Harris's love for Lecter became his downfall. Not in terms of his bank balance, I'm sure. But as a serious author his reputation is forever shot.
Something similar happened to George Lucas. George just couldn't let Darth Vader be. Pause at the end of The Return of the Jedi and we have a highly satisfying resolution of that character's "arc", as I believe the cool kids call it nowadays (and of the entire trilogy itself for that matter). But George was a fool in love. He couldn't leave well alone. Like an over-eager suitor, he came on too strong. Incapable of having a good first date and then giving the girl some space, he had to call. And call. And call. The inevitable result then followed.
Origin stories are bad news. They sell tickets. But they disappoint. There was never any way for Harris to provide a reason for Lecter being what he is which would have been anything other than an anticlimax. It's the same with Darth Vader: no explanation for why Anakin turned to the dark side could possibly have matched the audience's expectations. Not because the audience would have had a good explanation themselves - it's not that good characters are mysteries who call on the viewer or reader to try to fill in the blanks. It's that good characters are mysterious in such a way that their "blanks" appear so deep, complex or terrifying that their existence alone is a thrill. We didn't like the Hannibal Lecter of Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs because we wanted to speculate about what turned him into a cannibalistic serial killer. We liked him because he appeared to us to be inexplicable, and thus made us shiver deliciously at the prospect that evil is out there and cannot possibly be rendered banal by being understood.
The absolute low point for origin stories might be Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It turns out that Willy Wonka likes chocolate because his father was a dentist and didn't let him eat it and it is his way of rebelling.
ReplyDeleteIt really deflates this weird, otherworldly figure to give him a mundane, childhood background in the first place. On top of that, did anyone who read the book or saw the first movie adaptation ever say, "Well, it was a good story, but I don't get why Willy Wonka liked chocolate."
Ive seen this thought several times and have been confused by it as i see tim burtons movie (if only structurally) as the superior story. If there was a weakness to the origin story, i dont think it was willy wonka trying to rebel, but the lack of 'middle flashback' that showed his growth from discovery of candy through to exploration of new candies in the jungles of loompaland; some form of 'obsessive study and enjoyment' phase wouldve sweetened the arc a bit more.
DeleteIn the original, willy wonka is much more of a cypher, there doesnt seem to be much rhyme or reason for his creativity in the candy scene besides the fact that a crazed candymaker is what he is, depp's wonka adds a bit more fullness to the character (though maybe a worse characterization of him) by showing his impetus for confectionary insanity.
I also vastly prefer wonka as the central dynamic character who gros through the film with charlie as his impetus for cathatic change over charlie being the main protagonist, if only because charlie is much more an ideal of a character as opposed to a character himself.
Of course, i havent read the book, so i cant pretend to claim which representation is closer to the spirit of the original story
I quite the Tim Burton Wonka film. I thought the origin story was supposed to be tongue in cheek. Thay said, I think Depp's performance in that film is weird - in a bad way.
DeleteQuite *like* it.
DeleteMaybe it was. At the time that movie came out, I was just so tired of the need to explain characters that I might have taken a joke seriously.
DeleteEither way, I have to concede that my post is a little off-topic as your point was about when the creator of a character goes too far, which isn't the case here.
Getting closer to the point of your post, I remember really liking the first season Game of Thrones for never once resorting a flashback when filling it out its backstory. Past events like Robert's Rebellion existed purely as stories that people told one another, and that made them more powerful in the same way that Vader's backstory was more powerful when it was a story told by Obi-Wan.
Conventional wisdom is to show not tell, but it can be fascinating to let characters tell their stories rather than doing a cut to some younger actor playing them in the past. It also allows the history in a movie to have the murkiness and uncertainty of real history.
Ironically, later in the run of the show, we get a character in Game of Thrones who can magically watch the past, answering any question about it with total clarity.
Yeah, I agree about that. It's one of the cool things about the early Song of Ice and Fire books which sadly gets lost as the series goes on.
DeleteAt least we can rest easy knowing they'll never do this to The Joker.
ReplyDelete*ba-dum-tsss*
DeleteOnly that Joaquin Phoenix' Joker is a brillant example of how to do it right.
DeleteYeah... I haven't seen it yet, and I'm happy to believe that the movie is very good, but I still think the idea of an origin story for a fundamentally inhuman, enigmatic figure like that is a bad idea as a matter of principle. Willing to be proved wrong.
DeleteI agree - as good as the new film may be I think Ledger's Joker is best left an enigma.
DeleteTo help remind me of this I have a recurring NPC that I have show up in every campaign. The PCs always kill him because he's an asshole. He's in there to remind me not to fall in love with any of my NPCs.
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DeleteThe Vampire Lestat...another unnecessary origin story.
DeleteMaybe Harris just wanted the money grab. There's definitely a lot of people that can't appreciate a mystery for what it is. The baser instinct is gossip-gathering, to accumulate, however trivial...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think this is a key insight: "fan" or "nerd" culture as currently used in the pejorative sense is driven by a scarcity mindset that seeks to accumulate.
DeleteWhen I was a boy, back in the prehistory of nerd culture (the 1980s), we little nerdlings used to eagerly seek out and hoard out little bits of lore. You and your friend had both seen Star Wars, and you had developed elaborate theories of what that offhand reference to "The Clone Wars" might have been about, but then the kid down the block said that he had a cousin who had seen one of the new action figures that they only distributed by mail through a Cheerios breakfast cereal promotion, and the packaging mentioned something about "clones" in connection with a bounty hunter named Barbara Fett or something, which required you to reconfigure your entire theoretical framework.
Basically, the hunger in nerd/fan culture for explaining every character and setting element to death is driven by the same impulse that leads to people overindulging in sugary and fatty foods. You know it's bad for you and is going to make you feel bad, but you spent your childhood in conditions of scarcity where every little morsel was to be greedily devoured, and you can't break the habit.
That is very astute I think.
DeleteI would disagree that origin stories are as a rule bad, but I agree that they commonly fail, in part for exactly the reasons you suggest. I would definitely run into this problem when I first started GMing, where I'd fall in love with my NPCs, or the idea of who I wanted them to be, and try to force them onto the party. I've since learned to let them develop organically, as complements to the interests of the party, and to abandon the NPCs that the party doesn't like and double down on the ones they do.
ReplyDeleteIt never ceases to amaze me how unexpected NPCs become loved by the players. These are almost always the ones you make up on the fly because you have to.
DeleteI don't know if I would call Lucas’s case with Darth Vader one of ‘falling too much in love.’ It always struck me as him trying desperately to overwhelm us with enough evidence and detail to dismiss the clear and obvious alteration to his story line that happened when he changed the ending to Empire Strikes Back. Most know the story of that. But it’s clearly a deviation from the original story, and everything he piled on, especially once VCRs brought the ability to re-watch the originals and wonder ‘where is Vader as Luke’s dad in all this?’ back into the conversation, seems to me more trying to make a case than an obsession with the character.
ReplyDeleteThat may have started it all off but I see the prequels as mostly being George's attempt to do justice to the only really interesting character. I saw an interview with him once in which he was basically saying the entire six films should be thought of as the story of Vader.
DeleteI generally take interviews with Lucas (and many celebrities) with a grain of salt. Another thing he chafes at is that many prefer the original Star Wars to his CGI updated version released in the 90s. That is why he has done everything to keep the originals from being updated (tech wise) and released. Artists are a fickle lot sometimes. The same with Vader. Clearly he became the person the stories were about, but I can't help but think, remembering the various things said and written from back in the day, this evolved as he tried to validate the transformation. Don't know your age, but remember ESB came out before the widespread availability of VCRs. You saw movies in theaters, and wouldn't see them again until years later on TV. So something like 'I am you father' was only met with 'gee, that was weird, not how I remember the first one.' Once VCRs hit it big, however, and we all got to watch the original (and ESB) over and over, many said 'wait a minute, this doesn't make sense.' Prompting Lucas to do what he has done with 'Han didn't shoot first.' Perhaps that's how he wants us to think of it, but unpacking the unfolding events from back then I think it was more an attempt to assure us that he always wanted Vader as Luke's dad, even if we know from Hammil, Jones and Kershner that is was an eleventh hour change to the script. Again, just a hunch on my part, but it fits with all I remember over the years.
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ReplyDelete