The Two Visions of The Marvel Cinematic Universe

Recently I have been watching video essays from the YouTube channel Implicitly Pretentious about the thematic nature of the MCU and its characters which inspired a re-watch of the Avengers cycle of films. My original intention had been to, over an extended period, watch just the four Avengers films but that fell apart once I completed The Avengers and decided to include the Captain America films as part of this cycle making the list of movies: The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Solider, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and finishing the series with Avengers: Endgame. Since I have seen all of these movies, I am not committed to watching any single film in a single seating but rather breaking the individual films up over two or more nights. I am currently in the midst of Civil War.

What has been fascinating to watch is the different tones struck by the different guiding visions of the MCU. While the entire project is under the hand of Kevin Feige the MCU has been under the influence of two principle visions and they are contrasted in this series of films.

Joss Whedon wrote and directed the first two Avengers films while the Captain America movies and the final two Avengers films were directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and written by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely. (Side note: when you see the ‘&’ symbol in an American film’s writing credits it means those people worked as a team on the script and where the word ‘and’ connects writers it mean one wrote and then another came in and rewrote the screenplay.)

Implicitly Pretentious suggested in one of his essays that Joss Whedon’s view of humanity is one of cynicism and I think that he is not far off with the assessment. Ultron’s assertion that everyone creates what they fear and their own destruction even including children as something to be feared and something that is a threat is an inherently cynical philosophy. Whedon often coasts his cynicism with a heavy icing of snark and humor. His dialog is snappy, witty, and quotable but underneath it lies a dark view of the world and humanity’s place in it.

With the Russo brothers, Markus, and McFeely there is a much more positive interpretation of humanity. There is a nobility that fights in the face of evil and this is a theme returned to several times in their cycle of films. Consider Captain America’s effect on non-enhanced characters in two scenes by the two teams of filmmakers.

In The Avengers Captain America needs a local police officer to follow Cap’s direction to safeguard trapped civilians and set a parameter to limit the immediate damage. The cop incredulously asks why should he listen to Cap? At that moment alien warriors attack Cap and with an impressive display of strength and skill Cap dispatches the several opponents. The police office reverses his opinion and implements Cap’s orders. The most charitable interpretation is that officer is impressed with Cap’s skills as a warrior and follows the order of the stronger fighter. A less forgiving view would be that the officer is intimidated by Captain America but in neither case is the officer inspired.

Captain America: The Winter Solider presents us with a different view on Cap and his effect on others. Cap and his small team infiltrates S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ to prevent the launching of HYDRA’s plan to subjugate the world. Cap has no idea how many of the SHIELD agents are actually ones loyal to HYDRA, but he makes an impassioned plea over the loudspeakers for people to rally to his fight, to stand for freedom and against the coming tyranny. Throughout the base people unlimber arms and take up Cap’s fight but the most emotional moment is when an unnamed character who is not a fighter sits with a gun literally at the back of his head and under the threat of his immediate murder refuses to comply with a HYDRA agent’s command. He is terrified but holds fast to what is right because he has been inspired. The unnamed character returns in Avengers: Age of Ultron but Whedon’s script and direction treats the him most unfairly.

There is a clear and distinct difference between these two visions of the MCU and there is no doubt I prefer the one presented by the Russo brother and Markus & McFeely.

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Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula

Four years ago, I took a chance, and convinced a friend of mine to also roll the dice and went to see this South Korean zombie movie Train to Busan. It turned out to be the best zombie movie I have ever seen, beating out 1979s Dawn of the Dead by the slimmest of margins. Dawn is the classic film that launched the zombie apocalypse genre and is a terribly on-point satire of American consumerism, however Train has a best set of characters and story, but not by much.

Last weekend I watched the anime prequel to Train to Busan, Seoul Station. Not as groundbreaking or as tight at Train it still maintained a high level of quality and made for an excellent companion piece to the first movie.

Now we are finally getting the sequel to Train to Busan with the lengthy title; Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula.

Set in the years following the outbreak of the fast zombie plague Peninsulatakes place in a Korea that has become an apocalyptic nightmare. Directed and co-written by Yeon Sang-ho, who directed the original, Peninsula looks to widen toe scope away from the claustrophobic setting of Train into a wider dysfunctional world.

The truth of the matter is that most of the time sequels are a disappointment but I have my hopes and in these dark times we all need hope.

Peninsula is set for release this year, 2020, and is likely to be available as a Video on Demand rental.

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Life’s Most Vital and Most Difficult Skill

There are a lot of skills to master in life some are more important that others but there’s one in my opinion that rises above the rest in significance and sadly it is the one a vast majority of people find difficult to acquire.

At my, what used to be in pre-Covid 19 times, regular writer’s groups meetings we take turns reading aloud 1200-1500 words of our work and then sit silently as everyone present takes turns giving you notes and feedback on the project. On any one piece opinions are bound to vary, sometimes quite a bit, but each and every time there is feedback that is dead on target, some element where intent or choice has gone astray and I’ve fouled up what I was trying to achieve as a writer. The natural and very human tendency is to reject that which is painful to turn defensive against the critique. It’s always possible to justify why the feedback is wrong and not the piece. It’s much harder to admit error, accept that that truth, but without that vital step there can be no improvement.

That’s’ the life skill I am talking about, no specifically learning to take writing critique but learning to admit that you are in error. This is something that transcends political philosophies. Few people are willing to admit error. I see it over and over again. The leaps of logic, the twisted arguments, the reframing’ of facts all to avoid facing that an earlier call, decision, or position was in fact the wrong one. Sadly, until such an acceptance is achieved it is impossible for a person to learn from that error and move on to better and greater things.

I am no more immune to this failing than I am to Covid 19. I try and struggle to keep an open mind about things and accept that I may have held terribly wrong position in the past. I like to think that doing so with my writing has helped me leverage this skill in other areas but I am also painfully aware how easily we deceive ourselves. This is not a skill that is learned and then nothing more is required. It takes constant vigilance because that easy route, that path of least resistance where you justify the error rather than admit is always there and it always looks more inviting than the long hard road of truth.

 

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A Few Collected Thoughts About the Current Crisis

My week of intense book promotion has ended and so today I’m going to toss out just a few thoughts about our current pandemic crisis.

 

There’s no point beyond racist blaming to insist on calling it by some derivation of its geographic origin. It has an official name that’s not hard to use, Covid19. To quote my own novel,

Do not hide your intention behind a facade of ‘accuracy.’

There is reason to mistrust some of the data from China but that doesn’t absolve any of the bungling and lies by our own government and politicians.

Inaction at the start of this crisis, when experts were calling for swift and important steps to be taken and the scope was becoming clear, is the reason we’re deep in trouble. This was never going to be easy. It’s a novel virus and we’re all susceptible but months ago procedures could have been put in place, testing capacity increased, and vital equipment produced ahead of the crisis. None of that was done because it clashed with what our leaders wanted to hear and once you can no longer utilize hard truths you’ve already lost.

 

This is why it is always vital to vote.

We are stuck with a narcissistic immature vengeful man-baby as our president because a handful of people didn’t get their preferred candidate. Hell, I was deeply unhappy with our selection in 2016 but it was painfully clear who could operate better in a crisis. Everyone who voted for Trump or cheered his victory shares in this disaster but also to blame are those who were ‘unenthused’ to vote against him. Voting is a responsibility, a civic duty, not a lark subject to whims and moods.

 

This will go on for awhile. It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be painful, if we try to take an easy route out it will end up being more painful and more deaths. Save lives, stay home.

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The Blog Tour’s Final Stop

The final stop on the blog tour for Vulcan’s Forge happened yesterday March 29th with Jessica Belmont. She apologized for being a day late but hell, in these hectic, crazy, and frankly frightening times a date getting slipped is fully understandable. The pull quote from here review that I am using is:

Tension, intrigue, and action galore, Vulcan’s Forge was a compelling read

It has been very gratifying watching the response come in from the blog tour. The book has gathered responses from enjoyable to enthusiastic with none of the reviewers giving it bad marks or savaging the piece. That will come. It will eventually gain dreaded 1-star reviews at Amazon, Goodreads, and other places but that is how things should be. Nothing is a good fit for everyone.

This has been a long road to publication and it’s been surprising that it was my odd little SF-Noir that was the first novel to cross the finish line. This is an example of how you should not self-reject. I wrote this book for myself, first. It was what I wanted from a science-fiction noir but I wasn’t certain that others clamored for the same thing. I didn’t write this to the market and I think because of that it found its success.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the blog tour, to those who pre-ordered and have ordered the novel in these dark times you’ve given me a ray of warming sunlight.

 

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Publication Day Plus 1

The Blog Tour for Vulcan’s Forge continues at Scintilla. My pull quote from this review is:

Robert Mitchell Evans manages to create a world that is both a caricature and frighteningly believable. 

As they stream in it has been interesting to read the reviews of the novel. I know there is a great deal of advices suggesting that authors should not read reviews. After all reviews are for readers, to help them find the next book to add to their ‘to be read’ pile and not for feedback to the authors and there is a truth in that. Find reviewer whose taste matches closely with your own and use their information to help you find the next thing you’ll fall in love with. For author negative reviews can be emotionally crippling, or so I am told. Perhaps it is because I am coming to professional publication later in life but I find I can hold negative reviews and feedback at a personal distance. So far no one has hated the book but they will change it simply is the nature of the beast.

However, I am enjoying reading the reviews. It is fascinating to see all the various lens and interpretations that get applied to the text. In my writing group I am fond of saying that no honest critique can be wrong. It is how that person, on that day, reacted to that piece of work. Sometimes people see what is there more clearly than the author and other times what they see says much more about themselves and their worldview that it does about the words on the page. None of that is inherently right or wrong it is how people function. I can know my intention in writing a piece, or in a bit of world building but I too have lens and filters through which I interpret the world and that impacts on my world building in ways that may be invisible to me. So, some of these reviews might even open interpretation that I agree with but never considered because the very premises were obscured from me.

I hope that when the inevitable terrible review rolls in I will react the way I suspect I will. I have always been that sort of person for whom a professional rejection carries little emotional weight. The rejection slip doesn’t trigger imposter syndrome or send me spiraling into self-doubt and depression. My reaction to rejection slips has always been, ‘okay, not for them’ and sending the piece on to the next editor. We shall see if I feel the same way once the first 1-star reviews start appearing on Amazon.

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Publication Day Is Here!

Today is the day. You can now buy Vulcan’s Forge online and at your local booksellers, that is if you live in an area where the shops are open. California has been under a stay at home order since last week but my local favorite bookstore, Mysterious Galaxy, is staking order online and yours might be as well.

It has been a long and twisty road to this day. It started years ago when I decided that I wanted to write a science-fiction noir that didn’t rely on the private eye or police detective plots. And there I stalled for quite a while grinding the gears of my mental transmission searching for the plot and characters of the story.

One thing that consumed more time in my gear grinder than other elements was the search for a McGuffin. Hitchcock coined the term McGuffin referring to the thing that everyone wants in a plot to drive the action of the story, think the bejeweled statue in The Maltese Falcon or the NOC list from the first Mission Impossible movie. Borrowing the wider universe from an unpublished novel of mine I finally worked out the McGuffin and then the characters and story fell into place.

With that I sat down and write Vulcan’s Forge as a 15,000-word novella that did not work.

All the core elements of the story were there but far too compressed lacking the sense of building disaster that I think is one of the central elements to noir fiction. The story had to be a full novel.

So, then I planned on writing a short 60,000-word novel that I expected to self-publish as SF books of that length haven’t really been in fashion since the 60s. However, I overshot that mark and landed at 80,000 words a much more traditional, if a bit on the short side, for novels today.

Once the manuscript was finished, survived it beta-read, I sent it to my then agent where it languished unread until our partnership dissolved and he no longer represented me.

One my own I searched publishers for someone who might be interested in this odd mix of science-fiction and noir and discovered the wonderful people at Flametree. I submitted it, they made an offer, we negotiated, and now the book is out in the world.

Flametree has been wonderful to work with. From the editorial through the promotional processes I have had nothing but good experiences with these people.

Looking back on the trials and tribulations this novel faced to reach publication all I can say is ‘Never Give Up, Never Surrender.’

 

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1 Day Until Release and The Crush of a Deadline

Tomorrow Vulcan’s Forge will be released upon an unsuspecting public. Today’s blog tour stop was Miss Known’s blog and book review site. Let us all give thanks to book bloggers getting the word out there and help authors connect with readers. The pull quote I am taking away from this review is:

“There was so much happening, it made me forget that this was a sci-fi book.”

In addition to traditionally publishing novels one of my goals has been to win The Writers of the Future contest. WotF is a quarterly contest with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners each quarter, then at the conclusion of the contest year the 12 winners are brought together for a week of instruction lead by one of my favorite authors, Tim Powers. The contest does not disclose how many submissions it gets but it is known to be in the thousand each quarter and to date my best placement has been as a finalist, one of the top eight from which the winning three are selected.

Eligibility is restricted to writers who have not been professionally published and that means I lose my eligibility to enter the contest tomorrow with the publication of Vulcan’s Forge.

I have a story in progress the question is; Can I finish it before midnight tonight?

It will be an effort but I am going to try.

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2 Days Until Release and Satanic Panic

My science-fiction noir mash-up of a novel Vulcan’s Forge will be published the day after tomorrow. I will be taking Thursday off from work to spend time online interacting and promoting the book.

Sunday Night after a year of waiting my sweetie-wife and I finally got to see the horror comedy Satanic Panic on the streaming services Shudder.

I first heard about Satanic Panic last year when it played the opening night at 2019’s Horrible Imaginings Film Festival but due that night being a holiday and my low seniority at my day job I was unable to get the day of and drive to Orange county. I made the rest of the festival, saw great films, made new friends, but I also regretted I could not see the opening night feature. Last week the movie came to Shudder and it was our weekend movie.

Satanic Panic, directed by Chelsea Stardust and written by Grady Hendrix is about Sam, a young woman who has taken a job as a pizza delivery person working for sub-minimum wages and tips. Taking a delivery to the wealthy side of town instead of a generous tip Sam finds herself captive to a satanic cult with plans for a human sacrifice. With over the top gore and broad characters Satanic Panic is a satire in the manner that The Hunt failed to be with a point of view and something to say about class divides in America.

Not for the squeamish and while avoiding the Lucio Fulci perchance for things going into people’s eyes, though not by much, Satanic Panic is not for everyone but those who enjoy practical gore effects with social commentary this film should find its mark.

 

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3 Days Until Release and The Blog Tour Begins

This Thursday Vulcan’s Forge will be available from all your usual and favorite booksellers and as of today the link for the e-book went live.

The publisher, Flametree Press, organizes a week of book bloggers reviews the book around each book’s publications date and today my blog tour kicked off with a review at The Bookwormery.

Here’s my pull quote from the review but read the entire thing yourself.

“Wow…..the world building in Vulcan’s Forge is just so well done, the feeling of almost claustrophobic tension is felt throughout. “

In other news my sweetie-wife and I are handling the shelter in place order imposed on California rather well. We get along fabulously, part of why we’re married and all that, and we each have plenty of activities to keep us engaged. Her employer has instituted a work from home policy while I continue to go into the office at my day job, but the office staff is reduced there as many are being sent to work from home as well. A few others and I have volunteered to maintain the critical office roles for as long as possible. I am fortunate to have a job that is critical to helping people get medical care so not only do I still have work and pay but I am also helping people directly during this crisis.

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