The Modern League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

I was discussing Alan Moore's excellent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with a friend. We were trying to come up with a modern incarnation of the league when we realized that limiting ourselves to the printed word was ignoring the fact that popular literature has been taken over by popular television.

The rules we used to populate this list were that each character must both be created (written) and live (set) in the last 50 years or so.

This is our group.

Gary Seven - Agent of Peace.
Mr. Seven was recruited and trained by alien beings and returned to Earth to protect us from ourselves, he has brought together the new league and gives them their assignments.





John Steed - Gentleman Spy.
The quintessentially British secret agent. He can accomplish more with a bowler, a bumbershoot, and a quick wit than others can with a Walther, a submarine car, and a licence to kill.






Willow Rosenberg - Powerful Wicca.
Familiar with the strange and horrific world most of us choose to ignore. Willow has been helping save the world since she was fifteen.






Colonel Steve Austin - Former Astronaut.
Barely alive after his experimental aircraft crashed, Steve was rebuilt at a cost of six million dollars.







Special Agent Dana Scully - Level headed seeker of truth.
Originally assigned to debunk the wild theories of Fox Mulder, Dana came to see the truth and fight the future planned for us by unseen conspirators.





Carl Kolchak - Investigator of the Macabre.
Never satisfied with official explanations doled out by PR cronies, Carl will get to the bottom of a story no matter who, or what, gets in his way.

Do movie reviewers ever actually watch movies?

This past weekend I saw two movies. 'Lady in the Water' and 'My Super Ex-Girlfriend'.

They are both getting terrible reviews. But I must have seen different versions of these films than the ones shown to movie reviewers, as I enjoyed them both immensely.

Which prompts the question.

I believe much of the problem is that movie reviewers become jaded and grow to resent that which they once loved. (I refuse to think that someone who never liked movies would become a movie reviewer.) They learn the 'secrets' of the storytelling form and know what to expect at certain points in the narative. When they're right the film is predictable, when they're wrong the film is a directionless mess...

I truely believe that our local reviewer no longer truely watches new movies. He routinely gets plot elements wrong, misinterprets character motivations, and generally cannot be bothered to follow what's on the screen. However, if you get him while he's talking about an older film, his honest love of the medium comes out. He knows things! He knows the ins and outs of the cast, the director, the producers, and the details and history of the script. He can hold discourse about the intricate meanings of small passages of dialogue and the interplay of the characters. All this leads me to believe that he has seen too many movies and, knowing that they will not be the same, dismisses new films out of hand.

So if many, or most, reviewers are jaded old farts or snobbish young artistes out of step with the movie going public, why do we read their reviews? Well, every once in a while you may be able to distill some random information about the film from their viscious diratribes and superficial meanderings. But I believe it is more akin to a train wreck; no matter how horrible the scene, you simply must look. A friend of mine takes perverse pleasure in our local reviewers ability to infuriate him. Over and over again he will seek out and read the reviews just to cringe and deride the fact that the reviewer missed the point...

The truth of the matter is that the only persons opinion that matters is yours. Nobody can tell you what you like, you have to go see for yourself. But then you've already spent your money and waisted your time... and the movie reviewers job is based on the fiction that it dosen't have to be that way.

And in the end, the whole system is perpetuated by the simple, unavoidable fact that however distant and cynical a reviewer becomes, sometimes they're right.

Worth

Just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important.