In an early review of Spider-Man 3, Britain’s Times Online reviewer infamously wrote:
Also disappointing is the inability of the director, Sam Raimi, to end the romp without a fleeting shot of the American flag. The Stars and Stripes just happens to be fluttering behind Spidey as he makes his triumphal return to honour, probity and good honest fist-fighting.
I thought of this review the other day after I’d exchanged a few notes with a reader (I certainly can’t call him a fan) who contacted me at my public email address. The guy was unhappy with my treatment of Muslim terrorists in one of my recent novels, and what started as Pee-Wee Herman-level “I know you are, but what am I?” schoolyard taunts quickly devolved into anti-Semitism. I’m part of the Zionist plot, see, and the plot of my book was just a plot within that larger plot.
So what do my Zionist leanings and Spider-Man’s fluttering Stars and Stripes have to do with Remo Williams, that old Eighties action flick? To begin with, Remo Williams isn’t just the title of a 1985 film, produced by Dick Clark and distributed by now-defunct Orion. Remo is also the main character in nearly 150 Destroyer novels (26 of which I’ve had a hand in writing). It’s okay if you didn’t know that. Aside from a quick opening title credit to series creators Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, much of what makes Remo The Destroyer was jettisoned for the movie.
While the original Remo Williams didn’t do well at the box office, it has picked up a cult following through home video and cable. I’ve gotten mail from fans who’d enjoyed the film for years before finding out the books even existed. And if my mailbox is any indication, pretty much everyone who came to the books via the movie agrees with us old-time fans: None of us can believe Hollywood did such a lousy job adapting the characters to the screen. But in our current age of endless updates and reboots comes some fresh cinematic hope, and if things work out Remo will soon be starring in a brand new motion picture adaptation brought to the screen by Sony and some of the folks who gave us Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Hopefully this time it’ll be the real Destroyer we see, a goal best achieved by not ignoring or re-imagining what’s made the book series a success.
In the novels, Remo is an Everyman Superman who has fought Mafia thugs, drug lords, commies, Nazis, sentient computer programs and the occasional god. In the 1970s he even twice battled an unstoppable, shape-shifting killer android long before Ahnuld first vowed he’d be back. In books and in film, a great villain gets you halfway there. Unfortunately the first Remo movie didn’t have a Blofeld or Dr. No, no Terminator or Dr. Octopus. There wasn’t even a measly little Lex Luthor. No, in his first motion picture outing, Remo Williams — who has fought gods and lived — went toe-to-toe with a bad-guy American arms manufacturer whose great nefarious scheme was to sell crappy, malfunctioning guns to the Army. Is it any wonder moviegoers stayed away in droves? So there’s half the reason the first movie flopped right there.
The other half of the equation and vitally important to the success of the book series is the simple fact that the protagonists are patriots. If you want navel-gazing shades of gray where America is to blame and Rev. Wright’s chickens have come home to roost, you’d best look elsewhere, Jason Bourne. Remo and his boss, taciturn New Englander and former OSS and CIA agent Dr. Harold W. Smith, love America. Unabashedly and unapologetically love America. And they, along with wizened Korean martial arts master and mercenary Chiun, Remo’s trainer and father figure, will do whatever it takes to defeat her enemies.
So a good Destroyer film adaptation would ideally…
- Irritate British film reviewers throughout the empire
- Anger the enemies of America; like, for example, Muslim terrorists and their squishy soul-mates.
That’s it. Simple formula. Think big and love America.
Well, actually, there is one more thing.
A recent book, Dead Reckoning (coauthored by yours truly), took on a villain from an al Qaeda-like group hell-bent on releasing a toxic poison in the United States. Here’s a passage that gives a pretty good example of the attitude of the series. Listen up and take notes, moviemakers:
A locked steel door was the only exit to the rear alley. Remo sensed no explosives wired to the door. In a spray of mortar and falling bricks, Remo tore it from its hinges.
The door was not wired to explode because there were five men inside guarding it. Remo used the door to crush two against the wall of the basement hallway before they could even finger their triggers. The remaining three, seeing their comrades turned to mushy central masses possessed of human arms and legs, and seeing the figure of legend who had killed them, threw down their guns and threw up their hands.
“We surrender!”
Remo cast a cold eye over the three cowering figures, men who would gleefully murder innocents in the name of their cause, now quivering before him.
“Which one of you is Mohammed?” Remo asked.
Three shaking hands were raised. “Him too,” one of the terrorists said, pointing toward a mangled corpse.
“Okay, which one of you is Mustafa’s brother?”
Two hands lowered.
“Mustafa who was busted before he could fly a plane into the White House in 2001?” Remo asked.
The terrorist had to think for a moment. “Did you say 2001?” he asked. Remo nodded. “Oh.” The terrorist lowered his hand and shook his head.
None of these was the man he was after.
“I will let all of you live if just one of you knows the meaning of the word mercy,” Remo said coldly.
The three startled terrorists huddled like game show contestants. When they had decided on an answer, their spokesman turned hopefully to Remo.
“It means ‘thank you’ in French.”
Remo left the bodies near the alley door and headed for the basement stairs.
What, didn’t I mention that The Destroyer also does humor and social and political satire from a decidedly conservative perspective?
Get that attitude right, Hollywood, and you’ll have a movie for which fans of The Expendables, Gran Torino, Taken and Harry Brown will be lining up at the box office. If not? Well, if you go in a different direction, you won’t make much money but you’ll doubtless make a whole bunch of mealy-mouthed British film reviewers very, very happy.
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