Substantially Similar--A Blog on IP Issues, Writing and Film
A Primer on How Movies Are Made: Follow the Money
by John Aquino on 09/07/19Did you ever wonder why particular movies are made at all and then remade and remade and why perfectly good movies are left to die with limited distribution and no promotion? There are some exceptions, but the prevalent answer is the simple one. As "Deep Throat" is supposed to have told the Washington Post reporters investigating corruption in the Nixon White House, "Follow the Money." (See Note * at end)
There are, of course, examples of actors, directors, and cinematographers working for union scale just so the budget of a movie they thought was important would not be rejected by studios because it was too expensive. And filmmakers have produced scripts that they knew would be prestigious but unprofitable. But behind at least some of these stories were filmmakers taking a tax write-off or agreeing to make a particular movie only if the actor who wanted the movie made agreed to sign a multi-year contract (e.g., production head Darryl Zanuck, star Henry Fonda, and the 1940 movie version of John Steinbeck's 1940 novel The Grapes of Wrath). Sometimes, prestigious movies have even made money in spite of low expectations.
A more recent example of the follow-the-money approach concerns the Millennium trilogy of crime novels by Karl Stig-Erland "Steig" Larsson. Larsson died in 2004 having completed three novels about Lisabeth Salamander, a brilliant but emotionally damaged computer hacker and researchers: the English titles are The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. The novels became mammoth best sellers. By 2015, 80 million copies of the three books had been sold worldwide.
Larsson didn't leave a valid will, and, consequently, his estate, including his intellectual property, passed to his father and brother, neither of whom he had seen in a number of years. Larsson had completed three-quarters of a fourth novel on a computer notebook in the possession of his lover Eva Gabrielsonn as well as notes for a fifth and sixth book. Rather than work with Gabrielsonn, Larsson's family and publisher hired David Lagercrantz to write three additional novels in the series titled The Girl in the Spider's Web (2015), The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (2017), and The Girl Who Lived Twice (2019) based on his own imagination..
The Swedish film production company Yellow Bird released film versions of Larsonn's three novels in 2009. The film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo received the BAFTA award (the UK equivalent of the Academy Award) for best non-English language film; all three movies were released in North America and other countries and earned a combined $250 million worldwide. The three films were also re-packaged as a six-part Millennium miniseries for Swedish television in 2010.
Faced with the tremendous success of the novels and their Swedish film versions, Sony Pictures and M-G-M produced an English language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2011. It was given a substantial production budget of $90 million and a capable cast including Daniel Craig, who had starred in two films so far as secret agent James Bond, playing the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, Rooney Mara as Lisabeth, Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright, Joely Richardson, and Geraldine James. The screenplay was penned by Steven Zaillian, who had written or co-written the scripts for Schindler's List, for which he won the Academy Award, A Clear and Present Danger, Moneyball, and Gangs of New York. On release, Dragon was well reviewed, was nominated for five Academy Awards including best actress for Mara, won the award for film editing, and earned $237 million worldwide. Now, if a film cost $90 million to produce, the rule of thumb is that you add another $90 million to cover the marketing for a total cost of $180 million. With worldwide ticket sales of $237 million, minus the cost, the film made, based on these numbers, a modest profit of $57 million, not including ancillary income from DVDs, soundtracks, and cable viewings.
A script for a U.S. film version of the second novel was completed, and Craig and Mara were eager to begin filming. But the studios were disappointed that the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo didn't make more money. They were looking for mammoth profits: for a film with total costs of $90 million, filmmakers could expect $400 million or more in ticket sales, and for one costing $200 million to make, $1 billion in worldwide sales. The planned films of the second and third Millennium novels were cancelled.
Now, other minds might reason that, given that the Swedish film versions of Larsson's three novels had been released in the U.S. and many were already familiar with the stories, the U.S. film version of the first novel had still performed well financially and extremely well in reviews and awards. But the studios and filmmakers wanted more and decided to shake things up. They made the decision to produce a movie version of Lagercrantz's novel The Girl in the Spider's Web, which had not been filmed before and so familiarity with the story would not be an issue. They cast Clare Foy, who had won acclaim for playing Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflik's miniseries The Crown, as Lisabeth--a sharp departure for the actress. The rest of the cat, however, included few if any familiar names, all in the spirit of reducing cost. Deciding that Dragon had been over-budgeted at $90 million, the studios produced Spide'sr for $43 million. What really wasn't taken into account is that Lagercrantz' work may not have been as good as Larsonn's. The upshot was that Spider's received mixed to negative reviews, Foy's performance was considered as a valiant effort but inferior to Mara's, and Spider's earned only $35 million at the box office worldwide. Using the same math approach and doubling the production budget to account for marketing costs, Spider's, rather than having a $57 million profit as Dragon did, showed a $48 million loss. Subsequent versions of Larsonn's and Lagercrantz's novels have been cancelled or at least postponed.
You too can turn a $57 million profit into a $48 million loss and fizzle away interest in what looked to be a healthy film franchise if all you do is follow the money. Another approach would have been to keep the high production values, superior cast, and Larsonn's novel as a source and try to make the second U.S. film based on a his work even better than the first.
Note* "Deep Throat" never says "Follow the money" in Woodward and Bernstein's book All the President's Men. The screenwriter for the movie version, James Goldman, appears to have invented it or borrowed it from another setting. That line, at least, was a successful film adaptation, translating the spirit of the book.
Copyright 2019 by John T. Aquino
A Washington Nationals Musical in the Spirit of Les Miserables
by John Aquino on 08/04/19
Les
Nationalables
A Musical appreciation of the Washington Nationals 2019 season through July based on Les Miserables
Opening Number. The Washington
Nationals’ team storms onto the stage, angry at their latest loss.
At the End of the Day—Ensemble
At the end of the
day all that matters is winning
Doesn’t matter how
much
Or how hard you try.
If a line drive
takes a hop
Or our catcher drops
the ball
Doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter at all.
Is there someone to pay
to just skip the eighth inning,
So we’ll never again
blow a 10 to 1 lead?
No more boos or
hateful mail,
Or death threats
each time we fail,
Each time we fail,
At the end of the
day.
Max Scherzer, the Nationals’ ace pitcher, steps forward and sings.
One My Own—Scherzer
On my own,
pretending they’re behind me,
As the balls are whizzing
swiftly passed me,
And runners are
whirling, whirling by me,
I hear bats crack
and nothing back,
Like there's empty space behind me.
And I know I'm pretending in my mind.
If I turn
around, they will not be there.
And I know that someday
I'll find,
They’re out of here
and drinking beer,
And eating camembert!
On my own,
I’ll simply keep pretending,
That they’re back there
And to their jobs
attending.
I’ll strike out as
many as I’m able.
It would be nice
If once or twice
I’d feel I’m not
alone.
I’m out here.
I’m out here.
I’m out here
On my own.
Scherzer steps back. Mike Rizzo, Nationals’ general manager, dressed in
a sports shirt and slacks, steps forward.
Master of the
House—Rizzo
Master of the House,
General manager,
Happy as an apple
If you call me “sir.”
But if you throw your
glove,
If you give me sass,
I’ll trade you in a
second for a bunch of cash.
Everybody loves the
GM
Everyone loves the
boss,
And the Lerners still
will keep me
No matter what the loss.
Rizzo steps back. Dave Martinez, the Nationals’ manager, steps forward. An announcer’s voice is heard.: “Two outs, the bottom of the ninth, the Nats are a run behind, and Turner is on second." Martinez sings:
Bring Him Home--Martinez
God on high,
Hear my prayer,
In my need,
You have sometimes
been there.
He is young,
And not afraid,
He’s not slow,
As you know.
Bring him home,
Bring him home,
Bring him home.
Martinez steps back. Former Washington Nationals’ star Bryce Harper enters wearing a Philadelphia Phillies’ uniform.
Stars—Harper
There, there in the
distance,
My agent is hustling,
Hustling for me,
Hustling for me.
He’ll make a good
deal
And I’ll finally
feel
That I’m a star,
That I’m a star.
I hear the boos and
the hiss
When a change-up I' will miss,
And the cries of
traitor and turncoat
Still ring in my
ears.
And though my new
team boos me too,
It's millions I'll clear.
And so it has been,
And so it is
written,
On the door of the hall
of fame,
That he who shines like the rising sun
Will get his price.
Lord, please let me
get it,
That I can turn it
Into gold bars,
And it will be mine,
This I swear,
This I swear by the stars!
Harper exits. Martinez, the Nationals’ manager, steps forward.
Empty Seats on
Empty Benches--Martinez
There’s a grief that
can’t be spoken,
There’s a pain goes
on and on,
Empty seats on empty
benches,
Friends are traded,
and they’re gone.
I remember Daniel
Murphy,
Ross Detwiler,
Michael Morse,
And of course there’s
all the money,
But that’s par for
Rizzo’s course.
Oh, my friends, my
friends forgive me,
That I’m here and
you are gone,
There’s a grief that
can’t be spoken,
And the pain goes on and on.
The entire Washington Nationals’ team comes forward for the finale.
Finale
One Day
More—Ensemble
One day more,
Another day, another
chance to win,
We know we’ve said
this all before,
But if you give us
one day more,
One day more.
One day to an extra
inning,
Everyone will get a
ring,
Can’t you see a new beginning,
Can’t you hear the
people sing,
And sing,
And sing,
One day more!
One more day to revolution,
We will win and
never stop,
Say goodbye to wretched
losing,
We will make it to
the top.
Tomorrow we will soar
away,
Tomorrow is the
judgment day,
Tomorrow we’ll
discover
What the Lord in
heaven has in score.
One more dawn!
One more day!
One day more!
Copyright 2019 by John T. Aquino. This is a parody.
A Special Birthday and Remembering the Years Through Hello Dolly!
by John Aquino on 06/10/19I turned 70 yesterday, and I thank all my relatives and friends on Facebook and LinkedIn who were kind enough to send birthday greetings. My wife took me on a three-day birthday trip to downtown Washington (just 13 miles from our home but we stayed at a hotel for two nights), where, among other excursions, we saw Hello Dolly! at the Kennedy Center starring Betty Buckley. In addition to the usual thoughts special birthdays bring, this also caused me to view the years gone back through a bookends of the original production of Dolly! that my Mom took me to see in its pre-Broadway tryout at the National Theater in Washington, D.C., with this production and to wonder the degree to which memory clouds and enhances things.
I am not familiar with any songs specifically about turning 70, except a portion of one sung by Fagin in Oliver! :
What happens when I'm 70?
Must come a time--70!
When you're old and it's cold,
And who cares if you live or you die?
The one consolation's the MONEY you may have put by!
Thank God, I'm not cold and I have a lovely and thoughtful wife. I wish the MONEY had been better over the years and that bosses had been more appreciative of my efforts that made them rich, but, ca va. I'm retired from day-to-day journalism, still write, and practice law when I'm needed. I'm reasonably healthy and still active. I read the obituaries every day--not checking to see if I'm in them or out of any schadenfreude but because friends are getting to the age where they pass on and I have learned that if they do I hear about it in the normal course of things. Life is good, with God's blessings.
In watching Hello, Dolly! on stage for the first time in 55 years, I tried to assess the differences in the productions and me. When my Mom and I saw it at the National Theater, the show had left its first performances in Detroit and terrible reviews. The director and choreographer Gower Champion had spent so much time on the big production numbers like "Put on your Sunday Clothes," "Hello Dolly!" and "Dancing" that the rest of the show (about a matchmaker in Yonkers, New York in 1885 who contrives to have a rich half-a-millionaire, who has asked her to find a wife for him, marry her instead) came across as sketchy and cold. Champion, the librettist Michael Stewart, and composer and lyricist Jerry Herman cut and added some songs. But when my Mom and I saw it, the first act finale was still a number for the rich Horace Vandergelder played by David Burns, his barber, and the chorus called "A Penny in My Pocket." It was an indifferent song and ended the first act with a focus on the thick-headed Horace and not on the star Dolly., played by Carol Channing. By the end of its D.C. run, "A Penny in My Pocket" had been cut and replaced by Dolly's declaration of independence, "Before the Parade Passes By." Another new song, "Elegance," was added, that was, depending on who is telling the story, a song written by Bob Merrill that had been dropped from his musical, A New Girl in Town, or. Herman's version of Merrill's song. Herman was later hit by a copyright infringement suit claiming that the song "Hello Dolly!" had the same opening of as Mack David's 1948 "Sunflower" (The suit was settled out of court for a reported $250,000). While Dolly! was a big hit, I remember reading that Charles Nelson Reilly, who was unexpectedly effective as Cornelius Hackell, said that it was an unpleasant show to be in because everyone was only interested in money.
I was actually disappointed that another musical that I'd preferred that my Mom and I also saw--Meredith Wilson's Here's Love!, based on the 1946 film A Miracle on 34th Street--ran only 10 months while Hello Dolly! ran seven years, won 11 out of 12 Tony awards, including for best musical, score, and best musical actress, and was made into a major motion picture in 1969 starring Barbra Streisand. Thee 2018 Broadway revival starring Bette Midler won a Tony Award for best revival and Midler; the Dolly! we saw was the touring company of that revival.
Seeing this new version, I wondered how much of my reaction was colored by the effect of 54 years on my memory, the fact that when my Mom and I saw it in 1964 the show was new; and also that what we saw in 1964 was headed to Broadway while the Kennedy Center show was coming from Broadway and going on tour. I remember Gower Champion's direction as being full of energy: the song "Dancing" began with Dolly actually teaching the two inept clerks Cornelius and Barnaby to dance and ended with the dancing pouring into the street and causing passers-by the join in; the number"I Stand For" had Dolly, Irene Molloy, and Minnie Fay singing nonsense lyrics ("I stand for motherhood, America and a hot lunch for orphans") while trying to hide the two men from Horace in Malloy's hat shop in intricately plotted movements in and out of closets and under tables; and "Elegance" was so exuberantly performed it stopped the show. For this production, I noticed that the conductor's tempo for the overture was surprisingly listless. For "Dancing," the two men started dancing right away and the number appeared played for laughs, as was "I Stand For,"with Barnaby hiding in plain view by putting on hats; the title song "Hello Dolly" had the waiters primarily dancing by kicking in place while holding trays and Buckley as Dolly just walking around and tilting her hands back and forth; and "Elegance" had little choreography and appeared to be an on-the-apron number designed to disguise a scenery change, which it might have been originally, but as performed in 1964, came across as much more.
I didn't see "Before the Parade Passes By" in the original production, but here Dolly sang it all the way through in front of the curtain and then the curtain rose to reveal the marchers at the 14th parade moving in one place in slow motion; when the motion sped up, the cast mostly walked around the stage in a circle. Similarly, for Dolly's 11 o'clock number "So Long, Dearie," she started it in the courtroom singing it to Horace but then moved to the apron of the stage, the curtain fell, and she sang it to us in front of the curtain. It has to be stated that, when Carol Channing originated the role of Dolly, she was 43. Betty Buckley has had a glorious Broadway career, has won two Tony awards, but is 71 and hasn't been in a Broadway show for 20 years. It also needs to be said that as a touring production the show seemed to rely on backdrops and made the Kennedy Center Opera House look somehow small.
The show even restored "A Penny in Your Pocket" but as the opening of the second act and sung by Horace in front of the curtain (again!), detached from the show and its action. It may have been added for the cache of a "new song" and to please David Hyde Pierce, who played Horace in the 2018 Broadway production, in that Horace has only one-and-a-half songs--"It Takes a Woman" and he joins with Dolly at the end in a reprise of "Hello Dolly."
And so, on points, the original production seems to have been better. But it was new then. The "Before the Parade Passes By" number wasn't competing with the memory of the 1969 movie in which Streisand led a parade of a thousand marchers down 14th Street. And the rest of the audience when we saw the Kennedy Center production LOVED It. They laughed in all the right places and showered Betty Buckley with thunderous applause after every number. The Washington Post review was a rave.
Perhaps that's what comes with age. Memory can cloud what happened, and it can also be accurate. New seems fresher than old. My wife had never seen it, and she loved it too--although she agreed the tempo could have been a little sprightlier. And I'm glad I saw it, if only because I saw it with her.
Copyright 2019 by John T. Aquino
Historical Films on Impeachment and Confederate Sympathizers Took Liberties and Duped Us
by John Aquino on 05/28/19I have written articles and a book on legal issues concerning fictional portrayals in fact-based films. For historical films depicting events from a century or more ago, there are seldom legal concerns related to the portrayals because only the living can sue claiming they have been libeled. The main issue with these historical films is a distortion of the truth that can affect public perception of historical figures. I've recently encountered two such incidents: one concerning the 1942 film Tennessee Johnson, which is focused on the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, and the other the 1936 film Prisoner of Shark Island, which tells the story of Dr. Samuel Mudd who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Film being such a pervasive medium, it makes me wonder if the national understanding of impeachment and confederacy/slavery would have been different if the films had moved closer to the truth.
Tennessee Johnson was regularly broadcast on television when I was young, and I sorta grew up on it. It stars Van Heflin and portrays Johnson as a Senator from Tennessee who fought against secession and then as a loyal vice president to Lincoln who arrives ill for his swearing-in ceremony and is falsely reported to be drunk. On Lincoln's assassination, Johnson becomes president. He doggedly tries to perpetuate Lincoln's benign approach to Reconstruction but is fought every step of the way by members of Congress led by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, played in the movie by Lionel Barrymore. During his impeachment trial, Johnson delivers an impassioned speech in his defense. He is acquitted and years later represents his state in Congress. My knowledge of Johnson came primarily from the film and from John F. Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage, which told, among other stories of courage, how Sen. Edmund Ross of Kansas voted not to convict Johnson, which left the prosecution one vote short.
The film carried an unusual disclaimer that doesn't just repeat the typical Hollywood statement that characters and events depicted are fictitious. Instead, it reads, "The Senate of the United States, in 1868, sat as a High Court in a judgment upon Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln as President. In the only great State trial in our history [until 1998], President Johnson was charged with violation of a law which forbade him to dismiss a member of his Cabinet. In 1926, the Supreme Court pronounced this law unconstitutional--as Johnson contended that it was. The form of our medium compels certain dramatic liberties, but the principal facts of Johnson's own life are based on history."
And so, the filmmakers acknowledge taking "certain dramatic liberties" due to the "form of our medium." It was a while before I learned the extent of the "liberties." When I was writing my book, I wanted to find Johnson's impassioned speech during his trial and learned that he never gave such a speech or even appeared at his trial. In my other readings, I discovered that he was a slave owner, and, as president, opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship to former slaves, and fought against some of Lincoln's other plans for Reconstruction. While Johnson put forth a story that he had been ill and not drunk at Lincoln's second inauguration during which Johnson was also sworn in, contemporary accounts and comments from Lincoln himself--"I have known Andy Johnson for many years. He made a bad slip the other day but you'd need not be scared. Andy ain't no drunkard"--suggest it was otherwise.
I've finished reading Brenda Wineapple's just released and eerily-relevant book, The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and his Dream of a Just Nation, which presents a detailed picture of the circumstances surrounding the impeachment trial and contrasts markedly with the film. As president, Johnson took the position that secession was unconstitutional and therefore hadn't happened. He therefore felt free to pardon and give appointments to former Confederate officers, which tended to reassert white supremacist thinking in the south. This angered Stevens and others who favored racial equality. Some who opposed what Johnson was doing overreached, spreading rumors that he had been complicit in Lincoln's assassination and passing the ultimately unconstitutional Tenure in Office Act, which required the president to obtain Congress' approval before removing cabinet members from office. Johnson was impeached by the House and tried by the Senate after firing the secretary of state. The trial dragged on, consumed with arguments about process--is his being a racist enough to push a president out of office?--and, while Ross was the last to cast a vote, Democrats and Republicans ultimately joined together to get enough votes to acquit and end the national nightmare. Stained by impeachment, Johnson did little in his remaining year in office and failed in his attempt to secure the nomination for his reelection. He was ultimately elected to the Senate again in 1875 and served five months before his death.
Tennessee Johnson was made during World War II and extolled patriotism and unity at the expense of the more complex and more interesting factual story. Simplifying the story is usually thought to be more dramatic. The movie was directed by William Dieterle, who specialized in historical films such as The Story of Louis Pasteur, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and was co-written by John L. Balderston, a little remembered but extremely skilled and influential playwright and screenwriter, who coaxed a play, Berkeley Square, out of Henry James' unfinished novel The Sense of the Past, and either wrote or co-wrote the film versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Mummy, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Dracula's Daughter, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Prisoner of Zenda, and Gaslight. (As an attorney, I admire the fact that the year before his death in 1954 he reached a settlement of his lawsuit with Universal Studios that brought him and his heirs a percentage of revenues for all of the horror films he helped write and their sequels.) And so there was talent behind Tennessee Johnson, although it tended to be in people who had worked on films that didn't require historical accuracy. The film was criticized at the time by the NAACP, which boycotted it, and by Hollywood liberals such as actors Vincent Price and Zero Mostel and playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht for its glorification of a man who sought to perpetuate a racist south. The movie was a box office flop. But for the longest time, it was almost my sole source of information about Andrew Johnson and his impeachment.
As to the other film, recently, I was discussing with a friend the story of Dr. Samuel Mudd for some work he was doing. Again, I was brought up on John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island that portrays Mudd as a simple country doctor whom Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth visits for treatment of the injuries he sustained when he leapt from Lincoln's theatre box after shooting him. In the film, Mudd didn't know who Booth was, is unjustly tried and convicted for conspiracy, and is sent to a prison on the Dry Tortugas off the coast of Florida. When the prison's doctor dies during a yellow fever outbreak, Mudd helps stem the tide of the disease. He is pardoned by President Johnson and returns to his wife. Warner Baxter played Mudd and Gloria Stuart, who 62 years later dropped the necklace in the ocean at the end of the film Titanic, his wife. There were other version of the Mudd story that followed the same interpretation. Gary Cooper starred in the radio broadcast of Shark Island in 1938, and there were three television portrayals: Lew Ayres played Mudd in "The Case for Dr. Mudd" on the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse in 1958 and in "Time of the Traitor," an episode of the series Laramie in 1962, while Dennis Weaver took the role in The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd, a 1980 made-for-tv movie
Years after first seeing Shark Island, I was reading James L. Swanson's 2006 book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. I found it a riveting tale in itself, although not too well written. (It has been made into a television mini-series.) But I was shocked to read that Mudd was a slave owner and Confederate sympathizer whose name had been circulated to those of the same mind-bent who might need assistance, like Booth. I had heard over the years of the Mudd family trying to have their ancestor's conviction overturned and how they had received the verbal support of Presidents Carter and Reagan, to no avail. But that all tied into Shark Island's story. And here was a book that stated bluntly that the story I had believed was wrong.
I spent some time reading up on it. Historians are not in agreement about everything Swanson described about Mudd. But it is clear that Mudd owned slaves, that Maryland's 1864 emancipation of slaves harmed his tobacco farm business and embittered him, that Booth stayed overnight at Mudd's farm and that they met in Washington, D.C. in 1864, and that Mudd didn't report treating Booth after news of Lincoln's assassination broke. At least one of the conspirators implicated Mudd. This led the prosecution and some today to argue that Mudd was, at the very least, a conspirator in Booth's plan to kidnap Lincoln before Booth changed the plan to murder and that he willingly assisted Booth in his escape, possibly before Mudd knew of the assassination. And so, this modern reading is pretty close to the prosecution's case of 1868. Others, including Mudd-related groups and his family, contend that he was innocent. At the very least, modern interpretations suggest that Shark Island's version of a country doctor taking care of a stranger is not correct.
This is why fictionalization in fact-based films is such an important topic. A film can be the only way people learn about historical people. If the films of 70 and 80 years ago had accurately informed audiences about impeachment and Confederate sympathizers rather than simplify and falsify the facts, would our subsequent history have benefited from this better understanding? Can we still benefit today by knowing the truth about yesterday?
Copyright 2019 by John T. Aquino
Game of Thrones and the Series Finale Debate
by John Aquino on 05/24/19Having read what seems like hundreds of posts and articles from fans of the HBO series Game of Thrones about how unsuccessful the series finale was, I have some comments that come with a caveat
My caveat is that I have not followed the series devotedly for its eight seasons. This might strike some who know me as odd in that I studied medieval drama and literature in college, acted in one of the medieval mystery plays, and, having been a reader of Arthurian literature, wrote Camelot stories that have been published. I haven't read George R. R. Martin's Game of Throne novels and have not seen every episode of the series, most likely because my family dealt with several illnesses over the last decade and my journalism and legal work have been demanding. The episode I remember most, not surprisingly, which I clicked on without knowing about it, was the season five finale, in which Cersei's is made to walk with a shaved head and naked through narrow streets while the crowd throws mud and stones at her. (The event was modeled on the "penance walk" King Edward IV's mistress Jane Shore was made to take after his death, although she was wearing a kirtle or slip.) I later found out that the actress playing Cersei, Lena Headey didn't disrobe and that the effect was achieved by a body double and CGI (computer-generated imagery).
I did watch the last two episodes, "The Bells" and "The Iron Throne." Without being steeped in the characters, I was able to follow it pretty well. The former wasn't very suspenseful--whichever side has the Drogon is going to win, but the special effects were well done, the acting in both episodes was good, and, with all of the bloody fighting in "The Bells," "The Iron Throne" seemed rather tame and anti-climactic. Obviously, if I had invested eight years of viewing every episode and becoming attached to the characters, I would been more prone to find flaws, just as I have of other series finales.
I have written on these pages about my disappointment in the series finales of Seinfeld and How I Met Your Mother. For the former, I complained that, while it was clear throughout the run that the characters were selfish and self-centered, having the series end with their being imprisoned for being selfish and self-centered (they laughed at a man being mugged and so violated a local statute enacted after Princess Diana died while photographers took pictures of her dying without rendering aid) had comical conceits crashing bang-zoom-bang against real life issues. I wrote that by the same measure the classic tv series I Love Lucy should have ended with Lucy in a straitjacket in an institution where she was sent because she did such crazy things. I can imagine the Seinfeld writers feeling quite pleased with themselves for being so clever, even though the end result is that the audience was being told it was foolish to have become invested in these selfish people. As to How I Met Your Mother, Ted in 2030 tells his children the story of the events from 2006 to 2015 leading up to his meeting their mother. We know the mother isn't Robin because he refers to her in talking to the children as "Aunt Robin." In the last season, we finally seen the children's mother-to-be, who is lovable, only to hear in the last episode that she died in 2024. Ted's children tell him that his story wasn't about how he met their mother but how he was in love with Robin, whom he then rushes to find and renew their relationship. And so, the children tell us that the title of the series is wrong, and we watch a character we've become attached to die of cancer.
Part of the explanation for the Mother series finale is that all the scenes with the actors playing Ted's children were filmed in the first season before they aged out of their parts. Over the next half-dozen years, the characters developed in ways not initially imagined, and we got to meet the mother. Why the show' creators felt that killing off the mother would ever be acceptable is beyond me.
Something similar appears to have happened with Game of Thrones. The characters developed over the eight seasons, and audience members became attached to them. The makers of the show had already filmed all of the novels Martin has written so far and were making up the rest of the story, although Martin was listed as an adviser. He told them how the novel series is going to end, but also gave them the authority to develop popular characters more and to kill off whatever characters they wanted. After the finale aired, the show's makers said it has ended the way they always envisioned it. They appear to have zigged when they should have zagged.
Fans have complained that the final season felt rushed, that (SPOILER ALERT) Daenerys Targaryen was suddenly transformed from a heroine to a mass murdered, that Jon Snow determined that the only way to deal with her transformation was to stab her to death, that Cersei and Jamie are killed together but not in battle but rather by falling rocks as a result of the Drogon destroying everything by fire, and that the Night King was killed off half way through season 8..
When a series is based on finished books or dramas, there is usually an acceptance of the ending. Deviating from the published ending will devastate the devoted. But when the series develops from year to year and is contingent on renewal, the ending can be fluid and some people will be disappointed that their favorite character is killed off or doesn't marry the heroine.
Some series finales have been well received. I liked the endings of M*A*S*H and Star Trek: The Next Generation, which were ingenious and true to the characters..(Conversely, although I was glad the ship returned home, I felt the ending of Starship Voyager was rushed.) Everyone talks about the ending of Newhart being so great, but to me all it shows is that Newhart was the weaker of Bob Newhart's two series and that no one complained that all of the events of Newhart were a dream in the mind of Newhart's character from the earlier series. He was shown in bed with his first series wife played by Suzanne Pleshette. I have always felt sorry for his second series wife played by Mary Frann for the Newhart's eight seasons, being shown by viewers and critics that it was all right that her character didn't exist. From a surprise perspective, the ending of Newhart was clever. As an ending to the series, it was, of course, terrible.
Good series finales are possible. They only ever happen if the makers of the show and not the ratings decide the time has come to say goodbye. If the those who write the ending treat the characters and the audience with respect, the finale works. Otherwise, how can it?
Copyright 2019 by John T. Aquino
