Bloggy Update And Super Mario Dogshit Time

Hey, I’m updating the blog theme a little bit here (er, maybe more than a little bit) so forgive any digital debris. Bless this mess, as the cross-stitch in the Southern home might say. The site has long been sort of… erm, crappy looking since I ditched the vulnerable theme of the past, and so I’m messing around and maybe settled on this design? Though more tweaks may be inbound. I am not entirely thrilled with the font here in the individual posts and may try to futz with that. Which probably means I’ll break it. Shrug.

Anyway, so I’m also thinking of doing shorter form content here — a lot of my posts here end up being REALLY LONG (much like my books, zing), and as such I figure some shorter-form stuff might be nicer. Less stressful on my part to hop here and write three paragraphs instead of, I dunno, 300.

As such, here is a short-form thing:

The Super Mario Brothers movie was absolute dogshit. I don’t usually like to write negative reviews because, who cares? Not everybody likes everything, nothing to learn there. So what. It’s fine. You may have also like this movie I’m about to punch in in the neck, and that’s also totally okay. You should like the things you like. There is nothing wrong with you for that.

But it sucked bad and I figured I’d talk about it a little just because from a storytelling vantage, I think it’s instructive to me. And here’s why: the narrative structure of the movie suffers from what I call the AND THEN THIS HAPPENED mode of storytelling. It’s basically the same kind of storytelling quality you would receive from, say, a four-year-old. And not a very savvy four-year-old, you feel me? Your basic, mid-level four-year-old is what I’m talking here. And that kid will tell a story like this:

AND THE KNIGHT FOUGHT THE DRAGON AND THEN KILLED THE DRAGON AND THEN HE WAS HUNGRY SO HE ATE A SANDWICH AND THE SANDWICH WAS MADE OF SCORPIONS AND HE ATE THEM ANYWAY AND THEN

This type of story is essentially a value-less, consequence-free flow of abstract information. It is a sequence of events hung like pretty lights; they hang together in the gentlest dip and look nice and illuminate the patio but that’s it. There’s no there there. The saying, “put a hat on a hat” is one that indicates that you’ve maybe put too fine a point on something, right? This is the opposite. There’s no hat on a hat because there’s no first hat. And that’s the Super Mario Brothers movie. Things happen. They mean nothing. There’s no IF/THEN consequence, there’s no BUT WHAT IF questions, there’s no emotional stakes, there’s no arc, there’s just lights hung on a line, in a row, gently glowing. It’s kind of dogshit.

(And here you might say, well, what did you expect? It’s a game based on a really simplistic video game where a mustachioed Italian plumber punishes angry dickheaded mushroom men with turtle shells he violently ripped from his Koopa foes. It’s a linear video game and not much happens, and so no, I didn’t expect much. But the Sonic movie, which… listen, I dunno that it’s great, but it’s at least a story. Things happen, things matter, it’s a lot better than you’d think. So they could’ve done something here. But didn’t. It’s fine. It’s all good. It made a bajillion dollars until Barbie kicked it in the mustache. Whatever. There you go. Enjoy. Bye. Oh. Buy my apple book. Thanky.)