11/13/2022 0 Comments The fault in our stars rotten tomatoes![]() ![]() They have their own stuff to deal with.Īt no point does Gus demonstrate that he exists outside the bubble he’s created for Hazel and himself. They make promises instead of handing their significant others answers. They’re genetically engineered, but fallible. The problems may border on ridiculous - protect the vampire family! Save society from an oppressive government! Help ward off an evil witch sister! - but the dreamy-eyed hunks still acknowledge them. But even in silly dystopias, these fantasy characters have fantasy agendas of their own. They’re usually bossy they’re always impossibly handsome. Overly devoted boyfriends - Edward in Twilight, the Hunger Games boys, Ethan in Beautiful Creatures, Divergent’s Four - run rampant in modern YA adaptations. He’s just obsessed with her feelings, a sponge in need of water. Even when they’re trading cancer stories - Gus lost a leg to osteosarcoma and wears a prosthetic below his knee - Gus refuses to share too much of himself. Absolute confidence and charisma turn Gus into Ferris Bueller by way of The Master. Despite her insistence for informality, Gus often refers to her by her first and middle names, Hazel Grace, like a parent ordering a time-out. She gets a few words out, talking about her diagnostic history, before Gus interrupts: “Not your cancer story. In one of their first meetings, Gus asks Hazel about her life. Pretentious one-liners, seemingly culled from the worst of Facebook statuses, are his way of hitting an emotional chord without actually listening. There’s flirting - which is acceptable and necessary in the YA canon - and then there are moves, the kind of calculated lines that make you fear for the recipient. “Why are you staring at me?” Hazel says, in the first few seconds of meeting.ĭemeanor is key here. He even knows about metaphors - as he will tell you, every time he sticks an unlit cigarette between his mouth. He won’t accept her views on the “inevitability of human oblivion” because there’s a reason to live: him! He’s smooth, he’s compassionate, and he’s deep, man. Gus doesn’t wait for Hazel to stumble upon him he latches on after a group therapy meet-cute reveals her as a fatalist. Crossing Manic Pixie Dream Girl DNA with a teenage boy results in a fiercer predator than anything in Jurassic Park. Like Dobler, he won’t take no for an answer. In the opening narration, she swears her story isn’t one of those manufactured romances where everything can be “fixed by a Peter Gabriel song.” Sorry, but Gus is the physical embodiment of Lloyd Dobler holding up his stereo and blasting “In Your Eyes.”ĭid You Like The Fault in Our Stars? Here Are 7 More Books to Read Weber, Gus is everything Hazel promises he won’t be. ![]() But as characterized by Elgort, director Josh Boone, and 500 Days of Summer writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. I want to be clear that everything I’ve gleaned about him here comes from the Fault in Our Stars movie, not its source material. It’s possible Green’s original portrayal rounds out the character and grants Gus’s tin exterior with an actual heart instead of a pickup-artist handbook. Nathan Rabin famously dubbed Kirsten Dunst’s similarly flawless Elizabethtown character a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” an archetype existing “solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” Swap the genders and you have Gus, who is all-knowing, confident, and seemingly impervious to the throes of existence. He’s a bad boy, he’s a sweetheart, he’s a dumb jock, he’s a nerd, he’s a philosopher, he’s a poet, he’s a victim, he’s a survivor, he’s everything everyone wants in their lives, and he’s a fallacious notion of what we can actually have in our lives. It doesn’t take long for her to reciprocate. A creation of author John Green inhabited by actor Ansel Elgort, Gus falls fast and hard for cancer-stricken Hazel (Shailene Woodley). In fact, The Fault in Our Stars’ romantic interest has such a tight grasp of the unpredictable world resting beneath his feet, he may be an Edge of Tomorrow–like time-traveler, living out the 57th run of his same lifetime. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |