In Defense of the Emo God

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I found out the other day that Louis Leterrier, better known as the director of the Transporter movies and the most recent Incredible Hulk cinematographic catastrophe, will be helming a remake of the fantasy classic Clash of the Titans.

For those of you not old enough or geeky enough to know about this film, it was released in 1981 and directed by Desmond Davis, better known for… pretty much nothing else, except a long list of TV productions.

The original Clash of the Titans is considered by many prominent experts in the field, including myself of course, to be one of the finest Greek Mythology films ever made, even if the title is misleading (there are no Titans in the film, only Gods) and Medusa’s blood looks suspiciously like spaghetti sauce. Also, if we’re going to be anal about it, the Kraken, which Perseus kills at the end of the film to rescue the gorgeous Andromeda, is actually a sea monster from Norwegian Mythology and is never mentioned in the Perseus/Andromeda myth, but that’s also a minor issue. As is the weird mechanical owl Hephaestus builds for Perseus.

The point is, overall the film sticks pretty closely to the myth and features special effects that were cutting edge at the time.

Press forward to 2010. Some director whose better achievements include fast cars, slow plots and a green radioactive monster no one seems to care about, decides to do a remake. He keeps the name, still doesn’t put any actual Titans in the Clash of the Titans, but this time sends Perseus to the underworld…

This is the Yahoo Synopsis and I am really hoping they got it wrong.

Ok… Perseus was NEVER in the Underworld, his family was NOT killed by Hades and he certainly did not fight Hades to keep him from taking over Olympus because Hades never tried to take over Olympus.  Sadly, this is the second time I see Hades portrayed as a villain and this director seems to have pulled his plot straight from Walt Disney’s Hercules, one of the most inaccurate Greek Mythology-based films ever made, even if it was wildly entertaining (James Woods as Hades is still one of my favorite villains).

I was willing to forgive the Disney version mainly because it is, after all, a cartoon. I could write an entire week of blogs on how many things are wrong with that film, but I’ve watched it dozens of times and I love it anyway. My issue with this remake, is the same issue most people have with remakes of some of the best classics: it is unnecessary. Much like the remakes of Planet of the Apes and The Day the Earth Stood Still were unnecessary. In fact I think most movies with Keannu Reeves are unnecessary.

My even bigger issue with this particular remake is that, if Yahoo’s synopsis is right, it is blatantly ignoring the source material.  Mainly, by bringing together two story lines from Greek Mythology that never crossed paths, and by portraying Hades as a villain.

Hades, the God of the Underworld, is never represented in Greek Mythology as an evil God. If anything, he was a moody and depressed God. Call him the original emo.  Unlike his two brothers Zeus and Poseidon, he didn’t get to pick his job; he got what was left.

This is what happened. (If you already know the story or are just not interested in a free lesson in Mythology, you can stop reading now)

The Olympians had just won the war against the Titans, having kicked their titanic asses all the way back to the center of the Earth, and were celebrating by drinking lots of Ambrosia, which is the Olympian version of a Margarita, and dividing the world among themselves. The three main brothers were Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. They also had three sisters, Hera, Demeter and Hestia (yes, Zeus married his sister, get over it, this was Olympus, Alabama) but they didn’t get to participate cause Zeus was a chauvinistic jackass and had all three of them in the kitchen preparing the Margaritas.

So the three top dogs sit around and play a game of Poker… or something to that effect, to figure out who gets to pick their cubicle first. Zeus, who is always pushing everyone around because he thinks he’s got the biggest… uh… thunderbolt, wins and gets to pick first. Naturally, he claims the skies as his own, proclaims himself king of the Gods and proceeds to have sex with every female within sight, human or divine. Any time he shows up after this in a myth, he is either trying to get into someone’s pants or doing his best to keep his wife/sister from killing whoever owns the pants he just got into.

Moving on.

Poseidon wins second pick and he’s cool with not getting the sky cause he doesn’t like it all that much. He’s a seafood lover and enjoys long walks by the beach. He promptly claims domain over the entire ocean, which gives him plenty of real estate and a whole lot of lobster and cute mermaids. Poseidon is just about as promiscuous as Zeus but gets to do it less often mainly because all that sea water tends to cram his style and shrink his… possibilities. He takes a dive into his realm after this and only emerges every now and then to chase down some human girl or ruin Odysseus’ adventures.

Hades apparently was not too keen on the rules of Poker and never realized his two brothers were just bluffing so, naturally, he lost. He got stuck with the only thing that was left, the Underworld, which was not only dark, gloomy and a little moldy but also full of dead people.  Regardless, he takes his new gig, sets up shop in Tartarus and hires three old hags called the Fates to handle his appointments.  His most prominent break from this job happens when he decides that if he’s going to play undertaker to the whole damn planet, he wants to at least get laid regularly like his brothers.

After trying several dating services and coming to the conclusion that “Hey baby, wanna come live in my underground kingdom of darkness with a bunch of dead people?” was not as effective a pickup line as he had expected, he loses patience and decides to just kidnap a girl.  This is the one and only time Hades plays the villain in a myth and in the end he doesn’t even get to keep his girl full time. The reason for this, is that unfortunately the girl he kidnaps is Persephone, daughter of Demeter (and yes, his niece, which is not as bad as Zeus marrying his sister… ok, maybe it is). Demeter is not longer preparing Margaritas. Instead she is running the entire natural world including the weather and is not known for her patience.

Well, naturally, mommy is not happy with his baby girl’s forceful relocation so she promptly brings about a planet-wide ice age.  This concerns Zeus tremendously because in the frozen wasteland the world has become, humans are dropping dead like flies and if all the human girls die, he might be forced to have sex with his wife.

So Zeus, who incidentally is also Persephone’s daddy (this is one disfunctional family, I know) gets Hades on the phone and lets him know he’s got to return the girl or else he will send the D.E.P. after him. Hades whines and groans but finally says, “Fine, I’ll go get her.” Ten minutes later he gets back on the phone and lets Zeus know Persephone ran across the Underworld’s country buffet and because of some ancient rule… or maybe a rule Hades made up on the spot, she has to stay in the Underworld until her check clears through… or for all eternity, whichever comes first.

Well after many treaties and negotiations and lawyer fees, Persephone is allowed to return home to her mother, but she only gets to stay for six months and then she spends the other six months back in the Underworld.  Demeter is not happy with this arrangement but Zeus is still in charge and he tells her it’s a done deal. In retaliation Demeter creates Wisconsin… no, wait… the seasons. Basically the half of the year that Persephone spends in the underworld everyone in the surface gets to wear coats, shovel snow and go skiing in Aspen… or freeze to death instead, whatever.The rest of the year, Persephone comes home to mommy and that’s what we call Spring and Summer.

So next time you look outside and the flowers are blooming and the sun is shinning and the birds are singing just remember, down in the Underworld, Hades isn’t getting any.

 

Originally Published 08/27/2009

Take a Left on the Fourth Zombie

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Well we’re back after a nice long weekend and this is a special week because it lacked a Monday! That’s right we skipped right over Monday and went straight to Tuesday, do not pass go, do not collect $200. So, on the day that would have been Monday but which was, instead, Labor Day, I took a little trip to Tampa because my geek sister insisted on watching the new Star Trek movie on a bigger screen, as in an IMax screen. Apparently a normal theater doesn’t have a screen big enough to fit a movie as big as Star Trek. I imagine in an IMax you can actually see the wax inside Leonard Nemoy’s pointy ears.

Disturbing thought, I know.

Anyway, I like the movie and all that but not enough to watch it on a screen where the US Enterprise is actually life size. So I dropped her off and went my merry way to the bookstore, mall, etc. This was my first trip using a little device with which I am sure most of you are well acquainted. It is called a GPS and it has a cool touch screen that shows you exactly where you are lost. Because you don’t want to have to keep looking at the screen of your GPS while you’re driving because it would distract you from that text message your’re sending, the device also has a voice that tells you when to turn and which way to turn.

“In point 3 miles, make a left turn.”

Even more amazing, it will talk to you in whatever language you understand best! When I got it it was talking Spanish: “Hacer un giro a la derecha y continuar seis millas.”

But I am Cuban and it knows it, smart little bastard, so next thing I know it’s talking Cuban: “Oye asere! Vira aqui mijito que nos vamo a dar tremenda perdia. Cuidao con el conten comemierda!”

I was astounded! I wanted to know what other languages it could do. So I told it I was from Hialeah. Sure enough: “Mira, aqui en this corner me haces un left y ten cuidado because este street es one way. Mira that hijoeputa cut you off. Give him the finger.”

It’s truly an amazing device. Or so I thought.

I told it to take us home and I, being so trusting, naively assumed it would take us back the way we came. Well the GPS was still in Hialeah mode so it went” “Mira, take your route y shove it up your culo.” And it proceeded to give us a guided tour of the darkest, most desolate roads every built by man. For a while it was fine, and then I make a couple of turns and realize the street lights are gone. This is never a good sign. Soon after that ALL the lights are gone. No city lights, no house lights, no even a bum with a cigarette lighter.

This, my friends, is how good horror movies start. I know, because I have watched a lot of them and they all started playing back at once in my head, “Wrong Turn”, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “Night of the Living Dead”, “The Hills Have Eyes” although in Florida it would have to be called, “The Orange Groves Have Eyes”.

And while I am recounting every horror ever done to a lost traveler in a movie, we are driving down a road that is literally pitch black dark except for my trusty headlights, and where the last car we passed was twenty minutes ago. And next to me the GPS is going “Please continue driving for thirty miles.”

Are you kidding me? In twenty miles we will all have been killed by Jason, Freddie, Leatherface, Mike Meyers, Jigsaw and Dick Cheney. My ears will be hanging from some crazy hillbilly’s necklace and my skin will be part of his camping tent. Actually, with me they could probably make the whole tent, but let’s not go there. And just when I thought things could not get any creepier, the moon shows up… and it’s BLOOD RED! Hiding behind some creepy werewolf movie clouds in the horizon. And my GPS is still guiding me… “Please stay on this road for ten more miles or until captured and boiled alive by a band of mutant Amazonian cannibals, whichever comes first.”

Sadly we did not have the appropriate soundtrack to go with the situation, which I imagine would have to have been a recording of a question & torture session by an inquisitor in a medieval dungeon… maybe to the rhythm of Monster Mash. Lacking any such horrors to listen to, we had to settle for the next best thing, Jonas Brothers.

Well obviously we made it home eventually, all in one piece and without having to fight off a mob of starving Alabama zombies but I’ll be damned if I ever take directions from a GPS unit again, specially one who can talk spanglish. “You have arrived at your casa, pendejo. Next time, stick to the puñetero mapa.”

 

Originally Published 09/08/2009

Happy Birthday Kid!

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Well when I said earlier that this was a special week because it did not have a Monday, I was boneheaded enough to overlook the fact that this is a special week because three years ago on this day I got to finally meet the love of my life after nine month waiting for him. I can’t believe he’s 3 years old already.

You know the first time I saw him in the little monitor, you know, when they put Vaseline all over your wife’s belly and then move this weird little wand all over it. Anyway, yeah, he looked like a Mexican jumping bean! He was shaped roughly like a peanut and every now and then he would jump. I guess he had a lot of space in there at the time. This changed rather quickly. By the time the seventh and eighth months rolled around, he could barely twiddle his toes it was so crammed in there.

He didn’t seem to mind tho, cause when it was time to get out, he didn’t wanna! He got stuck and gave the doctor hell and of course, his momma paid the pain bill for that one. But finally we were able to talk him into coming out, mostly by grabbing him by the head and pulling for all it was worth and voila! There he was… ugliest thing I ever saw in my life.

Now don’t look at me like that. If you’ve never seen a baby fresh out of the oven you could not possibly know what I’m talking about. That’s why the nurses grab the little bugger as soon as he pops out and go nuts wiping him down and drying him and putting little booties on them cause if their momma ever saw what they actually looked like when he came out, they wouldn’t want to take him home.

-“Congratulations ma’am you just had a baby boy…”
-“Awww, thank you doctor I’ll just… WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?”
-“It’s your baby, ma’am.”
-“The hell it is! Are you sure you didn’t pull out my stomach by mistake? Look in there again, maybe the baby is still hiding in a corner.”

The nurse, who had kindly offered me a chair because she thought I was going to pass out and she knew for a fact the three of them in the room and a forklift could not possibly lift me from the floor, thought I was crying because of the emotion of the moment when all I could think was… Oh my God, she gave birth to a lemur. How am I going to show this to the family?

But then they cleaned him and dried him and… he was still ugly as sin but in a beautiful kind of way and at least he was not covered in slime and it didn’t matter cause I was head over heels for that little wrinkled creature screaming his head off in that weird-looking bassinet. I swear he looked uncomfortable as hell lying on that ugly square thing with a big lamp hanging over him and bunch of wires stuck all over his body.

So yes, while I had been in love with him since he looked like a peanut on espresso, I actually got to see what it was that I was so in love with three years ago, today. He looks a lot better now, by the way. So ummm, oh yeah, all I really wanted to say is,

To my son: Happy Birthday kid! You’re the sweetest, cutest, most adorable pain in the ass a father could ever want and I love you more than all my World of Warcraft Level 80 characters AND their epic mounts.

Hey don’t laugh, I’m saying a lot with that, you insensitive jerks!

 

Originally Published 09/09/2009