snow White and the Wicked Queen right at the heart of the tale where they belong, directing the action of the story between them. Both characters were better developed and far more engaging than in most versions of this story. Comic and sinister in equal measures, Julia Roberts really brings the royal stepmother to life. Lily Collins, too, definitely makes Snow White her own. Mixing knowing confidence with youthful naivety, she is both old-fashioned fairytale princess and 21st century teen. I liked the choice to make the magic mirror speak as a reflection of the queen herself, which both emphasised the character's cruelty and vanity, and served to make her more responsible for her own decisions, rather than putting her at least partly under the magical influence of another. One of the most notable changes to the story is that the Queen's transformation into an old woman is left till right at the end of the film. Turning up at her stepdaughter's wedding, the Queen is immediately identified by Snow White, who refuses her gift of an apple. This is a huge and positive change from the Grimm brothers' tale, in which Snow White is fooled a total of three times by the disguised Queen before her eventual "death". The first two times, she is rescued by the dwarfs, who paternally chastise her for her foolishness. Once dead, her cold and coffin-bound body is claimed by a creepy necrophiliac prince, who accidentally reanimates her by dislodging a piece of poison apple stuck in her throat as he carries her off. Here are no magic kisses.

This leads me on to the main problem I had with this film, which is the scene in which the dwarfs insist that she "prepare" for her first kiss by dressing up and having her face and hair done. Quite aside from the fact that it's difficult to see what this elegant, intelligent heroine sees in the stupid, irritating and easily led prince at all, this was probably the least credible and most annoying part of the whole film. Not only was the dolling up a pointless exercise as far as the hypnotised prince's appreciation was concerned (Who exactly was she trying to impress? Her stepmother's pet dog?), but also the implication that all of that stuff is important, that it is in these shallow things that the magic of a kiss lies, was extremely frustrating - both sexist and materialist. That, and of course the fact that, as most of us know, first kisses are typically awkward and spontaneous - I'd argue that it's the unexpected rush of the moment that makes a first kiss special, something that is all too easily ruined by meticulous planning.

Overall though, Mirror Mirror was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the Bollywood-esque elements that director Tarsem Singh brought to the film - lively dancing, vivid colours and highly stylised visuals - and I also felt that it largely succeeded in its effort to break down the misogyny of earlier versions of the story. This is something that probably can't be said for the second Snow White film this year, Snow White and the Huntsman, which, as the title suggests has been turned into a bizarre kind of romance. Beautiful as this film looks, it unfortunately stars the vacuous Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame. Nuff said.

Stewart's other starring role this year was in the final part of the Twilight series, a franchise which attempts to tackle sex, motherhood and teenage anxieties about these. It does so, however, in a much less progressive, less successful, and more obvious way than either Alien or Prometheus, films I'm much more interested in here. Like Alien, Prometheus features alien impregnations and births, a psychotic robot, and presents women as the tough survivors of an alien holocaust, still left fighting after all the men have been picked off. This film is, however, very different in tone from its predecessor, expanding the reproductive horror of Alien into a more general meditation on the nature of creation and destruction, be it biological, mechanical or artistic, human or divine.

As its title might suggest, Ridley Scott uses Prometheus as a space in which to explore much more philosophical and theological musings than we're used to expect from this franchise. Essentially, Scott creates an alternative religious history in which our gods through the ages are actually alien beings, responsible for the creation both of humanity, and the alien monster which now threatens to wipe it out completely. Something happened to make these alien gods regret their decision to father a new species. By subtle implication, we can hazard a guess at this being the crucifixion of Christ, interpreted here as an alien ambassador who promised a return to the home planet for us all, provided we behaved ourselves. The subsequent torture, ridicule and murder of Jesus alerted our alien fathers to our violent and dangerous natures, and the threat that we posed not only to each other, but even directly to them. The day of judgement was nigh, coming in the form of a hideous and indestructible alien monster which would destroy and devour us all, until it all went horribly wrong, and most of the creator aliens were themselves wiped out. Meanwhile, we see a similar story mirrored in our own creation of intelligent androids, which turn on their human masters in both Alien and Prometheus. Peter Weyland, founder of CEO and Weyland Corp, responsible for funding the exploratory mission which provides the story for this film, is portrayed as the ultimate in irresponsible creativity, favouring his robot "son" David (perhaps named after the robot child David in A.I., with his Pinocchio-like insistence that he is a real human boy) over his barely acknowledged human daughter, and insisting on the forward march of technology, science and discovery, with little regard for the potential risks or human cost incurred. As this brilliantly conceived teaser trailer shows, Weyland has begun to regard himself as a god, making him a classically ambitious over-reacher figure - a modern Prometheus, if you will (which, incidentally, is also the subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), ultimately destined for doom and downfall.

It's not all gods and robots though - in fact, we might understand this male creative impulse as a direct response to the mystery of the female body's innate creative power which, with aliens that look like this and this, comes across as a powerful and terrifying threat to male authority. Men seem to both be repelled by, and long for, the ability to do what almost any woman can do without even trying particularly hard, but as in Frankenstein, this usurpation of biological creation lands everyone in serious danger. Where in Alien we witness a literal male pregnancy, Prometheus is more concerned with other, less invasive methods of bypassing women in the creation of new life. That said, this film does still feature a horrific alien pregnancy, but this time it's a barren woman who is the victim, and this time, she survives, using a surgical machine to cut the hostile foetus out of her body before it can burst through itself. Here's where a comparison with Breaking Dawn becomes interesting. While Bella Swan/Cullen insists on suffering the monster child to tear its way out of her womb, loving the freaky blood-sucking monster that emerges and being "saved" from apparently inevitable death by being herself transformed into a blood-sucking monster by her blood-sucking monster husband, Dr Elizabeth Shaw (interesting sf trivia: this is also the name of a UNIT member in Doctor Who) does the sensible thing and gets the hell out. Like Ripley in Alien and Aliens, Shaw is resourceful, and she survives. Ripley, Shaw, and Meredith Vickers (Weyland's daughter, in charge of the mission in Prometheus) share a distrust of aliens, androids, and the greedy determination of the men around them, relying on their own wits and instincts to get by. In contrast to to the male-headed organisations that gladly put people at risk for financial or scientific gain, Vickers is willing to die for the sake of saving humanity, just as Ripley puts her own life on the line to rescue Newt in Aliens.

In general, Prometheus is not quite as tight or tense as either Alien or Aliens. Partly it suffers from a second-rate script, which never seems quite clever enough for the big ideas it seeks to convey, and scripting stands out as more of a problem in this film than in the earlier ones because the story requires that little bit more exposition. Apart from some fairly clunky and pedestrian dialogue, however, this is definitely a film worth seeing.

Finally, a couple of other significant characters deserve a mention here.

The first is Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man. Despite the ridiculous way she dresses for lab work, Gwen is probably the most interesting female character in any of the numerous superhero films I've seen since the release of Spider-Man back in 2002. What's great about Gwen is that she is actually shown to have her own life and ambitions which are independent of her involvement with Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Gwen is not just Peter's equal - she's easily smarter than he is. Gwen is top of the class at school, and has managed to land herself a proper job at the most exciting and innovative scientific organisation in the city. Peter, meanwhile, sneaks onto a guided tour that she leads around the Oscorp building, and makes friends with Dr Curt Connors by passing off his father's formula as his own. Unlike Mary Jane, Gwen has Peter pretty well sussed from the start, and immediately guesses the reason that he starts pushing her away at the end of the film, but she doesn't insist that he comes back to her - if he doesn't want to see her, then she doesn't want anything to do with him either. Not only this, but The Amazing Spider-Man also presents us with a much more knowing, kind and intelligent version of Aunt May than do Spider-Man or either of its sequels. While we're still a far cry from equal rights and recognition for women in the super-hero world (take a look at Black Widow in this year's Avengers Assemble for a classic example of a token sexy super-heroine), The Amazing Spider-Man at least makes a damn good effort.

The second is Tiffany Maxwell in Silver Linings Playbook. What this film lacks in a good title, it more than makes up for in content. It's a genuinely touching and entertaining little gem, sad and funny and beautiful, and nothing like as cynical and Oscar-grabbing as you might expect a film about living with mental illness to be. Bradley Cooper is brilliantly compelling as Pat Solitano, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a violent incident involving his wife and her lover. Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver are also completely convincing as Pat's dysfunctional father and long-suffering mother. But, as ever, Jennifer Lawrence utterly steals the show as the woman who turns Pat's life around, teaching him to love himself and aiding him in his search for a silver lining. Lawrence's spellbinding performance makes us laugh and cry by turns. This is an actress fast proving the depth and range of her abilities, and I for one can't wait to see where she goes next.

So a good year for film, a good year for women. Stay tuned for another 2012 review, where I'll discuss the the complex political aspects of some of this year's best movies.

"Tweenage Kicks": Angry Young Women vs. Andrew Collins

So I've just left off getting angry over this article enough to write something half-decent about it. Interestingly, I spotted it just after I'd spent a good chunk of my morning watching more Anita Sarkeesian videos. Both happened to be focusing on how things are marketed and represented to particular audiences, particularly to young girls. However, while Anita's comments are always intelligent, insightful, and well argued, even when I don't agree with her, Andrew Collins has managed to churn out a load of patronising, badly judged drivel on behalf of the Radio Times. So let's start with the first "tween" culture reference in the title of the article: the Twilight franchise. Here's what Anita has to say about Twilight:

Fair dues. Now here's Andrew's version of what Twilight is all about:

Tweens are fed a carefully mixed cocktail of harmless My Guy romance and an explicitly chaste kind of sexual promise, so that the intoxicating effect is aspirational and at the same time safe or as safe as any saga about vampires and werewolves can be.

Wow. Aspirational. Hm. Even if you're into your slushy romantic rubbish, could you really call a "My Guy romance and an explicitly chaste kind of sexual promise" an aspiration? A quick search on Google gives you these definitions for "aspiration":

as·pi·ra·tion/ˌaspəˈrāSHən/

Noun:

A hope or ambition of achieving something: "he had nothing tangible to back up his literary aspirations". The object of such an ambition; a goal.

So, specifically, an "ambition" is an intention to "achieve" something. Whatever your feelings about Edward, I fail to see how his making a "chaste promise" can in any way be classed as aspirational for girls. He (not Bella), is promising not to do something. Quite aside from its instantly vomit-inducing effect, the quotation above doesn't even make sense. So much for that.

Next, The Hunger Games. I don't entirely agree with Anita on this one because, personally, I found a lot to enjoy about the second and third books, even if they weren't as strong as the first. I also take issue with some of her more negative comments. For example, she doesn't believe that parents would give up their kids to fight to the death, while I'd argue that this already does happen in real life: many parents are perfectly happy for their kids to join the military, proud of them for going out to war with the intention of murdering other people's kids, and then seem strangely surprised when their soldier sons end up killed in combat. She also doesn't think that the kids from the Districts have been dehumanised enough by the Capitol to make it convincing that viewers would accept it, despite the fact that she recognises slavery as dehumanising people enough for it to work. I'd argue that Suzanne Collins makes it clear that the Districts pretty much are slaves to the Capitol - at least in all but name. I'm also not fundamentally opposed to a romance plot, if it's done well enough. Still, most of what she says about the first novel here is well put:

Let's compare this assessment to Andrew Collins's view:

The Hunger Games is another “young adult” franchise now in the process of bounding from page to screen… yes, a dystopian sci-fi saga, but this time with feminist “girl power” in the shape of the book’s teenage heroine, Katniss Everdeen, who must compete in a multi-player battle to the death.

Just to clarify for anybody who doesn't remember the 90s or wasn't in Britain during that period, "girl power" is a term most commonly associated with the pop band the Spice Girls and the rest of the hideous "music" industry they belonged to. Essentially, it's the preferred mantra of an absolutely insidious kind of sexism which masquerades as a form of feminism, sexualising, stereotyping and infantilising women (quite aside from the creepiness of Emma Bunton being "Baby Spice", note the fact that it's "girl" and not "woman" power), setting the equal rights clock back several decades and effectively erasing all the work done by feminists in the 70s and 80s. So, all in all, a great choice of term to associate with Katniss Everdeen, who is widely understood as one of the strongest and most interesting YA female characters aimed at a teenage audience ever created.

The third thing the title refers to is Julian Fellowes's upcoming film of Romeo and Juliet. Judging from Collins's article, I'd wouldn't have thought it sounded very promising. That said, it's not really much to go on, given the woefully misguided assessments of the Hunger Games and Twilight franchises that we've already seen.

My initial reaction to this article, believe it or not, was actually excitement when I read that the fantastic Hailee Steinfeld was going to be starring in a production of this wonderful, if much misunderstood play. Potentially, it could be great for kids reading Shakespeare in school to have an accessible alternative to Baz Luhrmann's 1996 version to watch. Though enjoyable, Luhrmann's interpretation leaves much to be desired, for precisely the reason that Andrew Collins inadvertently gives in his article. "Romeo and Juliet errs towards the soppy". This is true enough of Luhrmann's version, but not of the play in general. I can only hope that Collins's assessment is meant to refer only to the upcoming film, rather than to the original play, because if that's what you honestly think of any of Shakespeare's work then you should shut up and educate yourself. Bear in mind we're talking about a writer who actively ridiculed the "soppy" Petrarchan conventions of his time, and was responsible for creating this little gem of a poem, which in its way pretty much overturned all expectations about sonnets at the time. Despite common misconceptions, Romeo and Juliet actually makes almost exactly the same point. Romeo is a fickle and childish lover, who only thinks that Juliet is the love of his life. We know this because, at the start of the play, Romeo is in an agony of love over another woman, Rosaline. Shakespeare didn't just write in this other unseen character for no reason - as Friar Laurence rather scathingly comments later on:

Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here! 
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear, 
So soon forsaken? Young men's love then lies 
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. 

This is a major theme throughout the play. Shakespeare is obviously well aware of his characters' immaturity and wants us to notice it. For some reason, people nowadays, in a supposedly more sexually liberated society, seem perfectly willing to accept that Romeo and Juliet meet at a party, get married and kill themselves for each other all in the space of a few days. Wake up everyone! This isn't rational or reasonable behaviour by anyone's standards! It's not romantic, it's just plain ridiculous. Shakespeare definitely never conceived of the play as the great love story it's come to be seen as. In fact, the romance plot is principally a device designed to serve the play's most important theme: conflict. This isn't a play about love, it's a play about hatred and violence and feuding and the futility thereof, and about full-grown men who should know better carrying their childish enmity with them into old age, and abusing their power by inflicting their prejudices on the those who look up to them.

So what if Collins just means the film? Well, having seen Hailee Steinfeld star in True Grit as the intelligent, resourceful, and also very cold and hardened Mattie Ross, I'd be deeply disappointed if she has actually pandered to pressure to go silly and girly and romantic. Incidentally, that's not what Juliet is, and from what I've seen of Steinfeld, I'd say she should be fairly well-suited to the role. If you don't believe me, check this out. That's pretty damn raunchy. Romeo might mince and sugarcoat his words, but Juliet, by contrast, gets rather shockingly to the point. She seems a lot more canny and streetwise than her husband, despite being shut away all the time, and being only fourteen. See, young teens can exceed expectations.

Moving on to the other films Collins mentions nearer the end of the article. The first is Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. For me, this film was a major disappointment. Although they do revolve around a fairly stereotypical girl and a fairly stereotypical love triangle, I actually really, really love The Confessions of Georgia Nicolson. The reasons? 1) Georgia is a well-rounded and endearing character, who spends time with her family and other female friends and, although at her tender age she is excessively preoccupied with the opposite sex, it's not the only thing she ever talks about, and she can have fun in other ways. 2) These are amongst the funniest books I have ever read. Yes, there's romance, but it's done in such a knowing and ironic way that we're encouraged to laugh at Georgia's foolishness even as we sympathise with and grow to love her. We can concern ourselves over her bad decisions while similarly being secure in the knowledge that she will ultimately grow up, see sense and realise that she ought to be with her hilarious best friend, rather than any of her pretty, air-headed boyfriends (note the reversal of the usual stereotype here). Unfortunately, the film seemed to drain away all of Georgia's and Dave's charm, chemistry and charisma. Instead, it tried to present love interest Robbie as a much more sympathetic, if no less boring, character. So in the film, we're meant to want Georgia to end up with the stupid, dull one. Even the changing of the title from Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging didn't bode well: the disparity in tone between the words "Perfect" and "Full-Frontal" pretty much set the disparity in tone between the whole of the film and the whole of the book. Collins, on the other hand, says that:

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging...with its indie soundtrack and accent on kissing and being dumped, was anything but saccharine.

I beg to differ. An indie soundtrack and discussion of kissing does not a challenging, innovative or in any way interesting film make.

Finally, the article rounds off by talking about The Amazing Spider-Man. At last, you might be thinking, at least one paragraph that can't be quite so infuriating. If girls are into superheroes, that proves they don't only care about boys and kissing, right? They might like to see action scenes, they might enjoy the creative and imaginative possibilities of the fantasy genre, or they might even take an interest in the geeky science side of the film. After all, Gwen Stacy is a great heroine and potential role model. She's funny, intelligent and tough. She not only starts off the film having proved that her intellect is equal, if not superior, to that of her boyfriend-to-be, having already landed herself a job at science research company Oscorp, purely on the strength of her own achievements and confidence. Peter, meanwhile, merely sneaks into the building and becomes friends with Curt Connors through his family connections. Gwen then twice risks her own life saving Peter's neck, so eat that, Mary-Jane! Here is a heroine that, unlike any of the others discussed so far, actually offers girls something to aspire to. Remember that word? Aspiration. You know like, girls, you can get a good job! You can save people's lives! You can do well in school and learn things! But, naturally, according to Andrew Collins, none of this could possibly be of any importance to the girls who like the film. Obviously, all they're really interested in is this:

the current superhero reboot The Amazing Spider-Man....has Andrew Garfield pushed up against the lockers in high school and actually kissing a girl when he’s not in his mask. A superhero movie that’s not exclusively aimed at teenage boys? Who’d have thought it?

Yep, that's right. Kissing and boys. Of course. And, here's the cherry on the cake: after repeatedly and extensively patronising young girls, he actually has the nerve to say that, "The Tween market can’t be patronised". No, no, because telling girls they should be making chaste promises, obsessing over boys, and occasionally having babies isn't the slightest bit patronising.