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“The People will think what I tell them to
think” - Citizen Kane’s
Long Dominance
“If you come at the king, you best not miss.”
-Omar,
The Wire (a
TV series many people consider one of the greatest ever)
There are always stories about the culture that
endures.
These stories can wax and wane as time passes, can
depend entirely on one (mis)quote or half-assed comment that sounds good
and is picked up as a fact which the entire bedrock of a legend can be
built upon.
Citizen Kane was always lauded.
Citizen Kane was a box office dud.
Citizen Kane was tepidly received at the time.
Citizen Kane was loathed and marginalized by newspaper baron
William Randolph Hearst.
Citizen Kane wasn’t really appreciated until the European new wave
of the fifties and sixties.
Citizen Kane was praised for so long that it went from being
overrated to now somehow being underrated (and will likely undergo a
similar reversal in the future).
For all that, it is without a doubt the oldest film
that still gets bandied about as the greatest of all time.
And yeah, it helps that no one who watches it gets to
the credits and announces that it totally sucked (Maybe not everyone will
say ‘greatest ever’, but it’s not gonna make any ‘worst ever’ lists,
that’s for damn sure).
Citizen Kane is all the more impressive when you take into
consideration that it’s Orson Welles’ directorial debut.
In interviews decades later, Welles credits his
ignorance in how films were supposed to be made for taking risks and
chances with how this film was put together. Naturally a forceful,
inspiring personality, his crew rallied around this energy, and worked
hard to deliver creative answers when Welles asked ‘why can’t it be done
this way?’. Consequently the result was both exquisitely crafted for its
time as well as having one giant foot in the future of cinematic
storytelling.
‘Show, don’t tell’ is a popular adage for literature,
and while it seems obvious that it should apply to a visual medium like
film, its early decades were a whole lot of telling, even after the
wide-scale inclusion of sound. Captions for exposition and dialogue were
the necessary standard during the silent era, but even when you could hear
people talk, they were spouting exposition or sharing their feelings with
the vocabulary of an average teenager. And part of that last observation
was due to the fact that compared to dignified and erudite live theatre,
films were still the new fad on the block, supposedly appealing to the
unwashed masses so hey, who cares if all the actors said exactly what they
felt and what they were going to do, and chewed the scenery hard while
doing it.
The transformation of cinema
from hack to high art began before Kane (see Dali and Bunuel’s eye-slicing
shocker, A Chien Andalou)
and would not reach it’s full form until the embrace of European
experimental films of the fifties and sixties. So
Citizen Kane
sits right in the middle.
Before it, look to
Birth of a Nation
(the style and not the odious racist content) and
Battleship Potemkin
(and the famed
Mise-en-scene is the term for showing particular shots
to indicate what happened during a scene.
A close-up shot of a fired gun and then a long shot of a body falling into
a ditch tells you that someone has just been…shot, even if there’s a not
a…shot of a bullet hitting them in the chest.
Having the viewer quickly
put these two moment together to come to an (obvious) conclusion can be
done in very subtle and creative ways, and There is great level of
subtlety to Kane
that can easily be taken for granted today. Not treating the viewer as a
child, but believing that they can grasp quick temporal jumps back and
forth, imperfect narrators, and appreciate how lighting can create
atmosphere, which infers how you are supposed to feel about a scene.
Oh, and ceilings. Most films were not shot from
low-angles at this point, so sets never bothered with designing ceilings,
just walls and floors, because that’s all that was needed.
So yeah, what did Kane give to the history of cinema?
Ceilings.
But all this added to the realism of the set, which
bled into the realism of the performances. Some of the acting is wooden,
but still a huge step up from typical 1940s wooden.
Welles himself kills it as the titular character,
especially as he has to play Kane as a young, middle-aged and old man. His
sonorous confident voice as a twenty five year old gives way to a snarl as
he gets older, but even when he doesn’t say a word he is killing it, his
steely glare conveying so much, meaning the dialogue isn’t hitting you
over the head. There is so much brilliance in the scene where he is
clapping for his mistress’ performance onstage long after the rest of the
audience has stopped (and the crew reviewing her performance just by
pinching their nose with an excellent camera climb to the rafters), trying
to impose his will on the world around him any way he can.
Much of the cast was pinched from the Mercury theatre
company which Welles himself founded, meaning the actors benefitted
greatly from the familiarity with one another. They fall into the roles so
easily, even if one of them is always out of frame. Never truly seeing the
face of Jerry Thompson, the investigative reporter, means the viewer is
that much more easily thrust into the role of mystery solver. From your
perspective, you are the one who is interviewing all these people, and
from this their recollections come alive because the flashbacks are
smoothly done.
The make-up is excellent, which should never be scoffed
at, because the film spans decades and has characters age convincingly
before Stan Winston or CG effects.
Meanwhile, special effects at the time meant cutting
holes in the floor so you can put the camera setup inside it and shoot
from an angle looking up at the actors, or lining up a shot so that action
could be seen inside a home as well as outside through a window.
Of course it’s easy to take these things for granted
that long before the Steadicam, film cameras were so big and cumbersome
that any sort of tracking shot literally required tracks to be laid down
and the camera rig be placed on a cart with wheels (a dolly).
The ‘Sorkin walking and talking’ trope as the camera
follows the characters down a hallway or along a street was impeccably
done in this film, as using a trove of theatre actors, they could memorize
loads of dialogue as the camera moved around them (or them around it, or a
bit of both).
It made all of Welles’ films
feel more lively, more modern, less of a stage play (despite using stage
actors) and more of a story using on (comparatively) rapid cuts of time
and space.
Kane
even had an early twist ending, making this one of the first ‘spoiler
alerts’ in modern pop culture, and it’s best known line is almost a meme:
‘Rosebud’.
Like
Hamlet, Heart of Darkness, Las Meninas
and Sticky
Fingers, anything deemed ‘good’ by the
right group of people (critics, scholars, super fans who know all about
Hollow Knight)
can be (over)analyzed by asking the question, ‘but what does it mean?’,
and refusing to accept the simple answer that this movie is, ‘about an old
rich guy with regrets’.
There’s been eighty years of
contemporary takes on Citizen Kane,
and they range from a dominant ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’ moralizing
that overlooks the ability the wealthy have to control public discourse
(media, politics) while ostentatiously flaunting their wealth in other
ways (arts) to a reinforcement of patriarchal bullshit, and exposing the
insecurities of the male ego and how rich men try to exploit everyone they
can. There’s also the naked admittance of the lottery-ticket luck that is
the American Dream, how the passage of time beats us all down, and showing
how the recollection of past events can vary slightly from person to
person, inviting the post-modernist lack of objective truth not only in
art but human experience itself.
Of course today it is easy
to watch Kane
and note how much and how little has changed, or how much things did
change but now has apparently gone back to what they were a century ago in
terms of socioeconomics. And that time gap is huge, especially considering
that the technological breakthroughs of the 20th and 21st centuries have
altered our perspective of cultural history and what was normal and
groundbreaking decades earlier. It certainly helps that this film
epitomizes these changes by having it take place over many years, showing
the changes in technology (telegraph then radio then film), the newspaper
industry (local to national) and politics over the first few decades of
the 20th century.
Is it too much to expect
that someone born in the 21st century would appreciate
Kane the same
way film aficionados do?
There were certainly people
who thought very little of Citizen Kane
(and film in general compared to traditional forms of fine/high art) when
it arrived in 1941, as well as the years afterward.
If you don’t know much about
film history, there’s not much difference between how
Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Vertigo, Tokyo Story,
or The Godfather
are viewed as shorthand for ‘greatest film ever’ except that black and
white means extra old.
How we appreciate ‘the greatest’ has changed so much in
the last few decades because it has become easier than ever to immediately
cue up the greatest movie/album/artwork/etc, and become aware of the
discourse surrounding it and other worthy candidates for the title.
Finally everyone can truly be a critic, and register
their opinion on social media for all to see even before the credits roll
(with the only three legit reactions being: ‘best ever’, ‘overrated’, and
‘sucks’).
Sight & Sound magazine -
famed for its restrained approach of doing a ‘best ever films’ list once
every ten years by polling critics and filmmakers alike - has picked
Citizen Kane
so often that it’s more exciting when they don’t. And while the
aforementioned other films are familiar back-ups (along with
Vertigo),
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce,
1080 Bruxelles
arriving on the top of the 2022 list was a wonderful surprise. It not only
highlights the oft-overlooked genre of slow cinema and minimalist
mocku-drama (which sounds derogatory but is not meant to be), but also
reminds us that film is not just a playground for straight white men.
Let another film carry the
burden of ‘best ever’. Heck, not being the tops might actually help
Kane’s
reputation as it slightly lowers expectations going in for new viewers.
As the past fades away, there are fewer and fewer
historical events and cultural material that are kept in the public’s
consciousness. Of course the World Wars will be remembered by the masses
for a long time, but the Spanish civil war that happened a few years prior
WW2? Not so much. Similarly, unless you’re a student or scholar of theatre
or literature, naming a dramatist from over one hundred years ago other
than Shakespeare might be difficult, and that’s not because you’re an
uneducated slob. A vast majority of people consume what is being made at
present, and it’s this immediacy and relevancy to the moment that people
unite behind.
Even with having technology that allows us to keep
various records of the past to a greater degree than ever before (just
saying the word ‘Wikipedia’), it doesn’t mean we are going to be aware of
every single artistic movement even in just one popular medium, let alone
movies, tv, music and books combined.
Which is why we have to parse, to narrow, to conflate.
‘This’ is the album of the year, ‘that’ is the book of the decade. People
have time to cherry pick a lot of different mediums or do a deep dive into
one. Not only when it comes to the amount of - in this case - movies we
will talk about for general film history, but how we talk about them.
The accurate summation of
Citizen Kane’s
reaction at the time it was released in 1941: The critics thought it was
very good, but didn’t light up the box office, and that latter point meant
a lot more for the future career of its creator than its critical
reception.
Orson Welles wasn’t finished
with Hollywood by any means, but everything after
Kane would
involve clashing with the studios and investors that were willing to work
with him (read: give him money to make a movie).
The Magnificent Ambersons
(which he wrote and directed) was filmed and released only a year later,
and the studio refused to give him final cut, removing an hour of footage
before its release (giving it a ninety minute runtime). That it still
remains an excellent 1940s drama (although feeling rushed and disjointed
because of that missing hour) and also holds up today shows that
Kane was no
fluke. It also shows that even back then if you didn’t bring in the money,
the studio is going to be poking its nose into your art at every turn.
It would not get any easier for Orson as the decade
progressed.
For films like
Touch of Evil
Welles had to fight with executives just to get his own cut into the
theatres, and the fact that it was once again well received but wasn’t
commercially successful meant he was being under appreciated by studios
and audiences alike.
In the fifties and sixties,
while his legacy grew worldwide largely due to Kane’s ever growing
critical standing, he found himself reliant on European funding for his
projects (such as 1962’s excellent The
Trial, based on Kafka’s short story), as
few of them were profitable in America.
As he ambled into his golden
years, he was reduced to taking voiceover work for films like
A History of Western Civilization: Part One
and
Transformers
and appearing in commercials for wine (which became meme-worthy decades
after his death, which goes to show that no one knows how your legacy
might shake out).
Meanwhile,
Citizen Kane
is becoming representative of the black and white era of film because
that’s how we are compartmentalizing that past. Even though that lack of
colouration continued far into the sixties with films like
Dr Strangelove
and Persona
and there were already colourized films before Kane itself, like
Wizard of Oz
and Gone With The Wind,
muddying the waters for what Kane
can quickly represent for those who only have tik-tok time to learn
something.
It’s old, but it’s important old. It is old that still
strangely feels fresh and new, which is pretty much what we look for when
we try to describe something as timeless. It says something about that
period of moviemaking, even if it never intended to represent the many
years and styles of film that came after. Even with all the egos in art
(and Orson Welles’ in particular), it’s impossible to be certain that your
work will come to define so much of it. But when it does - and with it still being lauded over eighty years after release, Citizen Kane damn well does - there’s no doubt, shame, or problem with being called ‘The Greatest’.
How Has Hayao
Miyazaki Lived?
Magic isn’t real, but it is necessary.
And
as far as figurative and literal magic in cinema, forget everyone else,
Hayao Miyazaki is the most consistently brilliant director of the last
forty years.
Kubrick only made two films after 1980,
Spielberg has a great mix of pop culture blockbusters and critically
acclaimed dramas, Tarantino twisted genres flicks in super cool ways, Von
Trier can be creepy, uncomfortable and heartbreaking all within the same
scene, Scorsese’s brilliant films is slightly tempered by many simply-good
one in between.
Yet no one touches
There is an almost maddening level of control he exudes over the project,
even compared to the control freaks listed above. He writes and directs it
all (and not all of the directors listed above do both) and oversees every
frame, sometimes making changes himself throughout the process. There is
nothing out of the director’s control, and that is the great plus and
hideous minus of animation all at once.
Indelible, impossible images have come define
Two
young girls waiting at a bus stop beside a giant but friendly looking
woodland monster.
A
rotund pilot on a beach, sleeping soundly with a magazine over his face
with the sea-faring propellor plane beside him.
A
magical, towering bathhouse coming to life at dusk.
A
mobbled, medieval-steampunk castle crawling across the countryside.
He
starts with illustrations that interest him long before any concept of
story, meaning part of the early process is connecting images A to B with
story beats.
For
him, the narrative is not as important as the image, because it creates a
feel and atmosphere, a liveliness to his animation that is lacking not
only in other animated films from his homeland, but from across the world,
whether hand drawn or computer generated.
But the process of getting that from inside his
outside to inside a movie theatre can be slow, and might require a ton of
cigarettes, as the documentary - 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki - has shown.
It is a portrait of the man developing and directing 2008’s
Ponyo over
several years, and sometimes shows him pointedly but politely criticizing
(yes, such a balance is possible) his artists over the stiltedness of
their work.
In what sounds like an affront to the overall
filmmaking process because you hear of
You never feel like you know what’s going to
happen next in a
This can mean wasted days of work when it’s decided that a change must be
made to a character’s action, and wasted weeks when the decision is to
change the character’s personality or role in the story.
By letting such important aspects of the film’s
overall presentation ebb and flow during its creation,
Consequently, the plot twists never feel
forced, because
There is no fight against an evil witch at the
end of Spirited Away,
but a crooked guessing game that doesn’t seem to have any trick or reveal
to it. Chihiro/Sen has simply grown and matured enough to answer
correctly.
While
Princess Mononoke has a wild climactic
sequence with several narrative threads weaving together, the ending
itself is ambiguous.
Howl’s Moving Castle
ends with the two main characters falling in love, and the end of war is
almost an afterthought.
Porco Rosso
has an intentionally comic fistfight followed by an ambiguous trip into
the clouds.
Going from one extreme to the other tonally or emotionally can sometimes
be devastating for the opening or ending statement of a film, but Miyazaki
pulls it off time and time again, because it always feels logical within
the world, and never plodding, tacked on, or excessive.
Studio Ghibli films are the healthiest ones out there because there ain't
an ounce of fat on any of them. When it lingers on seemingly minute
moments (characters eating, looking bored, putting on clothes, or dancing
around a room) it lingers with purpose, while on the opposite end of that
spectrum, exposition is handled deftly, with sensible explanations given
to characters who would be genuinely unfamiliar what was happening at the
moment, putting them in the shoes of the audience effortlessly.
This means that for audiences young and old,
they have captured their imagination around the world for four decades,
and it has to be acknowledged that part of this is because in 1996, Disney
became the chief Western distributor for Ghibli films. That created the
odd alliance where you had that powerful promotional arm pushing films as
if they were as family friendly as
Beauty and the Beast and
Aladdin. So
of course the first film released under the deal was
Princess Mononoke,
which feature amputations and decapitations in battle scenes within the
first fifteen minutes (and promotional posters with the titular Princess
looking stern with blood on her face). VHS tapes and DVDs of Miyazaki’s
entire oeuvre - right back to 1984’s
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind -
were traded like gold, because it bares reminding that not so long ago
there was a finite amount of physical copies of media to go around.
Crediting
Sailor Moon,
Pokémon, or
Naruto
to get people into anime in their formative years means whenever they came
across the work of Studio Ghibli, the potential for transfixation was
high, even if it wasn’t as simple to find as today.
Distributions rights got even more complicated early in this century,
being divvied up by different companies for theatrical, home video, and
streaming, with Disney bowing out in 2017 (with some exceptions).
Today, streaming a Ghibli film is either on
Netflix or Max (formerly HBO), depending on your where you live, but at
least they are easy to find and enjoy, because
But
why is he not recognized in the same breath as the other directors
mentioned at the opening of this article?
Because animation.
Like Dangerfield, it gets no respect.
It’s still largely considered a genre for children, and admittedly most
are still certainly aimed at that demographic.
Even the few animated works - whether film or tv/streaming series - aimed
at adults are typically only so because of the same reasons horror or
actions films are (violence and maybe some sex), not because of any sort
of more high-brow, thoughtful, challenging content.
Which is a damn shame because by the very nature of being animated make
these films come off as experimental because it can more easily challenge
audience assumptions of what this form of film can offer in terms of
narrative, theme, and style.
Spirited Away
won the 2002 Oscar for Best Animated Feature (it should have been
considered for best feature, but as noted above animated films have always
been seen as a lower form of art by the academy, and that will always be a
scar and asterisk to its pronouncements). It is the best introduction to
the joy, beauty and originality of anime, let alone
It
seamlessly blends the relatable experiences of childhood blossoming into
maturity with a dazzling fantasy world that feels endlessly deep and real.
By only seeing a sliver of the nameless magical world the bathhouse exists
in, it makes it all the enticing as you want to imagine what every other
character’s life entails, what other villages or towns might exist at all
the other stops on the mysterious tram line that connects this strange
places that mirrors our own.
It is the
Wizard of Oz of the 21st century, and
deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence
But Princess
Mononoke is better.
It
is a joy, a tragedy, an adventure, a message, a warning, a myth that has
been retold for hundreds of years. The city versus the pastoral, ancient
magical forests versus the encroachment of industrializing human
civilization.
At the wild climax of this movie, you are
rooting for practically everyone to succeed, be they human, beast, or
freaky ever-growing spirit that is dripping poison everywhere. Ashitaka
takes on the Herculean task of trying to save everyone, to save both
sides, to believe that compromise is possible, a position that becomes all
the more valuable in modern society because it seems so hopelessly
unlikely. It reflects
Even if he had only made these two films, his
name would be etched in the halls of movie history, but instead the rest
of his filmography is filled with so many more nearly-as-great
masterpieces, from Nausciaa
onwards (although his take on 1979’s
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro
shows his mad skills were quickly maturing).
Regardless of the stakes – painted not just by dialogue, but mood and
atmosphere – time is set aside for letting the characters enjoy themselves
and explore, like when the titular Nausicaa journey’s underground and
dances and let the dust fall on her like snow.
The film is based on his own manga, and while
Nausicaa
is a narrow re-telling of the printed story by that point, the series
continued for another decade before
Critics have noted that during this period, his
film output was much more positive and upbeat, as if his more dour and
serious viewpoints was poured into
Nausicaa. That the first film he made
after the manga ended was the super-serious
Mononoke
gives credence to that.
Like
Mononoke’s Ashitaka, the Nausicaa is
royalty, trying to keep war from engulfing a society that has already gone
post-apocalyptic, and both of their journeys involve divine intervention,
where prophecies - whether good or bad - inevitably shape their destinies.
Their relationship with nature is much more patient and understanding than
the people around them.
And
while Mononoke has the horrifying headless forest spirit to show its
destructive side, Nausicaa has it beat with the nuclear weapon infused
giant cyborgs that are constantly melting when switched on.
Themes of ancient/futuristic technology run
amok is seen a more light-hearted way in the follow up to
Nausicaa,
Castle in the Sky.
The brilliant action sequences, the resurrected
robots that are both emotionlessly violent and overflowing with
generosity, the wordless comedic moments, none of these aspects would have
such an impact if the characters themselves were not so well designed and
presented. Pazu and Sheeta are bright-eyed orphans whose families
ultimately play outsized roles in the adventure they are about to
undertake. Scenes of the two of the cooking and eating breakfast or
spending time in the crow’s nest add relatability and depth that many
movies - animated or not - tend to overlook or eschew.
Going the complete other way in tone,
My Neighbour Totoro
is the best movie ever where the only antagonist is vague uncertainty, the
story being nothing more than the depiction of slow but rewarding
childhood discovery. Children playing and coming across a giant teddy
bear-raccoon hybrid can also sound like a horror flick, even if it’s the
opposite (and when you try to describe the Cat-bus, it’s like a
psychedelic film). And while Totoro steals the show when he figures out
how an umbrella works, don’t discount the importance of Kanta, a local boy
from the village who perfectly encapsulates the complication of being ten
years old, with both noble and idiotic qualities.
Growing up is explored in more maudlin ways in
Kiki’s Delivery Service.
Like Totoro
it starts with a child starting life in a new place (which will also be
seen in Spirited Away
and The Boy and the Heron),
only this time she is a friendly young witch with a cheeky talking cat.
And instead of a grand, fantastical adventure, she works at a bakery and
as a delivery person. While she makes friends, she misses her family, and
when her cat stops talking to her, it’s sadder than what happens to Old
Yeller.
Changing the tone and theme like a record
scratch, 1992’s Il Porco Rosso
is not just about a cursed WWI fighter pilot
with the face of a pig. What sounds like a bizarre war film is actually a
romp through peaceful southern
Violent battle in the skies has been replaced by amusing sky pirates and
using aircraft for racing, while at the same time portraying Marco as a
comic and tragic figure, who is both charming and still lamenting the loss
of his friends years ago in battle.
Howl’s Moving Castle
is a story about one woman learning how to make important personal
decisions before her life literally passes her by, but it also embraces
the horrific idea of a powerful wizard playing both sides in a war between
two nations. How simple to switch from one to the other is seen in Sophie
trying the magic town-switching door in Howl’s castle (also an early sign
that her youthful curiosity is still hiding within her).
Ponyo
is another take on The Little Mermaid that is both more down to earth and
fantastical than both the Hans Christian Andersen and Disney versions of
the tale. It features a regular family (Lisa being upset that her husband
is stuck at work and flopping on the bed is a wondeful touch of human
behaviour that brings the character to life), and an old folks’ home full
of friendly and grumpy octogenarians alike.
On
the other hand, there is the magical parentage of Ponyo herself, with the
sea-goddess ‘Gran Mamare’, who is the beautiful and caring ‘fairy
mother-god’, and her wizard-like father Fujimoto, playing the perfect
not-villain, balancing out sympathetic motivation and responsibility with
comedic moments as he tries to ‘rescue’ her from the land.
Yes, Ponyo chafes at his overprotective parenting, but at no point are
Fujimoto’s actions truly vindictive or malignant, which is why a
harmonious resolution is never in doubt, but the journey to it is still
effervescent, especially with a magic-infused toy boat.
A lack of true enemies is another feature of
Knowing the outcome of the war can colour all
perspectives of the events during it, but
Like in
Mononoke, the exploration of the beauty
and danger in technology (aviation in particular, and even Studio Ghibli
is named after an airplane from the Second World War) is presented here in
a more grounded sense, adding another more dramatic, mature and restrained
dimension to Miyazaki oeuvre.
Upon its release, he announced his retirement, and consequently the film
world issued obituaries for his mindbending list of wonderful films, that
at the time were still not discussed or viewed by enough of the world
because of this stigma towards animation, anime especially.
But in the ten years since, the appreciation
for the medium has grown immensely (in tandem with manga), which is why
works like Attack on Titan, One Piece,
and
Demon Slayer are not just popular, but
worth talking about and are influencing the wider culture as well (from
merch to conventions to academic papers to how NFL football teams promote
themselves). For Generation Z, anime is as big as Marvel, while offering
much deeper and nuanced fare that creates an appreciation that will last a
lifetime.
And it was in the middle of the decade since
The Wind Rises
that the gears began grinding again at Ghibli, because
It
was originally intended to debut around the time of the 2020 Tokyo
Olympics, but even if Covid didn’t derail that deadline, it was unlikely
going to be met.
Rushing was/is anathema to the whole point of a Studio Ghibli film, in
contrast with how anime has typically been made in the past (very, very
quickly and of dubious quality).
With it finally being given a summer 2023 release in July, it meant old
and new fans had waited a decade, giving them a chance to re-gorge on his
past successes and raise expectations for what was to come.
How
Do You Live?
was met with critical and commercial success when it arrived in
It’s a true mix of what critics and fans can
expect from
As
one can expect, the presentation is immaculate. It is a beautiful,
visually stunning film, with hand-drawn animation being dominant and
computer generated effects added as a flourish. The contrast in character
design between the ‘real’ world and the one Mahito’s enters through the
ancient tower on his family’s rural property fluctuates (sometimes the
granny are overtly garish, sometimes the ridiculous creatures are much
more life-like and relatable).
The
music - once again by Joe Hisaishi - is incredible, setting a tone both
playful and triumphant.
And those two words are perfect to encapsulate
The Boy and the Heron,
which attempts to encapsulate
The novel ‘How Do You Live?’ is given to Mahito
at one point and its parallels of a boy learning about adulthood through
his Uncle is quite clear. And layered on top of this is ‘city boy has wild
adventure in the forest’, which is not a new narrative, and
Mahito’s journey to save his step-mother means meeting other people in his
life in different ways when he finally journeys to this new world, a clear
echo of our own.
There’s no narrative handholding, either, as your brain might get
scrambled a bit trying to realize that he is interacting with a youthful
pirate version of an older woman, and magical version of his (dead) mother
at a different time in her life, when she was closer in age to him.
This idea of the tower and its contents
existing on such a conflating or random time scale is extremely
intriguing, and like the wider world beyond the supernatural bathhouse in
Spirited Away,
it is never explained. Which is not to its detriment, but rather a
wonderful tease for our own imagination.
Critics have effortlessly interpreted that
Mahito’s elderly great uncle who is keeping this magical world continually
existing by carefully moving some blocks around is a representation of
While a happy ending for the most part is all
but guaranteed, one can certainly ask if it was all in Mahito’s head. And
yes, once again, this an overused trope in fantasy and out, but we
shouldn’t be upset or disappointed by that, because we got to live
And
that’s magic.
Notes
(https://www.polygon.com/c/2024/1/22/24034466/anime-is-huge-and-we-finally-have-numbers-to-prove-it)
2001: A Space
Odyssey’s
Plea for Delayed Gratification
Nobody waits or wallows in films anymore. Nobody seems to have the time to
waste time.
Even
when it comes to Oscar bait - and movies are rapidly being slotted into
that genre or superhero franchises - a brooding shot of a character
looking over a city or country sunset is meant to be overloaded with
meaning because there isn’t a minute to spare for it to mean nothing much
at all.
Much
of the power of 2001: A Space
Odyssey (produced, directed and co-written by that good film dude
Stanley Kubrick) is that the first half of the movie is so slow it feels
less like a sci-fi film, and more like a documentary. It slides into the
horror/psychedelic/experimental genre so subtly that it just blows your
mind as it goes on.
It is
an epic tale of humanity’s evolution that for many filmgoers was (and will
almost certainly continue to be) the gateway to non-blockbuster,
artistic-bordering-on-the-avant-garde cinema. No other movie is able to be
full of awe-inspiring effects and interpretive narrative and imagery while
remaining a pop culture touchstone for so many decades after its initial
release.
But
it's no surprise that people find it slow. It is slow. And it's supposed
to be slow. The name alone suggests its grandiosity and scale.
2001 wants you to brood over it, even as the characters in it are
not doing that exciting at all, and instead are living in the most mundane
of ways, at least until they are forced to confront a shifting reality
writ large.
And
it's not just slow for modern audiences, who are seen as expecting
action-upon-action-upon-action for their cinematic faire. People found the
movie slow when it was released in 1968. Even critics found the movie
slow, giving mixed reviews. For a first-time viewer in 2023, they might
think there was a mislabelling. What’s pitched as a sci-fi film created by
cobbling together bits of Arthur C Clarke stories (who helped Kubrick with
the screenplay), starts very differently.
Part
One - the twenty minute opening Dawn of Man sequence - feels so much like
a nature documentary that the only thing missing is David Attenborough’s
dignified narration. Kubrick’s demand for perfection in trying to make it
seem like two million years ago means no hand-holding at all. Here are
your ancestors, sitting around, eating bugs, and fighting over a watering
hole, because for them life was truly nasty, brutish and short.
At
least until a large black rectangle shows up with an eerie, shrieking
chorus telling us that this is very important.
How
would a bunch of apes react to such a thing?
Well,
with fear and awe, and it seems pretty damn realistic.
The
joke in early 1969 was that the Academy gave the ‘best makeup’ Oscar to
Planet of the Apes instead of
2001 because they thought the
primates in the latter film were actually apes.
A
little after touching the black monolith one primate playing around with
animal bones internally asked the question: why just play with a femur
when you can bludgeon your enemies with it?
And
after some dramatic testing soundtracked to Strauss, there is the glorious
military victory from our ancestors butchering a rival group of apes to
make the watering hole truly theirs. Toss up your bone weapon in triumph!
Skip
a few million years in one cut.
In
Part Two, the sound of apes screeching is replaced by beautiful classical
musical pieces that effortlessly convey the casual simplicity of
travelling above the planet in the (then) future of 2001AD. Despite this,
the film still has a documentary vibe, as it’s not hard to imagine that
the graceful ships in space are like whales slowly twisting and turning
underwater.
Interspersed with incredible spacecraft flying and docking sequences is
pleasant, yawn-inducing small talk, as modern humans are now the subject
of this fly-on-the-wall, slice-of-life perspective, and we are peering in
on their daily routines.
Compared to the apes having to fight for survival in the first segment,
the humans we meet in the year 2001 above the earth are civilized,
respectful, largely unemotional…and boring as fuck.
They
make a conspiracy about a lunar pandemic to deflect the discovery of a
buried second alien monolith as exciting as a morning meeting about
switching email servers.
In
Part Three, we’re on a spaceship flying through the solar system just as
so many people have dreamed of doing, and it’s so dull and automated that
three of the five crew members were able to spend the trip in cryo-sleep.
Until
Bowman has to kill HAL no one seems to break a sweat, even when Poole is
doing his jogging exercises (incredible practical special effects and
camera setup).
The
implication is that we have domesticated ourselves compared to our primate
ancestors, and are politely proud of our accomplishments.
Take
your time, comment on sandwiches, play some chess, celebrate your
birthday, there is no rush, no reason to kick up a fuss and screech.
That’s beneath our species now.
In
fact, even the more complex duties like medical response and piloting
spacecraft has been handed over to Mr. HAL 9000 himself.
It
works great!
Until
it doesn’t.
And
while trying to figure out why the artificial intelligence tried to kill
everyone on the ship (and almost succeeded) seems like the most logically
thing to do next, you can forget that.
A
recording plays right after Bowman deactivates HAL in heartbreaking
fashion that explains the actual reason for the mission to Jupiter: the
monolith on the moon sent a powerful radio signal in the direction of that
planet.
So of
course that recording is the last bit of dialogue we hear in the whole
film (where we’re goin’ Dave, we don’t need no words!). Bowman takes the
pod out and goes towards the monolith, which suddenly becomes a gateway
to…your guess is as good anyone’s (in the Mad Magazine spoof - ‘201
Minutes of a Space Idiocy’ - the star gate sequence is explained as
‘crashing through 105 floors of the Jupiter Museum of Modern Art’), but
boy is it still trippy and far out today.
When
released in 1968 - a time when hippie culture was at its apex - there were
stories of some chemically enhanced theatregoers running up to the screen
claiming that they were seeing god during the five-minute special effects
sequence.
The
end of 2001 can be endlessly
discussed and debated (although reading the book really narrows what
exactly Clarke and Kubrick were aiming at) and that’s one of the reasons
why it has withstood the test of time in ways other films don’t. Because
it’s not clear, theories abound.
As
noted above, the performances of the actors are perfectly forgettable and
the lines they utter are blandly perfunctory. And unlike so many other
films - including other ones directed by Kubrick - this is by design.
The
collective achievements of humanity - the designs of complex
interplanetary technology, the music of a full orchestra, artificial
intelligence - are the stars of the show, and they are ultimately upstaged
by what one loosely assumes is the collective consciousness of beings of
even greater intelligence and ability than our own.
Bowman travels to…somewhere else…as the representative of all humanity,
after destroying one of humanity’s then greatest achievements: artificial
intelligence. Perhaps a reading of that act is the importance of humanity
not relying on what they created to make their life supposedly easier,
that only the real thing is permitted to meet other real things.
Memo
to self: Don’t create a tool better than yourself (some food for thought
for all the current AI developments out there).
It’s
been posited that HAL began to malfunction because he was morally torn
(assuming it is possible for an artificial intelligence to feel that
emotion, so maybe it manifests itself as a glitch) between two directives:
Serve the crew of the Discovery One to the best of his ability, and keep
quiet about the true meaning of this mission that cannot be revealed at
this time.
Since
he couldn’t do both at the same time, he went on the attack, turning this
‘documentary’ into a horror film in only a few minutes by killing four
people.
Whereas the sounds of humans breathing in their space suits was initially
meant to be an accurate depiction of spacewalks, the breathing takes on a
more sinister and claustrophobic quality once this film genre rears its
cold, robotic non-head.
Similarly to plenty of horror films, Bowman’s survival was a bit of luck
in the sense that HAL could not control his space pod to crash it or blow
it up. And even though Bowman getting back aboard via the air lock (and
without a helmet) seemed far-fetched, Kubrick consulted with engineers and
doctors to make sure that it was possible to survive in zero gravity for
at least a few seconds.
But getting back into the ship and killing of HAL was necessary, both
thematically - man must destroy its creation that rose up against him -
and narratively, because the AI’s deactivation triggers a video to play of
the boring scientist we met earlier, explaining the true reason for this
trip.
In
the film we move right from Bowman hearing this (and having just destroyed
his former robot friend and serial killer), to him in his space pod
approaching a very big monolith that becomes the Star-Gate.
No
idea how long Bowman took to relax and take this all in (HAL had
recommended he take a stress pill and think about not killing him), but
he’s quite the big deal astronaut to look past the violence and lies and
get the job done.
And
this particular job - which is probably not explicitly stated on the
astronaut application process - is a real mindfuck.
Five
minutes of psychedelic special effects trippiness that would really blow
the minds of audiences in the late sixties, and is still damn impressive
today because no one makes big-budget movies like this (MGM was fretting
as production went over budget and blew past deadlines back throughout
1966 and 1967, whereas today a nine figure budget would come with very
close executive oversight right from the start).
Michael Benson’s account of the making of the film – sensibly titled
‘Space Odyssey’ - goes into exhaustive detail of the technological leaps
and builds the film made, and just how much of a ‘see what works’
environment Kubrick fostered (which was both liberating and frustrating at
the same time to his very large and sometimes impatient crew).
One
thing that they couldn’t figure out was how to properly depict
extraterrestrials or higher dimensional beings…so they didn’t.
Bowman’s trip beyond the stars ends in a stately apartment with bright
tile floors and no windows, with the inference being that whatever
entities designed the monolith and led humanity on a less-than-merry chase
across the solar system (and galaxy), they knew finding something somewhat
familiar would lessen the chance of a total meltdown of the traveller (if
they even survived the trip).
The
apartment is void of anything that was invented in the twentieth century
(no television, no phone, no fridge), suggesting a simpler form of
existence (although certainly not pastoral).
It is
a sign that modern technology is to be shed.
First
HAL, and then his space pod, then his space suit.
Technology gets you through the door (gate), but mustn’t stay in the room.
A
room that might be nothing more than an elegant looking cage, complete
with a hot meal and a change of clothes. What Bowman is to do here and for
how long is not certain (surprise!). But like at other moments, this film
has no problem taking it slow, and we watch him eat dinner
unceremoniously.
Then
time changes at a glance. Look into another room or notice something in
the corner of your eye, and you age by years or even decades.
Eventually the monolith appears again and gets pointed at by an ancient
looking, most likely dying Bowman in a comfortable bed. A cut to the big
black box’s perspective suddenly has our erstwhile hero no longer old, but
exceedingly young. A fetus hovering in a black sphere, in fact, because
conquering an individual’s relationship with space (the trip through the
star gate) and then time (which inevitably (we thought) ends in death),
allows you to become something different.
Returning to earth as something else, something more (nicknamed ‘star
child’), and looking down up on the planet from high above.
To
help, to hurt, to teach (an attempt that can result in both helping and
hurting in unpredictable ways), to simply bear witness?
It is
Baby Bowman’s choice, just like it was the ape’s choice to use a bone as a
weapon.
The
star child slowly turns to the camera.
What
will he do?
Roll
credits.
And
if you saw this in 1968, there was none of the above comments or possible
explanations. Or the internet, for that matter.
2001 is one of the most challenging films ever made that still
ended up becoming ridiculously
popular, although because of its then high budget for the time (over $10
million) it didn’t turn a profit until a re-release in 1971, but
ultimately became the highest grossing movie from that year thanks to
successive re-releases over the next decade.
When it became available
on VHS (and then laser-disc and then DVD and then Blue-Ray) old and new
fans constantly snapped it up, because the film still looked amazing, and
the bigger and better quality televisions meant you could get closer to a
cinematic experience in your living room.
‘Evergreen’ is the term used to describe any sort of cultural
material that has withstood the test of time and is still consumed and
discussed (and re-released in various ways to make its owners more money)
years after it first arrived.
With
the rise and general adoption of computer generated graphics for movies in
the late nineties, this film from 1968 looks more realistic in its
assumption of what 2001 would look like, even if we are over twenty years
on from that date (ah, to imagine today that manned space flights to the
orbit of Jupiter was something two decades old).
Lucas
and Spielberg both cite 2001 as
their filmmaker generation’s Big Bang, the film that pushed every sort of
envelope, from the artistic to the technical.
While
Lucas is much better known for his pew-pew-storytelling that is
Star Wars, his directorial debut was the much more experimental
THX-1138, which explored a
futuristic police state.
Spielberg’s Close Encounters of a
Third Kind (still overshadowed by his own blockbuster
Jaws from two years earlier, and
by Lucas’ Star Wars from the
same summer) certainly maintains a sense of extraterrestrial wonder and
uncertainty that Kubrick’s masterpiece laid the groundwork for. From the
grandiose moments of an Indian village coming together after an apparent
visitation from an alien spacecraft to the domestic drama of Richard
Dreyfus worrying his family with mashed potato art, the film brings in a
lot more clarity to what is happening as the film develops compared to
Odyssey, but it is still a
matter of the viewer piecing possibly disparate moments together. Dreyfus
sitting frustrated in his truck at night and waving a pair of apparent car
headlights to just go around him only to have the lights move upwards is a
wonderfully sublime cinematic moment, also completely void of dialogue.
Spielberg would repeatedly return to the sci-fi genre over the rest of his
illustrious career, but Kubrick bailed on it completely, while keeping
that iconoclastic streak of never telling the audience much, and instead
focused on showing them both the horrific and the sublime. 1971’s
A Clockwork Orange is as
contemporary dystopian earth as it gets, and 1975’s
Barry Lyndon goes back to the
eighteenth century. The former begins with a long penetrating stare of its
protagonist and doesn’t skimp on slowly following him through a shopping
arcade or being nearly drowned by his former friends in one long uncut
take. The latter was meant to look a like a painting, hence the choice to
have extremely beautiful and carefully set up tableaus that didn’t cut
away for seemingly ages.
1980’s The Shining holds shots
longer just to freak you the fuck out, wondering what kind of
psychological agony might be happening just out of frame.
By
taking so long to set up his shots, and then trying slightly different
ways to film the actors doing their business, Kubrick dangles the idea
that ‘maybe something is going to happen, so let’s not cut away’, even
though all of this has been edited so tightly and with excess intention
(even if the intention is ambiguity).
Which
takes us back to 2001. If the
film camera can be viewed a window from which higher beings look down on
the earthly pageant presented to them, then consider the meaning of long
and close up shots of prehistoric ape boredom. Of Dr Floyd flying high
above the earth in a futuristic spaceship…asleep the whole time. Of Frank
Poole jogging in a literal loop on loop. Of an artificial intelligence
confessing how worried he is.
Usually in science fiction films the acting and plot has to be the focus
and the crappy model rocket with some cheap fireworks is hastily shown
then cut away from because it’s embarrassing to look at.
Kubrick reversed this.
You are dazzled by watching the ships dance in orbit, while the acting is
the seemingly irrelevant part. Nobody talks because nobody would actually
talk in these situations. Why a five minute psychedelic technicolour
sequence instead of a two minute one?
Eventually someone has to make that call, and the man at the helm of this
film was a genius.
As
the apes and scientists and astronauts try to figure out what is placed in
front of them, filmmakers figuring out when to tell the story and when to
take a breather is not an easy call. It’s a mixture of the aesthetic and
technical aspects of filmmaking (and depending on the power of studio
executives looking over your shoulder, ‘commercial potential’ might also
become a factor), and no single director combined them so effectively and
uniquely as Stanley Kubrick.
With this film he was able to tell a distinctly visual story regarding our
relations to our bestial ancestors, the bureaucratic malaise of
post-industrial society, and the unpreparedness of individuals when
confronted with concepts and situations beyond our control (some involve
that our own making like AI, some in attempting to understand our place in
the universe).
But it does so at a pace
that is practically unheard of in modern filmmaking, hence
2001: A Space Odyssey
is not strictly a science fiction film, but a documentary film of us…we
just haven’t got to that part of human existence yet.
Notes
(https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/stanley-kubrick-rolling-stone-interview-1987/)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KLujOXs8wg)
Star Wars Again, Again, Again
“So you
want a realistic, down to earth show…that’s completely off the wall and
swarming with magic robots?” (The Simpsons)
One day we will
stop writing about the galaxy far, far away. But the Mouse’s thirst for
profit means not today.
Nothing has
dominated popular culture the same way for so long, and that’s even taking
into consideration the (comparatively) fallow sixteen years after 1983’s
Return of the Jedi.
Sure, plenty of
comic book heroes had been around for decades, but they didn’t become so
dominant until decades after the original Star Wars trilogy. Even the
first blockbuster take on Superman didn’t arrive until after A New Hope
(and Clark Kent’s sequels of lessening quality is partly why Batman took
another ten years to arrive).
In terms of revenue only
Pokemon stands above Chewie and
friends, but that’s mostly merchandise and not the cookie-cutter video
game series (which only accounts for about 25% of its revenue). Not that
we should discount how much of that has been part of Star Wars’ financial
power (that Wampa rug has always looked great, and if you have $6000 lying
around, why not larp Star Wars for a weekend in Disney World?), but we’re
still waiting for someone to write that article explaining how Ash Ketchum
fits into the matrix of Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero With a Thousand Faces’
(wouldn’t be too hard actually, as filling your Pokédex is similar to the
journey from youth to adult, from ignorance to knowledge).
And 2022 has a ton
of Star Wars content to feast upon, as long as you stay out of the movie
theatres.
Star Wars? On TV? With the Holiday Special
firmly in the rear view window (and tied up inside a basement fridge in an
abandoned house), the success of The Mandalorian became a blueprint that Disney is quintupling down
on.
Ah, says the true
Star Wars nerd, this isn’t that new. Don’t forget that there were a ton of
animated specials and series that arrived during and after the Prequel
Trilogy, and many of them were better received by fans than the Prequel
movies themselves.
Yes, but the catch (such as it is), is that
because it is ‘animation’ only superfans (and not even all of them)
bothered to devour all this content. First because of the short stick that
animated anything gets by the general populace. Yes, this attitude towards
the medium being seen as just for kids or for ‘anime weirdos’ is finally
dying away, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to jump in, or
that all these series are written well. But the biggest hurdle by far is
the amount of content. There’s y’know, 7 seasons (133 episodes) of
The Clone Wars just to get started.
Having six to eight
episodes for the recent live-action entries is like sweet relief to our
overloaded eyes, even if they are treading rather familiar ground, with
characters only once removed from some of the most familiar pop culture
icons of the last half-century.
Can they/we ever
let go of the Skywalker Saga? What is Star Wars without it?
The Mandalorian was the biggest expansion of the Star Wars universe
simply because of who it didn’t feature, but even they ultimately relied
heavily on bring back fan favourites (Yoda in baby form! Boba! Ahsoka!
Luke! Herzog! Burr!).
The challenge in
that series was how to build an unfamiliar, non-Jedi backstory, and that’s
always a mix bag. You have to tell so much on-the-nose exposition because
you literally don’t have the time in the episodes.
Were we excited
about Mandalorian lore involving their ruined planet? We’ll see how much
the series commits to this in Season 3. Was Baby Yoda the honeypot to make
us care more about a group of people who don’t show their faces? We’ve met
breakaway groups (led by Kate Sackhoff) who only wear helmets because
producers realized that you can’t expand a cast very effectively if they
all wear similar face-plates.
The Mandalorian himself - named Din Djarin -
was meant to be an obvious Fett stand-in, even after he meets the actual
man. Which is why Boba getting his own show was forty years overdue, and
for how nitpicky this fan base can get, they had no problem overlooking
Fett’s ignoble and clumsy ‘death’ in
Return of the Jedi.
And even though this was a much loved
character, there were still some Grogu, Luke catch-ups, and Easter egg
moments in The Book of Boba Fett
that overshadowed the title character’s own triumphs as if the
producers/writers realized that a grumpy old man who’s good at killing was
only slightly more interesting than the Mandalorian’s grumpy middle-aged
man who’s good at killing.
And then there is the
Obi-Wan Kenobi series, which is
just going backwards, literally and figuratively, another slotting in of a
story in between movies.
While it’s great to
see McGregor back in the role - certainly the best part of the prequel
trilogy - the story itself reeks of retread.
Character-wise, Kenobi must start from a place
of doubt or there’s no arc, but that works out since the Jedi had their
ass kicked at the end of Episode III. And he can’t live in a cave and
occasionally stare at Luke from afar for all six episodes (even if that’s
what he’s
been doing the last ten years) because
that’s dullsville (although that would also be one of the best flexes for
Disney to do, a super slow-paced, dialogue-free exploration of isolation
and reflection).
Instead, it’s protect/rescue yet another
important child, with the force being (re)discovered just at the nick of
time to save a life. Since this is heavily lifted from
The Mandalorian, apparently we
can be nostalgic for story tropes from only three years ago.
Young Luke seemed
like he would be such a macguffin, and there are Imperial inquisitors
scouring for Jedi on Tatooine, but the swerve is that his sister is the
one in danger.
Young Leia is
portrayed wonderfully by Vivien Lyra Blair, and we can definitely see how
she would grow into the role perfected by Carrie Fisher, but that doesn’t
mean the character works as an integral part of the series.
The addition of kids can
always send a film off the rails (see:
Phantom Menace). It’s that
strange situation where in a movie filled with aliens, magic powers and
impossible technology, the thing that breaks the suspension of disbelief
is our expectations of what children are capable of. In
Obi-Wan it was difficult for bounty hunters and a Jedi to capture a
ten year old in two extra-silly chase sequences just as it was ‘most
impressive’ how Anakin accidentally blows up the most important ship
attacking Naboo (but hey we can always point out how terrible
Stormtrooper’s shooting accuracy is…).
The class contrasts
in Luke and Leia’s upbringing (desert villagers versus royalty) is still
something that is hard to get used to in Star Wars, because it was so much
of an afterthought in the Original Trilogy. Neither the Rebel Alliance nor
the Empire seemed particularly rich, as all expenditures seemed to go
towards constant and total war. In fact, we don’t really ever meet any
citizens of the Empire who weren’t military. Sure, Bespin seemed nicer,
but it was a mining colony, and - until Han and Leia and company showed up
- outside of Imperial control. The only ‘rich’ person in the OT was Jabba
the Hutt, a ruthless crime lord whose palace looked like a hellhole (but
hey, I ain’t kink-shaming the slug).
Of course getting the hell off out Tatooine is
imperative for Kenobi, because
it’s comical how much attention this supposedly backwater(less) planet
gets. But what are your choices? City, forests, mountains, water? The
series briefly takes us to Daiyu, which is your typical
bad-part-of-cyberpunk-town, but Star Wars is caves, bases, spaceship
hallways, and showdowns on rocky terrain where there’s plenty of room to
maneuver.
The two lightsaber
fights between the titular character and Vader are beautifully shot but
rather empty because (once again) we know what’s going to happen. Our hero
barely escapes the first (thanks to friends, which is what Obi learns that
he needs, at least for a while), and lets Vader escape in the second.
He has the
opportunity to kill him again, but doesn’t…again?
Why not have a
just-in-time rescue by the Grand Inquisitor or Darth ‘Spider Legs’ Maul?
Why is it important to let a youngling-killer and right (robot) hand of
Palpatine off the hook?
It’s disappointing
that a curt, cutting remark from Vader is enough for Kenobi to think that
Anakin being gone is punishment enough in the grand scheme of things.
You’re not just fighting a former apprentice gone bad, but a high ranking,
bloodthirsty official of an evil empire who is definitely going to kill a
bunch of good guys in the coming years. If you were okay with cutting off
his arm and legs, the headshot shouldn’t be too much to ask.
But yeah, plot
armour.
Fortunately you don’t have much time to be
mildly disappointed in Obi Wan,
because there’s a ton of more content down the Plus pipe.
Andor
is the biggest break in terms of characters (as it’s more of a prequel to
Rogue One, which is weird to
think about), but is still smack dab in the middle of a very familiar
time.
(Then again, it
ain’t called ‘Star Peace’, so of course it’s going to always revolve
around an all-encompassing conflict)
Extending beyond
the periods before and after the Original Trilogy during the eighties and
nineties came in the form of Lucas-approved comic books and novel series,
most of which still paid plenty of attention and lip service to the
Skywalkers and Solos of the galaxy. When Disney did their ‘dump truck full
of money’ move, all these tales became ‘Legends’, which is the nicest way
to say they retconned an entire galaxy’s worth of stories. But some
characters and narrative arcs that were popular with diehards were
re-morphed back into some of the content we’re consuming now.
Why?
The executives want
to give you, the fan, exactly what you want. They want to make you happy,
because both happy hardcore and casual fans spend more money and that gets
executive’s profit pants extra tented.
But fans are
fickle.
When you love
something, there grows the chance for you to become completely
disappointed, disenchanted and dismissive of it.
It’s sad when it
happens between people, and it’s sad in a completely different way when it
happens to The Simpsons or Ghostbusters or Mad Magazine.
If you were only
mildly interested in a particular IP and the owners of it make a new lousy
movie, tv series, video game, graphic novel, etc that differed from the
ones you liked before, these changes - whether they happen quick or slow -
wouldn’t really bother you at all.
But even casual
fans can smell the stench that comes with the ridiculous complaining and
defensiveness that can come with hardcore fans objecting how writers,
producers and executives are handling ‘their’ precious IPs, and deciding
they want no part of it.
So pity the
executives trying to walk that fine line, putting story arcs in the hands
of writers and directors who grew up dreaming about how they would tell a
tale in a galaxy far, far away, wondering if an online mob will shit on it
endlessly.
Do you try what worked in the past? The Star
Wars Sequel Trilogy borrowed heavily from the Original because that’s what
the producers thought people wanted, and considering the general
assessment that fans hated the Prequel trilogy because it was too
different (and…uh,
poorly written and directed and
therefore poorly acted, etc.), telling the same story sort of made sense.
But oops they borrowed too hard with
The Force Awakens and not enough
with The Last Jedi and
Rise of Skywalker tried to
retcon the previous film while trying to tell one-and-a-half movies worth
of story all at once.
Think how much more interesting the sequel
trilogy would be if Poe died in the crash landing on Jakku, which was the
original plan for him (to give the viewer a twist so they can’t expect the
same sort of Han Solo-esque hero to survive this time around). There would
be no weird temporary mutiny in Last Jedi, and no empty journey to the
christmas planet to meet his ex in
Rise.
And this is no
disrespect to Oscar Issac, he did amazing as a lovable rogue, which is why
the added him back in at the end of Awakens, ‘cause sure, somehow he
survived that explosion on Jakku.
So don’t re-hash
too much, don’t try something too different, just find that sweet spot
where everyone’s going to have so much fun they don’t realize how
ridiculous/stupid all the pew-pew and ‘vshooum’ (lightsaber sound) is.
Faults in the
Original Trilogy are forgiven and forgotten very quickly because most fans
watched them as kids. Palpatine coming back in 9 was just as ridiculous as
the Death Star coming back in 6.
And wait, how long did Han and Leia evade Vader
before Cloud City in Empire? A
few days, weeks? Is that how long Luke trained with Yoda on Dagobah before
venturing there to save them?
And the whole thing of Vader not knowing he was
taking to (or torturing) his daughter during
A New Hope became a real
narrative boondoggle when it was revealed in the last two-thirds of Jedi
that three of the four main characters are related to each other.
Criticizing the
make-it-up-as-we-go-along attitude of the sequel trilogy? It’s kind of how
Lucas made narrative choices for the original, even while he had tons of
backstory to consider.
The Prequel Trilogy might have been the most
planned out all the works in the Star Wars saga…so yeah, it’s no guarantee
for success. And a rarely mentioned additional fault of those three films
in general is how its style of storytelling was influenced by…Star
Wars. Which sounds normal and a good thing until you realize that
adventure-films-for-all had been cribbing from the 1977 film for over
twenty years at that point.
Many of them (your Spielberg oeuvre,
Alien and its sequels, Star Trek
films, oodles of anime like Akira, and all the superhero films up to
1997’s Batman and Robin) tweaked
the formula just so to ensure that they still felt modern for eighties and
nineties audiences. But Lucas seemed to have made
The Phantom Menace as if he just
released 1983’s Return of the Jedi. The entire way that film is shot and edited
feels very sterile and overly familiar.
Contrast that with a movie that debuted just a
few weeks early: The Matrix.
A Hong Kong style
action flick plus Bullet Time effects and a level of first year philosophy
class musings that puts The Force to shame.
The political ideas
of the Prequel Trilogy - how a democratic republic can fall due to
external stresses and internal power struggles - is the most interesting
part of it, which is a damn shame considering it’s also a movie about
laser swords and space battles.
While adding
politics to art can give it another dimension and perspective, one
shouldn't break a good story to make a good point.
This can mean
either socio-political commentary, or lining it up with certain symbolic
elements (including paying homage to other narrative structures or
philosophies). By all means incorporate them if you want, but do it
carefully, not at expense of proper character development or an exciting
plot twist.
Consequently, there
is the Star Wars ring theory, where Lucas' six films are apparently an
ironclad, interlinked pattern of character motives and story beats in one
film being shadowed precisely in another along a clock-like diagram. All
this makes for an interesting essay, but doesn’t necessarily make the
prequels any more enjoyable. Appreciating greater narrative themes is not
the same as being entertained by them.
But what do you do
with this IP that is at once stale and predictable and ripe for
development with a still massive audience?
Can you jettison
these familiar tropes and ideas about family trees, destiny and the
duality of nature? Is a story without The Force even a story about Star
Wars?
Rogue One and
Solo were attempts, and the
(relative) disappointment of the second sent Disney to more familiar rock
hovering, lightning finger-filled pastures.
But because
Rogue One did well money-wise
and is practically looked at forlornly by the end of the sequel
trilogy…they made a prequel to it.
On TV!
If you can’t change
the story too much, change the style.
The Mandalorian
was the Star Wars western, The Book
of Boba Fett was more of the same while acknowledging that Fett isn’t
as interesting as we all hoped and so here’s everyone else we introduced
in The Mandalorian coming back.
Obi Wan was supposed to be a movie (or series of movies)
before it was re-made into a series, and it showed.
The cleanest of breaks is
Andor, having just debuted on
Disney+, with the hijinks of C3PO and R2D2 very far in the rear view
mirror.
Creator-writer-producer of the series Tony
Gilroy says the tv series is heavily influenced by the Bourne film series,
and you can be sure he knows what he’s talking about, since he wrote four
of them and directed one (oh, and he also co-wrote
Rogue One, the darker standalone
Star Wars film that shows what ultimately happens to
Andor’s main character).
So skip the
one-liners, the clearly stated exposition, and add in cold hearted
betrayal, bureaucratic corruption and pointless deaths that won’t be
explained until some end-of-episode murmurs.
Did we all want a
grittier Star Wars all this time?
And even asking that it’s as if we’re
pretending that there haven’t been dark moments in the past, because if
you’re ever really down in the dumps, just watch the last half hour of
Empire Strikes Back so you can
witness Luke Skywalker have a much worse day than you’re having.
For many fans, that
was the most emotional and exciting moment in the entire franchise, one
that every new entry has been chasing for over forty years now.
The owners and
creators of Star Wars are in a bind because they are looking at the fans
looking back, so
what do you think Disney is going to cook up for the series’ 50th
anniversary in 2027?
Definitely re-releases of the Original Trilogy
in the theatres (maybe without the 90s Lucas monkeying), but since too
many people who saw A New Hope
in 1977 are still alive, they won’t dare announce straight-up remakes of
them just yet. Perhaps with ever advancing digital technology they will
even be re-made with youthful representations of Fisher, Ford, and Hamill,
the whole thing done in a more modern pacing and art design. Are older
fans feeling Dark Side thoughts just considering these possibilities? Can
there be infinite Batmans but only one Luke Skywalker?
While the release of
Andor can be seen as sign that
the Star Wars galaxy is trying to expand beyond stories involving that
family, the familiar idea that anyone can become family if they have a
common cause remains strong. Hell, our titular protagonist sets the
narrative wheels in motion by trying to learn more about his past, getting
caught up in a double murder of low-level imperial-esque guards and having
to go on the lam.
The series follows the
politicalization/radicalization of Cassian Andor as the Rebel Alliance
begins to gain strength and oppose the dominant and evil (surprise!)
Empire. And while almost every Star Wars story starts on a planet where
nothing good seems to be going down (with all the lower class British
accents, you’d think the planet Ferrix was the sci-fi Yorkshire), the
eager young Imperial-esque sleuth trailing Andor was seemingly nicked from
the Obi-Wan series, meaning the biggest initial change is a droid that’s
more depressed than anything else.
The series’ not-so subtle commentary on
colonialism and environmental disaster doesn’t seem ‘long ago in a galaxy
far away’, but we have the luxury in our criticism/analysis of deciding
just who the Evil Empire is supposed to represent (just as the social/film
critics’ assessment that the success of
A New Hope was due to Americans wanting pop culture escapism after
Vietnam, Watergate and a recession). Star Wars doesn’t need this sort of
introspection and evaluation to be successful, but
Andor does to separate itself from all the stories already told in
its universe. If it’s not the fate of good and evil across the galaxy in
the hands (or mechanical hands) of a few space wizards, then we need to
see the more mundane trickledown effects of their laser swords (and
ideologies) clashing. Which is why Andor has flashbacks of how Palpatine
fucked up his life even if they will never meet.
To loosely connect
these very long strings of fate is how we can look at the globalization of
our own world…if we want to. It’s how we can choose to make a tv series
mean more than it does, how the sum becomes greater than its parts.
Of course with this
being carried out on a scale that is rarely seen in what counts for pop
culture these days comes with its own challenges. Some people decry any
sort of hinted political and social message (unless it’s a message they
agree with), and some people go for hyperbolic words when it comes to what
is right and wrong with Star Wars to such a degree that the content and
community become exhausting.
Star Wars was part
of people’s childhoods, and now that it’s part of their adulthoods, it has
gotten a lot more complicated (y’know, like adulthood). So saying this as
someone who has written a lot on the subject in the past and should really
take their own advice…If you truly love Star Wars, try loving it a little
bit less.
We Are Completely
Dune-d: It’s so exciting to show
a world that sucks
Enthusiasm helps when selling
the idea of death and despair, whether it’s a climate report or an
upcoming blockbuster film.
In a
recent New York Times profile promoting
Dune, director Denis Villleneuve
noted that while growing up close to a nuclear power plant at a time when
it was the easy symbol of a looming threat of the destruction of all
humankind, throughout his childhood he had hope.
“Hope, as the activist Mariame
Kaaba has said, is a discipline, and it’s one that’s hard to maintain. To
keep hope for the future alive we have to consider it as still certain,
have to believe that concerted, collective human action might yet avert
disaster.” (MacDonald)
(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/magazine/Dune-denis-villeneuve.html)
A perfect quote to define epic
stories in general, where it is usually against impossible odds that the
protagonist succeeds.
Mythic storytelling is as old
as civilization itself, and since many were meant to explain the creation
of the earth and why things happened on it the way it did, plenty of these
stories involved angry gods creating and destroying stars, mountain ranges
and people.
Thousands of years ago, people
had no choice to live in the environment, and now that many of us have the
luxury of living in heated, air-conditioned buildings with plenty of
modern conveniences (why hunt for food when pad Thai can be delivered to
your doorstep?), the environment has been relegated to something we lived
around.
Of course the factory farm
chickens eventually have to come home to roost, and we are seeing plenty
of warnings that we can’t keep living like this, burning through resources
like it was…1999?
We should have seen this coming
though, as the warnings have been around for decades, and environmental
overtures in sci-fi fantasy epics on the big screen are comparatively
recent. Trying to make dire warnings about the future exciting is easier
than it sounds because plenty of dystopic material is critically acclaimed
and profitable.
The
‘seven days of fire’ in Nausicaa
makes no bones about referring to nuclear war and its horrible effects,
Cameron’s Avatar is a bigger budget take on
FernGully: The Last Rainforest,
Wall-e is a trip through the
garbage dump that earth becomes, and the white walkers in
Game of Thrones were meant to
represent climate change according to George RR Martin.
Because of what couldn’t be
done on celluloid (at least not very effectively) throughout the first
half of the twentieth century, it fell to novels and the reader’s
imagination to bring science fiction to life.
That’s not to say the 16-minute La
Voyage Dans La Lune from 1902 isn’t without it’s charms, but it was
old fashioned bound paper that held the dreams of the future, inspired by
the seemingly impossible discoveries that late nineteenth and early
twentieth century science made (galaxies of stars, atomic theory, time
travel, rocket technology, black holes, anti-matter, parallel universes).
Jules Verne’s War of the Worlds
set the template for aliens wanting to fuck us up and take over, and it’s
conveniently forgotten that humanity didn’t win so much as the aliens
lost, because they didn’t realize until too late that oxygen was poisonous
to them (a subtle suggestion to do your research before you travel).
Edgar Rice Burroughs is known best as the guy who wrote
Tarzan, but in 1912 he also
wrote a sci-fi series about a civil war soldier ending up on Mars (maybe
Hollywood should try to make a movie of it, because they certainly did NOT
try in 2012).
While some early novels about
the epic-ness of space focused on the epic-ness of space, it didn’t take
long for real-world horrors (namely the Second World War and the nuclear
arms race that came out of it) to influence the angles many of these
stories took.
The earth was something to
escape, or something to save because it’s become quite the mess, and
even if earth wasn’t there in
name, there was typically a civilization that resembled it in some way.
Issac Asimov’s Foundation series
began in the 1950s, and it was inspired by the fall of the Roman Empire
and the ensuing dark ages. It took place thousands of years in the future,
long after humanity has conquered the Milky Way galaxy. But such triumphs
do not mean they will last forever, and a smart weirdo starts preparing
for the coming collapse of the entire civilization.
Ray
Bradbury kept it close to home in his
Martian Chronicles, with earth
being destroyed by nuclear war and the survivors heading to mars…only to
find that it’s full of martians, and boy do the two species not get along.
Bradbury also penned Fahrenheit 451,
depicting a world where books are no longer permitted and information is
tightly controlled by the government (what a concept!).
Robert Heinlein’s best known work today is
Starship Troopers, and it’s wild
to think that a sci-fi movie that seemed to be born out of 1990s
blockbuster excess was from a fifties novel. Set 700 years in the future,
it lionizes a military elite that rules the earth and protects the lesser
citizens from evil bugs on a distant planet.
While you can rely on these
stories having a satisfying ending, all bets are off for happy ones.
Certainly they don’t come without ridiculous costs that is typically
measured in destruction and death, as this is typically the underlying
message that these books wish to impart on its readers.
Oh, and they sold like
gangbusters. Success in sci-fi publishing meant there were attempts at
replication in Hollywood, but doing it quick and cheap meant plenty of
b-movies, with cheap cardboard sets, wooden plots and clunky acting.
It
wasn’t until Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke hammered out
2001: A Space Odyssey that time,
money and effort was spent on an outer space film, and it paid off
handsomely in every conceivable way.
The special effects alone made
humanity’s future in space not only exciting but ordinary.
It wasn’t just set dressing,
either, as Kubrick devotes long segments to ships taking off and docking
above the earth as swirling classical music plays.
And as a nice flip on the
usual, the unseen aliens were beyond benign. They literally dragged
humanity out of the muck and onto a higher plane of existence.
We
didn’t spend any time on earth in
2001, but the idea that pleasant birthday wishes could be sent from
our planet’s surface to a distant spaceship near Jupiter suggests things
couldn’t be that bad down there.
The only malevolent force in
the movie is the AI on board the ship, Hal 9000, an he only goes crazy
because he was placed in an irresolvable moral quandary regarding
information sharing (what a concept!).
Technology run amok is nothing new (that was the message of Shelley’s
Frankenstein monster in 1818, which was inspired by the myth of
Prometheus), but the early seventies coincided with some minor crises (oil
supply problems, recession, political corruption/malaise) that made a
lousy future seem more likely. Before George Lucas took everyone to a
galaxy far, far away, his THX-1138 showed us an earth where people are kept quiet and in line
by drugs and robot policemen (what a…concept…).
Meanwhile, the modern
environmental movement emerged out of the sixties, tagging along with the
many other pushes for civil and women’s rights.
Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ detailed the terrible
effects of pesticides and certain popular chemical products, and suddenly
the possible danger we could inflict on the planet and ourselves wasn’t so
abstract.
Even the pedestrian notions of
picking up trash and recycling began to gain steam at this time (the line
‘don’t mess with Texas’ was from an anti-littering campaign).
In America the Environmental
Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act came to be in the early
seventies, but Hollywood wasn’t afraid to show what might happen if the
earth continued polluting like there was no tomorrow.
In
Silent Running all plants on earth become extinct, we all know that
Soylent Green is indeed people
(but it is also a grounded depiction of overpopulation, urban pollution,
resource rationing, and public unrest), and
The China Syndrome reminded
everyone the risks that come with nuclear power because apparently trying
to use less energy is always out of the question.
Even if we don’t all die,
living never seemed to be that great in the so-far-fictional future,
either.
The
original Blade Runner is an
absolute film-noir, cyberpunk classic involving escaped killer androids,
but instead of explicit messages it let the dreary atmosphere of a rainy
futuristic LA do all the talking.
(In the book it was based on
(we’ll get to it), some of the problems of the planet are much more
pronounced, with artificial pets being cheap and real ones being toys for
the super-wealthy)
Blade Runner was exceedingly grounded and reflective sci-fi, giving
plenty of time to people walking down dark-but-artificially-lit streets
and sitting in their cramped apartments on the 94th floor.
With
2001 setting the standard in the late sixties, part of the appeal
was not just all that stuff about story and writing and acting, but making
sure the set design and special effects all look at least good (and
ideally cool).
Cost
of these films were getting out of hand, but thanks to the massive twin
sun successes of Jaws and
Star Wars, expectations for box office returns were growing as well.
It’s why Hollywood was
obviously the only place to make these sorts of films, as independent
cinema just didn’t have the budget.
But across the Pacific they
found a solution with pencil, paper and ink.
From
Akira to Cowboy Bebop (and
we would be remiss to not mention
Castle in the Sky, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion), Anime
certainly picked up the mantle from the mid-eighties to the end of the
century.
Science Fiction novels continued to be cranked out on paper, and took a
weird bend of bleakness and psychedelia, best exemplified by the
mind-bending oeuvre of Phillip K Dick. While having a cult following
through the sixties and seventies as he cranked out bizarre stories about
split personalities, mind controlling drugs, travelling to mars, and out
of control computers, he first made it big when his short story
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
was turned into Blade Runner.
And
then he promptly died, so he legacy only grew afterwards because the films
Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, The Man in the High
Castle (a series, yes), and The
Adjustment Bureau are all based on his writings.
They
don’t have the same weirdness as the books because the transition from
page to screen means mainstreaming it quite a bit. This was definitely
necessary for the few attempts at bringing the work of eighties writer
William Gibson to Hollywood, since 1995’s
Johnny Mnemonic didn’t quite
come out the way the book intended. In some ways it’s nice that to crack
the spine of a book to experience Gibson’s brilliance. From the epic urban
region simply known as the sprawl to hacking and genetic modification, the
novels Neuromancer and
Mona Lisa Overdrive probably won’t seem much like ‘fiction’ in the
coming decade or two.
But
in terms of a fascinating story that seems (operative word there) to be
absolutely perfect for the big screen, Frank Herbert’s
Dune still stands head and
shoulders above many other sci-fiction fantasy novels before it.
Not only does it hit the easy
targets that this genre ostensibly demands (space ships, psychic powers,
power struggles, moral ambiguity, halucinatory drugs, conspiracies, knife
fights, giant worms), but fifty years after its publication its message
regarding Corporatism, cronyism, exploiting natural resources, and the
political/personal will to create great change is just as relevant and
pressing as in 1965.
It is dense, it is thicc, it
has plenty of cake.
Credit is absolutely due to
Herbert for being able to make descriptions of mythic alien civilizations
more than just a textbook re-hash. Whether it is a history of a tribal
bloodline with mysterious powers or describing the biology of strange
planets, you are absolutely interested and engaged.
In film terms, the book is both
a huge, multi-film/series narrative arc and the ‘show bible’ that gets
into the weeds about how everything works in this fictional universe.
Despite this seeming slam dunk,
It’s trip to the cinema was/is just as complicated and difficult as
enacting effective climate policy for our own planet.
The
First time was a decade after the book’s publication, when the master of
psychedelic weirdness - thanks to movies like
El Topo and
Holy Mountain - took a crack at it. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s vision for
Dune (fourteen hours long,
creative liberties like robot stand-ins and castration, and staring
Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger and his own son) is the perfect
example of the artistic ideal that could never come to fruition, and can
be compared to the ambitious policy that is the Green New Deal.
Both things that could/would be
amazing if actually made, but was never feasible because of depressing
practical problems…namely money.
Jodorowsky spent $2 million of
the $10 million budget in pre-production stage alone, and it never went
anywhere beyond that.
When the rights for the film
were available again in 1982, famed producer Dino DeLaurentiis snapped
them up and got David Lynch in the director’s chair. The resulting film
from 1984 is the example of a corporate enterprise trying to tackle
climate change.
Sure, they would love to have
it happen, as long it arrives exactly how they want it, and they will cut
and re-arrange things to what they think is appropriate for themselves and
the public.
Which means they end up ruining
everything with half-baked ideas that don’t impress or help anyone.
Like Jodorowsky, the production
soon went over budget (Coming off two critically acclaimed films of a much
smaller scale, Lynch took full advantage of all this Hollywood money and
the chance to truly design wild sets and a future tech that is meant to
not look too much like Star Wars), but at least the cameras began to roll.
And when executives got a whiff
of what was being made, they noticed it was just as weird as Lynch’s
earlier stuff. Seemingly taking a nod to the predecessor’s attempt,
another rock star (in this case, Sting) was cast, and a meme-worthy shot
in the film was him preening around in futuristic underpants. Soon-to-be
Captain Picard Patrick Stewart fighting with a gun in one hand and
cradling a small dog in the other. The Evil Baron hams it up by never
wiping his mouth as he (sexually?) assaults underlings when he’s not
buzzing around in a flying wheelchair. It has an alien-ness and
unfamiliarity that you want in your space epic, especially if monster
make-up and giant puppet creatures are eschewed (except for that one time,
and boy does it pay off).
(Plus least Brian Eno helped
with the soundtrack in all his ambient glory)
Lynch turned in a three-hour
movie, and because the studio had final cut, they took a razor-blade to it
by removing an hour and added re-shoots, some of which whittled down
Herbert’s world-building to a handful of paragraphs spoken at the
beginning that many audiences forgot seconds after they heard it.
Ultimately Lynch wanted his
name off the credits, and it was savaged by critics and ignored by
audiences.
Years later it certainly deserves its cult status as an appealing mistake.
It absolutely feels like someone tore apart a David lynch movie because
the strangeness that permeated
Eraserhead (and would soon permeate
Blue Velvet and beyond) is
certainly there.
But despite the reception and
money loss, no one could stay away from Arrakis very long.
A five-hour mini-series on the
Sci-Fi Channel (appropriate) in 2000 was the equivalent of the Kyoto and
Copenhagen accords from around that time. It arrived and didn’t make a
dent, the series was for die-hard supporters and not much else.
That
Dune has been on the back burner for most of the last decade shows
that Hollywood art still wanted to take a big screen crack at it and
Hollywood business thought it could still find that spice money among
sci-fi addicted audiences. Just as we are all still fishing for that
climate agreement that might actually make a difference.
Enter Canadian director Denis Villeneuve. He cut his teeth on low budget
dark, psychological dramas (but not exactly in the same way as Lynch with
eraserhead) Like
Incendies and
Prisoners before he moved onto the ‘smart blockbuster’ fare of
Sicario (drug war!) and
Arrival (Aliens!).
Dune
isn’t villeneuve’s first space cowboy rodeo, either, as he also directed
the acclaimed sequel, Blade Runner
2049. While certainly living up to the world-building and atmosphere
of the original and satisfied fans of the original (and dare we say that
the plot was much more engaging?), it didn’t exactly set the box office on
fire.
Fortunately Warner Bros still
trusted Villeneuve with another project that was a beloved sci-fi
property, with deserts and a nine figure budget .
Wanting to avoid the hazard of cramming a massive story into just two and
half hours, Villeneuve began pre-production with the idea that his
Dune would be broken up into two
movies…even if Warner Bros wasn’t going to commit to the second just yet.
The logic being that it doesn’t matter if the ‘first’
Dune doesn’t have a proper
ending if no one goes to see it, and if a ton of people go to see it, then
that’s when you can quickly announce that a second film is coming down the
pipes.
(Real world spoiler alert: the
latter situation happened exactly as written. Props must be given to
Villeneuve For making a satisfying
‘ending’
that is more of a beginning to
the next stage in the overall story, a great way to get people excited
about the potential for part two in 2023).
Shot across several countries
(including Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to really get that sand
feeling) throughout 2019, incorporating thousands of visual effects shot
(meant to compliment instead of overtaking what you see on screen) took
much longer, although everything was ready to go for a holiday 2020
release.
But then real world chaos
arrived early in that same calendar year.
Hunkering down as if in a sandstorm,
Dune sat in a hard drive for almost twelve months, waiting for the
pandemic to end, and even though that’s currently as over as the Marvel
Cinematic Universe, Warner Bros is trying to cover all the bases by also
making it available on HBO Max.
But now it’s here, and there is
no adequate move against climate change to compare it to unless the
upcoming UN conference in Glasgow next month really surprises everyone.
Instead, Dune does an excellent job at making the planets that are part of
its story universe feel alive and alien, even if everybody is essentially
human.
Having it largely take place on
a desert planet is a good start because similar regions on earth are
unfamiliar to most of us because it’s so hard to survive (let alone live
comfortably) in, say, the Sahara.
The tech does a great job at
balancing the recognizable (Helicopters with dragonfly-like metal wings)
and the fantastical (wristwatch-controlled invisible body shields).
The bedrooms should be called
sleeping quarters, because they don’t look like a places where anyone on
earth (whether they are duke or commoner) would ever sleep.
Having bizarrely powerful bombs
(without explanation) for air attacks and knife fights assist in reminding
us that a war without guns is possible (what a concept!).
As for the heavy lore required
to get the average movie-goer up to speed, the film finds the sweet spot
between exposition and character development through relatable dialogue
(something science fiction has either struggled with or ignored
completely). It is assisted by incredible art design and cinematography
that helps tell the story as well.
A Mixture of showing and
telling is required when it comes to notions of familial duty and how it
is related to settling interplanetary scores because of the importance of
a singular, exploitative resource.
People with the power to make
life-altering decisions for millions have to weigh the pros and cons of
acting too rashly, or upsetting other power-players who might resent some
benign changes. Finding out that you are being set up to fail or that
there is no going back is exciting in the film you are watching, and
horrendously demoralizing when you see how incongruous politics can be
with scientific data of a rapidly changing global ecosystem (ahem…).
Adding in a marginalized race
of people who have a more spiritual and personal relationship to the famed
‘spice’ (a drug that increase lifespan and mental facilities, can power
interstellar travel and is (of course) highly addictive) has plenty of
real-world overtures, and to complicate matters they are (of course)
waiting for a leader to help them overthrow the yoke of oppression.
But
regardless of how well Dune is
put together, we have to be careful with these easy narrative traps for
our own future. A messiah isn’t here to save us like we were all trapped
in a burning building or lead like we were about to race into battle
against obvious enemies, but rather to teach us a new way of looking at
the world and ourselves.
That, after all, is the true
form of saving and leading. That we are taught to do it ourselves so we as
a group can continue.
How do you save a
planet? And how much harder or easier is that than saving the people
living on it? Is there even a difference?
Have a little hope, first of
all, and don’t
be afraid. After all, Fear is the Mind Killer, or something like that.
I'm Thinking About
Ending Things...Like a MultiBillion Dollar Film/TV Property
How
do you do it?
You
don't.
That
title is a good way to be virtually tossed out of a
Stories typically have happy endings (market research shows that people
love 'em), but older IPs like Arthurian legends and Sherlock Holmes have
always shown that people were clamouring for more way back when. Creating
brand new ideas might be rebuffed by a fickle public, like it's just
another brand of cereal or toilet paper. Ideally what you're hocking is
already a thing. Already a film, a series, a book or a popular meme (The
Emoji Movie!). The initial challenge is just getting eyeballs to the
screen is then solved, and with the right amount of care and attention you
can have them pay dividends for years to come.
While real world events are feeling more and more like a never-ending,
superhero-less disaster movie, the dominance of a
super-hero/sci-fi/fantasy entertainment universe continues unabated. Soon
we will escape our poverty-stricken, overheating planet by putting on a VR
suit and experiencing a multi-week adventure across the stars with the
Silver Surfer (he'll be big, you'll see!), but until then it's checking
streaming services for whatever's 'new' and predictability epic.
It's
a time when a mega-blockbuster about time travel by Christopher Nolan is
considered a bit of a financial risk because it's not a sequel or a
reboot.
And
spin-offs aren't even enough. Is there swag in it? Can figurines be made,
can a meme-ready bit of dialogue be printed on a t-shirt or a mug? Maybe
some side stories and ideas can be cooked up into some comics, since
apparently some people buy those, even as PDFs.
Telling the story over a few films or a few seasons requires a nearly
self-contained act one as the initial movie or first season, the latter of
which can range from anything between six and twenty two episodes (the far
end is becoming much rarer these days, and it's wild to think that in the
previous century it was the norm). Sure it might be a storytelling risk
since maybe the second film or season wouldn't be picked up or made and
therefore the non-neat-and-tidy ending was never resolved, but it was
probably cancelled because not enough people were caring in the first
place. There is less and less of a risk of expecting 'six seasons and
movie' when starting your project that probably involves a disparate group
of talented people trying to work together to stop, start, or fix
something world-changing. Act as if there might be more story around the
corner in some way. ‘The Matrix’ is a great example of a single film that
ends with Neo becoming the One and destroying Agent Smith, while still
suggesting that there was more story to come, because the matrix was not
destroyed (while at the time of its release there was no guarantee that
there would be more). Of course, the Matrix went on to make two sequels
which were... interesting (see somewhere below), as well as some short
film prequels (and is about to be semi-re-booted for 2021).
The
Wachowskis have said they've always planned on making more than one film,
but you could screw it all up without a cohesive vision, which is just
corporate-speak for 'good story'.
Take
Star Wars (please).
At
least the Matrix didn't have generations of fans that loved Morpheus and
Trinity the way people loved Chewie and Leia and Count Dooku. The original
Star Wars trilogy ended as wonderfully as you could hope for. The
redemption of Anakin Skywalker was so note-perfect that not even the Ewoks
could ruin it. It seemed that telling more stories about what happened
after the battle of Endor (and bringing back the old gang back again), was
win-freaking-win.
Ultimately, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy is a fun, visually-enticing
trainwreck of a story. The first is too same-y, the second is too
different, and the third is too much (we've written about each one
extensively further down below on this page).
It
seems bonkers in hindsight that you wouldn't put all the directors and
writers who will be working on the trilogy together in a room when
starting to develop the storylines, but hey, live and learn (and make
billions of dollars and upset plenty of people on the internet who are way
too sensitive about the pop culture from their childhood). Of course,
planning out a trilogy ahead of time is no guarantee it'll be good, and
the Star Wars prequels are proof of that (also further below). While
Disney announced plenty of immense plans when they bought the universe off
Lucas in 2012, it was with the massive $2 billion box office success of
'The Force Awakens' that this kicked into high gear. A movie every year,
another new animated series, a Disneyland/World expansion, more video
games, more novels (and re-labelling the pre-Disney novels saga), and more
swag. You can argue it's all about the benjamins, but people really did
want it so bad, and they proved it by dropping the cash. Until they
decided they didn't. Or didn't want it this way.
Too
much of anything can be exhausting, and there's no greater evidence of
that than with 'Solo' coming out just five months after
The Last Jedi. Especially
considering that if Solo succeeded (which means make a billion dollars,
which it didn't), there was going to be more of them. And that meant
leaving a dangling story morsel at the end of the film, which meant
there's not much closure there. A forgotten plus of
Rogue One is that because everyone died at the end, they could
commit to ending all character storylines, full stop.
Instead 'The Last Jedi' tried to ignore the previous movie and tell the
last two pieces of a trilogy in one 2 1/1 hour film with a new-old villain
(because Rise of Skywalker
killed off the villain in a cool-swerve-but-now-what sort of way).
Everyone in a Star Wars flick is supposed to be in a rush to do something
important, but TLJ never takes a narrative breath for the viewer's sake.
Every scene matters too much, every third one has to be a twist (Chewbacca
is dead/not dead, Rey is a Palpatine, Hax is the spy, Kylo is dead/not
dead/dead). Palpatine telling Rey that she has to kill him so he'll stop
the zombie star destroyers from killing her friends, but it would mean
that Palpatine lives on inside her… is a stupid 'agonizing choice' (and an
attempt to mimic Luke's much clearer agonizing choice at the end of
Return of the Jedi), because she
has to realize that Palpatine will just kill her friends afterwards.
Fortunately, Ben Solo has a change of heart and saves her (more
RotJ call backs) by sacrificing
himself to defeat the baddie, but not before they have a surprise kiss
because apparently they have to play the Han/Leia roles in this one, too.
And then the movie almost hits the full circle by having Rey retire on a
desert planet, but not the one she grew up on. And she takes a different
last name, but not that different. After all, in the Star Wars universe,
you can be whoever you want to be, as long as it's either Skywalker or
Palpatine.
It's
not a terrible ending, but it's not a good one. As Marge Simpson says,
'it's an ending, that's enough’.
The
'failure' of the Star Wars sequel trilogy has slowed plans for another
three film saga and suggests that maybe the name Skywalker and its
powerful blood (uh, midi-chlorians?) truly deserves a rest. But the galaxy
itself never has to end. The success of Disney-Plus’s
The Mandalorian further suggests
that plenty of people are game for a well told story of a bounty hunter
with a heart of almost-gold in a massive sci-fi universe, that many people
would gladly trade their current life to jump into for realz.
The Mandalorian creator-producer Jon Favreau said he wanted to
capture the feeling not just of the original Star Wars, but the first
thirty minutes of A New Hope, where we first checked in on the ultimate
battle between good and evil and then saw how people lived on a cruddy
desert planet, where even the main town is a piece of crap. Paradoxically,
it's only misstep narratively was when it nodded to the original Star Wars
too much, with a stopover on that very first planet, Tatooine.
When
it comes to squeezing more money out of familiar franchises, Favreau is
the man with golden touch, directing the mega Disney reboots of
Jungle Book and The Lion King.
Because the whole point is to tell the same story over again, these
live-action Disney re-makes is able to skirt around the issue of anything
ever ending. The original Jungle
Book and The Lion King were
both massive hits, and spawned much lesser sequels (in quality and
commercial success), so the easiest thing to do was to do the same thing
all over again.
But
Favreau is best known for playing Monica Geller's rich boyfriend who wants
to become an ultimate fighter on
Friends, and then known for ushering in the all-consuming Marvel
Cinematic Universe because he directed
Iron Man in 2008. And like every
good comic book, the ending of that movie nails it and leaves you wanting
more. Sure, evil is vanquished for now (in this case Stark's former
business associate, which shows how well they carefully notched up the bad
guy factor to Thanos), but the way Tony ignores the cue cards at the press
conference and announces to the world that he is Iron Man just makes you
want to see more of him as soon as possible.
The
MCU 'is' comic books, and while storylines certainly end, the superheroes
don't. A 'crisis on infinite earths' sounds pretty apocalyptic, but
there's still men and women in very tight-fitting costume wanting to know
what they have to do next month.
Remember when Superman dying in 1993 got national news coverage? He was
back by the end of the storyline. Even in this period of declining
readership because print is still slowly dying, stories are still being
made (and re-made) for comic book shop and digital enthusiasts alike. But
this universe is a low-risk spot to try out stories that might become
something bigger. Literally. Since comics don't cost at one hundred
million bucks a pop (at least), they also aren't expected to bring in a
cool billy from the masses. Comic book movies are, and with those kinds of
returns, no one wants that gravy train to end.
Overseen by Kevin Feige, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's continued and
indomitable success is more impressive than its films, but only because it
has mined the formula so efficiently that yet another nugget of formulaic
storytelling and spectacle seem ho-hum. But that sameness is at the heart
of comics as well, it's just that there are now a hell of a lot of fans
around the world willing to spend $10-$15 for a two hour cinematic issue a
few times a year.
So
just as the comics occasionally promise 'the final battle’, the Russo
brothers gave us a 5 1/2 hour Avengers extravaganza split perfectly into
two so that half the world 'dies' at the mid point.
Infinity War is an incredibly
crafted climb of tension and suspense that ends with a deliciously
depressing cliffhanger.
Credits goes to slowly and steady story and world-building to make the
creation of a big glove to hold 'magic wishing stones' believable. Bad guy
wishes bad thing. Boooo. Thanos wants to commit genocide upon half the
galaxy because apparently there are problems with hunger and
overpopulation (really, with all that amazing tech to effortlessly
traverse the stars you can't redirect resources to a couple food bank
programs?).
Infinity War, uh, so good that the second half (Endgame) doesn't really compare. Five years after the
semi-Armageddon the core Avengers (plus some comedic relief) come up a
hair-brained scheme to go back in time to change the past to fix the
future. Good guy wishes good thing. Huzzah.
But
a half decade is a horrible gap. That's enough time for people and the
planet to start adapting to a world of three and a half billion. Emotional
wounds obviously linger, but half a decade is enough to get the economy
and sociopolitical norms to get going again.
And
with a snap, it's reversed.
Welcome back, everyone we thought was gone for five years! I'm sure there
won't be any problems with suddenly having to feed, cloth and house twice
as many people immediately. It's like they're rapidly creating all the
problems Thanos said he was trying to get rid of.
But
that the luxury of big blockbuster movies that we can all wallow in. We
don't have to think about legitimate questions about effects of turbulent
population control.
The
ending of Endgame pushes all the
familiar buttons. The good guys win, the leader that everyone loves makes
the ultimate sacrifice, the leader that everyone likes gets to live his
best life in the past (because time travel), and there are still some
loose commitments by the surviving heroes to be ready if anything happens
again (I wonder if it will...).
But
now they have to do it without the star. Sure, the Avengers are a team,
buuuuut...eleven years for Robert Downey Junior as Tony the Iron Man
seemed to be enough. And since he and Favreau started all this way back in
2008 with Iron Man (making 'only' $585 million, which would be considered
a bit of disappointment nowadays), he has always been the face of the
franchise, even as more A-listers arrived in tights and cloaks to join the
fray.
But
actors age. Actors get bored. Hell, we the audience can get bored (In
eleven years, RDJ played Tony Stark in eleven films. There's a testament
to the talent of the actor and the writers to make sure we never got sick
of him). Iron Man learning to sacrifice was really first realized in the
first Avengers flick (the other moral of that one: you can accomplish
anything when you work together as a team!), and they tripled-down on that
one as the movies rolled on.
While Downey Junior is a once in a generation talent that found the
perfect role, the replacement of him is not necessarily an issue.
See:
-man, Bat.
The
Batman movie franchise of eighties and nineties were the very definition
of diminishing returns, but no one seemed to mind that they went through
three actors in the title role. After that, the strength of
The Dark Knight alone elevates Nolan's Batman Trilogy to the best
self-contained storyline in all of comic-movie-dom. While
Rises is a bit overdone, it's actually a huge relief to see Bruce
Wayne clearly not being Batman at the end of it (and enjoying himself).
But that's not what this article is about. Batman never ends. Sure enough,
there were more stories to be told, and Christian Bale was offered
dump-trucks full of money to continue his role in the Justice League
franchise. Since he refused, they got Ben Affleck, who frowned through two
ensembles flicks that some people though were okay, and now it's a re-boot
with the younger, broodier Robert Pattinson.
But
hey, nobody's perfect.
Although the 'Wizarding World of Harry Potter' (to name the universe) got
damn close!
While the books were already four mega-selling novels in when the first
movie arrived, there was no guaranteed that people would show up to see a
film version. There was a possibility that even as Rowling wrapped up the
seven book series to great acclaim, each successive film could be more of
a dismal flop that they could become low(ish)-budget direct-to-DVD flicks
with constantly changing casts.
This
didn't happen, and the book and film series both wrapped up very neatly,
in terms of critical, commercial and diehard fan reception (proof that a
singular, well-plotted out vision can be very helpful). That why everyone
breathed a sigh of relief on all fronts when it did so. She even ended the
seventh book with 'all was well'. You can't possibly mess with that,
right?
But
the
So
Rowling went back to the well, writing a sequel play, and having a large
hand (writing, producing) in the 'Fantastic Beasts' film series. The
latter based on her very short mock textbook written for charity, which
might explain why it's...okay.
And
whether you think 'okay' after 'perfection' is acceptable might come down
to the type of person you are. Are you a glass half full, or a glass half
full of dragon fire sort of person?
Which leads us to Game of Thrones.
While full of backstabbing power struggles, nudity, and ice zombies, the
'story' of Game of Thrones itself was part of what made it so appealing.
It had a disastrous original pilot, was slightly scoffed at when it
started (gritty fantasy), but its popularity climbed with every episode,
and then skyrocketed with every season. Everyone loves the underdog, and
that's not just some of the most popular characters in the series (Jon,
Tyrion, Arya), but the creator as well.
George RR Martin had written for TV, and the whole point of 'A Song of Ice
and Fire' was to be so epic and massive that it was un-filmable. He would
never worry if a scene might too hard to pull off on a set (or too taboo),
and let his mind just fucking go.
So
of course it was a big hit in fantasy fiction circles and HBO came a
knocking, with the team of Benioff and Weiss taking the showrunner helm
(and doing an amazing job bringing it to life off the page). But that the
TV series it caught the zeitgeist of the world at a time when technology
allows us to absorb culture constantly and unceasingly was incredible.
With
bigger budgets the size and scope of the series expanded, the battle
scenes being everything Martin could have imagined, and the plot twists he
wrote keeping millions on the edge of their seats, the stakes raising with
each season.
And
while the adage is 'what goes up, must come down', in GoT's case, that
second bit was ignored completely, but for very practical reasons.
At
the time of its premier episode, Martin had only written five of the
planned seven books in the series, and while it was two year gaps between
the first three, the fourth took five and the fifth took six.
They
were working without an ending.
But
hey, these were beasts of books, and you could easily squeeze out two
seasons of TV from one of them without padding. Besides, even with
Martin's slowdown it seemed reasonable to assume that at least book six
would drop during the show's tenure.
Heh.
(Once again, give points to Rowling for not only sticking the landing, but
bringing it in on a very reliable schedule. First four Potter books were
annual (!), and after a three year break, the last three were biannual)
With
hindsight being this year and all that, there are appropriate aphorisms
that could have been taken out of the show's dialogue:
--Only something that you love this much can somehow disappoint you that
much.
-We
all have ideas of what people are going to become, and we're angry when
they become something else.
-you
know nothing, [insert producers, writers, critics, fans, or whoever you
think is in the wrong].
Because so much of the show succeeded so marvelously - where filming
people's reactions to The Red Wedding became a cultural institution all by
itself - expectations for its end just got as high as the wall.
Sticking the landing is never easy, especially for a series that made
their mark in part by subverting a lot of the storytelling tropes (both
fantasy-focused and otherwise) that we've pretty much internalized over
the last thousand years (thanks, King Arthur and Star Wars!).
First off, both seasons seven and eight would have benefited from being
eight or ten episodes instead of having six and seven of them,
respectively. The decision was pretty much that six seasons were spent
developing these characters, so there's little need to develop them on the
same practical level in the last two.
But
even with what we were given, changing the cliffhangers and shortening
episodes could actually make a big difference to the overall presentation.
GoT episodes have usually clocked in at just under an hour. Several
episodes of season seven went over that, and over half of season eight
did. That means you could just end some the episodes ‘early’ and carry
over the additional content to the next, to create more of them.
At
first this might ruin some cliffhangers (yet also build new ones), but the
overall benefit to how the audience is viewing and experiencing the
passage of time is massive. One of the problems with the last two seasons
is how quickly everyone is rushing up and down the fictional continent.
Everything feels rushed. Even if you're binging episodes, seeing the
credits is a still a mental 'break' from what you just watched. You can
use the bathroom, get something to eat, you can live your life again
before diving back in.
You
can also imagine that time has also passed in the world of Westeros, and
that the characters are still grappling with what just happened in the
episode. And as the main theme plays again, you are re-engaging, and that
'time away' (whether a week or five minutes), puts the previous episode in
particular context in telling of the larger story. The more episodes, the
more appropriate the pace.
[Let's look another fantasy franchise for comparison. You're waiting a
year or two for the new Harry Potter book/movie. But in the Potter
universe, only two months max pass between each book (one ends with the
school year wrapping up, the
next begins when it starts up again). So when you finally read book five
after waiting for three years, it doesn't seem like the disastrous
Triwizard Tournament just ended a couple weeks ago like it did for Harry.
It felt like...years. You have to get your imagination motor running again
and start thinking about what the characters are going through within that
fictional world]
Case
in point: Season Eight, Episode Four, aka 'The Last of the Starks', aka
picking up the pieces after the Battle of Winterfell. It's (deep
breath)...saluting the dead, sad drinking then happy drinking (coffee
cup), Jamie's trouser dragon slays Brienne, 'please don't tell anyone, Jon
Snow', let's not wait to march south, ‘hi Bronn, bye Bronn’, 'hey, family
guess what, hey, Tyrion guess what, hey, Varys, guess what', surprise sea
attack, bye dragon, bye fleet, 'bye Brienne', let's try to talk it out,
bye Missandei, Dany sad.
Eighty minutes.
During the surprise naval attack, Tyrion jumps ships as it's blown to
pieces, and while floating in the water, the mast cracks and falls what
seems to be right on top of him, turning the entire screen black.
That's when you should roll the credits. That's the cliffhanger, and you
save the fifteen minutes after that for the next episode.
Even
if this hypothetical episode begins with the survivors washing up on shore
(suggesting not much Westeros time has passed), we've had an episode break
to process what's happened.
Right from the naval disaster to Dragonstone for a brief strategy meeting
and then to the outskirts of King''s Landing is a hell of a lot of moving
around in the last quarter of an episode that started in Winterfell. It
makes the start and end of Jaime and Brienne's tryst feel much less
rushed. And putting Missandei’s death in the early part of the next
episode much more shocking.
We
can all be armchair TV producers, of course. Albert Burneko makes the
great point of saving Rhaegal the dragon's death for the
Did
it all feel rushed? You bet.
If
all of Game of Thrones was a two hour movie, then its last twenty minutes
is supposed to be a heart pounding rush to the climax. But since it's a
seventy three hour 'movie', what would be the last twenty minute segment
of 'this is over-the-top amazing' is the entire last season.
So you had epic battles and plot twists, which is absolutely what you
would expect at this point, but ignoring Game of Thrones much vaunted
nuanced character development means those two things didn’t work nearly as
well. This epic was never meant to sprint to the finish line.
The
audience was promised too much with this ending. Not only was it expected
to be a spectacle, but that it would wrap up nicely AND blow our minds
with surprises. Trying to do all that because it was series that gave it
in measured amounts throughout meant it was hard for Benioff and Weiss to
fashion a satisfying conclusion, and boy did it ever hurt that Martin
himself wasn't even there yet in his telling of the tale (perhaps he's
realizing that he can't wrap up his story in just two more books, even if
they're fifteen hundred page monsters).
So
alas, Jaime and Brienne's truncated affair. Pity Bronn's drop-in to
pointlessly threaten the Lannister brothers and then disappear again. But
most of all, pour one out for the complete lack of Queen Cersei in
seasoneight, who sleeps with a pirate and then just stands around smirking
until she looks terrified, and subsequently dies from rubble falling on
her. An absolute waste of the great Lena Headey.
Benioff and Weiss took the brunt of the Internet dragon fire for the last
season (really, the seventh is full of great stuff, it's just fast, fast,
fast), and it is completely unfair considering how well they brought
Martin's supposedly un-filmable epic to the screen. And hey, despite all
of the problems, it was (gasp) an actual happy ending for people within
the story, and it was an ending that stuck, with no plans to explore the
future of the Westeros.
But
the past is ripe for the plucking! Here comes a Prequel Series! Valar
Morghulis doesn't apply to stories!
On a
final note, we'd be remiss to not mention the actual movie this article
title is taken from. A subtle, quiet reflective film, 'I'm Thinking of
Ending Things' explores a relationship that might end, with plenty of
awkward conversations about death and uncertainty. There are also creepy
crank phone calls, unexplainable shifts in time, and surreal march to its
conclusion. It's slow and sad, and not the sad because a superhuman
sacrificed themselves to save the planet. It's a much smaller, much more
personal experience, while exploring the same themes you find in all the
movies and tv series mentioned above.
Is
it fun? Is it exciting? Is it what you're looking for in an evening's
worth of entertainment in 2020? Well the first twenty minutes is an
awkward car ride.
But
these sorts of movies as a whole are in jeopardy. Not exactly from being
made (although there seem to be fewer and fewer of them), but from being
relevant (which is why there seems to be fewer). There are fewer people
talking about for sure. Not only in terms of impact upon the greater
populace (as artsy dramas have always struggled against popcorn fare), but
in terms of being seen as a viable financial investment for movie studios.
There doesn't seem to be much of an interest in a follow-up, according to
these numbers. Maybe we're not thinking of starting things...
Sources
(https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/a-better-way-game-of-thrones-could-have-arrived-at-this-1834720538)
Star Wars'
9th Symphony
It's
gotten to the point where we all like thinking/talking/writing about
Star Wars more than like watching the movies (except
Empire, probably).
The
story behind the Star Wars saga
is becoming just as crazy as what happened a long time ago in a galaxy far
away. This was not intentional, but now the creation and reception of the
original trilogy is as legendary as Luke Skywalker himself: -A
New Hope was saved in the edit -Empire
got mixed reviews when it came out
-Harrison Ford thought it would be better if Han got killed in
Return of the Jedi, but Lucas thought it would be a downer
The
Prequel Trilogy came and went just before the internet went into
hyperdrive, but since that time it's not that hard to find defenders,
detractors, re-editors, detractors, ring-theory-ers and detractors of
these three boring movies (which is really the most damnable thing to say
about anything Star Wars related: how the hell do you make the high concept of
'wizards + space ships' actually boring?).
Star Wars is a modern fairy/fantasy tale, and here it’s meant in the
sense that for five decades now it’s been a story that (unless you were
born before the sixties), many, many, many people almost certainly first
experienced as a child. Lucas didn't set himself up to be the modern day
Grimm, but he certainly used plot devices that you would find in those
themes and archetypes.
We
have been cannibalizing culture since we've stopped cannibalizing each
other, so of course we're going to find narratives from thousands of years
ago in a 1977 sci-fi film (and
a 2015 half-remake of said film). Very easy to follow narratives, and that
means it's easy to say it's for kids and...neeeeerds!
And
while that was a stigmatized group in the eighties (to some degree, where
it was thought of as silly if you were indulging yourself in a cultural
piece that was considered for kids), now nerd culture has also become
adult culture.
That's not to say that in the last twenty five years or so adult content
has been tossed out of the window, but it's certainly gotten less popular
(and much less financially popular).
Instead, a lot of what was considered 'kids stuff' has gotten a bit
smarter, a bit more mature. Even with
Game of Thrones’ violence,
sexuality, and labyrinthine, complex plots (well, up to the last two
seasons) meant it was clearly for adults...it was still magic, dragons,
and swordfighting.
Now,
there's this old sociocultural/religious book that had this line about how
when you were a child you thought and acted like a child, but when you
became an adult you put away childish things, but we don't do that when it
comes to entertainment now. In the glorious twenty first century, and we
drag the stuff we liked when we were ten along with us as we get older.
But we're not just
bringing Han, Chewie, Luke, Leia, and the Stormtrooper who bumps his head
on the door as it rises.
We're also bringing all
our childhood feelings along withgrown-up cynicism to the same rodeo.
In
The Last Jedi, Skywalker was
talking to Rey...and us: this isn't going to go the way you want it to.
And people were up in arms over [insert how Rian Johnson ruined your
childhood here because he was trying to tell you to let it go].
Luke
had been able to hold on to that childhood optimism throughout the
original trilogy, even when he found out who is Dad was, mainly because he
was able to help his father find his good side again. But age catches up
with everyone, even Jedi Knights, and fucking up the training of a
powerful apprentice (flashes of Kenobi) was enough to break his spirit.
Johnson tried to make Star Wars
grow up, and a lot of that was turning the old stuff on its head. It
didn't just stick Empire Strikes
Back in a blender, it ripped up a shitload of
Return of the Jedi, too. Luke
purposely gets caught, tells Vader that they can work together because
there's good in him, and listens to the emperor gloat in a throne room,
where Vader eventually turns on the emperor. In
Last Jedi, Rey purposely gets
caught, tells Kylo that they can work together because there's good in
him, and listens to Snoak gloat in a throne room, where Kylo eventually
turns on the melty faced robed-dude. But then Kylo stays bad. 'Let the
past die', he says to Rey. And he's also talking to us.
By trying to do this at
every turn (while still dealing with space wizards and interplanetary
dogfights), The Last Jedi is the
only one of the Sequel Trilogy that has any replay value (but yeah, Canto
Bright is still lame). It's a bit of a bummer that Luke died in it,
though.
Not that his death at the end didn't work (it did quite well, echoing
Kenobi's sacrifice), but it would have been cool if he played a bigger
part in the last movie just because...man, it's Luke Skywalker!
And
in The Last Jedi Luke
was...interesting! It certainly helps that Hamill was brilliant in
returning to the role, but the whole cast brought their a-game to this
one. Everyone had their arcs (Kylo freed himself from the cycle, Rey bound
herself to the cycle, Finn learned how to sacrifice, Poe learned
responsibility, Holdo made up for some bad planning (don't keep your plan
a secret for no reason) by going out in a hyper-blaze of glory), the
action scenes and showdowns were note-perfect, and made you ravenous to
find out more about what happens next in the wider
Star Wars universe.
This
was good, right?
Apparently the Internet didn't think so. Some people's reaction were most
unimpressive.
And
there was even a great disturbance in the actual force...money. Last Jedi
made $700 million less than The
Force Awakens. Bad tweets and rage videos are one thing, but the mouse
house doesn't like sagging sales.
Apparently we really, really wanted it to go the way we wanted it to. We
just held onto that past like it was Leia in the vacuum of space.
That's the unintended problem with when a work of art/culture means
something to a lot of people. All of a sudden it has to mean something
more.
Adoration of pop culture comes with money for the creators (or y'know,
copyright holders). And while that can come with the baggage of
expectation from the diehard fans, the goal is balancing what most people
(casual fans) might be interested in watching on a Friday night and giving
the obsessives respectful heapings of Easter egg meat. Even better is if
the movie itself is...uh...good, because any product that is received well
has a better chance of making even more money.
Reviews from movie critics associated with mainstream media publications
have become a Rotten Tomatoes aggregate number, and more and more people
are taking cues from YouTube creators, popular Twitter handles, and
instagrammers. Another effect of the fragmenting of culture is the ability
to stay in a ‘lane'. If you watch one video trashing
The Last Jedi, chances are
YouTube will serve up a bunch more in your recommendations, and it's a lot
easier to get the impression that everyone thinks that the movie is trash.
Heck, that so many reviews praised
The Last Jedi was proof to people who hated it that...well, we're not
sure what it proved. That the mainstream critics are pressured to say good
things? That they don't 'get' Star
Wars'? That critics are irrelevant? That nobody in 'Hollywood' cares
about the fans? That they were trying stuff diversity into a far away
galaxy? Whatever you wanted to believe, it was true, apparently.
With
the Prequels, George Lucas was the problem. Everyone was relieved when
Disney bought him out, but now Disney is the problem. More specifically,
individual producers and directors are the problem. Apparently if
Star Wars isn't making you feel overwhelming joy and exhilaration at
every moment, it's a problem, and it's not yours, it's the people trying
to make it for you.
The
only real 'problem' with Disney owning
Star Wars is that there's just
too much of it. Five films since 2015 (plus several TV series and more)
has created a lot of fatigue for the franchise. If your only complaint
from a company perspective is, 'we're not making as much money as we had
hoped', then it's working out. But it gives diehards more chances to
complain, and gives the impression to casual fans that
Star Wars isn't special, that it's just another cultural thing that
will be available with increased regularity (diminishing returns always
kill slow).
As
far as quality goes, it's maintained (the standalones
Rogue One, Solo and the
Mandalorian have certainly bolstered the average). The films are
wonderful experiences on the big screen, and they're a lot fun, with
stories that the entire family can enjoy. I'm not being overly diplomatic,
that's what they are, that's what they've always been. But it's a much
better story (and profitable one, considering click-bait) to say that
online fandom has lots its collective mind. Yet people who like
Star Wars have always complained
about Star Wars.
Empire Strikes Back and
Return of the Jedi got mixed to
good reviews when they came out, among critics and even some fans (You
know how 'I am your father' is one of the coolest movie twists now? Well
when it came out, critics thought it was cheesy, and fans were livid that
the good and bad guy could be related).
And
yeah, then there's the Prequels...
*cough*
You
get into Star Wars when you're
eight, and it's a fucking joy because it's everything you want in terms of
entertainment when you're eight. It's going to fuse itself to your
adolescence and therefore shapes part of your social and cultural
interactions as you become an adult.
Butt
you can't expect to have the same sort of overwhelming connection and
adoration to it when you're eighteen, or twenty-eight, or thirty-eight.
If
you really want Star Wars to
make you feel like you're eight again, it's probably going to disappoint
you, because you're bringing an idealized, perfect concept of
Star Wars into the theatre
with(in) you.
And
that's also why this series is so important to so many people.
We
still love it, and it still loves...our money...but even in loving
relationships things change. That's part of life. Losing things that are
so very close to you, and then trying to carry on. Which is what
Star Wars is about, really. So
many people die in these films. From Uncle Owen in the first one right up
to Uncle Owen's grandnephew in the new one.
Oh
right! A new Star Wars movie
came out last month! The Rise of
Skywalker! How was that?
[deep breath...]
[wait for it...]
[spoilers as well]
It's fine.
It's better than the three prequel films, and Abrams covered
up plot holes the size of house by Marvelling it up. That means lots of
fast paced macguffins and plenty of quips. Looks great, action pieces were
well executed, the new planets felt like there could be plenty of stories
and history found if more time was spent in them, but Abrams makes sure
the film zips through its 150-odd minutes so you don't have to think too
much about ridiculous it all is. But hey, that's
Star Wars baby! None of these
films make much sense. It's been operatic fantasy with spaceships since a
princess stuffed a robot full of killer moon blueprints.
So yes, finding out the protagonist is the secret
granddaughter of the ultimate evil that everyone thought died at the end
of the Return of the Jedi is a
stretch in one sense, but in A New
Hope Darth Vader doesn't recognize his daughter as she stands in front
of him and later tortures her for information, so y'know...
Johnson tried to fix
Star Wars in The Last Jedi
and sometimes that means breaking it a little bit. Abrams trying to patch
it back together makes quite the mess, since repudiating the previous film
on both surface and thematic levels weakens the power of the entire
trilogy.
Rise's
biggest sin arrives right at the beginning of the expository crawl. 'The
dead speak!' Not that weird considering all the force ghosts we've seen,
but Palpatine actually lives, thereby negating Vader's sacrifice to save
his son (and the Galaxy) at the end of Return of the Jedi. 'He survived
all along' isn't the most original story beat, and since
Star Wars is based on/steals so
many adventure/fantasy cliches it's not that out of the ordinary, but that
is one thing the Original Trilogy nailed perfectly and made it end on such
a satisfying note. Now instead of casting off evil's hold on himself and
destroying the physical manifestation of it, Darth Vader just delayed it,
like Palpatine was just going to come back all along.
Hastily shifting the whole nine film saga to focus on 'the
rise and fall of Palpatine' may thread a lot of needles and make it about
(grand)kids evading their (grand)parents shadows, but it comes at a huge
costs.
For those fans who thought Johnson did a disservice by
portraying Luke as a cranky hermit in
The Last Jedi (Instead of
Kenobi's wise hermit), minimizing he and his father's triumph at the end
of Return of the Jedi was even
more frustrating. Even if you weren't going all Comic Book Guy and 'were
moments later registering your disgust throughout the world', it was
certainly messing with the purity of the Original Trilogy’s impact and
success.
Palpatine’s re-emergence also comes out of left field, but
only because the 'field' had a lot different teams on it, trying different
things. Abrams built up Snoak (literally, he was absolutely massive in
Force Awakens), but Johnson cut
him in two, and where did that leave Abrams? First off, he wasn't even
supposed to do this one, since Disney dismissed Trevorrow and his ideas
during the pre-production of IX, and now the guy who did VII is back to
wrap everything up as if VIII was just a 'previously in
Star Wars...'.
So what does Abrams do? Another surprise evil guy that no
one's heard of until now? Pretty weak sauce. How committed are you to
making Kylo become Ben and keeping Rey 'Rey'? Since the answer to that one
is 'very', he had little choice but to go back to Palpatine. And it
borrows plenty from the third film in both of the previous trilogies. From
ROTS (Reminder: Revenge of the Sith): a lightsaber duel in a raging
volcano, this one has it take place in a raging sea. Both close at a
familiar moisture farm on Tatooine. Both have C3PO getting his memory
wiped.
The nods to RTJ are screaming at us during the end of
Rise of Skywalker. A seemingly
insurmountable battle of resistance/rebels versus the Final Order/Empire's
fleet, each one with Death Star-quality cannons (it's gotten to the point
where all the planets in this galaxy have to constantly be on edge,
because it seems like every few years a couple of them are suddenly going
to be blown to bits).
Rey is tempted by Palpatine just like Luke was, and with the
same sort of bargain: do it to save your friends. Meanwhile, what was
Yoda's cold-as-ice advice when this option is presented? Sacrifice your
friends for the greater good, he tells Luke. The Dark Side twists your
emotional connections into a liability. The Force tells you to free
yourself of these notions.
It's a tough job, marrying nostalgia nods with good
storytelling. Marvel's universe is free of this because it's only twelve
years old and its callbacks aren't drenched in the viewer's childhood
memories, but dank memes. At the same time, the MCU’s impact on how
super-hero/sci-fi/adventure/everything movies are made is certainly seen
in this Sequel Trilogy.
The Four Avengers
films are clusterfucks that work because many of the characters have
standalone movies as backstory so the ensemble tales can blast along to
each ridiculous set piece, but Star
Wars is cramming so much story while trying to do character
development at the same time. The impact just can't be the same, and with
different directors having different visions, there's less 'time' than
ever for Abrams to wrap it all up. Consequently,
The Rise of Skywalker is very
busy. Even the way it takes a breath is done quickly.
Abrams' goal was to move so fast as to: A) shoehorn two
movies worth of story into one, making The Last Jedi practically
non-existent (or a bad dream), and B) make it hard to remember that what
just happened made almost no sense.
Of course, if you are asking how Palpatine built all those
Star Destroyers, or why there are homing beacons to mysterious, powerful
planets left all the over the galaxy for only plot-relevant people to
find, then maybe Star Wars isn't
for you.
Not that this will excuse the film's problems.
A 'nothing matters' pervades this film because the 'big
guns' have been out since The Force Awakens, with planet after planet
exploding to the point where no one really bats an eye when it's
discovered that now it can happen even easier. The stakes are low because
we're pretty damn sure no one important is going to be stuck on those
hunks of rock when it becomes much, much smaller hunks of rock.
And that's why Chewbacca's fakeout death fooled no one,
since all mains in the Star Wars
universe get a pretty sweet exit.
But at least that's something for Chewie, who is certainly
well loved, but has always just been...there…since the 6th or 3rd film,
depending on how you count (remember when he met Yoda just before Order
66?). And randomly getting a medal from Maz - to make up for not getting
one in ANH – feels coincidental and forced in a movie where the force is
actually an important thing.
Other than the kiss at the end (anything else, even hands on
each other's faces and foreheads touching would still be more emotionally
stronger than some 'ship work), Kylo/Ben and Rey is handled very
well...but at the expense of everyone else. It makes sense that the mains
get the main story, obviously, but adding so many characters in
Awakens and
Jedi means the rest of them all
get the short shift here. Finn had a great arc in the last one, but now
he's just 'I have to tell Rey something'. We learn a bit about Poe's past
but it doesn't seem to mean much other than strengthen his Solo parallels.
And poor Rose Tico found herself in the unlucky position of being the 6th
or 7th 'lead' in a film that instead finally gives C3PO a bit of a heroic
moment (the rest of the time he is so comical it is almost distracting).
While nice to see Lando again, it really felt like a walk on guest star
cameo on a sitcom.
Speaking of which, hopping from planet to planet to find
temporary friends makes it feel like some mini episodes of a tv series,
and it doesn't really work. Some of these characters have changes of heart
at hyperspeed. Ms. Boba Fett in Santa's Village is trying to kill Poe one
minute and then giving up all she worked for to help him the next.
You need time to make this work, but Abrams has to tell this
story, acknowledge new characters, and do all these fan service nods until
his neck hurts. But Disney is not going to let him make a 3 1/2 hour film
to get it all done.
At least the movie is a feast for the eyes, a true modern
visual masterpiece (although the whole trilogy has been, really). The
planets, the fight scenes, the long shots and close ups, it all looks
great, and what's more, even the acting is great, and the dialogue is
snappy, too. These three factors are hallmarks of the Marvel Cinematic
Universe and the Abrams filmography as well. Clever quips spoken by
talented actors elevate both, and having a green screen behind them during
most of filming means the only limit is the CPUs processing power.
And that's why this movie is...fine.
At no point are you rolling your eyes wishing for a
particular moment or scene to end. Of course that's kind of faint praise,
but the only way you're going to hate
Rise of Skywalker is if you go
into it determined to hate it. It's a very okay film, maybe even a good
film. But because all these movies are supposed to be connected, you have
to connect them. Sounds tautological, but from a storytelling standpoint,
it really limits your options. You can't just kill off a character or
ignore past events without blowback (not just from fans, but within the
story itself). And how they are connected narratively is not the same as
how the people watching them. Movies 4, 5, and 6 were made first. That
means 1, 2 and 3 were waiting for the future, and 7, 8 and 9 were strapped
to the past.
If there is one thing to take from the creation of the
Star Wars saga, then constantly
remind yourself that this a fairly ridiculous way to tell a story,
especially over forty two years. Lucas started with the good stuff right
off the bat, with heroic rebels versus the evil empire and wrapped it all
up nice and tidy. But then he added a very long and dull three-film intro,
and then Disney had to figure out how everything that could possibly go
wrong in the galaxy after the party on Endor's moon...would go wrong.
And of course it has to. It's not called Star Peace, after
all.
Conflict (especially familiar conflict) is essential in your
storytelling, and bringing back the old gang so eager directors can kill
them off and replace them with plucky young ones is a trope all by itself.
This nostalgia hit is why The Force
Awakens got a very big pass by the fanbase. It didn’t have to try hard
to be better than the whole Prequel Trilogy (it seems like Harrison Ford
eagerly got back into Han Solo's vest just so he could be killed outright
and have the fans stop bothering him about
Star Wars). It also made $2
billion, so Disney figured they could do no wrong (the almost-standalone
Rogue One did a cool billy in
box office, too), which meant they didn't get too nosy when Johnson made
the follow up. The Last Jedi
took risks just like Empire did,
and while Return of the Jedi is
certainly the weakest of the original trilogy, it nailed the most
important bit, which is the redemption of the Skywalker name. The PT and
OT was about the Skywalker name (and the rise and fall of an evil empire),
and that meant the ST was pressured into being about the same thing. Ever
since The Force Awakens there
were questions. Kylo Ren has Skywalker blood, but does Rey? Stay tuned!
It's embrace of familiar and recurring storytelling tropes
is one of Star Wars' greatest
strengths...and therefore one of its greatest weaknesses.
Even if you subvert these expectations by doing the opposite
thing...well, you can only do that so many times before it becomes a trope
itself. Misleading the protagonist (and audience) about parentage is a
Star Wars (and general
storytelling) hallmark.
While Lucas's films say that it's possible to choose your
destiny, regardless of your name, the Sequel trilogy stresses that you can
choose your destiny and your name. Anyone can be Skywalker. Even a
Palpatine.
Does this go against Johnson's 'anyone can be a Jedi' view?
Well...yes, and the fact that it was teased that Rey's parents really were
nobody special in Last Jedi
(plus the force sensitive broom kid at the end) makes the whip around that
'her grandfather was special...and evil' in
Rise of Skywalker particularly
painful. She certainly acted quite predictably, trying to exile herself
after finding out. After all, Kenobi failed hard and exiled himself...but
close to Anakin's son, waiting for the right time to intercept and help
lead 'a new hope'. Luke failed hard and exiled himself...and waited for
death. Kind of. He could have just offed himself, but perhaps that's not
the Jedi way, at least when nothing is at stake.
When Luke appears to Rey as a force ghost and tells her that
this isn't the way, he admits that he and Leia figured out who her
grandfather was but decided not to say anything (cheap, but cheap in the
same way how Kenobi gave Luke the parentage runaround all those years
ago). More damning was Luke saying 'I was wrong' and not really
elaborating. A mea culpa for his actions in
The Last Jedi (and that movie as
a whole)? Is it just the thing to say because you know that's what the
still living protagonist needs to hear?
Lies are huge in Star
Wars, and while it's no surprise that the Sith use it, 'noble lies'
come dribbling out of plenty of Jedi mouths (Kenobi telling Luke how his
father 'died', Luke telling Rey what happened when he confronted Ben
Solo).
Kylo is sick of it and offers Rey to wipe it all out in
The Last Jedi, which is sort of
Vader's bargain to Luke at the end of
Empire (together we can end this
war!), but eventually see the light and becomes good again, embracing the
family name. Rey takes it in a literal sense at the very end of this
nonology suggests that she accepts the recurrence of fortune's wheel. The
Skywalker name is here to stay, and good riddance, we’re all absolutely
sick of three generations of moody guys.
Or maybe it was just the result of terrible management
decisions at the highest ranks of Lucas film and Disney. Dumping so much
Star Wars so fast that of course
the magic fades a bit. You know it's a big franchise thing when you're
name dropping studio executives like Iger and Kennedy when trying to
criticize or defend the movies.
Yes, hindsight is 20/20 and they should have made had one
director/vision/storyline the whole way through for this trilogy, but the
OT had Lucas making it up as he went along and that worked out pretty damn
well. Whereas a mapped out Prequel trilogy proves that doing it that way
doesn't guarantee success, either.
[Does the disappointment in the Sequel Trilogy make the
Prequel Trilogy better? No. While both have massive plot holes and
questionable character decisions, the PT also has terrible acting,
terrible writing, and CG that has not aged well. That the PT is more
thematically and narratively consistent because Lucas was at the helm the
whole time doesn't make the films any more watchable. At least most of the
ST moves at an exciting pace, so you don't really have time to quickly
realize that this plot point is ridiuclous. With the PT, you can say 'that
was really stupid and nonsensical' in real time as it plods along. As I've
mentioned before in other Star Wars bits, the PT faced an uphill battle from the get-go
because everyone knows what happens... except for all the characters.
There is little emotional stake for the audience. It's six and a half
hours of dramatic irony. That's a basic problem of presentation even
before you start to consider all its cinematic faults. Yes,
Revenge of the Sith is by far
the best of those three, and there's a lot of good stuff in the second
half of that film, but it's still...meh]
Ending the Skywalker saga in this state... is as good as you
could hope for. When it comes to making new
Star Wars content, you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you
don't. Some people are going to like it, and some people are going to hate
it so much they are going to act like maniacs online. Time was very kind
to the OT, and maybe the ST will get the same sort of love in the future,
or at least some of the initial kneejerk detestation that the internet
specializes in will fade.
In the meantime, The
Mandalorian fills in a lot of thematic blanks of what life could be
like for non-epic heroes after the Empire crashed and burned (while being
lots of fun). It is once again a visual marvel, but the series works so
well because it is not the
continuing story that started with some stolen space station plans over
forty years ago. A (slightly) morally ambiguous hero is a refreshing
change, and grounding it in plenty of Western tropes and styles means some
pretty big fan service nods (the little green asset) won't come off as so
nakedly obvious.
The galaxy is truly the limit now, and hopefully with a few
lessons learned (and a lot of money made), Lucasfilm/Disney will (slowly)
churn out some truly impressive content about the history of Life Day.
May the force be with you for now.
December 2019 - We put our 2010s review (which inlcudes tv and film stuff) in the 'Sound Checks' section because there is also music stuff. So yeah. Here is the link.
Pulp Fiction
- 25 Years On, and Joker - 25
Days On
Shooting people in the face for laughs.
If
Pulp Fiction can be considered a
dark comedy, then Joker is the
darkest comedy (while both still being successes at blurring the line
between how independent and blockbuster cinema tell a story). Neither is
trying very hard for laughs. People in these movies are just trying to
live their lives. Vincent Vega wants to get high and resist sleeping with
the wife of his boss. Arthur Fleck just wants to make people happy and
treat his mother right.
It
just so happens that circumstances have them shoot people who weren't
supposed to be shot, and then they have to detail with the consequences.
It gets Vincent a visit from The Wolf and then breakfast, and it gets
Arthur on late night television.
Being a hit man, Vincent is pretty relaxed at shooting people who are
supposed to be shot, but Marvin was a mistake because the car (possibly)
went over a bump. Arthur was just protecting himself on a train from those
drunken businessmen.
Going through challenges and hardship are essential to every story. The
protagonists get the brunt, and they are expected to overcome these
problems and triumph. The main characters in these movies aren't very
'pro', however.
The
good people are literally bystanders and hostages in
Pulp Fiction. Everyone else is a
criminal or guilty by association. To say that Tarantino is celebrating
the gangster lifestyle may be a bit of a stretch, but it is certainly hard
to tear your eyes and ears away.
The good people in Joker are
being trod on by a corrupt, failing bureaucracy that favours the rich (who
are contemptuous at best and violent at worst). But then they don clown
masks and become a mob, rioting, looting and attacking law enforcement. A
justifiable reaction when society is failing them? When is violence
justified (if ever)?
Pulp Fiction was held up by conservatives as an example of how Hollywood
was ruining society in the mid-nineties. Showing such casual violence (and
sexual assault), glorifying drug use, and offering up a mostly nihilistic
outlook. But the violence wasn't any more graphic than a horror film,
'glorifying' drug use is a bit of a stretch since Mia overdoses and almost
dies, and Jules' change of heart at the end of the moving is full-on
inspiring. But the publicity around the film and whether it was the
decline of civilization certainly helped it at the box office.
Joker was labeled as possibly provocative for maybe inspiring
copycat violence by click-baiting hang wringers on the internet.
Frustrated young men will go all Howard Beale (ask your parents) with
their 'I'm mad as hell and can't take it anymore'. It could re-ignite the
class war of the 99% versus the 1%, by making the differences pretty stark
between the have-not's and haves. Its depiction of mental health aligns
the people afflicted with other marginalized groups in modern society.
Arthur's doctors are black women, as is the object of his affection. The
only time people of different backgrounds come together is when they shed
their backgrounds completely and become anonymous behind a mask. Too bad
they riot when they do this, instead of, say, work at a soup kitchen.
Pulp Fiction (like all of Tarantino's filmography) pays homage to past
gangster, kung-fu and war films. Characters love talking about other
movies and tv shows, and the restaurant Vincent and Mia go to is full of
celebrity impersonators from the 1950s. With the exception of Al Green's
'Let's Stay Together', the songs are lesser known surf-rock and country
tracks.
Pulp Fiction is all underground, and not just in its cultural
references. Despite several acts of violence and criminality, there is no
law enforcement presence in the film...except the guy who got the medieval
treatment on his ass for being a rapist.
And
everyone's pretty okay about it in a practically comical way.
Driving in a car that's covered in blood and brains? There's a buddy's
house to lay low at, and then we'll send over a private, professional
corpse disposer. Law is a mild inconvenience, like traffic. True power
comes from the individual and their own personal experiences. Drugs are
only a problem if you can't handle your shit.
Justification for doing any of these things aren't addressed. Sure there
is a code - if you double-cross a mob boss, he's going to come get you -
but it is wholly internal. Outside the gangster lifestyle, everything is
strange and unfamiliar. The 'coolness' disappears when Butch ventures out
into the outside world to cross some streets and yards to return to his
apartment to pick up The Gold Watch. It's one long shot with no dialogue,
and it's as unnerving as a horror film graveyard walk (despite taking
place in the middle of a sunny day).
If
Pulp Fiction takes the 'feel' of
seventies genre flicks, then Joker's
nods are much more specific: two Scorsese films that look at mental
illness and fame (Taxi Driver
and The King of Comedy) and the
superhero origin story.
Regarding the latter, it teases and rejects them.
Penny Fleck is a kind
woman who holds out hope that the good man Thomas Wayne will come and
rescue them.
Arthur learns that he is actually the multi-millionaire's
son.
But
neither of these things end up being true.
The
origin story is kicked to the side of the road. You know how you think
you're no one? Well you are! When you have nothing - when you have always
had nothing, when there doesn't seem to be any hero's journey to take -
you become the bad guy.
Or
really, you just stay the average guy, until the weight of the world
crushes you. Joker is about
people wanting to engage but find society unable or unwilling to help.
Arthur is trying to right previous wrongs with a job placement after
getting out of Arkham, but cuts to social programs and a weak job market
(contemporary commentary, anyone?) meant he and many other Gotham
residents are being pushed to the limit.
So
what do you…do?
Law
and Order is at the heart of Joker.
It
starts with a minor crime - some high school kids steal Arthur's sign and
then beat him up in an alley - and ratchets up to murder.
Soon
the police are questioning Arthur and his (ex)co-workers, but they are
representations, not fleshed out characters. When they confront him
outside the hospital they are more trench coats and gruff questions than
anything else. They weren't there when Arthur needed them, but now that
some rich guys are dead, they lurch into action.
The
real 'order' in this movie is Thomas Wayne. To those outside of his inner
circle, he is cold, dismissive, and contemptuous of the rabble of Gotham.
To his inner circle...well, we never see that. Order is distant. He never
interacts with Bruce, doesn't do anything with his wife except hold her
hand at public events. He is never a father here, just a stern,
disappointed father figure to the city. While his legacy in the rest of
the Batman-canon was much more positive, having him as the 'not quite bad
guy' here adds a wonderful layer of complexity to this one-off story about
how a super villain might be created, and not born.
Punching Arthur in the face during the bathroom confrontation shows how he
favours the stick over the carrot, but it's not an unreasonable reaction
when you realize it's the guy that snuck on to your front yard a few days
ago and had a creepy conversation with your son.
This
ambiguity in the protagonist and antagonist is rarely seen in superhero
movies, and while director Todd Phillips doesn't do much more than ask the
question (or even show which side 'wins'), that means it can be debated by
audiences as they walk out of the theatre.
When
he is captured after shooting Murray Franklin on the talk show set, even
the police are helpless in the midst of the riots that Arthur has
inspired. But was he justified in shooting the men assaulting him earlier?
And if yes for the first two who were attacking him as he fired the gun,
what of the third who was shot as he tried to escape? Was he making a
point by killing Franklin? Is he incriminating the media, or society in
general? Do we create villains by ignoring the plights of our fellow
citizens en masse?
If
this film wasn't a one-off back-story about one of the most disturbed
villains in comic book/moviedom, you might address these questions with
more weight, but… why so serious? As a think piece about the masked
vigilante in society it's a bit thin, but as a superhero movie tackling
the issue, it's a great stomach churning, chin-scratching experience.
Pulp Fiction puts you at ease despite the murder and sodomy because for
the most part the characters are always relaxed and in control. The way
Pumpkin and Honey Bunny are lounging in the diner, the way Vincent and
Jules are hanging out in the car (and later at the diner), and the general
coolness of Vincent's date with Mia.
Even
when something violent or crazy does happen, it doesn't last long and
there is still time for the odd quip under duress.
Meanwhile, Joker wants you
uncomfortable from the start. The city is a dangerous place, even
(especially) for clowns. The run-down neighbourhoods are full of squalid,
cramped buildings, and there's an ongoing garbage strike (contrast this
with the clean, sweeping majesty of Wayne manor). By having the film take
place in the early 1980s, everything feels antiquated and backward.
Everyone is suffocating in a world where all you could do is watch four or
five channels on television or grab a newspaper blowing down the street.
When
he is trying his hand at standup comedy there is the Curb-Your-Enthusiasm
awkwardness but Phoenix isn't playing it for laughs. He has a card to
explain his ailments, he contorts his body into seemingly impossible
positions, and he runs around in a panic: a sudden burst of speed and then
a desperate gasping for air. Even when he tries to do the right thing -
taking care of his mother, entertaining kids at a hospital - it all goes
wrong. He's not there for her for one night and that’s when she ends up in
the back of an ambulance, and a gun a co-worker gave him falls out of his
costume while he's dancing around in front of the kids.
Only
when Arthur does something awful does he start to relax. After shooting
those men on the subway train, he flees into a rundown public bathroom and
serenely dances, as if he's finally found some peace.
As
far as a super-villain origin story goes, he is destined to walk this
path. As far as a movie about vigilantism, it want to constantly ask you
if the obstacles placed in front of him make his turn to violence an
inevitable one. Was he 'set up to fail' because he had a mentally ill
mother whose partners physically abused him when he was child? If one
person reached out him during the film, would he have avoided becoming a
symbol/agent of chaos? Are we supposed to look at our own society and ask
how we are addressing the problems of people who face the cycle of poverty
and mental illness, and its many overlapping and far-reaching effects?
Can
you make a movie like this and have people debate it endlessly?
Well, yeah.
Pulp Fiction already did it.
It's
the most important movie of the last twenty five years.
If
Jaws and
Star Wars inadvertently created the modern blockbuster that rules
over moviedom now, then Pulp Fiction
inadvertently created the self-reflective, post-modern 'cool' movie/show
formula that has injected itself into so much of our popular culture.
[Also in 1994: The Simpsons were
at the height of their powers. New episodes were welcomed with open arms,
and syndication had arrived, which meant it was possible to absorb several
episodes per day. For a entire generation, this was how you learned what
funny meant.]
Pulp Fiction not-quite-intentionally asked the questions: What if bad guys
weren't so bad? What if they were normal? What if we saw them before they
'got into character'?
What if it felt real?
Why
that would just emotionally heighten the moments of narrative progression
of sudden violence!
Yakking about
non-expository bullshit in a movie was a way of helping to build the world
and the characters, but Tarantino made it a focus. And if it's
good dialogue, yak away!
Sure
the Tim Roth-Amanda Plummer opening is about the difficulty of robbing
places, and that eventually has larger implications for the interconnected
stories, but Vincent and Jules have two leisurely conversations over ten
minutes about fast food in Europe and foot massages. It definitely
established back-story and personality, but when it's time to knock on the
apartment door, Jules says, 'come on, let's get into character'.
They're about to go to work (of...uh...killing people), and work is an
act. Real Vince and Jules talk about tv shows over getting breakfast.
[Let's just take a moment and appreciate that Samuel L Jackson's
performance in this film is one of the greatest ever, hands-down. The
apartment scene gets all the attention, but what he does in the diner is
transcendent and beautiful and inspiring, all while pointing a gun at a
guy we would all love to see get shot in the face. When he repeats Ezekiel
25:17, you would actually think it's actually think it's from the bible
(it isn't exact)]
By
all metrics Pulp Fiction is more
than a movie, it's a cultural touchstone. It made a bunch of money, won a
bunch of awards, chock full of pop culture references that everyone still
gets.
And
it's good.
And
it's weird.
And
it's funny.
And
it's exciting.
And
it's romantic.
And
it's fucked up.
It's really fucked up.
It goes from 'Royale with cheese' to a gangster getting sodomized by a cop
in the basement of a pawn shop. Yet
Pulp Fiction made $200 million in box office alone (but also add
rentals, VHS (then DVD) purchases, swag, and the soundtrack sales). While
Tarantino's debut Reservoir Dogs certainly laid the groundwork,
Pulp Fiction changed how many,
many movies would be written, produced, and marketed.
And Tarantino did it
with post-modern pastiche that most audiences only has a vague familiarity
with. Certainly the movie-obsessed knew seventies gangster and Kung-fu's
flicks, but most people in 1994? It was a learning experience.
A step into a larger cultural world. Told out of order, full of
pop-culture deep cuts, inside jokes and call backs, all of which enhance
the experience if you get them but doesn't detract if you don't.
Over two and a half hours it never feels slow, never feels rushed, feels
completely natural, and - despite that - feels completely over the top.
If
it was an idea pitched today, it would have become a six-episode series on
Amazon Prime, and the Twitter-verse would get into a froth over every
episode and meme it to heaven and back. It was the Ideal internet
experience before most of the world ever went online. It was right on the
cusp, looking forward and backwards at the same time.
How
people talk in film and TV over the last twenty five years – whether
building character or pushing the plot forward – owe a debt to
Pulp Fiction. This holds true
for the onslaught of shocking indie films that came right after or even
the glossy, formulaic Marvel blockbusters that lord over us today.
Speaking of which...
Joker has made over $750 million, and Batman isn't even in it!
(In
a move with Batman in the title, the public chooses order. In a movie with
Joker in the title, the public
chooses chaos)
Controversy surrounding
a piece of pop culture doesn't necessarily increase attention in a way
that translates to ticket sales, ratings or plays, but it works a lot of
the time (see: Fiction, Pulp).
It was worried that it
would really bring out the angry incel vote, but people don't need a movie
to tell them that the wealthy few are exploiting them through bureaucratic
bullshit.
It's
also not a surprise that people don't act like they do in movies. You
don’t air your grievances by marching rebelliously in the streets.
Unless you count Hong Kong protesters, Spanish protesters, Chilean
protesters, British protesters, and Iraqi protesters, right? But they're
fighting for democracy and fairness, right? It's not just chaos for the
sake of chaos? Good protesters have policies and plans, and rioters just
have a brick or a Molotov cocktail...right?
It's
a decent reminder that violence is easy and real change is hard. That what
takes years to build up can be torn down in a flash. That the needs of the
many outweigh the needs of the few. That an open palm is the future, and
the closed fist is the past.
But
it also reminds you that...
"The
path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the
selfish and the tyranny of evil men.
Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the
weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's
keeper and the finder of lost children.
And
I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those
who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers, and you will know I am the
Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."
The Matrix Trilogy is right about everything (and most of it isn’t very
good)
It was twenty years ago today...
(well, this week)
...that The Matrix came out, and it was good, and made
money, and so they made more, which weren't as good, and didn't make as
much money, so they didn't make any more.
The circle of life.
Things start, they're good and fresh, they get old and
rotten, the end.
Are we talking movies, people, civilizations,
vegetables, or the particles of the universe?
Don't worry, when it comes to an open-ended question
like this, The Matrix has you covered. Specifically the last two films in
the trilogy, which pack in so much philosophy that they almost suck. The
four and half hours that The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions
will take from your life are bonkers and bad in a way that no movie studio
will ever let happen again, especially for a three hundred million dollar
price tag.
But compared to other film franchises - and especially
film sequels - they are at least fascinating and weird. They are Lynch's
Dune without the camp and constant exposition. They are taking acid with
Yoda in the Los Angeles from Bladerunner. They are unrepentantly id-driven
and everyone in it is miserable or a computer program.
It shouldn't work...and it mostly doesn't...but you
have to give plenty off points (percentage points?!) for the attempt.
The Wachowskis didn't want to double down on
cookie-cutter sequels, and more amazingly, Warner Brothers let them. And
that's because Warner was thinking they had two George Lucases on their
hands, and that means dollars in the bank. See, Star Wars: A New Hope
wrapped up everything rather neatly (regardless of Lucas's long term
plans). Death Star destroyed, Han saves the day, everyone but Chewie gets
medals. But when you make hundreds of millions of dollars at the box
office, suddenly everyone wants you to make more of them. So Empire
Strikes Back's opening crawl tells us that actually things are pretty damn
shitty and there's still fighting to be done. Same with The Matrix. The
first one ends with Neo essentially reaching Buddha-warrior status,
destroying Agent Smith into ones and zeros. Everyone happy. But mega box
office happened, so, y'know, maybe there can be more story to be told?
Mo' money equals mo' problems.
Which is not necessarily a bad foot to start on, but if
Lucas leaned heavy on Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, then the
Wachowskis cribbed Foucault on an acid trip.
The first Matrix asked the audience what is reality,
and followed that up by asking what is a prophecy, and how can you make it
self-fulfilling? The answers were 'what you choose it to be', 'what you
choose it to be', and 'by choosing it'. Plus slow motion bullet dodging in
leather pants.
It was great fun, the most successful R-rated movie of
all time for over a decade, and spawned a huge cultural phenomenon, from
video games to anime shorts to throw pillows.
But that's not necessarily impetus from a storytelling
perspective. Why should the Wachowskis return to a tale that wrapped up
perfectly? Why tell more of the story? Why make two sequels? Why bother?
They answer this question early in Reloaded:
Purpose.
Agent Smith returns as a virus. Not quite a program of
the Matrix, and certainly not human. But he can roam around the Matrix and
infect other agents, turning them into clones of himself. When he (and his
99 new selves) finally run into 'Mr. Anderson', he laments to Neo that
because he defeated him at the end of the first film, he's been wandering
around without purpose, which, to Smith, is the most important thing any
sentient being can have. It’s not necessarily enough to put food in the
mouth hole and reproduce. We want to have a reason for getting up in the
morning, even if we complain about our job as a plumber, lawyer, or
butter-passer. Purpose is paramount.
Except for maybe Choice. Which comes up later when Neo
meets The Architect, who built the Matrix. That whole scene is a wonderful
mindfuck, which assumes (crazily) that the average moviegoer would be
vaguely familiar with reincarnation, karmic realignment and Nietzsche's
eternal recurrence. Cinematically, it's put together perfectly. Helmut
Bakaitis does a great job as the anti-wise old man, the surrounding
monitors allow us to get a peak at what angry Neo might be saying or
thinking, which means they can quickly be dismissed and focus on calm Neo
asking all the right questions. And getting some pretty out-there answers.
It's great that the two of them don't talk down to the audience, that it's
a genuine conversation between a Buddha-like man and an ultra-powerful
computer program. To wit: This is not the first Matrix. There have been
messiahs like you in the past who lead a rebellion to free humanity from
it, and we planned for that. Now that you're here, we re-set and we start
the fight again, as if it's the first and only time, and if you don't
agree, Neo, we'll kill everyone when we reach the real-life rebel
stronghold. All previous messiahs have agreed to the re-set, but Neo
doesn't, because he specifically wants to save the woman he loves. This
isn’t subtle. Even The Architect points this out. For the other messiahs
there was no alternative to the re-set. There is for Neo, which means the
problem is choice.
This is what Neo realized a few minutes earlier in
conversation, when The Architect described our true nature, as viewed by
an ultra-intelligent machine. It first created heaven for humanity and the
place was literally too good to be true, our tiny brains couldn't handle
it and it crashed. So then it tried to build what was essentially The
Purge, and that sucked for slightly more obvious reasons. So the Matrix
that worked was one that looked a lot like 'our' world, with a small
little group of rebels who know that the Matrix is a fake, live outside of
it, and are trying to overthrow the AI and robots that run it. But the
robots know all this, and are just manipulating the rebels as easy as they
manipulate all the people hooked up the fake world they think is real.
So after pulling off a near impossible mission/action
sequence to get here and find all this shit out, Neo, whatcha gonna do?
The problem is choice, but now the red pill/blue pill
moment from the first film is flipped. Accept the recurrence of the Matrix
and humanity lives (as unconscious slaves), accept reality and everybody
dies when the Matrix crashes.
And that's not the only thing that crashes. How about
your ego? Already Neo is a pretty zen dude - as most messiahs should be -
but one couldn't blame him for being a bit disappointed, or at least
shocked. You think you're the first, but it's all been done before. You
think you're important but you're not, you're a mistake they've been
planning for. Your entire life being whittled down to:
"The anomaly is revealed to be both the beginning and
end."
And in the end it comes down to...two doors! Yes,
doors. Because after a conversation full of ergo, vis-a-vis and
concordantly, we should finally make it simple for those in the audience
who just want to see Neo punch a fancy-talkin', well-dressed old man in
bullet-time.
It's hard to really stress how great of a topper this
was. Neo pretty much ended the first Matrix as a god, and for most of
Reloaded he's mostly sleepwalking as he breaks the necks of more agents
and other foes. So how do you bring a god to his knees?
Philosophy!
Just yakking about Choice, Purpose, and Prophecy is all
fine and good in a midterm paper, but when it's suddenly wrapped up in the
woman you love and the death of humanity, it takes on a whole new meaning.
There's pure narrative queries of what if Neo didn't do this, what if
Trinity did that instead, and what could possibly happen now, all those
questions of butterflies with flapping wings, all having to be considered
in a very narrow series of seconds. There's the deeper concerns involving
acceptance that life involves suffering, that we are here to attempt to
mitigate this suffering, that a reunification of the mind and body is not
a singular event but is a continual process. And if Buddhism fondling
Hinduism isn't doing it for you, why not a try a hit of Gnosticism?
Everyone's trying to escape the fake world put together by the evil gods,
but the evil gods know this and have a plan to crush our real bodies as
well. They've even compromised the good god/messiah. What else can do you
except learn and become aware of these dichotomies, and shed your
ignorance?
But in case that's not enough to fill up a movie
theatre, here's a crazy highway chase, and here's a lady orgasming from
eating a slice of cake spiked with a computer virus, here's Neo doin' the
Superman and gal his crush at the last second, and apparently Agent Smith
can travel into the real world via dial-up.
People kind of liked Reloaded, but the only cultural
buzz was making fun of the cave rave and Neo's butt. It did over $700
million in tickets.
And six months later came Revolutions.
*cough*
This movie was the mirror-version of the first film.
Whatever worked in the original, they did the opposite. Whatever was
slightly cliched in the original, they magnified. Now epic sci-fi doesn't
really do 'subtle', but it really should avoid bludgeon. Cyberpunk
obviously doesn't do comedy, but they usually have some vestiges of
humanity, and that is truly lacking here. No one really seems to have much
emotion about anything (even as killer robots destroy the last city on
(in) earth), except for that plucky young guy they actually named Kid, and
he's right out annoying character class 101. Everyone seems to forget that
Joe Pantoliano's Cypher (who betrayed everyone in the first movie) was by
far the most lively and interesting character of the entire trilogy. No
one remotely fills his shoes in the next two films. Everyone acts like the
robots they're supposed to defeat. Even how the remaining awake people
discuss how best to defend
It's not that there were gaping plot holes, it's that
no one really cared enough anymore to point them out. You watch
Revolutions and kind of follow along and you become the sheeple we're
supposed to not be.
But...
It was still royally fucked up and weird in an epic,
once-in-a-lifetime car crash sort of way. Watching spider robots fight
people in big mech-suits can’t be all bad. They seem to triple-down on
symbolism, since now Neo is Jesus, Neo is in a coma and stuck at the Mobil
(read: Limbo) Avenue Subway Station, Neo was the wrong anomaly. See, Smith
was the anomaly, but he only became that when Neo defeated him the first
time.
And in the fist-fight at the end of the Revolutions,
they both defeat each other (a nullification of good an evil necessitating
a semi-synthesized rebirth), and based on the terms Neo outlined to the
Machine Leader beforehand, by stopping Smith, the machines would let
everyone leave the Matrix if they wanted to and live their own
reallife...in the hellscape that is an earth ravaged for centuries by
robots, apparently.
Now that’s not really the happiest ending of all time,
and it also breaks the fourth wall, because the Wachowskis were
essentially telling this to everyone in the theatre that you aren't a
slave to technology, ideology, or theology, that you are free to live how
you want. It's just up to you to turn your phone off, disconnect and walk
away from the personal matrix you find yourself in, from everything that
you thought was important but maybe it's not, maybe it's just what they
want you to think.
Which is fine if you want to live alone on the top of
mountain (and eat whatever you can scavenge and occasionally drink your
own urine) since, as another French philosopher pointed out, 'Hell is
other people'.
Today we are constantly connected to other people.
Today we are in our own voluntary matrix, and while at first the Internet
was rightly hailed as technology that will bring the world together and
change everything, it is now being derided as technology that has divided
the world into distinct camps and has changed everything.
The Internet was still mostly done through your
landline in 1999, and there wasn't Facebook or an iPhone in 2003. Prior to
this trilogy, the best example of evil AI were the robots in the
Terminator Series (who were portrayed as humanoids that carried guns) and
HAL from 2001 (who was felled by mental illness and a screwdriver). There
were plenty of movies throughout the nineties that explored the dark side
of cyberspace (including Johnny Mnemonic, starring a rather familiar
looking protagonist), but The Matrix was the first to take it to the
extreme, 'your whole life is a lie' angle. It gave rise to the notion of
the much more nefarious idea of extensive infiltration by the digital.
The only thing that could be worse than being forced to
live in a giant virtual world is choosing to live in a giant virtual
world. In a lot of way this feels like what we're doing now, and not
really just in the literal sense of VR headsets becoming more popular. Our
phones connect us to each other in ways that were unthinkable twenty years
ago...unless you were making a cyberpunk film about evil robots.
So now we decry the system we’ve created, saying it's
taking our jobs, making us more unhappy and isolated, and warping truth
into whatever the individual wants it to be. But we say all this while
relying on it more than ever. More of our money is digital, more of our
valuable information is digital, and more of employment and pleasure
requires an almost constant connection to a vast conglomeration of
computer systems and networks acting in perfect unison.
Obviously it'll be a huge problem if this system
suddenly breaks down. But it will also be a huge, different sort of
problem if just gets more and more powerful.
How much more can we rely on cyberspace before it
becomes our prison? What if we created the Matrix, and just got AI to run
it?
To be blunt and bring the archetypal messiah into our
present moment, Neo took the full brunt of the Internet just so he could
contain and kill it, and in the process it killed him. Neo died in a
deluge of toxic YouTube comments and tweets and 'we are having trouble
accessing that file at this time' so you didn't have to. He destroyed the
Internet by becoming one with it, thereby freeing us to have to rely on
it. Sure, it's a hellscape at first...but we're free.
Oh, and at the end of Revolutions strange robot
tentacle arms carry Neo's body away as he lies in a Christ-like pose.
Fin.
*cough* Throw your phone in the river *cough*
Okay, so that was weird, sweeping, and...okay at best.
Watching Revolutions again - especially not long after the first two -
feels like a R-rated version of a Saturday morning cartoon show from the
eighties or nineties. Serious and silly at the same time, offering the
worst of both worlds. Once again, it's the inverse of the first film,
which managed to thread the needle of those opposites perfectly.
If The Matrix Trilogy didn't change the world, it at
least changed Hollywood. Unfortunately, not for the better.
After the release of the last two films, anything
costing nine figures would almost certainly be made by committee, since
you can't let that kind of money be trusted with a couple dreamers who got
lucky with cool effects and an early spring opening with little
competition. No doubt that The Matrix quickly exploded into a franchise,
but critics looking back can say that it wasn't handled well by Warner
Brothers, that it could have been bigger, better, more extensive, and then
point to Marvel and Star Wars as examples of how to do it right (read:
take a lot less risks, and keep driving the plot points home).
It also changed the perception of what success is for a
blockbuster. The two sequel films costs three hundred million to make, and
they made over $1.1 billion.
That's a hell of a good investment, but for some reason that when it was
combined with the reviews (meh for Reloaded and sub-par for Revolutions),
these two films were seen as disappointments, and that meant the entire
trilogy was viewed as fatally flawed.
Perception is everything.
That is exactly what the heroes of the first film of
this trilogy tried to fight against (a warped perspective), and it worked
so well that it's future became a victim of this mental scourge.
The Matrix made seven times what it cost (not including
huge video/DVD sales), got great reviews, and became a cultural phenomenon
(which is hard to measure, but it involves fans buying boatloads of
merchandise and lots and lots of quoting).
Nowadays, blockbusters are supposed to do all three of
these things to be considered a success. That is the perception in
Hollywood now.
The first - money - has to happen, otherwise the next
two factors don't even enter into the conversation. Look at Solo: A Star
Wars Story. No really, please look at and watch it, because apparently no
one did, since it's considered a box office bomb, making 'only' $392
million. And because of that, the meeting rooms in Hollywood and the hive
mind of the Internet soon decreed that it wasn't very good (the second
thing), and therefore shouldn't be analyzed, quoted or referenced to (the
third). It's hard to become a cultural phenomenon when too few people saw
said film, which means making any references to it is difficult for people
to get, which would have helped make it be a cultural phenomenon (eternal
recurrence again).
[Side Note: I really liked Solo! It was a lot of fun,
it looked great, and the whole cast was stellar. I thought it straddled
the comedy and drama well, and they did a great job expanding the Star
Wars universe. I truly don't get why it didn't make more money (Last Jedi
fatigue, because it came out less than six month earlier?) or why it gets
kicked around so much]
Sometimes you can make a shitload of money, and it's
still considered a failure, like Batman v Superman, because critics hated
it and fans just made fun of it constantly. Sometimes you can make a
shitload of money, get rave reviews, and people are still a bit wonky on
saying it's not great because it wasn't as great as the one that came
before it, which was the unfortunate fate of The Dark Knight Rises. Which
is a good comparison to the Matrix because of how it emphasizes the
importance of trilogies having to land the ending. After however many
years of the films being in the public consciousness and a run time of
over six hours, those less ten minutes have to be fucking mint. Like the
orgasm from a sex cake And for all the bashing Return of the Jedi might
get, even the Ewoks couldn't stop how awesome it was to watch the
redemption of Anakin Skywalker and the defeat of the Empire. The Dark
Knight Rises had a lot of good stuff going for it, but never got close to
its predecessor in importance and emotion. Revolutions just exploded on
takeoff, and few people had much interest in picking through the wreckage
for anything worthwhile.
So because a massive franchise wasn't enough of
success, Hollywood became even more risk-averse. Let's not delude
ourselves into thinking it was ever just about the art, and of course the
blockbuster film mindset was around for decades by the time the Wachowskis
scored their big hit in 1999. But the Matrix franchise is sadly able to be
held up as yellow flag, a warning for executives to put a lot of clauses
in big money contracts regarding how much the filmmakers have to listen to
studio notes throughout the entire process. With the possible exception of
Spielberg and Nolan, everyone has been making big budget franchise movies
on leash (and those two are free from that because of budget adherence and
repeated financial success) for over ten years.
Reloaded and Revolutions are what happens when a bunch
of art school comic book fans were given three hundred million dollars.
Compared to the sci-fi (and comic book) blockbusters that would come
after, the Matrix trilogy is the fisher king narrative pushed through a
strange animal's digestive system, cross-bred with a first year philosophy
student's wet dream (advanced studies would be Grant Morrison's epic,
super-nuts comic book series The Invisibles, which the
Wachowski's...uh...borrowed...a lot from).
What's interesting is how, twenty years on, The Matrix
Trilogy, encapsulates the feelings we have about technology, bureaucracy
and society now. The Internet and AI are things we need and fear,
political and corporate power act like faceless suits with too much power,
and we aren't sure what is true anymore. The Wachowskis focused too much
on accidentally nailing what life will feel like in the 21st century, and
not enough on keeping a fresh story going all the way through.
And now there's talk of rebooting/relaunching (already
starting with the 're-'s) The Matrix series. That makes sense. With enough
producers and writers and executives on board (and the original creators
brought on as 'advisors' and nothing more), I'm sure they can Marvel-ize
it completely. Only four more reboots to go until the cycle truly breaks.
But can lightning strike twice? Will the public spend
enough on a property that left an (ir)rationally bad taste in everyone's
mouths? Does every dystopic films series about out of control technology
deserve a second chance?
We are at a point where all the information ever
accumulated is at our fingertips. What do we do with it?
We are close to creating virtual worlds that people can
live in, and machines that can think like people. What we do with them?
The problem is choice.
"So here's the plan..."
And off we go. How they're going to rob the bank, rescue the prince(ss),
or get to
Enter planning, which has traditionally been presented to audiences via
exposition. Oedipus Rex is overrun with characters telling what they did,
or what they are going to do, and through this the tragic truth can be
pieced together. While Hamlet's sanity can be endlessly debated, he is
quite open in his plans and what they are meant to do ('a play's the
thing, to catch the conscience of the king'), as are Claudius and Laertes,
when they tell each other their fail safe plan to make sure Hamlet is
positioned during or after the final duel. In Great Expectations, Pip
makes the assumption of who his mysterious benefactor is, and plans his
life accordingly, telling the reader what he is doing and why he is doing
it.
These declarations were so typical over thousands of years that they
became the archetype. And only when prose and the visual image (both
onstage and in photographs/film) began to show rather than tell, did they
become cliched and heavy-handed, and storytellers found themselves having
to adjust accordingly.
Well, kinda. Sometimes old habits die hard, in part because many audiences
are watching a movie or play not necessarily to appreciate symbolism and
subtext, but to watch the hero get the girl in the end.
The James Bond novel and film series is a
fine example of how to address these challenges, plus sex and violence. Fleming
began writing the novels after film had established itself as reputable
storytelling medium, and before it crushed the literature as the primary
western medium for storytelling. Bond novels had a bit more mystery to
them, and world domination wasn't always the villain's end goal. This
changed with the films, which simplified both storyline and character (and
consequently, how plans were presented). A debriefing early would given
Bond a rough outline of mysterious and disturbing events around the globe
that intelligence agencies believed were connected, and once captured by
the villain, 007 will be informed of the plan in its totality. Not long
after, the villain's missed or failed opportunity to kill Bond will come
back to haunt them, as they will be blown to smithereens or fed to a
shark.
To tell the plan is to give up power. Secret knowledge is something to
keep...secret. And throughout many of these films, that's the trail the
spy is following: Dead bodies that the villain is creating to cover his or
her tracks. But even if every standalone film hits the reset button - with
a new cadre of villains and henchmen who makes the same mistakes and fall
prey to Bond's familiar ingenuity and luck - the audiences don't reset.
The same thing becomes the same old thing, and the challenge becomes
finding new ways to present similar series of plans.
But small simple tweaks are the only changes that are really available to
storytelling that has to adhere to a rigid formula. James Bond was never
going to pick up the format of French new-wave, and so the biggest leap in
the series was when it went grittier and realistic in the late eighties
with Timothy Dalton, with plots involving weapons smuggling and drug
trafficking (he even had his license to kill revoked at one point). One
could say this was returning the series to its literary roots. One
couldn't say this worked at the box office. The producers pressed a slight
reset button, and at just the right time…philosophically.
At this point post-modernism has been pulled in such opposing directions
that there doesn't have to be middle ground. It's either completely
meaningless and can be ignored, or it is the most important theory of
comprehension that it even incorporates its own meaninglessness. To say
everything is just relativistic mental constructions leaning up against
each other can illuminate or bore you. In post-modernism, everything can
be reduced to constantly changing subjective plans. You could define
yourself, your reality, but that doesn't mean anyone else has to
acknowledge it in the same way.
Every generation wants to be an important. Those living through this very
moment like to puff out their chests and say that this is key time to be
alive. To claim that they saw grand plans succeed and fall (Kurtz's lament
in Heart of Darkness: 'I had immense plans'). That's part of everyone's
own personal story. No one wants to look back at their life and said
nothing happened politically or culturally, that it was all one big bore.
That these concepts came to the academic and intellectual forefronts in
the sixties and seventies (Cold War, social upheaval, technological
advances) meant that it would take a few more years before it dribbled
into popular culture. Postmodernism (and post Cold War) in action films
can work for a while. The first Bond film under this banner is Goldeneye*,
which opens with 007 and 006 (Alec Trevelyan) breaking into a Russian
chemical weapons lab, but we don't know that's what is, and we don't know
what they're doing there. For once the producers trust the audience can
figure out the plan for themselves (since there's only so many options in
a film like this). Most of the changes are ornamental, a line or two that
would sit awkwardly in an earlier film of the series, but feels a bit more
knowing and 'in the film's own world' (that suspension of disbelief
thing). During this initial sequence, they are ultimately noticed by
guards and a firefight begins, and as they exchange gunfire in a room
filled with explosives, Bond at one point yells to his partner, "Shut the
door, Alec, there's a draft!" Which a lovely little line that shows some
grace under pressure while conveying a rather importance message regarding
how Bond would like all the bullets whizzing by his head to cease. It
sticks in your head just a bit. Like a meme.
*-unless you want to include Never Say Never Again, a 1983 remake of
Thunderball, starring a returning 52 year old Sean Connery. It's certainly
an overtly self-aware film, with plenty of comments about Bond's age. The
movie only exists because of a legal loophole, where one of the producers
of the original retained the rights to it.
It didn't outgross the 'new' Roger Moore-fronted Bond film of that year,
Octopussy, where the only thing memorable was the title.
Halfway through
Goldeneye it’s revealed that the villain is 006, who everyone thought was
dead. Suddenly Bond is fighting a former friend, who knows the spy game in
and out. It’s business and personal at the same time, which is a wonderful
way to raise the stakes. The problem is, 006 still has a plan, and Bond's
job is to ruin the villain's plan by any means necessary (usually by
blowing something up). How he does this can be pretty haphazard, sometimes
making it up as he goes along (with a Q gadget usually helping), which is
typical of many other action and thriller films, where only the
antagonists have a plan, and the protagonists job is to thwart it,
typically on the fly, creating chaos every step of the way (see: first two
Star Wars, Die Hard*, etc.).
*-in the third Die Hard (that would be 'With a Vengeance'), this is
addressed for laughs. Jeremy Irons' villain tells Samuel L. Jackson's
character that he interfered with a well-laid plan, and
Contrast this with the Mission Impossible film series, which is based on
the premise that the protagonists will have a better (and more advanced)
plan than the antagonists. Typically the antagonists' plan is presented as
being airtight and foolproof (hence the name of the series), and only
through a series of identity switches and death-defying stunts/chases
(still with some element of planning) are the protagonists able to
succeed. The audience is typically fooled into watching the plan develop,
and only at one point close to its conclusion is it realized that what you
thought what the plan unfolding is not an accurate depiction of reality
(ie, the head of the national intelligence was Tom Cruise in a disguise,
getting the supposedly impossible access to the macguffin). This has been
part of the Mission Impossible film series since its inception in 1996,
and instead of tweaking this formula, they just made the action sequences
more epic and death-defying (knowing Tom Cruise does his own stunts in
these movies means there's a safe sort of rubbernecking going on, where
you go to watch the film just to see him almost die while skydiving,
racing a motorcycle, or holding his breath for five minutes. It's a
strange dose of reality in the middle of over the top fantasy).
It's no coincidence that the most well-received and critically-lauded
comic book film in recent memory was the one that played with narratives
and planning the most. The Dark Knight stands head and shoulders above the
rest of this genre because of how well the Joker is able to balance chaos
and planning. The opening sequence where he has his fellow thieves turn on
each other and is able to escape all by himself (with the money) is a
perfect introduction to the story's recurring question of how to combat
chaos through law and order. Batman is already a vigilante operating
outside of the police department to fight organized crime (ruining their
usual plans of making money via drugs, weapons, gambling), but the Joker
is something much different. His plans are for their own sake. Just a way
to watch the world burn. Destroy the power of the mob and hunt down police
officers and Batman-lookalikes at the same time.
The elaborate plan of faking Gordon's death and getting Dent to confess to
being Batman was just to draw the Joker out into the open so he could be
captured. But he expected this, and 'turned the plan in on itself',
escaping jail and disfiguring Dent, the public face of law and order.
Even how The Dark Knight addresses the secret identity issue for
superheroes is planning atop of planning. A Wayne Enterprises employee
realizes his boss is Batman, and is about to go on TV to tell the world,
when the Joker publicly announces that unless someone kills this employee
(which would ruin his own fun), he'll blow up a hospital, which leads the
employee being saved from mob rule by Bruce Wayne in a very fast car. But
the Joker goes to the hospital, anyway, as his main goal was to unleash a
now deranged Dent upon the city and blows the building to boot.
He's only foiled because, ultimately, the Joker's planning goes awry when
he put too much faith in the darkness of humanity, rather than the light
(neither of the ferries laden with explosives are blown up by the other
passengers/prisoners). He stepped back from total control of the situation
and made assumptions that people would react like he would. In other
words, he lost when he let others choose the plan.
A cat and mouse game doesn't begin to cover it. Super-hero films are as
simple as the Bond ones, but here was one that assumed the audience had
absorbed the style and stories of all the ones that came before. Director
Christopher Nolan was able to breeze right through the set up, letting a
couple offhand naturalistic lines tell us all we need to know to
understand the plan. We were presented with the chance to be more like
citizens of Gotham City watching it unfolding real time in a city that
could conceivably have a man dressed a bat swooping through it, and less
like a blockbuster movie audience.
But the film that was able to successfully challenge and upturn the
concept of the plan was the middle one of the Oceans Trilogy, the mindfuck
that was Oceans Twelve. First off, the 2001 remake of Oceans Eleven is a
pristine piece of heist/ensemble filmmaking. The plan of all plans. A fun
romp that keeps upping itself while letting the audience know just enough
to follow along and still be surprised along the way. The fact alone that
it was a remake meant the audience's understanding was built in (you
didn't even have to see the original, you just had to know it existed).
Even the characters were presented to the audience with a self-assured
confidence that all of this was fun and games, had been done before. As if
we were all in on the plan, which was to do the 'impossible' casino heist,
with the slight twist of knowing how the antagonist would react when the
plan is revealed to him. For a movie about stealing $160 million dollars,
it's remarkably airy. Everyone dunks on Matt Damon's character. Brad
Pitt's character was always eating. The asides alone were worth the price
of admission. When Carl Reiner’s character is told about a relationship:
"Tess is with Benedict now? She's too tall for him." (this is one of the
greatest left-field dig lines of all time)
What's great is how screwed up the sequel is. If Oceans Eleven is a warm
bath, then Oceans Twelve is a shower so cold it's actually ice pellets.
The plans are broken and turned upon themselves. The entire climactic
theft was a failure, but it's later revealed to be a fake out, that the
treasure in question was actually stolen much earlier in a rather
unimpressive manner. Audiences found this fake out to be as frustrating as
the antagonist did. When it's revealed to him, Clooney is shit-eating
grinning him half to death. At the same time, narrative bows are tied so
perfectly it's almost eye-rollingly uncomfortable. Pitt is a thief in love
with the woman who's trying to capture him, and she's searching for her
long-lost father, a legendary thief who knows Pitt. It's hyper-aware of
story/audience expectations and will meet them cringingly so, or stuff
them in a garbage compactor. Characters frequently note that Julia
Roberts' character looks like the real Julia Roberts, and the thieves get
the character to portray Roberts the actor as part of the final theft. The
movie even has Bruce Willis as himself, trying to chat with the character
Roberts, who he believes is the real superstar. It's fascinating as it is
ultimately underwhelming. In Oceans Twelve, you are constantly being reminded of the failure of planning, and you aren't sure if that extends to its creation. It's a half jarring, half boring experience, and a long way from Oedipus Rex, but we’ve always enjoyed every weird detour from A to B.
Okay, now we can talk about The Last Jedi
It's only made one point three billion dollars. The casino subplot. Luke as a grumpy, cynical old man. Space Leia. The 'kids' screwing up every idea they had (let's deactivate the First Order's hyperspeed tracker by hacking into it, let's try out some old fashioned mutiny, let's fly into a battering ram cannon). A 'fan' cut that took out any heroics or agency of the female characters, and whittled the run time to less than an hour. Rey's parentage tore the Skywalker legacy down, just like Luke did with the Jedi. Kylo tore the Sith legacy down, just like he his gramps did. And Rian Johnson pretty much did the same thing to JJ Abrams' The Force Awakens. It's life imitating art imitating life imitating art, man. The whole conversation across the vast and scum and villainy-filled internet over this film was great. There's a lot of real problems in our very real world, and what better way to get away from all that for a bit (or for too long) by complaining about people with laser swords in a galaxy far, far away? (And a long time ago, to boot. Quit living in the past, everyone) The Last Jedi is far from a perfect movie, but it's a fascinating one. A blockbuster franchise film that takes risks that you never thought a room full of Disney/Lucasfilm executives would ever allow. Ever when it doesn't work, and certain scenes fall flat, you can't help but quickly think, 'well Johnson and his team certainly know how to make the scene work, but they didn't. Is this intentional? Is every little bit of this movie so carefully planned? Do we have to over analyze every single shot to find out the possible hidden meaning? Is this guy Kubrick-ing up a Star Wars flick?' We want that to be the case. We want things to be bigger and deeper than they really are. Especially when it's something so many of us already know and love. Everyone has always wanted more Star Wars as soon as the credits for A New Hope rolled in 1977. And George Lucas and his rapidly expanding merch empire did not disappoint. Comics books, novelizations, and holiday specials spilled out in quick succession, before the actually sequel came out in 1980. Even after the trilogy wrapped up in 1983 and there was peace in the galaxy, the stories never stopped coming. More stories for years and years, taking place before, during, and after the events the films covered. But y'know, be careful what you wish for. The ever-expanding (and income-disposed) nerd world went into a froth when Lucas announced his intention to make a prequel trilogy, and he did, and people watched them...and yeah. And then he sold the rights to Disney, and now we have a new Star Wars film every year, with the promise of more TV series’ down the pipe. So now we are drowning in Star Wars, which means the time is nigh to shit over anything that doesn't meet the impossibly high standards of every super fan who scoffs at anyone who doesn't know what a mynock is. And Last Jedi is particularly vulnerable to criticism because it eschews the re-hashing that the Force Awakens embraced. Everyone is comparing it to Empire Strikes Back, which is partially fair, since in both cases these films reject the happy ending that came before and remind viewers that everything is certainly NOT OKAY in the galaxy. And initial reviews of Empire were rather mixed. A downer ending, our heroes separated for most of the film, and the stuff with the green puppet on the swamp planet seemed kind a slow. Opinions turned with that, and it's certainly possible for the same to happen with this new one. There's a lot to love in this movie. The opening action sequence, Skywalker tossing the lightsaber, Skywalker meeting up with Chewie and finding out about Han, Skywalker deciding to teach...okay, let's just go right out and say it that Mark Hamill hit it out of the park here, letting just the right amount of the old Luke shine through the understandable mask of weary cynicism for all that's happened to him in the last thirty years. Ahem...Leia force-stunning Poe, the Holdo maneuver, the entire throne room sequence, the force-chat (to the point where a Star Wars Jedi rom-com might be a good...okay, not that good of an idea), the Crait battle lead up, the Skywalker-Ren showdown, binary sunrise/sunset, 'moving rocks' coming back just at the right time. All the actors gave a thousand percent, and sometimes it’s hard not to sound foolish when barking sci-fi exposition all the time. So much of this movie was so very well done. The visuals were absolutely stunning, the music was all encompassing and then absent exactly when it needed to be. Making parts of the earth look like a completely different planet is not easy, but everyone behind the scenes make it effortless. But this kind of stuff is taken for granted when it has the word 'Star Wars' in it. All those things are expected to be perfect, because the fans have immersed themselves in the galaxy for forty years. These super fans have made George Lucas, Lucasfilm, Hasbro and Disney very rich, and gave the many people who work there a steady career. In exchange, however, their expectations are pretty goddamn high, and bordering on the unreasonable and impossible. Hence the idiots complaining about a female lead and a black stormtrooper in The Force Awakens, and making further complaints that Luke doesn't kick enough ass and too many women are calling the shots in The Last Jedi. These aren't really worth addressing. These are complaints that these fans have with the contemporary world at large, not a sci-fi film. And these kinds of complaints get in the way of the more harmless and nerdy (read: fun) discussions about the actual narrative and other elements in The Last Jedi that don't seem to work. Once again, great movie experience, buuuut... Why spend so long on Canto Bight? Why bait and switch the master-code breaker? Why does Maz just get a holographic projection cameo, and Captain Phasma get to show up for a minute or two and fail again, this time falling/exploding to her (probably not) second death? Why doesn't Holdo tell Poe her plan? Why isn't Poe tossed out of an airlock for treason? Why aren’t there faster First Order ships to catch up with the escaping Resistance Fleet and destroy it more quickly? Why doesn't Luke get the frog nuns to milk the walrus? The reveal in this film isn't so much who Rey's parents are (drunken nobodies, therefore turning the Empire Strikes Back moment upside down), but that Luke and Kylo both seemed to be in agreement in letting the Jedi-Sith legacies die away. Luke is willing to burn the sacred Jedi texts (and he does, with Yoda's help), and Kylo slices Master Snoak in two. The first six films have a family tree connecting them, and this new trilogy is intent on uprooting it completely (even Force Awakens took an axe to the Han Solo branch). The Last Jedi took this a step further, which makes sense because it's the middle of the trilogy, the Empire Strikes Back for millennials (the quicker we forget Attack of the Clones, the better, since it's not really clear who those movies were for. Either CG effects students or seven year olds). Chuck Klosterman noted that The Empire Strikes Back accidentally defined/encapsulated generation X. Luke is a moody twenty one year old getting a degree in phys-ed and Buddhism. It ends on a downer, with the enemy not just being some sort of ultimate evil, but an ultimate evil that happens to be your Dad, and he wants you to be just like him. On top of that, the girl he was kind of crushing on ends up with his best friend, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because she’s apparently his sister. It's not hard to picture Luke blasting 'Lithium' as he zips across the galaxy in his X-wing. In the Last Jedi (and like so much of the culture we absorb practically via osmosis in 2017 and 2018), pastiche is king. The nods to the Original Trilogy are incessant, to the point that it feels like a bobble head. The old master sacrificing himself so the heroes can escape (Skywalker here, Kenobi in A New Hope). A chase through space that requires luck, guile, and is full of setbacks (The First Order chasing the Resistance here, like the Imperial Fleet chasing the Millennium Falcon in Empire). A glimpse of the world outside the war (Canto Bight here, Cloud City (or Bespin, for you nerf-herders) in Empire)). The two male leads spending barely any time alongside each other (Poe and Finn here, Luke and Han in Empire) The master initially unwilling to teach the apprentice at first (Skywalker here, Yoda in Empire). In both Last Jedi and Empire, time is all fucked up. What seems to be a short period of time for those speeding through space, trying to evade an Imperial/First Order fleet, the young apprentice might be spending weeks or even months training on a distant planet. And in both films, there's more self-awareness, cynicism, and exhaustion throughout. You thought that everything was going great at the end of the previous film? Nope, turns out things are actually worse, happy endings are still a whole other galaxy away. Hard lessons are learned through difficult sacrifices. You can't always get what you want, and it's hard to even tell what you actually need. Skywalker fulfills his own prophecy, saying there's no point in him facing down an entire army with his 'laser sword'. And he does and he doesn't. Kylo Ren wants to face and best Skywalker. And he does and he doesn't. Kylo Ren and Rey team up to take down Snoak and fight off all his elite guards and find out who Rey's parents are. And that it all turns to disappointing shit in seconds. You get everything you want and then it's all taken away in a flash. No millennials, there's no correlation here between the good people who want to stand up and do what's right and your own futures, none at all. Move along, move along... No wonder fanboys are so upset. Space Operas aren't supposed to be this complicated. Everything is supposed to be cut and dry, A or B, Jedi or Sith. The Last Jedi is maddening, and that makes it fascinating. Johnson is giving the fans what they want and then turning it inside out. And the biggest risk was leaving the War completely for so long. Canto Bight was one of the few glimpses of the Star Wars universe that wasn't completely immersed in War, or about to be caught up in it. We saw Uncle Owen's farm, then it gets torched. We see Bespin, and the Empire comes and takes over. Everything in the Prequel Trilogy, from Naboo to Coruscant gets caught up in the struggle. Rogue One opens with a family trying everything they can to get away from the Empire, but to no avail (it's tough to hide when your skill is designing powerful, planet-shaped battle stations). There has to be something akin to neutral ground in the galaxy. A series of planets full of people that just keep their heads down, go to work, raise their families and don't want to get involved with the fight between the army and the terrorists or the dictatorship and the freedom fighters (granted, the title for these films would have to be Star Life, instead). Even if it was an overlong macguffin, it's good to see that Space Monaco seems to still exist as we last saw it. Maybe in Star Wars Nine (!) the few rebels left will be shunned from planets and space stations because it's believed wherever they go, death and destruction soon follow. War isn't just a valiant rebel shooting a stormtrooper. It spills over and infects so many different aspects of a society. The clumsy commentary on war profiteering and child labour was the most political Star Wars has ever gotten. And of course it's heavy handed. It's not a complex expose on war torn planets. All they can really afford (in the longest film in the series) is Rose explaining to Finn how horrible it is. And then they get back on the ships made by the corporations to go fight other ships made by the same corporation. Then the movie ends with the Rebels/Resistance in the worst shape in the entire saga (at least Kenobi, Yoda, and the Skywalker babies are alive at the end of Revenge of the Sith). War is particularly hell, here. The 'hope' is the legacy of Skywalker finally spreading across the galaxy (as Rey commented on Luke in The Force Awakens, 'I thought he was a myth'). A little kid on Casino being bullied by his owner, apparently has a bit of force power himself, doesn't need to be related to Skywalker to make a difference, he just needs to be inspired by him. A Force Awakens was the nostalgia jolt everyone not-so-secretly wanted, only realizing when the credits rolled that you kinda just watched A New Hope all over again. Now – with Luke relegated to force ghost and Carrie Fisher sadly leaving us too soon - we're in uncharted territory. The first six films was really about one man who (eventually, after millions of deaths and a brutal authoritarian regime) brought balance to the force because he couldn't bear seeing his longs-lost son tortured by the evil dictator who used to tell this man what to do (it's Anakin Skywalker, by the way). But now anybody might take down this now evil...who happens to be Anakin Skywalker's grandson (And that really will end the War in the Stars. The actually end of the Skywalker family tree) Rose keeps Finn from sacrificing himself because she believes they have to save what they love instead of destroying what they hate. And that's the most powerful anti-war message that's ever come out of a movie that has 'Wars' in the title. Forget X-wings and blasters, we're gonna save the world with memes! No one came to the Resistance's side, except for a myth briefly coming out of retirement, but that alone is supposed to get the galaxy to slowly turn towards the light. Finding good, inspiring ideas to join together is the new goal. (In some way, it would be amazing if the next film is just Rey, Finn, and Poe knocking on doors, asking if people have heard of the wonders of the force) And that's where we are now, outside the films. The problems we face on a global scale today aren't ones that a war is going to solve, even when the same companies are providing the weapons. But the trilogy of Star Wars trilogies have always been representative of their culture and political climate. The Original Trilogy seemed fresh for 1977-1983 because they made one of the leads a headstrong female who was great with a blaster (of course, it was a one step forward, one step back, when they briefly put her in a bikini and made her a slave), it was still the Cold War so let's make it good versus evil right down the middle, and the special effects were great even if they were in complete debt to a smarter, weirder sci-fi flick (2001). The whole thing (even Empire) was light and fun and kid-friendly after the ponderous, though-provoking dramas that were born out of New Hollywood. The Prequel Trilogy (1999-2005) was perfect for the late nineties. The summer blockbuster that the OT helped create was a massive Hollywood cash cow, and the seven hours of story we knew the end of earned a lot of money but not much love. Everything that everyone kind of got sick of in all the blockbuster previous were in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith in spades. Too much clunky expositional dialogue, too much reliance on action sequences that didn't have properly set up stakes, too much comic relief that snuffed out any slow building tension. At least it existed at the right political climate, since in 1999 (Phantom Menace) the Cold War was over and everything seemed right with the world, but then came (here we go) 9/11 and beyond, where there was no clear, easy to define enemy, just evil that lurked in the shadows. A 'you're either with us or against us' mindset, even though 'only a Sith deals in absolutes'. And now we're two-thirds of the way through the...New...Trilogy? (have we settled on a name?) It's post-monoculture, everything is ripped off from everything else, and the Internet has managed to take over and ruin most aspects of human interaction. But there's not much of a life you can live without it. It's essentially the power of the First Order, and even Rey can't quite quit it, Force-chatting with her bad-boy crush. What can any sort of rebellion or resistance look like a post-political world that we're living in now? A giant amoral blob of global economic policy has more of an impact on our daily lives than any one nation's politicians. Johnson's not interested in creating a detailed argument in a movie with laser swords, but lessons of compromise, cutting your losses, throwing away the past, and trying to reach out with peace instead of war abound in The Last Jedi. And maybe that's the best thing to work towards, to make sure the Empire can never Strike Back again...until the next Star Wars Trilogy.
There is no Rule 6: The more time passes, the fewer pieces of culture from the past are remembered. The law of diminishing returns, really. Which is a shame, as certain chunks of past cultural works played an integral part in developing and influencing the culture of the present day (and all the years in between), and it's always good to know the history and context of these works. This is a rather serious opening, note, which is a bit of a shame, really, as the culture I'm referring to is Monty Python's Flying Circus. Now I'm aware that Monty Python is certainly not an obscure, long forgotten British comedy troupe. Only three years ago they did a ten night stand at the O2 arena in London. Their films are regarded as some of the best comedy of the last half of the twentieth century. There would only be a few people who would disagree that they had Beatle-like influence on modern comedy. But the movies and the cut-up YouTube videos of their best/most famous bits are cheapening their legacy. Monty Python means movies, albums, stage shows, books and solo success, but Monty Python's Flying Circus was the television show (and their introduction to the world), and not watching it how it was meant to be seen (rimshot) is kind of missing the biggest thing these five Brits and one American did for modern comedy. It was a skit show, yes, if it had to condensed into two words, but it was a skit show that constantly pulled the familiarity rug from under you. The acknowledgement by them that you were watching a skit show was pervasive, mocking, and occasionally frustrating. Sometimes getting a laugh (even from the 'Cheap Laughs' next door) wasn't the point. The point was a healthy bit of what Guy DeBord called 'detournement' (ahem, twisting dominant/capitalist conventions and norms on their head, usually in forms of parody or mockery). And now for something completely different: 21st century Western democracy is facing its biggest series of crises since the Second World War (the occasionally Cold War near-dip into 'hot war' notwithstanding). As opposed to listing them here, you can just watch/read the news. We are not handing this gracefully. We are all getting very silly. We are rapidly populating and polluting a planet that cannot handle much of either (and a sizeable chunk of the populace and powerful don't think the second one is an actual problem). Our own power to change large-scale issues like economic inequality, social (in)justice and climate change is greatly reduced, as more and more of these decisions are placed in the hands of a powerful few. What we are reading or watching on the internet immediately comes under scrutiny for its credibility and accuracy. We are being marketed to constantly, and if politics is being sold to us the same way cars and toothpaste are, then suddenly politics begin to appear as disposable as toothpaste. A simple empty slogan can quickly shutdown any important political discourse ('Fake News!'), and no one seems to have the attention span to read/listen to a detailed, thought-provoking account of challenges in our future. A reality TV show host is President of the United States. And not a very good one. Donald Trump talks about complicated political issues like international diplomacy, military operations, and national health care as if he was talking someone into buying an overpriced penthouse apartment. And that is horrifying at the same time it is hysterical. Oh, and maybe some political leaders and judges are perverts and… cross-dressers? But what links our modern postmodern experience (political or otherwise) to a bunch of well-educated British comedians and one American is just that: links. (And of course they do a skit about the challenges of linking sketches together) The television show Monty Python's Flying Circus challenged and tore to pieces the notion of a fluid and logical path from one idea to another. Do away with punch-lines, switch the focus of the skit to someone in the background, abandon skits halfway through (and then apologize for doing so), shatter and re-shatter the fourth wall. Give attention to a screaming idiot standing in a stream for way too long. Whatever is revered, go ahead and mock. Whatever is mocked, go ahead and revere. And the silliness of the material (flying sheep, weaponized humour, homicidal barbers, newscasts for various animals, Spanish inquisitions, dirty Hungarian phrase books, and spam, spam, spam) was the glossy sheen, with the piecemeal style of these ideas (and counter-ideas) being the intrinsic style that has come to exemplify the online experience (and for more and more of us, with our phone practically bolted onto our palms, this experience is the primary experience of reality). The medium is the message, Marshall McLuhan said, and Monty Python told us that everything was getting very absurd, in both content and form. This was on BBC 1 on prime time in 1969, which was the equivalent of Thursday Night on NBC in the nineties. There wasn't cable, you could count your viewing choices on one hand. And this show was one of the options. A accidental half-hour look at the future played for laughs that was at once both instantaneous and disposable (a fifteen second skit like 'Conjuring Today') and interminable (the Johann Gambolputty documentary). A half-hour Python episode could feel like a full length film, what with so many ideas quickly squished together. It is a piece of culture that mirrors how we live almost every moment of our lives today. Your brain will engage with a new story, a gossip story, a text to a friend, a scan down your newsfeed on Twitter or Facebook, a couple levels of a quick freemium game, checking the weather, a place close by for food that might have a current app ordering deal, all in a few minutes. Then you'll go back to the job you were supposed to be doing all along. And that first news story, perhaps one of a dozen headlines you already missed because how can you possible take it al in, there's just an overwhelming amount of information each morning before you even get your problems, is already slipping out your head, only five minutes after reading it (this disorientation was baked right into the Flying Circus shows). Suddenly everything has a sense of Deja vu hovering over it (Python also does a great bit on Deja vu). Everything is overly familiar but is never identical. Everyone has an opinion on a matter they only half understand. Everyone is making political decisions every time they take out their wallet and don't even know it. Python was rarely explicitly partisan, never really favouring the left or the right, and certainly mocking the foibles of both (one notable exception: in the skit, 'how to recognize different parts of the body', Margaret Thatcher's brain was suggested to be in her lower leg). Coming out of sixties social movements meant there was certainly a rejection of the old ways (stuffy old bankers and easily offended old women), but they had no problem making fun of the naivety of the youth (sorry hippies, kids shows, Cartesian dualism). Additionally, satire was never really the goal. In fact, they'd rather just go one level deeper and mock satire itself, by occasionally having it flash on the screen when a particular skit is running off the rails. They were political without intending to be political. A scenario that seems to infect almost every bit of culture these days. In 2017, to watch program A or listen to artist B suggests your views lean in a particular way (typically assumed to be reflecting the artist). Today, divisive-ness seems to be the point. For Python, it was to be able to laugh at divisiveness. The second season skit, 'Election Night Special', perfectly skewered the cable news networks' breathless, manic reporting of results, decades before CNN and Fox News. Predictions that didn't come true, graphs that were inherently meaningless. And as far as imprinting your own political beliefs, go right ahead: There was the sensible party (and a reasonable-looking candidate in a suit with a normal name) and the silly party (a bizarre looking person with a name like Jethro Q. Walrustitty), and sometimes the result was a lot closer than you'd imagine (there was also a slightly silly and very silly party). A disastrous television appearance that becomes gifs and memes in seconds these days was perfectly encapsulated in the skit asking how far a minister can fall. Literally, as it involves a pol giving a speech who falls through a crack in the earth, the camera never cutting away as he tries to continue to speak. Country rubes lethargically attend a Hilter rally (please note the intentional misspelling). The Upper Class Twits of the Year is a bunch of rich idiots failing at series of kids games on a football field before group suicide. The future was hard to depict thanks mainly in part to the rather small operating budget, but you didn't even need poorly designed robots to show a possible dystopia: -A theological surveillance state (The Church Police) -A less-theological, drone-focused surveillance state (How Not to Be Seen) -A profitable surveillance state (Blackmail) -a crooked police state ('Police Raid') -the worst people ever running for parliament (The North Minehead By-Election) -Hellish marketing (Conquistador Coffee) -Free-market capitalism (bartering job interview, the Stock Market report) -A peak into our reality show culture ('The Most Awful Family in Britain') -military rule and school shootings ('School Prize Giving') -cannibalism (Lifeboat/Undertaker's Sketch) -suicide (Falling from buildings)
But most pervasive is the passive absurdity that we now take for granted in our overwhelming and incessant news culture. Politicians and their paid puppets contradicting themselves within the same sentence. Any excuse could be spewed up in the face of evidence, from ‘I don’t recall’ to ‘there are alternative facts’. It was all there, fifty-odd years ago, on the BBC, but at least then it was played for laughs: The Dead Parrot Sketch and Cheese Shop Sketch in their entirety. Two wrestlers fighting to settle important theological matters. Discussing the matter of the afterlife with a panel full of dead people. Interviewing the man who always contradicts people. Plus all the practical tossed off one liners that border on stupid, but are said with perfectly straight faces ('The man who scored all six goals in Arsenal's one-nil victory over...', 'I'd like to be in programming but unfortunately I have a degree', 'I forget my name at the moment, but I am a merchant banker' 'but there, let us leave the art critic to strangle his wife and move on to pastures new'). And it's funny, in part because it's so bizarre and unpredictable. You were kept on your toes because all expectations of what a television program and humour had to be were thrown out the window. Pantomime horses that work at banks, a ministry devoted to...silly walks, an interview with politician that includes the following line: 'First I'd like to answer that question in my regular voice, and then in a silly, high pitched whine.' Or at least it used to be unpredictable. How decisions are made in Monty Python skits are close to how political decisions are actually being made today. We watch the news with the same level of uncertainty, but dread has replaced levity. Donald Trump as the man who is alternatively rude and polite. Roy Moore as the dirty vicar. The Minister for not listening to people is...contemporarily apt. Their 'Apology to Politicians' is incredibly cathartic (and a lot less silly) today. The jokes are coming to life. Not only that, but it was a unending blur of 'what the hell is going on?', a sort of safe space for an inconceivable reality masking itself as lunatic humour. In fact, Monty Python stopped being television during the golden age of television. If a program was a half hour long and began with a title and ended with credits, well, they'll screw with that, too. Shows don't begin properly (is it the movie 'The Black Eagle' or a skit show?), shows end early (and they would apologize), they used an actual BBC special announcement backdrop and made bizarre announcements. They got actual newscasters to take part close to the end of the episode so people would think the news had started, but was actually a fake out, and there was more show to sputter out. A fake 'new' talk show begin at the end, with Ringo Starr about to be interviewed, but the whole thing immediately get shut down. The only thing they weren't allowed to do was a Terry Gilliam idea: Slowly make the sound of the broadcast quieter and quieter, forcing people at home to turn up the volume at their end. And after about fifteen minutes, hit them with a huge blast of sound that might blow out their cheap 70s era television speakers. They tried to take apart the televised medium for shits and giggles long before the televised medium fell apart by its own obsolete inertia. Now there is 'always' something on, whenever you want it, however you want it, and it all becomes a sort of background fridge buzz. If we live in a time of cultural shattering and bureaucratic absurdity, Monty Python gave us a glimpse of what it might look like in forty five episodes of their half hour TV show (and their three films also stuck a thumb in the eyes of almost every movie trope and cliche). Now it's not even played for laughs. Now it's a series of instructional videos. Let's hope The Colonel doesn't walk on and tell us that our civilization has become far too silly and have it cut to the cartoon.
Here's the link (!) to the official Monty Python YouTube page, with some of their best known skits as standalone skits, although watching the full half-hour episodes are strongly recommended to get that WTF feeling.
https://www.youtube.com/user/MontyPython
Suggested Viewing: Episode 2. Sex and Violence Episode 9. The Ant, An Introduction Episode 12. The Naked Ant Episode 15. The Spanish Inquisition Election 19. It's a Living Episode 24. How Not to Be Seen Episode 25. The Black Eagle Episode 26. Royal Episode Thirteen Episode 30. Blood, Devastation, Death, War and Horror Episode 31. The All England Summarize Proust Competition
No Escaping Escapism
No, movies don't suck more than they used to. That would be too easy a dismissal. Movies that make it to multiplexes are carefully created in board room laboratories, meant to provide maximum enjoyment to the most amount of people as possible. Its faults are its adherence to formula and to a sort of polish in scriptwriting, acting and narrative style that reminds you of every sort of movie you've seen before that was good. And yes, of course the movie studios design films this way to make as much money as possible, but for you to spend your money, they have to cater to you. They are trying so, so hard to give you what they think you want. It's a world of superhero flicks and super-feel gooderies. Where the good always triumphs, at least for the time being, until the next installment eighteen months later. Everyone looks great, everyone has something smart to say, and even people's breakdowns and failures have a noble quality to them. Nothing too bleak, nothing too weird. We have real life for that. It's difficult to criticize movie studios pandering to their audience. The shows, films and overall culture the entertainment industry provides is what they think we want. They're trying to make us happy and content (for cynical reasons of course: to generate more money). Life is getting harder and more stressful for the average person, and the art and culture we seek in response has to balance these difficulties out. As we become more powerless in a more complicated world, we look for easy and simple solutions in our entertainment (and even when these escapist forms do bring in some contemporary issues, the good guys do indeed triumph just in the nick of time). Even reality television is staged in a way so that there is a satisfactory resolution to whatever ridiculous (non)crisis a contestant or family member has to deal with that day. To balance out the feeling of political and economic powerlessness, our choices for what to place in front our eyes and ears have grown exponentially. Everything is at our fingertips. Immediately. Almost any sort of basic knowledge you want is available on Wikipedia, and if you want to further your research in any way, there are free courses available through all sorts of websites and apps and digital bookstores. Any sort of breaking news can now be known by everyone, at almost exactly the same time (depending simply on whether you signed up for any sort of BBC or Google news alerts). We can know what is happening to our world in essentially real time. But we - as individuals - don't have the ability to quickly make decisions or adapt in any sort of way to this breaking news. It's not our role, whether we want it or not. These decisions are still in the hands of monolithic-like institutions and enterprises that (ideally) act in our collective best interest. Knowledge is still a form of power, but agency is not so similarly distributed. Whether it is escalating tensions between global superpowers (or unstable non-superpowers) or the debating of domestic political policies in the capitol, we helplessly grin and bear witness it. Our expanded choices as consumers of culture are scarcely a replacement, but we should definitely acknowledge that at the same time, we run to these diversions and pleasures with open arms. And the newer the tools available to allow us to wallow for hours on end with shows and video games, the less we know how they are going to affect the structure of personal and political power in the long run. It can be argued that every technological advance has some level of human isolation or disconnection built into it. This is especially true - perhaps paradoxically - with communication advances. The telegraph, the radio, the television and the Internet have all increased the ability to talk to people much more quickly, but due largely in part by being able to cut out the many people who beforehand would have helped carry a message across a city or nation. Radio and television especially were heavily criticized for removing thoughtful discourse completely, replacing it with the wholly passive activity of simply sitting quietly and absorbing whatever come out of the speaker or screen. It was never really argued that people forgot the difficulties of the industrial revolution, the two world wars and the depression in between simply by listening to the radio, or that the fear of nuclear war sent millions of westerners into their living rooms to watch television. But with the fading influence of organized religion, it made for a nice opiate replacement. And it's not like people were more resilient then or more cynical now. We change our behaviour and perception simply because the opportunity is there. If we can get away with hiding our heads in the sand for a bit, we'll do it, with whatever’s the new popular device. Communism as Marx conceived of it may be an eternal pipe dream because of the basic fallibility of human nature (as we organize in larger and larger groups, certain people must be given more power than others in order to effectively delegate), but he nailed it on the head with his theory on Alienation. During the Industrial Revolution, Marx became increasingly concerned that the gap which was being created between the creation of a product and the purchase and use of it. Before factories, you pretty much knew where your table, shirt, and milk came from. You made (or milked) it yourself, or you bought or traded for it from someone down the street who made it or milked it. With technological advances in transport throughout the twentieth century (first rail, then cars and trucks, and then airplanes), these products came from a few towns over, then the other side of the country. Today the gap is wider. The ease of international trade and truck-to-shelf inventory procedures means that not only products from the other side of the planet are sold at corner stores, but the parts made to build said products ate shipped from multiple nations to a single manufacturing location (from where the product, once completed, is sent back across the globe). The effects of this are complicated. Local factories close because even with increased transport costs, it's cheaper to build products on the other side of the world. This can devastate entire towns, enrich a small and wealthy contingent of company owners, and passively support terrible working conditions in developing countries. There comes a sense of disposability when you don't know the maker of the product or service you're using. The further we are from the person who made our shoes, and iPad, or grew and picked our Granny Smith apple, the further we are from the understanding the symbiotic relation between finite resources and concepts of value and fairness. We don't consider that people in Malaysia or Guatemala are paid only a few dollars a day for a job that would pay at least ten times as much (maybe twenty times) in the West. Focusing how much money we're saving when buying at big box discount stores means we don't think about how fellow men and women (and children) are working in sweatshop-like conditions in Bangladesh to make these goods. And increasingly in the early 21st century, it seems like there's little to nothing any of us can do to change this. That international capitalism is too indomitable of a force to be regulated, let alone completely dismantled. All of this is overwhelming. Sartre notes that with freedom paradoxically comes responsibility, and that we flee from the latter in most cases when it becomes onerous or uncomfortable. We don't like being confronted with truths about our buying choices, or that, because we live in a democracy, we share a slice of responsibility for whatever the government does because - for better and for the much, much worse - we are the government. And these days, when practically everything feels like a bad news (and good economic news only falls upon the super rich), there's an emotional toll as well. Bad news is draining. Helplessness is draining. Responsibility is draining. When it seems that everything matters, that every little piece of information needs to catalogued and reacted to in some way (because if we don't, then things will just get worse), the exhausted seeking for something that doesn't matter at all becomes all the more important and pervasive. And robots and superheroes and reality television doesn't matter. (And, of course, for the thousands of people who work even tangentially in film and television, these movies and shows do indeed matter, as it's how they make a living. The escapism industry (hey, let's throw in video game companies, too) is a multibillion dollar one, and suddenly 'doesn't matter' is beyond understatement. It's just plain wrong) These responsibility-free escapes come in all shapes and sizes, and with the tent pole blockbusters and HBO super series becoming viral memes for the week, we can wax poetical about this character's sacrifice or that crazy scene, and rant and rave with endless emoticons and paragraphs on Twitter and message boards and wait for responses and likes and make some sort of connection with someone across town or the world who feels the same way you do (maybe not about religion or politics, but about Spidey's new Aunt Mae or Sansa Stark). And if escaping to where everyone already is isn't for you, don't worry, everything's also gone niche, and it only takes a few google searches before finding on that you think will fit you like a glove (and hey, if it isn't so hot, immediately bail on it and head to something else three reddit threads or two YouTube channels over). TV shows for the thousands, music for the hundreds, memes for the dozens. The unending golden age of television (even as 'television' might mean watching a stream service on your iPhone) appears to be much better equipped for throwing wrenches in our mental works. Twists upon twists upon twists, cringe-worthy comedy, cooking shows for snobs, cooking shows for slobs, and more anime than you ever thought possible (some of them not even involving giant robots). These shows can be weirder, slower-paced, more character-driven (or Eric Andre-driven) than fare that is carefully designed in board rooms by committee, but something must be said for the movies that still attempt to be escapist fare for all. Inclusiveness is a difficult enough task in every aspect of our civilization (from employment to religious services), but it's also difficult in a two and half hour popcorn flick where at least a third of it has to be shootouts and car chases (even the heroes acknowledge this: "You know what's about to happen, do you wanna punch your way out of this?" Black Widow asks in Captain America: Civil War). They are meant for global audiences, not simply American/Western ones. Any references in small talk that might not be understood perfectly in a particular region are gently tweaked and smoothed out. And no matter where it's being marketed, never have the lowest common denominator (note: this euphemistic term has outlasted many others to describe stupid people) scratching their heads during the credits. Now, would it be better if studios provided more thought-provoking fare which challenged audiences' expectations not only how films can address contemporary issues, but of how films themselves are put together? Well, 'better' here is a bit of a loaded word. Critical consensus and lowest common denominators are very infrequent bedfellows, and who's to say which is superior (as far as cultural impact goes, the latter might win the sprints, but the critics (simply by the act of frequently writing about the films they enjoy, and compiling lists and academic papers) win the marathon, with medals being historical context and preservation)? The simple answer of letting people like what they like and letting them wallow in a narrow slice/shallow pool of culture is no problem at all (better someone is ignorant of Chinese cinema influence rather than Chinese economic influence). 'It speaks to me' is a term thrown around when buying an abstract painting (or really, in films or shows when someone is buying an abstract painting), yet it can apply to why anyone likes...anything. But there is always a natural urge to want other people to like what you like. Being able to talk Star Wars with someone is like finding someone from the same city you were born in, but being able to talk Italo Calvino (or The Red Green show) is like finding someone who grew up on the same street. There's that much more of a connection because you're both aware of how you're part of a much smaller and incidentally exclusive club (and once again. Exclusion in sociopolitical affairs can be dangerous. Not watching the same TV shows as others is no problem at all). And if imaginary stories don't do it for your need for escapism, how about some real ones, forced onto the field, court, rink, or pool? Sports are wonderful because they can encapsulate human ingenuity and strength while not mattering any more than whether Superman lives or dies at the end of the movie, because (ideally) no one dies at the end of the game (and if someone gets injured, well hey, that's just the beginning of their comeback story, which the fans love). (but of course, sports are also such a huge escapist industry that - for the thousands of people are dependent on the jobs that organized sports provides, from the players to the food vendor - it certainly damn does matter. Especially if the season is a good one and tickets get sold out and more merchandise is bought) But caring only about tv, movies, music and sports and cultural miscellany is no answer, either. Near permanent escapism from the difficult realities of personal and public life is not an acceptable choice. Always fleeing responsibility is (wait for it) irresponsible. The antidote for overwhelming feelings of alienation is connection, either through acknowledging our collective powerlessness (and attempting to rectify this), as well as embracing a more unrealistic and 'perfect' temporary escape. And finishing this article with such a noble and important recommendation means we’ve earned a few hours of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild playing time.
A Long Time Ago, in an MI6 Office not far away…
[Spolier Alert: We discuss the new Bond film here]
Spectre, the 25th (official) James Bond film has been out for a little over a week. Fourth time with Daniel Craig, and critics are saying that the freshness of the reboot isn’t there anymore. Well, yeah. Fourth Time Around isn’t supposed to be fresh. [Aside Time: ‘Fourth Time Around’ is also a track from Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, which is considered a homage/rip-off of The Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’, which was said to be a homage/rip-off of Dylan’s style of songwriting at the time that John Lennon was nicking left and right (also: ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’). The last line was thought to be a warning to Lennon from Dylan: ‘I never asked for your crutch, now don’t ask for mine’. Stealing, borrowing, rebooting. If it’s good enough for the movies, it’s damn well good enough for music] Fourth time around, you’re supposed to be nestled into cruise control in your Aston Martin, firing your Walter PPK with one hand and counting the box office money with the other ($550 million worldwide box office so far). Don’t get all hot and bothered about accusations about getting stale and leaning a bit more on cliché. Sure Spectre is the fourth of the reboot, but it’s the series’ 25th. 007 runs on cliché. And for the fans that somehow have inflated expectations about a Bond film, that’s only a drop in the bucket in terms of what’s going to happen when The Force Awakens drops a month from now. Star Wars is back. But you’d know that if you checked the internet or the cereal aisle in your grocery store. Yes, the best way to experience the epic space opera is to take out a second mortgage and by absolutely everything, from Loopin’ Chewie to the Ligthsaber Dildo (the former is real, the latter is inevitable). It’s a time honoured tradition. When the first round of 1970s Star Wars toys weren’t able to be manufactured and shipped for Christmas, the toy companies sent pieces of paper with pictures of the toys on them for the kids to play with. Memories! So yeah, let’s take a look back through the sands (Tatooine? Egypt?) of time, all the way back to the summer of ‘77. That July Roger Moore delivered arguably the best Bond movie in the canon (may the debates never end) with The Spy Who Loved Me (Skiing! Jaws! The submarine car!), but that summer really belonged to George Lucas’ strange left turn follow up to American Graffiti, Star Wars (going from 1950s nostalgia in the Midwest to blowing up planets and mystical super powers). Conventional Wisdom is that Jaws and A New Hope (as the flick was later re-titled) began the era of blockbuster (which continues to this day), but making a boatload of money has always been Hollywood’s goal. It’s just that these two films were actually good. Prior to this, creature features and sci-fi flicks were considered cheesy B-movies (2001 was clearly the exception, but it was light-years away from Planet Nine From Outer Space). By 1977 there had been 10 Bond films (and three actors playing him), and all the tuxedos and sports cars couldn’t mask the fact that it was still a ridiculous teenage fantasy of saving the world by shooting people and saying clever things. Done over and over. But there’s only so many action archetypes to go around. When Spielberg remarked that he always wanted to make a Bond movie, Lucas replied that he had an idea ‘better than Bond’, and it ended up being Indiana Jones (Roger Ebert famously remarked that Raiders of the Lost Ark was a movie made out of all the best bits from Saturday Morning serials). ‘Borrowing’ was rampant. Hell, The Spy Who Loved Me had an evil businessman feeding people to his shark two years after Jaws (and a character named Jaws), and 1979’s Moonraker capitalized on Star Wars’ popularity by sending Bond into space. And because of the success of these genres (hyper-escapist spy-monster-space, if we had to gumbo them all together), the blueprints/formulas of all these films have been cookie-cuttered to no end. Now it’s no longer ‘how to make a successful sci-fi franchise’, but ‘how to reboot a recently successful sci-fi franchise’ (although with continued duds like The Fantastic Four, The Punisher, The Green Lantern, Dredd and Ghost Rider it’s clear Hollywood hasn’t perfect the latter. Or maybe failures of the genre are just the natural causalities of betting on the bubble, as some of them are going to be made half-assed and not make any money). But you can always keep trying. Hell, even if a successful franchise seems to be running a bit low on creative juices even as it brings in the money, why not start it up all over again? Spiderman, X-Men. Superman. Batman (and soon to be Batman and Superman. Well Batman versus Superman, but really, come on. If they’re not fighting some super evil villain side-by-side in the third one, then the terrorists really have won). Start again with new actors. Go back in time. Super reboot powers, indeed. But both James Bond and Star Wars stand slightly apart from this glut of superheroes. Their releases are bit more tempered. Star Wars films came out every three years (although, they’ll apparently be cranking them out from now on…). Bonds have waxed and waned, averaging every two years for most of its run, but now gaps between films can grow longer. Meanwhile, The Marvel Cinematic Universe is seven years old, but it already feels considerably longer, thanks largely in part to twelve films being released since then, with another eleven in the next four years. That’s the plan anyway. Cinema audiences can be notoriously fickle (critical acclaim does not necessarily translate into bigger money, and diminishing returns of the same formula can diminish very, very quickly, forcing cancellation of a lot of other projects meant for the future). With a total of twenty six superhero films meant to come out in the next four years, we may never want to see another cape or mask for a very, very long time. Meanwhile, James Bond’s first (official) film came out in 1962, and Star Wars is about to hit forty. Portion control was a big part of their continued success (absence makes the heart grow fonder), but narrative simplicity is/was also a big help. Star Wars isn’t shackled to ensuring the continued existence of life on earth. They blow up planets as a form of interrogation. Telekinetic abilities, violations of all things science, you’re making up history as you go along. From a storyteller’s standpoint, it’s a blank canvas (but you can certainly paint yourself into a corner, as the Prequel Trilogy showed us). (Maybe this is one of the reasons that Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the best received and promising series of the Marvel Universe. No need to save the earth all the time (and practically destroy it in the process). And if the job is to (as it were) guard the whole galaxy, then it’s okay if you lose a planet or two along the way) Writing Bond can be even easier, as everything comes second to making him look good. With the exception of a few minutes at the beginning when he exchanges pleasantries with Moneypenny and curt words with M, he doesn’t have to share the screen with a cabal of superheroes, some of which are gods in other universes (really, what the fuck is Thor doing hanging around Hawkeye?). 007 films have long been episodic (as opposed to serial). What happened in the last doesn’t really come into play in the new one. What didn’t work can be scrapped (including the guy playing Bond) and what worked can be kind of repeated. Hell, even when they kept Blofed and his terrorist organization Spectre for a few films in the late sixties and early seventies, the actor playing Blofed kept changing, and no one referred to the time they met in a hollowed out Japanese volcano. Spectre’s original goal back in the sixties was simply meddling in the Cold War and getting the United States and the Soviet Union to start launching nukes at each other, at which point the evil terrorist organization will swoop in and take over the smoldering ruins. Spectre in the 21st century doesn’t have two world powers fighting in proxy wars across the globe to screw with. Now we all live in a big free market machine with haves and have-nots until we run out of resources, which is a pretty easy situation to take advantage of if you’re a evil terrorist organization (or a investment bank, for that matter). The criticism lobbied at Spectre – and not without merit – is that it’s trying to raise the emotional stakes of the Craig films by uniting the events of all four of them. Blofed says quite clearly that he’s been the one behind all the other villains ruining James’ life, and there are clear references to past lovers, villains, and maternal figures. While it’s breaking a big Bond commandment right off the bat, it could work if handled properly. But Spectre bungles it with some dry audience hand-holding exposition, uncreative nick-of-time rescues, and one too many terribly thought out death traps by Blofed (who is supposed to be the world’s greatest supervillain). Which is the exact sort of cliché we expect from James Bond. Despite this, as long as killing evil weirdoes and having sex with attractive women is cool, there will be a place for James Bond in this world. The longest gap between the films has been six years (1989 to 1995), but even that re-invention (Brosnan replaces Dalton, Cold War is over, M is a woman) wasn’t the first. After Sean Connery bowed out after four films, the producers announced that Bond was bigger than one actor, and that they planned to make more of them with other actors (but they went back to Connery after a single film with Lazenby, the kinda underrated On Her Majesty’s Secret Service). Bond is supposed to be forever. The success of Daniel Craig starting the story from the beginning (did it really feel that way, though? Yes, it started with him getting Double-O status, but he caught up to speed with the chases, fights, screwing, and exasperating M pretty fast), means they always can (and if they can do it in the movies, they will) reboot again and again. But tweak gently with the formula. Elements of contemporary culture and society are always being infused into movies about an eternally suave killing machine. And those changes can come in the form of accurately reflecting the world more appropriately (better roles for women, for starters. Judi Dench added a stellar balance of professionalism and sentiment to her portrayal of M. She also offered up shades of a maternal figure in the reboots with Craig), or tweaking Bond himself, showing a bit more emotion than in the past There’s the oft-forgotten scene in Casino Royale of Craig helping Eva Green recover from shock (after watching him kill a bunch of henchmen) showed that Bond has to have at least a thin streak of humanity flowing through him. Bond is closer to a superhero or a jedi knight than any of us, even if he is supposed to live in a world familiar to us. Certainly cold, dismissive, and exploitative in his killing and womanizing, but still personifying and acting upon noble values and beliefs in the most exciting way possible. Certainly we would all agree that defending one’s country and trying to achieve world/galactic peace for all are treasured human achievements, but it’s not really done in real life with lightsaber fights, telekinetic swamp training, car chases, and constant sex with beautiful people. But you don’t go to the movies to see M talk with politicians, or Mon Mothma broker treaties with various star systems (deep cut?). For escapist entertainment (which spy and sci-fi frequently fall into), oversimplification of good and evil is pretty much the norm. Even in the recent Bonds, where some CIA agents are crooked and multinational amoral corporations replace terrorist organizations with shell corporations, there’s no crisis of conscience for Bond (well, maybe to save the woman first). Six Bonds, four M’s, three Q’s, a handful of Moneypenny’s, and now the same bad guys. Massage that golden goose. Because James Bond is replaceable. Luke Skywalker is not. Nor Han Solo or Leia Organa. The Force Awakens may never live up to the inevitable mega-hype machine, but the first time everyone who is old enough to vote sees the old gang again, there will be the sigh of relief/dopamine shot/orgasm/post orgasm cigarette. The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy had an uphill climb from the time they were announced. Sure ‘how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader’ is a tantalizing prospect for a film, but it pretty much means nobody from the original film was going to be in it, except for a young Obi-Wan. Which means you weren’t just starting from scratch character-wise, but trying to replace heroes and villains who had become iconic in the last two decades. It was never just the lightsaber duels and Death Star dogfights that made people love the Original Trilogy. It was who was doing them, and having the audience care about the characters. There are some brilliant action sequences in all three prequel films, but you don’t really care that much about who survives the outcome (granted, this is partly due to the fact that you already know who survives the outcome, which is another challenge for the films: It’s hard to make people excited when they known how it all ends). So when Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 for a cool 4 billion, you knew they weren’t going to make the same mistakes. They were going to get everyone’s favourites back together, over hoth or high water. Guaranteed moneymaker, and it becomes a springboard for the future (of making more money). It’s the classic bait and switch. You go for the heroes you know love, and come back for the exciting and fun new recruits. That’s the idea. That’s really what the studio executives at Disney are shitting brocks and crossing their fingers over. Mark, Harrison, Carrie, and Peter all qualify for seniors discounts. How much longer can they play these characters? (which makes the possibilities of Skywalker or the Solos dying at certain points in this new trilogy all the more exciting/nervous/gut-wrenching) That’s the real challenge for JJ Abrams. It’s gotten to the point where you can assemble a team of special effects experts to give audiences eye orgasm after eye orgasm, but that doesn’t sell toys or t-shirts. Swapping Luke Skywalker for another plucky, bright-eyed, Empire hater is much harder. More so than any other film franchise, Star Wars depends on the merch to carry it into the next level of money making. Billion dollar films is one thing, multi-billion dollar swag is something else. And that can’t be made in factory. That has to be made with nebbish storytellers in a Hollywood bungalow. You have to create the idea of cool, heroic people (and villains you love to hate) in your mind, then with words on a paper, then with actors saying them on a giant film set. And the whole thing can fall apart at any time. Engaging characters never happened in The Prequel Trilogy. Jar-Jar Binks is held up as the archetypal failure, but at least he’s remembered for being terrible. Everyone else is forgettable. Qui-Gon, General Grievous, Fett Senior, Darth Maul, and the less said about Padme and Anakin falling in love, the better. From an acting standpoint, the entire trilogy would be unwatchable if it wasn’t for Ewan McGregor who seemed to use force-like powers to channel a young Alec Guiness to play Obi-Wan perfectly (also good: Christopher Lee as Count Dooku, who played dignified menace better than any other villain in the three films). The Original Trilogy had such a massive influence on how every sort of sci-fi/fantasy/super-hero movie would be made from then on, that by the time Star Wars returned with the Prequels, everything about it felt stale and cliché (and not in the acceptable James Bond way). Ten years later, it’s all happening again. Without George Lucas. Instead with the guy that rebooted Star Trek to great success. May the force be with him, because Tomorrow Never Dies. OR I’ve got a bad feeling about this, because You Only Live Twice.
TODAY THE BOX OFFICE, TOMORROW THE LAND
Soon 'independent film' will take on a new meaning. Mark our words, in the next three years or so, an 'independent film' will be any movie that is not related to a multi-billion film-comic-toy-entertainment franchise hybrid in some way. Furious 7 and The Avengers sequel have both hit one billion dollars (pinkie to the side of the mouth). You can't argue with money (why would anyone, if that's the chief reason they're making these things). A film executive can relax for a moment, a week, a month, and then wonder if they can hit that mark a second time (or third or fourth or eighth). A film franchise has never been more like a restaurant or clothing store franchise than today. Sequels used to be a consideration if the first film made a lot of money and everyone involved thought it was a good idea (and sometimes they were wrong). Now it's expected, now it's part of the pitch for the original movie (and why the actors have to sign up for possibly playing their character in a boatload of related films). If you have yourself a golden goose, hook it up to the best medical equipment available (your Joss Whedon respirator, your British actor drip), and massage out each egg. And making this work just so requires a very specific formula. These movies are made with a fine-tooth comb, with dozens of executive notes stuck to each fang. The action sequences are here, here, and here (and here and here). This is exposition scene one, that is exposition scene two. Here's the scene where the two protagonists who have butted heads previously bond and agree to work together. Here are the five lines of sexual tension you have to sprinkle over the first half. [Do yourself a favour and watch The Empire Strikes Back. You'll be amazed at how many contemporary big budget sci-fi/action films try so goddamn hard to be that good] But this formula still works where it counts. People see these blockbuster films in droves (and spend more money on merchandise and ephemera related to it). The makers of these franchise flicks are chained to their own success. You can't fuck with it, you can't take risks, you have to use the cookie cutter and colour inside the lines. So 'are they good' is beside the point. If they bring in the green, they're good enough. Not quite critic proof, but even a shrug from a majority of them will be enough to keep the stench of 'cinematic dogshit' off the porch (and anything Michael Bay touches seems to be impervious to reviewer beatings, anyway). Anything more hostile than a shrug, though, and people might actually avoid the film (and once again Michael Bay is the exception. Hell, maybe Michael Bay's films are supposed to be that sort of over the top bad. Like Uwe Boll with nine figure budgets). This is in part because hype and the perception of the movie as an event is as essential to the bottom line as the movie itself. Whatever challenges in production, whatever gossip related activities the actors have engaged in leading up the release, if the toy inside the happy meal is covered in some sort of poisonous chemical, all of this becomes part of the 'story of the film' which the public participates in when they go see it and then tweet about it afterwards (or during, if they're an awful person). And no one can be sure if this sort of publicity or awareness will backfire, if the promotion is too overpowering, too tepid, too stupid, or accidentally offensive to a certain segment of the prospective audience. Or if any of this becomes a factor at all to an underperforming box office return ("I'd attribute the product failure to fundamental shifts in our key demographic, coupled with the overall crumminess of Poochie"). All of this involves even more money, so of course you have to rely on a straightforward story of good people with superhuman powers fighting bad people with superhuman powers on top of exploding vehicles and buildings. Even the refreshing, high energy and occasionally weird Mad Max Fury Road is a high concept, can't really fuck this up reboot. But because it came in second to an actual sequel (Pitch Perfect 2) on its opening weekend, Mad Max has been crowned the sleeper critical darling of the summer (and we haven't even actually hit summer), the 'Edge of Tomorrow' of 2015 (that's how we're classifying films now. Matching up criteria wholly outside of the film itself: box office performance and critical reception). The film that people want a bit of chilli sauce on their movie-going experience, since everything else is essentially on autopilot. We got more Marvel (Ant Man), a return to Jurassic Park, some easy-as-store-bought pie comedies (some are sequels), disaster flicks, Pixar, middle-of-the-road feel-gooderies for the awards season, then the new Star Battles a week before Christmas. This is the movie experience in 2015 until...whenever. And it's not going to change. Which leads us to Tomorrowland. This film has been out for ten days. It's made about $100 million (against a $190 million budget plus another big secret number for promotion. And that’s definitely something that has to stop. You shouldn't make a movie that costs that much unless it's based on a comic book or it has the word Spielberg somewhere in the main credits) and the critics are ambivalent. Which is enough for the story of the release of the film named Tomorrowland to end with the conclusion that the film is a disappointing flop. A damn fucking shame, since Brad Bird and his crew and cast are firing on all cylinders in what is certainly the most fun and challenging big movie of the summer. Tomorrowland's a bizarre hybrid of blockbuster, art film, character driven, celebrity led, original idea based very loosely on an area of an amusement park, looking at how people in the fifties thought (hoped) the 21st century would look like. Now, conventional wisdom holds that the more juxtapositions you dump into a two hour story, the higher the odds of it crashing and burning into a mess (and not even an over-the-top, future-cult-classic mess). But Tomorrowland succeeds (and there are SPOILERS to follow), and even lands the hellishly difficult 'inspire without preaching or begging' manoeuvre with only a hint of a stumble. There are flourishes of Brad Bird's (and co-writer Damon Lindhof's) creative and off-the-wall mental wanderings left and right (not sharing the bottle of pop, the swag in the collectibles store, rantings about Tesla and Edison, a pathetic on-and-off climatic fistfight). Does it deliver the summertime goods? Damn straight. Shiny, sweeping epic expanses of what the city of the future could have been. George Clooney as a grumpy recluse fighting of an army of perky, murderous androids (in the Catskills and at the top of the Eiffel Tower). Waddling tank robots fighting each other. Jet packs bringing the story full circle. But it's also for kids and never too dark and there's a streak of humour and humanity throughout. It's like The Avengers without the heaps of expectation baggage and narrative necessity. The protagonists in Tomorrowland have the luxury of wallowing in their motivations and flaws. Be warned, there's acting in this movie. In summer blockbusters being an able to deliver lines well is usually secondary to delivering explosions big. Clooney plays against type, a man already bitter and being dragged into another adventure by two earnest young women. And he plays it well, gnawing on just the right amount of scenery (or he's so good you can't tell he's phoning it in). But his role wouldn't work without the dual engines that actually push the movie forward and fill with fun, Britt Robertson and Raffey Cassidy, as a young woman with a flair for inventing and a mysterious girl who team up to save...oh, let's say, hope. There's genuine laughs on their road trip to meet Frank, and they're able to change Frank's mind not only by reminding him how to be giving and generous again, but by doing a good fucking job at kicking ass and taking names. Mad Max has been given attention for having several strong and long overdue roles for women, and Tomorrowland is in the same boat. And they all hold their own against one of the best villains of recent memory because David Nix is barely a villain. He's played by Hugh Laurie, doing his best to be charming, dry-witted and noble and succeeding wildly. When you understand and can practically sympathize with the villain's motivation (but still hope he gets all blowed up), you got something special on your hands. And you sympathize with him while still cheering on the heroes because everyone's trying to do what they think is right. Saving the world on one side, saving the world by destroying it on the other. Fixing what's broken or letting it break and starting again. The latter justified in many a movie with the argument that the world is wicked and needs a nice bit of cleansing fire (think Noah). And the villain takes the position of 'willing to do what needs to be done', which is the PR term for letting billions of people die. Which is more horrifying but in some lazy and cynical sense easier than fixing the myriad of problems we currently have on our hands. Traditionally our hero(es) always overthrow these apocalypse pushers and wipe their hands with a 'job well done' sense of satisfaction, and leave the fixing to... almost everyone the story didn't focus on. (Super) heroes are supposed to stop the bad, not necessarily start the good (picture The Avengers rebuilding all the cities and villages they fought in and around, or pushing for fair trade). Tomorrowland finds the courage in its robot and jet packing loving insides to take a well-meaning peek at what it looks like to actually make the difference in the real world (it helps that one of its chief explorations is the question of reality, and how we perceive and change it). This is not a typical trope in big money films. There's an article on here (LINK) about Interstellar tried to talk about fixing the world in a roundabout way, and now here's Tomorrowland, where the unambiguous goal is to save the planet by using hard work, positive thinking, and imagination. No wonder it's flopping. It's a sci-fi movie that hits too close to home in the end. Audiences want superheroes to fix imaginary, fantastical problems. Not be told that they have to do something themselves ("Wait a minute, am I being emotionally manipulated to do something about the poor state of our society while trying to have a good, mindless time?") The movies ends (again, spoiler alert) with dozens of people (all ages, all cultures) arriving in the Tomorrowland dimension having touched the transporter pins left for them by recruitment robots (that's one hell of a sentence). It feels a smidgen out of place, a touch forced. Nebulous enough that if you weren't here for the two hours previous, you'd think it was a commercial for a massive, irresponsible corporations, from a cell phone provider to Bank of America to Exxon-Mobil (or really, to be honest, Greenpeace or any other big-name charity, since everyone uses the same PR ad techniques to jerk on the heartstrings). It’s an ending without a hint of cynicism, and without any sort of acknowledgement that there will be a sequel, that is part of a Hollywood money machine. It’s pure, and designed to be wholly inspiring to its audience, whether they’re eight or eighty. And that’s what makes it weird. Because about five minutes earlier George Clooney dumped the exploding robot-corpse of his childhood sweetheart into a machine that can tell and alter the future. Certainly a fucked up leap. And the principles know this. Bird, Lindhof, Clooney. Keep ‘em on the edge of their seats with the stuff of blockbusters, and then lay on a sprinkling of good-intentioned guilt trip. It can’t be in the hands of superheroes. It can’t be part of a happy meal. It can’t be revealed in a mid or post credits scene. It has to stand up on its own (which also makes the fact this is a Disney film based on a amusement park area all the more confusing and full of doublethink. Maybe the ‘story’ of this film is why it’s being dismissed. Maybe the same company that owns Stars Wars and Marvel can’t be making films that try to go against this powerful grain). Yes, movies have the power to change people's attitudes, but how that actually manifests itself on a broad and meaningful level in a post-industrial, interdependent civilization is hard to ascertain (Bob Dylan: "Songs can't save the world."). Whatever agenda one is pushing, ideally it would be accompanied with some semblance of real-life examples and practical application. It’s hard to do this in a sci-fi film that acknowledges that civilization is in trouble for a huge host of complicated reasons (war, famine, disease, inequality, pollution, lack of resources, etc.). Scientists of all sorts have warned that in terms of resources and the environment that we’re reaching a ‘point of no return’, and so it’s no surprising that the cold and rational David Nix would conclude that such a terrible fate is inevitable. Which is why it’s up to the innocent and can-do spirit of youth (in the form of Misses Robertson and Cassidy) to come to the rescue (and redeem George Clooney). After all, trying to save the world is one thing. Trying to prove that it's worth saving is something else entirely.
Interstellar and Art as a Tool of Social Change
(no real spoilers here, but there is talk at length about the problems on earth depicted in the film, and we’d say that to best experience Interstellar is, as per the wise words of Frank Constanza, ‘to go in fresh!’)
Nope. Oh, it's a fine film. A great blockbuster film. A real inspiring mindfuck. But no. It won't change the world. (Oh, I appear to be the only person to even entertain the notion that it could possibly change the world. That a film about the end and re-beginning of humanity would perhaps force or inspire us to take a look in that figurative mirror and ask what we are doing here and what we could be doing better. That a film whose core crisis is mass starvation and resource depletion might start even a informal dialogue between friends and family this holiday season over how much more food and energy is costing them these days). No, it’s 'just a movie.' and 'it can't possibly happen to us.' I certainly goddamn hope so. Earth is dying (we’re talking about the movie right now) because very few crops will grow and massive dust storms continually ravage the landscape. Everything takes place in Midwest America so the state of the rest of the world is never directly addressed, but since the gist of the film is about figuring out how to send the future of humanity to live on other planets, it’s safe to assume they aren’t living it up in China. On top of that, revised history is now taught in school as to not get the kids’ hopes up, or because one of the teachers actually thinks that the Americans faked the moon landing (which is one of the many nods to Kubrick in this film (he helped NASA film the Apollo 11 mission on a soundstage, according to ‘moonthers’)). So it’s a dire situation that in no way parallels current world events. It’s not like rising waters and an increase in devastating natural disasters is going to make a dent in the global agricultural output. We shouldn’t worry that Beijing has to close down factories, offices and school for a week leading up to the APEC summit so that the air will be breathable for visiting dignitaries. And it’s not that big of a deal if we’re using 20th century teaching methods knee deep in the 21st, creating a populace that’s underprepared and overeducated to stumble into the widening underclass. (some dour, dark sarcasm there. We should go see a Christopher Nolan film to feel better about ourselves!) So how can we get important, monumental, life changing ideas into the world without them having to be reaction to a terrible disaster or a prevention for an impending disaster? Certainly it takes more than a movie, but a movie can play a small but helpful role (movies – and art – are like supporting players in the story of human civilization). And individuals or small groups of active or like-minded people may only need one more nudge of inspiration (like gravity) to actually make a difference. And we have to rely on these little idiosyncratic cultural nudges, because the opinion that the monoculture has almost completely shattered into a thousand pieces is no longer much of a debate (and the positive and negatives of this occurrence can be debated elsewhere). It’s hard to find a movie, song, TV show, or piece of art that everyone is familiar with (let alone one that everyone can be positive about it). A handful of blockbuster Hollywood films are the closest we have of everyone being on the same page and being able to have small or deep talk about something they experienced as a form of entertainment with maybe perhaps a hint of didacticism. This is particularly true as worldwide box offices are almost always besting the North American grosses for these tent pole films (with Nolan’s own name being a tent pole in itself). The style of filmmaking and any possible messages within are reaching global audiences, not just Western ones. Christopher Nolan is the unique position of being able to creatively reap the benefits of elevating the superhero movie to something more than costumed guys punching each other. The Dark Knight was so successful at bring realism and humanity to comic book films that everything else before (and almost everything after) comes off seeming ridiculously silly. The Prestige was his first film to add doses of science fiction into a realistic (in a movie sense) world, and it was handled so superbly and believably that it’s no surprise that Interstellar succeeds in the same way (that the audience doesn’t question the feasibility of the technology, or how it can be used to save the day just in the nick of time). And it’s this seamlessness of combining action scenes and plot twists with questions about memory, justice, ethical boundaries, destiny, and philosophy that makes Nolan that much better than his many big studio contemporaries. The films aren't graduate theses, nor are they meant to be. The heavier topics can trigger broad and shallow queries that audiences can chat about in cinema parking lots and on home sofas. All art can be a jumping off point for further learning from any topic the art addresses. And there is certainly something to be said for art that can reach many, many people. Nolan’s 2010 film Inception is probably the last movie that doesn't have characters from DC or Marvel that was popular enough to be spoofed in other pop culture realms and discussed by film fans and critics alike. And while ‘dream invasion’ is ridiculous enough to obviously not start a privacy debate, a world where there is a political, social, and financial advantage to know every little thing about someone along with an ability to do this (thanks for the info, Snowden) is a lot closer to home. And ‘saving humanity’ is a lot less controversial than the government tapping your everything. It’s something everyone can get behind. Especially if it’s done in a heart pounding and inspiring way with a (spoiler alert) happy ending. Interstellar can't help but be a Nolan film. It is wrapped up tight, with no loose ends (unless you’re a picky/amusing astrophysicist spotting tiny errors that no one without a PhD in a scientific discipline would notice). The flaws are brisk, familiar and offered up in a nice glossy sheen. There are no surprises about the surprises. A Nolan film is full of incredibly elegant construction of familiar figures and tropes that are tweaked rather than wholly deconstructed. It’s not paint by numbers, but it’s not an earth shattering revelation, either. He is the Salvador Dali of contemporary mainstream film. As mentioned in a previous article (click), Nolan can work the suspension of disbelief (and the hiding of its wires) to the point of where he becomes an auteur of a not particular auteur-like quality: The Best Blockbusters in the Business. So what do we want from Interstellar (in addition to two and a half hours on the edge of our seats)? What can we want? How likely is it that our current resource-vacuuming policies will create a dust-filled, wasteland-like future? What kind of plan B’s and C’s do scientists have? What kind of technology should we developing? In the face of these queries, Christopher Nolan will sensibly say something along the lines of, 'no, of course it's not supposed to change the world, to be the catalyst of changing our entire outlook on our relationship not only to this planet but the cosmos at large. But if it has people talking about it, great.' The man has settled on saying he hopes the film will reignite out interest and passion in space flight, which is certainly a more sensible and less politically sensitive stance (if certain pundits were accusing him of trying to name check Bane with Bain Capital in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises, certainly they'd see left leaning radicalism if Nolan explicitly made climate change a cause of the Interstellar's destructive dust). I firmly believe that Nolan wanted to entertain us first and foremost. The Dark Knight was always about Batman catching the Joker in the coolest ways possible first, and a freshman university essay on chaos and vigilante justice second. But a troubling future will always ring a bit truer because we're constantly inundated with damning facts, statistics and personal experiences that strongly suggest a troubling future. That said, hopefully we're a long way off from that film's depiction of a planet dying at a rapid pace. Dystopian films have been a big draw recently, but always with the ultimate promise that things will get better. Art can offer the positive note that reality simply cannot guarantee. Consequently, art has traditionally been a cheerleader of change, never a quarterback. Certainly figures central to any sort of social, economic, or political reform would attempt to use cultural property to extend their message as broadly as possible (and I'm being as general as the use of flyers, posters, and website banner ads here). Even Good ol' Joe Biden gave us all a 'sounds good but not exactly ironclad evidence' example of this when he suggested that America's change of position on gay marriage is due in part to the popularity of Will and Grace (a sitcom with two gay main characters). Some of the most emotionally powerful and affecting works of arts come in response to a tragedy, and so can be seen as part of a general push to prevent similar tragedies in the future. Picasso's antiwar masterwork Guernica was created in response to the fascist bombing of the Spanish town of the same name in 1937 (note: despite this, wars have continued to this day, more or less without interruption). Folk music was a champion of many causes throughout the twentieth century, from poverty to civil and equal rights. Although Bob Dylan oversimplified the role of art and culture - and broke more than a few hearts - by saying 'you can't change the world with a song', not long after he left his early protest folk work in the dust. A cynical statement to be sure, but as the optimism of the first half of the sixties gave way to entrenched situation in southeast Asia and a Nixonian White House (with all the justified mistrust it brought), it was clear that any sort of communal utopia was much too lofty a goal. Kurt Vonnegut later observed that the collective effort of the left wing to stop the Vietnam War ultimately became the equivalent of throwing a pie off a stepladder. This has much to do with the incredible amount of money tied up in these endeavours, which tends to drown out many ethical (or in the case of the issue of combating climate change, scientific) arguments for reform to the status quo. It also doesn't help that a lot of art with social/protest bent is made in part to (re)energize people who are already supporters of the cause. Left wing filmmaker Michael Moore has admitted freely that he has essentially been 'preaching to the choir', but playfully defends this with 'sometimes they need a good tune'. That is, art doesn't convince the same way money can (even while money can play a sizeable role in society’s valuation and consideration of art). In the context of advancing social change, at the very least art can give someone a political pause. A momentary consideration of an issue or crisis from a fresh and/or unique perspective, regardless of how much prior information or experience they are bringing to the piece. An agonized face in Guernica might make a politician - or a citizen who is debating as to whether they should vote for said politician - reconsider their support for any sort of foreign military action or accepting money from a weapons manufacturer. Maybe for a second, maybe for good. But we cannot demand or expect this from art. If the criteria for a successful piece of political art is that it played a large role in political change, then every piece of art is a failure (Fairey's 'Hope' poster for Obama's 2008 campaign looked nice on a wall, but didn't make anyone vote for Obama who wouldn't have already done so). The internet has created a unique environment for grassroots political organizing. It's easier to join a movement than ever before, but in most cases participation for whatever political cause you're supporting is not much more than signing a digital petition (typically requiring one of your junk e-mail accounts) and sharing a link on your facebook or twitter page. Such an open and egalitarian field can yield mixed results. After a Greenpeace-led campaign, Lego ended its partnership with oil company giant Shell. Part of the campaign included an internet commercial showing an arctic landscape made of lego pieces (including polar bears) being flooded in black goo as Sarah McLachlan sings a piano ballad version of the song 'Everything is Awesome' from the Lego Movie. It’s a strange process, finding the way to frame an issue in a way that its message (usually reduced to being as simple as possible, unfortunately) can go viral. Kudos to Nolan’s Interstellar to lead from behind. Now there needs to be a more overtly sociopolitical step for the issues it raises to be discussed in the public forum. For the many drawbacks that the internet has when it comes to discussing important and complicated topics that challenge modern society, it still makes accessibility even and fair for all (huzzah for net neutrality). Science fiction has become the biggest business in the world of art and culture, and hopefully scientific non-fiction will play a greater role in the world outside of it. On the other hand, after trying to get people politically motivated by promising to respond to every petition that garnered at least 50,000 signatures, the White House found themselves explaining why they would not pursue the construction of a Death Star.
Notes: “Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless butchery it was. We formed sort of a laser beam of protest. Every painter, every writer, every stand-up comedian, every composer, every novelist, every poet aimed in the same direction. Afterwards, the power of this incredible new weapon dissipated. Now it’s like a banana cream pie three feet in diameter dropped from a stepladder four feet high.” (Vonnegut, 2003) http://www.progressive.org/mag_intv0603#sthash.IFLp4HeS.dpuf
Living on the Edge of Tomorrow
'Edge of Tomorrow' is the new Tom Cruise, $178 million budget summer sci-fi action flick that is already tumbling out of the box office top ten, despite great reviews and a boatload of money already made in overseas markets. It's a film about Cruise reliving the same terrible day over and over again because he keeps getting killed fighting aliens (in true video game style) on or around the beaches of Normandy in the near future. Okay. There's quite a bit to unpack in that opening paragraph, about the state of Tom Cruise, the contemporary film industry, and the ever-present sense of deja vu.
-Tom Cruise is alive, and terrifyingly not old looking (he's about to turn fifty two). This is his second big sci-fi action flick in a row where things get totally bizarre. In last year's Oblivion, he played an honourable astronaut turned soldier whose body was cloned by aliens and whose clones overran the earth, killing hundreds of millions of people. (note: to show how much Oblivion didn't work, the described moment above was told as an anecdote by co-star Morgan Freeman to an incredulous Cruise. That's right. What would easily be the most impressive and talked about scene in the movie wasn't made, it was just alluded to. Fortunately, Edge of Tomorrow does not make this mistake). There is a slight notion of 'career revival' for Cruise in the wake of this film, since the critics are really championing it (more on that later), but this man doesn't need such notions. Tom Cruise was making blockbusters before Will Smith was telling us that parents just don't understand. He exists outside the normal parameters of Hollywood. He rarely does interviews, but it seems like everyone knows everything about him. He is one of the most recognizable stars in the world, who seems to have a genuinely affable demeanour when dealing with fans, while remaining extremely private once his job is done. His comedic turn in Tropic Thunder shows that he will make fun of himself to a degree. His public persona yes, his personal life no. This make sense. There seems to be a balance there, that occasionally tilts with issues concerning relationships and religion. But that happens to almost everyone. In your life, friends, acquaintances and co-workers will talk about you for whatever you did or said to the partner who left you, or some strange lifestyle decision you made. The man we're discussing here just has the unfortunate luck to be a superstar, and therefore his challenges in life also double as our water cooler fodder. And we're used to this being the case, and - three decades after Risky Business - he must be used to it as well, or as much as anyone in his situation could be. Just by being in the public eye and making a movie where he plays 'Tom Cruise', Tom Cruise makes this crazy, mixed up overheating world feel like it makes just a bit more sense. And just to clear, we're dealing with the idea of 'Tom Cruise', not the man. The idea of 'Tom Cruise' - like any public figure - is more about our relationship with activities the real Tom Cruise participates in, combined with any slivers of information we glean from his personal life. It's a mixture of judging someone's job and home life we only kind of know, and then trying to make person out of it. And we do that to some degree with everyone we ever meet. The advantage for doing this with a celebrity is that there's more common ground with talking to others about them, since a celebrity is better known than the person in the next cubicle over. We compare this slightly or greatly exaggerated person to how we're doing in our own lives. In other words, how we see Tom Cruise is, for better and for worse (which entirely the point), how we see ourselves and each other, if we suddenly have to relate in some way to someone who's succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Suddenly considering what to do when dealing with someone who we all want we want to be, along with how annoying it can be if it all works out too well. A bit too perfect, a bit strange, and probably not as tall as we really hope.
-if you make something that costs $178 million, you are making a summer sci-fi action flick. Repeat: You are making a summer sci-fi action flick. PG, of course. Alien guts can explode in all sort of creepy weird ways, but people must die off screen, or in a bloodless hail of bullets, or in a comically (but still bloodless) squashing or smashing. The movie will have a happy ending (unless sequels are planned, which is the case a lot of the time, which means it will have a cliffhanger ending). It will not challenge any preconceived notions of what it means to be a person, but merely reaffirm that you have to work hard to succeed (which at first seems like a pro-capitalist mindset, until you realize that the hero never does it alone. Heck, look at Star Wars. Luke needs the help of his sister, the crew of the Millennium Falcon, the droids, and the force (socialism at its purest) to defeat evil).
-it's not enough to be 'high concept' anymore. It has to be 'high concept sci fi' for nerds, because nerds (and here I'm going to making large assumptive leaps of logic) are good with computers which means they make good money, which means they have a disposable income to actually pay for movie tickets and associated swag. They are a coveted demographic, is all I'm saying (further evidence: hey, what's with all these superhero movies?). So spend money on the people who have money to spend. Make movies for them (this one has aliens, futuristic battle suits, and kind of time travel). Easy peasy, right? Well, no. Easy answers are fine for inside the movies, but outside in the real world, spending more money increases the chances of losing more money. Better to cancel something in the early development stage than watch it slowly limp to the 'completed film' finish line and have it die at the box office or go right to Netflix or an online rental store (which is the new, endless VHS and DVD discount bin). It was never a matter of art versus money. It was always a matter of making money versus not making money, and the studios did all they could to give their contender all the help and hype it would need. Speaking of which...
-Edge of Tomorrow is 'already tumbling out of the top ten'. Buzz is hard. 'Movie formulas' is the term for films made with a specific series of instructions, like an ikea desk. Ideally films built out of formulas will do well at the box office, since they're chock full of the stuff that worked for previous box office hits. The term 'ideally' is used, because this doesn't always work. That there are box office bombs is proof of this. If Hollywood has really perfected the 'movie formula', every film would be a hit, or, at the very least recoup its costs completely. The main variable is buzz. People talking about the film before it comes out, and while it's in theatres. A successful marketing campaign can increase the amount of buzz, but buzz doesn't directly translate into box office. It certainly helps, especially after a movie opens and people keep telling their friends about it, or some nerd (!) makes a gif of Tom Cruise getting hit by an armoured personnel carrier over and over again. 'Edge of Tomorrow' had weak buzz, according to Hollywood insiders (ah, Hollywood insiders. We picture studio execs spilling the beans to some reporter at a swanky party), which may be an easy excuse as to why it's not still playing strong across the North American continent. Plus, with box office numbers being so ridiculously important these days, studios and movie-goers see a film slipping out of the top ten box office as a sign of it being a bad movie (or a failure of a movie). 'Edge of Tomorrow' falls victim to self-perpetuation: People aren't going to see the movie because people aren't going to see the movie.
-'despite critical reviews'. Ah, the critics! Remember them? Remember thumbs? Remember the hideously reductionist matrix of two thumbs equals great, one thumb equals okay, and no thumbs equals garbage? Well now it's been replaced with an aggregate of all the reviews for a film, so you REALLY know whether a film is good or not. On Rotten Tomatoes, Edge of Tomorrow is at 90%, so it's...gotta be an A-plus film, right? Thanks to the internet, the adage 'everyone's a critic' is truer than ever before. And with facebook, twitter, instagram, and every other website or app that can tell the world what you're doing and thinking right now, every film is now at the mercy of immediate, knee-jerk reactions of the general populace. But not really. The critics were never the gatekeepers of the box office hits, and there's so much other flotsam and jetsam in cyberspace that your recommendations (whether a two thousand word piece on the film (hey now!) or just a bunch of exclamation marks with the title as a hashtag) fall on already deafened ears. One of the biggest film franchises of the last ten years is Transformers. This despite middling reviews and that it's practically impossible to find anyone post-puberty who would say they're very good. From a critical and cultural perspective, they're junk food. But they're also...wait for it...a series of summer sci-fi action flicks (see above).
-'a boatload of money in overseas markets'. Fickle North American audiences whose interest in star power has waned should beware. There's a new hip crowd in town and they're called everyone else in the world. Todays press junkets don't really have a movie star talk to forty interviewers for five minutes each in a room at the Chateau Marmont. Now, Tom Cruise and other big budget celebrities like Will Smith and Jennifer Lawrence travel to four continents and attend oodles of premieres in Mumbai, Rio, Paris, and Shanghai because that actually makes a difference (Tom had them at hello). So now movies - especially 'star vehicles' - may be tweaked to attract the global common denominator. In the past, a film might be dumbed down a tad to play a bit better in the area between Los Angeles and New York. Now even more edges of specific Americana must be dumbed down as to not alienate or confuse the crowds in Istanbul and Beijing (the 'Iron Man 3' that played in Chinese cinemas had extended scenes with Tony Stark meeting with a scientist played by Wang Xueqi, a famous Chinese actor). Summer sci-fi action flicks were already pretty broad, but they're only going to get broader.
-'Edge of Tomorrow' is a high concept film that combines Groundhog Day, Saving Private Ryan, and every movie involving aliens who are woefully underdeveloped character wise, save for the desire to kill people and take over the world. But the filmmakers know that they are cannibalizing past successes, and so 'Edge' plays with our expectations wonderfully. Tom Cruise plays a sleek, fighting-adverse PR-spouting major who is suddenly forced to strap on a bulky mecha-suit and try to kill aliens on a French beach. And he sucks at it and get killed and it's great because it's Tom Cruise failing at every possible step, which is not supposed to happen to Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise gets humbled and learns something in other Tom Cruise movies, but here we get to watch Tom Cruise die again and again (and again)...before learning something (namely how to actual start kicking ass and killing aliens). He gets shot, squished, exploded, hit by cars, and put out of his misery like a wounded animal, and it's all good, in fact, it's all great. Emily Blunt plays the tough as nails not love interest. And this is also important. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray slowly woos Andie McDowell. In 'Edge', Cruise grows feelings for Blunt as they kill aliens together, but the filmmakers are able to build an emotional connection without pushing too hard and awkwardly for happily ever after. Even the handling of the kooky scientist who develops the technology that could save them all is at least smart, funny, and presented in a way that acknowledges the audience knows all the traits and duties of the kooky scientist. The pacing for the necessary repetitive aspects of the film (to teach the audience what Cruise is going through again and again) is brisk and winking. 'Edge of Tomorrow' never 'talks down' to its audience, but rather respects them, having faith that they'll piece two and two together just as its protagonist does. It is also based on a Japanese graphic novel named 'All You Need is Kill', which is quite a wonderful title. And while people rightly grumbled when it was announced that it would not be the name of the movie adaptation (a bit too dark, apparently), 'Edge of Tomorrow' is a good backup, considering it is perched upon the very heart of the 'big movie' conundrum of right now.
-the film cannibalizes a milieu of cultural tropes and influences, but it also takes a page from actual history be re-imagining the d-day landings. You can't attack northern France for any reason without this comparison being thrown at you, unless you're Henry the Fifth. And you can take the easy way out and just make the comparison of aliens to Nazis, or you can acknowledge the wonderfully un-conquerable island of Great Britain, or you can see it as a commentary on the endless futility of war, fighting once again in a familiar place (in Cruise's personal case, over and over again), with peace never in sight. War is never over. We've always been at war with the aliens.
-Cruise's learning curve borrows heavily from Groundhog Day, but these cycles of slight advances before imminent death will strike a particular chord with gamers. Edge of Tomorrow is the successful adaptation of the video game experience. Learning through constant death, and only getting a bit further with every go around. Each new life for Cruise (or Mario, or Master Chief, or whoever) might only mean making it to the next enemy or pratfall. But with endless lives, the only real death is frustration and giving up the entire endeavour (which Cruise, to his cowardly credit, tries to do at one point). This feeling that our protagonist has mirrors those held by millions of gamers over the last three decades, from Donkey Kong to Battlefield 4. Whether it's 'stuck in an endless time loop' or 'I've got to go and do my homework', the emotions churning in you to advance, to see if doing one thing slightly different and maybe succeed, is always in the back of your mind 'Edge of Tomorrow' captures this perfectly. This film is the future, even as it's 'tumbling out of the box office top ten' (making $320 million on a $178 million investment isn't great, by some idiot's standards). A Tom Cruise film becoming a cult hit is an odd notion, and 'Edge of Tomorrow' seems to be proof that standards for success have always been a bit warped, but long term influences on popular culture take time to take root. And this has been proven, over and over (and over and over, death be damned) again.
In Celebration of Unhappy Endings (and the snobs who like them)
The best movies are downers (and without getting too much into defining 'best', most of the films cited here are those that frequently on 'best of' critics and publication lists as compiled on the wikipedia page, 'films considered greatest ever' (and yes, that includes the Sight & Sound polls)). But don't take my weird-filled word for it, look at how some of the greatest films of all time wrap up. THIS IS YOUR SPOILER ALERT. YOU WILL NOT BE GIVEN ANOTHER.
Gone With the Wind - Rhett to Scarlett: 'frankly my dear I don't give a damn' The Rules of the Game - jaded lover shoots the wrong guy Casablanca - Rick doesn't get the girl, might fall into Nazi hands Citizen Kane - we find out what Rosebud refers to, but the grumpy, old complicated man who's full of regrets is still dead The Third Man - Harry Lime is dead, his ex blows off his friend (and the film's protagonist) Martins at the funeral The Bicycle Thief - father alienates his son after getting caught trying to steal a bicycle (because his was stolen earlier, although we're not sure why it's necessary to add this point, perhaps because we erroneously believe that this movie is less familiar than most) Tokyo Story - mother dies, children head back to Tokyo, long-time widowed daughter-in-law feels like she's doomed to be alone The Seven Samurai - the Samurai saved the village, but the remaining ones lament their lost brothers, noting that the villagers won at their expense Paths of Glory - the three soldiers are shot, the French girl sings a heartbreaking song in the tavern The Seventh Seal - Death gets the knight. Vertigo - a damn nun sends Judy 'accidentally' falling to her death. Dr. Strangelove - nuclear bombs go off around the world (to the tune of 'We'll Meet Again'). Bonnie and Clyde - they get mowed down in a hail of bullets. A lot of bullets. In slow motion. A Clockwork Orange - Alex is rehabilitated, so he can once again be evil by choice. The Godfather - Michael finds his inner soullessness, has a bunch of people killed, including his brother in law The Godfather II - Michael expands on his soullessness, his wife leaves him, he has his brother killed Apocalypse Now - Willard kills Kurtz, has the Air Force blow the camp (full of native soldiers) to smithereens The Empire Strikes Back - Luke gets his ass kicked, finds out his Dad is full-on evil, Han gets frozen in carbonite Raise the Red Lantern - Songlian goes insane, wanders around in a daze Pulp Fiction - Vincent's gonna get shot to death by Butch in a couple days The Dark Knight - Batman takes the fall for the police officers the deranged (and now dead) Harvey Dent killed, becoming an outlaw
Whew! That's a lot of death, and lot of terrible revelations. And the people that like to pound out words about these films (occasionally referred to as a 'critic') can always find something else to say about them, and how their dour endings are fine commentaries on the human condition (Apocalypse Now: civilization encroaching on nature; Pulp Fiction: the shifting narrative reveals interconnectedness and the inevitable). Now this list is certainly selective. I've left off some well-loved and critically acclaimed movies with happy endings (The Searchers (John Wayne doesn't kill the girl), 2001 (humankind begins its next stage of evolution), The Shawshank Redemption (Red meets up with Andy on a beach in Mexico)), but overall they're the minority here. And many of the films listed above should not be confused with still very good films with full on depressing or bizarre endings. Among them: 8 1/2, Persona, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Grave of the Fireflies, Fight Club, Dancer In The Dark, and Requiem for a Dream. What does it mean that so many of the frequently named 'greatest films' eschew the traditional happy ending? An over-saturation of films with happy endings lessen the impact of that sort of ending. This is not to say that bucking the trend is the way to go. The public is perfectly fine with happy endings. Box office winners and modern blockbusters have them in spades. Few people go to the theatre to watch two children in postwar Japan die of malnutrition (Grave of the Fireflies). A Saturday night's entertainment at the multiplex can be cheap and fun in a dumb, forgettable sort of way and no one's complaining. Bad guys vanquished, true love found, and big money made. But if the creators and audience wants something a bit more....well, anything beyond that formula, really…it gets harder. Both to make the film work and for the masses to embrace it ('embrace' meaning 'pay to go see it', which is the measure for whether films are successful in the studios' eyes). A film's got to be great from start to right-up-to-the-finish to have a finish that has been done a thousand times before and not come off as predictable and clichéd. But it's got to be an unforgettable masterpiece from title to credits for an ending that challenges the expected ending. The public's embrace of familiarity can be seen as a frustrating challenge for a filmmaker or artist who wants to connect with their audience (although it should be noted here that some filmmakers and artists don't care about the audience's reaction at all to their work). A producer/writer/director can settle for the predictable, tweak the formula just a bit, or blow it off (up?) completely. Unique films are more likely to have unique endings. And unique is pretty vague term. Is the artist making a break with the currently familiar narrative content and/or style? Are they trying to make a conscious effort to make a comment on contemporary society? In either case, it's not only the artist that plays a role in this break from formula, but the critics who interpret the move as such. Looking over the movies that are remembered and held up as masterpieces, a pattern emerges, where the unhappy or simply 'fair' endings carry more realistic emotional weight than feel-good ones. And realistic is more useful when you want to compare it to reality (which is full of disappointment, tragedy, tribulation, and other topics that can people can look over for education or ‘fun’). For most of film criticism, death is eternal, 'happily ever after' is not. Yet we should contrast this with some of the most popular films of all time. First of all, there's some overlap. Adjusted for inflation, Gone With the Wind is the highest grossing film of all time, with The Godfather (and its sequel), Empire Strikes Back, Pulp Fiction, and The Dark Knight also making plenty of cash for the major studios behind them. And that's really about it. Citizen Kane was a commercial flop. The litany of foreign films on the list above did pretty good business in their respective countries, but were not what we would consider a hit. But over time, many of these films through re-release (and more recently, on VHS and DVD) turned decent profits, and that's largely in part due to critics and film buffs unrelenting push that 'hey, this is a great flick!'. But hindsight is 20/20. As far as studios bankrolling these projects, years before they ultimately enter a movie theatre, there's a risk in unhappy, ambivalent (but narratively appropriate) films. People certainly do like watching movies end in happily ever after marriages, the bad guys exploding in a helicopter, the hero riding into the sunset to fight for truth and justice the next day, and the balance restored to the greater community (whether it's a tiny fishing village on the shores of the North Atlantic, or a galaxy far, far away). For films with anti-heroes or overtly sympathetic antagonists, that justice is served frequently has to suffice instead of full-on happy ending, but it still can leave the audience satisfied. Entertainment has always been a form of escape for most citizens, with 'education' and 'creative/personal expression' usually vying for second and third place. And when you see the films that top the box office lists every week (even films with simply average ratings can become forgotten a month after release), it's not hard to feel like the lowest common denominator has the biggest say in what is the weekend fare for the rest of us. But that's a pretty easy and clichéd reaction (on par with the endings of said films). That critics would decry the taste of the general public suggests a blind spot regarding their own profession. It's pretty easy to take a jaded and cynical approach to your career over many years, whether you're a construction worker or a heart surgeon. And the same goes for the film or art critic. Someone who isn't stuck watching three films a day - and instead spent eight hours in front of a computer or renovating kitchens - is probably going to be satisfied with the movies that make up the Fast and Furious franchise. Results from test screenings frequently request 'happier' endings. Two famous examples involve eighties sci-fi films which - with their original 'downer' endings - are praised by critics. With pressure from studios, Ridley Scott's Bladerunner had Deckard and Rachel escaping the dreary city of LA together as the sun finally shines. The Universal Executive cut of Terry Gilliam's Brazil had Sam and Jill, uh, escaping the dreary city without a name together as the sun finally shines (hey, they're archetypes for a reason). When critically praised strange or sad films play to empty theatres, excuses have to be made. 'Ahead of its time' is a label that benefits from the fact that you have to wait for the 'ahead'. If you're going to end a film with a dead man's cherished possessions burning up in a fire, how about at least throwing in a wacky sidekick? Citizen Kane came out over seventy years ago. Everyone involved in its creation is dead. But its legacy is secure, indomitable, and that's thanks in large part to filmmakers influenced by it, and the critics. The role of the critic is expected to be a fairly straightforward one. Educate and enlighten through inspiring print and pontificating. Their expertise and familiarity with their chosen art/activity is meant to separate their opinion from that of the average layperson. Ideally their relationship with the general public is one of instruction, recommendation, and illumination. At worst, it's a bunch of pretentious douchebags telling the unwashed masses that they're wasting fourteen bucks for the latest flashy but forgettable studio shit pile. Make no mistake, it's a privilege that one is paid to watch/listen/experience art and entertainment and then write/talk about it. It's almost baffling how talking about films or any sort of art became less of a past time of the leisure class and more of a role to play in the community. [and just as critics can overpraise the material that enthrals them, it doesn't take much for them to overpraise and exaggerate the importance of the role they play in said community] Obviously the public's taste still has to play a major role in the reputation and possible legacy of a film, but those that continually push certain films as 'culturally significant' (to use the Library of Congresses' term) as part of their duty/role/pay-cheque/choice are doing so with works that frequently diverge from what's most popular with the public. Critics best of lists rarely match with top box office earners at the end of a given year. The few over the many. Elitism over egalitarianism. But it must be remembered that the goals of these two groups are not exactly the same. The public usually just wants to have a entertaining Saturday night. The critic would like the added bonus of something resembling clever writing, inspired performances and iconoclastic directing (and hey, maybe something entertaining, too). Not a nanny state for arts and culture, but certainly a plethora of nanny suggestions for a slightly more refined evening. For critics, the public's entertainment has to be investigated, analyzed, categorized, and properly tagged for future generations. They are the wards of culture (not exactly self-appointed, as they fill a vacuum of curiosity by people who are interested to expand their arts awareness and are looking for guidance and suggestions), lauding or turning up their collective noses at films that challenge, reflect, represent, and question not only the nature of telling stories but the nature of the world in which telling stories is an expression of something greater. What art pushes boundaries, what questions them in unexpected and innovative ways? What does A Separation say about the role of women in Islamic culture, what does Transformers say (if anything) about the military industrial complex?' Essays of varying length and academic quality can be written about these topics, but to find the consensus as to which films from which periods deserve the most attention can be done by simple aggregation. To wit: Ask a bunch of critics the best films and tally up their responses. It's crude, as compared to reading a collection of essays in all the issues of Sight & Sound that focus on Rashomon, but critics are supposed to provide us with the shortcuts so that we don't have to make the many cinematic missteps to find the good stuff. Picture time capsules. It's their incidental job (after saying whether the film is amazing, terrible, or somewhere in the middle) to carry culture over to the next generation, even if most of the generation in which it was produced missed it. What will be popular years from now? What should be popular years from now? Critics don't necessarily wake up each morning thinking that, but they see so much of the same thing (safe, clichéd story lines with rote happy endings) that anything different immediately stands out, becomes more appealing. Critics gets sick of the big new thing first, because they always get the first wave of imitators before the rest of us. But that's just part of the process of always looking for the big new thing (it used to be found at big international film festivals, then at smaller, less well-known film festivals, and now somewhere in the subterranean bowels of the internet). The general populace comes later. Maybe. Ideally we're challenged, we adapt, we alter our expectations. Take Tokyo Story, Ozu's 1953 depiction of an elderly Japanese couple who visit their children in Tokyo, most of whom don't have time for them. In 1953, it was groundbreaking in its depiction of the minutiae of family life. The mother quietly weeping herself to sleep because her daughter-in-law hasn't yet re-married after losing her husband (and the mother's son, obviously) after the war is still heart-wrenching. And ultimately the mother has a stroke and dies, and the youngest daughter laments to the aforementioned daughter in law, "Isn't life disappointing?" And she responded with a half-forced smile, "Yes, it is." A revelation that flies in the face of what we expect from film. And not just when Tokyo Story was made, but today (perhaps especially today, where the only guarantee of reaching the masses is making a film based on a superhero or already successful book). And so the role of critics continue to be essential, as they are the ones who continually look for artists searching for a new and meaningful way to express themselves in their respective medium - and maybe even have a dash of contemporary social commentary to boot – which is a search that is supposed to be one without end. And the cycle of a subculture becoming mainstream culture is another familiar trope: Discovered, praised, rehashed, dismissed. We'll let ourselves be endlessly reminded of the futility of humankind. Until 2001: A Space Odyssey becomes a documentary, we'll hold on to our unhappy endings.
Hayao Miyazaki and The Children's Spirit Crusade
Listen. Hayao Miyazaki has become unstuck in time. And what he found along the peaks and valleys of the eternal now he funnelled with great care into his stories. The brightness and brilliance of childhood. The hidden and majestic tales of history lost in the overt and insufferable pages of history. (Hayao Miyazaki was born that much we are sure of but the rest of his personal life is a personal matter and we are more interested in sifting through the things on the margins of the personal the dreams and visions of a restless imaginative spirit on one end and the completed animated films on the other the fact that it had to transition through a hand is something our eyelids get heavy over although we will concede that certain places the body that held the mind of Miyazaki visited has inspired the visual landscapes of his films the forests of Yakushima upon Princess Mononoke for example) Listen. Sometimes magic is real. That's what gives it its power. Its impermanence. Its inability to be properly pinned down and examined with scalpels and microscopes and chalkboards full of theories and equations. Now magic won't save your life or make you a fortune in the stock market. It won't even clean your eaves-troughs. But it can change the passage of time and the shape of your heart. And it seems to be in abundance when one is watching a Hayao Miyazaki film. So. Them. The films. Yes. The Cat Returns is a well-regarded entry in the Studio Ghibli oeuvre (note: Miyazaki is the executive producer, not director of this one), but never quite got the masterpiece level praise that Spirited Away received (perhaps because it came on the heels of Spirited Away), so let's start there. Haru, a high school student who has a crush on one of the boys in her class saves the life of a cat crossing the street (through some sweet moves with a lacrosse stick) and in return the cats offer her mice and catnip. Why? Because the cat was a prince in the Kingdom of Cats, obviously. Then she's taken to the Kingdom of Cats to marry this Prince Cat, and only the Baron (another cat) and his friends (a really fat cat and a crow) can save her and return her to the human world where she belongs. Yes, it sounds like I've regurgitated the back of a DVD cover. And sure, probably it sounds like typical kiddie film fare, but there's something the way all the elements of this film come together to make it come off as an epic, inspiring adventures (that clocks in at 75 minutes). There is a level of maturity and confidence that's never come through in a Disney film. A complete lack of condescension towards the audience. These aren't films for children. They're films for people, but you will feel like a child watching them, enraptured at how every plot twist and pronouncement seems fresh and original. The archetype shine. The heroine overcoming her own fears doesn't foster a single eye roll from the audience. You can't help yourself from grinning ear to ear at the majesty of Haru walking down a stairway made of crows high above the city of Tokyo. And Spirited Away is better. Miyazaki is at the helm of this one and it starts just as normal and gets even weirder. Chichiro is ten and she just moved into a new town and is feeling alone and... her parents gets turned into a pigs in this abandoned amusement park they visited which on the edge of the spirit world and now Chihiro has to work in a magical Japanese bathhouse to find a way to transform them back! It's a place full of giant babies, twin witches, a no-face, emetic dumplings, the stealing of names, tiny soot callbacks to My Neighbor Totoro, and dragons. Y'know. Kids stuff. And it's through the eyes of suddenly-thrust-into-the-role-of-heroine Chihiro, who suddenly has to act years beyond her age. Some Miyazaki protagonists are born/created with this quality. Chihiro has to earn it, and she does so in an elaborately designed dreamland. Not only is attention paid to the smallest detail (the lanterns, the door handles, the stuffed animals in the baby room), but to elaborate action sequences as well. Oh, and the expansive visuals of the evening tram ride are breathtaking. Pixar would slay a thousand Brad Birds to be able to take a peak into Miyazaki's brain (instead they have settle for helping Disney make english dubs). Listen. It ain't easy being a kid. And once you start to get the hang of it, you ain't a kid no more. Miyazaki seems to grasp this intuitively, and uses it as a springboard into making the good ol' bildungsroman archetype into - gasp - something fun and exciting. And it doesn't matter if you're a girl worried about making new friends who ends up having a crazy adventure (Spirited Away) or a Princess in a post-apocalyptic civilization that needs to keep giant insects at bay who's therefore more prone to have a crazy adventure (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind). Being a kid is hard work, and sometimes the challenge is just finding the courage to complete the task in front of you, whether you're destined for it or not. The pre-Ghibli Nausicaa tinkers with the fisher king narrative just enough to keep you guessing (where you can't possibly see how the heroes are going to get out of one sticky situation after another), with amazing visuals keeping your eyes unendingly peeled. ['there has to be something else' is always a start and sometimes it's the impossible and sometimes it's a type of magic that is so mundane no one in the worlds of Miyazaki's creations bats an eye when they see a witch or a talking fish or someone with psychic powers and this makes it all some simple to write off these films as kid's fantasy but for kids it's never so outlandish and farfetched and let's just say fake as adults always make it to be and that's what Miyazaki has been able to do to make magic feel like it's just there around the corner or over your shoulder] One of the chief joys of Miyazaki's films is their reluctance to offer up an oversimplification of basic themes. *cough* Clear villains are hard to come by, and resolution is stressed over full out vanquishment. And that means you have to throw certain narrative expectations out of the window, which is great because you never know how everything will work out, or even if it will work out. The unknown! The loss (and possible re-discovery) of innocence! Because innocence alone is too easy and simple of a description (practically boring, really). There are certainly great heapings of the joys of childhood in his films, but these moments are always carefully tempered with the inevitability of maturation and acceptance that many things in life are out of our control. Even the happiest film in the world, My Neighbor Totoro, revolves around the possibility that Mei and Satsuki's mother might die in the sanatorium from the undisclosed illness she's suffering from. It's Miyazaki talent that allows him to balance out these moments of great emotion and grounded familial conflict with the rescue of Mei by a half-cat/half-bus. Realistic fantasy is an oxymoron, but great tales can rest on such contradictions. Witches and wizards are a familiar part of life in Kiki's Delivery Service and Howl's Moving Castle. Spirits, demons, and magical forests abound in the period drama that is Princess Mononoke. Terrifying creatures and a chaotic jumble of old and new technology are present in Nausicaa. These collisions can come apart in farcical shambles in the wrong hands, but Miyazaki burned off all his hands' questionable inclinations in a cleansing fire years ago. And it's not just a matter of balancing the two contrasting ideas/themes/environment, as the speed at which the mundane transforms into the magical is another Miyazaki hallmark. A family walk around an abandoned amusement park goes wrong in a hurry (Spirited Away). Mei is playing outside stumbles across two tiny wood spirits that inadvertently lead her tumbling down a rabbit-like hole where she lands right in front of the dozing Totoro. Haru goes from worrying about boys in her class to worrying about her impeding marriage to a talking cat. And what starts off in realistic, modern day Tokyo ends in a magical world where, with its zaniness and over the top action sequences, the last third is practically a homage to Warner Brothers Cartoons. And in the midst of this, Haru (currently transformed into a cat and wearing a wedding dress (long story) is being carried up a massive spiral staircase by her cat-in-shining-armour The Baron, and at one point looks up at him with a sort of schoolgirl awe and crush. Then he looks down at her and catches her gaze, and she immediately looks away in embarrassment. It's a moment of genuine and realistic emotion in the most bizarre of places. And it works, which is a form of magic in itself. Listen. Hayao Miyazaki sleeps beside his stories. Oversees individual cells, hovering over animators' shoulders like a benevolent vulture. Spit shines the dialogue nightly. Builds and cuts away at story lines like a sculptor with his marble. A smooth operator who hides the strings beyond plain sight. When he pitched Nausicaa as a standalone script he was told that all projects should be based on a pre-existing magna series so he went and wrote a Nausicaa magna series. He slew ten animators until he was satisfied with Totoro's cuteness and geniality. [no man is an island but some men and women can spend a lifetime building one and populating it with whatever they fancy and on the island nation of Japan there is a man who builds islands out of imagination and ink and all the other words that drip out of accolades and introductions and honours that dance around the practicalities necessary to actually churn out a great film and instead focus on that suddenly overused word that happens to be magic because box office returns and golden statutes mean nothing compared to the feeling of a person whose eyes are boring holes into the film playing in front of them mesmerized at that first appearance of the Forest God in Princess Mononoke) Listen. Now is the part where we acknowledge the crew. When Miyazaki helms a project, he directs, writes and storyboards the whole thing himself, but he's damn well smart enough to surround himself with top talent, the animation team at Studio Ghibli (check out Ghibli cohort Isao Takahata's heartbreaking Grave of the Fireflies) and the always talented rotating cast of voice actors. While Ghibli films are typically given limited release in North America, quality speaks for itself, and A-list actors and actresses take on the character roles in the English dub. Yet, animation has long been seen as a child's genre in North America, and we are all the poorer for it. Perhaps in some ways this is what make Miyazaki's and Studio Ghibli's films so powerful. While Disney and Pixar can constantly make a visually stunning film, there's not always a pulling of the heartstrings or tapping on the noggin. With Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and many others, the emotional weight and maturity is presented so artfully, that they are able to expand our very narrow Western range of expectations of what an animated film can be. And now Hayao Miyazaki steps off the stage, into well earned retirement. A storyteller leaving on his own terms, at the sustained height of his powers. He’s acknowledged as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, has been working for nearly five decades, and it seems most likely that he’ll never fully grow up, never fully act his age, and never understand why anyone would bother not looking around the very next corner or ignoring the mysterious box in the corner of the dusty attic. That’s where the stories are. That’s what we can all remember. Listen. I wouldn't trade that knowledge for a fleet of cat-buses.
When Epic Breaks Down: Pop Culture of Summer 2013
It's summer, and it's time to get serious about fun. Blockbuster films! Number one albums! The Chicken Dance! But this season our hallowed creators of culture are putting epic under the knife and cutting it up real good. Forget saving the cursed kingdom/princess/soul, the inevitable happily ever after, and the straight line from apprentice to master. They know you know that shit back and front, and it's time to change up the design, leaving only the barest foundations in place. Pushing the envelope is not always in the cards for pop culture. It's usually saved for the margins, influences which slowly and carefully tweak box offices and first week sales. But this summer we're apparently going for broke. The results are a bloated brilliant mess of a resurrected television that's shoved in your face all in one go (rewarding repeat viewings), a taut and twisted LP from a guy sick and tired of having it all, and zombies, zombies, zombies!
Arrested Development Season Four and Cultural Binging
It's the end of June, which means the long anticipated season four of critically acclaimed and rating challenged Arrested Development (please note that I have fulfilled the requirement of using those two terms to describe the show in the opening sentence) has been out for five weeks, which means it's old news and we can focus on being excited for Dan Harmon's return to Community. Cough. So yeah, this article is late to the party. And we're okay with that here. It's nice when being lazy can dovetail with the quasi-luddite excuse that we don't feel pressured to consume the latest bit of pop culture and then shoot out a hastily written review or blog post or tweet or tumblr whatever (we waited four months after its release to write about the latest Radiohead album). Not that there's anything wrong that. Hey, remember Seinfeld? Remember when new episodes of that show were only on once a week at the exact same time every week? Those were the old days (no reason to toss in the word 'good' there). If you really loved it, you had to plan your life around television, but at least the broadcast networks tried to meet you halfway and put on the good stuff in the evening, when you were home from work or school. Proto-cultural binging came in the form of syndication, where you could watch the same Simpsons episode four times in one day because four different channels were on the same schedule. Or maybe you taped everything with your VCR (which is what Jack Valenti was afraid of), and kept an organized library of every Taxi and Hill Street Blues episode, as well as some Monday Night Football games. DVDs (get 'em while they're still around!) were the big step, with entire seasons of TV shows fitting on three to five discs. Now you could kill an afternoon by watching nine episodes of Cheers in a row. Or you would purposely avoid all of the Sopranos' that season, just so you could gorge on them in a weekend when they're finally released as a box set. But by 2010, it was time to get un-physical. Now with the push of the button you can DVR your favourites, second favourites, and something you'd never heard of that you accidentally recorded. And Netflix filled the void for what wasn't on TV. An ungodly amount of movies (some of them even pretty good) and TV series, all for the low, low price of your friend's Netflix account password. That's now. Everything at your fingertips, which means you can be that much more choosy. Homeland not floating your boat fifteen minutes in? Dump that shit and move to Breaking Bad. Or Girls. Or Mad Men. Or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (it's a good, weird adventure story). And lo, the ancient networks floundered, and HBO fretted over internet piracy of its product, and Netflix decide to cut to the chase and just gave us a season of Arrested Development in one go. Fifteen episodes, ranging from twenty eight to thirty eight minutes long. All of them available at the exact same time. Bizarre numbers for television, but then, it's not exactly television. It's a big wad of entertainment circa 2013, existing for a target niche of diehard fans, DVD-discovering bandwagon-ers, and just curious enough members of the general public who wonder why all these entertainment websites are in a froth over a show that apparently ended six years ago (and no one watched and was critically acclaimed). Too much of a good thing isn't the right way to say it. We're still on training wheels when it comes to this sort of thing. And our natural, youtube, twitter trained brains are all set to absorb it fast, make a judgment call on it fast (blasting it into cyberspace via single sentence), then move on to the next piece of culture that glistened in such a way that you were invariably drawn in, at least for a thirty second sneak peak. And for a lot of pop culture, that's enough. You pretty much get all you need to understand 'Gangham Style' in totality about two minutes in. But Arrested Development is different. There's a slightly larger chunk of responsibility dropped into our laps. Watching/listening while doing any other sort of household activity is not an option. You have to develop a strategy. Keep a reasonable pace of absorption, or pay double the amount of attention and analysis if you're going to take it in twice as fast. Unless you're willing to double back and re-watch, which is easier than ever all of a sudden. You don't have to miss a thing ever again. Reflection and deliberation relying on your own memory alone has become an optional exercise. The culture you love is only a click away. You can pick up your phone or tablet and listen to your favourite song, the scene from your favourite movie, and look over the favourite painting of your favourite actor from the scene in your favourite movie. Thanks to youtube and DVRs you can watch what you just finished watching a second later, but even then, you typically had a week before the next episode became available. No longer. Now, instead of getting a weekly fix, you can shoot up and up and up. Klosterman noted that this has allowed for such in depth, near-obsessive analyses of cultural works, such as the interpretations of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, as depicted in the documentary film Room 237. Since one of the interviewees believed that the film was Kubrick's subconscious way of confessing he helped fake the moon landing, it shows one of the problems with such immersion. And if that's the extreme reaction, then perhaps the moderate one is burn out coupled with indifference. Maybe it's hard to form a respectable opinion after watching eight-plus hours of Arrested Development in a weekend. Maybe the last thing you want to do is reflect on what you just seen and heard. We have to re-learn how to absorb the message, since we've spent the last twenty-odd years getting used to the change of medium. Arrested Development is certainly a good pick to usher in the era of culture binging (even if the political drama House of Cards beat it by a few months). It's fast-paced but there's a narrator there to guide us. There's references to jokes from previous episodes that are not essential to getting most of the ones being currently flung at you. It can be exceedingly simple (it's about a riches-to-rags dysfunctional family) while revelling in the opportunity to be ridiculously complex (here's the new season's chronological time line, spoilers obviously: http://remarked.co/arrested-development-season-4-timeline/). And for saying all that, I'd recommend watching the seasons beginning with one if you're a Gobias rookie (if you don't know what this means then you are). As far as season four goes, the format of single-character focused episodes seems to have more drawbacks than advantages, as one of the joys of AD is skipping to and from multiple plot lines in each episode. It kept the show fast paced, nimble, with jokes having to be carefully packed into concise scenes that had to carry the narrative along. We lose that here. Despite the depth and uniqueness of each character on the show, forty odd minutes predominantly following one of them can get kind of exhausting. The narrator (executive producer Ron Howard, who also plays movie director Ron Howard) is sometimes working on overdrive, giving us paragraphs of exposition, as if it actually has been a week since we last tuned in. Creator and executive producer Mitch Hurwitz has pointed out in several recent interviews that cast availability was the main practical reason for arranging the season in this fashion. But he decided to turn bananas into Mr. Banana-Grabbers (with animation rights retained), pointing out that by doing something different and off-the-wall, it's actually following Arrested Development's rule-breaking and genre-bending/deconstructing spirit. Fair enough. The other standbys for this show (great acting by the cast, broad jokes, narrow jokes, callback jokes, jokes you haven't even gotten yet) are there in spades. The expectations for the return of this series were stratospheric, so it only makes sense that something you inhaled like it was a Big Mac doesn't taste as good as the three seasons you were able to dote over and let marinate in your brain for many years This was a big step. This is the future. Give it time. You'll get used it.
Yeezus Has Landed You gotta hand it to Kanye West. He's able to turn a ten track, forty minute album into an epic listening experience. That's Sgt. Pepper-like magic there (yes, I've gone for a Beatles comparison this early. It's what sustained brilliance and number one albums get you). Because for all intents and purposes, Kanye's last album - 2010's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - should have been his epic. Long songs (meaning a long album), tons of guest stars, crazy samples, and an ambitious, symphonic sounds that ends with a battle cry for the future of the United States, courtesy of Gil Scott-Heron. With the arrival of Yeezus, West's second trilogy is complete, and if the first was three hours of hip hop classicism, then the second pushed the genre into new and bizarre places. 2004's College Dropout, 2005's Late Registration, and 2007's Graduation was about proving himself as hip hop artist in the first place, not simply a talented producer that belonged behind the mixing board. It was a learning experience for both artist and listener, complimented by the school theme that runs (albeit loosely) throughout the three albums. So while the beats were impeccable and original, we quickly understood that Kanye wasn't exactly going to come from the same place lyrically as many of his contemporaries (and to cushion this blow, there were a lot of guest stars early on). He didn't grow up in the same environment as Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamarr, Eminem, Easy E, or 50 Cent. Kanye's most personal moment from College Dropout was 'Through the Wire', which detailed the event of being in a car accident and getting his jaw wired shut. Kanye never tried to be someone he wasn't, which is pretty real. On Yeezus' 'New Slaves', he acknowledges that his mother faced many more traditional challenges of post-segregation and marginalization than he did. This did not deter the public, so there were hits with fun hooky samples: Jesus Walks, Slow Jamz, Diamonds from Sierra Leone, Gold Digger, Stronger. He made a touring hip hop show that was actually worth attending. And he wore those white glasses that looked they were cooler than more trouble than they were worth. Ultimately, Kanye West became as cool as his songs sounded. (Un)fortunately, he apparently found this unfulfilling, and he took a scorched earth policy to himself and his music. And while this deconstruction/reinvention might take years for an artist, West - thanks to some celebrity missteps dotted through his ascendancy to the cover of People magazine - was able to deliver 808 & Heartbreak only a little more than a year after Graduation. Cold beats and autotune, lyrics that lament the end of relationships ('you spoiled little LA girl' is a sing-along at one point), the fun of everything that came before was popped like the heart balloon on the album's cover. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was a manic-semi apology for being an egotistical jerk, whether to the women he loved, the women he fucked, the public who adored him, the public who couldn't stand him, or his own better judgment. Which would have been a downer if it didn't sound momentous. Not much hovers under five minutes except the outro. With lush piano ballads and Sabbath samples, Kanye and friends have trouble reconciling with the hangover from having too much money, success, fame, and power. If College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation was about trying and getting, then 808 & Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and Yeezus was about having and losing. With that last one being the deepest, dirtiest, and most disorienting cut. Yeezus opens with what at first sounds to be laser guns, and it's only after a couple more (non)beats do you realize it's the song itself. And in the middle of' On Sight', the track stops on a dime and a choir sample gleefully announces Kanye West's mantra for the summer of 2013: 'He gives us what we need, it may not be what we want'. It's quick flash brings to mind the Stones' epic. The schizophrenic nature of the album is like that dichotomy. Jagged, cold, hollow, banging samples, with Kanye boasting of his abilities or confessing his failures. Consider the exorcism-like screams in 'I Am a God', as if West's being rewarded or punished for such an egotistical pronouncement. It's a good thing a god can't blaspheme, because he gets damn close by rapping about civil rights and fisting in the same line on 'I'm In It'. That's about the closest he gets to channeling Tyler the Creator, although bringing up the Odd Future frontman is relevant, as the music on Yeezus is just as confrontational and radio-unfriendly as anything on Goblin or Wolf. It's Death Grips with a slight pop twist (which I suppose says a lot about Death Grips). At the same time it never feels like Kanye is trying to push our buttons, and that in part comes from his eternally underrated skills on the mic. His clever wordplay makes it at first sound cerebral, and only later do you realize he's revealing something about himself. It's never quite 'fuck you', but a very enthusiastic 'fuck yeah', followed by a very emotional 'fuck me'. Kanye doesn't really need to start a beef with other rappers, because he's too busy beating himself up. And even if he revels in hedonism via 'I'm In It', the album's centrepiece - 'Blood on the Leaves' - is a six minute (yes, epic) lament on the end of a relationship, shoehorning chopped up Nina Simone samples with a heavy as hell TNGHT beat. Love and lust can sometimes overlap on much of Kanye's discography, but now both can be used as a weapon. As far as the latter is concerned, the politically-tinged 'New Slaves' offers us, 'I'll fuck your Hampton spouse, cum on her Hampton blouse, and in her Hampton mouth." But despite harsh words over, alarm siren wails and un-toe-tappable beats, Kanye remains a romantic at heart. While King L raps about selling drugs on the penultimate track, 'Send It Up', Kanye has a conversation with a woman in da club. The man's still looking for love, and seems to find it on the almost warm as hot cocoa closer (at least compared to what came before), 'Bound 2'. It must be noted that West is by no means the first artist to push the bounds of his respective musical genre. Many other lesser known artists have been experimenting with this sort of 'alternative hip hop' work for years (and decades, really). Kanye however is the best known artist to incorporate these lesser-known sounds and approaches into his own work, bringing attention of these sub-genres to a wider audience. It's the same as Radiohead, when they introduced electronic, jazz, and classical musical artists to the OK Computer-worshipping rock kids with Kid A and Amnesiac. Which is a good comparison, if we're looking for musical projects that carefully hover around the idea of epic (or rock criticism terms like seminal and trenchant). In terms of critical acclaim, musical influence, ardent fanbase, and the ability to top the charts and headline festivals, the only artist close to Kanye is Radiohead, a band known for trying to stop bloated, unoriginal musical ideas before they start. They're a band that acknowledged in interviews their music was hard to take in more than fifty minute chunks (which is why the 1999-2000 recording sessions were split into the two aforementioned albums), and frequently lamented that prior albums were always a couple songs too long. If one were to be crude, they might say that Yeezus is Kanye West's attempt to get (Radiohead frontman and electronica/alternative hip-hop aficionado) Thom Yorke's attention. Regardless of whether it works, it's a goal from which we the listening public are all the beneficiaries of. It's easy to say that West isn't aiming for the top of charts (even though he's hit it with Yeezus), and that he's not even trying to win a grammy or garner critical acclaim (even though the latter has happened and the former is likely). He doesn't have to now. His public persona is such that it can improve the overall listening experience of the music he creates. This synergetic approach to art and music is not as surprising as it might seem when one realizes West recently compared himself to Steve Jobs (another egotistical blowhard up to his neck with the talent of creating something amazing out of disparate parts). Kanye West is fascinating because he doesn't turn the character off for the public, whether on his records or on the record, in interviews and promotional appearances. Of course, behind the spotlight he can be someone completely different. Justin Vernon noted that in the recording studio the man is quieter, more reflective and generous. As if it's typically in front of a microphone that West becomes 'Yeezy'. Hip-hop stars - more so than any genre of popular music - live and die by their reputations, whether it be gangster (Snoop), gangster-turned-CEO (Jay Z), psychopath (DMX, Eminem), eccentric (Andre 3000), and Kool Keith. Yeezus is the (il)logical, captivating conclusion of a three album cycle made by a man who might be frustrated by having it all. And the fact that we don't know for sure makes it all the more impressive.
World War Z: The A+ B movie Some of World War Z is eye-rollingly dumb, but the Z stands for zombies, so you have to tweak your expectations as soon as you buy your ticket. Flicks involving zombies, monsters, and superheroes - and animated films that feature monsters and superheroes - aren't exactly chin-scratching culture, but World War Z bring the seriousness of the Bourne films to stopping hordes of brain eating monsters. There's no catchy one-liners, no slow motion triumphant kills, no [SPOILER ALERT] clear happy ending, instead replaced with just a minor resolution. And it's engaging because it's serious, and it's fun because it does a good job at drawing us into the reality of this apocalyptic scenario. It's 28 Days Later (the zombie film with an indie heart) on a Brad Pitt, global scale. The original B movies were meant to be serious explorations of a ridiculous premise. These films typically dealt with doctors, scientists, and military meddling with (or being forced to confront) forces beyond their control. They were only silly by accident, thanks to cheap effects, hackneyed plots and dialogue, and classic overacting. Jaws brought a more nuanced and mature approach to a ridiculous premise. It helped that Spielberg used problems with the effects to his advantage (less shark means more anticipation for shark!). The man's followup, Close Encounters of a Third Kind, brought a seriousness and master of craft to the theme of many b films: Aliens. This other film called Star Wars also helped. And, lo, the blockbuster was, well, not exactly born, but certainly now agreed to be a very good business decision. With earth (or galaxies, nubile teenagers, and small Nantucket towns) in peril every summer, a hero had to come along and set things right in an epic sort of way. In WWZ's case, it's former UN worker Brad Pitt to the rescue. And once he leaves his kids to fight zombies he doesn't have much fun, but his all business is our all pleasure. Zombies are the threat, but the setup still means tough guys with big guns shooting at the enemy.You honestly wouldn't be surprised if Matt Damon showed up halfway through to lend a hand. The connection to The Bourne trilogy (sorry, Bourne Legacy) is not surprising. The Bourne Identity came to theatres twelve years ago, and it's impact on the action genre since then - how it's shot, how it's edited, it's brisk narrative, it's resolute, stoic characters, it's vague political/social commentary - is immense. Modern action movies have always straddled the line between serious and b-films, but even the best films of the genre winked at the audience, adding a bit of humour or heart to alleviate the tension and explosions. Predator and Die Hard come to mind. Heck, even Eastwood's cold-as-steel Dirty Harry had five or six one liners in each film. The Bourne Identity dumped that in the river (although Frankenheimer's Ronin is a good Bourne prototype), taking a brooding, silent supersoldier over a tough, wisecracking cop. And now we get The Bourne Formula applied to the most ridiculous of premises: Zombies! Closest thing to a laugh in this movie is the small talk of the soldiers that are always wary about helping Brad Pitt and his crazy schemes, since it probably means most of them are going to bitten by zombies, and then shot to pieces by their friends. And those little relatable moments are important. They're need to keep the suspension of disbelief strong in WWZ, but they can't overwhelm them and enter the realm of melodrama. Others scenes include Brad Pitt ready to jump off a building to stop himself from attacking his family when he wasn't sure if he'd been infected from the zombies he was just fighting. Another is when soldier goes back out of a plane to his doom to release the fuel hose on a runway full of zombies, saying "Israel [the plane's destination] better be worth it!" (his professionalism is impressive. Most impressive). Also of note is Pitt's impromptu and practical goodbye to his family in the lab. These little things keep us engaged in ways that explaining cliched methods to stop a zombie plague never could. Some critics are trying to sift through the bodies in WWZ and find some sort of political commentary. And as much as you can note that George Romero's original Dawn of the Dead was a comment on consumer culture (the dead-eyed undead lurching through a mall!), it was shooting zombies in the head first, and a materialist treatise second. An Israeli defense official tells Pitt's character that his country was able to put up travel restrictions and defenses (a wall! Even though they kind of already have one) quicker than others is because they always treat any threat extremely seriously. Nlo9om7 \ bo matter how paranoid they might appear, or how much it might interrupt everyday life. It was also noted that North Korea had less of a zombie problem, because the army removed the teeth of millions of citizens. Granted, this was told to Pitt by a deranged ex-CIA agent behind bars, but this and the Israel thing was enough to catch attention by some serious writers, wondering what we are to make of this: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2013/06/world-war-z-z-z-zion.html Does this advocate a sort of Dubya-Cheney position, of using overwhelming force and extreme methods to keep your citizens safe, regardless of ethics? Since the zombies get in anyway, not really. In fact, it suggests that no matter how hard you plan and prepare, some things are out of your control (typically the work ethic of zombies). That's how you know when you got a really good epic on your hands. When you want it to be more than just a b movie full of plane crashes and getting chased through blacked out apartment buildings. World War Z never blinks, never lets on that it's anything but deadly serious - even when it borders on ridiculous - and that's more than enough to elevate it to the status of perfect summer entertainment.
The Millennials and The Star Wars Prequels I like the original trilogy more now than I did when I was a kid. A New Hope actually starts kind of slow (you forget that the first half hour is mostly a gold robot bitching at a beeping trashcan) but takes off spectacularly once Obi-Wan shows up, The Empire Strikes Back is near perfect from start to finish, and Return of the Jedi is pretty good when there's no ewoks in sight (Jabba's Palace is good way to the old gang all together again, the Lando-led space battle is mint and created a second-tier catchphrase, and the Luke-Vader-Emperor showdown is really well paced, well acted, etc. I think when people rag on Jedi, they forget how effortlessly those scenes on the Death Star work to tie up much of the mythology of Star Wars, namely the redemption of Anakin Skywalker). I originally watched the movies in piecemeal form, in the late eighties whenever they were on television, usually on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. I think I rented them from the video store not long after. I remember some of the aliens freaking me out a bit (kind of how Luke felt when he walked into cantina in Mos Eisley). I'm pretty sure I somehow knew the big family spoiler before watching Empire all the way through. Even though I saw the theatrical re-releases of Empire and Jedi in 1997, I never considered myself as a huge fan. I never bought any memorabilia, never went any sort of event with the word 'comic' or 'con' in it, and I thought the one post-Jedi novel I read was terrible. I do remember reading a book describing all the ships and aliens in the Star Wars roleplaying game that was lying around in my grade six classroom (I know this sounds rather bizarre, that such an odd book was there, but it was, and I would flip through it when it rained and we couldn't go out for recess). Despite my accumulation of this rather useless information, I never played the Star Wars roleplaying game, but I found it impressive ('most impressive') that there was a book which went into such great detail of a fictional universe. I'm not sure why the movies resonate so much with me now. I was never part of the generation that was able to watch these movies on the big screen when they first came out. I didn't have to wait years between releases. Maybe the best way to make a nine year old care about mythic narratives thousands of years old is to add blasters and spaceships. Chuck Klosterman wrote an excellent essay titled 'Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth' (found in his book of excellent essays, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs) which posited that The Empire Strikes Back was the movie that first introduced generation x to disappointment, alienation, and cynicism. Klosterman points out that Luke was basically getting a degree in philosophy and physical education (not really employable), had some romance problems (the girl he kissed early in the film ends up being his sister), and his father is pressuring him into making choices he doesn't agree with (sometimes forcefully). And of course, the film ends on a depressing note, which won't be resolved for three years (a very long damn time for a ten year old). And so when this generation finally became adults in the legal sense of the word, it was a time of post-Cold War meaninglessness (Fukuyama penned, 'The End of History'), grunge, ironic detachment (the best kind of detachment!), and a resentment towards the elders that - instead of taking the form of tuning in and dropping out - meant acting sullen in secondhand clothes and complaining about globalization on an old couch. Sounds link a pretty good example of life-imitating-art to me. I missed gen x by a couple years. I'm lumped in with the millennials, which can roughly be defined as having the internet by the time puberty started. It sounds like a rather childish measure, but that's a big difference. We were offspring of the late-boomers and early generation x-ers. The things that were lightly mocked about yuppie parents in the eighties (everyone gets a trophy day, designer strollers, play dates, peanut butter-free schools, soccer moms) became the norm. The nineties were a period of non-stagnation in the global economy, in part because the internet hadn't yet crippled print culture or the entertainment industry and no one felt the blowback of the Wal-Mart effect (selling stuff so damn cheap pretty much means your suppliers have to make the stuff in Asian sweatshops for cheap, laying off domestic workers by the thousands). With the Cold War over, the one big problem (nuclear war between superpowers) became several slightly smaller ones (the environment, global inequality, green energy), which at first glance seemed a much more manageable proposition. Everything was working pretty okay even as the gen x-ers griped about it, and you expected things to get better, as long as that pesky Y2K thing got fixed in time. It was in this environment that George Lucas announced he was going to release another set of Star Wars movies. Gen X got the first three, and now my generation was going to their very own. So while I can love the Original Trilogy for being an awesome story that takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far away, I find myself having to look for meaning for my own generation in The Prequel Trilogy. For those who forget - intentionally or not - this includes 1999's The Phantom Menace, 2002's Attack of the Clones, and 2005's Revenge of the Sith. As a whole, they are mediocre at best. The action scenes are much more accomplished than in the Original trilogy, and while a lot of that can be credited to the Industrial Light and Magic team being on the cutting edge of computer graphics (like they were in the seventies for most special effects in general), a lot of credit can go to directors like James Cameron, and John Woo who raised the bar for action films in general throughout the eighties and nineties. The acting, writing, and plot? Well, we'll get to that. Despite my claim of not being the biggest Star Wars fan, I did see The Phantom Menace on opening night in 1999 with several high school classmates. In terms of pop culture that didn't involve Britney Spears introducing herself to the world via schoolgirl uniform, the first half of 1999 revolved around the release of this film. We're used to an over-saturation of tie-ins and synergy for the blockbusters flicks today, but it was The Phantom Menace that pioneered this practice (of course such massive promotional pushes existed beforehand, modelled on A New Hope). Themed pinball machines were created for it. The Phantom Menace was so highly anticipated that the trailer for the second Austin Powers film (which would also come out that summer) spoofed its impending arrival. So the movie was a big draw for people who obsessed over Star Wars, people who thought the first three Star Wars were fun movies, and people who who were easily influenced by whatever was being blasted at them from billboards and television commercials. Anyway, we were there on Wednesday evening, sitting in a packed theatre that had already been showing the film repeatedly since midnight. When it was over, we all agreed it wasn't very good. All of it felt very childish and boring, and in a way that no part of the Original Trilogy (even when considering the damn Ewoks) approached. And it looked wrong. CGI that was so good it was obviously not real. At least in the late 70s some guy actually built an alien mask or costume you could hold in your hands. It was hard to get excited for a battle when most of the combatants were pixelated. Narrative wise, it was a whodunnit - who's behind the trade blockade of the planet of Naboo? - that deviated from its premise for most of the film, as if looking into anything else was more worthwhile. A healthy dose of the film is devoted to getting Anakin Skywalker off his home planet of Tatooine (and not to knock Jake Lloyd, the actor playing eight year old Anakin, but if it's hard enough for adult actors not to make Lucas' lines seem wooden, what chance did he have?). And if that's supposed to be the point of the movie (focussing on Anakin), why isn't it? Why is it an awkward lump in the middle? Then there's Jar Jar accidentally becoming a battle hero, and an eight year old piloting a ship and blowing up larger ships only half- knowing what he was doing. The dialogue is mostly exposition, and a lot of it is painfully obvious not only to the audience, but to the characters being addressed. And there's no sense of urgency. No one raises their voices, no one barks orders, no one breaks out of this sense of indifference (and yes, that's kind of expected for Jedi knights, but at least in the Original Trilogy Obi Wan and Yoda were given some clever quips and observations). There is no attempt to give any character to the characters. Practically everyone is of the same temperament and says nothing worth listening to. The closest thing to someone even remotely interesting is Senator Palpatine, and it's rarely a good sign when that's your antagonist. On the other hand, writer Todd Alcott notes that he can also be seen as the protagonist of the film, which certainly implies a major narrative dysfunction. Alcott's excellent deconstruction of the 'protagonist problem' can be found HERE. More importantly, no one knew what was going on. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were detectives and then bodyguards. The scheming alien industrialists that looked a bit like Greedo complained about the deal they were doing with this mysterious other. The Jedi Council didn't trust Anakin Skywalker at first, but then changed their minds, and they couldn't understand where this one Sith - Darth Maul - came from. Who knew what was going to happen? We did. The audience. And not just a little bit. We had a six and half hour spoiler alert that is/was one of the most beloved and popular movie franchises of all time. One can argue 'it's not the destination but the journey', but a lot of people have some great memories of that destination, so this new journey we're being taken on to get their better be pretty good. While The Phantom Menace gets the brunt of the criticism, the next two films don't fair much better, full of awkward romance, more terrible dialogue (instead of wisdom, Yoda barks orders about creating defensive perimeters), and narrative inconsistencies that linger like dust under a couch. No one realized a clone army was being built? Not a single Jedi Knight realized there was an actual battle plan (Order 66) that involved their destruction? Anakin was unhinged by a bad dream? The Prequel Trilogy had huge shoes to fill, and perhaps it was doomed to failure from the start (even if they were good) because of the power of nostalgia. Both gen x-ers and a hell of a lot of millennials had internalized much of the Original Trilogy, forgiving its flaws and canonizing everything that was good about it (perhaps some of the public outcry Lucas received for changing parts of the films for the 1997 release - namely 'Han shot first', but also that terrible extended song sequence in Jedi - was a sign of how so many people had such strong affection for this world). So there was a lot riding on this new set of films. Darth Maul had to be more menacing Darth Vader, Queen Padme had to be more assertive than Princess Leia, Anakin Skywalker had to be more idealistic and exciting than Luke Skywalker, and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had to be better at charmingly helping Anakin than Han Solo and Chewbacca were at helping Luke. None of these came to fruition. Notably, Mark Hamill doesn't get enough credit for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker's youthful exuberance and idealism in a way that never became grating. Ewan McGregor's approach to his role of a young and middle aged Obi Wan Kenobi is the best thing about the Prequel Trilogy, and many times he prevents the films from being - how can I put this - pretty bad. The problem of course is that we know exactly what happens to Obi Wan. He cripples Anakin/Vader in battle, then lives on to die in A New Hope. The story arcs of the other characters in the Prequel Trilogy are supposed to be more interesting because we don't exactly know how Anakin was turned to the dark side, how Luke and Leia's mother dies, or how Palpatine gains power. And we find out all these things, but they're not particularly interesting stories, or well put together. Certainly not worth the six and half hours they're given. The Jedi are trying to figure out who the Sith lord is, the one pulling the strings of all the evil people in the galaxy, and the audience knows it's Senator Palpatine. A character that many other characters - Jedi included - interact with, and, at one point, rescue, throughout the trilogy. In a space opera where physics are ignored (light speed! Loud explosions where there's no air!) and believability is tested (Darth Vader doesn't seem to realize he's torturing his daughter in A New Hope), the things that keep our suspension in a state of disbelief is surprise, and that is sorely lacking in the Prequel Trilogy. And the main reason: because the story's told out of order, and that can really ruin the surprise. Lucas finds himself having to stretch out a less-interesting part of an epic tale (now looking to be nine films long), and if you can't offer up a good, tight, easy-to-follow narrative, then you are forced to rely on explosions, impressive looking set pieces and lots of plot via dialogue so we just might care about the explosions. Although it's not exactly fair to say that Lucas 'phoned it in' story-wise, character-wise, and dialogue-wise in The Prequel Trilogy alone. Harrison Ford said to the director during the filming of A New Hope, 'you can write this shit, George, but you sure can't say it', so the problem's always been there. The Original Trilogy deal deftly with clunky dialogue and ancient myth archetypes because both were infused into an easy-to-follow and exciting story. A New Hope also had the benefit of starting in the middle of the action. Sure it opens with the expository text crawl, but you really don't need it. Everything revolves around one thing: The plans for the Death Star. That's all you really have to remember. The opening scene reveals all: Clearly the human looking people with the hot bun-haired woman are the good guys (and gal), and the dudes in masks invading their ship are the bad guys. The fact that the goods guys (and gal) got their asses handed to them means they're going to need some much better heroes to defeat the bad guys. Enter the kid who represents the fisher king archetype, the wise old man, the kid's symbolic brother, and the brother's helpful wookie. Suddenly the chase is on! And never really lets up until the Emperor is thrown down into a near bottomless pit, a whole two and half films later. Everyone's goals are always clear, and every moment is pressing. Plans have to be delivered (or intercepted), people have to be rescued (or captured), ships have to be fixed (or destroyed), giant stars of death have to be exploded (or do the exploding). Luke barely gets a moment's peace on Dagobah before his force sense starts tingling and he has to go to Bespin to save his symbolic brother and actual sister. In chase scenes, everything becomes more compact, every line has to carry a directive and a bit of character. It's why you can get more chemistry out of Han and Leia yelling at each other for thirty seconds than out of Anakin and Padme whispering sweet nothings to each other for five minutes. It's not that thrill was gone by the time we got to The Prequel Trilogy, we just knew that the thrills came later. Together, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith are a perfect example of how something with so much promise could go wrong in so many ways, since there's deep problems not only with content of the story, but of the overall presentation of the story itself. And that's why it's perfect for the millennial generation. We are confused how to properly use the bevy of tools in front of us, are looking back when we should be looking forward, and are trying awkwardly to stand on the crumbling shoulders of past successes. We raised our expectations because we were raised on raising expectations. From the early eighties onwards - pretty much around the time the Original trilogy wrapped up - the baby-boomers filled their upcoming mid-life crises with rampant materialism and free market policies, generation x let the chip on their shoulder grow and fester, and the millennial kids gorged on sugar, watched animated shows that got more and more postmodern (by the early nineties, the Animaniacs were spoofing Apocalypse Now and The Day the Clown Cried) and were given as much meaningless structure as their parents didn't get when they were young. And then there's the internet, the effects of which the world economy is still trying to recover from. The filesharing program Napster came out the same year as The Phantom Menace, ushering in an era where paying for anything which could be transformed into a digital, ephemeral format became optional. People complaining on the internet began to affect the bottom line of certain artistic and commercial endeavours. While 1997's Batman & Robin is the primary example of negative internet buzz torpedoing a blockbuster movie, The Phantom Menace suffered from the online buzz of everyone wanting it to be great. And the internet became ground zero of the revolt against it once the fans and critics actually saw the film. And the amount of information that could be stored on a DVD (which could ultimately be transferred into video files on your computer, and then shared across the internet for free) meant that old movies, cult movies, and entire televisions series was at all our fingertips. We were awash in cultural epochs (and junk) that defied space and time. Nostalgia crumbled as we could watch Twin Peaks, Happy Days, and Spongebob Squarepants sequentially with three clicks of a button. The immediate dearth of monies flowing into the entertainment industry freed/marginalized musical artists that weren't pumping out Top 40 hits, made blockbuster movie season all the more crucial to a studio's bottom line, and forced network television to cancel any show that wasn't a hit after three episodes. You had to be a hit fast, you had to accelerate the entire process of creation and marketing. And this seeped into the production of news coverage as well. Crucial information as a whole became too big to properly order and comprehend. It all became a giant, complicated machine with dollar signs dripping out. The impact of the internet - computers talking to each other, to really call it like it is - on global society was an continues to be massive. In pop culture terms, it's as big as Star Wars. A faster internet connection time meant everything had to speed up, including the actions and reactions of our pop culture creators. We were sucking up more movies, tv shows, music and memes than ever before, as well as disposing them just as quickly and looking for the next fix. We millennials quickly built up a resistance to overplayed and familiar archetypes. If the culture-creating community was going to trot out predictable story lines that Saturday morning cartoon embraced and mocked in near tandem, they better at least slather them in winking self-awareness. But Star Wars wasn't going to do this. And in mastermind Lucas's defence, he had the difficulty of trying to appeal to both older and younger fans, each expecting different things (the former wanting practically the impossible, Empire-like intensity but still fun, and the latter just wanting straightforward, easy-to-digest fun). The heightened expectations of the older fans - I suppose I better include myself in this group - was going to be impossible to meet. And while I don't converse with many people who were eight in 1999, The Phantom Menace and the next two films don't seem to hold that kind of appreciation among that age group that the Original Trilogy did for eight year olds in 1977. The underwhelming reaction to the recent 3D theatrical re-release of Phantom suggest this is the case. So yeah, The Prequels were visually (that is, superficially) impressive but suffered from several structural problems, as well as inflated and impossible expectations. Sounds like the plight of the millennials, if you ask me. And while generation x had about ten years between the bleakness of Empire and the time the world revealed itself to be pretty damn lame (even though the world they found themselves in when they were in their late teens and twenties was in much better condition than today), everything went south for the millennials during the release of the Prequel Trilogy and continues to this day. This is the one of the problems facing the millennials. Our place in the modern world is confusing, contradictory, and nowhere close to meeting our expectations, even as we have a vague sense of our place is supposed to be. A possible example: be a responsible global citizen by supporting policies that will reduce inequality and environmental damage. But to reach those goals requires navigating such a complex socio-political-economic system that success for not just a small handful seems impossible. Financial reforms remain a tangled mess that a small but powerful group of bankers are able to defang by pressuring politicians to not apply them. An environment that is growing more unstable by the day, in terms of weather and resources available for world population who's needs are still on the rise. Energy policies that still revolve around holdovers from the nineteenth century (coal and oil), industries which smother and denigrate any sort of modern innovation such as wind and solar. Technological innovation that the average person can actually access is limited to the power of the smartphone they have in their pocket. It's features are undoubtedly impressive, but it's window dressing when compared to the obvious changes that need to be done (it's our version CGI actions sequences. Sure you can play scrabble on your phone, but that's not going to get you a job). The Prequel Trilogy is the unintentional cultural representation of the plight of the millennials. Plenty of hype, high expectations, and it all went wrong because of a story that didn't quite fit the times and a focus on flash and showiness instead of anything meaningful. Klosterman's Empire analysis showed that Luke failing in that flick was the unintentional cultural representation of the plight of generation x, but at least Empire Strikes Back was entertaining. For the millennials, the problems outside the trilogy's story lines reflected their own (although the films did track the death of a bloated, bureaucracy-filled democratic republic and the consolidation of power to a small group of powerful people who worked in the shadows, so we can add that analogy to the pile). The growth of the nineties started to crater right around the release of the first film, as the exciting but ultimately empty early internet start-ups (pets.com, Infospace, freeinternet.com) began to declare bankruptcy. When Attack of the Clones was released in 2002, the massive scandals of Enron and Worldcom showed that record profits were falsified to hide monumental losses. By 2005 - Revenge of the Sith - oil prices were skyrocketing and the only good news in the economy was the seemingly unbelievable growth of the housing market (no comment). Question of executive privilege and how the war on terror was being fought were finally being asked in the news media, as Queen Amidala noted that, 'this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.' Just as the legacy of the franchise's past successes weighed heavy on its shoulders, the millennials find themselves facing a world where they can't possibly match what the baby boomers and generation x achieved, mainly because the foundations these previous generations had are no longer functioning as successfully. Student debt, rising living costs, unemployment and underemployment for blue and white collar workers alike, governments that owe more than they take in thanks to the previous generations' profligacy, and global instability that can possibly interrupt things taken for granted like trade and travel. What makes it all the more maddening is that people of all ages seem to agree that these are all pressing problems, but couldn't begin to even solve them. Just as Lucas couldn't help but finish the Prequel trilogy without improving its quality, even after the disastrous reception of The Phantom Menace. Everyone is stuck trudging forward to diminishing returns. In the halls of power there is a careful acknowledgement of these problems, as many politicians and business leaders acknowledge the need for change but are wary of proscribing solutions that may jeopardize their own livelihoods. The ever important sheen of looking like you're correct, that you're not making mistakes, must be maintained at all times. Focus on soaring speeches that promise better times ahead and minimize the important of swallowing bitter pills at present. The Prequel Trilogy similarly is visually stunning but empty. Its pioneering computer generated effects create dazzlingly futuristic cities and vehicles (despite taking place 'a long time ago') as well lifelike alien creatures, but the humans that inhabit this world act stiff and wooden. They speak in platitudes. The world of good versus evil is crumbling as it becomes apparent (much too late) that friendly Senator Palpatine is actually evil Sith Lord Palpatine. The story held nothing of interest because we knew the back half of it (you know, the half with all the excitement, like any good story). We got very slow and meandering narratives. Contradictory actions and half-baked plot points that ultimately go nowhere (Obi Wan discovers the clone troops! But the Clone Wars happen anyway). Not unlike how global issues - from fiscal cliffs to environmental talks - are addressed today. Speeches that say nothing. Middling compromises that do nothing to alleviate the real problems at hand. Everyone reasonably suspects things are going to get difficult in the upcoming decades, but no one can really articulate or put forth a clear plan of action. If The Empire Strikes Back primed generation x for disappointment, then the Prequel Trilogy bludgeoned that notion into the millennials, and in a superficial and trite fashion that befitted the popular culture and socio-economic malaise we seem to be mired in. At least for gen x the pill they were given was sugar-coated. Calling a generation aimless or lost is old hat, but the millennials are going to have to try very- No! Do. Or do not. There is no try.
sigh...
PT Anderson's Absent Centre (since The Master is still in theatres, I suppose I should preface this with SPOILER ALERT)
I watched The Master and I never saw the credits coming. Same with There Will Be Blood and Magnolia. There is always something missing in the films of PT Anderson, and thank god for that. A majority of the films that make it to the cineplex today seem to be based on a carefully calculated overload. It doesn't matter if you're watching a blockbuster action film, period drama, or romantic comedy. They all have everything every other film in that respective genre had, only this time a little bit more, a little bit stronger. If it's going to be an action scene, it's going to be more unbelievable and chaotic. If it's an awkward comedy bit, it's going to be even more over the top. And if it's a historical piece, it's going to be hammered home that this is one of the most important moments in all of history (according to The King's Speech, one of the biggest challenges during the onset of World War II was getting the King of England to speak properly). There is an overabundance of nearly everything in mainstream film these days, so that why the work of Anderson is so refreshing. What's missing in his films is that level of comfort and assurance that most films - or even most bits of popular culture - have running through them like train timetables. You know what's going to happen in them, the only possibly unique or unusual aspect to them is how. Even contemporary masters of genre (Nolan for dark superhero epics, Apatow for raunchy comedies with a bit of heart) have a series of rules they seem to be unable to shake. There are surprises to be sure, which can at times be both exciting and fun, but never disorienting. And even if the ending is not outright happy, it certainly feels appropriate, that challenges were overcome, scores were settled, and the future seems a little more properly set. Not so with Anderson. The audience for his films has to earn their satisfying endings by working with what Anderson has given them. He builds worlds and then gives you only snapshots. You can imagine his plethora of characters living beyond the page of dialogue, beyond the sudden cutaway, and you can't help but wonder what everyone gets up to if that scene didn't end just when it did. The multi-narrative epic Magnolia best exemplifies this, but even when his films focus on one person, it's the power of the ensemble cast that makes everything that happens that much more believable. In Boogie Nights, everyone surrounding Dirk Diggler has just as many personal problems as he does, and so the idea of the rise and fall of the adult film community feels that much more approachable. Day Lewis' Daniel Plainview is in every frame of There Will Be Blood, but its terrified or scheming people around him that gives him his power and our sympathy. At the same time, there's a desire to get away from these people and their experiences as quickly as possible, because you cringe in the situations that they find themselves in. There's an awkwardness in many of the confrontations and hostile moments in Anderson films, and he never stops after a cutting line or a long hard stare. You don't know when the peaks into these lives will end. The negative and scarring reactions that abjection theorist Julia Kristeva finds rooted in the more extreme actions of humanity manifests itself in mundane microcosms in The Master, There Will Be Blood, et al. Lancaster Dodd's daughter telling him that she believes Freddie Quell can't be trusted and that he wishes to sleep with her is particularly unnerving since she is the one that has made advances on him. Daniel Plainview's so-called brother admitting to him at gunpoint that he is a fraud is more heartbreaking than shocking. There's also Tom Cruise's character emotionally shutting down while being interviewed in Magnolia. And of course Freddie's inability to heal and integrate himself into the philosophical movement known as The Cause - and the more traditional 50s style nuclear family that the film seems to support, at least on the surface - is able to come across as wholly believable and maddening at the same time. Because we're so inundated with happy endings from most films, we want to see quick and painless solutions to these seemingly mundane, easily resolvable problems, but we cannot rely on the traditional storytelling narratives to do it for us. We are lost in a sea of uncertainty, with problems being only half-solved as more rise to the surface as time passes. Concordant with this, the audience doesn't know when these films have made a narrative turning point until they're long past it. Jumping days, weeks, or perhaps years in time with very little early indication that this has happened, we find ourselves having to immediately make hasty assumptions about these temporal gaps and what may have transpired within them. All while trying to pay attention to the scene playing out in front of us. What would be climaxes in other films - Freddie confronting Dodd over whether the entire movement is a sham, larger companies attempting to buy out Daniel Plainview - are placed in the middle of The Master and There Will Be Blood, respectively. And in the case of the multi-character epics of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, individual climaxes tumble out, one after the other, so even then one is never sure at what point we are in the ultimate narrative arc (if there even is one). So with such an unsteady footing and no clear resolution ever in sight, apparent loose ends will inevitably dangle, and it rests on the audience's shoulders to stitch it them up as best as possible. This is no small matter. Films are frequently portrayed - at least in multiplex pre-shows and Oscar montages - as a form of escape, magic, and dreams coming true. The closest we get to that sort of thing in an Anderson film in the raining frogs in Magnolia (and a nod to a terrible, disorienting biblical plague, it should be noted), an occurrence whose effects randomly dole out reward and punishment. No, responsibility and hard work is usually what we are allowed to leave with the cinema employee when he or she rips our ticket (the only thing we have to after that is turn off our cell phones). Blockbusters are chained to a formula of fun, and even the odd darker, more complex turn (say, Nolan's Batman trilogy), has explosions, sex, one-liners, and good triumphing over evil. There's fighting in The Master, but it's messy and bordering on pitiful. There's an rather odd semi-dream scene of a several woman - some in their sixties - dancing naked with clothed men. And even though Hoffman's character is a charming cult-like leader, he doesn't triumph or fail against towering ideological opponents, but rather argues only once with a nebbish doubter at a dinner party (and once again, it's to Anderson's and the ensemble cast's credit that because these characters are so brilliantly written and portrayed that you - like Freddie - are upset and feel terrible when Dodd and his followers are challenged, even politely). Conflicts with institutions are unremarkable. Dodd is arrested for practicing medicine without a license and inflicting minor damage on a yacht, and he goes quietly. Freddie does not, kicking up a hell of a fuss to defend his mentor and father figure. The following jail scene can be reduced to the following exchange: 'You're a fraud!' 'You're a drunk, and I'm the only one that likes you!' And that's really what The Master - and much of Anderson's oeuvre - boils down to. Broken men and women trying to make do with their flaws. Lancaster and Dodd try to help each other, fail, and ultimately part ways. Everyone in Boogie Nights can't adapt the changing times, wishing it was always a 1970s pool party/porno shoot. In the most revealing scene in There Will Be Blood, Daniel Plainview admits he doesn't really like anyone, he sees nothing good in people. It's a trait that ultimately ends with him living all alone in an empty mansion, having driven away his adopted son and beaten his nemesis to death with a bowling pin. While these character flaws are universal archetypes, it's Anderson's almost unmistakable style that makes his film - and the characters that inhabit them - wholly distinct and original. His films can be unsettling, and that is meant as a compliment. They come on slow, and slow is not the type of thing that financially successful films are made of these days. It's up to salivating critics to rave over Anderson's auteur-ness and a cabal of hardcore filmgoers to slowly usher in memes from his work and let them saturate into the greater cultural consciousness ('I drink your milkshake'). Is The Master brilliantly shot, acted, written, edited? Definitely. Once the credits roll, while you suddenly think to yourself, 'wait, is that it?' Possibly. Closure in all his work is slightly hollow. It's implied, but never set in stone. Certainly there is an idea of protagonists coming full circle, and one would like to hope that the bildungsroman archetype is in operation. Dirk Diggler is back to having sex on camera, almost everyone in Magnolia will have to wake up the next morning, clean up their mess and do whatever is expected of them, Daniel Plainview has beaten his nemesis (literally), and Freddie Quell is in bed with an English woman, half seriously asking her the same questions Lancaster Dodd asked him earlier. Just as we are given only snippets throughout of these character's rich and detailed lives, the end of the film is really only the end of the period of time Anderson is allowing us to examine. Especially with The Master, where we learn very little about how well Dodd is faring in England, and whether Freddie is asking the girl he just slept with Dodd's questions because he wants to start his own movement up, or whether just for shits and giggles. Dodd's new English headquarters is massive and imposing, but like his temporary luxury residences in America, it could be just for show. And these deeply rooted unknowns are the sorts of things critics can latch onto and write essays about (ahem). You can re-watch these films, but it's not necessarily a matter of catching something you missed. Instead you will be that much more aware of what's missing, and how the film succeeds in unique ways because of that. Not surprisingly, this style of barely-show-and-certainly-don't-tell style is the hallmark of Anderson's mentor, Stanley Kubrick. For both auteurs, morality is hideously ambiguous, the perfect camera angle is god, and the moments of pure emotion are hidden deep beneath the grand and sweeping themes their films supposedly address. Dodd saying goodbye to Freddie in his giant London office by quietly singing him a whimsical music hall song is heartbreaking, and isn't that much different (at least in terms of an emotional thematic and narrative resolution) from Hal 9000 singing 'Daisy' as Dave Bowman turns him off for good. The Master is meant to be about a charming cult leader, and 2001 is meant to be about man discovering intelligent alien life. But the most powerful moments of these films address more personal concerns. Anderson's film also (or mainly) explores a prodigal son/father figure relationship, and their parting is where the film connects with audiences most strongly. Kubrick's film poses the query of how the automation of most things (in part the creation of artificial intelligence) has made people seem less human, and only by destroying Hal (who, in all fairness, did kill a bunch of people) is humankind able to 'be' human and evolve by going through the Stargate. The praise heaped upon Anderson since 1999's Magnolia has made him perhaps a heir to Kubrick (the two met on the set of Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut), and the man seems to be giving the most Kubrick-ian reaction over it by not seeming to really care about that and only trying to make great, strange, uncompromising films. So with that in mind, it seems rather ridiculous to say that The Master is the movie of the year. It seems to imply that films released in a particular twelve-month period are competing against each other for trophies and box office receipts. And while so many films appear to get caught up in this apparent race, this particular one (and much of Anderson's work) seems to have nothing at all to do with such trivialities. By turning away from mainstream style and expectation, The Master gives its audience an insular and nebulous experience. What it's missing seems to be something we have too much of, anyways.
This list was difficult to assemble, as it’s rather difficult to define ‘loophole’. And sometimes a loophole isn’t really apparent and glaring until a host of movies use the exact same one. Loopholes are devices to get around things that would usually occur in real life. And sometimes they’re just used to make the film more interesting. Movies in general exist in a state of willing disbelief from the audience, but sometimes we are shown things that are so ridiculous we have to sit up from our seats and go, ‘oh come on!’ At least we used to. Loopholes today are so common place that we just don’t question them anymore. Loopholes can be the reason for a crazy cool car chase or a way to shorten or extend your film by ten or fifteen minutes. Contrary to popular belief, they are not necessarily found in bad movies. Good – even great – films have loopholes; they just use them in an interesting or unique way. A good movie makes you forget you’re seeing any at all. Bad movies lift up their shirts and jiggle the loopholes right in your face. And here are seven examples of them. 7. Impossible Fireball Explosion from Die Hard 2 – Okay, to be fair I’m starting off with a popular example of the most generic of loopholes for action movies: The defiance of the laws of physics for the sake of, ‘ohhh, cool!’ In Die Hard 2, terrorists take over Washington-Dulles airport so planes can’t land, meaning they are circling the airport and quickly running out of fuel. After some low-rent attempts at overthrowing them, the terrorists punish Sen. Fred Thompson, Dennis Franz, and Bruce Willis by flying a British Airways plane – so low on gas the passengers are ‘choking on fumes’, according to the pilot – into the ground. A massive, massive fireball ensues, despite us hearing just before that there’s no gas left in the plane to ignite said fireball. Later Willis fights the head terrorist on the wing of a jet plane about to take off and gets kicked (literally) to the ground. Fortunately before that he was able to open the gas tank on the wing, letting gallons of petrol spill out and leaving a nice tidy trail of the stuff on the runway. Then he blows the plane up with his bic lighter. That’s worth a promotion, isn’t it, Lieutenant McClane? Another favorite: A scene revolving around the ever-shrinking number on a two minute timer on a bomb that takes ten minutes to play out. Come to think of it, that kind of thing was in Die Hard 2, as well! When all the terrorists threw grenades into a military plane cockpit that Willis was trapped inside (he got out thanks to the ejector seat), it took a hell of a lot longer than ten seconds to explode. They blinded me with science. 6. Communication Breakdown from The Blair Witch Project – You gotta hand it to horror films. They’ve been able to keep pace with technology in an unfortunate way, as every single gadget humanity has developed for traveling and talking to others has a horrible knack for not working at the most inconvenient time. The car starts to break down so you stop at a spooky motel. Or the car you try to use for your escape doesn’t work at all. You free yourself from the clutches of the creepy kids in the abandoned village (or the axe murderer in the bad-part-of-town) and run to the phone booth to call the cops only to find it out of service. And now that we have cell phones, suddenly battery life and signal strength are never more tenuous and in doubt (and signal strength can be the ultimate loophole, because once the evil dude is dead, surprise! Your phone works again!). But I chose The Blair Witch Project here because they kicked it old school. Instead of having a car or cell phone to lose or break, they had a map. Just a good, old fashioned, helpful map that can’t really ‘stop working’. And the guy threw it away in anger. Nice move, pal. You’re trying to find a witch in a giant forest. You couldn’t just kick your water bottle around when you lost your temper? 5. Why Don’t You Believe Me? from Fight Club – Ah, the wonderful world of law enforcement! Ready to protect its citizens unless said citizens are delusional fruitcakes who believe androids from the future are trying to kill them. Nothing’s worse than for a protagonist from loophole #6 to finally get through to the authorities only to have them laugh in your face or write you off as a prank caller and hang up. Or that your story of having messianic, soap-making alter ego who plans on blowing up dozens of office buildings, is as likely as it sounds, a la Fight Club. With the cops no longer an option, our leading man/lady/talking chimp can finally go and finish off the evil killer themselves. Or who knows, maybe the cowardly friend who ran away earlier comes back and helps at the pivotal moment. You can never tell these days… NOTE: I don’t include movies where ‘why don’t you believe me?’ isn’t just a loophole device, but the plot itself. This includes The Lady Vanishes, The Fugitive, and The Lady Vanishes for the new millennium, Flightplan. All of these films are about the protagonist trying to correct the world’s view of them from beginning to end. 4. Love in the time of Cholera. Or World War II. Or an alien invasion. From Atonement – Have you realized (hopefully before beginning the film shoot) that all you’ve got on deck is a typical romantic comedy/drama borefest? Spice it up by having it take place at a tenuous time and/or place in human history (just keep in the mind the costume budget). Suddenly there’s a smattering of things that can keep the lover’s apart! In Atonement we have lover’s pining for each other in the ever-extending shadow of the Second World War: ‘Sorry baby, I just got called up. Time to go fry some krauts.’ ‘But we were just about to say how much we love each other!’ And why stop at the chance of being blown to bits by a German tank? There are so many other things that can go wrong! Disease (Love Story), racism (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Jungle Fever), time travel (Kate & Leopold), neurotic Jewish comedians (Annie Hall), the supernatural (Bewitched), aliens (The Astronauts Wife, My Stepmother is an Alien), and, to a lesser extent, sharks (Open Water, Jaws 4). All of these situations take your typical guy-meets-girl and adds just a slight twist. And it doesn’t have to make the movies that different. Most of the movies I mentioned above are just as bad as regular romantic dramas and comedies. NOTE: It’s not just limited to young insanely attractive people in love. Sometimes love can’t keep a family together because one of them is a robot (A.I.). 3. 'The reason I brought you here...' from The Matrix: Reloaded - Is your film getting sluggish, or is the plot too complicated? Enter the MAN. You know, the white haired guy in a smart suit with a cane and a smile you just can’t help but want to crack with your fist. If you need exposition in thirty seconds or less (or in The Matrix’s case, many more seconds with the added bonus of watered down philosophical musings), this is the guy. Maybe he’s the old police chief in the small town (‘thirty years ago, crazy ol’ Joey Jones killed six kids in that church. Some say his spirit still haunts the place today…’), or an evil government doctor (‘we trained you in 1997, erased your memory in 1999, and we had you assassinate the ruler of the Congo in 2000…’), or a kindly old ghost (‘thirty years ago I killed six kids in this church, some say I still haunt the place today…’). He gives the answers, so you can get back to car chase without thinking too much. Sometimes he gives too many answers and you end up treating your audience like five year olds, but- ooh! Impossible fireball explosion! Cool! In a lot of ways exposition is the truest sense of cheating, because it’s here where you can treat your movie like putty, condensing an hour’s worth of plot into, ‘my brother was trying to do the same thing you were, but somebody killed him and we never found out who’. 2. The lingering camera from Raiders of the Lost Ark - Look at all these people walking around in that street scene! It’s almost too much to take in. Who's the enemy agent tracking the spy? Who's the hotel employee that will tell the hero who walked into the hotel late last night? Who's the girl that's obviously going to be killed after she sleeps with Nicholas Cage? (still talking about the film here, folks) Don't worry you're pretty little head about it, audience. The camera will tell you as it’s at slow or stops on it’s pan through the bar, lobby, or airplane fuselage. Look for a striking woman, or a particularly grimy looking passenger, or – if it’s an action thriller – a person of color. To nail the point home, there will probably be that can’t-miss 'turn of the head towards the hero' move. And in Raiders of the Lost Ark, just in case you can’t pick it up through cinematography, they give the guy who stares at Indy just a bit too long an eye patch. Thanks, Mr. Spielberg. Now that I know that I can run to the concession stand for more licorice before the next fight scene. Bonus camera crap: Just as the movie’s ending, a final pan to a scene or object… that changes the entire plot of the film! I’m looking at you, Basic Instinct…
And finally, number one. It happens quite often in movies that, well, don’t pay attention what happened just five minutes earlier. The best example of this can be seen in one movie, and that’s what I’m going to focus on. So without further ado… 1. Contempt for Logic / Order 66 from Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith – Yeah, George Lucas has always maintained that these movies were for children, but the only kids who didn’t pick up on this glaring gulf of a narrative probably thought Jar-Jar Binks was hilarious to boot. So the Jedi Knights were fighting alongside the ordinary Republic army against the evil clones. But then the evil Senator/emperor/melty faced Palpatine decrees to the army commanders to institute ‘Order 66’, which involves many soldiers wordlessly obeying the command and killing the Jedi Knights fighting beside them, all of whom seem to be taken by complete surprise. Remember Jedi Knights? These were the Navy SEALS of the far away galaxy from a long, long time ago. You mean to tell me that mind-reading super warriors never bothered to pick up the codebook for the massive army they were fighting alongside? The Republic army, representing the Republic that the Jedi’s were sworn to defend? Everyone knew exactly what to do with Order 66. They didn’t have to look it up. It was drilled into these soldier’s heads. But the Jedi’s didn’t do anything. They barely fought back. They were each killed essentially by a handful of stormtroopers! Remember stormtroopers? The guys non-Jedi knight Han Solo slaughtered by the thousands in the first three films? Stormtroopers/republic soldiers come off so dumb in these movies you can imagine them running down the corridors reciting their orders in their head. And that also means that the Jedi’s would know what the hell is going on because they can read minds! But instead they were swatted away like pesky flies. Yoda escaped because, hey, he’s Yoda. Sorry, coneheaded bearded dude and girl with the elephant trunks sticking out of her brain. That’s how loopholes work, I’m afraid. Now certainly that’s not the only film guilty of shooting itself in the foot, but if you can find another that does it with such glaring stupidity and contempt for it’s audience, drop me a line.(and B-movie sci-fi like Plan 9 From Outer Space doesn’t count, I’m afraid…)
A Pothead’s Guide to Children’s Television Classic Howdy Doody -this is a classic 1950’s variety show for children, featuring marionettes, clowns, and cowboys. It does not have a hint of malice; it treats its audience with pleasant condescension, and espouses the values of the American nuclear family with a noble Western theme. In other words, it’s just too damn creepy for the modern day, post-ironic toker. The sincerity wears thin after ten minutes, and the only acknowledgment of temporality is that it is, in fact, ‘Howdy Doody time’. Besides, the clown is clearly evil. (Maybe the show explains John Wayne Gacy) Captain Kangaroo -let’s get the obvious disappointment out of the way: He’s not a real Kangaroo. Love the ping pong balls bit, though. -And the moose. When it comes to sassy puppets, we should respect the moose. The Mickey Mouse Club -Proof the Hitler Youth wasn’t stamped out in 1945. I don’t know if it’s the mouse ear hats or the sweaters with the kid’s names right below the neck or the adults decked out in the exact same clothes, but it feels like the first gear of an impenetrable propaganda machine. Plus, it’s common knowledge that with the exception of a handful Chip and Dale-Donald Duck clips, Disney cartoons sucked. And sucked hard. -Checking the wikipedia article, creepy host Jimmie Dodd never got busted for anything, but he certainly played his part on the show like an overcompensating pedophile. -In other words, the show is great as documentary of cultural totalitarianism, but no one wants to watch that after ripping a bong hit. Looney Tunes -dude, why’s the rabbit always dressing in drag, munching on a carrot, and French kissing the bald hunter? Is that how repressed homosexuality and crossdressing tendencies were explored in 1940’s and 50’s America? It’s like the Kinsey Report with talking animals. -Speaking of the acme catalogue, why the hell is the Coyote still ordering all that deficient technology from the same company? And you know if he ever catches the roadrunner, the meal’s not going to be worth the effort. Still, stoners will always love the gravity segments. Dawning realizations of horror is hilarious when it’s not happening to you.
Retro Sesame Street -some of the letters and numbers shit gets predictable. Big Bird is always annoyingly upbeat, but that contrasted well with Oscar. People are insufferably kind. All of them. Maybe ‘Sesame’ is some kind of mood elevator. Interesting musical segments. Watch out for the large invisible mammoth. Highlights: Proto-Pat-Sajak TV host Guy Smiley and the only one that could kick Superman’s ass – other than Doomsday - SuperGrover. HR Pufnstuf -this was and still is a benchmark in high television. Ordering candy by telephone, octopus people, long nosed witches, orange spiders that look like eight legged cats and a tree named after Boris Karloff. And a wisecracking flute. The laugh track is switched on and off at random. And Pufnstuf is certainly the nicest what-the-fuck-is-that-thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of squinting at through my bleary red eyes. Wait, he’s a dragon? Get outta town. What’s with the flying saucer shaped head? You only have to watch five minutes before it will feel like the show has been a part of you since you were born. Scooby Doo -pure garbage. Do I need the regurgitated stereotypes of my own high foibles thrown back at me in a green shirt and bell bottoms? And do I need to watch this figure always shamed and embarrassed by his upstanding, straight arrow nemesis Fred? And is it always some crooked businessman utilizing the fear of the paranormal to solidify his financial concerns? Mix it up a bit, writers, I’m high, not senile. And what’s with the retarded dog that can only kind of talk to Shaggy? He’s either a talking dog or he’s not. This is a cartoon. Fuck the middle ground. Redhead’s not bad, though. Definitely an eight. Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids Man, that guy is fucking fat! And what’s Dr. Huxtable doing giving commentary? Isn’t there a sandwich he should be giving birth to? It’s worth watching an episode of this show on YouTube just for the 1970’s hairstyles and fashion. That Rudy sure dresses cool, but man is Fat Albert fat… Definitely the funkiest opening theme song in the history of television.
Modern Anything Disney – Ducktales, TaleSpin, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, Goof Troop, etc. -a dismal, bland format of action adventure with talking animals that made all the classic, reinvented cartoon characters too, too human. Plucking ‘toons from the wealth of Disney mediocrity and have them solve mysteries or try new job after new job. I preferred Chip and Dale when all they wanted was nuts. And Goofy has a son? Who fucked Goofy? What fucked Goofy? The only bright spot is one of the few original characters, Launchpad McQuack. And that’s ‘cause he’s accident-prone and crashes vehicles all the time. He’s like a NASCAR Driver you can truly depend on. Watch a Louie-centered episode of TaleSpin, the Goof Troop episode when he becomes a fireman, and the Chip and Dale roadkill show. Then flush. Barney & Friends -if you’re high, the ‘I Love You’ song has a lifespan of four listens. After that, it does become suitable for interrogation. -Barney’s gotten a bad rap. Its fun picturing him eating a kid instead of teaching the little brat the alphabet. And maybe that’s why Sesame Street deserves so much credit. Sure the preschool education bits drag the whole thing down, but in almost every show that’s come after it, the education fucking ruins the show completely. -the triceratops is named B.J. So that’s worth a chuckle or two. Batman: The Animated Series -not the current version of Batman, but classic Batman, but not that sixties live action shit. It was on in the early nineties and was pretty damn dark for a kids show. There’s not much to explain. It had Batman kicking ass everyday. The difference was the production value. Great dialogue and vocal performances, Gotham had a 40’s gothic feel to it and was bathed in near perpetual darkness. And do you know who notices the production values of children’s TV programs? Potheads. -Bonus: Luke Skywalker does the voice of the Joker. No, really. Teletubbies -Okay, take Barney and Friends, right? Then smoke a hash joint all to yourself. That’s how you get Teletubbies. It’s slow like molasses, but that gives you the time you need to ponder important questions like, ‘televisions in their stomachs?’, ‘only one of them is gay?’, ‘do you think they’d taste like candy? And would their colours correspond to, like, lemon, cherry, grape, and…uh…green?’ -Skip the live action sequences. It’s just filler to waste time between the Tubby-Toast and the Baby-Big-Brother-Sun. Spongebob Squarepants -ah, the piece de resistance. A stoner’s dream under the sea. The opening song merges clutch cargo and sea shanties. How I can watch this show without wanting to punch the hyperactive yellow protagonist in the face is a glorious mystery. The adventures range from trying to get your boating license, to getting your snail to take a bath, to trying to avoid your neighbor by stepping into an alternative reality. This program crystallizes the great cartoon archetypes to its essence. The bubbly hero, his dumb friend, his uptight neighbor, and his crush, a squirrel in a 1950’s diving suit. Spongebob is a gleeful child in an absurd piece of theatre that is the town of Bikini Bottom, a village that that has everything a pothead would need. A fast food joint, a cinema, an entertainment venue, jellyfish fields, and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Wonder Showzen -a delightful romp. A kids show not at all for children. If you park them in front of this, they will probably warp like a wet board. You, on the other hand, will kneel before your new god, Chauncey the yellow puppet, who in one episode witnessed God’s suicide and proceeded to eat the corpse. He also humped a box full of Mother Nature’s lady bits.
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what if you only knew what you didn't want? | |||