Comics, TV Series, and Endings

Growing up I was a comic book geek. Spiderman, X-Men, Justice League, Batman, Superman, Captain America, etc. I wasn't even one of those cool comic book people who looked for independent titles either. Mainstream superhero books all the way. This continued into college and eventually I did get into some First comics like Jon Sable Freelance and American Flagg (there's a great quote about truth from GrimJack that I need to share sometime). I stopped buying comics in part due to the typical college reason for giving something up - beer money was more important.

But another factor was that comics were becoming soap operas. Which is to say there were these long drawn out story lines where nothing happened for a year. One of the appeals of comics had been you could get a story in a couple of issues at most. I picked them up again several years ago spurred by the death of Superman storyline, but the situation had only gotten worse.

These never ending stories, it seems, are an infectious disease. Look at a number of TV series today (case in point: Lost). Good series with great concepts, but in an attempt to hold on to viewers, they drag the plots out and don't resolve anything. On the surface, this may seem good because you keep drawing people back. But I think it backfires, sometimes sooner and sometimes later but it almost always backfires.

I think this is one reason crime dramas like Law and Order and CSI are so popular today. In general, while there are some backstories, the main plot of an episode is resolved that episode. One of the reasons that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold so well is that it was the end of that story. I love short stories because in a single sitting you can get to the ending. Which is not to say that I don't like grand epics, like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, where you can have more characters and plot development. So, Stephen King not withstanding (eventually, if the Lord wills that I should live, I will get around to The Dark Tower), I'm convinced that most people like stories with endings.

The greatest story ever told has one. For some at least it is even a fairy tale ending - they lived happily ever after. If God, who I would argue is the greatest story-teller, has chosen to tell us the ending of the story of the universe in Revelation, then longing to know and arriving at an ending is not a bad thing.

Which is not to say the journey is unimportant. The journey is very significant because in some sense the journey is the story. Endings do not make sense apart from the story. Jesus in Revelation is the Lion and the Lamb. Try to make sense of that ending without Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, the Gospels, etc.

Sometimes with cliffhangers writers are too clever for their own good. Or they allow the people with the money to make too many decisions. Because stories without endings are not stories. God pronounces a blessing on those who read and hear the ending of His story. May that be each of us.

1408

Have you stayed in room 1408 at the Dolphin? Of course not - it's fictional. First in a short story by Stephen King, now as a motion picture starring John Cusack. One of my favorite authors and one of my favorite actors. When I saw it roughly a week ago, I was hopeful that it would be that rare thing - a good adaptation of a Stephen King story - and was not disappointed.

King is not, by his own admission, a Christian so to try to compare his work with CS Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien may seem unfair to some. My impression is that King would get a lower favorability rating than JK Rowling by most conservative Christians. But while he does not fall within the same religious foundation as a Lewis or Tolkien, King deals with a lot of the same themes. 1408 is about unbeliever confronted with true evil. It is not, though some may take it that way, a "ghost" story. It is more like Christine, or From a Buick 8, or Black House in that the room, a supposedly inanimate object, is the villain of the piece.

I'm sure over time I will have more to say here about Mr. King and his work. But if you like scary movies at all, I put 1408 in the "see at the theater" category. One other ranking criteria, though probably obvious for this film: it is not a "family" film. Do not take immature (you determine what that is for your) children.

Sidenote 1: When, on the occasion that I have seen a movie and chose to rank it, my rankings (high to low) will be:

1. See at the theater
2. Rent the DVD (or pay per view if that is your preference)
3. Catch it on a premium channel
4. Watch it on basic cable (you'll enjoy the breaks)
5. Don't waste your precious time

Sidenote 2: Many King stories don't translate well to cinema. Movies like Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption made the transition well, but many of the more stereotypical Stephen King stories have not faired so well (don't get me started on Hearts in Atlantis, which was actually a terrible version of "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and not "Hearts in Atlantis" proper at all). Why this is might be a good discussion topic for a future date.