Writing a Killer Shark Novel (or making a Killer Shark Movie)

This might be one of my bucket list things. Write a great Killer Shark Novel. I love killer shark books and movies, and I love them even more when they are done well. Jaws is a great read and a great movie, and is obviously the pinnacle of anything killer shark related. At the bottom end, we have schlock like Sci-Fi channel specials ("Mega-Shark versus Giant Octopus!" or my new favorite "Sharktopus!") and we also have the bottom end of literature - Steve Alten's Meg sequels (the first was pretty good, but they pretty quickly nosedive into schlock).

Let's look at two common problems that Killer Shark Novels face, and see if we can't brainstorm a way around them.

1. The Setting. Sharks live in water. Duh. Shark attacks, therefore, happen in water. So the first problem we have to deal with is why don't our protagonists just stay out of the water. We have a few approaches. Jaws, for instance, needs the beaches open for economic reasons. This is the most basic motivation - we can't get all the people out of the water in time, for some reason. So we have a quest to kill the beast before it kills others.

There are a couple other ways to get around this setting issue. For one, we can always go the route of White Shark (by Peter Benchley) - the shark evolves(!) lungs and can then walk and attack on land. Those wacky Nazis!

There's also Deep Blue Sea method - bring the setting to the sharks! In Deep Blue Sea, the laboratory the scientists are working on sinks and the sharks get in. It gets even crazier / cooler in the proposed sequel Deep Red Sea (which never materialized) - where a tower would fall into the ocean and sink partially, allowing the sharks to attack a hotel.

2. The Creature. Generally, we have to start looking at larger sharks for them to be a serious and continual threat to human beings. Sharks under 10 feet, whilst still possessing sharp and dangerous teeth, are not usually regarded as a terrible threat. Under 20 feet, and we may not be looking a repeat or multiple offender. Once we're at that 20 feet threshold, we have a creature that's large enough to do damage and one that considers a human being a proper sized meal. Unfortunately, sharks rarely get that large. When you rule out rather benign species, we're looking at Great Whites, as a rule of thumb.

We could always genetically engineer a smaller shark to be larger (Deep Blue Sea) or resurrect an extinct shark (Meg), but this runs us into other problems. Genetic engineering pigeonholes us into a story about... the perils of genetic engineering. And the extinct sharks we deal with (primarily the Megalodon) tend to be too large. The main shark in the Meg series is 72 feet long; at that point, eating humans is a waste of energy.

I suppose a school or swarm of smaller sharks would be dangerous as well, but thats basically the plot of Piranha. And even small sharks can be dangerous if there's no way to escape them or fend them off (Open Water).

So there we go. The two common stretches that we'd need to make to create worthwhile Killer Shark Story. We need a setting and we need a creature. The setting gives us the excuse for the creature. There are two ways to make the Killer Shark Story memorable - take existing tropes/settings/creature and write it really well - or use a new setting/creature.

A new creature tends to be outlandish - look at all the Sci-Fi specials out there. So what do we have for a new setting? What ways can we think of to bring the humans to the sharks (Or vice versa)?

Godzilla Threshold

Some situations reach a point that any solution, no matter how devastating, is worth it. This is the Godzilla Threshold.

You reach a point where it becomes worth it to summon Godzilla, the "patron saint of collateral damage."

It's that point where nothing could be worse than not solving the problem, so any and all solutions are on the table.

I don't know why I find this so cool, but I do. It nurtures my inner geek.

What situations in your own life reached a Godzilla Threshold?

Horror Movie Plots

I've said in the past that many horror movies are cliched and uninspired. So check out this "horror movie" synopsis:

Two kids are dragged underwater in a remote third world country and killed, and no one manages to catch a glimpse. After the locals rise up to defend their children, no more attacks happen...

...for nine years. Several more attacks happen, and one villager manages to catch a confusing glimpse of the creature. To help fend off the attacks, the locals call for help, and a British biologist shows up to try to identify and defeat the creature. After ruling out all manner of possibilities for the creature (crocodiles, sharks, etc) the Biologist sees a creature that shouldn't be there - or at least shouldn't be that size.

The Biologist (our protagonist) decides to set a trap for the creature. Theorizing that the creature (s) has been feeding off the half burned corpse that the locals leave in riverside funeral pyres, he creates a fake funeral pyre, and actually manages to catch the creature.

The creature - which has grown to 5 times it's normal size because of the abundance of human flesh- is...

A giant, six foot long, 160 pound, catfish, of course. Oh, and the final shot? There's a whole community of giant man eating catfish (for the sequel).

That's a crappy movie. Why? Because it hits every cliche in the book. Biologist Expert? Check. Glimpse of the monster? Check. Small child eaten to raise sympathy? Check. Even the final trap sounds likes a cheap jaws ripoff. Also, doesn't a man-eating catfish sort of sound stupid?

Good thing then that it's not a movie. This whole story is true - including the entire community of killer catfish. It happened in Nepal, on the Kali river. (And It Could Happen To You!)

I've been on a river where they have these types of funeral pyres. The entire time I was worried about seeing a dead body. Turns out I should have been worried about being eaten by a giant catfish.

Inception Review

If you haven't seen Inception, don't worry about reading this review. There's not really a twist to ruin and I won't go into depths of the story...

I'll make this quick - go see Inception. It's an amazing film. Very exquisitely layered, it rewards multiple viewings and discussion. Christopher Nolan has become one of my favorite directors - from the ironically unforgettable Memento, to the mind bending Prestige, and through the two best made Batman films, I haven't seen anything by him yet I haven't liked. I'm putting Insomnia on my netflix queue now simply because he was the director.

Gosh, I don't even know how to begin with Inception. It's a really cool story in and of itself - a heist film set in a dreamworld. But some of the concepts take it beyond being just a heist film...

I loved it. It's just amazing. Go see it.

Minor Spoilerish Discussion:

For those of you who have seen it: How do you interpret the end? Here's my theory : perhaps the entire film is an "inception" to Cobb in the same way they were "incepting" Fisher.

Importance

I really like the cloud that appears at the bottom of the right column on this blog.

What the cloud is is a ordering of what I've tagged different posts to be about. So anytime I wrote a post about choices or abortion and tagged that I did, it is referenced in the cloud. The more often I refer to something, the larger the link to that tag becomes.

So here are some of the largest tags:

Random Thoughts

Movies

Reviews

Somebody Smarter Said

Hey Neat-O

The last two are long running "series." Random Thoughts is just thought - random musings. Two of them - including the predominate heavyweight "Reviews" refer mostly to movies.

Why is that I spend so much time musing on movies? Even my most recent series "Signs" was headlined by movie quotes.

I think it's because in some ways movies can say things that are true even when they are a fictional enterprise. Books can do this too; but books are entirely a visual medium. Movies are increasingly multisensual - stimulating vision and hearing and even olfactory and taste senses.

There are true aspects to movies. Sometimes I wonder if I could ever get involved with moviemaking. I read a book recently and all I could think about was how cool of a movie it would make - how I would frame the shots for maximum suspense, what sort of music, how to avoid being cliche...

I wrote a screenplay once. It was four pages long and was a love story told between different types of IHOP syrups. I won an award at school, and briefly thought about continuing down that path. But I never did. You can found the original video on my facebook page (I believe the youtube page has had the audio track removed for copyright violations).

I just recently created my first animated film. It's below, and I entered it into the Million Miles Short Film Contest. Didn't win, but I didn't really try.

I guess what I'm wondering and rambling on about is whether I should continue this path. It could end up with me winning an academy award someday, or perhaps I'll create dumb little skitvideos for church use.

I have no idea what this post was going to be, and this is what it is. Strange world.

In Honor of: Jaws 35 Year Anniversary

35 years ago (yesterday), Jaws was released into cinemas. It was the first summer blockbuster; an instant classic. It was a perfect movie.

And it changed film. Without Jaws, Alan Ladd doesn't take a risk on George Lucas, and you have no Star Wars. Ridley Scott never makes Alien. Spielberg never makes Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Schindlers List. Cameron (because of no Scott) never makes Aliens, Terminator 2, Titanic, Avatar.

So this one movie is responsible for some of the best movies of all time.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how CGI ruined monster movies. I used a few examples of really bad monster movies - Primeval, Anaconda, Deep Blue Sea.

Jaws is a perfect monster movie. There isn't a scene in Jaws that could be cut. I have watched Jaws more than any other movie in my life; and I've even watched all the sequels (ranging from okay to horrible) more than most any other movies.

Here's a few of my favorite Jaws links:

Quints 35 year Celebration

Jabootu's Review

Vern's Review

The best film ever.

How CGI Ruined Monster Movies

I bought a movie the other night. I was at a discount grocery store, and they had movies for 2.50. I thought about buying Children of Men - an excellent movie, but I ended up going with my more... primal instincts. I bought a giant killer crocodile movie - Primeval.

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved monster movies. Jaws is still one of my favorite movies of all time. Jurassic Park may have been the first movie I saw in movie theaters. To this day, I see a movie about a giant man eating crocodile/shark/dinosaur and I want to go see it in theaters.

However, and there is no denying this, Dumb-People-Getting-Eaten-Movies (DPGEM from here on out) have gone downhill. The absolute peak was 1974 - Jaws. The next comparable quality DPGEM is Jurassic Park in 1993 - and that one movie sparked the slide into mediocrity and sci-fi-channel badness.

Name one quality DPGEM since 1993. Here are your options: Deep Blue Sea, Lake Placid, Anaconda, and Cloverfield. Three of thosel came out in the late 90's and are generally considered "so bad they're almost good."

It's depressing to me that in 10 years we've had more quality X-Men movies (1.5) than DPGEM. And it's all, in my opinion, because of CGI.

In 1974, you had no option when making a DPGEM. You made a robot shark. And even if it was the fakest shark in the long and noble history of fake sharks, it looked real on camera. It was tangible. It had presence.

Now? You film the entire movie and then make the monster later. In the making of Primeval, they had all the principle photography done, and then started working on what the beast would look like. And it just kills the movie...

It changes the shots you do - CGI requires quick composite shots, where as a real creature can do long takes. It changes the way the actors act - compare Robert Shaw's death in Jaws with the death of Saffron Burrows in Deep Blue Sea. One is acting - and one is simply CG gore with no emotional stakes. It even changes the focus of the movie - the strength of Jaws was in the characters, not in the shark. When a movie is focused on the beast and on the kills, you end up with a forgettable movie.

And yet knowing all of that, I'm still sort of a sucker for DPGEM. When the inevitable remake of Jaws hits theaters, I'll go and watch opening night - excited to see people get eaten, and terrified that they'll ruin the characters and story in service of plot and CGI.

Avatar Review

Avatar is an immersive film. No other way to describe it. What James Cameron has done is to create a world that is real and I have no other way to describe it. I was seriously enthralled looking at the fauna and flora of Pandora, the first digital world that I seriously believed in.
It's hard to review this film. Most films you review based on story and scripting and acting, but those are all secondary to the world of Avatar. The story has been told before (think Dances With Wolves or Pocahontas); the scripting is tight, but ultimately nothing special, and the acting is well done and believable, without anything being knocked out of the ballpark. So overall, it's a smooth film... but the experience of Pandora makes it amazing.
Some of the creatures are breathtaking - and I'm not talking about the massive terrifying beasties. The dragons are cool and all - but they're dragons, which are always cool. My favorite were the 'helicopter lizards' - which aren't a plot point, but a little beautiful creature that serves as nothing but eye candy for that scene.
If you get the chance, see it in 3D. It's a wonderful experience. (And it's not a 3D "coming at you!" movie, but a movie which uses the 3D to create the world).
Great movie. 5/5.

Paranormal Activity Review

There are two levels that movies work on, in my opinion.
One is on an artistic level. Movies like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Memento" come to mind - these are movies that are crafted so well as to be art.
Then theres a pure entertainment, a pure visceral level. These are your Transformers and your Cloverfields - a ton of fun to watch, but ultimately meaningless.
Paranormal Activity may have been the most visceral movie I've ever seen. It certainly has no artistic value - but as entertainment, it can't be beat. Assuming of course, that you count sheer terror as entertaiment.
The basic premise is this - Katie has been plagued by a spirit since she was 8, and it's been scary, but harmless. Her boyfriend, Micah, has decided to try and catch the spirit on film. So he sets up a camera to film them while they sleep.
And then the camera catches things happening.
I will say without a doubt that it was the scariest movie I've ever watched in theaters. My wife and I both did not sleep well after seeing it. It was sheer terror. And I loved it.
The difference between this and other ilk of the "found footage" genre (read: Cloverfield) is that I don't think this movie needs to be watched in a dark crowded theater. I think it could be even scarier in a quiet and dark living room.
I probably won't sleep well again tonight. 5/5

Narnia: Prince Caspian Review

This is where everyone calls me a bad christian, because I didn't like Narnia.
Yeah, so shoot me.
The allegory is heavy handed. Aslan is not my favorite picture of God. The elements that are good are underdeveloped - in particular the leadership conflict between Caspian and Peter. Edmund, my favorite kid from the first movie, has very little to do here. He does have one nice moment, which plays off his arc from the first movie, but thats about it.
I also did not thoroughly enjoy the first movie, but it did a nice job of introducing the world. In this movie, Narnia doesn't feel magical anymore. It's true, that supposedly 1300 years have passed and the magic is suppposed to be gone, but that was the greatest appeal from the first movie for me.
So... I'd pass and wait for DVD. If you liked the first movie, or if you loved the books, you'll probably like it. I'd rather catch Iron Man again.

Speed Racer Review

This movie is like crack cocaine for your eyes.
I think the movie was not very good, as far as movies go. As far as experiences go, it was pretty sweet. My roommates and I caught the midnight opening, and chugged Red Bulls and Pop Rocks throughout. So it was crazy!
I left, convinced I was going to be able to make my car do backflips.
But... The storyline is slow at parts. When they weren't racing, I was fairly bored. Also, the live action 'anime' didn't really appeal to me. I think it made some bold choices, and was full of great visuals, but overall, I'd recommend Iron Man first.

Juno Review

Juno is such a sweet hearted movie. It's funny, it's warm, and it's caring. It's also really funny.
Ellen Page is hilarious, and she reminds me of some friends in great ways. Except most of my friends aren't pregnant sixteen year olds.
That's the plot, really. A young girl sleeps with her friend, because shes bored. Then she's pregnant, and decides to give it up for adoption.
It's so funny too. And sweet. I definitly recommend it.

Iron Man Review

Heck yes!
If the rest of the summer can be this awesome, we're in for a heck of a ride. Looking at the line up of upcoming movies, I'm now wondering if we might have started off spoiled.
Because Iron Man was awesome.
It's a great (perfect?) superhero movie.
Do you remember when you saw the first Spiderman movie? Well I do, and I remember being blown away that someone had done a good comic book movie. That they had brought Spiderman to life. Well, here, they've done just as well, if not better. I know absolutely zero about Iron Man mythology, so I can talk about the little sly nods to fans, but I do know this - any sequel of Iron Man just jumped into my must see list.
Robert Downey Jr is perfect as Tony Stark. He's batman, but never bothered to learn any sissy martial arts. Just decided to create a human tank. Terence Howard is also pretty awesome as his friend Rhodes, and his line at the end - "Next time baby..." That is such a perfect set up for a sequel that I love it. Everyone in the theater knew it too, and loved it.
Here's the best praise I can give for Iron Man - immediately after seeing it, my desire to learn how to weld went up a hundred fold - simply so I can make my own Iron Man suit.

I am Legend Review

I never bothered to review I Am Legend when it came out in December. Mostly because I thought it was a 2/3rds great movie, with some flawed sequences. I liked some of the religious connotations in it, and I think its a darn near perfect movie, but it misses on two important sequences. The sequence where Will Smith's character Robert tries to commit suicide is confusingly edited, and not very exciting. There is very little tension to it. And the finale... it's stitched together altogether too fast. Robert dies a hero's death, but he hasn't done anything to make us think he deserves it. He hands the woman a magical bottle of his blood, which it only took him three years to figure out is the antidote. And then blows himself up. The end. Not very good.
Well, yesterday, I watched the alternate cut. And it's different, but I think I like it more. The suicide sequence doesn't change, so I still have that complaint. But the original ending plays - where Robert realizes that the vampire/zombie/things actually are regaining human emotions, making him the monster.
And here's my beef - at the end of this version, Robert lives. Even though he now seems to deserve death. So if you're following, in one version he dies and shouldn't. In another, he doesnt die but should.
I still think I Am Legend is a good film(s). But if they had managed to nail those two sequences, it would have been note perfect.

U23D Review

3d is no longer a cheap gimmick.
It's pretty sweet.
U23D was one of the coolest experiences I've had in a cinema. It looked like Bono was right there, singing to me. The Edge was being awesome on guitar right in front of me.
If you're not a U2 fan, you might still be able to enjoy the technical aspects of the 3d. I'd probably wait until Journey to the Center of the Earth to really enjoy the 3d, but this was pretty cool.
If you are a U2 fan... then you should definitly see this. They do all the classics. Beautiful Day, Vertigo, Where the Streets have no Name, Sunday Bloody Sunday... All of those plus more. The Fly made an appearance, and the ended with "With or Without You" which has special meaning to me.
I highly recommend it in your local 3d theater.

Rambo Review

Rambo is unapologetically a man's movie. At one point, Rambo singlehandedly destroys an army. How do you top that?
Stallone is back as John Rambo, the haunted vietnam vet. He is living just south of Burma, selling snakes to make a living. When some missionaries want to go into the warzone that is Burma, he reluctantly takes them. When their mission goes awry, he leads a band of mercenaries to rescue them. The plot is that simple.
Stallone does a great job of acting; Rambo is clearly weary of the world. He is waiting to die. When he finally has something to live for, it's a sight to behold.
The film is outright brutal - from its cringe inducing first scene. People are killed onscreen in crazy ways, and Rambo just ups the violence to ultra realistic levels.
So what do I think? I think Rambo is an interesting movie. It shows the horror that is war as realistically as Saving Private Ryan did. Unfortunately, the other theme that comes across is the futility of hope. It is implied that hope could never save Burma - only a man willing to kill hundreds of people in a bloodbath could stop killing. And that's the problem - killing leads to more killing, which in turn leads to more. If Rambo didn't have a missionary killing someone in the end to save himself, I could have recommended it as a man's movie. Now it's a man's movie that tries to show a worldview that only ends in death.

Cloverfield Review

Cloverfield. I can't really say it's a great movie. In my mind, a great movie is one I buy on DVD the day it comes out, and I watch it frequently. I'm talking about watching it beyond the two week excitement period, where you watch the same movie four or five times. Jaws, for example, is a great movie. Cloverfield... I can't imagine Cloverfield will work on DVD. So it's not a great movie.
But it's an awesome movie.
I will sit here and tell you it ranks as one of my top five theater experiences of my life. One of the best times I've had in a movie theater ever.
In case you don't know anything about it, it's premise is pretty simple. Rob likes Beth. Rob sleeps with Beth, never calls her back. Beth comes to Rob's party, leaves early. Rob pines for Beth. Giant monster attacks New York. And so on.
It's told in that hand held camera style, originally used in The Blair Witch Project. There is no music, no explanation, no panning camera shots. It is just the footage that these people shot.
And that makes it a very exciting movie experience. Some movies, you might talk at the screen. Tell a character that they are obviously about to make a big mistake. This movie, I was screaming at the screen, because I was so involved. At one point, I involuntarily yelled "Whoa!"
This is a brave movie. JJ Abrams and Matt Reeves do things here that are amazing. You never get an explanation for the monster - you just follow this group of friends as they try to survive and rescue a friend. It is exactly what you would say or do in this situation.
Like I said before, it probably won't stack up on DVD. But if you see movies in the theater at all, see Cloverfield.