The Last Argument of Kings

As I read Joe Abercrombie's The First Law trilogy, there were signs everywhere that this was going to be different, that this would be about breaking the clichés. I've written about the first two books, how the characters and settings are generally unlikable, even though they seem to taking an upward path towards likability. And as all good final books in a series do, The Last Argument of Kings ties it all up nicely, completing the storylines by teetering on the line between cliché and groundbreaking. And at the end, though the novel successfully completes the trilogy, I am torn by how I feel about it.

To be sure, Abercrombie delivers on the promise of the first two books. These are fully fleshed characters, with ups and downs, quirks and eccentricities, personalities with as many facets as there are witnesses to their actions. And as one might expect from an epic fantasy, everything ends up on a good note. The protagonist country is saved from warfare on dual fronts by heroism and luck. A new age of enlightenment and creativity appears to be born in the Union. But to even mention this conclusion would appear in most reviews to be spoiling the story, and for the blogs I have written thus far about the books in the trilogy, something of a let-down. But, as with the first two books, the war is just the background for what the story is truly about: the evolution of the characters.

By the end of the book, nearly every character has experienced a reversal from where they started; the lowly have been raised up, the weak made strong, the selfish become enlightened. And so it would appear the classic tropes are fulfilled. But Abercrombie lingers on the characters for a bit after the otherwise natural climax of the book, so that we can see how fragile appearances are and how easily the façade can slip. And the big reveal of the book, the revelation of an unexpected puppetmaster behind all the action of the trilogy is both refreshing and completely disconcerting, because we discover that no action has taken place without the long-time planning of this hidden figure.

As the book and trilogy winds down to its conclusion, the best character (to this reviewer at any rate), Logen Ninefingers, has an existential crisis. Embodying the apparent sweeping movement of the trilogy, Logen explicitly decides to make himself into a better man. But forces beyond his control—the puppetmaster, the war he finds himself fighting in, unexpected allies, even his own demons—force him to constantly question if he is a good man at all. Why can't he keep his promises? Why can't he retain control of his actions? And when he asks those he considers to be his friends if they feel the same sort of trap he does, invariably the answer is that they do, such that they cannot help him with his own. And so he questions himself incessantly until at last he can take no more and decides to go back to where he came from.

Similarly, Glokta the torturer recognizes the evil qualities of the people around him but feels so trapped in his role that he can never quite convince himself to rise above them. And his own role as a torturer constantly causes him to be cynical about his own motives, even when he is doing "the right thing." Only when his personal safety is firmly caught between two forces he cannot contend with does he begin to break out of the pattern he has lived for years, reaching out for help. And even so, doing the right thing drives him further into despair as the puppetmaster is revealed and every cynical belief he has held appears to be proven true.

Jezal, the courtly soldier, appears to undergo the most growth of all. He is no longer cocky, but sure of himself. His interest is not in his personal well-being, but the betterment of the people around him. But by the end of the novel, that beneficence becomes a façade masking his fear of the repercussions of not doing as he is told. And because helping others is so much against the goals of the puppetmaster, the thinly veiled pessimism of the story surges to the forefront, making the last few chapters of the story painful to bear.

Even Bayaz, the First of Magi, taking on the Gandalf role in the story, is torn down through the course of this final novel. All the legends of him, especially the ones he tells, are suddenly cast into doubt, and Bayaz is revealed to be the crankiest of old men with an outlook on his inferiors much like Mr. Smith's from The Matrix: they are all vermin and it is his right to rule them as he sees fit.

Joe Abercrombie has taken the bones of the epic fantasy and taken it to places it has never been before. I doubt the epic can grow any bigger, so Abercrombie drives it inward, making it a study of character under pressure from the forces that normally drive fantasy. His characters are protagonist and antagonists, not heroes or villains. There is much ambiguity not in what they but in their reasons for doing it. There may be fantasy novels that spend as much time in the characters' heads as these do, but I'm pretty certain Abercrombie treats the characters honestly. In The Lord of the Rings, Boromir steals the One Ring because he wants to save his people—an unfortunate act done for heroic reasons. The characters that populate The First Law often do the right thing, not for heroic reasons but for selfish ones, or because no other choice of action is left to them. And so, while there are horrible adversaries, there is nothing quite so horror-inspiring as the rationale for the deeds done. And by the end of the trilogy, we can't even say that the good have one. The Union is still just the narrative framework from which the story is told. It is clear that their adversaries have plenty of cause to war against them. And yet neither are those adversaries wholly good themselves.

I understand that the next trilogy is in progress, The Second Law. I think I want to read some more. I don't know that I want to know any more about these characters, though they fascinate me, because the fascination is depressing. I have seen the antithesis of the epic fantasy, where the issues are not black and white but all sorts of shades of gray. Suddenly fantasy is not the escape it usually is, and I have a better understanding of why fantasy often goes as it does. But Abercrombie the writer is a joy, asking the questions he does and remaining unflinching in the moral uncertainty that is daily existence, even in a fantasy world. Abercrombie doesn't hint at a new paradigm for fantasy, but he has twisted the epic paradigm to the point of its shattering. I think I want to see some more of that, but I need time to cool down, to cleanse my palate.

And it makes me wonder if there is space for a new paradigm, or perhaps a return to the pre-Tolkien one. Abercrombie will likely not take us there but he makes asking the question far more relevant than it has been in decades.

Watchmen—a follow-up

I may have to change my opinion about the success of Watchmen after my second viewing last evening. Mrs. Speculator and I went with a few friends to a different theatre than we had been to on Friday. The reception of the movie was completely different; the audience was engaged, and after ti was over there were conversations in the hallway and outside the theatre about what had been seen. I'm not altogether sure that everyone got all the details of it, but if they left the theatre relatively pleased, that's better than what I had hoped for. Our companions, while not comics-savvy, are a thoughtful bunch, and they had lots of questions about why certain things had happened and how the movie differs from the comic. I was pleased to share what I knew, and I noticed some other folks listening in.

Upon seeing it a second time, my opinion of it really has not changed—it's a good film and a good comic adaptation. But perhaps the world isn't so unready for such layered and thoughtful story-telling as I had believed. The second weekend's take will be an interesting number to watch.

Watchmen

Oh, I so enjoyed this movie.

Oh, it's so going to fail at the box office, beyond fan boys seeing it over and over.

Comic lovers finally have exactly what they wanted, a movie that stays as true as possible to the source material over the length of the movie. Sure, there are some things missing—the Tales of the Black Freighter story is not even mentioned, the ending is different (had to be, keeping in mind the amount of thought most people spend watching movies), Laurie doesn't smoke—all of these make sense, and the movie is still more than two and a half hours long. But all the things that separate the comic Watchmen from the standard fare are what is going to keep mainstream movie-goers from enjoying this movie. Some will go, and they'll be unhappy, and word of mouth will just kill it. I expect this to be out of the big theatres in about four or five weeks, if the people in the audience at my showing are any indication.

Basically, the general movie-going public thinks they know everything there is to know about comics. They can name characters and maybe even identify them when they see them. And they believe that the plot and movement of stories is so simplistic that you really don't have to know very much or even THINK very much while reading. So comic-based entertainment like TV shows and movies must be the same way. And until recently, creators of those TV shows and movies did very little to dissuade that opinion. Character development is Cyclops dying or Peter Parker facing life without his Spiderman powers. (This, incidentally, is why Heroes did so well and is now falling apart. You basically tell the X-Men story using "everyday people" and audiences will eat it up. But when you start doing the time travel and relationship twists that X-Men has had over its lifetime in a period of weeks, even the most virginal of fans will see the ongoing manipulation and get bored.) But comic readers are not surprised by this kind of story-telling; these kinds of plot twists happen regularly. And so, if you will, their resistance is up and they demand bigger and better things. And Moore and Gibbons granted it, taking comics to the next level (if only briefly) by making it into literature. Steven Grant has a wonderful blog up this week on Permanent Damage about why Watchmen (the comic) is so good (http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=20319). Watchmen is literary: it has character development beyond villain of the month, it has symbology, it has a freaking theme for heaven's sake. And comic fans rejoiced—Watchmen represented the potential of their medium.

Zack Snyder, director of Watchmen, is clearly one of those fans. He has lovingly recreated image after image from the comic into the movie. And the result is a daunting piece of cinema that requires its audiences to THINK about what's going on, just as any good piece of literature will. As Mrs. Speculator and I were discussing this last night, a couple of comparisons came to mind. In some ways, Watchmen is a lot like Ang Lee's Hulk, with its emphasis on developing character and relationships. And like Hulk, the focus of the ad campaigns has been the tremendous action in the movie, but viewers of the film quickly learn that such action is very rare. If you've read Watchmen you know there is not much hero versus villain action, and the commercials I have seen really do represent the better part of the action sequences in the movie. The rest of the time is spent with people talking and remembering, not what the avid fan of action fare generally pines for in their movies. And like when I saw Hulk, the people in the audience grew restive at the non-action parts. The other movie I am reminded of is The Fountain, a movie I just loved and spent a great deal of time thinking about. It was not straightforward story-telling and aggravated the generally impatient movie-goer. And the climax of the movie is brilliant, but subtle and unexpected, and movie-goers that regularly expect overtures of emotion and sound at their climax were completely lost by the movie's ending. So goes Watchmen, where the conflict that drives the story rests in the background for most of the movie, hinted at and commented on by the characters, but not brought into the foreground until everything is moving at break-neck speed.

So, as a fan of good writing and good comic books, I really enjoyed this movie. It is beautifully filmed, clearly using the comic book as its shooting schedule. Scenes are packed with details that repeated viewings will only make more delightful (in fact, that was Mrs. Speculator's biggest complaint—at least with the comic, she could stop at a panel and take in all the detail). The acting is a little mixed, but only because Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach is a tour de force. Patrick Wilson's Dan Dreiberg is played dead on, but the character, while vital to the story, is such an ordinary guy, that it feels like there is very little acting going on at all. Matthew Goode's Adrian Veidt is something of a cipher, not a major character in the story at all until he has to be, but even then he is overwhelmed by the raw intensity of Rorschach. Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays the Comedian brilliantly throughout the flashbacks. If there is a weakness, it would be Malin Ackerman's Laurie Jupiter, who just seems to waft alogn from scene to scene with little direction, only showing determination in the scenes where she becomes Silk Spectre. And of course, this approximates her role in the story—only really coming to life when she puts on the costume—but Ackerman is too detached from what's going on when she is Laurie, so much so that it distracts some. Harder to evaluate is Billy Crudup's Dr. Manhattan. It's ironic that the most powerful character in the story pretty much does nothing throughout the course of the story, mostly standing around and pondering ideas bigger than humanity. And Crudup does this well, though it's difficult to tell where Crudup ends and the CGI begins. The special effects surrounding Dr. Manhattan in every scene he plays are tremendous and tend to obscure the character, a foreshadowing of the notion that we are remembered by our actions more than for our presence that resonates at the end of the movie. So, if the measure of an actor is how well they play the role they have been given, Crudup talks and ponders aloud very well…and glows blue pretty well too.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, so much so that I am going to see it again this evening. I expect that my non-comic-reading companions will be distressed by the moral ambiguity that is the climax of the film. I expect that again I will be immersed in the alternative 1985 and a word where superhero exists and have affected the culture in dramatic ways, such that being in costume, let alone fighting in one, is a crime. I look forward to more viewings of this down the line, including the director's cut DVD promised for Christmas, when The Tales of the Black Freighter will become available. But then I am a fan who has spent many hours reading the book and measuring it against the best its genre has to offer as well as yards of good science-fiction writing to compare it to. It really is pretty much all that a fanboy could ask for and perhaps an indication of why we shouldn't always get what we ask for.