Warner Brothers: 100 Years of Celebrating Every Story, Even the Ones They Tell Themselves to Assuage Their Insecurities

 

Captain Marvel

MOVIE TITLE: Captain Marvel

DIRECTORS: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

YEAR: 2019

GENRE: Superhero Science-Fiction

RATING: PG-13 for violence and language

GRADE: Pass

In the year 1995, the technologically superior Kree civilization is in a never-ending war with shape-shifting aliens known as Skrulls. When amnesic warrior Vers and her squadron of Kree soldiers botch a mission to rescue an undercover agent, she finds herself trapped on planet earth with familiar clues to her past. The more she investigates, the more suspicious she becomes of her own Kree brethren. Political conspiracies are unraveled to where Vers doesn’t even know who to trust anymore. Whatever it is she finds, she’ll have to prepare for the fight of her life, part of which includes wrestling with her emotions in the heat of battle.

I must confess, when I saw the first few minutes of this movie, I thought it was going to be another cut-and-paste superhero movie. But the thing with Marvel movies is that they always surprise you just when you think you’re comfortable with the formula. Sure, we get witty banter from the likes of Vers and Shield Agent Nick Fury. We also get the obligatory big fight feel with the future at stake. We also get a well-crafted conspiracy that gains new wrinkles throughout the movie. But what drives all of these fun parts home are characters we can actually care about instead of just being told to cheer because they’re superheroes. I cared about Vers’s lost memories. I cared about her friends. I even cared about the villains because of how cold and callous they were. This is a character-driven story about non-conformity; how can the audience go wrong?

Speaking of characters I care deeply about, how about the precious orange kitty Goose? Who’s a good kitty? Goose is a good kitty! He rubs his head against everyone, he purrs like a lawnmower, he floats through the air in zero gravity conditions, and he even has a little twist in his character near the end. I won’t say what the twist is, but when you get there, not only will it give you a good chuckle, but you’ll want to cheer for Goose even more. I wouldn’t mind having a kitty like him sleep next to me at night, semi-frightening twist aside. I would call him George and love him and pet him and hug him and squeeze him! If an animal can make me quote the Abominable Snowman from Looney Tunes lore, then it must be a special little critter.

And because this movie is set in 1995, there’s always that nostalgia trip down memory lane. Remember when Blockbuster Video was still a thing? How about Street Fighter II arcade cabinets? How about dial-up internet that took forever to load? Even if you’re not old enough to remember those things, you’ll still get a kick out of the 90’s soundtrack the filmmakers put together. “Come As You Are” by Nirvana and “I’m Just a Girl” by No Doubt were well-placed in their respective scenes, which is what all good soundtracks should aspire to be. If nothing else, you’ll get a good chuckle at all of these nostalgic references. They’re funny because Blockbuster doesn’t exist anymore. Laughing is the only thing you can do to keep from sobbing at your lost childhood.

Captain Marvel is certainly an enjoyable movie for more reasons than just the obligatory violence and witty dialogue. If female audience members want a role model to look up to, they’ve got Vers. If conspiracy theorists and mystery buffs want to piece together this puzzle that is the main story, have at it. If you have a prejudice against superhero movies because of how “low-class” they are (I’m looking at you, Bill Maher), then Captain Marvel will prove you wrong. A passing grade is what this movie gets.

Wrestling With My Mind

***WRESTLING WITH MY MIND***

One day of creative inactivity is unacceptable to me, let alone four. Creating blueprints for my next novel idea doesn’t count, because that shit was too easy. I’m so close to putting the finishing touches on Silent Warrior. Only four more chapters to go and my racecar ran out of gas. I know I originally said three more chapters, but I’ve decided to add another one to make sure all of my loose ends are tied up. You want to know what I’ve been doing during those four days of inactivity aside from creating blueprints? Wrestling with my mind. It wasn’t a schizophrenic attack, but rather a creative struggle within my soul.

Wrestling with your creativity can be good for coming up with story ideas, but when it takes the place of actual work, that’s not a good thing. I used to do this all the time when I was a teenager. I’d wrestle with my mind and never get around to writing something that would amount to a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex fan fiction. Back then I wanted to do a self-insert fic where I was the subject of unrequited love for Makoto Kusanagi. I ran a bunch of different scenarios through my head and eventually popped something tangible out. Looking back now, it’s not very good, but at least some good came from the constant inner turmoil.

In the case of my most recent four days of nothingness, this running of the gauntlet was a long time coming. It began in mid-February when I researched an episode of Millennium called “A Room with No View” due to nostalgic curiosity. I’ve beaten this topic to death with a lead pipe, so to give you the Cliff’s Notes version of why that episode was upsetting to me, it was a unique version of the kidnapping trope, this time a beautiful woman kidnapping a handsome high school boy and giving him lovey-dovey treatment while in captivity. I saw the Wikipedia article for this episode and figured, I want to do a story like that too, though with my own spin on it. Thus a novel synopsis for “Beautiful Monster” was born. But blueprints aren’t anywhere near as valuable as an actual novel, so it’ll have to be shelved for now.

Less than a week later, I went to see Pop Evil at El Corazon, a nightclub in Seattle. The music was good and dancing to it was a lot of fun. Here’s what I didn’t tell you guys. While Black Map (one of the opening acts) was performing onstage, a cute stocky black chick tried dancing with me. She had her hand in mine. She had her hand on my shoulder. She was twirling around. For all intents and purposes, since I’m apparently so lovesick, I should be making moves on her too. But no. I was terrified. I just stood there frozen like Walt Disney while this chick was giving me sugar and love. It didn’t help matters that she shoved another woman with her elbow and got herself ejected from the building, but that’s beside the point.

I spent the next two days wrestling with the awkwardness and then the following Wednesday I saw Starset at the same venue without incident. But think about this for a minute: an episode of Millennium, an embarrassing moment at a concert, and a childhood of rejecting girls as a reaction to my father’s divorce troubles. Bad timing aside, don’t you think this makes for some emotionally raw creative fuel? You’re damn right it does. The creative fuel helped get me through ten more chapters of Silent Warrior, which is a story about an unconfident high schooler named Scott George getting into an unfamiliar romance with a younger woman. Pay attention to the theme of lacking confidence around women, because that’ll come into play multiple times during my creative journey.

Because of this creative fuel swirling in my brain, I became obsessed with certain songs in my music library. You all know about “Beautiful Monster” by Otherwise, but I also listened to a lot of “This Love” by Pantera. I also listened to a lot of heavy metal songs to bring me back down into bathos territory. And then I start watching Final Fantasy videos on You Tube and finding even more vicarious romances to set my mind on fire. Squall Leonhart and Cloud Strife are both emotionally distant characters who are colder than Walt Disney (man, I’m really laying that shit on thick!). When they went on dates with their respective love interests, I felt the terror building up in my stomach yet again.

And then the scenarios swirled in my head once more. I actually imagined Squall, Cloud, and Landon Bryce (Millennium) joining a group therapy session to get in touch with their feelings, y’all (as Dr. Phil would oftentimes say). And then I imagined myself in a college class introducing myself as someone who doesn’t open up easily. And then I imagined having a schizophrenic episode in the middle of a WWE ring with the girls of Absolution screaming for paramedics.

And while all of this nonstop nonsense is going on, I still have two novel ideas floating around in my head. One of them is Beautiful Monster as I’ve mentioned before. The other is Booger the Clown. Let’s compare and contrast the main characters of both stories. Windham Xavier is an elf paladin who gets kidnapped by a beautiful vampire named Shelly Atwood so that the two of them can have a black wedding together. Booger the Clown (real name Private Andrew Gale) is a depressed birthday performer who picks fights with orcs because he secretly wants to die. Both main characters are snarky. They’re both emotionally fucked up for life. They’re both being pursued by beautiful women. And whatever happy ending they achieve, they’re going to have to earn it through fire and fury.

Keep in mind that these ideas and dream scenarios are all invading my mind right when I’m ready to pull the trigger on Silent Warrior. Four chapters left. Four fucking chapters left, all of which I’ve played out in my mind many times before and therefore have a solid foundation for how I’m going to write them. Two chapters are going to be told through Tom Simpson’s point of view, one chapter is going to be told through Scott George’s POV, and the other one goes to Alan Young. You won’t get many spoilers beyond that, so cool your jets, as my mother once told me.

But let’s go back to this theme of being unconfident and afraid around beautiful women. This is a curse that has followed me for pretty much all of my life. Even when I was dating a Bremerton woman named Brianna, I could never bring myself out of the shadows for fear of offending the other person. I’ve been offended by women in the past and I don’t want to put anybody else through that. So in order to keep the peace between us, I give them a shield from my lovey-dovey behavior. Even if they don’t give me a shield, I give them a shield. Though the peace treaty is intact, our hearts are not. Careless overconfidence can lead to awkwardness. Nobody needs that. Shyness, on the other hand, is the greatest defense I’ll ever have.

But instead of rolling over and playing dead for a cold world, I use sexual inadequacy as creative fuel for my emotionally rawest stories. William Butler Yeats was once told by his crush that if they got together, he’d have nothing to write about. That doesn’t mean I don’t intend to date again when the opportunity presents itself. It just means I’m going to focus my broken heart on getting things done rather than being a perpetual angsty mope. Like I said, Silent Warrior is four chapters away from completion. I may write the twenty-fifth chapter today, depending on whether or not my brain wants to cooperate. I think it will. It’s cooperated with me long enough to get this blog entry out, so I think I’m good to go for Silent Warrior’s twenty-fifth chapter. I’m Garrison Kelly and I’ll see you next time!

***NOVEL QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“I know it isn’t fair. I know how hard you try. But if you want love and affection in this world, you have to earn it by being a good person, not by throwing a fit.”

-Windham Xavier to Shelly Atwood-

Charles Goodhorn

My older brother James has this habit of introducing me to certain media and then years later losing interest in it himself. He did it with the bands Crossfade, Nightwish, and Limp Bizkit. I still love those bands and James thinks they’re a bunch of big babies. In the late 90’s, he introduced me to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (second edition). I became addicted to it and he now thinks D&D players have no life. James changes his interests more often than he changes his underwear (not that I would know anything about his underwear habits).

But if it wasn’t for him, two things would have happened. One, I would assume RPG’s are all hack and slash and no role-playing or puzzle solving (like the Final Fantasy franchise). And two, Charles Goodhorn would be an afterthought. I originally wanted to call him Charles Goldhorn (because I had a Lego piece that was a golden trumpet), but James advised me to tweak it to Goodhorn to fit Charles’ paladin class. That ended up being good advice.

As a D&D character in the late 90’s, Charles Goodhorn, a human paladin, reached level eight before he was never used again. Throughout those eight levels of awesome adventures, I learned what it meant to be a true good guy. Paladins have a strict code of behavior they need to conform to lest they lose their magical powers and become fighters without weapon specialization. They have to have a lawful good alignment, they have to donate money to a church or to poor people, they have to help the weak whenever in danger, and they can’t have henchmen who deviate from lawful goodness. I followed this code of behavior to a tee until one day at level eight, he broke the rules by assaulting someone of good alignment (at the time, I thought the guy was evil). While Charles never actually made the transformation into a fighter, he was never used again.

In 2010 when I was still writing movie scripts, Charles was revamped into an orc paladin and became a sheriff in the D&D-style fantasy movie Gangs of Kingston. He was basically one man trying to keep order in a town highly populated with criminals and sociopaths. The streets of Kingston were piled high with dead bodies and blood pools. That’s not an exaggeration, that’s what Kingston looked like.

After a while of being overwhelmed by his duties, Charles became apathetic over time and doesn’t reconsider his disposition until the main character, an elf warrior named Jonah Jeriqee, immerses himself too deeply into the gang system of Kingston and almost gets himself killed. This would have made an awesome movie, but unfortunately, I don’t live in Hollywood, so there’s no way it would have made it onto the big screen. Plus, 2010 was a time in my life where my writing had no literary influences and therefore suffered greatly.

That’s two times in a row where Charles Goodhorn has been overlooked, both as a human D&D character and an orcish movie character. If I ever do recycle him, I’d want him to be done right this time. He’s not going to be an apathetic sheriff nor his he going to get somebody’s alignment wrong and almost kill them. He’s going to be the perfect good guy until the very end. He can have a few flaws, but not so many that it changes him into a sociopath. If ever becomes perfect, he can be a side character. Either that, or he can be the lead character who earns his way to becoming perfect. Sounds like a perfect day for a D&D story. Sounds like an even better start to the third act of Fireball Nightmare (if I have one). My spine is tingling with delight! Either that or I need to see a chiropractor.

　

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What does a futuristic police officer produce while he’s in the bathroom?

A: Robo Crap.