In this special guest blog, MNet intern and University of Ottawa Communications MA candidate Anton van Hamel looks at how a desire to appeal to international audiences may affect a movie's setting and storyline.

Why is a movie about a young boy learning kung fu called The Karate Kid? For most of the film’s young audience, Jaden Smith's break-out movie doesn't explain the confusion. Their parents and older siblings, however, may recall the earlier installments in this series which started with a young Ralph Macchio learning karate from Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, a movie which started as the hero's quest to learn karate to overcome his tormentors and evolved by film's end into a coming-of-age story about the bond between mentor and student. The first Karate Kid struck a chord with audiences, becoming the fifth-highest grossing film of 1984.

After two sequels, which did little to alter the formula established by the original and met with dwindling success, the franchise underwent a revamp in 1994 when Daniel was replaced by a new student. The Next Karate Kid, a 1994 sequel, tried to cash in on that decade’s trend towards butt-kicking hero-ines (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess, etc.) by casting Hilary Swank in the title role, but failed to either reproduce the original’s success or revive the franchise.

A full 26 years after the release of the original, the newest version is once again adding a twist motivated by the changing market. Although this re-imagining of the original story changes up many elements, the most significant one is moving the setting to China. The suggestion to transplant the story overseas was actually the decisive factor which emboldened the producers to green-light the newest chapter despite the lukewarm performance of the last edition. Moving the story to an exotic locale isn't just a case of trying to one-up the original, though: as with the decision to cast a girl in the 90's, the focus on China – and the switch from the hero studying karate, which is of Japanese origin, to learning Chinese kung fu -- in the newest Karate Kid is mostly based on money.

Hollywood has a complicated relationship with China. Composing nearly one-fifth of the world's entire population, and with a growing middle class, China is a market too big to ignore. More importantly, it is a market which appears poised to embrace Western cultural products on a massive scale; for example, Chinese ticket sales for Avatar account for the single biggest chunk of the film's take in foreign box offices, no small feat considering the difference in exchange rates. Despite the massive appetite inside the country's borders for Hollywood films, though, the government officially sanctions only a small trickle of foreign-produced movies, allowing no more than twenty onto screens each year. According to a statement from Dan Glickman, CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA,) “because there are fewer movies available legally, there is more of an appetite for seeing them illegally. You can buy just about every movie in the history of the world in China”. As a result, China is ranked in the top five countries where piracy is a major problem for American producers (so is Canada, incidentally, though for different reasons.)  In some cases the MPAA has filed suit against Chinese sites which stream Hollywood films without permission, yet because most of those films are not legal for distribution in China anyway it's more difficult for the MPAA to claim damages to their profits. The fact that so few foreign films are legal for distribution in China means that unapproved ones exist in a legal grey area. The best the MPAA has achieved so far are promises from the Chinese government to crack down on piracy internally.

As a result, some studios are trying to make inroads into the Chinese movie market by being proactive about securing those few, precious spots allowed for foreign films. Nods to Chinese culture are one strategy to please film committees, but signing on with local companies is a more committed tactic. Co-productions with Chinese studios (such as The Mummy: the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and The Forbidden Kingdom) are in the fast lane to get onto Chinese screens since they can be vetted by government officers at each stage of production.  The Karate Kid remake is actually the biggest Chinese-American co-production in film history, partnered with a state-owned Chinese studio to make sure of government approval. This latest twist on the franchise may be a shrewd move on the part of the film's distributors to reach a tricky market. If the setting alone isn't enough to convince Chinese audiences, martial arts movie legend Jackie Chan -- a household name in China, even moreso than in the Western world, due to his more than 70 roles in both English and Chinese-language films – seems likely to seal the deal. Some foreign film studios are putting down roots inside China on a permanent basis, no doubt motivated by the possibility of circumventing the cap on foreign films. After an initial success with Mulan and later breaking the record for box office sales in the animated film category for Kung Fu Panda, Disney has set up their own studio in China for a local adaptation of their surprise-hit, High-School Musical. In the case of the latter, Disney is planning to simply take advantage of low production costs in China and probably won't release the final product internationally, clearly betting that there is enough money to be made in the Chinese market alone.

Of course, Chinese audiences don't uncritically embrace every American production which features some aspect of Chinese culture. Despite financial success, both The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and Kung Fu Panda hit some speed-bumps due to perceived cultural insensitivity. In the case of the former, some movie-goers were outraged that the villain of the movie was loosely based on a venerated Chinese emperor who (spoiler alert) is dispatched by the film's square-jawed Western hero. As for Kung Fu Panda, its release was unfortunately timed around the Sichuan earthquake. As the panda is the symbol for that province, some critics felt it was in bad taste to show a comedy with a panda as the main character and suggested a boycott. While The Karate Kid remake has already raked in more than half of the original's total gross in North America in its opening weekend alone, the release in China is scheduled for a little later. This version has apparently had a few edits, but it remains to be seen how well audiences will tolerate the story of an American boy learning kung fu and (spoiler alert) besting his Chinese tormentors at one of China's oldest sports. Nevertheless, if it is a success it would be a massive step forward in the globalization of American-produced films. China is attractive not only because of its huge consumer base, but also because it is one of only a few markets which Hollywood films haven't broken into yet. A combination of policies which block entry for foreign films and a thriving black market has so far made the middle kingdom a tough nut for Hollywood to crack. Even India, which has its own well-oiled, homegrown movie-making machine, has started warming up to some American-backed productions and turning out impressive profits. There, too, the key has been adapting and being sensitive to the local market rather than repackaging and dubbing old content, but striking the right balance is still a work in progress.

For Teachers:

• Ask students to debate the character of Hollywood blockbuster movies. Are they distinctly American or are they stripped of national character to appeal to as many countries as possible?
• Canada and America are lumped together into one 'North America' category when tallying box office grosses. What does this say about the market for films in Canada?
• Ask students to make a list of different films they like and know well and order them according to how easily each one could be exported to a completely foreign country where the language, customs, or history are totally different. Discuss what the audience is expected to already know before they enter the theatre. This is the same task faced by many Hollywood executives everyday.
• The topic of this blogpost can be used as a supplement with Media Awareness Network's lesson The Blockbuster Movie

What colour is an Airbender? If this question is not at the top of your mind, it’s because you haven’t been following the controversy surrounding the casting of the film The Last Airbender, set to premiere in early July. The question of ethnicity in the film’s casting casts a valuable light on many of Hollywood’s decisions when it comes to race and gender – and the attitudes and assumptions that underlie them.

It's a question that most parents of young daughters face: "Has she hit the 'princess phase' yet?" Not all parents are upset by this, of course: many happily buy their girls princess costumes, toys and accessories ranging from shoes to purses, all in pink. Some, though, despair of the powerful gender stereotyping this delivers to young girls and each new piece of princess gear can be a source of conflict.

The source of much of this princess culture is Disney, of course, and this winter the studio is extending its reach by introducing its first African-American princess, Tiana, in the animated film The Princess and The Frog. Princesses are big business for Disney: since 2000, when the company began to tie together all the merchandising for any of its characters who might conceivably be called "princesses," the line has become one of the company's biggest earners. Disney's Andy Mooney, who spearheaded the creation of the princess line, told the New York Times  that he got the idea from seeing girls at Disney on Ice shows who were dressed in non-Disney princess costumes, but there's no doubt that in the years since the company has pushed the line into almost every imaginable aspect of a child's life, from beddings to Band-Aids to lip balm. Not surprisingly, the marketing of Princess Tiana began well in advance of the movie's December 11 premiere: more than 45,000 dolls based on the character had already been sold by mid-November, while actors portraying her were already performing in "Tiana's Showboat Jubilee" at Disneyland and Disney World. 

The creation of Princess Tiana would seem to be an attempt to expand into the one market as yet untouched by princesses: African-Amerian girls. The official list of Disney princesses includes, along with born princess Snow White and married-to-royalty Cinderella, two entirely non-royal characters, Mulan and Pocahontas, who are Chinese and Native respectively. The last two characters, though, rarely appear on merchandise -- less, perhaps, due to their ethnic origin than the fact that neither fits well with the "princess aesthetic": in their movies Pocahontas appears in tolerably realistic (if somewhat revealing) Native garb and Mulan actively rejects feminine attire in order to masquerade as a male soldier. Tiana, though, is carefully crafted to fit the princess mould, with an hourglass figure, many glamorous dresses, and even a tiara. Of course, she spends much of the movie in the shape of a frog, but that's not the image that will adorn lunchboxes everywhere. If the movie is at all successful, an entire new population of young girls will soon have caught princess fever.

Is this necessarily a bad thing, though? After all, princesses -- whether born to royalty at the beginning of a story or married into it by the end -- have been fairy-tale protagonists for hundreds of years; the characters of Cinderella and Snow White long predate their Disney incarnations. The appeal of princesses is not hard to see: the unearned wealth and privilege of being a princess makes it a close parallel to classic boys' fantasies of being demigods or orphans rocketed at birth from a distant planet. Where the male and female versions diverge is that where the boys imagine gaining powers and abilities from their special status, being a princess instead brings girls wealth, beauty and romance. It's not surprising, then, that many parents are concerned about just what gender roles their daughters are being trained to play.

Graphic by Jeff Brunner

One common feature of the many articles on this phenomenon is that young girls resist any criticism or alteration of their princesses. In the New York Times article cited above, the writer's daughter asks repeatedly if her mother likes her princess heroines; in her article in The Los Angeles Times  Rosa Brooks fails to convince her daughters that princesses are more likely to end up at a guillotine than a fairy-tale wedding; and Tracee Sioux, who writes a blog titled The Girl Revolution, describes her unsuccessful efforts to steer her daughter away from princesses. Nor can girls be easily swayed by stories that try to subvert the classic princess: "Frogs and snails and feminist tales: Preschool children and gender," a 1989 study by Bronwyn Davies, found that both boys and girls often rejected stories that tried to alter the traditional gender roles found in fairy tales.

Is it really gender roles that children are so attached to, though, or is it the fairy-tale narratives on which they are experts? A recent article by Karen Wohlwend, "Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing Identity Texts Through Disney Princess Play,"  finds that while children engaging in "media play" with princess characters feel a strong loyalty to the original narratives, they are not averse to changing things like the gender of secondary characters (turning Prince Charming into a princess, for instance) or making the protagonist more active, especially if that means giving themselves a larger and more entertaining role to play. (One of the girls in Wohlwend's study finds a way to involve a comatose Sleeping Beauty in a swordfight.)

The children in Wohlwend's study, though, are kindergarteners; though they might have been exposed to quite a lot of princess-related media by this age, they’re still in the early stages of forming gender identities. As girls get older, the worrying aspects of princess culture -- the passivity, consumerism, and so on -- may become more and more confining. As Lyn Mikel Brown, co-author of Packaging Girlhood  writes, the issue is not princess play but the sheer dominance of princess culture: “When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.” Her co-author, Sharon Lamb, points out as well that the road travelled by princesses is a narrow one, leading to the hypersexualized roles now being sold to ‘tween and teen girls: "There’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink -- exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”

How should parents deal with the arrival of the "princess phase"? One option is simply to say “no” -- something parents should never be afraid to do. But an outright ban may backfire by making all things princess even more desirable. What may be more effective is to make sure that girls (and boys) are also exposed to more positive female role models. There are many children's books with strong female characters; kids' movies with good female leads can be harder to find, but the anime produced by Studio Ghibli -- such as Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro -- is a good place to start.

Most important is that parents engage with their children's media and be ready to discuss the images and events they see. Don't be confrontational, but ask questions: do you think you can really make an angry person nice like Belle does to the Beast? Is it worth it to give up your voice, and your family, for a boy the way Ariel does? If Mulan spends most of her movie dressed as a boy, why is she in girls' clothes on the merchandising? There may be no escaping the "princess phase," but teaching kids to view media critically can help make sure your princess doesn't grow up expecting a handsome prince -- or a fairy godmother -- to solve all her problems.

MNet Resources

Teachers can address the presence of gender stereotypes in fairy tales and other children's media through the less Once Upon a Time (for Grades 2 to 6).
 
Media Stereotyping: Media Portrayals of Girls and Women looks at the ways that mass media can stereotype girls and women; the effects this can have on girls' body image, self-esteem and views of gender roles; and provides tips for kids and parents on resisting stereotypes and working for change.

Marketing and Consumerism: Special Issues for Tweens and Teens  talks about how young girls and boys are sold rigid gender identities by consumer culture.

Some concerns have been raised about the portrayal of race in the movie The Princess and the Frog. To help kids deal with racial and ethnic stereotypes, consult Media Portrayals of Ethnic and Visible Minorities .

Halloween is perhaps the most contradictory of the major holidays. Though born in Ireland and other Celtic regions, today it is almost exclusively observed in the form that developed in North America; though closely associated with the imagination, it has been thoroughly commercialized, becoming an opportunity for children to buy costumes and then acquire candy (today it is the second largest commercial holiday in the US, after Christmas); and finally, though it is the holiday most closely associated with children, it is also one that has, traditionally, been all about fear.

From its beginnings as the Celtic festival of Samhain, Halloween has been associated with death and the supernatural: it marked the passage from the "light half" of the year to the "dark half" and was seen as a time when the border between this world and the next grew thin. Perhaps for this reason, it was associated with a variety of masking and divination practices, many of which still happen today. Interestingly, trick-or-treating, at least in its current form, is one of the most recent aspects of Halloween. Derived from a tradition practiced by adults, it was -- along with wassailing at Christmas -- one of a number of occasions each year when landowners were expected to give food and drink to peasants. It became more associated with children when Irish immigrants brought their traditions to North America in the late 19th century. Almost immediately, religious activists began objecting to the "diabolical" effects of the holiday on children, while doctors and community leaders urged parents to remove anything that might frighten children; since then Halloween has been both a playground and a battleground.

Why do kids like scary things?

 While Halloween today has been substantially defanged -- you're more likely to find a branded character from the most recent Hollywood blockbuster at your door than a ghost or a witch -- part of its appeal to children undoubtedly comes from its association with fear. One of the things that appeals to children about the kind of frights provided on Halloween is that it is limited to a single night. It's similar to a thrilling roller coaster ride, or to the experience of watching a horror movie for older children and teens: an opportunity to play with fear, experience the adrenaline thrill of it while keeping it safely contained. Masks or costumes provide another level of emotional safety, as do symbolic markers such as jack-o-lanterns: children can engage with the holiday as something other than themselves, and even their neighbourhood is transformed into a fantasyland.

Unfortunately, today's media landscape provides an all-you-can-eat buffet of frightening TV shows, movies and video games, and children are unlikely to be able to judge in advance how frightening they will find a particular media product. As well, channels that appeal to younger children such as YTV and Teletoon often show TV shows and movies at this time of year that are more appropriate for older kids and teens. As a result, children can find themselves getting frights that are beyond what they're able to handle.

How are kids affected by scary things?

What frightens children changes significantly as they age. One thing that remains consistent with time, as noted above, is the desire for frights to be contained to a particular context. What is perhaps most frightening for all children is images of grotesque transformations, which violate the boundary between fantasy and reality. Joanne Cantor, professor emerita and director of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found in a survey that the most frightening image children had seen on TV was that of Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk in the TV series of the same name.

The ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, however, does not develop until children are about six or seven; before that, children are as likely to be frightened by fantastic images as by more realistic ones. Young children may also be as affected emotionally by animation as by live-action film, so don't assume that "Scooby Doo Meets Dracula" is a safer bet than Bela Lugosi.

In general, children younger than seven are most frightened by overtly grotesque images and stories where a child or a parent is in peril; older children, meanwhile, who might not be affected by ghoulish images such as witches or vampires which are clearly (and safely) fantastic, can be quite shaken by things that blur the fantastic quality of Halloween by invoking the real world. Psychological horror, frights that connect to their daily lives, and blood and gore can still frighten this age group. What is best are movies and TV shows that are safely contained in fantasy, or that contain clear cues that they are not set in the real world.

What parents can do

 As always, it's important to be aware of what your children are watching and playing. Don't assume that a program is safe for your children to watch based just on the channel broadcasting it or the time that it's airing. Whenever possible, watch potentially troubling content with your children, and be ready to talk to them about what they see.

If your household has children in a range of ages, be ready to provide alternative activities for younger children if your older kids want to watch something frightening, or use your DVD player or PVR for them to watch it after younger kids have gone to sleep.

Don't assume, though, that older children are immune to frights. Don't schedule potentially frightening media or activities right before bed time; spend some time doing reassuringly "normal" activities before kids sleep.

Remember that both younger and older children are most frightened by things that violate the difference between the real and the unreal: if anyone in your household is wearing a potentially frightening costume or makeup effect, let your children watch it being put on so they aren't scared by the transformation.

If you are taking young children trick-or-treating it's probably best to do it during daylight, and emphasize the "dress-up" aspects of it over the potentially frightening elements. For kids who are still learning the difference between fantasy and reality, make sure to reinforce the idea that Halloween is a put-on -- it's a special night where we all pretend to believe in ghosts and goblins. Letting kids participate in things like carving a pumpkin and hanging decorations can help, and keep them clear of frights that might shock and surprise them. When you're decorating, don't use props or tricks that might frighten kids unless you're able to control who encounters them.

Older children should be allowed to engage in "scary play," since this is an important part of learning to manage fear, but make sure that they only do it with kids their own age and older, rather than frightening younger siblings or neighbours. Always respect your kids' limits when it comes to frights and don't let older siblings pressure younger ones into doing things they're not yet ready to do, such as going out after dark or going to a stranger's door.

MNet resources

Our Parents' Section has more information on frightening TV content and how to deal with it.

The article "Questions to Ask Yourself Before Donning A Halloween Costume" provides parents and children with some tips to help find a costume that does not demean or stereotype people of any ethnicity or ability.

The study "Tales from the Screen: Enduring Fright Reactions to Scary Media"  is hosted on our Web site and contains a lot of information about what kinds of images frighten children at different ages, and what kinds of short- and long-term effects being frightened can have on children.

Our Tip Sheets "Helping Kids Cope with Media Coverage of War and Traumatic Events"  and "Talking to Kids about Media Violence" contain lots of great information about how to tell if your children have been frightened or disturbed by media images and how to help kids deal with what they have seen.

Other online resources

Common Sense Media has detailed reviews of many media products, including tips on which are likely to frighten children.

Last year in this space we wrote about how summer movies serve as advertisements for various kinds of merchandising. The success of 2007's Transformers and its sequel this summer point to a different but similar trend: making movies that are actually about the toys companies sell.

Transformers 2 has had the second-largest opening weekend of the summer, and is likely on its way to be one of the year's highest-grossing pictures. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra –  which, like Transformers, is based on a 1980s toy-line –  is set to debut in August, and more toy- and game-related movies are waiting in the wings. In fact, for a while reality was moving faster than parody: before you could even make a joke about them, movies based on Monopoly, Battleship, and even Ouija were announced, leading almost inevitably to this video:

What stands behind this odd trend? One factor is simply Hollywood's relentless appetite for content. As screenwriter John Rogers explains, behind every ten finished films stand a thousand scripts in varying stages of completion. In the face of this, it's not surprising that almost any hook will do. Compared to the total cost of making a movie, the price of optioning a property (buying the right to develop it) is almost inconsequential. The answer to "Why toys and games?" might easily be "Why not?" Hollywood has scoured novels, plays, comics and video games for content, so why not toys?

Of course, there's an advantage to adapting existing properties that goes beyond the fact that the material already exists. If a property is well-known to the public, it takes a lot less time and effort to advertise it. The advertising campaign for an original movie has a lot of work to do: it has to get across the genre, the premise, the expected audience, and the tone before it even touches on what makes this particular movie unique. When you hear that there's a Transformers movie, on the other hand, you already have a pretty clear idea of what it's about: giant robots that turn into other things and bash at each other. Monopoly may not sound like the most obvious property to turn into a movie, but nearly everyone has played it at some time or another. Because the nature of these toys and games is open-ended (as opposed to adapting a novel or a play) it's easy to turn them into a franchise and churn out sequels until the audience moves on.

What may be more interesting than the fact that toys are being made into movies is precisely the choice of which toys. It's instructive to note that 2007's Transformers was not the first movie made from that property: in 1986 a cheaply-made animated film appeared and quickly disappeared from theatres. While that movie was released when the toys were at the height of their popularity, when the 2007 version appeared Transformers toys had largely been absent from store shelves for more than a decade. This does not make it unusual among the properties being made into movies: GI Joe, its companion in this summer's movie season, was discontinued in 1994, while two other projects currently slated for adaptation –  Stretch Armstrong and Major Matt Mason –  have not been widely available for more than thirty years. Even Monopoly, though still a strong seller, is a long way from its glory days. 

At face value this seems like an odd strategy. In an age where every five-year-old boy has dozens of pieces of Cars merchandise, why base movies on properties that young viewers are unlikely to have heard of? Why not make movies based on currently popular toys and games such as Neopets, Bionicle and World of Warcraft? The answer is that these movies –  or at least the choice of properties to adapt –  aren't aimed at young viewers at all. The market for Baby Boomer nostalgia is well-known, and Generation X has proven to be, if anything, even more susceptible to its charms (half the jokes on Family Guy, for example, are references to 1980s youth culture.) The theory may be that teenage boys are going to go see goofy comedies and action movies anyway, so there's no need to choose a property that will appeal to them specifically. Make a movie about a toy or game with strong nostalgia appeal, however –  Transformers and GI Joe for Generation Xers, Major Matt Mason and Monopoly for Baby Boomers –  and you add another potential audience, and possibly their children. (The power of nostalgia may explain the otherwise inexplicable decision of some respected directors and actors to do these projects, such as Peter Berg on Battleship and Tom Hanks on Major Matt Mason; apparently Hanks brought his own collection of Matt Mason figurines to his first meeting with the film's producers.) Of course, this can still work for the toymakers' advantage, by bringing old toys back to prominence and popularity: nearly half a billion dollars worth of Transformers merchandise was sold after the 2007 movie's release.

Childhood, it would seem, has become a moving target. While we are rightly concerned about what's called Kids Getting Older Younger (the increasing sexualisation and sophistication of childhood play, such as that described here), a parallel phenomenon might be termed Adults Staying Kids Forever, an obsession with the trappings of childhood such as the particular toys and games you had, or didn't have but wanted, when you were young. (This is not to be confused with the genuine pleasures of childhood, such as play and exploration, which are available to anyone at any age.) The root cause of both is the same: consumerism, which is served by teaching both kids and adults that they can be happy if only they buy the right things – "sexy" clothes, the toys you loved as a child, and so on. Seen this way, Hannah Montana and Transformers are both working to make sure kids and adults meet in the middle to become that most desirable demographic: the perpetual teenager.

The most anticipated movie of the year, at least in some circles, is opening on March 6th: Watchmen, the adaptation of the 1986 comic book of the same name. The original, which won a Hugo Award for science fiction and was named one of Time’s top 100 novels of the twentieth century, tells the story of a group of retired superheroes investigating the death of one of their colleagues; the mystery leads the reader through the alternate world their existence has created, in which heroes with cosmic superpowers overawed the Soviet Union and in which Richard Nixon is still president in 1985. Though time will tell how successful the film will turn out to be, the buzz around its launch gives an opportunity to look at comics and how they’re adapted into other media.

To begin with, it’s useful to set out some of the differences between Watchmen and other adaptations of comics such as Iron Man or The Dark Knight. To begin with, the source material wasn’t a long-running serial but a series of only twelve issues which told a self-contained story. (The ending of that story is fairly final, so unless great liberties have been taken there’s no chance of a Watchmen 2.) The series had just one writer and artist, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons respectively, unlike most comics which have had any number of people work on them over the years (while Iron Man was created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Don Heck, for instance, the 2008 movie drew more heavily on the 1980s version by David Michelinie and Bob Layton.) Instead of the freewheeling page layouts associated with most superhero comics, almost every page of Watchmen is a rigid grid of nine panels, each stuffed with details that give verisimilitude to its fictional world and draw links between the different storylines. Finally, few of those pages feature fighting or action of any kind, most being given over instead to characters talking, dreaming, reading or just walking around.

That brief summary may explain why Watchmen, which has attracted Hollywood’s attention since it was first published, has been such a challenge to adapt into film. Its writer, Alan Moore, has repeatedly said he does not think it should be made into a movie at all; while he does not own the original material, which he did as work-for-hire for DC Comics, he successfully convinced at least one prospective director to abandon the project. He’s also spoken with regret about the effect Watchmen has had on the comics industry in the years since it was published, as many other writers overlooked its criticisms of the genre and instead imitated it by creating darker, grittier superheroes.

When the movie was first announced fan reaction was mixed, due both to affection for the original and Moore’s opposition to any adaptation. Director Zack Snyder fended off criticisms by saying that he took the assignment because if he didn’t, someone with less love for the material might ruin it. (He’s certainly resisted efforts to make it more kid-friendly, letting it go to theatres with a potentially crippling R rating for sex and violence.) In an interesting example of targeted marketing, much of the promotional material released to outlets such as Wired, which cater to people familiar with the original comic, has been as much about the authenticity of the film as its quality. This featurette, for instance, goes to great lengths to show that every last background detail from the comic has been incorporated into the movie:

Of course, one important difference between a comic and movie is that time in a comic moves at the reader’s pace: there’s an opportunity, if one wishes, to slow down and spot all of the details. In as dense a text as Watchmen, where repeated motifs and accompanying text pieces are key to a full understanding, the reader needs that freedom. (For instance, repeated images of watches and clockworks pun on the title – itself a reference to Juvenal’s maxim “Who watches the watchmen?” – and connect to references to the Doomsday Clock, the watch-in-the-sand argument for the existence of God and Albert Einstein’s comment that if he had known where his discoveries would lead he would have become a watchmaker.) A movie, though, clicks away at a relentless twenty-four frames per second, only slowing down or speeding up when the director wishes. Given that, can the movie do any more than approximate the original?

Maybe not – but perhaps that’s the wrong way to look at it. Perhaps it’s a mistake to imagine seeing the movie in a theatre; maybe just as the original Watchmen was a new development in the comics medium, the adaptation will be a new development in the medium of film – a movie made to be watched on DVD.

Resources

Teachers wanting to bring comics into the classroom have a wide range of resources available to them. Please note that some of these sites contain user comments that may be inappropriate for a classroom. Teachers are strongly advised to pre-select material for their classes to view and read rather than simply directing students to the sites.

Wired magazine hosts a series of short films about the making of Watchmen that cast light both on the adaptation process and film-making in general.

Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons talks about his process in drawing comics in this clip:

For the writing side, you can get examples of comic book scripts at The Comic Book Script Archive.

Teachers looking for age-appropriate comics to bring into the classroom can use this list at USA Today’s Pop Candy blog.

The history of comics in Canada is covered in depth on the site Beyond the Funnies,  which ranges from 1942’s Dime Comics to Chester Brown’s recent comics biography of Louis Riel and includes history, bibliographies and sample comics. The CBC covers much the same ground with TV and radio clips on their site The Comics in Canada: An Illustrated History.

MindBlue maintains a Wiki of comics resources that links to lesson plans, articles, resources and tools for helping students create their own comics.

Finally, the MNet lesson Comic Book Characters, for Grades 5 to 7, looks at differences in portrayals of men and women in superhero comics. This can be followed by the lesson Female Action Heroes, for Grades 6 to 8, which lets students create their own, non-stereotyped superheroes.

Will the recession depreciate Oscar gold? Promises of a leaner, more entertaining Academy Awards ceremony have come to be as reliable as the first robin of Spring, but viewership continues to fall. Each year something new is tried to shake things up, in this case giving the actor Hugh Jackman the hosting duties. This is a role traditionally given to comedians, with the idea that there would be no conflict of interest as they were unlikely to be nominated for any awards. (Long-time host Bob Hope made a joke of this, saying that at his house they referred to the award ceremony as “Passover”; more recently the role has often been given to talk-show hosts such as Jon Stewart or Ellen DeGeneres.) The decision to give the job to Jackman was no doubt made in hopes of luring back female viewers, who have always been the event’s core audience.

Oscar’s problems, though, may be more than skin deep. A more fundamental reason for the decline in viewership may be that the Academy’s tastes rarely reflect that of the broader audience: while some of this year’s Best Picture nominees have performed well – the heavily-promoted The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has grossed over $100 million, Slumdog Millionaire nearly $90 million – none of the others have even hit the $30 million mark. This can’t be written off as part of an overall box-office slump: as often happens in poor economic times, people are actually spending more time and money at the movies. The best-performing film of 2008, The Dark Knight, earned nearly double what all of the year’s Best Picture nominees did combined. Nor is it simply that there were no commercially successful films to nominate: Wall-E received better reviews than any of the Best Picture nominees, scoring a 93 (out of a hundred) from the review-tracking site Metacritic, while only two of the nominees fared better than The Dark Knight.

The fate of these two films helps us to understand Oscar’s problems. Wall-E was almost universally praised by both critics and audiences alike, and represents a major step forward for Pixar, the studio that made it: with its long silent sequences and often-sombre mood, it’s the first of their films that is made equally for kids and adults, as opposed to being a kid’s movie that adults can also enjoy. The Dark Knight, meanwhile, for all its flaws, was a tremendously ambitious movie, with scenes and images to rival anything in last year’s nominees No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Both movies were being seriously talked up in the days before the nominations were announced, but one senses that in the end the Academy was more concerned about respectability than quality.

Fortunately, we can still use the Oscars as an opportunity to bring students’ attention to what’s good in film. Here are a few online resources that will help you channel Oscar buzz into productive classroom exercises:

• The Web site In Contention has a great list titled The Top 10 Shots of 2008, which combines stills, descriptions of the shots and interviews with the cinematographers responsible to analyze just what made these shots memorable. Have students read and discuss the entries and then have them make the case for their own favourite shots of the year.
  
  
• One of the few aspects of film-making that doesn’t have an Oscar is the title sequence. Many don’t know that titles typically have their own director (who works in concert with the film’s director) and their own history, techniques and conventions. The Art of the Title helps to address this, providing analyses of dozens of title sequences from various films along with clips and interviews. Show the title sequence to a well-known film and have students discuss how it establishes the mood, tone and themes of the movie. Students can then pick a favourite movie of their own and storyboard an alternate title sequence for it, then defend their choices. (For help with storyboarding, see the MNet lesson The Privacy Dilemma and the handout Storyboards for the Production.) 
  
  
• Finally, we can give the overlooked technical categories a little love by considering The Top 50 Special Effects Shots of all time. Reaching all the way back to 1930's Just Imagine, this article considers not just the historical importance of the shots it describes but also the emotional or narrative impact each shot had within the film. You can use some of these scenes as a springboard to a discussion about the role of special effects in film: when are they most effective? Do they work best when made to seem as spectacular or as realistic as possible? You can also focus on how special effects are used in broadly realistic films, such as Apollo 13 or Forrest Gump – or this year’s The Strange Case of Benjamin Button – and discuss why these aren’t seen as “effects films.”

Note: some of the video clips in the sites above may contain disturbing or otherwise unsuitable content, and some of these sites contain user comments that may be inappropriate for a classroom. Teachers are strongly advised to pre-select material for their classes to view and read rather than simply directing students to the sites.

Ever wonder why the movie you see in the theatre looks nothing like the trailer you saw for it? The one that made you decide to pay ten dollars to see the movie? Last week David Pogue asked that question in his column Circuits, complaining that the film National Treasure: Book of Secrets did not contain the most memorable scenes from its trailer. This week he prints a letter from that film's director Jon Turteltaub, explaining the process by which a movie and trailer are made --  including the surprising fact that the trailer is not made after the film; instead, the two are made at the same time by two essentially separate and parallel teams.

Says Turteltaub: "What’s funny is that the filmmakers do exactly what you do. I was watching the final trailer for my movie, saying what you said: ‘Ummm....that’s not in the movie, that’s not in the movie, THAT’S not in the movie.’"

Turteltaub goes on to explain that the very things that make a scene or image good for a trailer may cause it to be left out of the final cut of the film: "Dialogue that is really blatantly clear and ‘explainy’ is GREAT in a trailer. Profound statements like ‘Let’s find that treasure!’ work in a 30-second commercial, but come out pretty lame in a real dialogue scene."

For Class Discussion

• How important is the trailer in making you decide to see a movie?

• How often are there significant differences between the trailer and the eventual movie? Have you ever been disappointed by the difference between a movie and its trailer?

• Do you think it's fair for movies to be so different from how they are advertised? Is this false advertising? Why or why not?

• What decisions might the "trailer director" make in creating a movie's trailer? How are they different from the decisions the movie's director makes?

Check out the lesson Hype! for an in-depth look at how movies are promoted.  

Our recent survey of the most frequently accessed parts of our site showed that there was a strong demand for our resources on film-making. This past weekend the New York Times ran articles on film editing and sound editing that serve as excellent primers on those two important but often overlooked aspects of film-making, looking at them through the lens of likely Oscar contenders such as The Bourne Ultimatum, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood. These articles are both great resources for anyone who teaches media.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006) demonstrated that movies could be a powerful force for creating awareness of environmental issues. However, up until recently there has been very little dialogue on the environmental impact of television and film production. Media creation is a big business, dominated by big-budget productions, which generally means a big-footprint on the environment. A 2006 UCLA study of Hollywood found that California’s media industry creates more greenhouse gases than the apparel, hotel, or aerospace industries.
 
A growing group of filmmakers, media creators, industry partners, environmentalists and supporters have come together to develop a green code for media production. The Canadian initiated greencodeproject includes environmentally friendly guidelines and principles, a mini-“Kyoto Accord” tailored specifically to the needs and processes of the film, television and new media industries. According to the project all media productions have the ability to become greener, from using fair trade coffee to sourcing eco-friendly suppliers, from reducing waste on location to counting carbon impacts. 

 
Supporters of the greencodeproject include the National Film Board of Canada and Greenpeace. In 2007, the greencodeproject was strengthened through the creation of a national not-for-profit non-governmental organization: The GreenMedia Institute. The mission of the newly formed organization is to guide the screen industries toward sustainability.

For Discussion

Ask students what ways the movie industry can help “green” media production? Answers will vary, but may include that the industry can:

• Encourage movie makers to create ‘climate neutral films’. The film Syriana (2005) offset 100% of its carbon footprint. During filming, the production generated an estimated 2,040 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. To offset the emissions, the production companies Warner Bros. Pictures and Participant Productions made investments in renewable energy equivalent to four million average car miles. 
   
• Promote ways of eliminating waste and decreasing the amount of energy used for movie production. Making films can use up lots of power, gas and resources. Production companies can be encouraged to use environmentally-friendlier equipment/vehicles, use local suppliers, not use stylofoam cups or disposable cuttlery, and recycle sets and props. Production teams for The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) arranged for 97.5 percent of set materials to be recycled, including 11,000 tons of concrete, steel and lumber which were reused in housing for low-income families in Mexico. 
    
• Develop a certification system for movies produced using green practises. Similar to the disclaimer “No animals were harmed” from the America Humane Association, a certification logo can appear during the end credits to indicate if the film met enviromental standards.

While critics of product placement in movies may joke that some films are so brand-heavy that the products are treated like characters, in the summer blockbuster movie Transformers, the products are the characters. The film features General Motors vehicles as the heroic Autobots, who receive as much screen time as any of the actors in the film, providing GM with one of the biggest product-placement opportunities ever for an automotive company.  

The use of GM vehicles in Transformers is just one example of the pervasive marketing practice of placing brand-name products in films, music videos and television shows. A good resource on product placement is the Brand Hype (www.brandhype.org) Web site which features articles and an extensive database of product placement examples. The site also offers a 37 minute documentary video Behind the Screens: Hollywood Goes Hypercommercial which tracks the rise in the movie industry of product placements, merchandising deals and tie-ins with fast food chains. For educators, there’s a downloadable companion study/teaching guide.

The UK-based newspaper The Guardian recently published its list of “1001 Movies to See Before You Die”. Movie buffs will find the list an invaluable resource for choosing their summer viewing and adding classic films to their DVD collections. And because choosing favourite movies is an entirely subjective exercise, the list provides a starting point for debating the merits of the films that were included and an opportunity to create a list of gems that were overlooked.
 

Visit the Guardian Unlimited Web site to see which flicks made the cut.

• Assign students the task of researching and creating a list of the films that won the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’ over the last fifteen years. Ask students to include a brief description of each and have them discuss how these films the reflect social priorities and ideological concerns of their time.
   
• Have students compare a list of the top money-making films of the year with the films nominated for awards (pdf). This year, as in the past, the films nominated for the higher profile awards, such as best picture, actors and director are not the ones that dominated the box office. Of the various films in contention of the top prizes, the only one that made the top-10 list for top money-makers is Pursuit of Happyness in which Will Smith is nominated for best performance of an actor in the lead role. Ask students how would they explain the discrepancies between profitable films and those which are critically honoured?
   
• The Oscars are about much more than just honouring cinema. Ask students what other elements of the event have become focal points. Answers may include the fashions on the red carpet and social/political statements made during presentations.
   
• The producers of the ceremony’s broadcast are planning to make the Oscars a two screen event. According to Bedonna Smith, the creative consultant for the Academy Awards, many viewers of event shows, such as the Oscars and Super Bowl, “watch them with their computers right there”. Ask students what advantages does the Internet have in presenting Oscar content over traditional broadcasts. Ask them if they can think of any disadvantages.   
   

• Prior to its release in 2006, Snakes on a Plane became a hot topic online for movie enthusiasts. Web sites, script excerpts and user-created sound bites popped up online to celebrate the film’s camp value alluded to in the film’s title. Capitalizing on the buzz, New Line Cinema added five days of re-shoots to incorporate fan suggestions. Among the additions was an expletive-rich catch phrase inspired from a user-created audio trailer and homemade song which was part of an online contest for the film.
   
• An online contest was also used to promote the upcoming 2007 summer release of Transformers. Dreamworks challenged people to submit dialogue for the popular character known as Optimum Prime. Visitors to the movie’s Web site then voted for the best phrase. Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimum Prime, recorded the top-10 winning entries. The top three entries where made into ringtones while the winning entry will be used in the film.
   
• In January 2007, the Vancouver-based film company Lionsgate, teamed up with the popular online teen community Habbo to establish virtual focus group testing. Habbo hosted ten animated shorts, based on the Habbo world. The short clips, nicknamed “Habbosodes” were created in a variety of formats by professional animation companies. The more than 70 million members of the Web site had the opportunity to cast their vote on whether or not Lionsgate should extend one of them into a feature length movie.