★★☆☆☆
Two Stars

In preparation for finally seeing Disney’s Maleficent, I googled it to gauge what oth­ers had thought of it thus far. The top hit was a scathing Guardian review: 1 star, slat­ing the film for its confused intentions and being an overall “derivative mess”. A little perturbed to say the least, I nonetheless put this aside, and as I took my seat in the cine­ma, I was determined to like the film. I really, really was. But unfortunately, I have to admit that The Guardian wasn’t far off.

People are comparing this film to Wicked; but to do so does Wicked a disservice. Wick­ed does not amend the original story, but simply illuminates it from another perspec­tive. Maleficent starts off in the same way, but as the film progresses director Robert Stromberg starts to make drastic changes which render our knowledge of the original tale completely invalid. In my pre-release thoughts, I speculated as to whether Malefi­cent would destroy our classic childhood vi­sions of Sleeping Beauty (1959); as it is, the two films are incomparable.

True, they overlap visually, but the conclu­sion of Stromberg’s film could not be more alternative. Though aspects such as the “true love’s kiss” are given a thoroughly modern (and delightfully feminist) twist, there are so many narrative changes at the close of this film that are problematic and incompatible with the original. To name just one thing: Maleficent does not die. Make of that what you will, but the perfect happy ending felt horribly unfulfilling to me.

However, the look of the film cannot be faulted. In 3D, the visuals are really quite staggering; Hollywood has not seen cine­matic landscaping like this since Avatar. The world that Stromberg creates truly comes alive onscreen, and is nothing short of mes­merising, from breathtaking vast landscape shots to an intricate attention to light, detail and the movement of the camera through this glittering virtual world. The budget was estimated at $130–200 million, and clearly, visuals and world design are where the mon­ey has been spent.

And then, of course, there’s Angelina Jolie, who is absolutely fabulous and looks wonder­ful (kudos to the makeup and costume team). The depth of character that she creates is ex­actly what a film like this needs; we find our­selves rooting for Maleficent, which ticks a big box for Stromberg.

If only the casting of the other actors had been as successful. It isn’t often I find myself actually cringing whilst watching a block­buster movie of this scale, but Elle Fanning’s portrayal of Aurora made me feel like I was being quite literally smacked around the face with sunshine and happiness. Nobody smiles that much in real life, because doing so would be, quite frankly, excruciatingly painful. Sharlto Copley, as King Stefan, abso­lutely nails the “angry Scotsman” archetype, but alternative shades of his character are virtually non-existent.

Maleficent is a dazzling film which is in serious need of a drastic redraft. Disney evi­dently wanted to produce a remake of a clas­sic, but a remake which stood separate from its original (though surely, by principle, this is impossible). In doing so, however, they have lost sight of the basics. This version of the story is full of holes, climaxes early, rush­es scenes from the original that Stromberg feels compelled to include whilst drawing out new narrative sequences that could do with being paid a bit more attention and be­ing paced much more effectively.

Oh, and basic marketing. I previously de­bated who this film would be aimed at…and after having seen it I have unfortunately reached no conclusion. It’s like Disney have tried to do a Harry Potter, creating a film that speaks to all audiences; and it hasn’t really worked. The tone and atmosphere are too dark to be a out-and-out children’s film, but basing the story on a character from a Disney classic makies it difficult to see the attraction for an older, adult audience. What they’ve ended up with is a film which speaks to everyone in part, but nobody as a whole.

The Apocalypse is a popular subject, and with good reason. What better way to add drama than by introducing a deadly meteor, creating a horde of zombies, or just generally suggesting that everything’s about to finally go horribly wrong for the last time?

The term is first found in the Book of Revelations, a name translated from the Ancient Greek ‘Apocalypsis Ioannou’. The book contains a prediction of the end of the world, and the final judgement of humanity by God. Faithful followers of Christ will be granted eternal happiness, while sinners will be cast into the fires of Gehenna and a burning late to suffer for eternity. Various plagues shall beset the Earth, and the world shall end.

This vision of an inevitable and unavoidable end of all, looming ever-present in humanity’s consciousness, is something which can be seen throughout religion. In the ancient Iranian religion, Zoroastrianism, it is predicted that “a dark cloud [will make] the whole sky night” and, just as in Christianity, sinners will be separated from good people. Muslims also believe that the end of the world will inevitably arrive and its demise will be accompanied by many signs,.

All these beliefs point to an original human fear that, with humanity helpless, the world will somehow end.

This primal fear of a supernatural and invincible element has been portrayed countless times. Films like Armageddon, Planet of the Apes and 2012 depict science fiction scenarios in which nature catches up with humanity and wreaks havoc, in the form of an asteroid from space, over-evolved apes and a Mayanpredicted disaster.

Ideas about natural and unpredictable disasters were developed by H. G. Wells and others with the advent of the concept of an alien invasion of Earth. Wells’ War of the Worlds was one of the first works to depict such an event, and this seminal novel has since been adapted in a number of fairly disappointing instances. The book tells the story of aliens, driven from Mars due to the ravages of disease, invading Earth, easily defeating the world’s armies with their superior technology, and then ruling until they encounter their own natural apocalypse in the form Earth-based bacteria. While the story seems initially about an apocalypse for humanity, one might observe that the Martians themselves are on two occasions defeated by nature. The alien invasion trope has since become rather popular, appearing in the film Independence Day, John Wyndham’s 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids and even Queen’s excellent ‘Flash Gordon’.

However, in today’s society these are somewhat rare and unfashionable ways for the world to end. In 1962, American President John F. Kennedy announced that the chance of the world ending as a result of nuclear war in the near future was between a third and a half. The prospect of nuclear war between West and East and the terrifying concept of mutually assured destruction brought the idea of an apocalypse into the realms not just of possibility, but of probability.

A real-life means to the end of the world excited cultural imaginations like nothing else. Peter Tosh’s brilliant ‘We Don’t Want No Nuclear War’, Nena’s ever-recognizable ‘99 Luftballons’ and Kate Bush’s ‘Breathing’ exemplify the boom in disaffected, anti-nuclear sentiment. Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ described a nuclear wasteland where “the people are many and their hands are all empty” and “pellets of poison are flooding their waters” as a result of the “hard rain” and “the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world”. These artists formed the voice of a generation desperate for their leaders to see sense and avoid the apocalypse.

Technological fears constitute another vast proportion of apocalyptic stories. The successful Terminator series, as well as The Matrix and I, Robot imagine a world in which machines gain dominance over their human masters, an idea which must surely gain ground after the recent news that a computer from Reading has allegedly passed the Turing Test, and can be declared to have the ability to think.

Similarly, films like 28 Days Later and Zombieland, along with books such as 1954’s I Am Legend place the blame for the end of the world on technological advancement, as human experimentation produces a virus, or some variation on that theme, creating monsters who wage war on humanity.

Once we add to the picture the more recent fear of global warming and a man-made natural apocalypse, depicted vividly in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow and lamented in Michael Jackson’s ‘Earth Song’, we can see a change in views of the apocalypse.

While religion tells us that the end will come without warning, and that we can do nothing to prevent it, popular culture prefers to place apocalyptic blame on humanity’s shoulders. There is a rapidly growing idea, supported in some academic circles (notably Oxford philosopher Professor Nick Bostrom), that we will inevitably destroy ourselves. Don’t sit around waiting for the asteroid, get off your arse and recycle your cardboard.

Twin Peaks

David Lynch (1990-91)

A surreal soap opera cum murder-mystery, Twin Peaks follows an investigation headed by Special Agent Dale Cooper into the death of the homecoming queen of a fictional town in Washington. The show was a critical success and has since developed a cult fan base, perhaps because of its mixture of genuine creepiness and the surreal humour of its range of weird characters. Cancelled after its second series, it ends on an unresolved cliffhanger – will we ever really know ‘Who killed Laura Palmer?’

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood (1986)

The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that has replaced the United States of America. Offred, the protagonist and narrator, is a handmaid – a woman assigned to bear children for elite couples; reproduction rates are dangerously low due to sterility from pollution and STDs. The story slips from tales of her daily life to flashbacks. The novel ends with Offred on her way either to prison or to freedom—she does not know which.

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Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Featuring a truly mesmerizing debut from Elizabeth Olsen, this is an understated, deeply disquieting psychological thriller. Protagonist Martha goes to stay with her sister and wealthy husband; it becomes clear through a series of flashbacks that she has escaped from a terrifying cult. Shot and acted more like a drama than a thriller, the film’s wilful ambiguity is its genius. Our expectations are confounded as the film ends not in Martha’s suicide, but in complete, terrifying obscurity.

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We’ve all seen the iconic photos of jubilant crowds bringing down the Berlin Wall. But Sven Regener’s novel Berlin Blues, which ends on the evening of 9 November 1989, captures quite the opposite reaction. When someone runs into a West Berlin bar to announce that the Wall’s coming down, the news is greeted unspectacularly: “Well, I’ll be…”

25 years later, it’s easy to look back on that night as a momentous occasion. But after nearly five decades of a tense, divided Berlin, life beyond the Wall seemed to many like an impossible abstract rather than a history-altering reality.

Berlin was the closest thing the Cold War had to a front line – and therefore became a microcosm of that standoff. Flattened by bombs during the Second World War and divided into Soviet, British, American, and French sectors, the city that survived the physical deconstructions of war remade itself along occupying forces’ terms.

When it went up on 13 August 1961, the Wall was a hostile, militaristic installation – first as threatening coils of barbed wire, then as an impossible, nearly 12-foot-high grey concrete barrier buffered by a ‘death strip’. Over 200 people would die attempting to cross this physical symbol of the East-West divide.

The Wall pervades how we speak and think about modern Europe and beyond. Putin’s reign has got some commentators muttering about a new Cold War; terms like ‘Iron Curtain’ conjure up literal images in discussions of East-West relations; walls like the Israel West Bank barrier and Northern Irish ‘peace lines’ will always carry loaded connotations.

Berlin may be a unified city again, but the socio-economic makeup of the German capital remains influenced by the former divide. Physical sites along the former Wall like the Brandenburg Gate are still international political platforms. For many, tearing down the Wall was a reclamation of German identity – but the Wall remains an unresolved historical presence in a city self-consciously reshaping itself as a European powerhouse.

This autumn’s 25th anniversary Berlin Wall commemorations won’t be as straightforward as last week’s D-Day anniversary. Jackhammers on graffitied concrete have come to symbolise the end of the Cold War. But the system that came down with the Berlin Wall has left more uncertainty than happy endings in its wake.

You’ve probably, at some point in your Oxford life, heard of the Failed Novelists Society, whether it’s through the occasional review in one of the student papers, or finding yourself signed up to their Freshers’ Fair mailing list. If you haven’t come across them before, they are an open creative writing group in Oxford. Welcoming anyone from undergraduates to tutors to townies, every Sunday at 2 o’clock, the group gather in Teddy Hall welfare room and show their work. Pieces are read and discussed, and feedback is offered.

We met with Dòmhnall Iain Dòmhnallach, their President, to find out more about a group of people who, it emerges, are completely unselfconscious and just love writing. Dòmhnall puts three small books on the table, admitting that they look hilariously self-published, but that’s just how it has to be. It’s hard to disagree, but it’s part of the charm. Two of the books are anthologies. “Every year we do an anthology, which is partly a celebration of, I’d like to say, the best writing in Oxford. We have prose, poetry, sometimes drama, everything. I think it’s the only Oxford-only creative writing anthology that takes everything.” It allows people to celebrate their work and to “see it in print in a way that you can have a party and celebrate it with your friends, because sometimes you submit to a magazine, you get the magazine in your pidge, and then that’s it”.

The group has just published a new work, The Failed Novel, a book which was produced collaboratively. We wonder about the drive behind this. “We are, of course, failed novelists, and degrees and things get in the way of writing your own full novel, so you can always say you’ve written a novel if you’ve written it with other people.”

It’s been done before by the group, in various, hilarious, ways. Once they did a ‘choose your own adventure’ type story, the “turn to page 63 as the monster attacks you” kind of thing. “I’m told,” says Dòmhnall, “that someone nearly failed their degree trying to edit that one!” Another time, they tried handing chapters on, so you would read the previous one and then write the next yourself.

How does the newest collaborative effort work? “This year we realized that the problem with writing a collaborative novel in term time is people have so much else on, so we tried to make the easiest, well, most encouraging, way of making a novel. We’ve done a sort of Arthurian quest narrative like the Holy Grail. It’s completely ridiculous, but great fun. The idea is that every character can hear a noise, but they don’t know the source of the noise, so the quest is to find the source, and you get a wonderful array of variations on that.” It does sound a lot of fun, but there is still the lingering question of how they managed to keep it a unified work. Dòmhnall explains, “The idea is that characters from some chapters will reappear in others – the books has involved a lot of talking to each other, trying to get things together. It’s not really much of a novel, in that there isn’t much of a central plot driving it – it’s the central theme and characters that unify it. The big gimmick is there’s one character who appears in every chapter who’s on his own quest in search of a yoghurt where you take the lid off and there’s no clod on the bottom of it – completely ridiculous!

This is primarily just a bit of fun!” This is what really comes across about the group: it’s a place where anyone can come, share their writing, not take themselves too seriously, and just do it for fun. “We’re quite evangelical about trying not to make it cool.” A lot of these things tend to be self-consciously hip – the Failed Novelists successfully avoid this, and in doing so actually sound incredibly cool and unselfconscious. Sometimes they have ‘juvenilia nights’ – sessions reading out their angsty teenage poetry, or awful childhood epics. Sometimes they get experimental – once a guy took Kubla Khan and entered it into Google Translate, putting it through every language until it finally came back to English. “It’s really strange – you do get this weird echo of Kubla Khan, you can tell it’s that, but it also sounds incredibly weird.”

And yet, this environment is also a great place to get real feedback on work. “Some creative writing groups in Oxford – not naming names – ask you to submit applications and things, which I just feel is almost a defence mechanism. The good thing about letting anybody turn up is complete strangers can criticize you and there’s none of that pressure which comes with being a cliquey tight-knit group of people sitting in an independent bookshop.”

The Failed Novelists sounds like a wonderfully relaxed, open place to share work and receive comments. In all, a really great idea – we’re definitely going along to the next meeting.