Look at it. It’s beautiful. It’s glorious. I covet it despite the fact that it’s mine.
It is so precious to me that I’m going to booby-trap my home like an ancient South American temple — lest that sneaky Indiana Jones try and abscond with it. It also explains why I’m running around my home in only a loincloth, shouting a strange language and shooting poison darts at any newcomers.
I’m glad we had this talk.
When I was in the third grade, Marvel’s 1982 adaptation of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) might have been the most beloved comic book in my collection. And that’s saying a lot — there were a couple of issues of “Sgt. Rock” that I probably would have killed to protect.
“Raiders of the Lost Ark” was a quite decent adaptation of what I still revere as my favorite movie of all time (though it’s probably tied for that distinction with a certain unpopular film that I will not name here). It makes sense that the book was so well crafted — this Internet thingamajig tells me that it was scripted by none other than comics great Walter Simonson.
I’m a little confused by some of what I’m reading online … yes, this was originally published as a three-issue arc. (I had a couple of those.) But it was also released as a complete book (with the cover art that you see below).
Postscript — I learned a couple of years ago that Marvel also released a two-issue adaptation of “Blade Runner” (1982) the same year. The artwork looks pitch perfect. Sooner or later, I need to get my hands on that.
I know this is a childish comparison to make, but does anyone else look at acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and totally see Toht from 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark?”
“Pitfall!” was quite the hit when Activision released it in 1982. (I’m a little unclear on what I’m reading about the relationship between Activision and Atari … it looks like the former was a group of defected employees who were then sued by latter, but who then inadvertently pioneered the third-party-developer arrangement for video games.)
“Pitfall!” hit the shelves the same year that the priceless “Raiders of the Lost Ark” galloped through theaters, which I’ll bet helped with the popularity of the jungle adventure game. But the game became a bestseller because of its own merits. Wikipedia informs me that its took a lot of innovation by its creator, David Crane, to get his newer, more advanced graphics stored and operable on a 4-kilobyte game.
And I could kinda see that, as a kid. “Pitfall!” was far sleeker and seemingly more complex than other Atari games my family had, like “Combat,” “Missile Command,” “Frogger” and “Donkey Kong.” And it was a lot of fun. See for yourself; you can play the original game for free right here at the Virtual Atari website. (Seriously, the people who set up that site did something really cool for the rest of us.)
When I sat down to write this, I actually got my memories of “Pitfall!” confused with a later, more advanced side-scrolling PC game called “Impossible Mission.” I played that in high school, and I loved it even more than “Pitfall!” The two games look pretty similar; I wonder if anyone else gets them confused.
By the way, does that kid in the pith helmet in the ad below look familiar to you? That’s because he’s none other than Jack Black, age 13.
I had this poster for “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) when I was 11 or so. It was goddam gigantic. It took up nearly an entire wall in my room.
It wasn’t store bought; it came from a theater. My father used to do something that was pretty damned cool for any parent to do — he’d occasionally ask the manager of a movie theater to save their in-house advertising for my favorite movies. (I don’t know how things are done nowadays, but back then they’d just throw them out after using them.) Then my Dad would hand the guy $10 or $20 for one of these, or maybe the manager would just give it to him.
Sometimes that meant a truly industrial-size poster, like this one. Sometimes it meant one of those huge cardboard stand-up advertisments. (I could only have a couple of these at a time … I had a small room.)
I also had a cardboard stand-up for “Colors,” the 1988 film depicting Los Angeles gangs — but my older brother brought me that one. It had nearly life-size cutouts of Sean Penn and Robert Duvall, the movie’s police protagonists. I don’t know why the nerdiest kid in East Coast suburbia was so taken with a movie about inner-city West Coast gangs, but that movie meant a lot to me.
Come to think of it, a lot of people were talking about “Colors” back in the day. It was a big deal. It was considered pretty edgy at the time, the critics loved it, and I’m surprised I never heard about it again after the close of the decade. Its soundtrack had a damned good title track by Ice-T, too.
The poster below was my favorite, though. To this day, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is probably my favorite film of all time.
Guys, please do not view the solar eclipse tomorrow without the ISO-certified eclipse-viewing glasses. You could go blind.
Do not allow any children to view the eclipse without the special glasses. (Wouldn’t a lot of kids just ignore adults’ advice and watch an eclipse unprotected anyway, especially if their eyes don’t hurt when they first look at it? I was that kind of kid.)
Sunglasses are not a substitute. I’m a little confused by what I’ve read so far online about taking pictures, but I understand you should not be looking at the eclipse through a camera or a smartphone camera either.
I don’t know why this whole thing has me acting like such a mother hen on the Internet, seriously. But here we are.
If your eyes aren’t protected, MARION, DON’T LOOK AT IT.
Does anyone else think that the “Alien: Covenant” ship logo looks a hell of a lot like the sculpted top of “Raiders'” Ark of the Covenant?!
Am I just realizing something everyone else has already noticed? I’m not known for being the first guy to notice important details …
Or maybe both are based on the same ancient Hebrew art or something?
[UPDATE:] Okay, various smart people on Facebook are informing me that while the Bible doesn’t contain illustrations, it does contain a detailed textual description of the top of the ark. So both movies took their cue from Exodus: 25. (Thanks, Lisa L.)
NERDS.
Whatever. I’m still counting this as my own “Sherlock” moment.
I think that it’s tremendously difficult to write a spoiler-free review of the third and final season of “Hannibal.” (No, I am no longer hopeful that the show might return via a different network or an Internet-based provider.) But I need to try to keep this review spoiler free … this really is a suspense thriller and, indeed, the second season ended in cliffhanger after which viewers were unaware of even which major characters survived. So … this will be pretty vaguely worded and a little tough to write.
I loved Season 3; anyone reading this blog could have guessed that, given that I’ve visibly been such a rabid fan of the program. I do think that it was the best show on television, and it easily beat out “The Walking Dead,” “Daredevil,” “Family Guy” and “The Strain” as my favorite. When it was good (which was most of the time) it was simply incredible. When I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did past seasons, it was because of deliberate creative and stylistic choices, my reaction to which I’m sure are mostly subjective. There were things I loved and things I didn’t love. All things considered, however, the shameless fanboy in me won out over the critic. I’d rate this season at a 9 out of 10.
First, here’s what I loved. The script, directing, acting, sets and musical score were as strong as ever. For a show that sometimes really struggled with dialogue in its first season, the writing in Season 3 was fantastic. I am referring to the story, characterization and dialogue across the board, but especially the key interchanges between characters: our main protagonist facing off against Hannibal Lecter, Bedelia du Maurier, and Rinaldo Pazzi. The performances here were simply fantastic, especially considering the complex, nuanced, but also mysterious characters the show’s writers have skillfully developed. Our surviving heroes were played with extraordinary skill.
Mads Mikkelsen was also predictably perfect, even given that Season 3 required a broader range, as Hannibal’s past and his adversaries humanized him this season in a manner we haven’t seen before. The script finally allowed Gillian Anderson to be a less stoical — her later monologue concerning a wounded bird was stunning. And the surprise standout here was Fortunato Cerlino as Pazzi — this secondary character could have been a one-note buffoon, but Cerlino and the writers turned him into such a “real” (and extremely interesting) character that I actually thought the show would depart from the source material and make him a hero of the story.
Scenes between certain survivors of the Baltimore massacre also beg for specific mention, but I just can’t do that without revealing who lived through it. The actors playing those “good guys” who are still alive did great jobs. (More on why that term is in quotation marks just a little later.) And they generally had well written character arcs. One character’s agenda at the beginning of Season 3 was actually genuinely touching, considering how ruthless this story’s characters typically are. (He or she arrives in Florence, where Hannibal has secreted awayy, merely to safeguard another.) Far more touching is the exposition of one character who did not survive Baltimore; it surprises the viewer with astonishing sadness.
Bear in mind — I obviously loved the dialogue, but, like the show, it actually won’t be to everybody’s taste. (No, for once that is not a deliberate pun.) It is overly stylized, and rarely naturalistic. This isn’t an extremely well scripted show in the manner of those like “M*A*S*H,” “LOST,” or “The West Wing,” and it isn’t a sit-com. Our heroes and villains often just really don’t sound like real people. It takes a greater degree of willing suspension of disbelief just to accept them. Yes, I was a nut for this TV show. But if somebody told me that they didn’t like it simply because the characters “talk funny,” I’d really understand that. I personally loved it, because a universe where super-smart criminals and investigators are squaring off against each other, and verbally ribbing their opponents to psychologically undermine them (when they’re not getting all stabbity-stabbity, taht is), appeals to me. Given the anti-intellectualism I’ve seen a lot in our culture, it’s refreshing to see an unabashedly intellectual TV show, with powerful characters, both good and bad, who are educated and beautifully articulate.
And … if you’re a horror hound, as I am? The show delivers. Season 3 was the most macabre. And with the introduction of the “Red Dragon” storyline, it became the most brutally violent. Generally, we no longer see the aftermath of gory murders, but see them in action. Remember a key scene near the end of Season 2, when the mutilation of a major character is understated, because he is seen mostly in shadow? That … kinda wasn’t a thing in Season 3. And it was frightening. A certain switcheroo the show pulled toward the end of the Mason Verger storyline was gut wrenching, really.
This show was brilliant, making its departure all the more bittersweet.
As for what I didn’t love? These were intentional changes and creative risks that might appeal just fine to another viewer. And showrunner Bryan Fuller actually advertised them in advance. He promised fans that the show would be far more surreal and would farther push the boundaries.
I have no doubt that many fans loved what he did. But considering Season 3 in its entirety, I’d rather he simply followed the maxim of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” For me, Season 2 was perfect, and these bold changes had slightly less satisfying results.
For me, the show became too surreal beginning it its second act, the Mason Verger storyline. Yes, the most striking images and sequences of the prior seasons were the surreal visions, dreams and thematic visuals. But these worked, in part, because of their stark contrast with the “real world.” They were one of the best parts of the show. But I didn’t want to see the entire program become something akin to a Terry Gilliam movie. I first got acquainted with Thomas Harris’ source novels with “The Silence of the Lambs” (both the book and the film) in 1991. That was a kind of “real world” police procedural, albeit with a principal villain that seemed larger than life. (For moviegoers, whether Lecter or Jame Gumb was the story’s main antagonist depends largely on your personal interpretation.)
A police thriller was Harris’ intention for most of his books, I think, with the only possible exception being 2000’s novel, “Hannibal,” with its lamentable, nutty ending. (I and other readers wanted to tear out the final pages of that book after we read it.) Harris examined criminal psychology and behavioral profiling in some of the same manner that Tom Clancy examined military technology and intelligence-gathering.
Yes, it’s amazing what Fuller was able to explore and accomplish with his departure from Harris’ books in the first two seasons. And horror-thriller fans really didn’t need another cop show. (The first half of Season 1 maybe relied a little too heavily on standard cops and robbers, and the seemingly perpetual stalemate between an anonymous villain and the good guys.) But, for me, the Mason Verger story arc was rendered in a style that was just too … far out. All those red visuals and baldfaced gore and references to inevitable death! It seemed like something penned by Franz Kafka, by Clive Barker, or maybe by Edgar Allan Poe on acid. A plot point involving livestock was just … too weird for me. I immediately was taken out of the story when I stopped to wonder whether such a freaky thing was even medically possible.
None of those things are bad (except for maybe the acid). But none of them are Thomas Harris either. None of them are “Hannibal,” for me, anyway. For an absolutely perfect treatment of the Mason Verger storyline, please see Ridley Scott’s 2000 film adaptation of the book. It’s one of my favorite films of all time, and I enjoy it far more than “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991). I find these characters so compelling that I want them to be real (or … y’know, at least the good guys, anyway). But for that to happen, they have to inhabit the real world, not some blood-soaked passion play with psychedelic music and 70’s-tastic visual flourishes.
As far as tone and content … I can’t believe I am actually writing this, but Season 3 might have gone too far for my tastes. Do you remember the death of a key investigator in Season 2? With the crime scene being the observatory? That was gruesome enough for a major protagonist with whom the viewer is asked to identify. Yes, as a horror movie fan, I’ve seen countless zombie and slasher films, but those stories’ victims are often throwaway characters with whom we spend only the running time of a feature film. This is a not-quite-primetime television show with characters we visit every week. The gory victimization here, for me, was just too much. Those who’ve seen Season 3 know I’m talking about one assailed character in particular. I’m also referring to another scene in which one character’s face was peeled off in closeup. I cringed. The movies managed to scare us without this stuff. If I’d wanted a “Hellraiser” movie, I’d have watched a “Hellraiser” movie. (See my disclaimer above … again, this is all purely subjective.)
The protagonists themselves became too dark for me. Yes, I know an ongoing theme here is that everyone under “the devil’s” influence is corrupted by him. But … my favorite TV show suddenly began to seem like a story with no good guys. Remember “The Silence of the Lambs?” Much of its emotional resonance resulted from Clarice Starling, who retained her innocence and nobility despite the horrors she’d faced, including her incidental, bizarre kind of intimacy with the caged Lecter.
We don’t have that here. We’ve got moral ambiguity, and character complexity that makes for great storytelling. But do we have a clear hero to root for? Often, no. One character distinguishes him- or herself by being morally heroic in the season’s first act … only to commit the same ethical mistake as in past seasons in the third act. One character (who I liked a hell of a lot in the prior seasons) went so “dark” that he or she was unrecognizable. And the script did little too support this character change, beyond the obvious fact that he or she was traumatized and was affected neurologically as well. (Bone marrow in a person’s blood can do that?) Margot Verger was great in the past as a righteous victim; here she seemed like a compliant turncoat. As far as I can tell, the only remaining characters who are unambiguously “good guys” are Jimmy and Brian, the goofy lab techs who appear only seldom for necessary exposition and rare comic relief.
The bad guys, too, seemed different. Mason Verger is played by a quite capable, but very different, actor. He seems far more controlled and intelligent in Season 3, and the unfortunate result is that he seems to have been replaced. Actor Michael Pitt brilliantly gave us a manic sexual deviant that was reminiscent of the comics’ incarnation of The Joker. Joe Anderson’s calmer Verger seems like … his Dad, maybe.
I was unhappy with key plot points here and there. Simply put, more people should have died at the Baltimore massacre at the end of Season 2. It was great seeing the characters I liked so much return, but it certainly made Hannibal seem like a surprisingly bloodless killer, and temporarily undermined him as a threat.
Hannibal’s major decision at the last supper in Florence is baffling, considering what we’ve seen throughout the length of the show. Then a crucial intervention here is made by characters who are tertiary and clownish — should those asshats really have been the ones to save the day (even if only temporarily)? The manner of Hannibal’s arrival at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane is unsatisfying, and robs the viewers of an emotional payoff (although it is lampshaded quite cleverly in the final episode). And Hannibal’s vicious threats in the final episode are too terrifying even for him, given the character’s well established … sense of “decorum.”
Oh, well. I realize that my criticisms above are detailed. But it’s only because I loved the show so much — not to mention the universe originally established by Harris in his books. I have since I was 19. Starling (who of course hasn’t appeared in Fuller’s universe) is one of my all time favorite heroes. Think of my nitpicks above as analogous to those of a die-hard Trekkie criticizing stardate continuity errors. (As bizarre as my own favorite fictional universes may be, Star Trek s an obsession that I will never truly understand).
“Hannibal” still really was the best show on television. I’m sad to see it go.
“The Microbe is so very small
“You cannot make him out at all,
“But many sanguine people hope
“To see him through a microscope.”
— Hilaire Belloc, “More Beasts for Worse Children,” 1897
“Too bad the Hovitos don’t know you the way that I do … BELLOC.”
— Indiana Jones, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” 1981
After I was born, they should have called it Martyr’s Day.
I was a difficult child to raise, and I am quite grateful to my sainted mother for succeeding (and surviving) that Herculean task. You guys think I am weird guy now? Imagine me as a child and then a teenager.
A favorite childhood hobby, for example, was building weapons, including a quite functional crossbow, of which she wisely deprived me after we successfully tested it. Broom handles met the saw in the garage and were linked by chain to become nun-chucks. (I owed the 1980’s “Ninjamania” magazine for the inspiration here.)
I took up another favorite childhood hobby, after seeing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1981. I donned a brown cowboy hat to dig holes in the backyard, explaining to anyone who would listen that I was an ARCHEOLOGIST, and that I was “on a dig.” Shawn Degnan, the kid next door and the greatest best friend ever, would help. When my poor mother made me stop, Shawn and I simply took to the woods and held our digs there. Because I was a child both stupid AND dedicated. The rare passerby through the woods would be curtly informed that we were ARCHEOLOGISTS looking for dinosaur bones. (Yes … Shawn and I were slightly confused about what an archeologist actually looks for.)
I took my first sip of beer when I was … around six or seven? David Darling and I swiped it from a less-than-vigilant uncle who got up from the front porch to go to the bathroom; we sat cross-legged in the front yard and took turns taking sips. I didn’t smoke when I was a child, but I … once ATE a piece of pipe tobacco, left behind by a dinner guest. It looked like chocolate, Dammit!
I fared poorly in grade school. I understood about as much mathematics then as I understand Attic Greek today. I was far more interested in the classroom in pondering questions arising from “Sgt. Rock” comic books. (Does he ever get to go home? Or change out of that ripped up shirt? Does he ever meet G.I. Joe, or was that guy fighting in the Pacific? Is his brother really dead? Will he survive the madness of World War II? And what about Bulldozer? Four Eyes? What about Little Sure Shot?! WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF LITTLE SURE SHOT!?!)
Math remained the bane of me, despite my mother’s best efforts. The poor woman eventually hired a tutor for me. But by then I was 14, and the patient blonde high school girl who came to our home was really, REALLY pretty. Her smile distracted me even more than Sergeant Rock did, and my math skills worsened. I might have needed “special help” in middle school for math, but I already knew who I intended to marry, so I figured I was a step ahead of the other kids.
At the age of 15, I disavowed the Roman Catholic Church (y’know … the kind of thing that goes over really well in a conservative, working class Irish Catholic family).
At the age of 17, I asked a science teacher (Mr. Ignolia, who hated me), if I could try to build a functional model of an atomic bomb for the required science project. (I was too dumb to realize either the political sensitivities here or the scarcity of the necessary plutonium.) After it was suggested I pursue a different project; I began to lose interest in science. i was thrown out of class a week later for NOT PAYING ATTENTION. (Ingo always was a Draconian jerk.) And, yes, my mother was called.
I was occasionally punished or grounded. Sometimes it left me bitter. In a ruse straight out of a goddam Batman comic book, I aspired to a villainy worthy of The Joker. Once or twice when I was 11 or 12, I sprinkled ammonia in her houseplants upstairs; they then had a 48-hour life expectancy, at best. She never guessed I was the culprit — I still remember the image of her in the upstairs bathroom, perplexedly examining an overhanging spider fern which had suddenly turned the color of breakfast toast. [Mom — if you are reading this right now … I’M SORRY!! I WAS A KID!!! There … is some sort of statute of limitations for this kind of thing, right??]
Anyway, the point of all of this is that my mother was faced with an extraordinary task. And I’d like to think that she succeeded. She kept me safe, housed and well fed, and then financed and supported a wonderful college education. I was raised with what I still think of as Irish American values … hard work, humility, independence, respect for others, patriotism, and a love for poetry and prose both.
I am the kind of man who tries to respect the elderly, our nation’s veterans, and an old fashioned work ethic, and who always has worn paperbacks lying around the floor. They are beside me now, as I write this. And, as I have gradually approached my own middle age, my mother has always been a true friend to me when I have felt the most alone.
Mom, thank you for these things. I love you.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 