"I'm also starting from the premise that I didn't like the monkshood being only a temporary cure, which apart from being bait-and-switch, negates the whole point from GS that there has to be a reason why there aren't more werewolves around, so there have to be easy cures."
I disagree here. How would Brigitte and Sam ever know it was a cure? How? Sam himself admitted they were shooting in the dark. They witnessed Jason reacting positively to it
for a few seconds. Besides that, they had never tested it. Sam didn't mention finding any literature that said it was a cure. Legends don't mention a cure for it. Stories about werewolves emphasize that it's hopeless.
Now, for comparison, let's look at reality for a second and take an example of a much less complex disease: AIDS. How long did medical science take to find even an effective treatment? How expensive was it? How many labs were involved? How many people died in the interim?
Sam and Brigitte were so lucky it worked at all, or didn't kill a person as Sam admitted it likely would. So, what reason was there to count on monkshood being a cure? That doesn't impugn the story. Great stories have a lot of luck in them.
As for a cure being why werewolfism wasn't spreading faster,
Sam was just dead wrong, and I knew that right away. Why? It doesn't matter if there's an easy cure for the disease
if nobody knows the disease exists. Who would be administering the cure? It would be impossible to miss it happening.
Sam was smoking crack about this. If it wasn't spreading, and quickly, there was a completely different reason why, one that GS did not go into (and left for the sequels.) Again, look at how AIDS spread, and people weren't even biting people.
So, I'm just the opposite: it wouldn't have been plausible to me if Sam and Brigitte solved it all in one astronomically unlikely guess. I didn't think it was a betrayal of the original. I thought monkshood turning out to be a treatment and not a cure fixed a flaw in the original GS.
Given the fact that it was sexually transmitted, the mere supposition that
everybody didn't know about it is either an idiot plot, or suggestive that something totally different is going on, something beyond the scope of GS and left for the sequels.
Therefore, IMO, it's no betrayal of any pillar to the plot GS to say monkshood wasn't a cure. To sum up: Sam was an amateur. He and Brigitte were in over their heads, and if anything went right they were the luckiest human beings on the planet.
And with further apologies, I'm not willing to watch any continuation of GS with that invasive character, Ghost. If it were a totally unrelated film, perhaps, but that character did not belong in the series, period. Since she was a glaring flaw in the story, I don't know why you suggest throwing out everything in Unleashed
except her. In a sequel movie, you simply can't begin with completely unrelated characters.
Lastly, I think you've got things reversed creatively. You find the story first, trust your unconscious to insert the theme, and then you tweak the story to emphasize the theme. You don't write to theme. That's generally a recipe for disaster.
Yes, Karen Walton might have done it, (or she was just trying to avoid stereotypes) but it also took a long time and she had a lot of help. Her early versions of the script did not look anything like the final product. If GS succeeds, it succeeds from being a great story first. The adolescence tie in, if you want to know, just makes you recall the story more often.
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lombano
12 years ago
The thing is, if it weren't easily curable or preventable, werewolfism would be rife. Take rabies, which is transmitted exactly in the same ways as werewolfism in GS (and is probably the origin of both the werewolf and vampire myths) - before there was a vaccine for it, it was common enough that there were special hospitals for it. For werewolfism to be transmitted as in GS, and it to be so rare that it would be thought mythical, it would have to be easily cured, at least in the early stages; otherwise it would be endemic (as is AIDS in some countries). Even for rabies, now extremely rare in the developed world and in much of the Third World, its existence is not in doubt. That's true even for smallpox, which has been effectively eradicated - werewolfism would have to have been very rare for a long time to have escaped detection. I don't think the monkshood was an astronomically unlikely guess - in this logic, there would be probably a large number of cures and so it wasn't that unlikely they'd stumble across one on their second try. That silver doesn't have any effect is significant in that it shows how much GS departs from folklore - thus folklore not saying anything about cures is not such a problem. Thus the original's take on it makes more sense than the bait-and-switch of Unleashed. Even if monkshood was ineffective, by this logic there were probably many home remedies that would've worked - obviously in Unleashed Brigitte hadn't found anything better than monkshood.
I disagree that it was the story that is the core strength of GS; I'd say it was the characters of Ginger and Brigitte, and their connection. But by the end of GS, Ginger's dead, and given that werewolfism has to be rare, it's extraordinarily unlikely Brigitte would ever have anything to do with werewolfism again (even if not as an infectee), unless the cure doesn't work and she can't find one that works, which makes no sense if werewolfism is both fairly easily transmitted and so rare as to be seen as mythical. That pretty much rules out having Brigitte without pulling a bait-and-switch that in my opinion makes no sense. In other words, that calls for new characters altogether. It's not that I'm determined to keep Ghost, it's that I like the idea of a sequel about motherhood gone wrong, and a monstrous child fits in nicely, it might as well be Ghost.
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freeist
12 years ago
"The thing is, if it weren't easily curable or preventable, werewolfism would be rife. Take rabies, which is transmitted exactly in the same ways as werewolfism in GS (and is probably the origin of both the werewolf and vampire myths) - before there was a vaccine for it, it was common enough that there were special hospitals for it..."
I'll tell you what's wrong with your example: people know about rabies. They had to know about it before they would find a cure. And the "cure" is difficult: it's nothing that you would just run across.
In the GS universe, they're ignorant of this incredible disease (and there were no special hospitals for it). That means nobody knows it has to be cured, and they somehow missed the existence of a disease with symptoms far more spectacular and noteworthy than rabies. It's like missing that zombie plague that wiped out North America. That, to me, would make GS an idiot plot, where the whole human race, including the principal characters, are idiots. I have a moral objection to that.
"I don't think the monkshood was an astronomically unlikely guess - in this logic, there would be probably a large number of cures and so it wasn't that unlikely they'd stumble across one on their second try."
Guessing that werewolfism has a large number of cures that even work when people are ignorant of the disease itself is more astronomically unlikely than Sam's guess. What other disease organism works like that? Why would you consider that to be some kind of GS orthodoxy when it's not suggested anywhere in the movie? If it was eradicated like smallpox, people wouldn't miss that. You keep on pressing the idiot plot. I'm sorry. The main problem with a lot of horror movies is exactly that idiot plot, and I won't accept it implied in GS.
(Not to mention the fact that if there were many cures, why would Sam's choice be one that's a deadly poison?)
Therefore, maybe there are totally different reasons why it hasn't spread or is not spreading? You might as well consider my totally off the wall reasons: 1) werewolfism has short, uncommon, infectious periods in between which it cannot be spread; 2) It went extinct for centuries, and has just re-arisen in the year prior to GS; 3) werewolves are selective about which humans they infect, and secretive. Those are what I will go with, and they all make more sense than what Sam said.
All of this went beyond the scope of GS, which was narrowly focused on how werewolfism affected the Fitzgerald sisters. For as little you're given, a dozen other things could be correct or part of the answer. Not Sam's. When I first saw the movie, I laughed at it immediately because it was so implausible. (Not that I didn't like Sam, but he was just in over his head.)
"I disagree that it was the story that is the core strength of GS; I'd say it was the characters of Ginger and Brigitte, and their connection."
You're confusing the story with plot. Characters are a part of a story (as is plot, so is setting, and so on). Therefore, your disagreement is based on a misunderstanding. No other comment about it necessary.
"But by the end of GS, Ginger's dead, and given that werewolfism has to be rare, it's extraordinarily unlikely Brigitte would ever have anything to do with werewolfism again (even if not as an infectee), unless the cure doesn't work and she can't find one that works, which makes no sense if werewolfism is both fairly easily transmitted and so rare as to be seen as mythical."
Your logic is only as good as its premises. I've already gone through why the cure might not work and that GS didn't give you any big picture as to how werewolfism operated in the wider world. It's a very focused movie. In the wider GS universe, not only don't you know what's making werewolfism rare and unfamiliar, but you don't know what you don't know. You might as well just insert the most interesting explanation you can.
However, Sam was wrong because his explanation requires an idiot plot, and GS is just too intelligent for that. You have to talk me out of that first to change my mind.
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lombano
12 years ago
I think you're missing the point of my comparison with rabies; the point is precisely there were no werewolfism hospitals or anything like that, and that the only way such a disease could've basically escaped detection was to be extremely rare, not just in modern Canada, but pretty much everywhere, always, otherwise it would've been well-documented even without modern record-keeping. The comparison with rabies is that it's transmitted in the same ways and thus there must be some explanation of why werewolfism had always been very rare, if it was transmitted as easily as rabies, which was fairly endemic before a vaccine was developed.
That people generally did not look for a cure for werewolfism has no bearing on my arguments; Sam was looking for a cure, in ways that were basically guesswork, not looking it up in the medical books. Sam knew about it and was looking for a cure; that nobody else was has no bearing on it. That people don't know a disease exists has no bearing on whether an effective cure could be found by someone who did know it exists and looked for a cure.
Ginger seemed pretty reckless as a werewolf, as did in fact Jason and the original werewolf; the notion that werewolves are highly selective in those they infect is in contradiction with what we see on screen. If werewolfims had somehow become extinct and then unextinct, that wouldn't explain why it didn't become endemic once unextinct, or at least detected by the authorities, who in a place like Canada tend to investigate murders. The notion that werewolfism could only be transmitted during rare, brief periods is pure speculation; the notion that cures might exist does have a basis in the film.
Actually, that Sam would only on his second guess come across the only thing that had any effect at all on werewolfism (as implied by Unleashed) seems statistically very unlikely; surely it's more likely that he stumbled on one of many possible cures.
True, there are no real diseases that are have many effective, easily-found cures; but there are no real diseases that cause the sort of transformation Ginger goes through, either - there are no real diseases that are that spectacular and the only aspect of werewolfism in GS that resembles any real diseases is the way it's transmitted. If we require medical realism, then the series is absurd from the word go. In fact, I'm glad GS didn't go down the route of trying to explain werewolfism or go into the physiology of werewolfism or anything like that; it would just be silly and unnecessary.
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freeist
12 years ago
And none of what you said has any bearing on your making it an idiot plot. I said: I'm not with you no matter what else you say, unless you're able to counter that. You didn't say anything about that part of my argument, even though I emphasized that three times. I told you exactly the only way you can win me over, and it doesn't even merit a mention from you. I guess that part was so irrelevant it didn't even register in your conscious mind.
You could can save the rest of the writing about whether what I said about rabies was irrelevant and so on. Because to me, all of that is irrelevant. You didn't show me how your scenario, Sam proposed or not, doesn't make everybody in the world into idiots.
Now, I'll stop hedging and be honest: I wouldn't see a movie based on your plot proposal if I were in an isolation booth, could only watch television, and every channel but the one with your sequel was playing only Jersey Shore and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The fact that you're so in love with your own idea that you can't bend, can't consider objections, and call everything else irrelevant, says something.
However, despite my gut, maybe I'm wrong. If you're so in love with it, I suggest you write it as a fan fiction and prove to the world that it works. Quit pi.s.sing people off about it and get cracking. That's what I did with the ideas I've mentioned to you. I wrote and posted a Ginger Snaps novel. It took three years. I'm writing another draft, that's going to take another year. I can say with experience that if you do work on it for a couple months, and if you're not disgusted by it, or totally bored with it, you might be on to something. At least you'll prove that you thought the idea was good enough for your own commitment.
I've been reduced to snark. We're done. I'm off this discussion.
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lombano
12 years ago
I've not addressed your objection because it makes no sense whatsoever. How, exactly, does Sam being right turn the rest of the world into idiots? Repeating your point does not mean it makes any more sense than it did the first time. However hard or easy it may be to find a cure has no relevance if nobody is looking for it. Ironically in the GS commentary it's clear Karen Walton also thinks Sam was right.
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freeist
12 years ago
Go back and reread then.
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lombano
12 years ago
OK, let's look at what you actually wrote:
"How would Brigitte and Sam ever know it was a cure? How? Sam himself admitted they were shooting in the dark. They witnessed Jason reacting positively to it for a few seconds. Besides that, they had never tested it. "
What does their knowing have to do with anything? The point is whether monkshood works or not, not whether or not Sam and Brigitte would know that for a fact in GS.
"Sam didn't mention finding any literature that said it was a cure. Legends don't mention a cure for it. Stories about werewolves emphasize that it's hopeless."
Werewolfism here doesn't adhere to folklore or modern werewolf tropes, which is lampshaded by "forget the Hollywood rules."
"It doesn't matter if there's an easy cure for the disease if nobody knows the disease exists. Who would be administering the cure? It would be impossible to miss it happening. "
Who exactly is administering it other than Sam? Who says cures can't be common enough that they might be ingested or taken by dumb luck (no, not medically realistic, but not more far-fetched than the existence of werewolfism in the first place)?
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rhetoric2k
12 years ago
My idea for a sequel would've been to not have killed Ginger off in the first place. The sisters work best when they are together. Sure we saw Ginger stabbed and stop breathing at the end of the original, but she's a Werewolf for gods sakes. Would it really have been such a suspension of disbelief to have her not be dead in the sequel?
They could've even re-shot the ending of the original and as the Police Arrived, Ginger attacks them after she stopped breathing. More Ginger would've made for a better sequel.
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freeist
12 years ago
Having Ginger live would have ruined the beautiful ending they did shoot. No, they could have Ginger being a ghost haunting Brigitte the way Jack did David in American Werewolf in London, but they absolutely couldn't have had Ginger live at the end.
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