How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [60]
The board game was invented about 5,000 years ago and it didn’t quench anyone’s thirst for activity. People continued to invent stupid new religions and have wars because they knew that getting an axe in a face was better, by miles, than a game of Cluedo. Look at Hitler. He could have played Risk but because it can only ever be won by the person charged with the task of conquering Australia and North America, he decided to make up his own rules and play them out for real. Would he have done so if he’d been given a PlayStation and a copy of Call of Duty V? I seriously doubt it.
The fact is this. Since science harnessed the electron and turned it into a Cylon or a Nazi paratrooper with a realistic machine pistol, the world has unquestionably been a better place. And so, too, is life for the family.
I’m writing this at our seaside cottage where there is no PlayStation and no Wii. As a result the children get up in the morning, play something old-fashioned and then bicker about it till bedtime. Tomorrow we will be back at home, which is full of gruesome, vicious, bloodthirsty electronic games. Peace, contrary to the teachings of those in tweed, will be restored.
Sunday 11 January 2009
Run for cover – Pooh the Dark Knight is coming
I’ve just watched the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight, and it is very far removed from the original television show I used to watch as a boy. For instance, instead of biffing and kapowing his way through the tracing-paper plot in a body-hugging supersuit, our hero is a brooding and complicated character, tortured by inner demons, a sense of his own worthlessness and perhaps a touch of shame about what he and Robin used to get up to in the bath together back in the sixties. In short, Batman has become what film marketing people call ‘dark’ or ‘gritty’, and we see a similar problem with today’s James Bond, who has lost the one-liners and the gadgets and become ‘brooding’ and ‘complicated’.
It’s the same story with the plot. In Quantum of Solace I was left utterly bewildered by what on earth he was up to half the time. Was Mathis a goodie or a baddie? I have no idea, and if I have no idea, what chance is there for the small boys whose fascination with 007 has kept the brand alive for so long? Even the car chase was impossible to follow. It was designed to be the longest, and best, in all of movie history, but what we actually saw in the cinema was a savagely edited facsimile. Why was it cut down? Presumably so they could shoehorn in more shots of Daniel Craig smouldering.
And deeper insights into his inner being.
In the olden days, Bond would get some orders from M and then embark on a series of fights, interspersed with some light sexual intercourse, until eventually the baddie and his entire operation exploded. It was as easy to understand as a boiled egg. But today, we’re told, 007 is more in keeping with the character from the original books. We have to be told this, of course, because no one has ever actually read one.
Frankly I wish he’d just get back to the days when he headbutted Curt Jürgens in the face, blew up Donald Pleasence’s volcano and went to bed with Barbara Bach.
It’s easy to see what’s going on here. After a character has been around for forty years, the people who created him become bored with blowing up Pinewood every two years. So they start to employ directors and actors who want to explore the hero’s roots and his motivation. Which means that, instead of getting Superman to fly about and make the world go backwards, they ask what being a superhero does to a man’s soul. Can he ever love someone? Can he ever be at peace? Does he ever develop a deity complex because there is simply no answer to the eternal question: why me? Oh, for God’s sake. Just kick Lex Luthor in the wedding veg and