Biblical prayers for the modern church

Here are some famous Biblical prayers, as they might sound if they were written today. Not intended to give offence: just to raise a smile and maybe make people think again their own prayers.

The Lord’s Prayer… as prayed by an evangelical

Our Father who is just in heaven,

we just really want your name to be hallowed, Lord.
We just want your kingdom to come.
We really just want your will be done, Lord, on earth, just as it is in heaven.
Just give us this day our daily bread, Lord.
And just forgive us our sins, as we just forgive those who sin against us.
We really just want you to save us from the time of trial and just deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are just yours now and for ever, Lord.
Amen.

The Magnificat…. as prayed by a liberal

‘My soul magnifies the Lord/Lady/Formally Elected Superior of Indeterminate Gender,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he/she has looked with favour on the lowliness of his/her servant/mutual partner/best friend in the whole wide world.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the mighty One has done great things for me, without contradicting the normal laws of space or time in any way that could be construed by a superstitious population as miraculous,
and holy is his/her name.
His/Her mercy is for those who fear love him/her from generation to generation.
He/she has shown strength with his/her arm, although not in an oppressive, patriarchal way;
he/she has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, while at all times ensuring that they feel included and valued.
He/she has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he/she has filled the hungry with good things, after attending the appropriate Food Hygiene course, and sent the rich away empty and fed the rich too in an inclusive and welcoming manner.
He/she has helped his/her servant Israel, in remembrance of his/her mercy, according to the promise he/she made to our ancestors, to Abraham and his descendants for ever.’

The Song of Simeon… as prayed by a contemplative

….

….

….

….

The Song of Zechariah… as prayed by a charismatic

Mmm… Hmm… Oh Lord… Mmm, blessed be the Lord God of… mmm… Israel… Oh Jesus, hallelujah… for has looked… mmm… favourably on his people… Yes Lord! And redeemed them…. He has raised up… Praise Jesus!... a mighty saviour for us… in the house of… hmm… his servant… …

[Gospel writer gives up and walks away]

Batman - Life after Nolan

So the Dark Knight has finally risen, Bale has hung up the cowl, and Christopher Nolan has rounded off his take on the Batman story with a satisfying conclusion. People are already talking about Warners Bros’ inevitable reboot/remake of the cash cow franchise and, for once, I am okay with that. In fact, I’m excited.

One character, many versions

Yes, yes, I know that I ranted about Hollywood remaking the same fantasy film endlessly in my last post but I think there is scope in the Batman franchise for a new and interesting direction. Nolan’s trilogy was (mostly) excellent but it was also limited in specific ways. And that’s the strength of Batman as a character. He is like Tarzan or Sherlock Holmes, a character with essential core traits that can be interpreted and portrayed in a variety of ways, be it the campy pantomime of 60s TV, the noir-flavoured adventures of the 90s animated series, or Nolan’s brooding realism. There are elements of the character that simply didn’t fit in the recent films and I’d like to see some of them on the silver screen. With that in mind, here is my personal wish list for the next big screen Batman.

1        No origin story

I think we can all agree that the superhero origin story has been pretty thoroughly covered. We have had reluctant heroes, idealistic heroes, accidental heroes, patriotic heroes, and repentant heroes. The Amazing Spiderman might have surprised everyone by making a retelling of Peter Parker’s origin watchable, only ten years after it was first seen in the cinema, but there are few changes to be wrung out of Batman’s origin story – dead parents, obsessive quest for justice, a bulk order of fetish gear and military hardware. Nolan did a bang up job putting that on screen. Besides, is there going to be anybody in the cinema who doesn’t know who the basics? Let’s follow Tim Burton’s example and jump straight into an established Gotham City, with Batman already an active superhero.

2        Make it a comic book movie

This is a very subjective point but, personally, I’d rate Batman Begins as the best of the Nolan trilogy. The other two may be more ambitious and more sophisticated pieces of cinema, but Begins is just more fun to watch. It has a clear story with strong characters and some great action. And while it is brooding and thoughtful, it never gets lost in the navel gazing. Batman is arguable the ‘darkest’ mainstream superhero; his stories explore areas that other superhero comics won’t explore. But he’s still a guy fighting crime dressed as a bat. As SFX magazine once said, Batman is not just the Dark Knight: he’s also the Caped Crusader and the World’s Greatest Detective.

So, for the reboot, I’d like to see a Batman film that embraces more of the fantastical weirdness that you only find in comic books. Yes, Batman battles urban terrorists and mobsters but he’s also tangled with giant crocodile-man monsters and immortal ninja warriors. The benchmark should be something like: ‘Could this Batman conceivably join the Justice League?’ The only way somebody like Superman could have appeared in Nolan’s Gotham was if Bruce Wayne took some very strong LSD.

3        Robin

Robin for the 21st century -
 say 'Jimmy Jillickers' to him and he'll break your legs

I love the 60s Batman series, with its campiness and knowing humour, but it has made it difficult for people to take the Boy Wonder seriously ever since. Think about The Simpsons’ painfully accurate parody, Fallout Boy. It does not help that the last time he appeared on big screen (apart from a fan-pleasing nod in The Dark Knight Rises) it was in Schumacher’s generally reviled Batman and Robin. But I think there is potential for the character to feature in a reboot. He could add levity to the films by playing off against Batman, the dead panning straight man. Robin could also serve as the audience’s way into this new Batman franchise, as he goes on his own journey to become the Boy Wonder. Hell, why not use Tim Drake’s origin story: he works out Batman’s secret identity and demands the job of sidekick?

4        The Riddler

Riddler is one of Batman’s most enduring and iconic villains, right up there with Joker and Penguin, but he’s had a troubled history both on page and screen. This is mainly because his central gimmick – leaving riddles at the scene of his crimes – is difficult to write well. But I think that Rocksteady Studio’s Arkham videogames have shown that, not only can the Riddler be an effective villain, he can be terrifying. The Rocksteady games, particularly Arkham City, portrayed the Riddler as a narcissistic sociopath obsessed with proving his intellectual superiority to all and sundry, but especially Batman. He kidnaps people and places them in sadistic death traps reminiscent of the Saw films, justifying his actions by claiming that his victims would have survived if they had been smarter. Add his kung fu kicking female sidekicks, Query and Echo, for some muscle and fanservice, and you’ve got a big screen villain.

'I'll get you next time, Batman!'

I can already envisage this new, more swashbuckling Batman film – told from the perspective of precocious teenager Tim Drake, he becomes determined to find out the secret identity of his idol, the Batman, an established superhero with a history of crime fighting in Gotham City. Meanwhile Batman, in partnership with Commissioner Gordon, is investigating a spree of burglaries by a mysterious criminal who leaves riddles at the scene of his crimes. As Batman solves more of his clues, the Riddler raises the stakes by kidnapping civilians and forcing Batman to negotiate his death mazes to save them. The overarching theme would be questions of identity – who is Batman, who is the Riddler, who is Tim Drake – and the finale would have the whole of Gotham City Hall turned into one giant death trap that Batman and his new sidekick Robin have to negotiate to save the mayor, or something like that. Add in an arc plot for the franchise involving Hugo Strange as a master puppeteer and you’re done. Hell, I’ll write it for them!

Formulaic fantasy - How Joe Roth is stifling a genre

Who is Joe Roth? He is a Hollywood producer, with a long list of successful films on his CV, including the Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Snow White and the Huntsman. I mention him because when the trailer for Sam Raimi’s new film, Oz the Great and Powerful, was revealed last week, it announced that it is ‘From the producer of Alice in Wonderland’: Joe Roth. Here is the trailer:

Anybody else getting a sense of déjà vu? We only have a few minutes of footage, but it looks like Mr Roth is giving us the same basic film again. The set dressing might have changed but the essential plot is another rehash of the Narnia story. A plucky and/or innocent character is transported to a magical fairy tale land under the dominion of a card-carrying villain. There is a chase and an escape. The protagonist meets some ‘wacky’ supporting characters, raises an army, there is a battle, evil is defeated, and it ends with the inevitable sequel hook.

I actually walked out of Snow White the Huntsman when I saw it in the cinema. I am a sucker for heroic fantasy but a combination of Kristen Stewart’s excruciatingly bland performance and the sheer mind-numbing, clichéd nature of the whole thing was too much. It made Avatar look like ground-breaking story telling. Prequel, sequel, reboot, reimaging; call it what you like, it’s the same film every time. Everybody is just wearing different hats.

Come to think of it, most of the changes that Disney made to A Princess of Mars when they adapted it as the much maligned John Carter seemed purposefully designed to fit this formula. In the book, Mars is a world in decline; its ecosystem has been devastated, forcing the various city states to fight constantly for ever dwindling resources. Apparently this was too subtle for the film makers. There simply has to be a card-carrying, world-threatening villain, so the city of Zodanga is now responsible for all the world’s problems, manipulated behind the scenes by the Therns. The director has already made a children’s film with powerful eco-message, WALL:E. Why did he shy away from the same message in John Carter? I suspect it was to appease the all-powerful formula.

Formula can be good. It’s essential to some genres. Almost all detective stories share some basic elements: a culprit, a detective, a mystery to be solved. It’s the variations, or lack of them, that make an individual work good or bad. But fantasy? Fantasy is supposed to be the one genre where rules and conventions no longer apply. Even science fiction (of the ‘hard’ type, at least) is bound by what is at least theoretically possible. Fantasy is only limited by the story teller’s imagination. And modern special effects have given us an unprecedented ability to put the limits of our invention on the silver screen. So why does Hollywood insist on churning out the same story over and over and over again? I suspect the answer is about box office returns. Innovation is risky. Innovation does not test well in the focus groups. The movie-going public likes familiarity; likes ‘brand recognition’. But then how did something like Inception, innovative and original, become a hit? Hollywood should give the public more credit.

At the very least, they should stop revisiting the classics! Does anybody really think that Sam Raimi is going to make a film on par with the original Wizard of Oz? We’ve got some pretty definitive versions of Alice in Wonderland and Snow White on screen. Let’s see some new adaptations; books we haven’t seen on the big screen yet.
 

What about a film starring Fritz Leiber’s barbarian hero Fafhrd and his partner in crime, the Grey Mauser? They’d be ideal for a swashbuckling heist film. Or a film of one of the Chrestomanci books by Diana Wynne Jones; a dimension-hopping, Doctor Who-style adventure with the titular wizard? Maybe look at the works of Tim Powers, a personal favourite of mine, like The Anubis Gates (time travel, Regency London and Egyptian sorcery) or The Drawing of the Dark (magical beer and Arthurian legend in 16th century Vienna)? Or Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files; a noir detective thriller with vampires and black magic?

 There you go Hollywood. You can have those ideas for free. Just don’t let Joe Roth get his hands on them.

'John Carter' - What on Mars happened?

Three weeks ago, I saw a film that I had been looking forward to for some time: John Carter. It had its flaws (what film does not?) but I thought it was  charming, witty and fun, with strong characters and some of the best FX I had seen at the cinema in a long time. I left the cinema enthusing about the story and already looking forward to the sequel.

Then I got home and read some of the reviews.

I had already read the reviews from SFX, Empire and Total Film, which ranged from positive to average. But I soon discovered that other critics had positively savaged the film, describing it as dull and confusing. Their judgement appears to have been carried through to the box office. Disney is set to lose $200 million on John Carter, making it the biggest flop in cinema history to date.

This makes me sad. As I said above, I had been looking forward to John Carter for some time. I became a fan of Edgar Rice Burrough’s original novel, A Princess of Mars, at nineteen when I read it on a train journey to London and have gone on to read many of its numerous sequels. The series is pulp, there is no questioning that, but it is so gloriously pulp that it takes on a kind of operatic grandeur. Everything about the series is exaggerated and impossible: the masculinity of the men, the beauty of the women, the scale of the scenery, the bloodiness of the violence. John Carter himself is like a combination of Conan the Barbarian, Superman, and a hero from a classic Western. He possesses super strength, can leap tall buildings with a single bound, and is described as ‘the greatest swordsman of two worlds’, regularly fending off overwhelming odds single-handed. But he is also a Southern gentleman of the old school; courteous, brave, and honourable. The question is not so much ‘why did Disney waste so much money on this story’ as, ‘how did they fail to make money with this story’?



A day in the life of John Carter. How could they not make a cool film out of this?



The film itself is a reasonable adaptation of the book. It has its flaws, of course. Releasing it in 3D probably didn’t help – people aren’t willing to spend extra to go and see a film they are not sure they will like. I also got the impression that a lot of critics could not get past William Dafoe’s opening narration. While it was admirable for the writers to stick so closely to their source material, perhaps playing down Burrough’s made-up words (Barsoom, Zodanga, Tharks, etc.) would have made the film more accessible.

I also felt like the film makers were holding back on the action. Andrew Stanton, the director, has spoken about his desire to adapt the first three books into a cinematic trilogy. That would explain why the battle scenes lack the scale of films like The Lord of the Rings. I still found them more engaging than Avatar though (that is another rant for another time).

A lot of people have blamed poor marketing for Carter’s poor performance. The decision to change the name by dropping the ‘of Mars’ suffix did leave it with a fairly bland title. Why not add a subtitle, like Pirates of the Caribbean: ‘John Carter: A Princess of Mars’ (although that might put boys and teenagers off; it sounds a little like Barbie’s First Space Opera)? Or use the original title from the book’s serialisation: ‘John Carter: Under the Moons of Mars’?

I can only speak for the UK but there did seem to be a distinct lack of posters, television advertising, or the usual paraphernalia that accompanies a big Hollywood production. Had Disney already resigned themselves to releasing a turkey and did not want to waste more money on futile marketing? All I can say to that is: Hollywood has made a lot of money with films that are a lot worse than John Carter. Here is a run-down of some recent box office takings:

• X-Men Origins: Wolverine - $373 million
• Clash of the Titans (2010) - $493 million  
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - $836 million
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – $963 million

I sat through every one of those stinkers. I would defy anybody, professional critic or not, to tell me that John Carter was a worse film. Transformers 2 had a couple of racist stereotypes and giant robotic testicles, for crying out loud! And it still made its budget back four times over!

The marketing for John Carter did seem confused. In a film featuring superbly realised mo-cap aliens, some genuinely funny moments, and a romance with a beautiful princess, why did the posters only show Carter fighting the two great white apes? A recent article on the BBC website suggested that the film’s advertising should have played up the romantic nature of the plot to attract female viewers. This sounds a bit patronising to me but it does beg the question why Dejah Thoris, the female lead and one of the best things about the film, was not featured more prominently.



A problem frequently mentioned by critics was the film’s apparently derivative nature. I say apparently because, although the likes of Superman, Flash Gordon, Star Wars, and Avatar, were all influenced by Burrough’s work, people unfamiliar with the book (speaking of which, where were the re-releases from Burrough’s Esate?) might dismiss John Carter as a ‘rip-off’. Why did the marketing not play on this? ‘See the story that inspired a century of fiction’? ‘A hundred years in the making’? ‘Only now can the cinema contain the epic scope of Burrough’s vision’?

In the end, the best fans like me can hope for is that John Carter will be remembered as fun but unappreciated. Perhaps it might resurface one day as a cult classic. For now though there is no prospect of the sequel I was looking forward to when I came out of the cinema three weeks ago. I will probably never get to see John Carter descend into the bowels of Mars to confront the hideous goddess Issus, or the epic airship battle above the planet’s south pole. It will be a long time before any studio is brave enough to return to Barsoom. John Carter will go down in cinematic history with Waterworld and Cutthroat Island as gigantic box office failures, while audiences continue to queue up for Michael Bay’s own brand of vacuous, moronic, jingoistic effluence.