Hugo-winning movies

[calimac]

Interesting disagreements going on in a File 770 comments thread over whether the film E.T. rulz or sux. I deleted the phrase "crassly manipulative (but then, it's a Spielberg film)" from my comment before posting, because I didn't want to needle Mike, who thinks it should have won the Hugo over Blade Runner (which we both liked).

Probably the most irritating thing about E.T. is that it's one of two stories that comes to mind (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe of course being the other) in which the Christ-like death-and-resurrection of a protagonist is the point of the story. (Gandalf also dies and is resurrected, but while his return is essential, the storyline doesn't hinge on the event - just one example of how Tolkien did it better than anyone else.) Who knows what Spielberg was thinking, but Lewis was trying to slip the Christian myth past what he called "the watchful dragons" of skeptical minds.

The problem is that it doesn't work. This non-Christian finds Aslan's death-and-resurrection weirdly arbitrary, and E.T.'s pointless. (I cannot remember, at this distance in time, why E.T. died at all, except to vaguely recall that it puzzled me at the time too.) Both function as Jackson-like extraneous diversions from what ought to be the storyline. Gandalf, by contrast, died for a good reason integral to the plot, but then Tolkien, as I already said ...

But Blade Runner, imperfect as it was (that mechanical pseudo-noir voice-over!), deserved and won the Hugo that year. Interesting that, though I'm not much of a movie-goer, I've seen all the Hugo-winning films since a TV episode last won the combined DP award 11 years ago. (I'm not going back further than that for now.) And to one extent or another I liked them all, even Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, though there are some cases where I thought another film was better. Winners to 2007; 2008

2008 - Stardust won. Not a great film, but better than OK, and certainly better than The Golden Compass or the crushingly disappointing Enchanted. I gave up on Harry Potter films after the first one.

2007 - Pan's Labyrinth won. Some people hated it; I found it largely excellent of its kind. But my choice was A Scanner Darkly, not only one of a handful of great SF films, but one of the few that captures the spirit of its book. V for Vendetta and The Prestige, on the other hand, were lousy adaptations of good books, especially the latter which is one of the most irritating films I've ever seen.

2006 - Serenity won. Sadly unworthy of the TV show it came from, but an OK film; certainly far better than the LWW film which is the only other nominee I saw. (I may be the only person on the planet to say it, but judged by their earlier short films Wallace & Gromit are boring, boring, boring.)

2005 - The Incredibles won. I wasn't blown away like many people were, but enjoyed it. I especially appreciated the DVD extras which alerted me that voice actor Sarah Vowell was at work on what turned out to be her wonderful book Assassination Vacation. But the only other nominee I saw was Eternal Sunshine, a superb, mind-blowing film that, like Scanner Darkly, goes on the short list of SF greats.

2004 - The Return of the King won. Vastly over-rated, but still better than the even more vastly over-rated Pirates of the Caribbean I or Finding Nemo (Albert Brooks, ugh).

2003 - The Two Towers won. I'd have preferred Spirited Away if only that film were half its actual length. Both it and the winner were better than Spiderman, my most recent venture into superhero movies.

2002 - The Fellowship of the Ring won. This time I saw all the other nominees, and I'd place the winner below all but Harry Potter I. Monsters Inc. was fun, the Buffy musical was terrific, and Shrek is one of the few nearly perfect films in existence. I've probably watched it more often than anything except Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

2001 - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won. I'd place it above Chicken Run and X-Men, the other two nominees I saw, but that doesn't mean I want to see it again. Although I should record that, while I was viewing CT,HD in a nearly empty theater, a few rows in front of me a cell phone rang. And its owner answered it and said, "Hello? Yeah, I'm watching a movie." I wish I could record that I leaped up in the air in the manner of the movie's characters and kicked him in the head, but I didn't even try.

2000 - Galaxy Quest won. This one I saw standing up in an over-sold theater, and I enjoyed it so much I didn't care that I couldn't sit down. But good as it was, did it really deserve the Hugo over the touching Iron Giant and the profoundly weird Being John Malkovich? A tough choice. But easy to pick over the trendy The Matrix and the atmospheric but cheating - yes, I said cheating: it didn't stay true to its premise - The Sixth Sense.

1999 - The Truman Show won. An excellent film, that got around its implausibilities with panache, and far better than the dull, unimaginative Pleasantville that was the only other nominee I saw.

1998 - Contact won. I barely remember this, though I vaguely liked it. Only other nominee I saw was Men in Black: clever premise, lousy movie.

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

2003 - The Two Towers won. I'd have preferred Spirited Away if only that film were half its actual length. Both it and the winner were better than Spiderman, my most recent venture into superhero movies.


And neither were better then "Peter Pan".
Seriously.
The perfect rendition of a classic.
Between that and "Finding Neverland" about as perfect an exploration of the Pan mythos as I have ever seen.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I didn't consider non-nominated films because I didn't have a list to look over. IMDB says that Peter Pan was a 2003 film, so it would have been up for the Hugos in 2004, in which year your comments would have been even more applicable.

I haven't seen it myself, but I thought Finding Neverland a very fine film.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

My favorite critique of E.T. is nellorat's: "I hadn't cried so much since Lad, a Dog. Then I realized: It is Lad, a Dog."

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Suggest the nellorat see Steven Chow's CJ7.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Did Lad die and get resurrected for no apparent reason?

Trying to find out something about it on IMDB or Wikipedia, I discovered that it is possible to misread this entry as stating that it is "a pair of films based on the Doctor Who series."

[ckd]

If Spider-Man was your last superhero movie, give Iron Man a look. I think it's the best superhero movie I've seen in at least 10 years.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

As the only superhero movie I've ever seen that I didn't think sucked rocks (if you don't count The Incredibles) was the only one (again excepting The Incredibles) to ever win a Hugo, the original Christopher Reeve Superman, I'm considering Iron Man, but with some skepticism.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Try Ang Lee's Hulk sometime. I didn't like it the first time I saw it, but now I think it's pretty amazing. A very different approach than your average superhero movie.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

While I agree about E.T. (once was enough), I have yet to make it through Blade Runner without falling asleep. I've tried. Many times, as the spouse adores it, and has several different versions. But I always fall asleep about twenty minutes in, after twenty somber-toned, curiously static minutes, not a smile anywhere in sight.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's a somber movie, all right - and to that extent, very unlike Phil Dick, who was always wry, whatever else he might also be. But somber isn't always bad.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, I I know it's not bad. It's just tough to catch my interest, and this one just can't. I realize the problem is mine, not the movie's. Like I say, it's one of the spouse's top faves.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

ET "dies" because his life force is connected to his people, and the longer he was away from them, the weaker he got. The blatent "heart-light" symbolism indicated the reconnection with his people (when they finally realized he'd been left behind and turned around to fetch him back).

But I agree, E.T. is superbly crafted emotional manipulation. It deliveres it's symbolic points with all the subtlety of anvil headed hammers. And the only reason it works at all is that Henry Thomas played Eliot's real grief (when Eliot really thought ET was dead) so well. He really sells that crucial moment, the audience buys it, and so they go along with everything else.

The correct delivery of crucial moments like that in films makes all the difference between the success or the flop of the movie. Another example I could point to is Star Trek: The Voyage Home - when Spock tells Kirk that the probe wants to talk with humpback whales, and Kirk accepts it as legitimate, we go along. Shatner gets a lot of flak for being a ham actor (which he so often is, true), but he played that moment straight up: if Kirk buys it, the audience buys it. If Shatner had winked at the audience in any way at that moment, the movie would have been received as idiotic puffery.

But now I'm getting off track. ;)

But I certainly wouldn't call E.T. a better film than Blade Runner (even with all its flaws).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"because his life force is connected to his people"?

That really, really doesn't make sense, considering the sequence of events in the movie. I don't have time to go into all the ways it doesn't make sense.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Heh. Oh, heck, yes, I agree with you that it doesn't make much sense. But that is apparently what the storytelling makes out the "reason" to be.

Come on... doesn't it at least make a little bit more sense than Jackson's Arwen's life or ailment suddenly being tied to the existence of the One Ring, for no discernable reason that I could tell? (Why Arwen and not someone else? Why Arwen only and not all Elves? Why? Why? Why at all? :D )

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

What about "The Day the Earth Stood Still", for films where the death/resurrection of a character was the focus of the story?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Was it? I thought "Message: Don't blow yourselves up, you idiots!" was the focus of that movie.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It was an allegorical treatment of Jesus (even to the name "Carpenter").

The message was as much, "You need an outside force to keep you from blowing yourselves up", as it was an exhortation to not do it, all by ourselves.

And without the ressurection, the world gets blown up, no need for us to do it to ourselves; the salvation of humanity rests on saying the magic words.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Whether a story allegorizes Jesus is not the point. In this film, the death-and-resurrection isn't the center of the plot, but more of a punchline. In the stories where it doesn't make sense, the death is dragged in by its ears, but it's understandable why Klaatu is shot. (For one thing, he'd been shot earlier for a similar reason.) And then the death is treated as somehow necessary for the resurrection events: but in this film it's not so: Klaatu could have delivered his parting speech without it. (Again, because his killing just reinforces the point about violence also made elsewhere.)

[emerdavid.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reminder that Blade Runner won a Hugo. It wasn't even considered for an Oscar (except in visual effects and set direction, neither of which it won), yet in retrospect it has turned out to be one of the most influential movies of its time.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Appropriately, set decoration may have been the film's single most influential aspect.