Conan’s Great Uncle Kull

After reading every known scrap Robert E. Howard wrote about both Conan and Solomon Kane last year, I have since moved backward is his oeuvre to Kull of Atlantis. Only three Kull stories were published in Howard’s short but prodigious literary career and one of these was a cameo in a Bran Mak Morn story. He did write more than he ever saw published including a number of unfinished stories.

Unlike with Solomon Kane, I was somewhat familiar with Kull due to the 1997 Kevin Sorbo film, Kull the Conqueror. I saw that film a few years after it was released and I don’t remember liking it. This was when Sorbo was well known for the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys television show (which I quite liked at the time), and doing a sword-and-sorcery film was a natural fit for the actor. Interestingly, it was originally to be a Conan film but this didn’t work out for a number of reasons. The film itself is a mix of stories but is closest to the only Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon (also known as Conan the Conqueror). This novel itself is a mishmash of previously written Conan stories. There are also elements of The Phoenix and the Sword, the first Conan story which was a re-write of the completed but previously rejected, By This Axe I Rule! — a Kull story! To add further confusion, the antagonist of the original Schwarzenegger Conan film, Thulsa Doom is actually from a Kull story too.

 As you shall see, the history of the film adaptations well reflects the confusing history of the source material.

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Seeing Black America – Part 1

The last two years have been especially turbulent with regards to race relations in the United States. I have written a couple of posts on aspects of this but never really anything much directly on the topic. What I write her will be somewhat biographical as I deal with my direct experiences with the reality of race relations in America. Before I visited the United States, I had a very different image of it born mostly through cinema and television. So while I knew about the “urban” demographic, I had a more romantic idea of the reality. Actually going to America and seeing and experiencing this with my own eyes as well as hearing it from Americans had me rethinking a lot of my assumptions and not in the way the powers that be would desire.

These were all experiences from fifteen years ago as of writing and things have clearly gotten a lot worse. This isn’t just a “this one time I went to New York and saw a mugging” story either. In fact, I didn’t witness any crimes directly. What I did was see a lot more of the country than most tourists do and spent time directly with Americans away from famous landmarks and tourist trails.

The first part will be my experiences while attending college for a semester and I will warn people that find this browsing or by chance that this will be *ahem* racially insensitive but I add (no doubt pointlessly), that I harbour no ill will to Black Americans.

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There is no Scooby-Doo Ending

Whatever the animation company, almost every cartoon on television I watched as a child had the same formula. The bad guys would hatch some convoluted and ridiculous plot and the good guys would put an end to it just after the third ad break with the bad guys vowing that the next time their plan would succeed. Sometimes there was a multi-part special or the odd episode where it transcended this formula but this was generally what you could expect. Off the top of my head this was true of G.I. Joe, Pokémon, Captain Planet, X-Men and a whole bunch of other shows.

Scooby-Doo was similarly formulaic but the bad guys changed with each episode. I haven’t watched it for a long time but I recall that they always got caught, admitted what they’d done and were brought to justice. While in one sense, it is good for children to see a clear distinction between good and evil and justice being served, this is not the reality of the world. Thinking about it, earlier works of fiction for children were far more grim and realistic with stark lessons to be taken away. This is particularly so for most fairy tales as they were originally told.

It seems there is a never-ending debate about what children should and should not be exposed to while growing up. This I should stress is one among people who genuinely want to raise children well and not amongst the growing legions of people trying to corrupt them. There are things children should definitely not be exposed to but there are also very bad things that it is best they are aware of. The true nature of evil is one such example.

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The Setting of the Rising Sun


risingsun
Rising Sun by Michael Crichton, Alfred A. Knopf Inc, January 27th, 1992

Rising Sun is a novel written by Michael Crichton while he was still at the height of his literary powers. It was published after Jurassic Park and before Disclosure — the latter of which I have not read.* All three were successful novels that were quickly adapted into successful films.

The subject matter of the novel is rather out of date today and it is best read as a period novel, as the issues of the time now seem rather quaint. The title is both obvious but still clever with three levels of meaning that I could pick out. The obvious being a direct reference to Japan as the land of the rising sun. The next being its position at the time as a major world power that was expected by many to eclipse the economic power of the United States. This features heavily in the plot with the two detectives investigating a murder at the Nakamoto Corporation. The last meaning can be seen in the time much of the story takes place where the detectives are racing against the sunrise to solve the murder. The actual plot goes on three nights though.

Although I’m certainly not very familiar with the genre, the book and film both have elements of classic American detective fiction and film noir. A quick search supports this as it wasn’t lost on critics. The film follows the book as closely as one could hope with the only major changes being the white character Peter Smith becoming the black Webster Smith. This was at a time when race-swapping characters was done less maliciously and absurdly than today. It also actually works as racism is a strong thematic element and the buddy cop dynamic found in the Lethal Weapon series had been well-received by audiences.

Almost thirty years later, things are very different. At the time of publication, the Japanese economy had already begun to decline and the fears of Japanese dominance now seem laughable though Crichton’s observations about American politicians and corporations willingly selling out their nation to foreigners are all too accurate. Nowadays, Japan has been usurped by its unfriendly neighbor China but remains a strong and (more importantly) stable nation. The United States today needs no help from foreigners to commit economic and cultural suicide. Americans could be now forgiven for wishing the Japanese had come to dominate the country.

Crichton’s style in all the novels I’ve read was to have characters explain scientific concepts or some other extended but relevant piece of trivia to another character or characters. He excelled at having things explained in ways that most readers could easily follow and while I’m sure literary pedants found it wanting, I always found these asides fascinating.

In Rising Sun, Crichton has the character John Connor explain different aspects of Japanese culture to the protagonist, Peter Smith. Although some critics seemed determined to have found fault with the novel (and the film) for being anti-Japanese, Connor is sympathetic to the Japanese and I suspect Crichton was too. As I lived in Japan for a decade fifteen years after the novel’s publication, I found these parts of particular interest.

In the film, John Connor is portrayed by Sean Connery and his commentary on the Japanese is far briefer — as is his use of their language. It also seems to have been changed to be more sympathetic to the Japanese though I would maintain that Crichton’s main target is the willingness of Americans to voluntarily sell themselves out and not Japan’s willingness to take advantage of this.

What follows are some of the extended quotes from John Connor which I found interesting and my commentary. As a last aside, I am a bit puzzled as to why Crichton used that name for the character as Terminator 2: Judgement Day was released the year before, is set in the same city and is still a much loved film today. Realistically though, it is a fairly common sort of name so it still works.

On to the commentary.

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The Genre Amalgamation

Just over a month ago I happened on a post from David V. Stewart which was very similar to something I had been contemplating on modern gaming. His post dates 2007 as Ground Zero for video games because that was the year when innovation in game development essentially froze. Almost all the most successful series that year saw major releases that set the staple for what was to follow. Games have gotten much prettier since but there hasn’t been any major shifts in game design since. Stewart admits that dating it here has its imperfections and allows for significant releases in the previous and the following year.

Making these declarations is always open to criticism by pedants though and the year is a sound enough place to set a marker. Who could plausibly claim for example, that the Call of Duty series has seen significant evolution since 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare? How have RPGs changed in any significant way since Mass Effect? That’s just two of the games from the list. I should also add here that this applies to the mainstream or AAA games and that the lower budget or indie games have been far more innovative though even they seem to have fallen into a rut of late.

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The Fake Rebels of the Music Industry

It seems almost inevitable as a teenager growing up in the times we live that you would be heavily into music. For whatever reason, music has long been important to the identity of teenagers and the kind of music you listen to, correlates heavily with your social group. I heard at least one story growing up of a kid dumping their entire music collection and starting a new one in a different genre. It was serious stuff or at least, it certainly seemed to be at the time.

One aspect I can vividly remember was the hostility my peers had (which I quickly adopted), towards pop music. Our antipathy towards pop music wasn’t entirely unreasonable and mostly had to do with it being highly manufactured and soulless. The fact that most artists didn’t write their songs and that everything about them from what they sung, to what they wore as well as their opinions and even who they dated was managed by their record company. Our main mistake was supposing the music we listened to was any better. 

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The Legacy of Richard Dawkins

The biggest of the false promises of a less religious world was that everybody would be a lot more rational and less prone to superstition and other irrational behaviour as belief declined. In 2006 when Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published, one could almost be forgiven for thinking this was true. With the (highly exaggerated) threat of Islamic Terrorism being the strongest example used to buttress their arguments. Not even twenty years have passed since but this time has seen a sharp decline in the amount of people professing religious faith or belief in God. Yet, it would be hard to argue that society has since become more rational in concert with this decline.

The recent withdrawal of an award given to Richard Dawkins twenty five years ago by the American Humanist Association is excellent proof of this.

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The Unchanging Nature of Mass Media

The above video was recorded after the Gulf “war” which ended in early 1991. The first time I heard it was in 2003 when the second Gulf “war” was hourly news and knowing Bill Hicks died in 1994, I was a little confused at first. Realising that exactly the same words and rhetoric were used twelve years later was something of an awakening for me and changed the way I looked at the media from then onwards.

Nothing has changed since, I’ve just become more conscious of it.

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Financial Success versus Cultural Legacy

Though I can’t now remember where I read it, I  read somewhere that the 2009 film Avatar, despite it’s immense financial success has not left any sort of cultural legacy. When thinking about it, it is hard not to agree. It is not commonly spoken about and I have never met anyone who considers it one of their favourite films. If I do hear about it, it is either calling it overrated or mockingly comparing it to Disney’s Pocahontas, Fern Gully or Dances with Wolves — all films which have essentially the same plot and all pre-dating Avatar by well over a decade. I found Avatar to be a boring, unoriginal film despite the visual spectacle it was sold on. I suspect many went to see it based on hype and quickly forgot it, so it is quite possible the sequels won’t do nearly as well unless they offer a lot more than impressive visual effects.

It occurred to me that the Star Wars prequel trilogy, despite being rather poor films, have had a significant cultural impact. They were critically panned and many Star Wars fans dislike them but the characters, worlds and sub-stories still spawned a significant legacy across multiple mediums. They even have hilarious memes; something that just doesn’t happen without a genuinely affectionate fanbase.

This post won’t be me trying to defend the films themselves — which I do think are bad. I am in agreement with the sometimes disturbing, frequently crude but thoughtful Plinkett reviews from RedLetterMedia. All the elements were there to make great films with some better writing and direction but this was not to be. What I will do is consider what might have helped these films have developed a strong legacy despite the negative critical reaction at the time and even still today.

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The Academy Awards were Always Trash

I read a post on the Arkhaven Comics blog by The Dark Herald arguing that the Academy Awards (or the Oscars) lost credibility when The English Patient won in 1997, though he did allow for previous mistakes including the snub for Citizen Kane — often called the greatest film ever made. Though I do remember watching The English Patient (and finding it extremely boring), I would argue the Oscars have really always been terrible.

The main reason is what I’ve said about awards before and that’s simply that there are far too many given out and rarely do they ultimately represent genuine quality. Consider how knighthoods are handed out in the United Kingdom for example. In one hundred years, I doubt many people knighted will be remembered with any fondness and so it is with literature, music and film. Time is a better judge than any award will ever be. Good films have won such as Gone with the Wind and A Man for All Seasons but the academy is fast trying to forget it ever awarded films like this — especially the former. I bring these two films up because I didn’t even know they’d won until I looked up the history of winners before I commenced writing this post.

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