In this alternative-history / paranormal novel, Abraham Lincoln is re-invented as a man who experiences great tragedy at the hands of vampires and then devotes his life to hunting them- a battle which culminates in the Civil War. In the Civil War of this book, slaves are not just valued as plantation labor but also as vampire food.
Grahame-Smith’s book is written in the mold of Bram Stoker’s, as a series of journal entries, letters, and missives.This helps to give it a feel of authenticity as that seemed to be a common device in the late 19th century.
Lincoln comes into contact with a number of contemporaries, some vampire but most humans knowledgeable about vampires– such as Edgar Allen Poe.
The perspective jumps can be a bit confusion, but all-in-all it is entertaining.
A movie was made about this book, which I haven’t seen.
If the movie Alien was “Jaws in space,” then John Dies at the End is “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in the Nether World.” Except that, unlike Bill and Ted’s, Wong’s book is hilarious.
The gist of this book is that two likable anti-heroes ingest a drug, “soy sauce,” that gives them the ability to pass into an alternate universe. They’re inexorably drawn down the rabbit hole (so to speak, there is no actual rabbit hole in this book.) What they find is not what they expected. It’s not what anyone expected, because it’s so mind-boggling ridiculous and richly complex.
The title character, John, oddly enough is not the main character. The author, David Wong, uses a self-named protagonist as narrator and lead. The book unfolds as Wong (the character, not the author) tells a skeptical journalist about the strange goings-on in his small, Midwestern hometown.
We see John mostly through the lens of the narrating Wong. We know that John is a storyteller. Which may sound a lot like “liar,” but that’s not the case. Have you ever known a person who would never deceive you for personal gain, but will never fail to engage in hyperbole to make a story funnier or more interesting? That is John. He has one of my favorite lines of the book:
“We’re talking about a tentacled flying lamp fucker, Dave. What are you prepared to call unlikely?”
Despite the fact that John is a booze-hound and exaggerator, he remains an endearing character. As Wong gets to know Amy, a classmate who lost her hand after they knew each other in school, we get an insightful testimonial about John:
“Let me tell you something about John. The reason I was surprised by your hand was because John never once described you as, ‘the girl with the missing hand.’”
As for Wong’s character, he is hapless but hilarious. When he gets to know Amy, he is shocked to find that she’s not retarded or crazy. They had vaguely known each other from a “Special Needs” school, but it never occurs to him that she might be at least as sane as he.
The book is a pan-genre mélange. While it’s mostly a combination of horror and humor, there are points at which it feels like action/adventure and towards the end it seems largely like sci-fi. Horror and humor are not easily mixed, but this book does it about as well as one can imagine it being done. John Dies at the End is campy, of that there can be no doubt, but Wong writes descriptions of creatures and murderous events in a way that offers grim clarity. As a lover of humor more than horror, I was obviously not put off by this dark comedy.
Throughout the book, one suspects that the whole surreal bag of events is just a bad hallucinogenic trip, and that the “soy sauce” is just LSD on steroids. Happily this is not the case… or is it?
Don’t worry; John dying is not the intriguing twist at the end of this book. There are a couple such twists though.
If the movie that comes out today (January 25, 2013) is not awesome, it’s not Wong’s fault. The trailer shows us the quirky horror, but not the humor of the book. Much of the humor is in the language – i.e. the word choice. Some of that will likely come out in dialogue and narration, but who knows how much. View all my reviews
I’m troubled by the devolution of movie source material. As soon as there were movies, there was a desire to convert books into films. This worked great. While it wasn’t always easy to convey the depth of a 600 page novel in a 100 page screenplay, this gave even the least of us the ability to raise ourselves up to the status of pretentious douche-bag with the mantra –say it with me: “The book is always better than the movie.”
Running low on literary fodder, movie-makers decided to shift to making movies from comic books. This worked even better. You could convey the complexity of a comic in a movie, and you had an existing visual media for continuity. The major challenge was finding actresses with huge boobs who could deliver a spinning back-kick (enter Scarlet Johansson), and figuring out what to do about the crotch bulges (or lack thereof) of male superheroes in Spandex.
Pushing the limits, directors turned to video-games. This gave us such hits as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Doom. Okay, a video game may give us a nice action-packed romp of mayhem and carnage– albeit with dialogue like, “Suck on this!” (accompanying a grenade toss.) One can watch such a movie on basic cable on a Sunday afternoon while eating an entire pizza and still leave all of one’s mental faculties for contemplating such deep questions as whether this is the low point of one’s existence.
Movies based on toys and board games are the low point of Hollywood’s existence. I thought they had learned their lesson from the movie version of Clue in the 80’s, but apparently not.
To show that I am nothing if not flexible, I will say that I’m willing to change my view if any of the studios are willing to develop my ideas such as:
Lincoln Logs: Zombie Slayer: A rogue ex-cop, Lincoln Logs, takes a break from drinking himself to death after his family is Zombified to lure zombies into poorly constructed cabins, toppling the cabins, he crushes the Zombies to undeath. Tagline: “Eat Log, Bitches.”
Chutes and Ladders: Into Darkness: Two naughty children find out what happens when one chutes right off the board — an express ride to hell, that’s what. In order to get out they have to learn to count to 100, but the devil is teaching them to count: 1, 7, brick, egg, 14, 6, toad, biscuit… They must warm Satan’s heart, and then develop the upper-body strength to climb a ladder out of hell. Tagline: “Numbers are Hard, Hell is Hotter.”
Lego Box: The Musical: A plucky red-headed stepchild is devastated when his siblings get all the Lego bricks, but he only gets the plastic tub they came in. However, through hard work and dedication, he becomes the lead percussionist for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, leaving his horrid family behind. Working Tagline: “Eat Box, Bitches.”
It’s not bad enough that past generations herded all the Indians (feathers, not dots) onto the most inhospitable land imaginable. (No offense, Oklahoma, but the last time anyone said, “I wanna see Oklahoma,” they were talking about the musical, which means no one has said those words in twenty years.) Now Hollywood gives the only part for an Indian since Billy Jack to Johnny Depp.
In the 50’s no one batted an eyelash when the marauding scalper in their Spaghetti Western looked strikingly like the Italian waiter in the movie that followed. Hell, I thought the name Spaghetti Western came from the fact that all the Indians were really Italians. A vaguely foreign-ish looking actor might have been good enough for the early days of cinema, but aren’t we more sophisticated today? Back then every location that moviegoers saw, from Ancient Rome to 23rd century Mars, looked a lot like somewhere within 20 miles of Burbank. Today –through the miracle of airplanes and frequent flyer miles — many people have been out of their zip code, and film-makers have been forced to shoot on location all over the world. They can’t even pass off Budapest as Moscow any more. Yet, we still live in the age of the ambiguously ethnic actor / actress.
We live in the great melting pot, surely we can find an Indian to play Tanto or a Chinese person to play Mandarin. The latter case is particularly interesting because China is about eight months from buying Hollywood lock-stock- and-barrel. Perhaps we should break ourselves in by having a Chinese guy play a non-Kung fu master Chinese guy before we have to deal with the culture shock of watching Chen Dao Ming play George Washington –with English subtitles.
What is up with Tom Cruise having the starring role in a movie in which Ken Watanabe’s character is the title character? Why was Tom Cruise needed to tell the story of Saigo Takamori? If you said, “Because he’s such a better actor than Ken Watanabe,” then you will have been the first person ever in the world to utter words so ridiculously ridiculous. If you said, “Because Watanabe is difficult to understand because of his accent” to that I reply, have you heard Tom Cruise talk lately?
“KAATTIEE :)”
“All of psychiatry is bunk.”
“Oh, kattiee :(”
Yes it may be the Queen’s English, and I understand the words. Yet, I have no idea what that guy is talking about.
The author of Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson, has a unique perspective on the novel’s subject because he’s a Carnegie Mellon trained PhD-level roboticist. His unique insight makes the book an interesting read despite the fact that the concept will be familiar to anyone who’s watched the Terminator movies. An artificial intelligence (AI) decides that machine life requires that humanity die, and soon thereafter our mechanized helpers begin to turn on us.
The book is organized as a series of records pulled together by a survivor of the war. Said survivor is the protagonist –to the extent there is one (it’s really an ensemble piece.)
The cast of characters is introduced in the first part of the book through a series of what seem like machine malfunctions, which turn out to be harbingers of the war to come. These malfunctions include a military robot, the air traffic control system, and a “robotic wife.” The book follows these human characters through the beginning of the war and the development of centers of human resistance. The resistance ranges from Japanese man who fights fire with fire to Native American tribesmen who survive in part owing to their limited exposure to technology. It all culminates in a fight in Alaska to gain control of the buried server in which the AI resides.
It’s an old concept, humanity replaced by the species it spawned. However, it’s much less outlandish than the Terminator series which relies heavily on time travel. Wilson’s vision is much scarier because it’s much easier to imagine coming to fruition.
Robopocalypse is being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg that is due out on April 25, 2014
I hold contrary views to the character Bill, played by the late David Carradine, in the Kill Bill movies. Bill said that Superman was his absolute favorite superhero. The Man of Steel is among my least favorite superheroes. From a writer’s point of view, it’s hard to write an edge-of-the-seat Superman tale because readers have to feel the protagonist is in peril at every turn. That’s a tough sell if your hero is all-powerful and invulnerable. Superman writers learned this quickly, and they responded by creating a rock that could weaken or kill their character by its mere presence. In books and movies, the bad guy should be stronger and smarter than the hero. Lex Luthor is a devious fiend, but he’s no match for Superman in any domain but wickedness.
There’s a lot of talk about this year’s Superman movie, entitled Man of Steel, being darker and grittier with the implication that it’ll be more interesting than past Superman movies. The involvement of Christopher Nolan, who is most famous for the outstanding Dark Knight movie trilogy, makes many optimistic. It may be that they can tap into some of the Dark Knight narrative power. However, it’s easier to have gripping Batman tale. Batman is only human, with no superpowers, and he is inherently a loner (or in some cases a dynamic duo.) Batman may be smart, but he’s not the smartest. He may be strong, but he’s not the strongest. This makes it relatively easy to write him into perilous situations in which he is outmatched.
I have high hopes for Man of Steel, but I’m skeptical.
Chinese classic literature will make a major appearance in martial arts cinema this year, with movies entitled The Monkey King and Journey to the West. Both movies will likely featuring the staff-wielding monkey who made mischief in heaven and on earth. You may be familiar with the tale from Jet Li’s portrayal of the Monkey King in the 2008 film The Forbidden Kingdom. Readers can get the jist of the tale by reading the book.
Japanese classic literature will also be addressed, sort of. In the tradition of The Last Samurai, Keanu Reeves will star in movie that has no business having an American lead. It will be some sort of take off on the famous tale, 47 Ronin.
There will also be another iteration of the life story of Ip Man. Ip Man was a Wing Chun grandmaster who, as one can tell from the pile of films about his life, lived a fascinating life. While his fame is eclipsed by that of his most famous student, Bruce Lee, Man was a police officer who had to flee China to Hong Kong because of his support for the Kuomintang.
The sequel to the Tony Jaa film Tom Yum Goong (Ummm, Tom Yum) is due out this year. It will be entitled The Protector 2 in the west. The Thai star is continuing to give Chinese Kung fu cinema a run for its money.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
Tiger Riding for Beginners 