Aahana Swrup
‘The Spectacular Now,’ a 2013 coming-of-age film, charts an earnest narrative about a high schooler’s life in all its fickle grit and glory. Sutter Keely, a 17-year-old boy with a borderline alcohol problem hidden behind a devil-may-care attitude, lives his life in the now. Therefore, after his girlfriend, Cassidy, dumps him, he ends up in a stranger’s yard with a hangover—crossing paths with Aimee Finicky. A nice girl with a penchant for kindness, Aimee ends up changing Sutter’s life in ways that he is entirely unprepared for.
In the unlikely romance that blooms between the two teenagers, Sutter and Aimee naturally gravitate toward each other’s interests. For her part, Aimee’s hobbies lie on the more nerdier end of the spectrum—perfectly encapsulated by Gleaming Planet, a science-fiction manga. Naturally, fans may be compelled to muse whether or not Aimee’s beloved series is an actual, real-life comic book.
Gleaming Planet was Created for the Film
In ‘The Spectacular Now,’ Gleaming Planet, the manga, enters the narrative simply to reinforce Aimee’s nerdy personality, establishing a basic cornerstone of her character. Showcasing a character’s interests is the most efficient way for a film to convey certain defining factors to the audience without textually identifying them as a cliched archetype. As such, through Gleaming Planet, the narrative expertly shows Aimee’s enthusiastic interest in a sci-fi manga instead of outwardly telling the viewers that she has nerdy interests.
Consequently, the same exhibits Aimee’s distinct personality compared to Sutter’s life-of-the-party persona. However, the manga returns to serve another character-defining purpose—this time, for the boy, as he buys the comic book to check it out for himself. Even though Sutter hasn’t previously showcased any interest in the sci-fi genre or comic books in general, he instinctually makes an effort to learn about it in light of his new friendship with Aimee. Likewise, he also introduces her to other Gleaming Planet fans from their school afterward, again seamlessly depicting his natural tendency to care for other people.
Therefore, despite its momentary on-screen presence, the Gleaming Planet manga ends up becoming one of the most productive tools in subtly sculpting the central characters. However, the comic book exists solely in the film’s fictitious narrative and holds no real-life counterpart. Due to its minimal but prominent significance in the narrative, the film fictionalizes a comic book for itself rather than referencing an actual manga from reality. By doing so, the book’s relevance remains exclusively tied to the film without any distractions.
The Gleaming Planet that the audience sees on the screen is actually the work of Illustrator/animator Michael Manning, who came up with the manga for ‘The Spectacular Now.’ He designed and scripted a six-page story segment for the physical prop—complete with a cast of original characters. As such, the comic book featured in the film is entirely confined to the cinematic world around it and holds no connections to a real-life manga. Ultimately, it remains a tool to introduce the intricacies of Aimee’s character and later quietly underlines Sutter’s thoughtful nature.
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