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Final Fantasy
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My name is David. I am as real as your love. That other David, stunningly brought
to life by young Haley Joel Osment in Steven Spielberg's A.I.
He is human; he is real. That David's story is a fantastic fable.
Mine is mundane by comparison.
I wanted to interview Aki Ross, the star of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. She is a revelation. She deserves two thumbs up. Real or virtual. She is the spirit within. I was denied the chance to speak with her, though. Some would say there are ethical issues to be considered. You see, we are family. I am David Manning from the Ridgefield Press. I am a make-believe film critic created by the marketing department of Sony Pictures. I am a lie. I am not real. Because of these facts, I have been banned from writing further film reviews. So, instead I am writing you.
This is an e-mail message I've been receiving. In my dreams. This message is not real. Just as David Manning, it's author is not real. But this artificial reviewer has me questioning just what is expected of a film critic when anyone, any one of us can write the story.
We're all insiders in the Hollywood system. Before films are presented to us, we can get the latest behind-the-scenes news from the set. We know casting decisions, budgets and release dates. We can read the shooting scripts online and see the trailers streaming before us long before they're attached to films in the theaters. Fans post opinions on the latest releases on various online sites.
The insiders have become legion. Films are released on Fridays and by Monday afternoon, the box office returns are common knowledge. The Hollywood game is fast approaching the level of the new national pastime. Per screen average has become the new earned run average.
Does this make movie audiences more sophisticated? I believe audiences notice more. A question was posed recently to "Movie Answer, Man" a movie trivia spot on Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times Web page. The reader questioned a blurb in the ad for Scary Movie 2. This blurb offered nothing more than a laundry list of the films and news items spoofed in the movie. The reader even went to so far as to question whether this was a result of the post-David Manning era.
America's Sweethearts takes aim at the relationship between the studios and the press, but seemingly forgets American audiences' exposure to Entertainment Tonight, Entertainment Weekly and E! Entertainment Television. What more can this film tell us about smug film publicists and gift-bag-grabbing junket whores that we don't already know? Maybe its best jokes are in its own press packets, simply waiting to be recycled in the nationwide full page ads.
I wonder if Sony's corporate leaders in Japan can appreciate the irony behind the marketing of their movies. Not only have they put words of praise in the non-existent mouth of David Manning, but a couple of Sony's African-American employees have passed themselves off as a couple of black folks who actually liked The Patriot. This looks like slaves to a corporate master to me. So where are the heads that should be rolling? In feudal Japan, honor would have demanded an act of appeasement by Sony executives.
Now, no one at Sony is falling on his own sword because, obviously, no one cares. We can barely be bothered to roll our eyes at the mess.
What does it mean that David Manning is not real? That Manning is not a writer for the Ridgefield Press? Manning is indeed a sibling of Aki Ross. In a sense, they are orphans, or they will be soon. Manning has already been written off in a letter from a Sony executive to the publisher of the Ridgefield Press in Connecticut. Manning is a less than historic footnote: a not quite 15 minutes worth of fame for the real David Manning, the son of a former first selectman of Ridgefield. And Aki Ross is actually a stepchild of Sony Corporation, the surrogate parent, if you will, distributing Final Fantasy. The marketing dollars put into the poorly received film will be resolved through fuzzy math in the company's annual report.
This is not news. This is part of the business of Hollywood. As insiders, there is little for us to offer any comment on. So now it is time for films to comment on themselves.
Swordfish, in its first 10 minutes, offered a rather didactic lecture on the issue of what's wrong with action thrillers given by its avenging archangel of a villain, Gabriel (John Travolta). The session was complemented by a cutting-edge visual sequence that played like an illustrated tour around a cinematic scene of carnage and devastation, courtesy of a variation on the "bullet time" effects from The Matrix. This awesomely realized set piece would have been a perfect short film and critique. Unfortunately, another 80 minutes of footage was added, and the lesson plan became unexpectedly ironic.
Jurassic Park III fares better in its attempts at entertaining commentary. Young Eric (Trevor Morgan), who serves as the de facto plot device that sets the film's engines in motion, has a discussion with Dr. Grant (Sam Neill), in which they discuss the books of Grant and Dr. Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), the familiar face from Lost World. Eric tells Grant that his books, especially the early ones, were better because "you actually liked dinosaurs." Malcolm's book on the other hand, was "kind of preachy" and full of "chaos." It doesn't take much reading into Eric's comments to see he's talking more about the Jurassic Park films rather than these books. The current installment wants to hearken back to the original film. It has a feverish and entertaining pace and a fair amount of love of the dinos, even if that love feels more like a healthy lusting for the thrills they can incite. And the chaos line? That's not a throwaway quote. Chaos is not only a good description of Lost World: It's damned near the mission statement of the film.
Is this better? Is this what Hollywood wants? What it needs? The criticism is no more or less accurate. See Swordfish as an example. Well, maybe not the whole film. And there are far less expensive ways to promote a film than to simply use the film as an advertisement for itself. Junkets, for instance. Out of the chaotic frenzy of money and movie-themed gifts being thrown at critics in the hope of securing the exact phrase of praise might come something even more startling: the truth. ©
