Harry Potter is a franchise that requires no introduction. The books have won critical and popular acclaim, gracing top ten lists the world over, and are set to carve out their place in literary history- but does the film series live up to the promise held by their source material? Or are they a commercial cash-in, popularised by hype and existing solely to feed the growing Pottermania? As the last of the movies, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two is released on DVD and Blu-ray, I wanted to take a look back at the film franchise that has dominated the box office for over a decade.

The Beginning…

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was released as Pottermania was starting to gain worldwide momentum and only served to add fuel to the fire. The first film is the one that’s most aimed at children; it’s a gentle adventure set in a magical boarding school, wherein our hero fights bullying teachers and schoolboy nemeses. It’s a loveable film that’s drenched in old school nostalgia, invoking memories of Sunday afternoon children’s dramas and roaring fires. The primary achievement of Philosopher’s Stone was that it took its time to carefully lay down the foundation of an unknown, fantastical world, although this did mean that it skimped in terms of character development, and depth. It was here that we were first introduced to the now globally recognised Daniel Radcliffe who portrays the lead character, alongside Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as trusty sidekicks Ron and Hermione. The three leads showed enthusiasm and were chubby-cheeked and cute enough to grin their way cheerfully through, but, lacking any true skill as child actors, were wooden for most of the film. All in all, it’s a charming and heart-warming family film, strategically appealing to the entire Potter demographic. As an adaptation it did a decent job, although it didn’t deliver on the thrill factor, but it was a credible beginning to a monster movie franchise.

Jar Jar: Redux?

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets successfully continued the trend of comfortable family drama, providing a stand-out moment of the entire film series in Harry and Ron’s daring jaunt in a flying Ford Anglia, and a great action-filled finale, wherein Harry fights a giant snake with the sword of Godric Gryffindor. More of the wizarding world is revealed, as we visit The Burrow, the home of the Weasleys, which is surely one of the most interesting sets of the entire series; it’s a place that you’d like to spend an afternoon, drinking tea with Mrs Weasley, watching knitting that knits itself, and playing with cats that wear jumpers. An obvious, although unavoidable, flaw with the earlier films of the series is the dodgy use of CGI, most notably in the case of Dobby the House Elf, who was fully realised using CGI. Dobby has been likened to the Jar Jar of the Harry Potter series, which seems rather harsh considering that, CGI aside, Dobby is rather a likeable character (and approaches nowhere near the levels of annoying that Jar Jar did), as he helps and hinders Harry in equal amounts. Chamber of Secrets is a Potter film made from the same mould as the first; a bright and shiny family film that merely skirts the edges of depth held in the book and only offers glimpses of the darkness to come.

The Godfather

Prisoner of Azkaban was the movie that changed the tide in terms of how the Harry Potter franchise was viewed by people who hadn’t read the books. It was this film that shone as something more than just a kids film as it noticeably darkened and deepened, both in its themes, its imagery, and its development of characters. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, this instalment was permeated with dread and gloom, particularly in the scenes featuring the Dementors, who suck the happiness out of its victims. In one notable sequence where these creatures force their way onto the Hogwarts Express, the windows slowly freeze over and the colour is leeched out of the frame as they make their presence known, bringing a level of depression and heaviness previously unseen in the series. The themes of betrayal, revenge, and friendship are prevalent in the movie, as the mystery of Sirius Black and his connection with Harry’s parents’ deaths is unravelled. One disappointment was that the Marauders’ tragic story was exorcised, without even a hint to non-readers of who they were; as such a pivotal piece of information in the book, it added a layer of poignancy missing in the film. The level of cheese was generally reduced in Prisoner of Azkaban as its darker tone and more complex themes lent itself to a film that, while not completely free of its child-friendly reputation, had more depth and emotion than its predecessors.

Four Champions and a Sparkling Corpse

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was directed by Mike Newell, a filmmaker known for his romantic comedies; it’s perhaps fitting then that it was he who first had to tackle that dreaded beast- teenage hormones. It’s less cringe-worthy than you’d expect, as the lead trio of actors have grown into their roles enough to pull off the awkward first crushes with aplomb, and it’s the funniest film of the series, with Rupert Grint in particular expertly exercising his comedy chops. The last forty minutes of Goblet of Fire, however, couldn’t be more different in terms of tone, as Voldemort is resurrected, Harry is tortured and we witness our first death. Casting Ralph Fiennes as the Dark Lord was a stroke of genius as he chews up the scenery in a spectacularly cold, menacing, snake-like performance, and it’s now difficult to picture anyone else playing You-Know-Who. The moment that spelled the beginning of the end of Harry’s childhood and one of the pivotal points of the series, was the instant that the corpse of Cedric Diggory (played by a pre-glitter Robert Pattinson) hit the ground with a thud of finality. The portrayal of Cedric’s murder is harsh and sudden, and for the first time death is real, immediate and un-reversible, and its finality is devastating in a world where we have been lead to believe anything is possible. This moment showed the audience that children can die and that no one is safe, giving the series a much needed boost in terms of tension and danger. Goblet of Fire fluctuates from light-hearted to absolutely heart-wrenching in a roller-coaster bit of storytelling. The audience is brought up high with the comedic exploits of Harry and Ron’s first dates, and then harshly reminded of the finality of death, the memory of the shiny happiness of previous films completely wiped out.

The Muggles, The Ministry and The Mayhem

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the first of the war films, with a grittier, more realistic feel. The film has a real-world tint to it, particularly in an opening sequence which sees the Millennium Bridge in London collapse, bringing the threat a step closer to home in a timely reminder that our safe muggle world is also in danger. This message is drummed home as the magical world intrudes into the determinedly normal, suburban lives of the Dursleys. Harry’s summer with the Dursleys at first appears more like a Mike Leigh film than a magical adventure as all colour is leeched from the frame and the usually sweeping, grandiose score is unnervingly muted. The atmosphere gradually thickens in a painfully fraught exercise in tension-building as Harry and his cousin Dudley are attacked by the soul-sucking Dementors first seen in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

This is the first adaptation of book to screen that works tremendously well. It’s the longest of Rowling’s works, resembling more of a brightly-coloured brick than a book, and the second shortest film of the series (just 8 minutes behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two, which hardly counts as it’s the second half of a two-parter), and David Yates, in his first directing effort for the series, has managed to get the balance just right between being faithful to the spirit of the source material and creating a fast-paced, tense action film that stands on its own merit. This film builds to an exciting finale, which involves the first display of non-practice duelling, which is spectacularly vicious and incredibly dynamic, as witches and wizards thrust their wands at each other and leap back and forth in movements akin to sword-fighting. It’s the least flabby of all the films, withstanding the complete removal of Quidditch, and an extremely cut down finale. Thematically, the book and film feel extremely similar, despite the cuts made to the text, but it’s Harry’s growth as he deals with loss and the coming war that marks the most interesting changes between the two. The book sees Harry break down in fury over the death of his godfather Sirius Black, while the film approaches Harry’s reaction in a very different way- by having him numbed by the pain, his grief overwhelming him. Indeed, one of the most memorable and effective moments of the film series comes at the end of Order of the Phoenix as Harry is stood in the centre of the destroyed Ministry of Magic after Sirius’ death, and he is confronted by a wall of photographers in a ghastly impromptu press conference. Harry stands there blood-drenched, and tear-soaked as cameras flash in his face, a moment Daniel Radcliffe plays beautifully. The war against Voldemort is heating up, and it is in this film that Harry is forced into becoming a leader and into fighting for what he believes in, an important step on his road to his destiny as the hero of the wizarding world.

Will the Real Tom Riddle Please Stand Up

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a difficult film to categorize. There are three prevalent sides to it: discovering Voldemort’s master plan, Draco’s story, and, incongruously, girl troubles. It’s an odd mix that doesn’t quite balance out as Harry has one foot in a romantic comedy and one foot in a thriller for most of the film. Daniel Radcliffe exercises his comedy muscles valiantly throughout as Harry deals with a love-struck Ron, the highs and lows of dating his best friend’s sister, and, in a particularly amusing sequence, imbibes a potion that makes him incredibly lucky and inexplicably turns him into a cheerful, gurning imp who skips across the Hogwarts grounds attending funerals and drinking mead.

Half-Blood Prince is an important part of the overall series as it is here that the tale of Tom Riddle’s journey towards becoming Voldemort is told, as we learn of his heritage and his master plan. The casting of Hero Fiennes and Frank Dillane as Tom Riddle at ages 11 and 16 was a major boon in the effective telling of this story, as both infused the character with cold fury, pure malice and an advanced ability to manipulate that explained very well how the Dark Lord seduced and frightened in equal measure. This movie took an interesting angle in highlighting something that had not been touched upon in the novels- the duality of Harry’s and Draco’s separate struggles as they fight on opposite sides of the war. The film was able to achieve something that the book did not by allowing us to see Draco’s side of the story, and sympathise with a character that has been extremely easy to despise throughout the series – in part, this was due to Tom Felton’s impressive portrayal of Draco’s struggles.

Half-Blood Prince is an odd beast in that it does the job of bridging the gap between the earlier films and the conclusion; it’s here that Harry stops struggling and finally accepts his destiny, and, with Dumbledore’s help, takes the first steps on the path to defeating Voldemort. The tone varies wildly, which makes for an uneven but still vital film in the series, giving us one last chance to take a breath before we are plunged into the murky waters of a war-torn wizarding world in the concluding two-parter.

The One In The Tent

It’s not difficult to see why Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One has frequently been referred to as ‘the one in the tent’. Harry, Ron and Hermione choose to go on the run, searching for Horcruxes and hiding from Death Eaters, instead of returning to the once safe haven of Hogwarts. As the trio struggle to solve the riddle of the Horcruxes, their journey treads water as much as it surges forward, and the film does lag in the middle with scenes of our heroes sitting in a forest seemingly endless. Harry, Ron and Hermione are in the eye of the storm, only hearing rumours of the horrors occurring throughout the wizarding world as they focus on the task at hand. Their separation from the world outside provokes an interesting study on friendship and how it breaks under the pressure of war, and Rupert Grint shines as for once his role is more than just comic relief.

Despite the overall dreariness, and the frustration and tension nearing boiling point, there are also several set-pieces that feel more like the Harry Potter films we are used to. The trio break into the Ministry of Magic in a risky move that results in their near capture, but is undeniably entertaining and also provides us with a few amused chuckles in a film sparse on humour. Similarly, Harry and Hermione’s encounter with Nagini the snake was both exciting and terrifying in possibly one of the scariest scenes of the entire series, particularly for those who experienced the movie at the cinema in 3D and jumped out of their seat when the giant snake lunged from the screen in an excellent use of the technology.

The change of pace is disconcerting for an audience used to Harry Potter films employing a specific structure, but the uncomfortable tension that permeates Deathly Hallows Part One succeeds in setting the stage for the finale in terms of plot, character development and tone.

And Now The End Is Near…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two is pure payoff. It’s the shortest film in the series and packs in an unbelievable amount- there’s what feels like a thousand set-pieces as one action scene flies (sometimes literally) into another, and there’s barely time to catch your breath as bridges burn, beloved characters die, evil reigns, Horcruxes are destroyed, and the wizarding world comes together to fight a great evil.

The Battle of Hogwarts is surely the best depiction of a magical battle ever committed to film as director David Yates takes great joy in destroying and perverting all of the most beloved sets of the series; the great hall is now an infirmary, the courtyard is a graveyard, and the forest is where the enemy lay in wait. The representation of Voldemort’s final demise was satisfying in a way that it wasn’t in the source material. Unlike in the book, where his body remained a corpse, we actually saw him disintegrate, which, while disgusting, was fascinatingly visceral (especially in 3D), and a fitting end to a creature who was barely a shell held together by a malevolent spirit.

One of the most touching scenes of the entire franchise comes as Harry steps into the now-deceased Snape’s memories and, through a montage of sorts, we see his motivations and point of view from various episodes throughout the series. Alan Rickman has frequently stolen the show with his acerbic put-downs and raised eyebrows, but it is here, as Snape’s barriers are broken down and we are allowed to see his pain, that Rickman’s performance is truly affecting. As Snape cradles the body of the dead Lily Potter in his arms, it’s impossible not to be moved to tears by a character long misunderstood and brave to the very last.

As a conclusion to eight films, Deathly Hallows Part Two works well at giving everyone a last moment to shine. Professor McGonagall orders Hogwarts to defend its students, Ron and Hermione finally get it on, Luna holds a key piece of the Horcrux puzzle, and Mrs Weasley gets the moment we’ve all been waiting for. It’s Neville Longbottom, however, who almost steals the show. His story is as heroic as Harry’s as he steps up and, against all expectations, becomes a leader. It’s in this film that Neville is thrust into the spotlight and gets more screentime than ever as well as a triumphant, inspirational speech, multiple comedy moments, and even a bit of a love story, all of which are nowhere to be found in the books. It’s impossible not to cheer for Neville, played with down-to-earth charm by Matthew Lewis, who has always been the underachieving everyman that Harry, with his mantle of ‘the boy who lived’, never quite was.

Daniel Radcliffe’s last outing as Harry is undoubtedly his finest work to date. Radcliffe’s improving skills as an actor can be charted clearly through each film, culminating in Deathly Hallows Part Two, where he puts in a startling performance. While a large majority of the film is Harry running from scene to scene, Radcliffe imbibes the character with a deep sense of determination that permeates every moment he is on screen. It is when Harry, having discovered Snape’s true loyalties and having seen the bodies of friends who have died for him, decides to offer himself to Voldemort and to meet his certain death, that Radcliffe seems to have come into his own as an actor. There is no dialogue as Radcliffe stares directly into the camera, his pain and determination written clearly across his battle-hardened face, and in that moment he has never been more like Harry.

The one aspect of the final film that has divided fans and critics alike is the final scene at Kings Cross train station as an adult Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione wave goodbye to their children as they head off to Hogwarts and adventures of their own. While it is a nicely cyclical end the series, it is undoubtedly riddled with cheese (as it was in the novel), and, frankly, it’s hard not to snigger at the goatee beards and dowdy clothes that are meant to be a mark of adulthood. It doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the movie and one can’t help but think that the franchise would have benefitted more by it ending with the scene before, as our trio stood on the edge of the destroyed Hogwarts, holding hands, grateful that they’ve survived and now have a future.

Splitting the novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into two parts was a controversial move. Many were outraged at the thought of greedy executives rubbing their hands in glee over the last drops of money they would be squeezing out of a franchise that’s been pulling in box office millions for 10 years. With both parts released, however, it’s clear to see that this was the best decision that could have been made. The extra two hours of storytelling this allowed director David Yates has meant that the conclusion to the series could be told properly, no important details had to be edited carefully around, and beloved characters could get their fitting goodbyes.

To Read Or Not To Read

The eight movies have remained fairly true to the spirit of J.K. Rowling’s series, but due to the nature of adapting a novel into another medium, certain stories have been emphasised over others, usually due to time constraints or the need to streamline plotlines. Fans have been unhappy in certain instances about the editing of beloved plotlines and characters, but rarely has their removal adversely affected the movies to an extent where non-readers have not been able to understand what was happening. This worked well in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which exorcised giant chunks from the books, such as Hagrid’s tale of meeting his giant kin, Harry’s visit to St Mungo’s Hospital, and lengthy chapters spent at Grimmauld Place. In streamlining the film and removing all non-essential detours to the main plot, the pace is increased dramatically, making for a taut and exciting adventure. This technique was also used to great effect in the adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which was one of the most meandering books of the series, and through careful editing and reshaping was transformed into a more concise and meaningful film, focusing on the parallel struggles of Harry and Draco.

It’s difficult to write about the Harry Potter films without referencing the books they were based on, as one has become so entangled with the other. It’s near impossible to read the books and not imagine Alan Rickman as Snape, or Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall, but do you have to have read the novels to appreciate the films? Based on the strong storytelling in the films, the fantastic world building, the sheer epic production values, and the reactions from non-readers, I would say that the Harry Potter movie series stands solidly on their own.

The Verdict

Over eleven years, seven books, and eight films, Harry Potter is coming to an end, and personally I’m more than a little tearful to see it go. I, like many people my age, find it difficult to remember when Harry Potter wasn’t a part of my life; I’ve debated over the books, attended midnight openings, marathon-ed the films, and staunchly defended it against those who said Lord of the Rings was the better series. I’ve grown up with the promise of a new Potter book or film being released in the near future, but now that the last book has been released, and the last film is out on DVD, is it really the end?

The Harry Potter movie franchise is guaranteed to chug along for at least another few decades, riding a wave of nostalgia and affection from the fans that spawned Pottermania, but will it translate for future generations?

Like many of the great story franchises, I think Harry Potter has the staying power to stick around for many generations to come, and, unlike Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, we’re saved from things like the Jar Jar Situation and the strange Hobbit love, and rewarded instead with the epic beheading of giant snakes. The strong storytelling, wealth of heart and emotion, fantastic cast, excellent production values, and yet something more, a- dare I say it?- kind of magic woven throughout the entire movie series makes me believe that the Harry Potter franchise will be beloved by fans, both long-standing and newly acquired, for decades to come.

When Christopher Lee finally hung up his cape after 15 years in 1973, it would give other studios and film makers the opportunity to reinvent Dracula, in many cases radically redefining the character’s motivations and appearance. This was an understandable approach, given that Lee was so clearly associated with the role in the public’s consciousness but it also provided an opportunity to take a fresh look at Stoker’s original tale.

Over the next 5 years Jack Palance, Udo Keir, Frank Langella and Klaus Kinski, amongst others, all delivered unique and interesting takes on the Count although, looking back now, it seems that one of the main challenges Dracula faced in the 1970s was getting a decent haircut. Many of these interpretations were unfortunate enough to be realised in a decade in which the influence of mainstream trends often meant that Dracula ended up looking like those black and white photos of male models that used to hang in barber’s shop windows, advertising a variety of gruesome and offensive blow-waved mullets. Don’t believe me? Then Google Frank Langella in Dracula (1979), and tell me that you’d ever be caught (un)dead with a haircut like that.

But haircuts aside, this was a decade that saw a huge degree of variety in the way that the Count and Stoker’s tale were presented. In Dracula (1974) Palance echoed the malevolence and swagger of Lee’s earlier films while adding a savagery to the role that few actors had matched. George Hamilton in Love at First Bite (1979) embraced the 70s preference for light hearted or exploitation skewed portrayals of the count, a trend that included films such as the Blaxploitation movies Blacula (1972) and Scream Blacula Scream (1973), along with Blood for Dracula (1974), Zoltan: Hound of Dracula (1978) and the nadir of 70s adaptations that was Dracula Blows His Cool (1979), in which a descendant of Dracula’s turns his castle into a disco and the Count comes into contact with lots of very nubile and very, very naked flesh.

Langella’s Dracula meanwhile, centre stage in John Badham’s exceptionally atmospheric 1979 adaptation, gave us one of the most memorable incarnations of the Count as brooding lover boy. However, effective and enjoyable though the film is for much of its running time, Badham’s film anticipated Coppolla’s by portraying the Count as some kind of anti-hero; a dashing, good looking rascal who really doesn’t seem to need the hypnotic mind control he employs to seduce Lucy and Mina. Also, although the film had all the trappings (castle, gargoyles, blood, bats) it looked like an exercise in creating mood rather than terror. Consequently, it was no horror film, the sort of Dracula it was concerned with best summed up by the movie’s tagline, “The story of the greatest lover who ever lived, died, and lived again”. Its dilution of the Count from a demonic monster into a dark seducer who looked a bit like David Copperfield was (along with the proliferation of light hearted or comedic depictions) another step in a journey that was seeing Dracula gradually losing ground to the new kids on the horror movie monster block.

One such character was Michael Myers, the bogeyman antagonist of John Carpenter’s Halloween who first appeared in 1978, quickly joined by Jason Voorhees two years later in Friday the 13th, while Freddy Krueger would round out this triumvirate when he first appeared in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. All three characters shared Dracula’s traits in so far as they were almost unstoppable, somewhat supernatural killers, terrorizing a new set of characters in each film before being dispatched by a lone survivor or two. But like Dracula they would somehow survive, ready to wreak fresh mayhem in the next instalment and between them they would appear in 29 films over the next 32 years. These were characters who would flourish in the era of the slasher movie, films that were designed to deliver a requisite amount of inventive kills (something that the Elm Street series did best) but which became increasingly derivative and repetitive. However, when they first appeared they were new and exciting and offered something different to the more traditional movie monsters. Such characters would even develop into something like anti-heroes in later films as audiences were encouraged to applaud and cheer their actions as a succession of brainless teen fodder was served up to them, and we were even encouraged to pick a side in the ultimate movie monster face off that was 2003’s Freddie vs Jason. But perhaps the most successful serial killing anti-hero was one who in many respects resembled Dracula himself. Hannibal Lector, as portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in 1992’s Silence of the Lambs combined a similar veneer of sophistication with a brutal savagery, eating his victims rather than drinking their blood but always capable of charming them first. The following year Hopkins would win the Oscar for this role, something that would have been difficult to imagine for such a character and movie had it been made 20 years earlier.

 

But back to Dracula in the mid-1970s, and one of the most intriguing Dracula movies of this period, at least in terms of its concept and take on the character, was Blood for Dracula (otherwise known as Andy Warhol’s Dracula, the bewigged doyen of the pop art movement lending his name to the production for promotional purposes). The story focused on Dracula (Udo Keir) having taken the decision to move to Italy, a decision based on the rationale that it’s a Catholic country and would therefore have far more virgins for him to prey on than other nationalities. However, much to his surprise and increasing frustration, the women who he was assured were virgins turn out to be nothing of the sort, his health consequently suffering into the bargain. The film itself was gratuitously camp, featuring a highly dubious scene in which a young girl is raped in order to protect her from Dracula’s advances. Trashy, sexually explicit and very rough round the edges, it nonetheless had in Keir’s Dracula one of the most overt screen representations of the vampire as a drug addict, the Count spending large portions of the movie looking as though he was in the throes of cold turkey.

This was an aspect of the Count’s personality that was realised even more successfully in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, a 1979 remake of Murnau’s silent classic, in which Herzog cast his bête noir Klaus Kinski in the lead role. One of the strongest and most distinctive Dracula films of this period, Kinski’s interpretation remains one of the very few capable of eliciting both revulsion and pity and if ever Dracula’s existence was depicted as a curse then it was done so here. Kinski’s chalk white, bat eared Count lives a life similar to that of a junkie, one who will clearly die without the life force of blood/love (in this film they were close to being the same thing) that he needs to sustain him. This was a theme that extended to the movie’s production design, Dracula’s empty and soulless castle an abode that would have given even the direst and most squalid drug den a run for its money. Nowhere is the junkie’s utter enslavement to his drug better encapsulated than in the scene where Jonathan Harker cuts himself, alerting Kinski’s Dracula to the sight and smell of his blood. In that instant all matters of real estate and social formalities are forgotten as the Count is transformed from a distant, dreamlike figure into a predator intent only on satiating his hunger. It’s an extraordinary scene that highlights both how dangerous and utterly lost this Dracula is. At other times Kinski visibly wilts, his voice whining, almost pleading as his torment becomes all consuming. Dracula has rarely seemed so pathetic yet horrific, the sight of him feeding on Lucy, his eyes glassy, his throat pulsing steadily as he drains her of life, the closest on screen representation yet of Stoker’s personification of Dracula as a loathsome leech. Another notable aspect of Herzog’s movie was that it ended on a complete downer, with Harker’s wife (in this case Lucy) sacrificing herself just as her Ellen did in the Murnau original. Not only that but this time Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is transformed into a vampire and the film ends with him having Van Helsing arrested and then disappearing on horseback, obviously with the intention of getting up to no good elsewhere. A strange, haunting and oddly beautiful version of the tale, Herzog’s film was a slow paced and surreally dream-like adaptation featuring a Dracula who was the very antithesis of the suave, attractive figure embodied by the likes of Langella.

While Herzog’s film ensured that Dracula finished the decade on a high, in retrospect it seems as though Dracula had been living on borrowed time since the moment George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead changed the horror landscape in 1968. Although many of the changes that would occur in horror throughout the next decade wouldn’t take place overnight, many of them would ultimately leave Dracula looking rather dated (but conversely would help to reinvigorate the vampire sub-genre of horror films). There were of course exceptions but prior to Romero’s movie, traditional horror films would end with a sense that good had overcome evil and that whatever sacrifices might have had to be made along the way, all was once again right with the world when the credits rolled. However, as well as being instrumental in ensuring that happy endings would be far less common in horror movies ever afterwards, Night of the Living Dead also suggested that there wasn’t much of a world worth saving anyway and this sense of nihilism would be more profound and pervasive in horror films from this point on. There must have been something in the water that year because, as well as Romero’s genre defining low budget zombie flick, 1968 was a particularly strong year for the horror film with the down beat ending, including Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder General and Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf. However, none of them could match Romero’s film for its sense of despair and complete lack of hope.

Rosemary’s Baby would act as a prelude to a decade of film in which the Devil meant huge box office for some film makers, with Polanski’s success being replicated by William Friedkin in The Exorcist (1973) and Richard Donner with The Omen (1976). In all three films the theme was the corruption of a child by a profound force of evil and their success inspired Hammer films to make To the Devil a Daughter (1976). Hammer was by now attempting to move away from its associations with the old movie monsters as they seemed archaic in comparison with some of the movies from across the Atlantic that were proving a phenomenon. Unfortunately, To the Devil a Daughter was a commercial and critical failure for the studio and did as much to drive the final nail into the Hammer productions coffin for over 30 years as any other film. However, whether they were a success or a failure, all of these films featured downbeat, pessimistic conclusions in which the Devil endures as a corrupting influence. Even if he didn’t ‘win’, the audience was left unsettled and given no reassurances, unless it was that the Devil finished the movie just as strong and just as present as he appeared to be at the very beginning.

Such a nihilistic and pessimistic world view does not sit well with the story of Dracula, one in which Mina and Jonathan Harker’s love endures and survives their encounter with the vampire, and this may explain why so many directors since have felt the need to change that relationship. The next significant film to do exactly that was Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation in 1992, when Winona Ryder would be cast as a Mina who was the reincarnation of Dracula’s long lost love, while Keanu Reeves’ Jonathan Harker suffered the indignities of the cuckold. However, in the 13 years between that film and the Badham version, Dracula would keep a very low profile indeed. The 1980s didn’t see a major screen adaptation at all and the character would only crop up in light hearted fare such as The Monster Squad (1987), a Goonies-esque caper that featured many of the classic Universal Monsters. What the 80s did give us though were some of the most enduring vampire movies released in the last 50 years, films that in many cases laid down a template for how vampires would behave and be portrayed over the next three decades. Movies such as Fright Night (1985), Vamp (1986), The Lost Boys (1987), Near Dark (1987), Lair of the White Worm (1988) and Vampire’s Kiss (1989) all delivered memorable and distinctive takes on vampire mythology.

One of the most prevalent traits in vampire films of this era was their portrayal as hedonistic hoodlums and wanderers, who chose to spend eternity partying and terrorising those who crossed their path in equal measure. Fright Night, The Lost Boys and Near Dark in particular depicted their vampires as outsiders who established their own social groups and surrogate families that would provide an acceptance they couldn’t find elsewhere. What’s more, it was presented as a lifestyle that looked very attractive. When Evil Ed, a bullied geek and misfit is offered the life of a vampire by Jerry Dandridge in Fright Night, it’s actually rather moving as Dandridge tells him “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I know what it’s like being different. Only they won’t pick on you anymore or beat you up. I’ll see to that. All you have to do is take my hand.” It would prove an enticing offer, and one that would appeal to any teen who had ever felt excluded and vulnerable. The vampires of Near Dark led the life of western outlaws, their vampirism seeming almost incidental, as they indulged in motel shoot outs and wrought havoc in bars across the mid-west. And the party-on lifestyles of the stripper vampires in Vamp and the motorcycle gang in The Lost Boys showed how each of them subscribed to a ‘live now, don’t pay later’ philosophy. Meanwhile other vampire films focused on the more thoughtful, existential approach to the genre popularised in the novels of Anne Rice. Catherine Deneuves’s eternal search for companionship and subsequent sacrifice of her lovers in The Hunger echoed Louis and Lestat’s preoccupations in Rice’s novel Interview with The Vampire, while Klaus Kinski played a vampire despairing of immortality and searching for death in Augusto Caminito’s Vampire in Venice. Vampires with a tendency to talk about their lot and sup blood in equal measure would become even more widespread in the following decade.

By the time Coppola got round to giving the world his version of the Dracula story in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) audiences were more familiar with vampires who could party or parley but it was exciting nonetheless to see a film maker of his stature attempting to deliver the definitive take on the novel. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Gary Oldman as the Count, has much to recommend it, not least the first third when Jonathan Harker finds himself taken prisoner in Dracula’s castle. It also featured an Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) who was as close to the character as written by Stoker as has ever been depicted. Highlights in the early part of the film saw a suitably malevolent Dracula drive Harker to the edge of sanity and featured some stunning production design and delightful visual touches (Dracula’s shadow creeping up on Harker while the Count himself remains motionless; Dracula slyly licking Harker’s cut throat razor clean of blood) that make it amongst the best adaptations of the early part of the novel ever filmed. And while Hopkins’s Van Helsing was criticised in some quarters for being over the top and the epitome of the ranting, eccentric, foreign scientist, that is exactly how Stoker portrayed him. However, it was when the story reached England that Coppola’s film took several missteps, the romance between Mina and Dracula failing to convince as the performances of Keanu Reeves and Wynona Ryder destroyed any chance it might have had to do otherwise. It also employed some very inconsistent logic as Dracula appeared in full daylight early on but then was only able to emerge from his coffin to defend himself near the film’s conclusion once the sun had set. However, it looked fantastic, Oldman was superb and the link to the legend Vlad Tepes (the original Vlad the Impaler) was done with a degree of wit and ingenuity.

Since Coppola’s film there has been no major big screen adaptation of Dracula that has enjoyed a significant degree of theatrical and commercial success. The 1990s and 2000s did however see Vampires becoming ever more popular with their success on the big screen being matched on TV. Cronos (1993) Interview with The Vampire (1994), 30 Days of Night (2007), as well as the From Dusk till Dawn, Blade, and Underworld franchises were among dozens of vampire movies that enjoyed critical and commercial acclaim during this period. Meanwhile, television gave the world the phenomenally successful Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 – 2003) and more recently True Blood (2008 – ), The Vampire Diaries (2009 – ) and the British TV series Being Human (2008 – ) which takes social realism about as far as it can go with a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost living together in a flat share. The most successful film series of recent years within the genre has been the Twilight films starring Robert Pattinson, films that take the romantic aspects of the vampire’s appeal and weave it into fantasy narratives that owe much but not all of their success to a comparatively new (at least in genre terms) and needlessly patronised demographic of young women in the 12 to 18 age groups.

Nevertheless, while the vampire movie continues to flourish Dracula continues to flounder, and (with the odd exception) modern vampire movies generally tell their stories in a contemporary setting while Dracula is rooted firmly in the turn of the century. The urge to set the Dracula story in the modern world is one that overall has been strongly resisted, and when it has been attempted has had a tendency to fail miserably. Perhaps the story is so strongly woven with Victorian era sensibilities and conventions that audiences would no more accept Dracula at large in 2011 than they would Oliver Twist. After all, some fictional characters belong to the time and place in which they were created more than others and perhaps Dracula is fundamentally such a character.

As for Dario Argento and next year’s Dracula 3D, it’s true that his more recent fare has not, to put it mildly, been well received. Mother of Tears (2007) was a poor successor to the brilliance of Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), while Giallo (2009) was responsible for getting more laughs than almost any film I’ve ever seen in a cinema. Trouble was, it was showing at FrightFest 2010 and was supposed to be a thriller. However, I’m not quite ready to accept that Argento’s film will be the unmitigated disaster that some fans are already predicting. For one thing, Argento expert and film journalist Alan Jones has already been making some very encouraging noises on his blog having been in regular attendance on set through production. Despite his friendship with Argento, Jones has never pulled his punches when it comes to some of Argento’s later work so if he sees something to get excited about on Dracula 3D then here’s hoping it all carries over onto what we see on screen. Regardless, one of the great horror directors taking on one of the great screen monsters promises to be a must see.

So what of the future for Dracula post 2012? Will Argento’s movie restore him to his former glory, paving the way for further adventures? Can Dracula once again achieve the same levels of success currently being enjoyed by other vampires in film? I have my doubts given that the character is so firmly mired in the past, both cinematically and historically. Multi-layered, unsettling and original films like Let the Right One In (2008) and Thirst (2009) have taken the vampire movie into territory where, based on past experiences, Dracula seems ill equipped to tread. However, here’s an idea that has never been tried in any of the film adaptations of the novel: how about somebody just adapt it as it was written? No name changes, no love story, no tweaking. Just a straight up film version of an undead noble who has bided his time, gathered his strength and is now ready to unleash his evil on a world that won’t know what’s hit it. Because perhaps it’s time to remember that Dracula is fundamentally a horror story, that we should therefore allow the Count to crawl back into our nightmares and whisper outside our windows, once again becoming the unmitigated monster that Bram Stoker clearly intended him to be.

Find part one of ‘Dracula on Film – Is He Dead and Buried?’ here.

“I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms.” – Theodore Sturgeon, 1958

Substitute “holiday entertainment” for “science fiction” in that final sentence and you have my point of view on media crafted for the final month of the year. Major conglomerates squeeze out acres of tinsel-coated treacle every year, and every year we blithely choke down the sickeningly sweet fare while participating in the capitalist bloodbath that is the holiday season. How is a sane person, a person of discerning tastes supposed to find worthwhile creative output to consume while dodging bell-wielding Santas and jamming fingers in ears to ward against the blare of traditional carols?

*The author pauses and wipes the froth from his lips. Takes a deep breath. Continues*

Let’s face it: when you scrape away all the crud, the holiday season has the potential to glimmer and shine, rousing the hopeful child in all of us. As cynical and jaded as I am, I’ll be the first to grudgingly admit that I like parts of the holidays: a strong snowstorm, a warm fire, a glass of eggnog, and soft carols playing. It is the good things that remind us that despite the best efforts of marketing departments all over the world, the holiday season can be the most wonderful time of the year.

Dear reader, for you I have sifted through and removed the crap to find the ten percent that is amazing, wonderful, and, dare I say it…magical in this year’s offerings. We’re being media agnostic for this column, so look for the following gems in your local bookstore, game shop, movie theater, mobile phone, and web browser.

These, then, are the Best Things of Christmakanzikah for 2016.

The Game

The question has haunted children of all ages since Victorian times: How does Santa manage to enter homes that have no chimney on Christmas? And how does he do it on one night?

The answer: A Portal gun from Aperture Science.

A group of game developers going by the nom de plume of “Cave Johnson’s Merry Elves” have released an ambitious and stunningly detailed mod for Portal 2 titled “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”  In the game, you are Kris Kringle, a former Aperture test subject who escaped the test chambers with four things: a special portal gun, a gel fabricator, a portable computer running GlaDOS, and a compulsion to give presents to children (apparently a side effect of some of the tests).

In single player mode, gameplay consists of GlaDOS guiding you through various periods of history where you must deliver a sack of gifts to the right children. GlaDOS is as unhelpful as ever, sometimes actively seeing to sabotage your efforts while other times helping you when you need it most. You travel from town to town and time to time, sometimes having to work your way though castles, sometimes villages, sometimes skyrise apartment buildings. Using the special gel attachments for your portal gun, your goal is to deliver all the gifts in the time allotted before moving on to the next setting.

Lest it become too easy, you have a number of obstacles that you’ll have to deal with while completing your mission. Some or the old standbys; convoluted mazes, tricky maps, difficult puzzles. However, the game developers also decided to incorporate the use of robot opponents, so that as you try to deliver the gifts, various enemies will try to stop you. Sometimes they are village guards or police, sometimes angry parents with shotguns. My personal favorite was the robo-Richard Dawkins with the rocket launcher and the penchant for lecturing while attacking.

Multiplayer mode is a real treat, using some of the usual suspects from Deathmatch and Team Fortress to spice things up. It is possible to play Capture the Flag (or the Capture the Tree, in this case), pure one-on-one shoot ‘em up using only portal guns and the hazards of the maps as weapons, or a new game called Black Friday Deathmatch where the goal is to collect as many of the gifts from a store called Mall-Wart while being assaulted by zombie shoppers.

If you enjoyed any of the Portal games (and I know you did), this will be a welcome addition to your collection.

A Complete Holiday Experience For The Rest Of Us

If the sitcom Seinfeld gave anything to the world, it was the holiday of Festivus. The Wikipedia definition (yes, there is a definition) is as follows:

“Festivus is a secular holiday celebrated on December 23 as a way to celebrate the holiday season without participating in its pressures and commercialism. It was created by writer Dan O’Keefe and introduced into popular culture by his son Daniel, a screenwriter for the TV show Seinfeld, as part of a comical storyline on the show.”

According to the lore, you need the following to have a proper Festivus celebration:

– A Festivus Pole

– A Festivus Dinner

– An Airing of Grievances

– Feats of Strength

– Festivus miracles

You’ll be happy to know that the folks at the Thinkgeek website have you covered. This year, they are offing Festivus-In-A-Box.

When you order the Festivus-In-A-Box, you get the following:

– A collapsible aluminum pole which can be mounted in place

– A cookbook of traditional Festivus meal suggestions

– A board game designed to make the Airing of Grievance fun for the whole family

– The Charles Atlas Guide to Feats of Strength, detailing over two hundred ways to show your personal prowess

– An air horn, for heralding the arrival of Festivus miracles

– a video of Jerry Stiller (or at least a remarkable computer generation), explaining the history and proud traditions surrounding Festivus

– a storybook with audio by the original Seinfeld cast reading tales of Festivi (Festivuses?) past

– a remarkable book called A Festivus Carol, wherein a miser named Scrooge is visited by three bartenders who show him the true meaning of Festivus

– and a goldfish, for reasons which remain a mystery to this reviewer.

All this for the low, low price of two hundred dollars. It’s a steal…a STEAL, I say. Even if you do not celebrate Festivus yourself, it’s the perfect gift for those odd friends you have. You know the ones.

I Made You Out Of Clay…And Light

Nothing says holiday good times like gambling, and for holiday gambling, it’s hard to beat the simple elegance of a dreidel. These days, however, are days of miracle and wonder, so why settle for a spinning piece of clay when you could have a holographic toy on your Android phone?

Holodreidel is a free app you can download for your Android device. You need the most recent version of the Android operating system and one of the HTC or Samsung phones that support the 3D-Touch interface, but if you have all these, you can be playing the centuries old Hanukkah game wherever you like; in meetings, in line at the groceries, even on the train home from work.

As I mention, the app is free, but if you are willing to pay for the Pro version, you can play over any 6G for WiFi connection with friends anywhere in the world. They even throw in a digital 3D menorah as a token of good will. Admittedly, it’s not as if a great miracle happened here, but if you want to celebrate with friends far away, this is not a bad way to go about it.

…An Angel Gets Its Wings

Hollywood has never remade the classic It’s A Wonderful Life for a good reason: it would be impossible to capture the same story in the same way to pull the same heartstrings a second time. Admittedly, there have been multiple re-tellings, in television series especially, showing what the world would be like if the main character had never been born, but no one has given the subject a movie-length treatment.

Until now.

When I heard that everyone’s favorite media terrorist spent the last year putting together a remake of the Frank Capra classic, I cringed. Xomsky might be a lot of things, but I never thought that “sentimental” would be one of them. Yet here is one of the finest, most touching stories I’ve seen to date, and as is typical with Xomsky’s work, everything stems from changing one critical part in the story. In his Star Wars remake, it was swapping the roles of Luke and Leia so that she was a farmgirl with the Force and he was a prince. In this telling of It’s A Wonderful Life, Xomsky takes the same story, the same settings, and yes, through the miracle of modern technology, the same actors and shows us what the world would have been like if George and Mary Bailey’s children had never been born.

The story is told through the eyes of the four children as things become more desperate for George, dealing with the failure of his Building and Loan. The children see how it affects their mother, and on Christmas Eve, the four meet in Zuzu’s room and talk about how hard things have been. That’s when Zuzu says that maybe it would be easier for Mommy and Daddy if the kids had never come to be.

The charm of this film, and part of what makes it so poignant, is the relating of the tale through the children’s eyes. All too often children see the cracks in the facade that their parent try to hold up to shield them from the troubles of the adult world. Children are not fooled: they know when Mom and Dad are having money troubles, or when they are not getting along. Xomsky uses Clarence the Angel to show the children how life is both joy and pain, and family needs to stick together to give one another strength. He shows the children that, rather than being a burden, they bring joy to their parents lives.

It is a surprisingly upbeat and positive message, considering that the idea of an intact nuclear family is usually regarded as some sort of outmoded vestigial remnant of a time gone by instead of an idea to be pursued and cherished.

This is a Holiday tale both realistic in its scope and heartwarming in its message. You should not miss it.

Wrapping It Up

And there we have it: some of the best media experiences to cross my line of sight this season. They vary wildly, but in each I found a little bit of joy and hope for the year ahead. There’s something for everyone in that pile of goodies, and it’s my sincere hope that you enjoy them.

This will by my last column for 2016, so let me close with a wish. I wish for you all of you in the New Year, that your families be happy and healthy, that your jobs be reasonable and low stress, that your drinks be strong and fortifying, and that your tables be overflowing with plenty. Turn off your devices, sit in the candle- or fire-light with your friends and families, talk for a while. Unplug, and remember the richness that comes from life beyond the screen, beyond the glow of a 3D display.

And, of course, if you want to find me, you can do so on Qlatch, via email, or on any of the other social networks. Until next year,  be good, and if you can’t be good, well…be safe. And if you can’t be safe, name the child after me. 

Martin Scorsese is not a name synonymous with family entertainment but in his latest movie, Hugo, he has captured the essence of early cinema and it is suitable for all ages. Scorsese grew up with film as a companion and took it on as a career; this is his reflection on the love of the medium and his inspirations for becoming a filmmaker. It feels very personal and the sentiment of wanting to pass his knowledge and passion onto the next generation is one that can’t be criticised. The film is based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick and tells the tale of a young boy who lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station. The film and the book both look back at the films of George Méliès with an affectionate eye.

Director Martin Scorsese and cast members Sir Ben Kingsley, Chloe Moretz and Asa Butterfield discuss the making of Hugo and their experiences and inspirations in film.

Martin Scorsese

Inspirations

Movies were a refuge to me for a long period of time. Because of having asthma I was not allowed to do any sports, or go near animals etc. So I was taken to the movie theatre often, I saw many films in the 1940s and became enamoured by the western genre, but the film that I think created the biggest impression on me was ‘The Magic Box’. My father took me to see it in 1952. There is something about the beauty of his obsession with the mechanism itself.

3D

I would like to take 3D into my future films, I just happen to be a great admirer of it, because when I first saw those view masters and stereoscopic images I was taken into another space as a child. I have been fascinated with 3D all my life. If it is used appropriately for the story, the same as colour, sound, widescreen there is space for it. The 3D world I was trying to create (in ‘Hugo’) was magical. The equipment is getting more flexible, they are working on technology to get rid of the glasses, so why not?

Eisenstein was working in 3D when he had his heart attack, imagine an Eisenstein film in 3D! I’m not saying it should be converted, I am saying can you imagine the mind of someone like that working in 3D? There is an obligation of the generation before to inform and to expose them to the great art of the past. There is a school of thought that you don’t need to see anything of the past to express yourself artistically, but I think if we make it available one becomes aware of the older work of the masters, of the work that has come before. You can reject it, which is part of the process or think this is wonderful. It’s exciting to show to the younger generation.

Sir Ben Kingsley

Inspirations

‘Never Take No for an Answer’ inspired me to get into film. It was about an orphan who survived a bombing. His sole means of employment was his donkey called Violetta and everyone loved him and his donkey. I was so taken by this film. I looked very much like the little boy and after the screening in Salford, the cinema owner spotted me and he thought I was the star of the film. He shouted “It’s little Peppino” and lifted me above the audience and I thought I could get used to this. It’s wonderful to be sitting next to the man who gave me the DVD years later (looks at Scorsese). I told Marty this story and he had of course seen it, so gave me the DVD. That was my first introduction to cinema and determined me to be in movies ever since.

Acting in 3D

Chloe and Asa are so young they are pure. Their performance is not filtered through anything and it was a great addition to the 3D discipline on set to be working with Chloe and Asa who work from the heart and not the head. If you work from the head in 3D it will spot it, you have to be utterly genuine. You have to be accurate and you have to be modest in front of the camera. It is far more scrutinising than any other close up lens I have experienced in my life. In response to the camera and Marty’s direction it pulled out a stillness and a modesty that I loved going into. I always try to minimise. The joy of 3D and Marty behind the camera is that nothing is lost, and everything is seen. You have to combine 3D with Marty’s all seeing, all loving eye as a director. No single tiny gesture is ignored.

Chloe Moretz

Inspirations

My mum has always been pretty obsessed with Audrey Hepburn, as am I too. One of the first films I saw to inspire me to be an actor was Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I saw Audrey Hepburn, how she lit up the screen and how she makes you smile when you see her. When I saw that, I realised that was what I wanted to do, I wanted to make people smile, to make people dream to imagine they were in that time and place. That is what inspired me to be an actress.

Acting in 3D

Acting is reacting, and with 3D you can’t overact you can only react because it picks up everything, the lint in the air, the fibre in your eye. It’s really a window to your soul as an actor, what you see is the character.

Asa Butterfield

Inspirations

It was during the filming of ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ I decided to become an actor, it clicked in my head. It was more of a past time before. Half way through the filming I decided this was what I wanted to do, ever since I just tried really hard to be the best I could be. I love to be someone who you wouldn’t be able to be in real life, to do something impossible.

Hugo is released in the UK on 2nd December 2011

Last December I had an idea.

Actually, the idea itself was the culmination of a series of ideas going back to around 2005, when Doctor Who Magazine finished their run of Complete Doctor Who Special Editions, in which fan professionals from the world of Doctor Who had looked back to important or memorable stories from the classic series, and written about the impact these stories had first had upon them. The essays were brilliant and universal, and it didn’t matter if you’d seen the story on its first broadcast or not, because what was being evoked was a feeling of ‘first contact’ between the authors and the show and its constituent parts. When the Complete Seventh Doctor Special Edition was published, the series came to an end and I was left ruefully hoping they’d carry on and do one more, a collection of writing by non-professional fans along similar lines. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.

But my favourite interviews with new series writers in recent years, had always been the ones in which they’d talked about how they’d originally become interested in the series, or why they’d wanted to write for it; so that idea stuck with me – the idea that someone, somewhere, ought to collect together a series of essays by the average fan-in-the-street, talking about how and why they had come to fall in love with Doctor Who in the first place. Their ‘first contact’.

Fast-forward several years, and in one of the threads on Gallifrey Base, I read about a chap called Richard Kirby. Kirby had written an account of his attempts to collect the autographs of all the living female companions of Doctor Who, and had self-published the book, Desperately Seeking Susan Foreman, through Lulu.com (of which I’d never heard at the time), with the proceeds going to charity. A number of people on the thread had written rather nice things about the book, and I decided to buy it and see for myself. Quite apart from the fact that it sounded like a pleasant read and the money was going to a good cause, I was curious about this ‘self-publishing’ business. I was curious, in fact, about how professional-looking the actual, physical volume itself would be. The seeds of an idea were starting to come together in my head…

At around the same time, another thread on Gallifrey Base was asking people to say which were the first Doctor Who stories they’d bought on both VHS and DVD. Those kinds of ‘list’ thread never held much interest for me, as I was always more interested in the opinions behind the choices, rather than just the simple, meaningless list of stories. Fortunately, a chap called Wilf was one of the first to reply, and rather than just rattle off a couple of names, he’d actually written the history of how and why he’d come to buy the stories in the first place. It wasn’t just that it was engagingly written (which it was), it was the fact that I recognised something of myself and my own habits and preoccupations in what I read. It was, essentially, pretty much the story of Wilf’s ‘first contact’ with Doctor Who.

Desperately Seeking Susan Foreman arrived. It was short and sweet and very lovely, and it was a ‘proper’ book alright.

I thought of the name You and Who.

The idea itself arrived more or less complete: I would start threads on all the major Doctor Who forums, with a simple message. Write the story of you and Doctor Who, send it to an email address that I would create, and once the submissions process was complete, I would self-publish the book with all the proceeds going to Children in Need (which seems to be the Doctor Who charity of choice). In truth, the charitable aspect (while significant, particularly in encouraging people to take part) was perhaps less important than putting together a book of all the Doctor Who writing I’d always wanted to read, but had never previously been able to. And sure, the internet’s full of threads in which people share these kinds of memories, but threads on forums tend to be rather ephemeral, and a book would tell the story much more clearly and permanently.

So, I organised the email account, posted the threads, and waited to see what would happen next.

Within 24 hours or so, three very interesting – in various different ways – things had happened. Firstly, someone I knew from Facebook had sprinted off the starting blocks and sent me something immediately. It was a short and narky comedy sketch about The Twin Dilemma, and not at all what the book really needed, and it was something he’d already posted elsewhere. I think he just wanted to be first.

Secondly, that internet legend from YouTube known usually as Babelcolour, submitted a much longer essay, detailing how it was that watching Doctor Who as a child had informed the whole of his adult life, how it had made him a better person. It was an excellent piece of writing, and very important for a couple of reasons: on the one hand, it gave me an assurance that this whole idea wasn’t as nutty as I might have feared (I’d had a real rush of confidence just before I posted the threads, and then a huge crisis of confidence afterwards), and on the other, it kind of gave the whole project a feeling of legitimacy. Some of the replies on the threads had been of the “Are you serious?” variety, but now I could tell people that Stuart Humphryes had made a submission already, and even quote an extract from it as an example.

The third thing that happened was, in the long run, the most important of all. Tim Hirst sent me an email, telling me about his publishing company (he counts Colin Baker among his authors) and explaining that he also had a ‘self-publishing’ imprint. If I were to get in touch, he’d be able to help with some of the more technical aspects of the project. Now, that really boosted my confidence. More on Tim later…

At this point, things slowed right down. I’d given the submissions process a deadline of three months hence, and for the next few weeks, the number of essays I received was the tiniest of trickles. My target was forty; fifty would be great and thirty would perhaps be the absolute minimum I’d need to save ditching the idea altogether. But if things didn’t pick up, I might not even make that thirty – I’d kind of assumed I’d get something of a rush at the start (and then again at the end), given that the first couple of weeks might see people enthused by the idea firing off submissions as quickly as they were able to write them. It didn’t really happen that way.

So I brainstormed with myself, and came up with a couple of notions.

The first was to set up a dedicated ‘free’ website, so I logged on to Weebly and, being a total techno-cretin and never having done anything of the kind before, spent some time working out how to set one up. The second was trickier. I’d had a couple of minor conversations with respected figures from the Doctor Who community online, and thought of writing to them and asking for a submission. If just one were to reply, then being able to tell people I had an entry in the book from ‘such-and-such’ (as well as the submission from Babelcolour, of course), might be what was required to kick-start the submissions process.

Nobody wrote one, of course. It was silly to think that anyone might. But Rob Shearman wrote a very nice reply telling me what a great idea it was, and how he wished it every success, and so I asked him if he’d mind me repeating his kind words on the website.

That’s when it really took off.

The number of submissions coming in increased; not massively, but I was now receiving a constant and steady stream of emails. But the thing that indicated I might have a success on my hands was the number of visitors to the website; prior to my posting the quote from Rob, there had been an average of around maybe twenty visits a day. This number increased tenfold (and indeed, the total number of visits is now well over 11,000).

Several of the submissions were of particular interest for one reason or another (although I’m not going to pick out any favourites, as that would be akin to choosing a favourite child; it’s just not done – besides, you can find out for yourself by reading the book). Probably the most exciting was Dez Skinn’s. Formerly the editor (and creator, indeed!) of both Doctor Who Weekly (which became Monthly and then Doctor Who Magazine itself) and Starburst Magazine, Dez is a neighbour of one of the other contributors to the book, who passed on the details and invited Dez to contribute himself. There’s a short but lovely piece in the book concerning Dez taking to the road back in the late 1970s, with Tom Baker in tow, to promote the nascent DWW. I had my ‘professional’ submission at last!

I’d also been intending to sequence the essays in the book more or less according to when they were received, but this approach proved inadequate for a number of reasons, not the least of which was my desire to keep those on similar subjects either completely apart, or else right next to one another (thus emphasising the differences rather than the similarities). When a 13-year-old’s essay arrived in my Inbox, showing an innate understanding of both how the show and the book were intended to work, I knew I had my opening piece. The promise of a short piece by a short six-year-old (whose father was another contributor) seemed likely to be the book’s epilogue (and indeed is).

One essay arrived from Mexico, and it was apparent from reading it that the author’s native language wasn’t English. It was, however, entirely comprehensible, and the message was clear for all to see, but as I’d been editing the essays as I went along (mostly for ‘formatting’, but also because one or two of the authors’ sentences occasionally ran away with themselves and needed a little nipping and tucking), I emailed the author back, offering to revise the essay into a clearer English – albeit with the suggestion that I didn’t think it needed changing at all. You’ll read Fernanda Boils’ essay if you buy the book, and you’ll see which decision we reached and why it was the right one. Another essay arrived comprising 2,000 words and not a single paragraph break; with the author’s permission, I chopped it up and made an easier read of it.

A couple of people I particularly wanted involved, thanks to my familiarity with their writing on internet forums, were the aforementioned Wilf and another regular on Gallifrey Base, KisstheZygon, although both seemed a little reluctant to take part (perhaps more because of a reticence about what they’d be able to accomplish, rather than any dissatisfaction with the aims of the book, I hope). Thankfully, a little prodding saw them both submit essays in the end, and I hope the resultant writing will delight the reader as much as it did me. Andrew ‘Wilf’ Philips’ submission was so central to the project (Wilf having been the key to the project’s inception in the first place), we actually split his piece in two so it could work as a kind of backbone to the entire volume. Mike ‘KisstheZygon’ Russell’s essay speaks for itself. And I even managed to persuade Richard Kirby to contribute, writing about Desperately Seeking Susan Foreman.

The most pleasing aspect of the project was how good everybody’s essays were. I was expecting some variable writing, to be frank, but I don’t think a single person submitted anything that doesn’t read as if it hadn’t been thought long and hard about, and given plenty of care and attention before being sent. There are no ‘scrappy’ submissions, in other words. No ‘chaff’. Not all of the essays will ring true with every reader, of course, but the amount of love for the programme that the authors feel is apparent throughout, and everybody will find something that chimes with their experience of Doctor Who.

The saddest aspect was the death of Nick Courtney towards the end of the book’s gestation. There are several essays in which he is at the very least mentioned, if not the subject itself, and I had to ask people, via the website, not to submit any further similar pieces lest the book become imbalanced. That Lis Sladen passed away a few weeks later (after deadline day) was worse still, and I added a short piece about the pair of them to the start off the volume, and there’s a dedication to that effect.

Eventually, the deadline passed in a flurry of extra submissions (I think the penultimate day brought six new essays, the most I’d received in any single 24 hours), and the book was, effectively, finished. After a few days’ editing, I forwarded the manuscript to Tim Hirst for a once over before the ‘self-publishing’ could take place.

“This is too good to self-publish,” Tim told me over the ’phone. “Instead, I’d like to publish it for you.” The rest is history, and You and Who is now available to order from Hirst Books here.

If you like what you read, or are interested in finding out more, then you should visit the website here. It’s full of interesting things, including a number of submissions that weren’t used in the book (one or two of the authors submitted a second essay when it looked like the final numbers might be rather low; eventually, I limited the book to a single piece per writer), and more information about several of the contributors – some of whom (Michael Russell, Cindy Matthews and Tony Green for instance) have published books of their own which I feel happy to publicise; these people took a risk on me when they first became involved in You and Who, so it’s the least I can do to thank them.

Moreover, you can also find out how to become involved in a potential second volume of You and Who stories. Because as good as this first book might be, I’m quite sure a second one can be even better, and right about now I’ll be launching the search for essays. You have nothing to lose but your anonymity…

Doctor Who fans, you’ve gotta love ’em.

Faced with potentially the best news the series has had since the announcement of its return in 2003, what was their first reaction? Panic.

It was ‘announced’ yesterday (on the Daily Variety news website) that David Yates, director of the ultra-successful last four films in the massively popular Harry Potter film franchise, is currently in negotiations to start work on a Doctor Who movie. Among other things, Yates told Variety, “It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena,” and, “Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch.”

You can see why fans of the successful TV series might be a little apprehensive. And yet a few moments’ pause for thought will surely present a different picture.

For one thing, David Yates is hardly the worst man to be behind such a venture. Not only does he have those Harry Potter films under his belt (the entire second half of the franchise, and one that has become even more successful under his directorship), but his pre-Potter CV is pretty impressive, too. David Yates was the man behind such intelligent and thought-provoking series as The Way We Live Now, Sex Traffic and The Girl in the Cafe. State of Play, which he directed from a script by Paul Abbott, is one of the finest things ever broadcast on British television. There’s absolutely no indication that Yates would wish to ‘dumb down’ a brand that already thrives on its reputation for intelligence.

And Yates’ ‘partner in crime’ on the Doctor Who project is Jane Tranter, now head of the Los Angeles-based BBC Worldwide Productions, but formerly Controller of Drama Commissioning at the BBC, a position that saw her ultimately responsible for the green-lighting of such series as Waking the Dead, Bleak House, Spooks, and the afore-mentioned State of Play. Tranter was also the executive who brought Russell T Davies to the corporation, overseeing Doctor Who’s return to the screen.

It is an easy assumption to make that between these two, a lot of respect will be paid to the idea of Doctor Who, and neither of them is likely to want to risk making a mess of a potential franchise that could be as lucrative for British enterprise as the Harry Potter series was. Now that the Harry Potter film series is over, in fact, Doctor Who might be seen as its natural successor in the cinematic arena. The notion of Doctor Who films achieving domestic returns in excess of £10m – let alone what the global grosses might be – is certainly not one to strike fear into the heart. And yet the Harry Potter franchise has seen returns of nearly $8 billion across its eight films…

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The fans who are panicking are almost certainly thinking of things rather closer to home. The effect on the television series, the possibility of the movie becoming a ‘turkey’, the continuity aspects.

Should fans be worried about these things, though? Certainly with David Yates behind the camera, it’s unlikely that a potential Doctor Who movie would fail. It’s worth remembering that Doctor Who isn’t a ‘cult’ show with a niche audience, after all, and that something as populist and popular as Who – existing very much in a prime time, Saturday night/Christmas evening slot – is always going to be a natural target for a big-screen, mainstream makeover. If the television version can attract audiences comprising maybe as much as a fifth of the population in its country of origin, there will be no shortage of interest in a cinema version of the character. Yates and Tranter would really have their work cut out to make a disaster of this particular franchise.

So what of the knock-on effect on the television show, which is after all the reason why we’re fans of Doctor Who?

In all honesty, there really doesn’t need to be one – except perhaps in increased viewing figures, and maybe a more impressive product, given how the makers of Doctor Who will presumably be under greater public scrutiny than before. Who knows, the BBC might even find the wherewithal to expand the show’s budget… And a successful movie franchise will only have a knock-on effect on the television series in terms of securing its longevity. If the movie is successful, more and more people will want to come to the television version as an alternative to what they’ve seen at the pictures (the Harry Potter films didn’t drive readers away from the books, rather they drove the book sales through the roof – and Doctor Who the television series stands to benefit from a similar upsurge in viewers), and the BBC aren’t crazy enough either to damage the parent show’s independence, or less still reduce the volume of production. The two versions can quite happily sit side by side, with fans of either becoming fans of both, in a mutually supportive atmosphere.

Remember, this proposed movie will be entirely independent of the television version. Those whose initial reaction to the news was that production on the TV series would be closed down to accommodate the film couldn’t be more wrong. There is no need for this to happen, and indeed it would be extremely counter-productive. Doctor Who on television is a strong and thriving – and very much established – brand, and is the perfect advertisement for a big screen alternative, and a movie would have the same effect on the series. The environment in to which a movie adaptation of a highly popular television series would be born would be one of mutual beneficiality.

But there’s the rub; the movie would be an alternative to the television series. There are a lot of people who like their Doctor Who to make sense, to add up to a cohesive whole. The kind of people who will jump through hoops attempting to delineate the continuity that allows for two, mutually exclusive versions of Human Nature to exist, for instance. This movie will not be for them. Yates’ assertion that the movie would need to “start from scratch” is proof of that.

But what exactly does “start from scratch” really mean? And how much of a departure might “a radical transformation” really be?

In truth, so far away from having a writer attached, let alone a script, it’s completely impossible to say. But if you read Yates’ remarks in context, rather than through the reactionary eyes of a died-in-the-wool fan-head, they’re perhaps not quite as sinister and exaggerated as some people are assuming. For one thing, Yates’ claim that the movie would need to “start from scratch” was said in the context of the post-2005 series; in other words, the movie will not be a direct continuation of the themes that have dominated the last seven years of Doctor Who. This movie Doctor might well still be the ‘Last of the Time Lords’, but the movie won’t be about him being so, just as it won’t revolve around the Falling Silence or the cracks in time. And that’s a good thing. Even the television version of Doctor Who effectively ‘reboots’ itself from time to time – particularly when it gets a new showrunner or producer, but actually more often than that: during the early years of the show, practically every single story began with something of a reboot. That’s the beauty of Doctor Who; it has a central idea at its absolute core – that of the wandering stranger who arrives and rights wrongs, before disappearing again – but just about anything else is fair game. It’s famously the go-anywhere, do-anything series, and there’s no reason why a potential movie would want to tie itself into knots adhering to current continuity and mythology.

Further than that, people are worried that the movie will be a complete reboot, with an entirely ‘virgin’ Doctor beginning his adventures afresh as if the television series had never happened. And truth be told, they’re probably right.

I don’t have a single problem with that.

The reason we enjoy Doctor Who is surely not because of the specific continuity (which goodness knows, the television series has itself overwritten often enough, whenever it has felt the need to do so), but because we like the story of a ‘madman with a box’ turning up here, there and everywhere – and every when – and righting wrongs, before disappearing again. Just because the movie ‘Doctor’ is not the television ‘Doctor’ doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy a new take on the same idea. Let’s be honest, nobody’s going to throw out the baby and the bathwater; movie executives (especially ones like Jane Tranter, with a vested interest in both formats) are savvy enough to know that when you adapt a franchise, you keep the bits that work. This movie Doctor will not be a human Doctor, as Peter Cushing was back in 1965 (and to be honest, I loved that portrayal of an alternative Doctor Who), but he will travel through time and space in a big blue box, bigger inside than out (after all, that’s one of Doctor Who’s most genius ideas, and one of the cruxes of its success), righting wrongs and disappearing again; everything else is secondary.

In fact, one of the great things about this movie, should it happen, is that we’ll be able to enjoy it in isolation, free from the trappings of the television series, and with no worries about how everything will make sense, to concern us. It will have its own internal continuity, and we’ll be able to watch it from a perspective of Doctor Who as a blank slate – just as we did back in 1963, and almost as we did in 2005, come to that.

A movie couldn’t have anything to do with the television series anyway, of course. Films spend somewhere in the region of about three years from script to screen (certainly the bigger budget ones, as this would be, do), and there’s no way such a project could tie in to casting and continuity decisions that are being made on the television programme on a year-by-year basis. Even if the movie were to go into production now, with Matt Smith in place as the star, there’s very little chance he’d still be playing the role on the television at such time as the film might be released (let alone afford the time to act in both). No, an entirely independent existence is a necessity of the production itself, as well as something to be welcomed. The casting of a current or past Doctor actor would be retrograde in the extreme, limiting the movie’s ambition and potential before the cameras had even begun rolling. So David Tennant is rather unlikely, too.

Speaking of casting though, I have had one thought…

Having already practised for the part of a Time Lord in the television version, and having spoken fondly of the experience, and especially having worked with David Yates on a number of extremely well-received projects before, I’d like to suggest that John Simm as a good bet for the part of the Doctor. Simm might be relatively unknown as a film actor, but in this instance that’s a good thing. A Doctor Who film might well play on a more widely-recognised actor for the villain (as the 1996 TV Movie did, of course), and it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility for someone of the stature of Johnny Depp (after all, this film will be budgeted high and will be casting to match) to appear as, perhaps, the Master… I can see such a movie having a guest cast with a high recognition factor (just like the Harry Potter films), while casting someone talented but unstarry as its lead.

If not John Simm, maybe David Morrissey…

Or Bill Nighy…

“A radical transformation” is a phrase a lot of people will have worries about. This is Doctor Who after all, and we wouldn’t want to see any radical transformations in Doctor Who…

But all joking aside, David Yates is once again using ‘film-speak’ rather than ‘fan-speak’, and what he means by “a radical transformation” is almost undoubtedly somewhat different to what we will take it to mean – and note particularly how he also describes the versions overseen by Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat as “transformations”; in other words, we’re over-exaggerating what he means by the expression. He’s simply talking about the regeneration of the material that would be necessary to put a series that’s used to time and budgetary constraints – and therefore has its scope, its ambition, restricted as a result – up on the big screen, where the only limiting factor is the artist’s imagination. Doctor Who will be, if anything, broadened and deepened as a widescreen experience – which sounds crazy, given how much capacity for breadth and depth it has as a thirteen-weeks-a-year phenomenon, but a movie will find new ways to approach the material, new ways to tell the story, and we should welcome these as yet more strings to Doctor Who’s bow, more weapons in its armoury. Doctor Who can only grow as the result of expanding into a new medium.

One complaint I heard – and I’m sure this is a common grumble – is that two versions of Doctor Who running in parallel would be confusing for people, and unnecessary. But I think this complaint gives people far too little credit; watching two stories consecutively but concurrently is just what we do when we watch television, every hour of every day of our lives. It’s easy to switch between modes as you transfer from one programme to another, and it’s not as if the film is going to be part of a series whereby you would need to remember the events of one episode to the next.

And let’s face it, with various CSIs and X-Factors – and King Arthurs and Sherlock Holmes – all running in parallel, it’s very easy for the mythical ‘casual viewer’ to distinguish between which version of any particular franchise they’re experiencing. Star Trek had three different versions of the television series running one after another in parallel with the films during the 1990s and 2000s (and a new movie has since more or less rebooted the whole lot), and nobody has found that too difficult to handle. In fact, it’s long been said that Doctor Who (the character) is fast becoming a kind of modern folk hero, to rival Sherlock Holmes and James Bond (and King Arthur, maybe), so the extension of the idea into a series of non-specifically (to the original) related films is only taking that notion to its logical next step. You could say the character is outgrowing his origins. There’ll be books and CDs next. How brilliant.

Of course, the movie might not ever happen. There are plenty of fans who still think it won’t, remembering the countless times – mostly during the 1990s – that news stories surfaced about prospective Doctor Who films that ultimately never came to anything. But Doctor Who fans sometimes have long and selective memories that fail to take into account external criteria. The abortive attempts to bring Doctor Who to the big screen towards the end of JNT’s run as producer and for some time thereafter, came during a period when the show was suffering flagging ratings, eventual cancellation and intense public apathy. And none of these projects had a director as successful as David Yates at their helm (the version that claimed Spielberg’s backing made it into production, eventually).

A better analogy for fans might be the Dr. Who and the Daleks movie of 1965, born into a time when the first television version of Doctor Who was still young, and still popular. Dr. Who and the Daleks might have been a cheap and cheerful British knock-off, quickly made and cashing in on the success of the programme and its most iconic creation, but ultimately it was successful enough to father a sequel, and both films are rather fondly remembered now. And this entirely without any adverse effect on either the production or the reception of the television programme.

The visual entertainment landscape of 2011 is somewhat different. It takes considerably longer to bring a film to the screen these days, but more thought – and significantly more money – will be spent on the forthcoming Doctor Who movie than was expended on either of the Cushing pieces. It will have the weight of an entirely different establishment behind it, masterminding its release to ensure that failure is not a possibility. The Doctor Who movie will push the brand’s success to new levels of popularity, and the television version can only benefit as a result. Far from damning the resurgent TV series to an early grave, the movie is more likely to give it a shot in the arm that will see it in production for many, many more years to come.

But the movie is not for the Doctor Who fans. We are just a fraction of the demographic it will be aiming for. So it isn’t going to pander to our needs and wishes, and it isn’t going to be the extension of the television series many of us would like it to be. It will be something new, something a little different, and something entirely of itself. And I can’t wait. The idea of having my favourite series running concurrently as a film franchise is a dream come true. Two Doctor Whos running around the universe, righting wrongs, disappearing again … why would anybody want to argue with that?

I just hope it’s as good as I want it to be…

Ask modern moviegoers who the ultimate Superman is and you’re likely to get just one answer: Christopher Reeve. No matter how many actors donned the red and blue tights of the Last Son of Krypton before, and no matter what happens in the Henry Cavill-starring Man of Steel in 2013, there is, and probably will only ever be, one true cinematic Kal-El for many film fans. It wasn’t always like this though. For a whole generation, the ultimate Superman doesn’t have Reeve’s broad shoulders and mild-mannered grace. In fact for many, the real Superman isn’t even flesh and blood. An animated deity, swooping through a 30s Metropolis battling evil hoods, megalomaniacal scientists and marauding monsters, the Superman of the Fleischer Studios cartoons is the one a generation of cineastes grew up on and look back upon as the defining rendition of the character. But for the Fleischers themselves, the Man of Steel would be a lead weight around the neck.

Dave and Max Fleischer were brothers with a talent for drawing. After working in the art departments of various New York publications at the start of their careers, they quickly moved into animation, first looking to get a foothold in the industry, then aiming to revolutionize it. Max, the more mechanically-minded of the two, was particularly eager for innovation. He thought animation was too rigid, the characters lacking sufficient realism to correctly capture the movement of human beings, so he created rotoscoping, the process by which live action footage is ‘traced over’ to create an animated cel. After a handful of experiments, this new technology was first put to use in 1918’s Out of the Inkwell, a short cartoon in which Koko the Clown (as ‘played by’ Dave) emerges from an inkwell and performs a series of stunts. The short proved a success and after a couple of years producing Inkwell cartoons for the Bray Studios, who in turn supplied them to Paramount, the brothers signed a contract with Paramount themselves and officially founded their own studio, Out of the Inkwell Films, Inc, in 1921. The Fleischer Studios name would later come in 1929.

With Max taking on production duties and Dave in the director’s chair, further innovation followed – notably in the shape of the karaoke cartoon series ‘Song Car-Tunes’. It wouldn’t be until 1930 that the studio would find its big break though. Betty Boop had originally begun life in an episode of Fleischer series Talkartoons, but proved so popular she quickly went solo. Featuring risqué scenarios and bawdy humour, Betty’s series was aimed largely at adults and it was eventually subject to sweeping changes thanks to the Hayes Code. The series’ popularity never diminished though and it soon helped spawn another star, Popeye the Sailor Man, whose individual series got underway in September 1933. It wasn’t long before cinema beckoned and the Fleischers’ first film, an adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels, arrived in 1939. Released just a couple of months after the outbreak of World War II, it flopped and proved the first of only two Fleischer features. The second, Mr Bug Goes to Town, fared little better, struggling to find an audience in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In between these two disappointing releases came the Superman films. It’s a sad irony that a studio so integral in the development of animation technology, and responsible for creating unique characters as iconic as Betty Boop, should be remembered for someone else’s creation. Perhaps that’s why the brothers were hesitant at first. When Paramount initially approached Dave and Max over an animated Superman series the brothers quickly tried to put them off. They knew that such a project would be more complex than anything they’d ever tried before, requiring a greater attention to detail and demanding an unprecedented level of realism. In an attempt to dissuade Paramount, Dave quoted a production cost of around $100,000 per episode – an unheard of amount for a cartoon at the time. Paramount declined, but still wanted to push ahead, eventually settling on a budget of $50,000, a greatly reduced rate, but still much higher than the Popeye cartoons, which cost around $17,000 per episode. And so, production on some of the most influential animated films in history got underway, with both Paramount and the Fleischers nervously awaiting the results.

They needn‘t have worried. Every cent of the budget shows on screen. The first episode, simply entitled Superman, is a visual treat. Focusing on a mad scientist who plots to destroy Superman’s home city (then simply an anonymous metropolis rather than the Metropolis we all know), it’s a pulp dream, featuring shadowy newspaper offices, vast, shimmering cityscapes and a creepy lair for the bad guy. Heavily influenced by the art deco movement of the time, the Fleischers had a dramatic canvas to paint their cinematic tale on, and it’s shot through with noir flourishes, the chiaroscuro lighting and Dutch angles adding a level of intrigue and mystery to a story that is otherwise rather straightforward. As the series went on, the Fleischers would touch upon science fiction, gangster movies and even a splash of German Expressionist horror, but there was always a singular style to each episode. Every frame seems edged by the yellowing dog-earned corners of pulp literature. This is Superman as 30s Americana, Superman as it really should look.

But what about the Man of Steel himself? How should Superman look? Stylized though it may be, Metropolis is populated by real people not cartoon characters. Our hero couldn’t have Popeye-esque inflatable muscles and Lois Lane couldn’t wiggle Betty Boop’s waistline. The Fleischers’ got around this by again rethinking their approach and building their characters with structures of blocks and squares rather than circles and spheres, as had always been the tradition. The benefits of the change are two-fold. Firstly, it simply looks much more realistic – cartoon characters are round and cuddly; human beings look much more linear. Secondly, it allows for greater movement and articulation. The bad guys express their evil with more pronounced physicality, Lois Lane swaggers through town with a steely reporter’s stride and Superman doesn’t just fly, he soars.

Superman was released at cinemas in September 1941 and was greeted with universal praise from filmgoers and critics alike. The short even went on to win an Oscar nomination in the Best Short Subject (Cartoons) category. More episodes followed, each upping the ante. In Mechanical Monsters, Superman battles flying robots designed to rob banks; in The Bulleteers he fights criminals armed with a super-powered car; and in The Arctic Giant he brings down a dinosaur resurrected from the frozen depths of the Antarctic. Earthquake machines and gigantic telescopes followed before the Fleischers’ involvement with the series came to an abrupt end with their ninth episode, Terror on the Midway. It was released in July 1942 and is the weakest of the brothers’ cartoons – a rather tepid tale of a giant gorilla running wild at a circus.

By this time, America was well into World War II and the fighting in the Pacific and Europe made the fantastical exploits of an alien orphan seem somewhat trivial. As a result, profits were down and with plenty of money still being ploughed into production, not to mention Dave and Max’s increasingly fractious relationship, Paramount brought their partnership with the studio to an end. In the Fleischers’ place came Famous Studios, who produced the final eight episodes in the seventeen short long series. Though several Fleischer employees made the transition to Famous, the new studio’s productions lacked the visual verve and panache of their predecessors and a certain wonder had been removed from the cartoons too. While the Fleischers’ stories were escapist and predominantly science fiction based, Famous’s efforts were thinly-veiled war propaganda. Their first film, the self-explanatory Japoteurs, was a sign of things to come.

Lacking Paramount’s funding, the Fleischers struggled as much as the cartoon. The Studio closed its doors and the brothers moved on, Dave to Columbia and then Universal, Max to the Jam Handy Organisation and then back to the Bray Studios. They never truly recaptured the success of their early days and died either end of the 1970s, failing to resolve their rift. It was a sad end to two great talents. Between them, the Fleischers contributed hugely to Superman history and animation innovation. Without them, there’d be no rotoscoping, there‘d be less Boop-esque sass in cartoons and even the idea of the short film before the feature may not have taken off quite as it did. The Batman animated series of the 1990s, so lauded and so deeply influenced by the Fleischer Supermans, would have been very different too. The same can be said of animation as a whole. They were that important.

Even Superman himself may not have become the hero we all know and love were it not for the Fleischer Brothers. When the Fleischer cartoons first started, Superman was grounded. Sure he could leap tall buildings, but fly? That was a concept the Fleischers introduced because the sight of a man jumping great distances simply didn’t play when static comic frames were put into motion. So they asked DC Comics if they could put him in the air properly. They said yes, and the change stuck. Pretty soon, Superman was flying everywhere: in the comics, in the George Reeves TV series and, of course, in the films. This is the Fleischers’ legacy. Years before Reeve spent the 70s floating above a soundstage to the strains of John Williams, it was Dave and Max who really made you believe a man could fly. A fitting epitaph for two of entertainment’s true innovators.

Family is a tricky subject. Most of the time, dealing with our blood relatives is hard enough in real life, watching those relationships get translated to the big screen can result in stories that are overly simplistic on one end of the spectrum and incomprehensibly angsty and complex on the other.

This month, let’s take a look at three movies about families.  They range all over the spectrum, some dwelling on the strengths of family, some on the frailties and weaknesses.

Supernatural: Sins of the Fathers

Supernatural followed the story of Sam and Dean Winchester, hunters of demons and other malevolent beasties that haunt the United States. The original televisions series, created by Eric Kripke, ran from 2005 to 2015 and was massively popular with the same demographic that enjoyed the X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel. Even though the show came to a satisfying conclusion, fan demand was strong enough to propel Supernatural into the same club as Star Trek and Firefly, continuing the story on the big screen.

One of the hallmarks of the series was the use of local and urban legends to push the story of the Winchesters forward. Even through the tales of angels and demons, there was always episodes about the common stories that sprout up around any midwestern town: the woman in white who strangles young adulterous women, the story of the boy that was drowned by bullies who returns from the grave to have his revenge. The common touch was one of the true delights of the series, and the movie has the same touch, thanks to Kripke.

Supernatural: Sins of the Fathers‘ story spans five generations of hunters, ending with Sam and Dean’s children. In the Jamestown colony, James Read was a blacksmith and a hunter. He came to the New World following a man named Thomas Couper, who Read believed was a worshiper of the demon Moloch. During the first winter, the colony ran out of food. Couper inducted a number of starving settlers into his practices; sacrifice and cannibalism. Read sent his wife and child to leave with some friendly native then returned to the colony to fight the demon and his followers. Read was never seen again.

The rest of the movie moves through time periods: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Great Depression, the 60s and present day, telling the story of the generational fight with Moloch. Without getting into spoilers, it falls to the daughter of Dean and the son of Sam Winchester to finish the demon once and for all.

This is one of those movies that is so much fun that it is easy to overlook its failings. Admittedly, I am a sucker for a good piece of supernatural adventure, and I was a fan of the show back in the day. Still I expect the movie to be a flop, only because part of what made the show so good was the chemistry between the two lead actors, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Even though they have cameos in the movie, that couldn’t possibly be enough to give the movie the spark that the television series had. To my surprise, the two actors playing the next generations of Winchesters worked well. Dakota Fanning as a tough female action hero and newcomer Michael Schulak as her bookish cousin fit the story perfectly.

While not a masterpiece of film, Supernatural: Sins of the Father is a fun time and a solid edge-of-your-seat adventure. Perfect for a Friday night out or a Saturday night in.

Happy Days

I’ll cop to it. The mere thought of this movie hurt my soul.

For American audiences of a certain age, Happy Days was part of a weekly ritual. In my family it was no different; Dad would get home, we would have dinner, the kids would help Mom with the dishes then head off to finish home. The plan was to reconvene in front of the television at eight o’clock and thirty minutes of laughter with the Cunninghams, followed by another thirty with Laverne and Shirley. Happy Days was part of that genre of wholesome family entertainment that died when the Cosby Show went off the air. It showed a funny, friendly, stable form of American life that didn’t really exist; an idealized world where Mom and Dad were in a solid marriage, where siblings quibbled and fought but ultimately stuck by one another, where friends always had your back and going steady with your best girl was tantamount to being engaged.

It wasn’t real, but it was comforting, like Santa Claus, or fair play, or God.

The mere fact that this movie made it to the screen is proof that God does not exist. The writers on this movie need to be taken out and shot behind the chemical sheds.

Strong words? You betcha. And that’s what you deserve for pissing on my childhood.

Rather than taking a comical look at the perfect family in all its naive glory (as they did in the Brady Bunch movie), or going for a straight retelling of what was a good story to being with, these jackholes decided to inoculate the story with bitterness and modern ennui. They dipped it in irony and set it on fire.

I don’t care if I spoil it: you cannot call a movie Happy Days and change the characters to make them all…well…miserable. It’s as if Lucifer himself decided to retell the tale. This movie is the tale of a 1950s American family pushed through a dark prism and dropped, broken and bleeding into 2016.

Howard Cunningham is no longer a lovely curmudgeon with a heart of gold; he’s a hard drinking chain smoker who’s lost his hardware store in the economic downturn and hasn’t picked himself back up yet. Marion Cunningham, once the most saintly mother on television since Barbara Billingsly played Mrs. Cleaver, was now a cougar working days at the local casino and nights in the bars picking him men. Joanie is an emo kid with a meth addiction and a habit of cutting herself. And Richie…poor Richie has been transformed into a bright teenager who is a closet homosexual who has trouble relating to the world around him.

And the Fonz? He still wears leather. And rides a motorcycle. He’s still a mechanic and still watches out for Richie. He swings both ways, being too cool for just one sex, and instead of frequenting the local burger joint he’s a staple at the raunchiest gay bar on the seedy side of Milwaukee…the Manhole.

It feels so wrong. So very wrong. So very, very wrong…to me.

And here’s the rub: the story being told in this movie, while less comfortable, might just be more relevant. The characters are drawn from more real life sources than they were before. The problems are more dire, and closer to home. It is, sadly, a more honest reflection than the original series ever was.

I wonder two things: do people want their entertainment to be a reflection of the troublesome world around them, or do they want to escape into a pretty whitewashed fantasy? When I was a kid, we wanted the latter; today, with the supremacy of reality television and cop dramas, people seem to want the latter.

Yeah…I know I sound like an old man, and I might feel differently about this film if it were the same story with a different title and different character names. Yes, I see what the writers were trying to do, and perhaps I would have thought it was clever if the original series had not been such a hallowed part of my childhood. But they do, and it was, and I think the movie is crap. Do not go see it.

And get off my lawn.

Little House on the Prairie

Originally, this series aired in the 1970’s and was based on the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a schoolteacher and author who’s family were some of the original settlers in the Kansas territories in the early 1800’s. Like Happy Days, this was family-friendly entertainment suitable for prime time. And like Happy Days, it ran for a long time, and when it went off the air, it was missed.

No one has touched the franchise since…wholesome family entertainment doesn’t have much of a shelf life in these more cynical and enlightened days. Regardless, the story of pioneers facing challenges could still be compelling if handled properly. Leave it to someone like J.J. Abrams to manage to take the raw material provided by the show and turn it into something compelling.

In the new movie, the Ingalls family is still a pioneer family, but they are on a whole new world…Mars. The year is 2308, and the surface of Mars has been terraformed and made suitable for human habitation. Charles Ingalls, a professor of history, and his wife Caroline, a botanist, apply and are selected to be one of the first families to settle this new world. They take their daughters Mary, Laura, and Carrie with them into the biodome.

Abrams and his team do a surprisingly good job of telling the tale of moving and working on a new planet through the eyes of an eleven year old girl. There is drama, there is adventure, but the writers do not shy away from sentiment. This is a refreshing turn, especially after reflecting on the Happy Days movie. The Ingalls family is close-knit and truly love one another. Charles is smart, wise, and hard working. Caroline is caring, resourceful, and clever. The characters are drawn simply and without deep-seated flaws, but in this context, it works.

Science fiction? Yes…but the story has less to do with technology and more about the human factor, about the things that hold us together and make us better people. The message is clear, that families are good, that they give us strength, and that when we are all alone, the only people you can really count on share your same bloodline.

And there we have it…three movies covering a narrow arc of the circle which is the life of a family. As much as I love to bring the snark, it is hard to do when speaking of family…except when I see writers who think that cynicism is wit, who use irony like a blunt instrument instead of a precision instrument.

That’s it for this month. Until next time…take a little time. Call your folks. It’s probably been too long.

On a desk at a Melrose Avenue address in West Hollywood sits a screenplay. Like many of its kind – found up and down America’s West Coast movie hot spot – it is a ‘reboot’ script. Yet there is something special about this one. Something unique. In order to find out why, we need to go back 25 years to the release of a little movie called Highlander.

When Russell Mulcahy’s fantasy epic hit US shores in March of 1986, the reaction was less than stellar. Following in the footsteps of classic fantasy epics such as Krull, Ladyhawke and Excalibur, Highlander embraced the swords (with a touch of sorcery) theme and merged it with a modern-day city backdrop. Utilizing sporadic historical flashbacks and heaps of romanticism, it was a combination that had never been seen before. Sadly, it just didn’t work. Audiences simply didn’t know what to make of the tale of Connor MacLeod, a warrior from the Highlands of 16th century Scotland who, having risen from the dead, is forced to live through the centuries until the time of ‘the gathering’, where he will vie for the right to be the only one of his kind left, winning mortality and a mystical ‘prize’.

In fact, 20th Century Fox (who had distribution rites) all but buried the movie upon release. While a brief reprise was granted when it hit Europe (thanks largely to the established fan bases of rock gods Queen and French heart-throb Christophe Lambert), it wasn’t enough to stop the film becoming a financial disaster. Perhaps this was due to the misleading marketing, an overly complicated plot or simply the fact that Mulcahy had crafted a film with a mainstream look but European sensibilities. Whatever the reason, the film soon sank without a trace.

But… like the film’s immortal protagonists, Highlander’s cinematic death lead to a resurrection. A few years later, thanks to the advent of VHS, the film finally began to find its audience, slowly achieving cult status. Perhaps it suited home cinema better, or maybe the film’s approach to its unique narrative was simply ahead of its time. Whatever it was, Highlander had shown the first signs that it could endure even the harshest of times.

25 years on and the same road is about to be travelled down again as the pieces slowly begin to fall into place for the Highlander reboot. Writers have been hired (and fired if you believe everything you hear), as have directors, which is no surprise. If history has taught the producers of the quarter-of-a-century-spanning franchise anything, it’s that the blend of genres is something that is incredibly difficult to get right. To pull this remake off, they’ll need to measure the right ingredients carefully to ensure that they capture the original film’s enduring appeal. Because to be honest, they haven’t managed to do that in 25 years of trying.

Five years after the release of the first movie, a sequel finally emerged. With blossoming VHS sales and a growing fan base, Highlander 2: The Quickening was to be a sure-fire success. Director Mulcahy reteamed with stars Lambert and (Sean) Connery, this time taking the production to Argentina where the largest sets since Tim Burton’s Batman were built to portray a dystopian future which Connor MacLeod (now an old man) must once again save from dark forces.

But, with the finale of the first movie wrapping MacLeod’s story up with a nice, neat tartan bow, the tale was left with nowhere to go. So, naturally, they turned their eyes to space and made all of the immortals aliens. Naturally. It was a bold move on the producer’s part, but there was no escaping the fact that this decision answered questions that nobody was asking. Part of the inherent ‘magic’ of Highlander was that you didn’t know where immortals came from. For fans of the original, learning that they came from space was just – for want of a better word – silly.

But the sequel’s problems didn’t end there (if only). Having seen Mulcahy’s final cut, the decision was made to take a butcher’s knife to the reels, hacking and shuffling scenes around in the name of ‘pacing’. The result was an all but incoherent mess (albeit a very pretty and expensive-looking incoherent mess). Once again, Highlander found itself floundering at the box office. In the years that followed – like its predecessor – Highlander 2 gained something of a cult status, especially after Mulcahy was brought back in to ‘re-tool’ a new cut (dubbed the ‘Renegade Director’s Cut’), excising the aliens and far-flung planet in favour of time-travel. To date it remains a beautifully shot fantasy movie. But a true Highlander movie it isn’t.

If the reboot can take anything from Highlander 2’s many faux pas, it’s that this time the film will need to leave some options open as the credits roll. While this may make for a slightly unsatisfactory ending, it will at least stop any subsequent movies going off on mad tangents. Although, that said, sometimes having a sequel that is purely ‘more of the same’ isn’t really any better.

In 1994, producers tried once again to follow on from the 1986 original, this time completely ignoring tales of extra-terrestrial sword-wielding immortals (and, bizarrely, also side-stepping the TV series which was running at the time). The result was Highlander 3: The Sorcerer (also known as ‘The Final Dimension’ in the US). Having clearly had their fingers burned with The Quickening, the decision was made to play it safe. Actually that’s putting it mildly. For all intents and purposes, Highlander 3 was all but a re-telling of the first movie, only with worse acting and the world’s most annoying child actor thrown in for good measure.

This lazy attitude did nothing to bring in a new audience and served only as a mediocre cinematic meal to sate the appetites of the franchise’s loyal fan base. Unsurprisingly, the film only managed to live up to the promise of its forbears, failing to make its budget back at the box office. And while its TV counterpart went from strength to strength, it seemed as if the days of Connor MacLeod’s immortal battles had finally had their day.

So if going off at a tangent didn’t work and staying true to the original didn’t either, where else could the big screen series go? For that they would have to turn their focus to the small screen.

Highlander: The Series was a surprise hit. Duel funded by US and European partners, the show (which featured Connor’s kinsman, Duncan MacLeod – played by British-born actor Adrian Paul) found a loyal fanbase in fans of the original film and in those with a penchant for open-shirted men with long hair and big swords. But while the series appeared to be little more than a showcase for star Paul’s rippling torso at the start, as time went on the writing revealed a more enduring appeal. In essence, the show managed to capture that evasive ‘magic’ that had made Highlander so popular in the first place. So when the show finally came to an end (after an impressive six years on air) it seemed like a no-brainer to utilize this successful formula to breathe life back into the film franchise.

Having six years of character development under your belt is a luxury that most big screen characters don’t often get. And in a sense, the upcoming reboot will have 25 years of history to draw from. But as the fourth entry in Highlander’s feature saga proved, too much back-story can also work against you.

Highlander: Endgame arrived in 2000 and once again it attempted to ignore its predecessors… including the original film.  While attempts had been made to link the first movie into the timeline of the TV series, the idea that Connor had accidentally missed hundreds of immortals still in need of a head-chopping, sat badly with fans. Many, instead, opted to allow the two to exist in different ‘universes’. So, imagine how much fun that was when bringing the two together.

Accepting that Connor hadn’t won the prize (and never would, thanks to a jaw-dropping bit of beheading in the third act), Highlander: Endgame brought Adrian Paul’s Duncan to the fore, re-teaming him with Connor one last time as they attempted to stop an evil immortal from claiming ‘the prize’. But that wasn’t all. More threads than you’d find in your average kilt were woven into a film that simply tried to do too much. This, coupled with communication problems with the Romanian crew, a bad case of bronchitis for one of the leads and producers fiddling in the editing room meant that, once again, a Highlander sequel failed to live up to its full potential. It did, however, manage to fair better than previous entries and, as such, all but guaranteed that we’d see at least one MacLeod on screen again.

In fact, Endgame appeared to herald a revival of the franchise as a whole. Riding in on the back of the film came news of several new projects including an anime film, console game and even a new TV series (featuring teenage immortals). But they couldn’t leave it there. There was also news of a new movie that would attempt to explain the origin of the immortals. Here we go again.

There are no words to describe the atrocious mess that wound up being Highlander’s fifth cinematic entry (if you consider a premier on SyFy cinematic). Despite some positive early vibes – thanks largely to Hellboy scribe Peter Briggs’ leaked storyboards and excerpts), producers decided to go with another script which thrust Duncan into a dystopian future where he would come up against what can only be described as a demon jester in fetish gear.

Highlander: The Source was a muddled mess, but this time there were no valid excuses to keep the franchise buoyant in the eyes of fans or the public alike. It killed Highlander stone dead, taking with it the console game and the proposed TV series. The anime movie survived and served as an interesting (if, again, totally unconnected) chapter, but everything else was sucked into the vapid black hole that The Source had left behind.

But, as we know, incredibly the story doesn’t end there.

If four critically panned sequels can’t dampen the good will that the original movie created, then surely that says something about the original Highlander. There can be precious few movies in existence that can absorb so much crap and still come out smelling of roses. And with that in mind, it’s no surprise that the producers are playing the final move available on their chessboard. The reboot.

With a quarter of a century’s worth of lessons to learn from, we can only hope that the new movie – now under the directorial care of 28 Weeks Later’s Juan Carlos Fresnadillo – will tread carefully within the footsteps of the first film. If it does so, it could wind up accomplishing something that ‘the powers that be’ have been attempting for the last 25 years: a successful continuation of the Highlander mythology. With the opportunity to bring in a new generation of fans – not to mention sell bags of merchandise – the stakes are high. But maybe, just maybe, they’ll get it right this time. If not, they’ll have once again validated their own prophecy… that in the end, there can be only one.