Just got back from it. As I feared, the movie is too rushed, too crammed, too truncated. Well, what did I expect with a 850 page book?

However, it does remind me of why I love the books. They talk about power and responsibility. The two are, as I'm constantly aware, dual sides of the coin. From my writing days (may they soon return!) I have the phrase 'money line,' that memorable phrase that demands a scene.

Actually, from The Elsewhere's mindset, a 'money line' is also a good warning it's a 'baby,' as in the phrase, 'you have to be ready to kill your babies.' The story drives the money lines, not the other way around. No matter how compelling the character, profound the pronouncement, whatever else the whatever, if it doesn't fit the story, it must be tossed overboard.

(At work, we call this sort of triage 'lifeboat drills.' It's the usual thought-exercise, applied to features or anything else. "If you're on a lifeboat with X, Y, and Z, and taking on water, what will go overboard first?")

The earlier movies have some great money lines. "It's not our powers that define us, it's our choices." This one has another insightful one, approximately "you are a good person, but we all have the darkness within us."

This time, we have the quandary that making the right choice will not always lead to a happy end. Sometimes, we make the right choice at the time, and hindsight in its merciless glare reveals the truth. Other times, the right choice merely leads to a smaller screwing.

Still, the point is that we made the right choice.