Posts Tagged ‘Transformer’

Robin Hood and the Making of an Outlaw Hero

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Ridley Scott’s 2010 film Robin Hood has been touted as being “Robin Hood as you’ve never seen him.”  Well, it depends on the “you” and the “seen.”

[What follows contains Spoilers, so if you haven't seen it, you've been warned.]

Certainly, many of the tellings of Robin Hood are about Robin’s life as the leading outlaw of Sherwood Forest.  Some versions have touched on what went before, how he came to be an outlaw, or what happened late in life.

The British television series in the 1980s showed how first a yeoman

and then an Earl’s son

became Robin Hood.  The Kevin Coster film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

shows Robin as a nobleman crusader who returns home to fight injustice.  1976’s Robin and Marion

also showed Robin as a crusader, who followed Richard the LionHeart off to war (after many forest adventures) and then returned home a much older man after the King’s death.

The literature and legends of Robin Hood cover many variations of how Robin became Robin Hood.  So, the claim that Scott’s Robin would be nothing like what you knew before is actually stretching the point, even if just limited to film appearances (and yes, I skipped mentioning the Flynn version).  Scott’s film doesn’t really stray very far from the core of the myth of Robin Hood as it has become.

First off, Robin Hood is one of the key examples of what an Outlaw Hero is.  Of the community, but not in it.  And the hero addresses some flaw in society.  So far, so good. We’re on track.

One thing that Scott’s Robin Hood does do is make our hero, Robin Longstride, a Transformer.  By being present in a scene, this Robin changes things.  More usually, one would expect Robin Hood to be a Trickster, the underdog who punctures illusions and outwits “bigger” opponents.  But Scott doesn’t go that route.

Early on in the film, King Richard explores his camp with his aide Robert Loxley, looking for an honest man.  They encounter a brawling Robin, who has been entertaining fellow soldiers with the shell game.  Then he is asked by the King to be honest and tell whether he thinks the King’s actions have pleased God.  Remember, as a Transformer, Robin changes things.  Even though Loxley tries to surrepticiously warn him against honesty, Robin says no, and cites a massacre Richard ordered in the Holy Land.

His honesty gets him put into stocks, where he is sitting when the King is killed.  Robin and his co-horts use the situation to cover their escape from Richard’s army.

As they head back to England, they encounter the ambush of the English messengers taking the news of Richard’s death - and Richard’s crown - back to England.  And Robert Loxley is the leader.  With his dying breaths, Loxley charges Robin with returning his sword to his father.  Robin decides to honor the request and does so by taking on Loxley’s identity.

Taking on a new identity certainly does transform things for a character.  But in doing this, Robin not only changes his social identity, he takes up the “burden” and responsibilities belonging to Loxley.  And in taking on that role he changes himself.  Likewise, in taking on Loxley’s identity, he has to take on Loxley’s wife.  This is yet another change for Robin (and for Marion).

Once he takes on this identity, his presence changes the way people react around him.  Their response to his perceived status strengthens his inherent resolution and leadership abilities.  That too changes him.

Onward the story goes, with the circumstances changing Robin and him changing the circumstances.  Right up to the point where King John rejects the changes in the power structure that had been prepared by Robin’s father and the Barons years before.  John declares Robin to be outlawed and so the “Legend Proper” begins.

There’s not much here that is alien to the nature of the Robin Hood legend.  Scott’s changes are, in effect, a distinction without much difference.  The one key “difference” in Ridley Scott’s version is that instead of a Trickster, he has given us the story of how a Transformer becomes an Outlaw Hero.

As always, feel free to comment here, or on the MESSAGE BOARD.

Pictures from Robin of Sherwood property of Goldcrest Films Int., Harlech Television, ITV.  / Picture from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves property of Warner Bros. Pictures / Picture from Robin and Marion property of Columbia Pictures / Pictures from Robin Hood property of Universal Pictures.

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Beyond the Avatar

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Although there are many things I could critique about James Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar, I’ll limit myself to a discussion of his principal character, Jake Sully.

Although there is an archetype known as the Wounded Healer, I think it would be a mistake to assign this title to Jake.  As we will see, “healing” is not what Jake brings to the situation.  But he is wounded, and this is something that needs changing, which indicates that Jake is archetypically a Transformer.  I have said that all doctor stories are likely to be about Transformers, but not all stories with a Transformer figure are doctor (or healing) stories.

Jake enters the story as a replacement.  His scientist twin brother has died, and rather than waste the large amount of funds used to create the Pandoran avatar, the runners of the program have decided to plug in the genetically compatible Jake.  The fact that Jake is bound to a wheelchair doesn’t matter to them, because the Riders lie in a unit while linked to their avatar.

But everyone (except the malicious Colonel) overlooks the fact that what Jake wants more than anything is to walk again.  The moment he wakes in the Na’vi avataar form, he is fascinated by the transformation, expressed in wiggling his new toes.

But Jake is a Transformer and things change because he is present.  He pays no attention to the warnings to go slow.  Instead he gets to his feet, excited to be able to move freely again, discounting the problems that go with being a ten-foot tall, tailed biped.

The balance in the Avatar program gets changed by the fact that Jake is a trained soldier.  Whereas before all the Avatar Riders were scientists, Jake’s position as a soldier gives him a different point of view and a different way of reacting to the experience.  He changes the course of events simply by being that person.  Because he is chased by animals and separated from the rest of the team, everyone expects Jake to die in the Pandoran wilderness.  Instead, his soldier’s survival training kicks in and he manages to fend fairly well for himself.

It is because he can fend for himself (in spite of not understanding the impact of death in the Pandoran biosphere) that Neytiri’s opinion of him is transformed.  She knows he is an outworlder (his Na’vi body has five fingers per hand as hers does not), and as such she was ready to kill him herself or leave him to die.  But his determination not to go down catches her attention.

Neytiri’s attitude is transformed even further when the flowers of the Spirit Tree settle on Jake in large numbers.  He goes quickly from swatting them away as a nuisance to being the one they are drawn to and accepting them.

Jake transforms his own mindset as he learns more about the ways of the Na’vi.  When daring is needed to inspire the Na’vi after Hometree is destroyed, Jake takes it upon himself to bond with a Toruk, the largest Pandoran flying beast.

His arrival before the refugees turns their hatred of his betrayal (he had told the Colonel about Hometree) into awe and a willingness to follow him.

And that is his final transformation in the story, from the human grunt soldier to the Na’vi warleader.

Jake transforms the situation, to be sure, leading the Na’vi in an assault that defeats the human mechanical forces.  But again, the transformations he brings are not those of healing, rather of combat and conflict.  He brings destruction down on the Na’vi, and then, changing his allegience, he brings destruction and banishment down on the humans.

He does change things by being present — which is the definition of the Transformer archetype.

Feel free to talk about this here or on my MESSAGE BOARD.

All pictures property of Twentieth Century-Fox.

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“Divine” House

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Dr. Gregory House has a genius for diagnosing unusual medical conditions..  And he sets about changing illness to health, Transformer figure.  As I say in The Scribbler’s Guide, all doctor stories are Transformer stories.

But House is also an example of what I call the “Divine Hero.”  Now, this doesn’t mean that the Divine Hero has superpowers.  It means that the hero comes from outside the community, bringing a boon to it.  He is in the community, but not of it.

Gregory House is in the community of the hospital, but he is not really of it.  He refuses to conform to the dress code, he is always at odds with Cutty’s administration, his only friend is Wilson (whom he regularly provokes).  But the boon he brings to the community is his skill as a diagnostician, and they genuinely value it.  So they keep him.

What makes for the dramatic tension in the show is the fact that Gregory House does not want to be this Divine Hero.  He is a misanthrope, disliking people.  He doesn’t really want their praise or appreciation.  His personal conflict is that the one thing he does well, that he loves doing, is the one thing that actually requires him to be in contact with other human beings.

House is just one of the possible ways of using the Divine Hero archetype.  And an excellent, off-beat one.

The characters of House, M.D. are property of the Universal Media Studios (for Fox TV).

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Star Trek Trinity

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

The release of the 2009 Star Trek movie re-sparked my interest in the character archetypes of Kirk, Spock and McCoy.  I made some initial comments about them as a guest blogger on Colleen Doran’s blog.   But that was comparing Kirk and Picard.

A well constructed character will have at least one archetype at the core.  When multiple archetypes are blended, you can create very interesting dynamics.

Let’s start with McCoy.  In this particular trinity of characters, he is firmly in the position of sidekick.  Sidekicks are often Trickster archetypes, for their job is to puncture the excesses of the principal hero.  Cranky McCoy frequently does this to Kirk and to Spock.  When Kirk pushes for some outrageous solution, McCoy puts the brakes on.  “Damn it, Jim! I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer!”  He also relights the fire when Spock dampens things too much with logic.  I read one critic who commented that McCoy was a bigot.  One assumes the comment was inspired by McCoy’s comments about Spock as a “pointy eared hobgoblin.”  But I think it is an error to call McCoy a bigot: he has no such reaction to other Vulcans or other aliens.  This reaction is specific to Spock.  It is another manifestation of his function as a Trickster, to puncture the excesses of Spock’s logic.

As a doctor, of course, McCoy is also a Transformer, changing the things around himself.  But this is often secondary to his function as a Trickster.  In the film, when McCoy first arrives on the scene, he transforms Kirk’s situation from being solitary to having a friend.

Spock is in many ways Kirk’s Shadow.  In being such, he also highlights the point I make in The Scribbler’s Guide to the Land of Myth that a Shadow is not necessarily an evil figure.  In this case, where Kirk is often passionate disorder, Spock is the opposite of that, emotionless (apparently) order.  But Spock is also a Threshold guardian: he oversees the possibilities of Kirk’s choices.  In the film, he is the one who has constructed the Kobayashi Maru test which winnows out candidates for command.  Kirk, of course, thwarts this  judgement, so Spock plays the next checking move of questioning Kirk’s ethics.  By doing so, he forces Kirk to become more than just contrary, to find the justification for his actions.

However, the one thing Spock is not, or rather is not best at, is being a Ruler.  He treats his judgements as absolute, and so does not readily attend to the advice of his subordinates, at least not when he is in command.  In the film, when Kirk (fulfilling his function as First Officer in putting forward his criticism of Spock’s choice and offering an alternate) counters him, Spock over-reacts.  He uses his authority not simply to remove Kirk from the bridge, but to abandon his appointed First Officer on the inhospitable and nearly deserted planet.  This is not wise leadership one would expect from a Ruler.

Kirk, however, is a Ruler.  Although he frequently pushes the envelope of a circumstances (a manifestation of his being a Transformer and Trickster), he does pay attention to the skills of his subordinates.  He delegates tasks appropriately.

This trio of characters provide balance and challenge to each other.  The dynamic between them continually shifts about; it is never static.  This is why they continue to be a fascinating set of characters.

You are welcome to comment either here or on my MESSAGE BOARD.

(Pictures are property of Paramount Pictures.)

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