Again, Paul (and Wonder Woman)
Mar. 20th, 2011 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficSo, further thinking about why Paul got a meh from me, I think a lot of it boils down to the relationship. In Shaun of the Dead, Shaun actually was a bad boyfriend, and had to change. And in Hot Fuzz, Nicholas and Danny weren't in a relationship (just go with it, yaoi fangirls), but they did have a bromance, and both of them did have to change.
In Paul, Kristen Wigg's character shows up, she and Pegg fall in love at first sight, then she sees the alien and faints and Pegg decides to kidnap her (instead of just leaving her behind when they go) because he's in love with her (despite the fact that not five seconds ago, she turned out to be enough of a Jesus freak to want to shoot Darwin in the head. And it's Kristen Wigg. Not to be shallow, but there's a difference between Olivia Wilde being a psycho and Kristen Wigg being a psycho.) So she wakes up, and in the course of one mostly unheard conversation, she completely abandons her religion and falls in love with Pegg. And when her father comes to save her from her kidnappers, he's treated as just another source of false conflict.
Now, setting aside the feminist and religious objections you could build up to this (maybe in Paul 2, they could have a Muslim woman rip off her hijab and do a striptease after Paul mind-whammies her), it's just flat. There's no conflict there and no character-building required for the relationship to work. Which means there's no goals, which means there's a decided lack of something you can root for the character to accomplish. It'd be like if the only thing the characters in Shaun of the Dead were doing was trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. You'd just have a zombie movie, instead of a great comedy (in short, Zombieland).
Also, cast your minds back to that script review of Wonder Woman I linked to the other day. I think there's a mischaracterization of Wonder Woman at a molecular level, which is that they're going waaay too far with the mainstream appeal and trying to make Diana all things to all people. She's a whacky punchline machine! She's a badass warrior! She's a total woobie!
Which seems to me to be totally missing the appeal of Wonder Woman. Just from what I've seen on tumblr and Livejournal, fangirls (who are the target audience of Wonder Woman, right?) really love it when Wondy is a badass. There isn't a lot of blogging about how awesome it was that one time when Wondy was mooning over some guy.
Now, one thing that's been a drag on Wonder Woman's comic for a while is her lack of a consistent supporting cast. This is something a TV show would have a much easier time with, giving Wondy an ensemble, and yet they're trying to make her the ensemble darkhorse of her own show. Diana should be something like Olivia in Fringe, a professional doing her job. Only unlike Olivia's characterization, Diana is very emotionally open and has a sense of humor, even if she isn't a wise-cracker. Think more Bolivia.
In fact, a better example would be James T. Kirk. On paper, he doesn't have much of a gimmick. Spock has the Vulcan thing, Bones has the catchphrase, and Kirk is in the middle keeping the peace. But because of sheer charisma, Kirk is interesting even on his own (not to throw stones, but for the reboot, they had to give him some angst and throw in a bunch of rebel-without-a-cause stuff to build up the character). And that's the way Diana should be. She isn't as violent as Artemis or as teenager-y as Cassie, but she's able to take care of business when the world is cracking open. Plus, you have the fish-out-of-water business and her existential angst over whether she has a soul. That's plenty of business to work through before you need to have her fall in love with her uncle.
In Paul, Kristen Wigg's character shows up, she and Pegg fall in love at first sight, then she sees the alien and faints and Pegg decides to kidnap her (instead of just leaving her behind when they go) because he's in love with her (despite the fact that not five seconds ago, she turned out to be enough of a Jesus freak to want to shoot Darwin in the head. And it's Kristen Wigg. Not to be shallow, but there's a difference between Olivia Wilde being a psycho and Kristen Wigg being a psycho.) So she wakes up, and in the course of one mostly unheard conversation, she completely abandons her religion and falls in love with Pegg. And when her father comes to save her from her kidnappers, he's treated as just another source of false conflict.
Now, setting aside the feminist and religious objections you could build up to this (maybe in Paul 2, they could have a Muslim woman rip off her hijab and do a striptease after Paul mind-whammies her), it's just flat. There's no conflict there and no character-building required for the relationship to work. Which means there's no goals, which means there's a decided lack of something you can root for the character to accomplish. It'd be like if the only thing the characters in Shaun of the Dead were doing was trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. You'd just have a zombie movie, instead of a great comedy (in short, Zombieland).
Also, cast your minds back to that script review of Wonder Woman I linked to the other day. I think there's a mischaracterization of Wonder Woman at a molecular level, which is that they're going waaay too far with the mainstream appeal and trying to make Diana all things to all people. She's a whacky punchline machine! She's a badass warrior! She's a total woobie!
Which seems to me to be totally missing the appeal of Wonder Woman. Just from what I've seen on tumblr and Livejournal, fangirls (who are the target audience of Wonder Woman, right?) really love it when Wondy is a badass. There isn't a lot of blogging about how awesome it was that one time when Wondy was mooning over some guy.
Now, one thing that's been a drag on Wonder Woman's comic for a while is her lack of a consistent supporting cast. This is something a TV show would have a much easier time with, giving Wondy an ensemble, and yet they're trying to make her the ensemble darkhorse of her own show. Diana should be something like Olivia in Fringe, a professional doing her job. Only unlike Olivia's characterization, Diana is very emotionally open and has a sense of humor, even if she isn't a wise-cracker. Think more Bolivia.
In fact, a better example would be James T. Kirk. On paper, he doesn't have much of a gimmick. Spock has the Vulcan thing, Bones has the catchphrase, and Kirk is in the middle keeping the peace. But because of sheer charisma, Kirk is interesting even on his own (not to throw stones, but for the reboot, they had to give him some angst and throw in a bunch of rebel-without-a-cause stuff to build up the character). And that's the way Diana should be. She isn't as violent as Artemis or as teenager-y as Cassie, but she's able to take care of business when the world is cracking open. Plus, you have the fish-out-of-water business and her existential angst over whether she has a soul. That's plenty of business to work through before you need to have her fall in love with her uncle.
