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chibimyumi · 4 years ago

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Lost and Wins in Adaptation

Dear everyone, as per Anon’s request, I shall analyse a Kuromyu and discuss the Lost and Wins in Adaptation. The results of your democratic votes (comments and asks) are out, and the winner is TANGO ON THE CAMPANIA! In this post I shall only be discussing character/plot influential changes, so no stand-alone comedic sketches will be included.

This is going to be a very long post because there’s just so much to unpack. But feel free to read it in bits, or skip to the part you are most interested in (but do come back later though (ÒvÓ)b). This post will include the following sections:

What makes a good adaptation?

AberHanks - Expert Glue and Filler

“Just like my family!�� - One line, many messages

Grell - A Capable Career Woman

An unfortunate Sacrifice

Raw Trash Demon

Active Inclusion Midfords - Manga Fix?

Reunion and Aftermath

Afterword

I promise you the analysis will make you love TotC even more!

1. What makes a good adaptation?

2.5D wouldn’t exist without the 2D, so it is essential for any 2.5D producer to prove to the fans the producing side understood the source material using their form of medium. Changes are inevitable, but the key is that when things are changed, the core of the original needs to remain intact.

Theatre as medium’s biggest disadvantage is its strict time constraints. Whether the producers are capable of adapting a story within the time constraints without it feeling like a quickly duct-taped patchwork is what distinguishes a good adaptation from a bad one. The scriptwriters have no choice but to sacrifice parts to tell a concise story, but the art is in skillfully choosing what to yeet. The musical does need to be able to stand on its own without new audiences going “what?”, after all

2. AberHanks - Expert Glue and Filler

The most obvious difference between the original manga and Tango on the Campania is the addition of Aberline and the musical original, Hanks. In Tango on the Campania they are very cleverly employed to tie the musical together within the time constraints.

Ronald appeared before the Campania Arc, but it wasn’t before this one that he gets his own proper introduction. What the manga readers and musical-only audience have in common then, is that at this point of the story, Ronald is almost equally new. The line: “if we get to meet again, alive, that is” is a very effective way to introduce Ronald’s chipper but cynical personality. In the manga Ronald’s conversation partner was a passenger who fancied Ronald. It would have been a waste of stage time to adapt the third class setting and introduce this girl too, but skipping the line entirely would not do Ronald’s introduction justice. So the script writers cleverly used AberHanks instead, and when Ronald delivered the iconic line, the impact is still the same as in the original.

Additionally, AberHanks are supportive roles in them being police officers who help combat the zombies. The historic Titanic had a really poor survival rate, and that’s without dealing with murderous zombies. In Campania however, that’s a different story. I would argue that Aberline and Hanks evacuation efforts, along with the Formidable Midfords greatly increased the survival rate of Campania passengers.

This addition is a brilliant three-birds-one-stone move. This firstly shows that despite AberHanks being the comic relief, as the police they are not there to fool around. Secondly, by explicitly placing the Midfords along literal fighters of crime, the audience also clearly understands what the Midfords - the Chivalric order - are: fellow fighters of crime.

Thirdly, the gentleman’s code of evacuation is children and women first, and AberHanks would undoubtedly also have heeded that code. And yet Frances was there, and AberHanks never attempted to evacuate her or doubted her skill. The police and Frances fighting side by side shows the audience that even in the 19th century, Frances is recognised firstly as member of the Chivalric Order, before being ““just a woman in a huge dress””. Don’t mess with her.

3. “Just like my family!” - one line, many messages.

A very small but game-changing alternation is when Ciel was trying to convince Lizzie to remove her dress to benefit escape. In the manga when Lizzie refused, O!Ciel immediately rips the dress, saying that once dead she won’t be able to wear any dress, because death is the end of everything.

In the musical with real child actors they couldn’t very well reenact this scene, so instead they gave Ciel the line: “Everything is over if you’re dead, just like my family!”

In the musical, Ciel doesn’t touch Lizzie, which is very clever. When someone refuses to remove her clothes, it is because she feels infringed, exposed and/or unsafe. If somebody doesn’t do something out of fear, what you need to do to convince them is to minimise that fear. By forcefully ripping her clothes, MangaCiel only made Lizzie feel even more infringed.

Instead of touching Lizzie, MusicalCiel appeals to Lizzie’s empathy. By making Ciel say “my family” to Lizzie, both audience and Lizzie are shown/reminded how Ciel had tragically lost his family, and cannot afford to lose more. At that time of the musical, new audiences wouldn't know yet what Ciel had been through. So when later the Cinematic Record of Sebas started, “just like my family” also functions as an effective foreshadowing of what would later be revealed, avoiding Ciel being in a cage looking like it came from nowhere to new audiences.

One could argue that Ciel’s phrase was emotional manipulation, yes... but it was a literal life or death situation for the objective good of everyone. And besides, we all know who our Trash Lord™ is; manipulation is part of him.

Ciel had yelled at Lizzie, and immediately he turned around, clutching his chest. It was such an impressive moment because it showed how that blow Ciel dealt was a doubled edged one. Lizzie was clearly hit too, and very quickly she realised her own fault and apologised. Then the most fun part for the audience is to consider whether this was Ciel’s genuine reaction, or whether that was all part of his acting skills in manipulating Lizzie. I say both are equally likely! (Oh Reo, you brilliant little...)

I personally consider this alteration superiour to the manga original.

4. Grell - A Capable Career Woman

Per Yana’s direct request to Grell’s actor, Uehara, she asked him to portray Grell as a capable career woman because Yana admitted she failed to do so herself.

Most of Yana’s request was fulfilled simply by Uehara’s acting and respect for Grell, but there is also one tiny line added to her script which emphasises her focus on her job. “I’m dropping you!”

Nobody on the Campania had time to fool around because it was literally going down. Grell had her job to do, and yet Rian thought it a good idea to withhold information from Grell about the method of stopping the zombies. By threatening Rian whose life was at Grell’s mercy with “I’m dropping you”, the audience is very effectively shown that Grell is a no-nonsense woman, and that she knows how to get someone to talk. 👌👌👌

5. An Unfortunate Sacrifice

Some things had to be omitted to fit the stage time limit, but the most painful omission in my opinion were details in Sebastian’s cinematic record.

A really unfortunate but understandable omission was Ciel reuniting with Tanaka and Madam Red... but considering the time constraints of the musical, shoe-horning these moments in with different actors would have come at the expense of the rest of the musical. Though very sad, it is what it is.

Another omission is Sebas forgetting to spare one assassin to interrogate. In this post I discussed in detail why this omission by the movie adaptation was such a sin. Tango on the Campania omitted that part too, though as a stage medium it is more forgivable than an animated movie with endless possibilities Ò^Ó. Nevertheless it is a bit sad, because this omission takes away that the audience can see how Sebas was just so used to massacring on auto pilot, and how even Sebas himself recognises he needs to learn control.

THOUGH, I must say the musical actually tries to compensate for this shortcoming, unlike the movie. This omission of what showed that Sebas was far from perfect at the beginning, Furukawa compensated by simply being the most insincere, passive-aggressive, unprofessional, arrogant prick he could be.

The audience won’t catch a hint that Sebas used to be no more than a weapon, but they will see how Sebastyun never served a human on close proximity before!

6. Raw Trash Demon

I have already talked about how Sebastyun is a real game-changer on this blog, so I will not repeat every detail again. So here I will only address the significant changes in spoken lines that add to Sebastian’s character before he was fully trained. In this post I discussed in detail how Furukawa portrayed Sebastian’s gradual growth from raw demon to one hell of a butler. Sebas at the beginning was really butler in appearance only, as he was insolent and never knew when to shut his wondrous trap.

In stage format it would have been quite awkward to do a bath scene, so instead the creators replaced it with a wound-dressing scene. Instead of pouring hot water over the boy, Sebastyun is now scrubbing his master’s skin off. When the boy protests, rather than immediately apologising like his manga counterpart did, Sebastyun just shoves the feedback right back down the boy’s throat. “You’re making too much of a big deal out of it.” Here we see how Sebas is not there to serve his master, he’s just doing his thing because he has to.

Another line that is musical only is when Ciel’s stomach rumbled, and Sebas laughed his arse off, saying: “what an inglorious sound!” In the manga Sebas started a high-horse speech about human weakness, which was quite bold already. But he did not seem to dare straight up humiliate his master for a basic bodily need.

Sebastyun however? Balls of steel.

He humiliates his master, can’t apologise for shit, and when he says things in compliance with his master, it’s in a tone of: “well, screw you too”. Sebastyun was so bad at his job that Ciel too was given another line that wasn’t in the manga: “The preparations of a day’s meals is part of a butler’s job”.

Sebas had just criticised his master for being a useless kid, and now Ciel makes a comeback with the line: “well, you don’t even know what your literal job is, let alone how to do it.” The addition of this line is very powerful in my opinion, because it quite effectively compensates for the omitted scenes of Ciel and Sebas both sucking at their respective roles.

When O!Ciel commented on Sebas’ awful cooking, MangaSebas seemed quite willing to do his job well, and immediately offered to fix his mistake. Sebas does not apologise, but he does show that he made a mistake in not being considerate enough of Ciel’s current condition.

Sebastyun however, couldn’t apologise for shit at the beginning. Instead of showing openness to feedback, he immediately externalises by making humans the problem again, rather than his own lack of cooking skill. No wonder Ciel smashed that table with such aggression!

Another changed line is Sebas bringing his master hot milk after his failed dinner attempt. Originally Sebas did so potentially as an attempt to show his readiness to do better at his job. He explains that he does so out of consideration for the well-being of the boy.

In the musical however, Sebastyun does not say the manga line. Instead he says: “I can’t afford to have you starve to death.” I am not sure whether this was the script or Furukawa’s improvisation, but either way it perfectly shows yet again, how Sebas is not there to serve his master, but to just get his tasks over with.

This is a very short but efficient alternative way to retell how Sebas especially at the beginning was not very enthusiastic about being summoned, as analysed here from the original Japanese manga. Sebas is not like: “(UwU) gimme more orders”, he’s like: “(ಠ_ಠ) what is it this time?”

A small addition that was definitely an improvisation was Sebastyun sitting down on Ciel’s bed, and the boy pushing him away. (At the beginning of the run Furukawa didn’t do that yet. The first time Furukawa sat down Reo just moved aside and gave Sebas a nasty look.) Here it also reemphasises how little Sebastian understood of what was done and NOT done as a servant.

A final, noteworthy addition in the far beginning of their contract was Ciel saying that he acknowledges both he himself are the demon are still fakes. The boy says this line after Sebas had brought him hot milk which Ciel appreciated.

Ciel calls his butler forward in a soft tone, and Sebastyun just looked so self-congratulatory, self-satisfied, he adjusted his suit, standing all ready like: PRAISE ME! (●´ิ∀´ิ●)✨

Yeah no... you wish.

In the manga this line doesn’t exist, so Sebas is simply surprised to hear the compliment, and then his master just splashes the cold water right over him.

7. Active Inclusion Midfords - Manga Fix?

The most dramatic and influential change to the musical is the active inclusion of the Midfords. It is an entire scene that was added to the musical, so it is a bit impossible to unpack everything in this already very long post. So here I will only address the most game-changing alterations.

Yana Beaten to the Punch, strike 2 and 3?

Now many chapters later than the Campania Arc, we know that the Midfords had been the legal guardians of Ciel after the death of his family. But even before the release of the chapter, we’d see in Sebastyun’s Cinematic Record how the Midfords were very involved with their nephew. This shows how much respect for the manga the musical producers had, and how well they understood their source material that they too could beat Yana to the punch. Strike 2!

Both Midfords were present before and during the decoration ceremony. And Sebas bows deeply, thanking them sincerely for their aid all this time. Sebas cannot lie, so when he says “sincere gratitude”, it really was sincere. Alexis responds humbly, saying that it’s simply the right thing to do.

Not only did the Midfords aid Ciel in his reintegration into the world, Frances also showed the audience and Sebas she knows exactly what she is preparing the child for. Frances says she understands how cruel it is for the young Ciel to do what is expected of him, because being Earl means more than wealth and power. It is: “shouldering the burden and name of ‘the Queen’s Watchdog’.” The musical also does a great job at linking Frances’ position as the previous Watchdog’s sister, to being the legal guardian of the future Watchpuppy.

I have seen many manga readers talk about how they found Frances’ involvement insufficient in the manga, and I understand. She has a very small role in the manga, so we don’t know what she has or hasn’t done to help. But in Tango on the Campania, we do get a much clearer sense of the Midfords’ role in Ciel’s life.

Ciel was still mid-preparation before the start of the Ceremony, but Frances and Alexis had already arrived to keep a parental eye on him.Ciel is surprised, but Frances responds with: “it would set a bad example if the star is late”. Though it is but one short phrase, the script writers shows (not ‘tells’) how she is there because she wants to make sure Ciel’s decoration will go smoothly, as well as that her own role is to set an example for Ciel by being on time herself.

This is possibly a reference to what Sebas says to Frances in chapter 14, how he wishes her to be his master’s example. Except that here in the musical, it is Frances who takes this initiative, which in my opinion is the superiour way.

When Frances commends Ciel for his courage of returning to fight, Sebastian adds: “The most opportune chance for counter attack is when the opponent strikes. That is what milady Frances had taught him, the Young Master said.”

To which Frances is quite surprised to hear, and incredulously she says: “Ciel said that?” This makes one suspect whether Frances really said those words to supposedly Real Ciel. It would be very funny if Sebastian (accidentally) gave Frances a hint of his master’s real identity. I am not sure whether this is an implicit hint that Frances might have started suspecting Ciel is not the Real Ciel. Some have theorised Frances has the deepest suspicions among everyone. If that turns out to be true, then TotC might have beaten the original manga to the punch again. Potential strike three!

Another change is the replacement of Madam Red with Alexis. This one is just a very pragmatic change, because the phrase “To Ciel you are already as good as family” is very iconic and important and shouldn’t be left out. But getting a Madam Red in here out of nowhere would require time-consuming exposition. So by giving this phrase to Alexis instead, the musical effectively solves two problems in one go.

8. Reunion and Aftermath

Another addition to the original manga is the reunion on the rescue ship, just like the the movie adaptation of the Campania Arc did. After all that has happened it is very nice for the audience to see the emotional reunion and the aftermath. In the manga the Arc ended with Sebas and his master on the rescue boat, and it had a very nice, open feeling to it, I absolutely love it! 💖🚤

Audience Considerate Story Telling

To a musical-only audience (which TotC had a lot of because of the collaboration with TOHO), the opening ending might have felt a bit abrupt. These musical-only spectators don’t have the Arcs after the Campania to know for sure Sebas and Ciel went home safely, and that life would just continue. Nor would they know for sure what kind of impact the enormous revelation of Undertaker being a reaper would have on our protagonists. Had the non-manga audiences been given the same ending as the original, then it might have looked a bit like this to them.

Also considering the musical medium, any (Japanese) audience would want a satisfying finale song to wrap everything up. (Kuromyu21 not having one was a real complaint among JP spectators). And after the dramatic brawl song of Sebas fighting the zombies on that boat, you can’t very well pull another song on that tiny thing again. Okay, the song TotC did settle with for the finale song was......very disappointing in my opinion as it reminded me more of a Disney parade, but it at least had a song.

Emotional Full Circle

Despite the song being quite unfitting, the emotional reunion really, REALLY hit hard. When Lizzie says “welcome back” to Ciel, it was a perfect full circle back to what Lizzie couldn’t do 3 years ago.

In her flashback of 3 years ago when Ciel returned to her, the boy lifelessly said: “I’m back... Elisabeth”. Lizzie however never responded with “welcome back” because she was too preoccupied with something just feeling off.

In the musical reunion however, unlike 3 years ago Lizzie was fully emotionally equipped to genuinely welcome her fiancé back, and Ciel too happily responds: “yeah, I’m back, Lizzie”, using Lizzie’s preferred name.

Sebastian’s Aftermath

The reunion is but a simple addition, but it allows the musical to show the impact of such a traumatic event on the omnipotent demon butler.

The Cinematic Record showed how cocky Sebastyun was, and how he didn’t have a single worry in his life. After Undertaker had fatally wounded even the demon however, Sebas became a different person. In the finale we see Undertaker silently disappearing into the shadows. Sebastyun wasn’t even entirely sure whether Undertaker was there, but at the merest suspicion already you see him flinch and twitch. This shows how from now on Sebas has become a person who is on edge.

I mean, what’s the point of telling an event if the event doesn’t impact the story and characters, right? In this way too, the inserted aftermath scene skillfully wraps up an overwhelmingly eventful story.

9. Afterword

Well, thank you for reading this looong post till the end! As discussed in this post, TotC did a wonderful job at adapting an existing story with consideration of its audience and medium.

The largest obstacle of the theatre medium is time constraint, so the makers have to sacrifice parts. In what was sacrificed however, they more than sufficiently compensated by including parts outside the Campania Arc into the musical, without harming the integrity. This shows just how much respect and knowledge the TotC team have of the source material.

As a musical adaptation, it is an exemplary production.

Hyper Detailed Development - The Art of Kneeling

That Demon, Skin Crawling

That Butler - Punchable

Lost in Translation II - Sebastyun’s Butlernese

#Kuromyu #Comparative analysis #Tango on the Campania #Campania #Musical #Sebastyun #Furukawa Yuta #Uchikawa Reo

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ganymedesclock · 7 years ago

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I know you don’t really talk about ships, but I was curious as to what you think of Allura x Shay, since it seems to be pretty popular.

I wish I was more optimistic about it, by which I mean... I think taken on its own, Allura and Shay are really cute, they’re sweet people and I think they could get along charmingly.

The part that I worry about is it feels... kind of dismissive? Like... the most popular major Voltron ships that I’ve seen are all male paladins with each other. And being fair 4/6 of the paladins are guys. The dark horse contenders rising to prominence? are male paladins with Lotor.

Conversely, I’ve seen the generals shipped with each other, and I’ve seen Allura shipped with Shay, and I’ve seen Pidge shipped with the one infodesk punk unilu girl that we didn’t even have a name for.

It stands that there’s something of a discrepancy here re: who gets shipped with major characters. And that’s what I mean by it can feel dismissive- it feels like it’s “getting Allura out of the way of” the steamy m/m paladin romance by pairing her off with Shay, who, as much as I adore Shay and would love to be proven wrong by future developments, Shay is kind of a secondary or even tertiary supporting protagonist. She’s a great character, but not too much of a major character.

One of Shay’s major connections to the larger narrative is, at this point, she’s Hunk’s love interest in that the two of them seem to be harboring a small mutual crush. In the comics in particular Hunk actively protests marrying the other two aliens on the grounds that 1. they haven’t met his parents, and 2. “There’s this rock girl...”

And I don’t really... miss that this is a thing when Hunk is a modestly popular ship target that there’s a great deal of enthusiastic “Shay and Allura are lesbians and dating each other” when I don’t know if I’ve seen much... really in-depth art of them.

There’s a couple of ships that seem to read that way- most inter-team Sincline ships that don’t involve Lotor, for example, and I mentioned Pidge with the Unnamed Infodesk Girl- in the sense that they feel like, to coin a phrase out of thin air here, Purely Aesthetic Female Ship. In that you’ll find... artsy pictures or edits of them kissing and maybe once in a blue moon a comic but far more often, total radio silence besides “I can’t ship Allura with anybody else because her heart belongs to Shay.”

I’d love to be wrong. I guess I’m just suspicious that a lot of these ships are super widespread but relatively little is written about them and if anything they often feel nested into other stories/meta as a way to say “And Allura’s not going to be here, she’s going to be off with her girlfriend, so therefore I don’t have to write about her at all.”

Like again- I could be sold on Allura / Shay, but like... actually sell me on it. Don’t just go “oh remember that time on the s2 poster where Allura and Shay were together wearing flower crowns?” show me... how does this relationship develop? What do they mean to each other? Other characters engaging and interacting with this? More speculation and fleshing out of Shay in and of herself because frankly if you date a major character it should make you a major character. If this is happening alongside canon events what does it mean for Shay staying behind on the Balmera and hearing after the blitz, and the trap at Naxzela, how close Allura and the entire coalition came to being completely destroyed?

Explore the Balmerans culturally. Maybe set up parallels with Shay emerging as a leader of her people because frankly the Balmera’s revolution started with Shay, it was her selfless actions to stand up and take that stand and it was in reaction to what happened to her that Rax and the entire rest of the Balmera reacted. But that’s also stressful, the Balmerans don’t appear to have established leader figures here, so imagine Shay going to Allura- the lifelong career princess- who can relate a little about this “I have to learn how to be a diplomat” feeling.

Have Allura and Shay bond over Allura’s developing powers! Allura mentions in s4e6 she’s never been trained and that limits her confidence, and the Balmera was the stage of her first discovering that, as guided by Shay’s own grandmother. Where’s Shay- whose entire people live and die by their connection to the Balmera and its energy- guiding Allura through that?

I mean, with any ship, it’s important to dig into it, the micro and macrocosms of how these people engage with each other, how they feel, what made them feel that way. If this is your ship, if you love it, analyze the shit out of it, take that by the horns. If you’re just sorta here because you like fluff and you think the fluff would be cute with them, make a lot of fluff, show me all the places their lives comfortably intertwine with each other.

Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody point out the idea that shipping Shay in her current role with anybody on Voltron is a terrific setup for a long-distance relationship and all the fun and foibles that entails!

So I guess it’s... I’d absolutely love to be wrong about this but it feels like a lot of major ships between female characters feel really... halfhearted, not much energy to it, while conversely Klance- I’m picking on it since it’s my ship- has eight zillion AUs everywhere under the sun from trapeze artists to vampire-and-priest to high fantasy to “literally reenact the plot of Beauty And The Beast” and people digging into scene-by-scene analyses and hypotheticals with wild abandon, and I don’t feel like that difference is purely because of popularity.

If anything, it’s suspicious that I can think of four popular male ships off the top of my head within Voltron’s main cast and none of them seem to exhibit that Purely Aesthetic problem that all of the female ships I can think of that I’ve seen in the fandom, ever, do. Just like I think it’s suspicious that whether or not I think Lance’s crush on Allura is unlikely to be reciprocated, it, and Hunk’s crush on Shay that does seem pretty reciprocated, seem to get all-but forgotten and not treated like genuine feelings.

Like... they don’t have to be your endgame ship, but it feels really jarring to look from canon, with Lance who really does adore Allura, all flirtation aside, and Hunk who again turned down potential suitors because he’s monogamous and more interested in Shay, and to suddenly leap to a fanwork where these people just... feel nothing about each other?

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Allura #Shay #Lance #Hunk #readmore #thenorthernphoenix

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seriousfic · 7 years ago

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The Dirty Harry movies ranked, or not ranked, society is breaking down

1. Dirty Harry

You know it’s great. I know it’s great. Let’s move on.

Of interest, though, is how a lot of the cliches of the ‘cowboy cop’ that Dirty Harry would come to exemplify just aren’t in play with what’s, at this point, a shaded and nuanced character. For instance, we all know the shouting police captain, “damnit, you were supposed to wait for back-up!” In the hold-up scene that famously leads to “Do I feel lucky?”, Harry does call for back-up. It’s only the fact that the criminals take off before back-up can arrive that prompts Harry to intercept them.

2. Magnum Force

I’d actually put this up there with Alien/Aliens and Terminator/T2 as an example of a sequel to a great movie that changes tack instead of doing the same thing over again. After spending a movie on criminals who play the system and get away with it, here we go the other way and focus on fascist cops who style themselves as judge, jury, and executioner.

I especially appreciate that the movie shows that such vigilantes wouldn’t be as scrupulous about avoiding collateral damage as comic book guys like the Punisher or Batman, but that’s also not used as an easy out by Harry in condemning them. He entirely takes issue with the fact that they’re murdering people, not going “good on ya, but ya shot a nun too, so I have to bring you in.”

3. The Enforcer

Probably the least memorable of the Harry movies, for good or ill. Harry goes up against a terrorist revolutionary group, which given Harry’s own problems with bureaucracy and the system might be interesting (if a little redundant after he went after the Magnum Force), but then it turns out they’re Gruberesque terrorists-for-hire. Given the topicality of the Harry movies, this means we end up with villains who don’t really stand for or espouse much of anything.

There’s an (notably unromantic) subplot about Harry partnering with a woman which is somewhat staggeringly nuanced--Harry takes issue with her lack of experience and being promoted to Inspector for PR reasons, but she’s also shown to be a competent officer for all her inexperience and she’s shown dealing with sexism both positive and negative. That is, people both dismissing her for being a woman and trying to use her as a poster child to promote their own agenda. It probably says all you need to say about Dirty Harry and the feminist movement, which is too bad, because the next one is the exact same thing, only, uhhhh

4. Sudden Impact

Eeeeeeeeh. Dirty Harry guest-stars in a rape-revenge movie, as performed by a cast of Bronson victims outta a Death Wish movie. (The event is frequently recalled with nauseating detail--a gang-rape involving the heroine, a lesbian (!), and an underage sister who ends up in a catatonic state! Geez, I thought Harry was supposed to be the sleaziest thing in these movies.)

Although this movie did give us the Eastwood classic “Go ahead, make my day”--not bad for a film series to still be so memorable on its fourth go-around--it also pushes Harry himself to the point of self-parody. In earlier movies, Harry seemed like an average guy who might spend his off-hours having a beer, watching the game, or enjoying some female companionship. Here, Harry is taken off the case (you know how it is) and immediately goes to test-fire a huge .44 Auto Mag like he has no life outside shooting guns.

Also, having Harry be Furiosa’d in his own movie is a dubious prospect--as you might expect, having Harry investigating someone else going around ventilating scumbags means he has precious little impact on the plot (until, of course, he has to step in and save ‘Furiosa’). But, coupled with sequel escalation that sees Harry not able to go five minutes without getting into a fistfight or shoot-out (seriously, you could start a drinking game at this point), this movie gets especially dubious.

In the opening moments, Harry bluffs a murderous mafia don into having a heart attack by faking evidence proving he tortured a witness to death (uhh, isn’t this exactly what the Magnum Force was doing?). So there’s a hit put out on Harry and he has to deal with assassins every coupla minutes. (Oddly, organized crime is never the main focus of these movies.) Again, this has nothing to do with the actual plot--which already takes advantage of Harry getting into various misadventures as he goes about his duty as a cop, stopping hold-ups, negotiating hostage situations, et al--it’s just an excuse to let Harry blow some people away.

Besides, if the idea is to ask the question of a rape victim being allowed to take revenge, doesn’t it completely invalidate Harry’s moral standing if he’s done pretty much the same thing in the opening act? Spoiler alert: he doesn’t end up hauling her in or saying she’s gone too far, but still, the dramatic question is inert from the get-go because he’s already demonstrated that cold-blooded murder is fine by him. I guess maybe the dramatic question is whether he’ll be a hypocrite and say that it’s okay for him to murder bad guys, but not for her to do the same? Well, he doesn’t. Yippee.

5. The Dead Pool

The one where Dirty Harry gets into a car chase with a remote control car.

This isn’t hypocritical at all--the violent, R-rated film series full of rape, sex, gunplay, murder, foul language, et al now asks hey, what if the media is causing violence? It doesn’t go so far as to come out and say it--a villain representing violent video games or whatnot being hard to personify--but still, you’d think the movie would be a little self-aware about probably having shown as many women being terrorized as the slasher movies they target here.

Well, that and heavy metal music, Jerry Springer-like talk shows, sensationalistic news programs, and, uh, celebrity dead pools. Plus, I guess, metafiction, what with all the movies being filmed while inside a movie. No wonder this movie doesn’t end up having anything to say about violence in the media. It’s covering practically everything that could be on a TV screen.

Speaking of everything that could be on a TV screen, take a look at this actual scene from an honest-to-God Dirty Harry movie and see if you can find everything that would be downright hilarious to a viewer in 2017.

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(Now that’s the video he should’ve sent to Emma Stone. She would’ve been like “Andrew Garfield who?”)

By the way, is it not odd that a bunch of people in Hollywood, who you’d think would know how movies work, expect us to believe there would be a scene in a slasher movie’s narrative which could double as a music video for Real-Life Rock Star Jim Carrey? Yeah, pretty much any eighties slasher director would be that cheap, but an actual scene where a rock star lip-syncs to his song while reenacting The Exorcist? Could you image watching, say, Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood and that scene following any other scene at all? They could’ve just said that Liam Neesons is using the same crew as the movie he’s shooting at the same time, or that’s it a tie-in. Well, maybe the movie within a movie is depicting Jim Carrey filming an Exorcist-themed music video there as well, a movie within a movie within a movie. We have to go deeper.

Anyway, this is pretty much a slog. The villain is a serial killer who’s motivation for killing people on a celebrity dead pool is pretty much just that he’s crazy. He’s not a patch on Scorpio. He’s one of those movie serial killers who uses a bunch of crazy methods, including (infamously) an RC car loaded with explosives. And, like I said, it’s odd that we’re going back to the serial killer well instead of doing organized crime for once.

There is a mob figure who puts a hit out on Harry (just like in the last movie; how many real-life cops have had hits put out on them, much less multiple times?), but Harry bluffs him into thinking he’ll get whacked if Harry dies. This results in the guy actually assigning Harry some mob guys as bodyguards but, unforgivably, nothing at all comes of this. You’d think Harry being escorted around by the fucking Mafia would be comedy gold, but they disappear from the movie immediately. Gyp!

The only thing that makes this a fitting cap for Harry’s oeuvre is that at the end, the villain gets his hands on Harry’s .44 Magnum and fires six shots instead of only five. Of course, that means that when Harry shoots him with a harpoon, he’s basically executing a guy in cold blood who was clearly stated to be mentally ill and who is effectively unarmed. He didn’t have a hostage or anything. Even Scorpio was going for his gun after Harry tried to bring him in alive. Kind of a sour note to end five movies on.

Oh, and to continue the theme of Harry becoming a self-parody, we’re told here that he’s trashed three department squad cars in a month. Even for Dirty Harry, that seems a little excessive.

#dirty harry #the enforcer #magnum force #sudden impact #the dead pool

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