Destruction of Childhood Nears Completion
May 8th, 2008 | By Leslie Fox | Category: Unhealthy Living
First our parent’s generation was forced to suffer through the indignity of Dennis the Menace on the big screen. Then the trend began to gather speed and Hollywood realized that slaughtering childhood icons was good business. Soon the list of the fallen included such luminaries as The Brady Bunch, Super Mario Bros, and in an act of extraordinary cannibalism, Star Wars. By now the rate and scope of destruction has reached such levels that a complete list of casualties would require hours of research on the Internet. Research that could be done by an intern if we had one, which we don’t. (Now accepting applications for an internship)
With the opening Speed Racer this Friday, the complete and utter destruction of any entertainment once loved by a child enters endgame. For a long time it was believed that because the Speed Racer television show did not have the cultural ubiquity of Transformers or Scooby Do, it would escape the brutal rampage of pitiless revision visited upon so many of the artifacts of childhood. The coming of the film this Friday demonstrates once and for all that no scrap of simple pleasure can escape being turned into an overproduced, debased facsimile possessing hard edged computer generated spectacle in place of a soul.
There could be no more ideal directors of this violation than the Wachowski brothers. Once known as intensely imaginative and reclusive auteurs, they were to be the animal voice of the digital age. They screamed lust, rebellion, and sentiment in an era when society had abandoned these qualities in favor of more cost effective attitudes. The Wachowskis foretold of a time when humanity itself became a doddering anachronism, too proud and stubborn to lie down and die.
In four years the Wachowski Brothers early promise, embodied in The Matrix, was buried under an avalanche of sloppy filmmaking and squishy thinking. Those later Matrix movies were so awful that they amputated any affection one might have had for the first film, leaving us with a suppurating wound and phantom pain in a place were pleasure once existed. For a time even Hollywood was taken aback at the destruction that the Wachowskis had visited upon their own creation. The Brothers were politely asked to take some time away from movies. So the Wachowski brothers entered a congenial exile, producing video games and cartoons and living off whatever residual affection the world still had for their badly abused franchise.
Now the prodigal brothers have returned, their goal to force us to examine yet another childhood love best left in the sepia tones of memory. As George Lucas has proved again and again, the pleasures of childhood belong to children. Revisit your beloved and you risk replacing affection with faint embarrassment and boredom. Watching a remastered Star Wars makes you wonder why you liked it in the first place and such an examination can only serve to further separate the adult you have become from the child you were. Such a sifting of your personality may remove clumps, but it also leaves you reduced and cynical.
So friend, I leave you with these parting words. Time and experience have warped your sensibilities; the simplicity of the original and the hollowness of the remake will only leave you saddened for what once was. These entertainments are best left to children and less complicated people. Instead, take a chance on something unfamiliar; you might just find your interior space expanded. Of course, when the A-Team movie comes out, all bets are off.
I still love pretty much all of the movies I cherished as a child. Maybe they seem dated at times, but (to me) that’s not grounds for detraction. As for the Wachowski’s, their self destruction began exactly at the midway point of the first Matrix film. You know, the part where “Agent Smith” chases “Neo” around for a full hour. This plot device could have been vastly improved by the simple line, “Tag, you’re it!”, followed later by the classic, “Of course, you know this means war!” (Groucho/Bugs) They must have forgot they were making a comedy. And who can blame them, all that chasin’ is really disorienting!
There are a few things that I liked as a kid that I still like, but now I like them for different reasons. I suppose that could be a caveat; if some of the the movie went over my head when I was 12 then I might still like it now.
Like the previous two comments, I thought to myself while reading this article that I don’t question the things I liked as a child. It is the fond memories that contrast with my present-day adult perceptions of the remakes that make me dislike the remakes. I did not dislike the Matrix because I had nothing to base it on. But Speed Racer? I know that I’ll never like the movie. And I just know I couldn’t possibly allow myself to watch the newest Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To me, it is the nostalgia that inhibits my ability to be open to a remake. All I can think about is how good the original was.
After writing my last comment, I went to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch onstage. The movie is one of my favorites, but not from my childhood. I had a hard time separating the live performance from the movie while watching it - I found myself remembering the imagery of the movie (and not because of what they did on stage). But I liked the show last night. I had a great time. It was a little different from the movie, but the music was exactly the same. And their energy was remarkable. Dunno how or why that works that I like the “remake” of sorts, but I’m glad it did! Maybe because it’s not exactly a re-make. It was written by the same person. Now I’m rambling. Just wanted to share. And done.
THE GREATEST COMMENT WRITER AWARD goes to: Jamie!
Remakes and redundant sequels tend to be superficial rehashes of the original. That’s not always the case. Sometimes an artist can find something new and interesting in old material, and sometimes a shift in medium (such as Headwig) can bring new energy, but much of the time these things (especially if aimed at kids) are disposable plastic bits of flim-flam that at their worst can expose the weakness of the original.