CineLinkr #9: The Story Behind the Puzzle
Spoilers ahead: for the puzzle and the movies/games
This post assumes you've already solved the puzzle. It reveals all categories and their connections, and discusses plot details, endings, and spoilers for featured movies/games throughout.
Forbidden Planet (1956) is a science fiction film set in the 23rd century about a spaceship crew arriving on a remote planet to investigate a colony's disappearance. It has Anne Francis, Walter Pidgeon, and Robby the Robot. It is a remake of The Tempest. The Prospero character is a scientist who projects his unconscious mind as a monster. Almost nobody in 1956 needed to know this to enjoy the film. It holds up fine as a pulpy space adventure. The Shakespeare operates underneath.
🟢 Easy: Directed by Martin Scorsese
Movies: Goodfellas · Taxi Driver · The Wolf of Wall Street · Hugo
Martin Scorsese has never made exactly the same film twice, which is both his strength and the reason every few years someone writes an article asking whether his latest film is a departure. Hugo is always the departure in this group.
Taxi Driver (1976) is Travis Bickle watching New York from a cab, narrating his dissatisfaction, deciding he is the person who will clean up the city. The film is deliberately ambiguous about whether his conclusions about himself are accurate. Goodfellas (1990) is the mob film that replaced The Godfather in cultural reference for a generation, Henry Hill's narration, the tracking shot, the dark comedy of a life that has consequences and enjoys them anyway. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) is three hours of excess: Jordan Belfort's rise and fall, Leonardo DiCaprio committing fully to a character without a redemptive arc, a film that trusts you to notice the critique without spelling it out. Some audiences didn't notice.
Hugo (2011) is Scorsese making a film about a boy in a Paris train station who is secretly a film about Georges Méliès and the history of cinema. It's his love letter to the medium. It is strange and beautiful and won five technical Oscars. The question is never whether it fits in his catalog; it clearly does. The question is whether audiences expected it, and they did not.
🟡 Medium: Based on a Stephen King Story
Movies: The Shining · Misery · It · The Green Mile
Stephen King is the most adapted novelist in film history by volume, and the quality distribution is very wide. The four in today's puzzle sit at the upper range.
The Shining (1980) is famously King's least favorite adaptation of his own work. Kubrick removed the redemptive arc, made the Overlook Hotel metaphysically abstract, and turned Jack Torrance from a man destroyed by a haunted place into a man already heading toward destruction when he arrived. King has been vocal about this. Kubrick was right, and King knowing more about his intentions doesn't change what the film is. Misery (1990) is the one that got an Oscar: Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, James Caan as Paul Sheldon, a remote house, a broken leg, a very specific story about what obsessive fandom does when it has leverage. Kathy Bates won Best Actress, the only Stephen King adaptation Oscar.
It (2017) split King's novel into two films covering the 1989 Derry events, the Losers' Club, Pennywise, the sewers. Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise operates at a different register than Tim Curry's. The Green Mile (1999) is Frank Darabont adapting King's serialized novella: John Coffey on death row, supernatural gifts, the guards who understand what is happening, the institution that cannot stop it.
🔵 Hard: Protagonist Discovers Reality Has Been Fabricated
Movies: The Truman Show · The Matrix · Total Recall · Free Guy
Four films built around the same fundamental horror: the world you're living in is not what it appears to be, and someone built the appearance for reasons that don't serve you.
The Truman Show (1998) is Truman Burbank, who has lived his entire life on a television set without knowing it. The film is about gradually noticing the cracks, the same cars, the same faces, the equipment that falls from the sky. It's written as satire and produces genuine dread. The Matrix (1999) arrived one year later with a more physical answer to the same question: reality as computer simulation, a resistance that knows the truth, a red pill. The Wachowskis built an action film around a philosophy of liberation. The sequels expanded the philosophy and complicated the action.
Total Recall (1990) is Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid, who may or may not be a spy whose memory was erased, or a construction worker having a dream of being a spy whose memory was erased. The film doesn't resolve this, which is braver than it looks for a 1990 blockbuster. Free Guy (2021) inverts the premise: the protagonist is an NPC in a video game who becomes aware that he's in a video game. The horror is absent; the film treats self-awareness as liberation. It's the optimistic version of the concept.
🟣 Tricky: Secret Shakespeare Adaptations
Movies: The Lion King · 10 Things I Hate About You · She's the Man · Forbidden Planet
Shakespeare in Hollywood spends most of its time announcing itself: Hamlet (1996), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Othello (1995). The four films today do not announce themselves. You have to know to look.
The Lion King (1994) is Hamlet: prince, murdered king-father, usurper uncle, ghostly visitation, delayed revenge, tragic ending rewritten for children. The adaptation is comfortable enough that Disney made a live-action remake without the Hamlet connection ever functionally mattering to the marketing. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) is The Taming of the Shrew translated to a Seattle high school: a shrewish older sister (Julia Stiles) who must be "tamed" before the younger sister can date. The play's gender politics become more visible in the high school context, and the film is aware of this while also being a mainstream teen comedy about it.
She's the Man (2006) is Twelfth Night: a girl disguises herself as her brother at boarding school. Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum's early career. Forbidden Planet (1956) is The Tempest in the 23rd century: scientist on a remote planet, unconscious power he can't control, monstrous projection of his own desires, spaceship crew as the Milanese nobles arriving on the island. The connection was deliberate but the film stands entirely on its own science fiction legs.
The Shakespeare category requires exactly the right kind of knowledge, not film knowledge, not game knowledge, but literary knowledge applied to film. Recognizing that The Lion King is Hamlet is entry-level. Recognizing that Forbidden Planet is The Tempest is the category of trivia that sounds made up when you state it at dinner.
Today's PixelLinkr puzzle was about Naughty Dog's three careers, roguelike deck-builders, time-control mechanics, and body-possession games. Driver: San Francisco is the one you need to find and play.