Superheroes, Spartans, and dwarves!

Yesterday Girlfriend and I went ahead and saw The Avengers--ahem, Marvel's The Avengers, no doubt to ameliorate the confusion of three or so people expecting a new John Steed movie. I'm not too sure what to say about it. Any accurate account of my opinion would probably be unfair considering the extent to which I enjoyed the movie; just saying that I enjoyed it would give the wrong impression, too. (I suppose this is a knot that movie reviewers learn how to cut early on.) I enjoyed watching The Avengers on a big screen. I do not think it would have held my attention on my television. It was, as I told a few people, a lot of scenes, the majority of which were entertaining. That they don't add up to much is probably not the fault of any of the artists involved. After all, we know whose movie this really is. It's in the title.

 I was not invested in this being a good movie. Since Iron Man 2 I haven't had hopes to speak of for Marvel movies. If Batman weren't still going, I would be ready to call this comic book movie thing over. The Disney Renaissance lasted 10 years, generously defined; if we're having a Golden Age of Comic Book Movies, well, it's been 11 years since Spider-Man.

One place I do hope the magic is lasting out the decade is in the Lord of the Rings franchise, for franchise it has become, and The Hobbit is coming (and coming again next year, because why not?). I wouldn't mind seeing a comparison of how much money is riding on these two enterprises.

Now, back when I played Halo: Reach I noticed a problem that I almost wrote about at the time, and looking forward to The Hobbit I see the chance for the same mistake. It turns out that good characterization can ruin a good character.

I played the Halo games, and I, for one, thought the character of the Master Chief was a very good one. I'm not going to call the series an example of deep or transcendent literature, but the Master Chief was a nearly flawless action hero. He wasn't exactly flat; his character had some conspicuous, gaping holes. He was Spartan 117, and he had extra kung fu where most of his personality should have been. This was apparently the human cost of the Spartan program. There was pathos in it. That's how he came off to me, anyway.

Then came Halo: Reach, where we had the privilege of meeting six other Spartans. Now they had to be differentiated. (Actually, did they? For the story Bungie wanted to tell, but I wonder.) They had to be characterized, and humanized. For the Halo series, some of them were pretty well-rounded. Jorge maybe even had depth--at the very least, there were tensions in his character that made him interesting. The gentle giant thing isn't the freshest character angle, but I liked him. He certainly didn't seem to have parts of his soul missing.

Suddenly, what the hell was wrong with Master Chief? If the other Spartans were capable of feeling the tragedy of war--capable of feeling fear and empathy--capable of bonding with and mourning comrades--then 117 lost his excuse. Now, apparently, the Spartan project wasn't dehumanizing. Master Chief must have had his Clint Eastwood growl when he shipped out to boot camp. He doesn't care because he doesn't care. The pathos is gone. Suddenly, he's either a cardboard character or a psychopath.

So I had that problem with Halo: Reach. By elevating its characters above their type, it made the old hero--first and foremost an excellent specimen of a type--and undermined him. If I ever go back to play the campaign in any of the Halos, I will probably ignore the characterization in Reach, but I can't unplay it.

So, Tolkien gave us elves and dwarves. In The Lord of the Rings he could use the different races and types. Dwarves were a certain way, elves were a certain way, and you didn't need to think about it too hard. Tolkien helped us out by never making us deal with more than one dwarf, or more than one elf, at a time. So Gimli and Legolas stand out as distinct from the rest of the Fellowship, and they have personalities, even without ever being much more than representatives of a cultural type.

I'm not going to get on Tolkien's case at all. The Lord of the Rings movies flattened out Legolas and Gimli even further--Gimli in particular. And to be fair, the movies' Gimli is not the character Halo's Master Chief is. He comes dangerously close to being the sum of the running gags around him.

So Gimli is, at best, a type. The shallowness of his characterization is supported, inasmuch as it is supported, by the absence of other dwarves to compare him to. So what am I worried about? The 13 dwarves in The Hobbit. In the book, not all of them are characterized. In the movie, they're all going to have to be differentiated, at least. Maybe even well-developed--actors get bored, after all. Which is fine, except I suspect it's going to get harder to appreciate the LOTR trilogy on its own terms.

This is Peter Jackson's fault, more or less. He left The Lord of the Rings open to this. Admittedly, his neglect in this area may have freed him up to do awesome things in other areas of the movies. And really, I'd rather see The Hobbit be as good as it (they) can be. I just wish everything could be perfect and everyone could win. You know.