When there's nothing left that can be said...

If you’re reading this, you probably have a well-worn memory of your first adventure through Hyrule. You were probably moved in some significant way that was nothing short of profound. The experience, and all that blossomed from it, may have even shaped your identity to some degree, not so dissimilar from past generations listening to that evocative album, seeing that mind blowing film, or reading that pivotal novel. In celebration of the release of Tears of the Kingdom, I thought I would share how the original golden cartridge (and its immediate sequel) radically impacted the trajectory of my young life, and how it impacted my upcoming NES game Mystic Searches.

I know that it was 1987, though I couldn’t tell you the month or even season. I was seven years old, and had somehow earned some significant good will in the eyes of my parents. As a reward, my father brought me to the stacked-to-the-ceiling aisle of endless adventures at the local Toys R Us (may it rest in peace). There, in an end cap display, was something provocative. The box did not sport the branded, black-box treatment, nor did it have an illustrative depiction of its game characters in some dramatic pose. Instead, its minimal fantasy iconography against the notable gold tint teased something new and different. It was, of course, the most expensive of the games (at half the cost of the system itself!), but apparently, I had done something worthy of this reward.

By the time we got home, it was night. I didn’t bother turning on the lights. I tore open the box. Pulling out the gold cartridge was excavating a hidden treasure. For a moment, I just admired the way the TV’s static shimmered off the reflective surface in that dark room, causing its subtle texture to come to life in a supernatural manner. I put the cartridge in my NES, pushed it down into position, and pressed the power button. For those that grew up with the NES as their formative gaming experience, you may recall that half-second of anticipation between hitting the power button and a new game’s title screen appearing. Most often, the player was met with a static image of some sort set against a mostly black background, some game choices (1 player / 2 player or the words “Press Start”) on the bottom two thirds, and a copyright line encroaching the border outside the title safe area at the bottom. I had played enough games that this is what my mind expected.

Instead, radiating from the small CRT, the entire room filled with a peach glow. The sun was setting over an animated waterfall pouring over monolith mountains, accompanied by a haunting, somber sonata that set the tone of what was to come. I remember being hypnotized as the sun finally set, the screen faded into darkness of night, and the music pushed with intent into the scrawl of minimalist lore that was just dense enough to allow my imagination to drip down into every crevice.

Before I had even pressed the start button, the direction of my life was altered. Even more than the enthusiasm for adventure upon which I was about to embark, the seed of something was planted that would come to define the next 35 years and counting. And maybe if you’d asked me at that moment, I could not have properly articulated it (I was only 7 after all), but the first ten seconds of the Legend of Zelda was all it took to flip a proverbial switch that converted me from passive player to aspiring, active creator.

From that moment forward, I wanted to create something that had that same profound effect on someone else. It became a dragon to chase. It became a fundamental purpose of life.

That sentiment only grew as I played through the game, and as I look back, it’s easy to understand why. Had we ever played a game before that point that was so large in narrative scope that it needed a method of saving progress? Had we ever played a game before that so deeply conjured varied biomes? Had we ever played a game before with such a diverse bestiary, as mechanically interesting as they were unique and iconic? Had we ever played a game before that rewarded us for exploration and experimentation rather than being so focused on the shortest distance to the end goal (who here bombed every wall and burned every bush in Hyrule)? So many of these attributes became core tenets of games going forward that it’s hard to imagine a time without them, but there is certainly a reason that so many who experienced this evolution of video games in real time hold this game in such high regard. I’d imagine it’s comparable to a memory of seeing The Wizard of Oz in color on opening night. If you only ever experienced the game after having played thousands of hours of its descendants (which would be the majority of games in your library), it may be hard to appreciate the radical steps. But for us who experienced it first hand, it was nothing short of magic.

I could run down a comprehensive list of things that still strike me as clever or brilliant even by today’s standards, but the list would likely be a common one that you’ve read a thousand times before. One subtle one that always stuck with me that I never see discussed was how much world the minimalist narrative could suggested. Considering the grand scope of three decades of memorable moments in the greater Zelda pantheon, one of my favorites is still a subtle, often ignored moment of narrative from the original that still resonates as brilliant to me. I remember walking into caves, meeting NPCs and shopkeepers, and getting lulled into the flow of that expectation. And then there was that one cave with the old woman, subverting all I’d come to know. She said nothing. She offered nothing. She just stood there, silent. Was it a glitch? Was it a puzzle? It was such a punctuation point that I remembered it for days as I grinded my way through the vast world. And then I happened upon a man who offered me a letter. “Show this to the old woman,” he said. And that strange cave encounter had been pronounced enough that I knew exactly what it meant. I returned to the silent woman and gave her the letter, at which time, she opened a potion shop. It was a simple trigger mechanic, but its implications set my seven-year-old’s imagination ablaze. Suddenly, six words and strategic use of a single 16x16 pixel sprite conjured volumes of potential narratives about the paranoid, desperate underground rebellion; a network of survivalist hiding in caves and communicating in code across the kingdom, mounting some last futile attempt to combat the overwhelming legion of Gannon (no, that’s not a spelling mistake, that’s the name of the antagonists as referenced in the opening crawl of Zelda 1). What was the old woman’s role in this? What was her relationship to the man with the letter? What did the letter say that would compel her trust? In my mind, I answered all of these questions with sweeping fanfiction. Time spent playing Zelda on the NES was more than engaging with a game, it was a constant creative workout. There was just enough framework there to serve as a skeleton for my own adventure. Link wasn’t the hero, he was the avatar; I was the hero. Link wasn’t saving the day; these were my personal accomplishments. Hyrule wasn’t the world I saw on my screen, that was just a symbolic reference like language in literature; the world was in my mind.

Not long after came Adventure of Link. There are very few who played this game in real time that have the same perception of it as those who only know these games in a retrospective manner. In 1987, it was brilliant. It was unique. It broadened the world and the lore. Entire towns had stories all their own. It was an RPG, but the battles weren’t random. You navigated a top-down map, but were pulled into vignettes of side-scrolling adventure. The physics and mechanics of actual swordplay against Iron Knuckles was exciting. Battling the Barba was intimidating. The downthrust attack was original and gratifying. Squaring off against your own dark shadow was thematic. It certainly was a different sort of affair, and by this point so many games had been released to compare it to that it didn’t seem as revolutionary as its predecessor, but I still consider it to be a great and important installment.

I never beat Adventure of Link as a kid. I’m sure I got close. But the creative seed that these games had planted soon became a budding vision for a game that took the best of both and combined it all into a NES masterpiece called Mystic Searches. While my young mind had no capacity to understand the logistics involved, I wanted to create a top-down adventure game in the style of The Legend of Zelda, but with the added platforming mechanics of Adventure of Link (2.5d gameplay). I wanted open world exploration like The Legend of Zelda, but sub-quests that helped you meet characters and earn rewards like Adventure of Link. Essentially, my underdeveloped creative mind wanted to synthesize two of my favorite games into a derivative hybrid that may as well have been The Legend of Zelda 3 on the NES, but with wholly original characters.

Some of you may know the story from there. That ambitious little 7-year-old kid and a friend dummied up all of their clever ideas, stuffed a bunch of illustrations in a box, sent them to the address they found in the back of Nintendo Power, and begged Nintendo to send them the stuff they needed to make the game. It was sent back with a form letter and lost to time, only to be found by a much more capable adult me who was feeling nostalgic for my old Zelda cartridge. And thus launched my adult mission to build that game for the NES almost 30 years later, culminating in the documentary The New 8-bit Heroes, and ultimately being responsible for hundreds of new homebrew games due to the NESmaker tools that were inadvertently created as part of our building process (read: Nintendo never sent us the stuff to make our NES game in 1987, so 30 years later we built the stuff ourselves…).

Mystic Searches, the moniker that was buried with those old childhood illustrations, has been a creative project for a decade now. I’ve worked on it through marriage, the purchase of my first house, birth of two kids, two major hurricanes, a 1500 mile move, two major career changes, a global pandemic, the deaths of friends and loved ones…a lot of life has gone into it. And all of the modern creative sensibilities that come from creating against the backdrop of adult life have visible roots in those formative experiences playing The Legend of Zelda.

I get asked often how close the game is to those drawings. Obviously, there was a creative challenge inherent in translating concepts from the mind of a child through the eyes of an adult (not to mention, 30 years of gaming vernacular and experience with storytelling). But there were certain aspects that were so pivotal, I could not abandon them. Mystic Searches is a 2.5d adventure game as I always imagined it to be; a top-down perspective with a z-coordinate jumping mechanic as first conceptualized. Mystic Searches does have an incredibly rich lore (complete with supplemental novelization, art book, and comic series), exploring vignettes in an open world to help create a real sense of a living world. It has a broad bestiary with large and ominous boss battles. And of course, it would never satisfy the ambition of that 7-year-old kid if it didn’t run on a cartridge on real hardware. The influence is clear. While Mystic Searches has developed an unfathomable amount since its inception, there is no doubt that it owes its existence to those experiences playing The Legend of Zelda, and I reflect on that as I get ready to celebrate a return to Hyrule in Tears of the Kingdom. While it’s far from a clone, it is perfectly fair to call Mystic Searches a love letter. With release of the cart scheduled for the fall and a Switch port coming not long after, I hope that once players are finished exploring the new Hyrule adventure, they’ll take their first step into Myrinda in Mystic Searches, and I hope that for those who had similar transformative experience with that original gold cartridge, our wooden special edition cartridge can make them feel like a kid again with a fraction of the same transformative effect. At that point, even if it’s just a few people, and those people also go on to be compelled to create something awesome because of it, I’ll consider the years spent working on this project a complete success.

Check out MysticSearches.com for more details.

With Picard S3 luring fans of TNG with the promise of getting the band back together again and attempting to lull criticisms with familiar characters, images, and the occasional musical motif, I thought it was a perfect time to articulate the precise moment that I knew that the show runners of this series had no real interest in the IP toys they were playing with.

In the first two seasons, there are so many moments that one could point to that were so tonally bizarre, so defiant of the spirit of the parent show, so incongruent with the reason that the legions of lasting TNG fans were eager for a better sendoff for this crew than Nemesis. I could write a laundry list of issues that I have had with the series on those terms. I think a fun sparring match could be had over which climactic scenario was worse - S1's absolutely needless, thematic thud that was Picard being turned into a sentient android indistinguishable from his person, with all the flaws, health ailments, and same general life expectancy, or S2's metaborg deescalating the final conflict by convincing borg queen, TNG era trek's arch nemesis, through two or three lines of shoddy dialog that the obscene galactic threat should try the tactic of being nice to everyone rather than conquering civilizations, and it worked.

And yet, neither of these laughable head scratchers even comes close to my biggest moment of criticism.

Like most I guess, I generally consider the TNG era of trek to consist of the sporadically connected The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine. They overlapped in their chronology, had similar tone, and explored many of the same themes. TNG and VOY also connected over a central series antagonist, The Borg. While many will (justly) suggest that as fun as the Queen-led Borg were in the feature length First Contact and throughout VOY, the arcs often ran contradictory to the initial concept of the space-zombie hive mind consciousness and the horror of the emotionless, pragmatic approach to their seemingly unstoppable methods of conquest. But even throughout Voyager, the concept of the Borg make for a perfect foil to a United Federation of Planets and our vignette experiences with the crews of some of their vessels. Each Star Trek ship from the show's inception is demonstrative of an array of cultural identities working congruently towards positive ends with overarching inclusivity for a breadth of ideologies, and the benefits that come from cooperation over indoctrination. In contrast, the Borg strip individual identity and remove the inefficiency of dissent in exchange for collective, more optimized, singular purpose. It's always fascinating to see the achilles heel in the Federation play out as disparity, while the Borg's weak link is their inability to anticipate creative problem solving. And even when the Borg are at their hammiest in Voyager, I think these things still hold as their container, and in that, they remain watchable. That, though, is a wholly different conversation. In terms of this critique, I want to focus on the breakout character that gave Voyager renewed life in its third season, and is reintroduced in Picard, Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine.

Conceptually, Seven is a great sci fi character, and for every bludgeoning thematic riff the writers ran the character through, there are legitimately complex and nuanced sociological, ideological, and technological issues in the grace notes and overtones. In this respect, she is the Data of Voyager, grappling with high concept questions of identity and humanity for five seasons. Seven's story is tragic; originally Annika Hansen, a six year old child assimilated by the Borg, she is severed from the collective by Janeway and crew. This liberation is an inversion of Picard's liberation from the collective in TNG's Best of Both Worlds. Instead of reveling with the taste of freedom, it is a horrifying experience. She is severed from the only world that she knows - she does not consider herself to have been saved. She was kidnapped and robbed of her will by the evil Federation. She spends a long while attempting to rejoin the collective with the lives of her captors being inconsequential. She longs to return to the hive mind. She wants to be borg. And the ethical quandaries of the crew of Voyager preventing that are certainly interesting and resonant.

Through five seasons of television, we watch her grow. She never truly embraces the child that was assimilated, but she does make peace with the growing preference for her individual agency. It takes a massive character arc for her to embrace her humanity in the end.

Fast forward thirty years to Picard. She is a logical inclusion in this universe. Both Picard and Seven were once assimilated. The Borg are still the titular character's most iconic foe, and seeing the prejudices that a Borg survivor faces has the potential to make for great societal mirroring.

But it was in an arc (I use the term lightly) involving this character that I realized this show with its existing creative team would never be able to redeem itself.

In the 8th episode of S1 of Picard entitled Broken Pieces, our heroes are aboard a decommissioned borg cube, one that is being used to experiment on the former adversaries towards what we presume is some nefarious ends. The team of protagonists are outmatched and being hunted by the antagonists. That's when Seven has a crazy idea...

Let me say that the setup for this concept is exactly what I want for Star Trek. As I describe the event from a voice emanating from a fictional writer's room, I do so in an aspirational way. I can almost hear the pitch. "I got it," says one of the writers. "Seven is put in a dire position with major potential consequences. This has to, for some reason, take place on a decommissioned borg cube. She realizes that she has the capacity to jack in as a new borg queen and re-assimilate the thousands of borg drones, which is the only forseeable way to give our protagonists the upper hand and allow them as a group to prevent some terrible atrocity. But at what cost? Not only does she have to violate the minds of all those assimilated drones, becoming the embodiment of TNG's most prominent villain and the thing that effectively stole her entire life, but she also may find herself powerless to the allure of being at the center of the collective again, an instinct that has taken her 30 years to combat. What does she do? What is the greater good in this scenario? When presented with this lesser of two evils, could this re-assimilation be seen as a character's self sacrifice? Do we get sympathy for the proverbial devil, and come to appreciate the borg in a whole new way? Broader - we can hold a mirror up to contemporary justifications for war - maybe she loses control and becomes the thing she fears, and it's all a metaphor for the runaway military machine. Or in contrast, maybe we can even come to extend inclusivity to actual borg mentality and their ideology, and really draw red circles around the subjectivity of good and evil. It works on a character level, as this is the ultimate test for her! It might even speak to things like the fear backsliding in the face of addiction or empathy for a victim's subservience to an abuser out of consequence. It works on a thematic level, as it really examines AI and agency! It works as a TNG era plot! It fits into the narrative we're telling! It's great! What cool sci fi!"

And yes. All of that would be great. I actually imagine this as a Voyager / TNG crossover, or maybe a movie based on this exact premise at it's core, and I think it's fantastic. It has the potential to be one of those scenarios that defines what we love about Trek.

But let's really think about the execution. And herein lies where I realized just how much this show doesn't get it, and probably never will, and has yet to show me a single moment that demonstrates otherwise.

At 27:53 in the episode, the plan to become the borg queen and direct the drones to do her bidding to save the protagonists is articulated. At 28:09, the conflict is articulated. "They might not want to be released, and I might not want to release them."

(a bunch of other plots are explored before returning to this scenario).

At 40:50- 41:03, she jacks into the collective without hesitation. At 41:53, her eyes darken, and the entirety of the cube echoes a "We are Borg". At 41:14, the bad guys open an airlock. Every single borg drone is pulled into space.

The next time we cut to Seven, she disconnects and says, "It's over." It is resolved in the 13 seconds between 50:32-50:45.

So, to be clear, for what should've been a major event in this series, in context one of the most profound character moments for TNG, with huge implications on themes and consequences for the plot...it's inserted as less than a footnote. We get about 15 seconds of setup, about 15 seconds of CG "connecting to the hive", 10 seconds of actually assimilating the collective before the whole scenario is neutralized, and less than 10 seconds of tension before the character disconnects without incident, temptation, or consequence. Literally, functionally zero happened here. There was not compromise made. There was no consequence for the action. There was no character growth. There was no narrative push. There was no thematic exploration. And this entire intriguing, evocative, topical, powerful potential arc launches and lands in less than 50 seconds of screen time.

The teaser trailer for Picard S1 was over two minutes. The teaser trailer had significantly more run time than the combined total of one of the most powerful thematic arcs in the entire show. The opening title sequence is a minute and thirty seconds. The opening title sequence is longer than this entire arc.

And this in a season that ultimately turned out to be centered around the very concept of AI, autonomy, technological agency, technophobia, and identity...like, all the things that this scenario was primed to explore. I'm not reaching here - these were the things the script of the show set up. And that's the execution we get?

This was the moment I realized that there was no redemption, that the show wasn't really leading to anything, and that it really wasn't ever going to be a Trek-like experience. It was just going to have all of the intelligence and charm of a six year old kid playing with Trek action figures.

That level of quality has persisted throughout both the first and second seasons, and I'm not sure the promise of familiar faces in the third is reason enough to hope for anything more. It will inevitably just be more of this. Familiar things for the fanboys, high concepts brushed by at maximum warp, with no greater aspiration for any of it.

Someday, I will write the collection of anecdotes and vignettes that will make for hilarious reading (those I can share, at least). For now, I recently came across a listing of touring locations from when we criss-crossed the US, and I wanted to archive it. The order is undoubtably off, and it may be missing a few, but here are the venues on said list. How we survived all this is still a mystery. Fletchers; Baltimore MD Piezano's; Annapolis MD The Grog and Tankard; Washington DC The Pontiac Grille; Philadelphia PA The Rex Theatre; Pittsburgh PA Mr. Smalls Funhouse; Pittsburgh PA The Blue Bayou Club; Raleigh NC The Met Cafe; Providence RI The Safari Lounge; Providence RI The Saint, Asbury Park NJ Floyd's Place; Seattle WA The Central; Seattle WA CBGBs Gallery; New York NY Acme Underground; New York NY Hattrix; Kenosha WI 313; St Louis MO The Lion's Den; Denver CO Jarrod's Place; Attleboro MA Good Time's Emporium; Boston MA Bridge Street Music Hall; Syracuse NY Club Amnesia; Utica NY The Limelight; Myrtle Beach SC Lenny's, Atlanta GA The Neutron Bomb, Atlanta GA Jack Rabbit's; Jacksonville FL The Haven; Orlando FL Churchill's; Miami FL Club M; Hollywood FL The Hi Ho Lounge; New Orleans LA Mojo Monkey; Lafayette LA The Door; Dallas TX The Big Fish Pub; Tempe AZ The Gig; Hollywood CA The Ventura Theatre; Ventura CA The Epicenter; San Diego CA Ray's Golden Lion; Richland WA The Boston, Las Vegas NV

This will be a strange entry into this collection of things, but I wanted to create it and give it a timestamp.

About 7 years ago (and I can mark the time because I know that it was before my son was born or even conceived), I woke up from one of the most vivid dreams I've ever had. It was straight up Quantum Leap fan fiction. And it was so on point and consistent with the themes and tone of the show, that I maniacally scribbled down everything I could remember. A few years later, upon coming across those scribblings, I laughed, and marveled at how much I'd love to have the blinding optimism of new Quantum Leap considering the vitriolic dystopia we currently call reality. There has been a running joke among the creatives I've worked with about me actually turning this weird dream into a fan-created reboot. Well, it seems I was just ahead of the curve. Almost ten years later, and we're about to get a new season of the show on NBC. I'm extremely excited...but then, I was also excited about more X-Files and more TNG (in the form of Picard) and about The Stand remake and when they announced Clarice...and...and...and...and of course, I'm almost always sincerely disappointed to the point where it sours my love even for the original property. You all get exactly what I mean. But with that all in mind, I thought I'd finally post a flimsy synopsis that is draped over the skeleton of the dream I had for the QL reboot. I'll be very curious to see how it compares. My hope - whatever they do is so awesome that it makes my weird dream-inspired version look trivial and juvenile. Here's to hoping! But for fun, and in anticipation for more QL, I thought that there has never been a better time to post it! Without further explanation, I present to you the very broad, entirely unofficial, fever-dream inspired, lazily constructed, checked for neither spelling nor grammar nor logical consistency, general premise for a new Quantum Leap potential reboot episode called Butterfly. __________________

Quantum Leap Butterfly

Alison Paige is a young, struggling performer in New York City. She is meeting with a friend and the casting director for Madame Butterfly, who respectfully rejects her for the part. He tells her that her performance is capable and musical acumen is technically proficient, but it all feels very calculated rather than moving. She never truly embodies the character empathically, and thus despite checking all the boxes for a quality performance, never transcends into the ability to change lives. 

Ali marvels at the tragic irony of having her work be described as calculated. She is estranged from her mother, physicist Dr. Samantha Fuller (known to friends as Sammy Jo), who has always been disappointed that she’d let her academic talents go to waste on a futile pursuit in the arts. Ali harbors a bit of resentment for her mother after her obsessive devotion to her work soured the marriage to her father. It was her father, Michael Paige, who had supported her and her career until losing his battle with cancer. Dr. Fuller did not even leave her Nevada research for the funeral, and Ali has never forgiven her for that.

To her surprise, Ali is called by her mother to Nevada for a private funeral for *Uncle Al*, the eccentric 98 year old consultant to her mother’s research. While she convinces herself to be civil, her mother’s reluctant but determined sudden exit from the funeral in service of her work leaves Ali fuming. She is calmed by Janis Calivicci, Al’s daughter,who expresses to her that her mother’s actions were ironically in service of Al’s wishes. She understands Ali’s frustrations and expresses that she’d once been in the same spot with her father. She gives Ali the same choice that she was given. Option 1, she could return to New York in ignorance, clinging to her resentment and pursuing a normal life, or Option 2, she could choose to take up permanent residency in the compound and learn first hand about her mother’s top secret project. While she is adamantly against the notion, seething in anger, she agrees to sleep on it.

Ali finds herself living as a muslim teenager, also named Ali, in the familiar New York City, early September of 2001. The muslim teenager’s confusion is attributed to suffering a head injury, which has resulted from an apparent fall down a flight of stairs. This teenager, and by proxy a confused Alison Paige, has frightful paranoia of being stalked by someone who means to do her, or rather the young teen she has come to embody, harm. She can not remember any details about this stalker.

Sure enough, she is pursued by a stalker. However, this stalker turns out to be the hologram of a military case worker assigned to be her custodian and handler. This hologram, Daniel Grimshaw, begins to fill in some gaps of her missing memory…about her mother’s work, about the Quantum Leap Project, about being a willing civilian participant in a time travel experiment.

As it turns out, Dr. Fuller’s early work was responsible for building a sort of temporal faraday cage around a particular part of the QLP compound; this ensured that those within it were immune to time distortions created by time travel experiments…experiments that were spearheaded by her grandfather, Dr. Sam Beckett. At 60, Dr. Fuller became the Director of the project. When Al Calavicci, in late retirement and feeling rather unsettled by no longer having purpose or meaning in life, was approached by his longtime family friend Dr. Fuller, he visited the compound and memories of his time with Sam came roaring back (including the secret detail that he’d long since forgotten, that Dr. Fuller was the daughter of the time traveler Sam Beckett). He moved to the compound and became obsessed with helping retrieve Sam, somewhat alienating his own children.

While QLP’s funding is still supported, it has slowly transitioned into a military institution rather than an academic or scientific one. A new director has recently been appointed to replace Dr. Fuller. Where Dr. Fuller’s primary interest was in tracking and cataloguing temporal fluctuations in hopes of finally retrieving her time traveling father, the new guard wants to see a return on the investment and flex the technology to see a true dramatic change with massive, overt consequences. So while Dr. Fuller, with the help of Janis Calavicci, set out to illegally utilize the QLP one last time, their retrieval of Alison was interrupted.  Now Alison finds herself out of time, not so dissimilar from her grandfather, Sam Beckett.

Daniel is rather annoyed that, by misfortune of having a uniquely tuned brainwave pattern, he was relegated to this detail rather than taking the next step in his career in USSF. He is tasked with proving the QLP is a legitimate experiment and not all just an algorithmic virtual sideshow by the QLP super computer nicknamed Ziggy. The military-led experiment is to prompt Alison to stop the coming terrorist attacks of 9/11. Through all this, she begins to recall her quest to find Dr. Beckett. Daniel the hologram balks, insisting that the truth of the matter is that there is only anecdotal evidence that Dr. Beckett ever traveled in time, and even if he did, if he is still alive.

As her fractured mind begins to come to terms with her situation, she is somewhat lost with no google, no social media, no cell phone with access to the world’s information in the palm of her hand. She manages to call on her acting career to play the part of the teen she has leapt into. She finds that her neighborhood is the target of extreme islamophobia. She witnesses a loud confrontation between a newly constructed mosque’s imam and a local resident.

Rather than try to change the events of 9/11, she runs down some personal rabbit holes, including catching a few pompous casting directors that had slighted her, seeing the struggle of their own youth and how it parallels her own. It gives her a unique perspective. Having momentary control due to understanding of the future, she considers acting in a spiteful way that might damage the career of one of her future dissenters, but seeing an advertisement for Madame Butterfly at the Lincoln Center causes a memory of seeing a 9/11 memorial at the same venue not long after moving to New York. While she’s distracted by personal pursuits, Daniel returns to give her instructions that will change the course of history. She follows these instructions. Unfortunately, as a muslim child of refugees from a low income part of New York, even the military tips from the future can not help her voice to be heard or taken seriously by the appropriate parties. And so, Daniel conveys an escalation of the order from on high - that she needs to act as the aggressor and begin calling in direct and specific threats that are dire enough to be taken seriously. 

This begins a major ethical debate. If she does do this, there is a high probability that the innocent boy she has leapt into will be convicted of terrorist activities, sentenced, and be murdered in a federal prison. However, if she does not do this, history will play out as she remembers - all of the innocent lives will be lost on 9/11, and it will begin the chain reaction that leads to decades of war and paranoia. The pragmatist in Daniel insists that the sacrifice of one innocent teenager will be for the greater good. He discusses at length the friends and family he lost to wars that were seeded because of the actions on 9/11. It all becomes a real life incarnation of the Trolly Problem with massive ramifications. She consults the imam about this in a very general way. After all, he knows the boy Ali has leapt into. It’s a good way for Ali to gauge how such an action would not only affect the life of this boy, but perhaps the community at large. She receives some sage words about the value of innocence, about conscience, and about perspective. As she is leaving him, the man who her swiss-cheesed memory suddenly remembers to be stalker that she feared upon leaping attacks the imam. This man blames muslim immigrants for all of the evils of the world and the eventual collapse of American democracy. He is a self-proclaimed patriot who believes his actions of violence are a cultural form of self-defense in service of his country. Alison, as the teenage boy Ali, intervenes and is beaten within an inch of life. The stalker is scared off before he can finish what he started, however her decision to intervene has saved the life of the imam.

She wakes up in the hospital in the dramatic and chaotic aftermath of 9/11, having failed. Daniel appears to her, citing what her failure means for the future of the QLP - that she failed to demonstrate that anything significant can be changed, and that his superiors question the validity of the project entirely, concluding that it’s all just a bad carnival act perpetrated through high end simulations. 

She asserts that he missed the point completely - that trying to create a false narrative to spark fear and action which would have led to the incarceration and death of an innocent kid is demonstrative of the cycle that led to 9/11 in the first place. She wasn’t the villain here for trying to protect an innocent life, the forces like her stalker were the villains for their violent xenophobia and prejudices. And while Daniel concedes that he agrees with her ideologically, he does not agree with her pragmatically - not when the cost is tens of thousands of lives and decades of turmoil. To him, no one life, innocent or not, is worth that.

When Alison asks Daniel what has become of Ali in the future, he is able to trace data that finds that he is a pediatrician in inner city Baltimore with a practice that was opened to work exclusively with low income or economically troubled families. This challenges Daniel’s absolute position, and he leaves in frustrated existentialism..

Ali finds the imam amidst the chaos. The racial prejudices are volatile. The fear is real. Neither are safe considering the images on the television. When she touches his hand to offer him comfort, the touch reveals that the man’s aura is, in fact, that of Dr. Sam Beckett, her grandfather the time traveler. Their true identities are revealed to each other. 

When Ali suggests that she was sent to help him find his way home, he smiles warmly but demures. He doesn’t want to be retrieved. His charge is to continue to help people in need. When she questions him about regrets for missing his own life, he explains that he’s lived a thousand lives and has been able to appreciate new perspectives in ways he never could’ve imagined. Ali grows frustrated about how she had an opportunity to stop a major historical catastrophe and failed. Sam reassures her that she did not fail. He tells her that such events are impossible to change. Quantum Leaping affords the opportunity to change the lives of individuals, and it’s that direct empathetic resonance that matters. The effects on the world are incalculable. It’s the smallest changes that make the greatest difference; Butterfly Wings and Hurricanes.

Ali and Sam both leap. However, rather than being retrieved, she leaps into a scientist working on Project Quantum Leap in the year 1999.

This sets up a long heart to heart talk between Ali and her young mother, whose younger self is around her current real age, and who has just recently started at the QLP. She is working on the algorithm to bring Dr. Beckett home. Because only a few people are aware that her mother is the child of time traveling Sam, she plays coy while discussing the concept of a paradox - if Dr. Beckett is retrieved and his timeline altered, could that cause a paradox in the things that he’s done or will come to do in the past? Her mother assures her that the quantum faraday cage protects the QLP compound and all within it from time travel paradox. As a parting thought, Dr. Fuller beams with a secret pride for the actions of her father, knowing the good he will go on to do. Ali internalizes that, finally fully understanding her mother, and also with the sudden ambition to be the source of the same sort of pride. 

Her mother leaves the software running as she goes to get a cup of coffee. Ali regards the laptop. Daniel’s hologram appears and urges her not to act on her impulse to sabotage the retrieval code. She responds with Sam’s words about affecting lives in an incalculable way. Daniel informs her that if she sabotages the code, she will likely be sealing her own fate to be lost in time along with Dr. Beckett, and if it is all more than a grand illusion, she can’t just go unilaterally changing time on a personal whim. She smiles, acknowledging that this isn’t a change to time - she was always here, doing exactly this. And as she plucks in a few alterations to just a few numbers to corrupt the retrieval code, she repeats Sam Beckett’s words about how the smallest changes make the greatest difference. 

After the change, Ali officially begins her adventure in time as she quantum leaps into an early 90s grunge rock artists in the dingy green room at an underground Seattle rock club.

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

I am not sure why I always feel the need to preempt these movie reviews with some sort of disclaimer. Perhaps it’s because I see far too much subjective opinion masquerading as objective criticism these days. Don’t get me wrong, opinion is a perfectly valid part of media criticism. We all take our personal experiences, our relationship to the source material and the media, our expectations, anticipations, environment, and social congress into account when consuming any media, and that is the lens through which we view a film’s success or failure. But there is an important, and often ignored, distinction between that subjective opinion, which can be summed up as personal taste, and objective analysis.

So I’ll try to be as transparent as I can between the two.

Let’s first analyze what I personally wanted and expected from the cinematic matchup, whether or not it was conveyed. First and foremost, I wanted to see the strict dichotomy between an impossible, idealistic, and inevitably unsustainable moral pole of Superman and the unfortunate, grim reality that straddles the gray of vigilante justice of Batman. I wanted to see these two things pitted against each other to serve a heroic end - the untenable goodness versus the morally flexible pragmatism. If there is a *reason* to create this movie that goes beyond ambitious ticket sales or a reason to make a whole lot of flashing lights and loud noises, I feel it lived in that theme. As a bonus, that theme could speak volumes about our current political landscape; both sides arrogant and uncompromising to enforce their perspective of what’s best...the first, strict and rigid conformity to narrow, singular unwavering ethos, versus the other, more practical in terms of the real world, albeit more complex and sometimes deceptive. The man who fights for truth, justice, and the American way (in the most rhetorical and monoidealistic sense of those words) against the Dark Knight, a vengeful vigilante bound to eradicate the criminal element. Some riff on that idea is the thematic reason you pit those characters against each other...besides the punching and eventual merchandising, anyway.

Well, the movie had punching.

The movie did not pay off in any way on the thematic dichotomy that I mentioned above. We never see the world where Superman is heralded or revered. Instead, we see nothing but contempt for the character. The entire premise of the character revolved around the important minor characters calling him out on his own vigilanteism. His unchecked power, his unilateral decisions of what is right and wrong.

This is just the first example in a series of horrible missteps that made the movie a muddled mess. And I mean that on an objective level, not as a matter of taste. It’s a tragic waste to make Superman’s plight that of a misunderstood and well meaning vigilante to eventually combat the ideology of Batman’s vigilanteism.

And what’s more frustrating? Higher themes *were* hinted at in scattered moments...as if David S Goyer had just put good thematic concepts in some blender and poured out a cup full at random.

And the more I meditated on this, I realized it’s exactly what happened. This is Zack Snyder’s modus operandi. BvS finally helped me pinpoint exactly what it is about Snyder’s films that I generally detest so much.

As far as narrative goes, his filmmaking is more akin to scrapbooking or collage making than it is storytelling. He plucked elements and iconography from Dark Knight Returns, from the Death of Superman, from Injustice: Gods Among Us, from Knightmare...he grabs little pieces of other artists' plots and strings them together with direct lines, whether or not direct lines make for good narrative sense...he cuts out the comic panels of someone else’s vision and pins them up on the wall as storyboards, filling in the gaps with contrivances...but he simply doesn’t seem to understand any of it. I could say the same thing for Watchmen. I could say the same thing for 300. The original artists of the works had particular themes they explored through their medium. Snyder simply cherry picks through much more competent artists' stories for things he believes will look good on the screen, and mashes them together without any regard to the purpose of the telling or any higher value or reason to exist that the original works have. The end result is a hollow adaptation of a bunch of things that happen. It’s the cinematic equivalent of *sampling*. In its own context, it’s exactly Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby when compared to Queen/Bowie’s Under Pressure. It’s Puff Daddy’s Come With Me to Zeppelin’s Kashmir.

But I digress. Back to the actual film in question.

I want to say that despite myself, I didn’t mind Ben Affleck as the rugged, semi-retired, at the end of his rope Bruce Wayne / Batman. As with Man of Steel, I thought the film actually started with a bit of promise. It was interesting to get the second perspective of the catastrophic damage that occurred in the third act of Man of Steel. But it only took about five minutes for everything to start descending into camp.

For a film that tied so hard to fit that neo-DC model of gritty realism despite it’s fantastic nature, the dialog was abysmal. Somewhere in the first act, the characters stopped relating to each other. From that point on for the remaining 2 hours, every single line that any character speaks is some sort of one-liner. Every. Single. Line. It was like this bizarro beat poetry. I’m not talking about the tongue in cheek, this-is-a-comic-book-movie-so-have-fun-with-it quips of the Marvel Universe (not that I’m condoning their overuse of this tactic either...). I’m talking about this dramatic level of self importance to every line that every character says. As if every line of dialog was written for potential trailer fodder. Every line written with the intent of being filmed in a hero shot slowly pushing in on the comical level of intension in the delivery, or the unnecessary “this is obviously a line from a movie that no one would really ever say” over the shoulder remark while walking away. These weren’t characters interacting with each other. They were empty vessels to recite promotional dialog.

Then there are our villains. Lex Luthor (jr.). Doomsday. Why do these comic franchises seem to have such a hard time with villains? Eisenberg was atrocious. There is no defense in the direction for this character. Again, this was not Superman’s thematic foil. This was just a character that did things to advance the plot. I get it, everyone. This wasn’t the Lex Luthor we’re supposed to know...this is most likely a Luthor Clone with daddy (creator?) issues. But again, back to the same Snyder failing...the purpose of the antagonist is to be the thematic contrary to the protagonist. Why did Ledger’s Joker work so well in Dark Knight? Because his chaotic intent was the very obvious contradiction to all of the protagonists’ attempt to restore order. Here, we just had a guy with a bit of a twitch who did things because...plot. Not to mention, we did the video-game-fight in the end with Doomsday, too. Completely with random appearance of Wonder Woman. Who also quite randomly arrived to do things because...plot. At least there were emotional stakes involved in the fight against Zod in Man of Steel. As overblown and gratuitous as it was, it hinted at a reason to exist and explored Superman’s morality a bit. Here, we just got Lex Luthor, letting loose a mindless, destructive monster, to...what exactly? Rampage and destroy the Earth? For what reason again? I’d say it was to kill Superman (though even if that were true, I’m not sure why...), but he had intended for Batman to do that. I’d say it was to exert power over the world, but there was never any indicator that he assumed this apocalyptic creature would be in his control in any way. So essentially, this was sub-80’s-cartoon level plotting.

And the “Death of Superman” was handled miserably as well. I’ve always thought that comic series might make a neat cinematic arc. Part one (presuming Superman has been properly established, that is) ending in the big battle royale against Doomsday, and Superman’s inevitable sacrificial death to stop him. Part two being a three year criminal backlash in a word without Superman, the faux Supermen rising up to try to take his place, each with complex motivations and back stories. Showing the allegorical problem with leaving such a power vacuum that has real world analogs. In the end, a questionable Superman is *reborn*. The third movie, Superman steps up to stop the faux supermen gone rogue and reveals himself as the true Superman. It's a traditional three part hero's journey arc. But what we got here instead, shoehorned in at the end, left a lot to be desired. Superman did fly Doomsday into space, was blown to hell with nukes (which, I’m not exactly sure why that killed Doomsday in context of the story, if it didn’t kill Superman...), but...literally, before he was even in the ground, we get the shot of his coffin thudding. It was a very shrug worthy moment. It’s OK to *not* kill Superman. We know he’ll survive. But what made it all pointless is not even exploring a post-superman world. Why do the fake out death in the first place? It had zero purpose.

I could drone on some more, but...that’s enough time spent on this one. Another ‘ blockbuster’, another disappointment. But I can’t stop going to see them. I guess I’m just a CineMasochist...

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

I really liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I liked it immediately after seeing it. I liked it after meditating on its issues. I liked it after reading legitimate criticisms. And I still like it now as I write this.

My biggest accolade for the film is that it felt like a Star Wars film (and by that I specifically mean like the original trilogy, which is important to point out seeing as there was also a Christmas special and the prequels, which together sum to an equal part of the ‘8 installment’ series’ cinematic existence until now). And I don’t just attribute that to the callbacks or obvious iconography. It moved like a Star Wars film. It cultivated the sense of place of a Star Wars film. It had the wanderlust of a Star Wars film. It was refreshing and I left smiling. That’s pretty much all I wanted.

On the other hand, my biggest contention with the film is that with just a few narrative tweaks, this could’ve been something unforgettably amazing, and instead will hold up as ‘just’ a fun installment that’s the best we’ve gotten in 30 years.

Spoilers ahead. Here are a few small (and one or two larger) narrative tweaks that I believe objectively could have made this an exponentially better film.

1. Rey’s force ability: I have zero problems with Rey being able to use the force. In fact, nothing that she was able to achieve via the force upset me all that much, even being such a novice. But it was because of questionable assumptions I had about what transpired off screen. My guess is that she had been recruited and was present, at a very young age, at Luke’s Jedi encampment (or quite probably is his daughter or Obi-Wan’s granddaughter). That the memories had receded, but that she had some level of understanding of the force, of how it is used by Jedi, etc, even if only on a subconscious level. I want to believe that she had an inexplicable fascination of this ‘mythology’ of the force growing up, which was certainly implied in her tone when Han Solo revealed to her that it was all real.

But that’s just it. This was all my presumptions. I would’ve loved to see this reinforced, say, by her attempting the Jedi mind trick or a force pull or something earlier in the film. It would have been easy to suggest. There were plenty of opportunities for it. I mean, come on - we as audience members all know that the force is fiction, yet I guarantee most people reading this have tried to do the Jedi mind trick or force pull something at some point in their life. And consequently, in a world where this was a legitimate myth, it would make a lot of sense for her to try to do it. And then when she actually felt the living force upon Kylo Ren mind-probing her, those repressed memories could have ‘awakened’ in her…this plot point writes itself and completely justifies one of the major issues detractors had with this film. And honestly, how long would it have taken to add her trying to Jedi mind trick the scavenger merchant for her fair trade (or maybe fair trade for someone else he was taking advantage of)? Or to sort of messing around to unsuccessfully try to force pull something while sitting in the desert with the rebel helmet on? Even if completely unsuccessful, it would’ve suggested her understanding that these things were possible, and made it not quite so jarring when she just instinctually did them later in the film. Again, an easy, subtle fix that helps plug a major hole.

2. The Starkiller base, as it pertains to the central conflict: I’m not upset that they regurgitated the super weapon plot. I’m really not. I think it could have, and probably should have, deviated completely from this...but more so, I’m annoyed by how incidental it was. As pointed out by quite a few, in A New Hope, stopping the Death Star was the main conflict. It set the plot in motion, led us to Obi-Wan, introduced us to the Force, and then, in the end, all of the major plot points focused down to a single laser fine moment. It was inevitable; one moment where Luke’s learning the power of the Force (personal journey) helped him destroy the Death Star (main conflict) and become the hero.

However, in The Force Awakens, the Starkiller base is some sort of convenient plot tick. Our heroine’s (inexplicable…but see above) learning of the force has nothing to do with the ultimate destruction of the Starkiller base.

In fact, if Ren had killed Rey while mind probing her, the plot would’ve ended just the same. The main conflict of this film, both for our protagonists and antagonists, is to find Luke Skywalker (or, it could be argued on the part of our protagonists, to perhaps keep his whereabouts secret).

It seems that if the real conflict of the story, as established in the first minute or so, was to find Luke Skywalker, then the main conflict should’ve been rolled up with that. Again, while I’d rather it have been something more original, the Starkiller base could have even been the fear, if in some way we could’ve made it more prominent as a threat, and more importantly, articulated that for whatever reason (the guardian Knights of Ren using the force to keep it safe from intruders, perhaps?) a Jedi was needed to stop this new threat. Then we would’ve gotten the earned beat. The resistance feels Luke Skywalker is ‘their last hope’ (help me Luke Skywalker, you’re our only hope). They fail in reaching him. Rey ends up finding out her Jedi potential and saves the day. You could argue this would have made it derivative plot wise as far as Rey is concerned, but honestly, we’re MEANT to take away the idea that she tapped into the force in the end, demonstrating her Jedi potential, so that part would’ve been derivative either way. But it would’ve been nice to see it tied to the main plot, and without that tie, the Starkiller seemed superfluous.

To simplify, the intervention of ‘the Last Jedi’ should have been pivotal to the resistance’s success. It gives both sides more of a reason to track him down, intertwines the plot threads to make them more cohesive, and makes Rey’s force sensitivity more important. If there could’ve been a way to do that with The Starkiller base, and they really desperately wanted that call back, awesome, and I think it could have been. And so failing to do so is irksome.

3. Fin: I liked Fin fine, I suppose. He’s the new plucky, kind of ignorant sidekick. He’s certainly no Han Solo, and that’s ok, too. But I feel like this was a tragically missed opportunity. From the beginning, we know that he’s a Storm Trooper with a crisis of conscience. Of course, that’s interesting, and I’m all for it, and I’m sure we’ll get plenty of reasons as to why this is in the next film and spinoff media with copious amounts of back story.

The question that I kept wondering while watching was, when is his having been a Storm Trooper and having seen and been indoctrinated on the opposite side of the war going to come into play? Was his entire reason for being a Storm Trooper just plot fodder? So that he could give the resistance some intel about where to target their attack fun? Nothing about his Storm Trooper experience informed his character one iota. What I suppose I wanted to see was some level of ideological differences.

I mean, we got stark contrast in A New Hope between Luke’s willingness to blindly follow the nutty sorcerer and Han’s obstinate cynicism. Luke’s sudden devotion to his new quest versus Han’s reluctant participation in the course of his self interest. I didn’t want exactly that, I just figured we’d get a similar divide in characterization. Contrary ideological pulls that were deeper than clever quips back and forth. And I feel like it easily could’ve been done through Fin coming to terms with his place in the universe.

Sure, he defected from the First Order, but it could’ve been because he knew he would be executed or tortured for his unwillingness to follow orders. Instead, he seemed to instantly align with the ideology of the resistance. Suddenly, after twenty or so years of brainwashing, he *snapped out of it*. It would’ve been much more dynamic if he still maintained the general ideology of the First Order’s lifetime of brainwashing and had to come to learn to appreciate the position of the resistance through his interactions with other characters in the plot.

For instance, he could’ve been filled with rhetoric that the resistance (and rebels before them) had been terrorists, responsible for millions of deaths and chaos and disorder, making a hatred of them logical and justified. This would’ve been fun and much more interesting to see play out. I mean, once again…they set this up to happen but never executed. Imagine Fin and Poe being stuck together (or Fin and Rey, to similar effect) for a while, with distrust turning to mutual respect, and finally, something specific about Fin’s character as a Storm Trooper (not just his knowledge as a sanitations officer) helps hinge the plot, finally effectively demonstrating that he’d taken on the ideology of the resistance and will be an ally.

Or what if Fin realized that by turning Rey/BB-8 into the First Order, he could regain their graces, but the series of unforeseen events (meeting up with Han Solo, etc), facing mutual perils that are non-character specific where they have to work together in order to survive (Rathtars, etc) ends up teaching him more about the Jedi, the evils of the Empire, a different perspective than he’s been bludgeoned his whole life by. The way the plot moves, it seems this must have been the original intent, but they pulled the punch to make him more ‘likable’, which I feel is unfortunate. In a way it’s the characterization equivalent of making Greedo shoot first. If Han is a heartless scoundrel, show it...it makes it more powerful when he does something selfless. If Fin is a Storm Trooper struggling with his identity, show it...make him retain that allegiance until swayed...it makes it more powerful when he joins the resistance.

4. Puppet / live human being for Maz Katana and Snoke: This is simple. There is no reason Snoke could have not been played by a live human being with a good make-up artist. And with all of the practical creatures that were in Maz Katana’s ‘cantina’, my sense of the uncanny valley kicked in and she looked completely fake in contrast. With just how slavish they were to practical effects, these two instances both distracted and surprised me.

5. Rey sets out alone: Give me a reason why Rey set out alone to find Luke Skywalker. I don’t care how quickly it’s glossed over, just someone articulate a reason. An easy one might be something like the remnants of the First Order that survived the Starkiller attack now know the resistance’s whereabouts and they need all available fighters to help defend /move the base…but you, Rey, you must find Luke Skywalker. Fine. I’m down. One line of dialog. Problem solved.

But since it seems the resistance was working so hard to find the location of Luke Skywalker, it would be counterintuitive that they’d not have then gone to find him once they had the information that they worked so hard to discover…instead they’d send the scavenger girl fresh from Jakku? I do believe it’s possible that, say, Leia would sense the newly awakened force in her…maybe send her to meet Luke before the same fate befalls her as her son…or because of fear that she’ll follow in the footsteps of her son…or because she has the best chance of getting Luke to come out of hiding…or whatever. But I’d really like to see that scene in the film. I’d like to understand that decision. Again, if the central conflict is to find Luke Skywalker, then the film derails completely when the climax is the destruction of the Starkiller, as the ending demonstrates no real action being taken once Luke Skywalker is found, negating the worth of the original conflict to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong, I like that she sets out alone to find him. It’s the right choice. It just felt unearned and illogical.

6. Kylo Ren: I could also cite a few potential problems I might have with Kylo Ren, but I think way more was right than wrong. I loved him as a unstable element…a young kid, mislead and dangerous, but dangerous even more for his unpredictability. I liked seeing him in his force-infancy, comparable to Luke pre-Dagobah. I liked how even with his inadequate handle on the force, he still looks like a supernatural being to his mundane evil counterparts. I guess the only scene, then, that bugged me was also his most bad ass. The opener, where he held the laser blast in place with the force was awesome, though nothing else that he did for the rest of the film suggested he had this level of control. So that presents me with a conundrum. I loved seeing his bad-assery in the opening scene, but I loved the potential of his ineptitudes for the rest of the film. Also, his ineptitudes that he demonstrated give context to why he didn’t just completely slaughter Fin and Rey. He still has only a small suggestion of his force potential, and hasn’t ever really had a worthy light saber adversary to face in his recent years to sharpen his skills much beyond that of what a storm trooper might be capable of (who else does he have to spar with other than Storm Troopers? Makes sense they had an anti-light-saber weapon...). So I’m torn on this one.

Anyhow, after mulling over it for a few days, those are my thoughts. I feel like an amazing film was right there, between the lines of this one, and so little would have needed to change to get it there. But at least I was glad to get a very enjoyable film, despite perhaps it not being up to its full potential.

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

I’ll cut right to it. The film I’m about to discuss was not a good film. Nor did I enjoy it. The two things are not necessarily connected in every case. I have enjoyed films that can be described and categorized as bad on an objective level. I’ve disliked films that can be described and categorized as brilliant on an objective level. I’m (ironically) noticing a lot of criticism of film criticism lately...a sort of, “oh shut up and just enjoy the movie” type reaction to people expression their perspective on a film, usually resulting from the fact that the reactor enjoyed a movie that the critic is lampooning, and thus on the basis of the individual’s personal taste, invalidates the criticism. But I think that is an unfortunate circumstance. I think criticism is an important and valuable tool that an audience can employ to help hold creatives’ feet to the proverbial fire, especially in the current creative landscape where often times business sensibilities steamroll the creative process and vision.

I am about to lampoon a film. Some of you may have enjoyed this film. I intend to use objective measures to demonstrate why this was a bad movie. You do not have to defend your taste. As stated, I personally enjoy plenty of movies that I would similarly consider to be bad. This movie, however, I did not enjoy. And I’m not sure how, in any category, it could be regarded as *good*, regardless of whether one happened to be entertained by the visceral experience of watching it.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

I loathed Terminator: Genisys. I found it to be deplorable. Literally, everything about it failed on a monumental level. I had a feeling this would be the case based upon critical reaction that I did see, but my morbid curiosity and affinity for the general premise of the franchise (read: the sheer desire for it to be a decent, maybe misunderstood, film) got the better of me.

Where to begin? Let’s start with some of the little things. The tone. Let’s face it, this was a comedy with action film elements. Every third line of dialog was a quip, and most of them were quips just for the sake of quipping, having no relevance to the characterizations and in most cases being things no human would say in the circumstances if at all. Each character tried to out-quip each other until the dialog felt more like a lackluster sketch show at an amateur improv theater. Yes, this movie had dramatic science fiction elements, but they were buried under the banter. It reminded me of a poorly executed version of a television show like Eureka, but not nearly as clever...and keep in mind, Eureka is listed as a Comedy/Drama/SciFi. While I’m not adverse to a multitimbral tonal experience in a film, in no way should an installment in this series broach the notion that it falls under the comedy genre first and foremost. And honestly, that’s how it felt. I never felt dread. I never felt danger. I never felt awe or amazement or wonder. The movie played for yucks. I don’t think there was a single minute of runtime where someone didn’t make a joke.

But you know what? Maybe some people found the tone to be more palatable. I mean, the first film was virtually a low budget slasher film (unstoppable killer in slow, steady pursuit of the intended victim, leaving a trail of carnage). The second shifted to big budget action blockbuster. That is certainly a tone shift, and it arguably worked fine and still maintained the world. So maybe one could make the argument that the tonal shift towards three stooges territory was just a creative experiment. So let’s move on from that. Let’s talk about the performances for a moment. It was very obvious that this movie wanted to link its chosen actors to the original two films...this wasn’t a straight reboot or new envisioning of the characters. This was supposed to be a version of those characters we were familiar with. Do you remember Anton Yelchin’s Kyle Reese from Terminator: Salvation (I can’t believe I’m about to defend something about THAT miserable mess...)? Yes, it teetered on caricature, but it was absolutely believable that the role he was playing evolved into Michael Biehn’s Reese of the original film. He captured the mannerisms, the voice, the facial expressions, the general vocabulary...contrast that with Jai Courtney’s version. Honestly, Jai Courtney just showed up and reprised his one-note action role from A Good Day To Die Hard (*shudders*). There was absolutely nothing Kyle Reese about him other than the fact that the plot demanded him to be called Kyle Reese. Was this a directorial ineptitude? A performance shortcoming? I can’t tell. But his lines sounded like bad script reads from a script that an 8 year old wrote, his presence was ultimately forgettable, and he had no chemistry with Emma Clarke. Speaking of Clarke, I was incredibly disappointed with her Sarah Connor as well. The very first instant she showed up on the screen with the first line delivery, I said to myself, “Oh, ok...I can see it a little”...for it never to be seen again. Just like Courtney’s Reese, other than place in the plot, the character did not resemble Sarah Connor as we have known her in any way, but beyond that, none of her emotions came across as authentic, and her lines were equally laughable.

But wait, Joe, you say. This timeline has been altered! Of course people would’ve turned out to be different versions of themselves! And here’s where I start to eviscerate this film and point out why, objectively, it was just plain bad on the most basic level.

It’s a little thing I generally call Screenwriter’s Apathy. Ironically, it was largely present in Terminator: Salvation as well, and I called it out then, too. It’s when a screenplay is written with such unforgivable flaws embedded in its formative makeup that they essentially negate the legitimacy of the story, but rather than fix them, the folks at the helm just move forward adding more flashing lights and loud noises in hopes the audience isn’t smart enough to catch them or is too hypnotized by the spectacle to care.

See, the Terminator films have a very simple time travel premise. Our technology turns on us, causing the attempted extinction of mankind. A savior rallies the people in a resistance war against the machines. The machines develop time travel technology to kill the child and erase his existence, strategizing that without his leadership, any resistance will be futile. The resistance sends back a champion to insure his safety. The presence of these figures from the future alters the timeline that leads to the eventuality (Kyle Reese, the protector, turns out to be John Connor’s father; the arm and brain of the T-800 end up making breakthroughs in science leading to Skynet in the first place, etc). This is the framework in which the Terminator mythos exists. These are its general rules. These are the basic tent poles of the reality.

So let’s count how this crumbles under the plot of the newest film, meanwhile pointing out other examples of stupid along the way. In this reality, Kyle Reese is sent back in time, only things aren’t as we remember them...because some anomalous time-travel thing happened years earlier. Ok...got it. No problem. As it turns out, Sarah and her protector T-800 have built a time machine (with 1984 parts) to travel into the future to the date of Skynet’s launch in order to stop it (instead of, say, stopping its moving components in 1984...). Now, a problem here - later in the film, Skynet, under the guise of Genisys, can not build a functional time machine despite an unlimited budget, arguably much better intel on its design, and 2017 technology...huh? But I digress, let’s get back to the main plot...

Reese convinces Connor to travel forward to 2017 instead of 1997, claiming to know the ‘new history’ of the timeline. They show up, and are greeted by a time-traveling John Connor, who, as it turns out, has been morphed into his own brand of terminator...no longer the savior of mankind, but instead, now the savior of Skynet. Arnie’s T-800 has been laying in wait for 30 years, and protects them from the newly-evil-part-machine John Connor, who showed up a few years prior to make sure Skynet was built...and now he must kill Kyle and Sarah to stop them from destroying Skynet....

Ok...time to start cataloguing the multiple instances of screenwriter’s apathy apparent in this plot. This first example is some think work, but with a very simple summation point. Bare with the concentration on the specifics in order to make the point overtly apparent.

First, Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor now exist in 2017. Young Kyle Reese is a 12 year old kid in this reality in that year. John Connor has not been conceived yet (and by 2017, he should be a little over 30 years old). Even if the date of the machine armageddon has shifted 20 years, the age of Reese has not. So...this means that if Sarah and Kyle were to boff in the new present 2017, and pumped out little John Connor sometime in 2018, Kyle Reese would be at least 13 by the time John was born. If in the original film’s timeline, John Connor was born in 1985, that means he was 17 years old in 1997 when the Skynet apocalypse occurred. So if, by some stretch of logic, we believe that said apocalypse conveniently were to line up with him being 17 in THIS reality for his clear path to be the same level of leader of the resistance he was first-go-round to warrant all this fuss (I guess that would make it sometime around 2034), Kyle Reese would be 30, rather than a few years shy of being born, at the time of the apocalypse.

Continuing that thought, in the original movie, the time travel occurred in 2029, which would have been 12 years after the apocalypse had occurred. So in this reality, if things proceeded similarly where John Connor became the charismatic soldier that rose to lead the resistance and eventually thwarted the time-travel plan by sending back Kyle Reese (etc etc etc) it would be around 2046, and Kyle Reese would be about 42 years old. In the original, John Conner would’ve been a 44 military general sending his 24 year old abled body soldier back in time to serve as protector. In this reality, it’d be 28 (or younger) year old John Connor sending his 40-some-odd year old senior back in time. There is no way they’d have had the same relationship dynamics as in the original history...

More...in the original history, Kyle Reese had lived his entire life in the ‘world of the machines’...in this one, 30 years of his life would have been in an ordinary world.

So here’s the point of it all. There is absolutely no logical way for things to have progressed the way they originally had once Sarah and Kyle arrive in 2017...meaning it’s pretty damn near impossible to conceive the fundamental story behind the Terminator universe would still be in tact. It is virtually impossible to believe that following this new reality, Kyle Reese would ever have been sent back to 1984 or ever impregnated Sarah...so...no John Connor. No Terminator traveling back in time to stop him. No Kyle Reese being sent to save him...etc etc etc. Not only that, even if it were to happen exactly parallel, and the 40-some-odd year old Reese was sent back in time...the Kyle Reese that we’re seeing in the movie itself is not a 40-some-odd year old, nor does he change to one when the timeline changes...the dude who we’re seeing as the film’s main protagonist could not exist as such in the film presented and still have the movie following its own rules!

But ok...too much thinking involved in that whole thesis argument? Am I reading too much into it? I really don’t think so...the film (and the entire cinematic universe) is built on the idea that changing the past affects the future, but completely ignores it when that fact is not convenient to the plot. But alright, fine...I’ll regress to sensory-hungry popcorn-eater for a moment if that felt like I was drawing too many diagrams on chalkboards. Let’s look at this simple plot point to demonstrate the same problem.

The entire plot of this film hinges on the idea of John Connor becoming a time-traveling evil super-terminator villain hell bent on Skynet’s existence. To these ends, he actively attempts to kill Sarah and Kyle. He sets out to kill them. His mother. And his father. Before he is born. *head in hands*

There are a few throw away lines about whether or not their deaths would change anything in the timeline, which is supposed to even it out and make us just go along with it. THAT, my friends, is Screenwriter’s Apathy. The entire movie is predicated on the fact that changing things in the past affects the future outcome. In fact, the ENTIRE REALITY OF THE SERIES is predicated on the idea that if the machines go back and kill Sarah Connor, there will be no John Connor, and the machines will achieve victory. But in this instance, mechanized John Connor is trying to kill his pre-maternal mother...if he happened to succeed, John would never have been born, and never have existed in order to turn into a weaponized new villain terminator to have existed in order to have killed her. That’s not me expressing my views of how time travel would work, that’s THE MOVIE UNIVERSE ITSELF’S views of how time travel would work. It’s simple - in ALL of the Terminator movies, change something in the past, it ripple affects the present. In fact, even in THIS movie, changes to the past ripple affect the present (alterations to the past affect Kyle Reese’s youth and give him different memories of his past, etc). However when the writers are too lazy to work around that, the main conceit, the foundational device, the god damned main point of interest in the entire series, the logic developed over 8 cinematic hours (plus 31 television hours if you count the TV show), can just be swept under the rug in this film because...because people love explosions!

For those who still think I’m putting too much thought into it consider this. The plot is the equivalent of a Back to the Future 4 that goes like this: Marty travels back in time to before he was born, chemically castrates his father, and then heads back to 1984 to attend the Huey Lewis concert with Doc and Jennifer. It simply isn’t congruent with the reality the film has made. It is OBJECTIVELY terribly written. That is exactly how stupid and nonsensical the plot for Terminator Genisys is.

To me, this point makes the entire film moot. It doesn’t work as a Terminator film. It doesn’t exist within its own rules. It continually goes for the lowest common denominator storytelling with comically bad tone in order to get to the quips and CGI action set pieces and referential call backs.

And that’s not all folks! There’s more! Like every little thing was a damn travesty of nonsense with almost no redeeming value.

For instance, in T2, they ultimately defeat the liquid terminator by drowning him in a bath of melted hot, liquified metal. Alright. At the end of this movie, a completely obliterated Arnie T-800 lands in a pool of the sentient liquid metal that T-1000’s will eventually be created from. And then the building explodes into a giant fireball, the explosion’s source right next to said pool. But instead of melting away in the undoubtably boiling liquid metal as which killed the counterpart in T2, somehow he is able to merge with the liquid metal (his ‘programming’) and emerge from the molten as an upgraded T-1000??? How exactly does that work in the reality of this series? (not to mention, when surviving Sarah and Kyle SEE a T-1000 in the guise of savior Terminator Arnie...they automatically assume it’s NOT a T-1000 in disguise come to kill them?! After all that?! Seriously?!?!?).

Or how nowhere in this film are actual terminator robots (T-800) being created...’Skynet’ (Genisys) is jumping straight to T-1000 production....because of evil John Connor’s influence on the project and changes to the timeline...yet we still have protector Arnie, a T-800. Is the suggestion that Skynet takes a step backwards from this point to manufacture T-800s? Wouldn’t Arnie just simply cease to be with the changes to the timeline?

Or the thematic suggestion of Skynet’s new plan to infiltrate all of our widespread interconnected technology with a throw away line, never to be explored despite it being the impending doom of the entire second half of the film.

It just goes on and on and on. It is objectively terrible on its own terms, beyond the simple fact that I personally did not like it.

That said, it is ok if you enjoyed it. I would never want to discount anyone’s enjoyment of a piece of media. I like plenty of movies, music, games, books, etc, that are objectively terrible and most people would dislike. But why I named this post as such is that I really want to express this point to those that want to criticize critical analysis on the basis of it not agreeing with their own tastes...

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

THE CINEMASOCHIST: 2017 Summer Blockbuster Review #2

THE EXPECTATION:

This happens to be my birthday weekend blockbuster. Having a mid-may birthday, there has been at least one major tentpole summer blockbuster movie every year as far back as I can remember. More times than not, it’s been a film I’ve been looking forward to.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Alien series at this point in my life. Aliens was actually the first R rated movie I remember seeing as a kid, and it has managed to hold up over the last 30 years as a great piece of action sci-fi cinema. As I grew up and began to learn about film and filmmaking, I fell in love with the original. What has always struck me as fascinating is that this series boasts the single example of genre-jumping that I think worked very well. The original was a horror movie set in space, not only because of it being centered around a stalking monster, but also in its intent. Dan O’bannon (Alien screenwriter) set out to find a thing that would make the audience uncomfortable and push that thing in the audience’s face as overtly as possible. There are dark, sexual undertones in all of the iconography of Alien that scream allusions to rape, the horror of which is the metaphorical center of that first film. It’s not only scary because *monster* or *jump scares*. It’s frightening because it affects us on a deeper psychological level. From the feeling of betrayal from someone we have implicitly come to trust to more literal reads of having a thing forced down our heroes’ throats to the overt phallic and vaginal imagery...it’s not subtle in its presentation of this very real thing to fear in the fantasy of a space movie.

The second film jettisons a lot of that for a much less cerebral and much more visceral experience. It substitutes explosions in the place of the metaphors, dipping its toes into themes of familial relationships (which have even more relevance and resonance if you watch the director’s cut, though I think those omissions in the theatrical release were warranted). It never goes too heavy handed into the psychological the way that its predecessor did. Instead, it masterfully creates tension which pays off in big action sequences. In a sense, it draws on the more pedestrian lore of Alien and extrapolates it into the basis for a very strong blockbuster movie.

The third film is very polarizing among fans and critics. For me, I always enjoyed it. I saw it as another attempt at genre-jumping. From (space) horror to (space) action to (space) melodrama/tragedy. Some of the strongest criticism comes from the fact that it, right from its first scene, essentially devalues the investment into the second film entirely. However, this is completely in line with the fatalist base that David Fincher aims to create.

But after that, the series takes a turn. Alien: Resurrection was Joss Whedon’s lackluster contribution. While the three films that came before it really took chances within their genres and all achieved a particular level of credit for vision if nothing else, Resurrection was more...paint by numbers, for one. It felt juvenile in comparison. It felt like a bit of fan-fiction. Some people prefer it as a *movie* experience to Alien 3, but there’s no doubt that its pandering condescension to its audience belongs more on the shelf with films like Fast and Furious than it does on the shelf with Alien. That’s not to say it’s not without some good ideas and some fun imagery. It just failed in execution, and in comparison to the other films in the series, it seemed almost like homage, knock off, or even parody rather than part of the series’ actual legacy.

Then there were two laughable attempts at Predator/Alien crossover films (which I barely count). The less said about them, the better. The first can be summed up as a cash grab with the sort of plot an eight year old might write. The second I think literally just spliced the scripts of Aliens and Predator together, edited the whole thing down until it was accessible for an eight year old, and then purposely focused on filming the worst parts of what was left.

And then there was Prometheus...the epic return of Ridley Scott to the series. Honestly, no film in the history of cinema has had such a dichotomy between my high expectation and my disappointment (except maybe Terminator: Salvation...). Damon Lindelof did for the Alien series what...Damon Lendelof did for Lost. He guided you down a path of intrigue only to reveal that even he had no idea what to do once he had your attention. So instead of developing an organic story that was anchored around some thematic center, he just stuffed in a bunch of inexplicable things happening and called it a movie. Space zombies and alien abortions and counterintuitive character motivations and a peek into a galactic mystery that ultimately meant nothing...none of it made much sense. It was very pretty to look at, for sure, but it forgot that it should have been about something. It was trying to be Alien in its disconcerting visual design, but in its absence of central intent ended up feeling more like a motion design demo reel with cameos from A-listers. It’s really hard to screw up a film with that strong of a cast, but screw it up, they did.

That’s the Alien universe to date. All that said, it’s weird that I hold the series as a whole in such high regard. We had two great films, one film that was generally polarizing, and then four movies that all were on the scale of bad-to-worse. More than half of the entire franchise’s existence was sub-par, and yet (just like with Terminator, I suppose) I still get excited by the thought of another film featuring a xenomorph.

So with all that in mind, now I need to create a rubric for this film. What does this film need to do in order to work?

One thing is that Alien: Covenant needs to be about something. I feel that this film should aim for Alien level of tension rather that visceral thrills of Aliens. Have a central theme that is the core of the movie. It doesn’t matter if it’s overt or subtle, but have an intended effect or idea...have a reason to tell the story beyond pulling in profits. If Alien wanted to horrify and make the audience feel raped, what does this film aim to do? If the answer sounds more like the untethered narrative from an 8-year-old describing what he does with his action figures, I will be disappointed.

A thing that could go horribly wrong, however, is too much time spent trying to forge cohesion between Prometheus and Alien. The film should not play like a dramatized set of ikea instructions of how to fit rod-A into slot-B. The greatest thing about Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and even Resurrection to a certain extent is that they really could exist as self contained films. They didn’t cram significant running time with callbacks and cheap a-ha moments. They didn’t need to set up a suggested sequel. Prometheus was nothing short of a phoned-in first act stretched out to feature length. Covenant, despite desperation to cultivate a larger cinematic universe, needs to resist the temptation to create nubs and limbs intended to be explored in other films. Look, it’s a film in the Alien family...we know it connects to the others. We know it will share some iconography. And we can anticipate a nod here or there. But don’t mandate that we watch other media to enjoy this film.

These are my fleeting thoughts prior to seeing Alien: Covenant. After watching, I will review below.

THE REVIEW:

This valiant swing-and-miss demonstrates that the people at the helm don’t seem to understand what made Alien such an iconic film. There will be spoilers beyond this point.

First, let’s look through the filter of my rubric for this film above. Was this film about something, or was it just a catalog of things that happened? Well...it certainly tried to be about something, I think, but certainly not in the manner that Alien was metaphor. In following Prometheus, this film did tie itself around the idea of creation, but it was more an overt, almost Snidely Whiplash villain motivation than a taught thematic undercurrent. For certain, the real reason to tell this story was as a narrative plot bridge between Prometheus and the rest of the Alien universe.

So to the second part of my proposed rubric, it was exactly what I feared that it would be. This wasn’t a prequel to Alien so much as it was a misguided sequel to Prometheus. I guarantee that the studio wanted to distance itself from the luke-warm reception of Prometheus and embrace the public’s affinity for the Alien series, so they gave it an Alien name for marketing value and with some implicit promise that it would be more Alien this time. That just begs the question...why didn’t they do that? If they wanted to push in the direction of the Alien universe, this should have been a lot less Prometheus and a lot more Alien.

I’d say on the first point, the film could be graded as a slacking student; maybe a D or D+. But the context of that barely-passing grade was inextricably mired in the latter point’s failure.

So what went wrong?

You know, like a lot of summer blockbusters, I was actually all in for maybe the first third. Dare I say, I thought Danny McBride was one of the strong points (I better never catch myself saying those words again...). The entire first act, while flawed, was honestly what I was hoping for. It was a slow burn of this inevitability of disaster. It felt like the start to a halfway decent Alien retread, but with enough of its own creative energy that it could’ve worked just fine.

And then right around the time we see our first sorta-xenomorph, things go south. Fast. Let’s start with a little canonical rule breaking (or at least taking extreme liberties). Members of the team on the ground are infected by some sort of sentient, swarming spores that puff out of fungal pods. After a short gestation period, the infected crew members become sick and...out pop really crappy CG xenomorphs (seriously, we’ll circle back on this in a moment), taking on more or less the same features of the products of the face-huggers we’re familiar with. It feels like I have to go on to explain too many inconsistencies to explain my objection to this, but I’ll start simply with it did not feel like this was any sort of outgrowth of the creative universe. Instead, it was more a “What’s a visually cool way can we infect these guys that we haven’t done yet?” It forgoes all the horror of the skittering face huggers and opts for something that feels out of a cheap franchise knock off rather than something that is supposed to be canon. It felt very disconnected from the point of consistency and iconography. It would be like Freddy Krueger killing someone by shooting them. Now, I’m not adverse to these pods emitting spores that have tragic ill effects as part of this narrative. I’m not even adverse to it resulting in some sort of gestation into some sort of creature. But seeing the emergent xenomorph felt cheap and lazy.

Right around the same time, we get these strange, unexplained, counterintuitive character ticks. A medical officer goes into full psychosis freak out panic attack due to a patient’s medical ailment. The new captain takes a scene to talk about the importance of his faith, which never once actually becomes relevant or important to the plot. Slipping on blood gives us not one but two keystone cop type moments. There is no concern over potential contagion despite the distinct absence of all fauna. Despite having clear technological methods to traverse the terrain, they venture 8 kilometers over treacherous mountains on foot. There is a surprising lack of awe in seeing a vastly superior crashed alien vessel, and even more baffling is there is no amazement or discussion of implications (or if it’s there, it happens off screen) about finding “the lost Prometheus’s” Elizabeth Shaw’s dogtags on said alien vessel.

And you know what? Even though all of that was irksome, it was generally, reluctantly forgivable in that “well, you’re not in the volatile situation or understand their context fully, no do you know how you’d react to xyz, so give some artistic license for their manners and reactions” sort of way.

But then the film goes off the rails.

David, Prometheus’s sociopathic android, shows up in cape and hood, to save the survivors with a bright-light gun, and then leads them to this necropolis of former indigenous humanoids. And then, the movie turns from a just-passable Alien film to a weaker sequel to Prometheus.

As it turns out, the mysterious xenomorphs that we fear from this franchise are actually megalomaniac android’s science project, as he tries to perfect the monster-weapon-thing from Prometheus’s *engineer* planet (read: the Alien of of the Alien universe). So much of this as an unnecessary explanation feels like midichlorians-and-battle-droids to me. It’s not exactly a retcon...but it’s this useless, unintuitive, sloppy exposition filler that deflates the magic and mystery out of the compelling, established universe.

And what sucks is the fact that this is what this film is really about. On the one hand, it sucks the life out of the more interesting parts of the series. And on the other, as an explanation, even if you can sort of force it to justifiably work (the way you would with Anakin having built C3PO...), it is really forced as far as adhering to its own themes.

How can I explain what I perceive to be the disconnect in the most succinct way possible? David becomes obsessed with the idea of creation. The disconnected intro to this film, coupled with the events explored in Prometheus, suggest that David is questing for progeny, I guess...because, reasons? Because upon creation, he and his creator discuss the ultimate question is discovering where we came from? Because his calculated ambition for progeny at all costs is supposed to mimic human’s biological imperative? It is so vague that unfortunately, I think I’m reading way too much into it, and I think in all honesty the screenwriters cared very little for themes that made sense. They were just dropping plot points on a line and connecting them with little regard to sense of theme or tone.

Think about how convoluted it is. David wants to procreate in some way. So his best plan for this was...to traverse the galaxy, unleash a biological weapon created by his creators’ creators, genetically modify the result to spawn a perfect organism? It’s such a contrived thing that, again, it sort of just feels like mustache twirling.

In the original Alien, we get what seems like a malfunctioning android. It leads to the crew’s demise. But the whole point is that the android isn’t malfunctioning. The horror of the entire thing is that the android is behaving as programmed, which is at the behest of their very human bosses, to whom the crew is expendable. The horror is watching the android tweak out over the contradiction of Asimov’s first law of robotics versus his expressed, malignant program.

In Covenant, we get an android who is...imperfect and sociopathic, so...kill people to create aliens to fulfill desire for procreation? That just about defeats the purpose of making him an android at all. If he’s supposed to be a murky reflection of humanity here, the parallel should express something like...if David is the creation, and he is willing to destroy his creators in order to bring something more perfect into the world, then that should parallel humans as the creation, destroying their creators (the engineers, I guess) in an attempt to bring something more perfect in the world. But that’s not a thing at all in this universe, so this theme is just flimsy, and it thinks it’s way deeper than it actually is. It’s the intellectual equivalent of the guy at the bar who is 8 beers in and suddenly thinks he’s the best dancer in the world.

I spend so much time talking about this because the movie basically becomes this. In Prometheus, at least we get a suggestion that perhaps to study this xenomorph organism is part of his creator’s programming to help his creator stave off death, and to those ends, the crew is expendable. Here, David the android is just a sociopathic android whose motivations are murky...just something about his ability to create justifying his actions.

This is the core of what’s wrong with Alien Covenant, but it’s not the only thing. It’s so difficult to comprehend how seasoned filmmakers depend so much on CG these days in scenarios like this. Alien, the first film, is almost 40 years old. Its low budget practical effects hold up, and to this day are still terrifying and make the alien into a real threat. The multiple instances of needless CG in this film are deplorable. They completely distract from the scenes. One moment in particular was the birth of the first true xenomorph, bursting out of Billy Crudup’s chest. Literally, this poor CG alien began dancing in mimic to David. It was more reminiscent of baby Groot than it was anything else.

Another thing wrong was that everything that happened was the most predictable thing that could happen in any situation. It leveled all sense of tension that it tried to cultivate when you could predict every single outcome right down to the timing of any given situation.

An example to demonstrate how far the film shifted into nonsensical camp...there was this scene. The heroic, nail-biting rescue of the survivors from the planet has been mostly a success...but the crew must find a way to mourn the loss and handle dramatic new implications of what they discovered on the surface, while at the same time figuring out how to right their course towards their future colonial homeworld. Instead, though, we get a shower-sex scene between two of the crew members (for whom we have zero attachment to), which is interrupted by a rogue stow-away alien. This plays out more like a bad death in a Friday the 13th movie than the tension that the Alien series generally cultivates. It was scenes like this that denote the people at the helm are completely ignorant as to what made Alien and Aliens work so well.

And the worst part is that this weird David-centric prequel arc isn’t over. David brought aboard a pair of face-hugger embryos (is that how they work? I don’t think that’s how those organisms work...) and stowed them with the colonist embryos. His last ship log, as everyone else is in hypersleep, discloses that they are heading for the intended planet, which is distinctly not called LV-426. That means that there is further involvement of David’s sociopathic megalomania to contend with before the two series officially connect. And because of this, we will likely get a third Prometheus that follows sadistic android watering down the potency of the lore even further.

How would I have fixed it? I think the most surefire way to fix this film would’ve been to completely avoid (or dramatically change) the David arc entirely (which means a dramatic change to the whole movie). At the end of Prometheus, David is decapitated, and therefor non-ambulatory. Maybe he should’ve stayed that way, decaying for 10 years with the rest of the tech on the ship. An accident may have caused Shaw to get exposed to the *Prometheus goo*, or as it was in this film, the spores. Maybe a queen gestates. Maybe its result decimates the indigenous population of the planet (I actually would prefer to have the planet uninhabited or abandoned, maybe with eggs or spores or whatever laying in wait). And this film plays out much more like Alien, relaying messages through space about what the crew is experiencing, and giving *the company* its first glimpse of xenomorphs and gives them the idea to utilize disposable colonists to breed the species. Maybe the android-versus-android dynamic could’ve been much more interesting; really, about potential complexities of Asimov’s first law of robotics, laying the groundwork on how or why Ash is able to act outside of this protocol...perhaps even inverting it, where the android Walter adheres to Asimov’s law, defies his direct orders from the company, serves the greater good and destroys the potential threat while incidentally killing crew to save the 2000 colonists in stasis (does not by action of mission, allow humans to be harmed, but having to follow that protocol in an instance where either action or inaction leads to deaths). In the end, we have the colonists on a set course for the new homeworld with no knowledge of the film’s events, but with the company now having knowledge of and desire for the alien species. Cue the future voyage of the Nostromo.

Something like this plays into all the themes explored in a much more narratively taught way that aligns much better tonally with the series. Instead, we get sociopath, megalomaniac android twirling his proverbial mustache.

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

THE CINEMASOCHIST: 2017 Summer Blockbuster Review #1

THE EXPECTATION:

Today marks the official first *summer blockbuster* viewing. It’s an annual tradition for the last ten years or so that I subject myself to all summer blockbuster films, good or bad, and for the extremes in each case (good or bad), splash my thoughts about the experience on the page.

I have the constant delusion that summer blockbusters were somehow better ten years ago or so. I mean, that summer of 2008 was amazing, right? We had Iron Man. We had The Dark Knight. That was quite a summer! But then...was it? We also had Crystal Skull. We also had Hancock and Journey to the Center of the Earth and Jumper. When I look back at the films from that year, which I always remember as being a seminal year in summer blockbuster cinema, it was as much a mixed bag as any other year. Take last year, which I regarded as abysmal, with films like the Independence Day sequel and the miserable Ghostbusters reboot and Suicide Squad, Warcraft, Through the Looking Glass, the Angry Birds movie, Tarzan...but we also had Star Trek Beyond, which was passable. And Captain America: Civil War, which was far from perfect but which left me with a smile. And Kubo and the Two Strings. So it seems every summer is more a mixed bag than I remember. It’ll be interesting to see what films hit and what films miss in 2017.

I decided to try something different with my reviews this year. I’m going to start with my expectation going in to the film. What I want and hope for based on my expectations or my reaction to the trailers (or source material, where relevant), followed in the same thread by my reaction to the actual film. I thought this might be a fun way to demonstrate my reaction to a film based on my own expectations rather than just come off as cynical or a fanboy. I can lay a groundwork of objectivity in the expectation, and then surmise the film through that frame in the review.

So here goes. Film #1 for 2017 will be Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.

In this instance, I suppose it’s important to start off with at least a little bit of my impression of the first Guardians of the Galaxy. This was a high budget Marvel film starring a buffed up dude from Parks and Rec, a talking raccoon, a sentient tree, Zoe Saldana as another colored alien (that’s not a racial slur...she’s been a blue alien...here she’s a green alien...I literally mean *colored*), and a whole lot of CGI explosions. Ironically, the thought I had leaving the theater was, “Wow, that was kind of disappointing...they really played it straight, huh?”

I had a blast in the film. I did. It was great at what it attempted. It played generally within its own rules, it draped itself around its tentpole themes, the characters were a little one dimensional, but in a way that worked just fine for the genre. A CG talking raccoon and a one lining sentient tree became perfectly believable characters.

But for a film that had all of those wacky ingredients...specifically choosing an intellectual property to mine that was poised to subvert the genre with almost maniacal intent, I was amazed with how ordinary and cookie cutter the actual plot was. How simple and sort of vapid the themes were. How juvenile the characterizations were, and how phoned in and on the nose the dialog was.

My major gripe was that it was just another marvel movie with a different coat of (digital) paint on it.

Despite that, I liked it fine. It was a perfect summer blockbuster popcorn movie. It’s one that, if it ever comes on TV on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I may watch again. I’m not likely to quote it. It didn’t really stick with me or resonate on any deeper level. But it did manage to tell a cohesive, character driven story that played within its own rules. That’s heads and shoulders above most summer blockbusters.

So what are my expectations and wants and hopes for the sequel? Well, for one thing I want it to take a few more chances. I’m hoping that it pushes the boundaries a little and sort of leans into its weirdness. I want the plot to really stand out as uniquely as its characters. One thing that could be detrimental to the experience for me is if it winds tighter to Marvel-formula. If I can sum up the entire film by “group of special outcasts engage in combat with CGI bad guy to save the Universe”, I’ll be a little disappointed.

Another problem most of these sequels suffers is lack of a compelling antagonist. It seems that the first films antagonists fair alright because we generally get proportional set up time between the hero and the villain to make their confrontation logically oppositional, but by the sequel, the villain is an afterthought or plot device. In Marvel’s case, where we have giant ensemble casts, the villains end up complete throw-away characters or characters with otherwise senseless motivations or actions. If Marvel has an Achilles heel, that would be it. So what I want to see, beyond world building, is a deepened compulsion to care about this world through a villain who presents a credible threat and who comes off as more than a CGI mustache twirler who is e-vil for e-vil’s sake.

Lastly, a potential problem that I worry this film will suffer (based on the trailers) is too much dependence on caricature. Rather than organically building the character’s relationships, I fear we’ll get spoon-fed, exaggerated callbacks to the first film’s characterizations. The fact that this is already an ensemble cast, and the fact they are apparently introducing more characters, and they’ll need to invest time into a new villain...that’s a lot to fit into a two hour film, and the fact that these were already sort of one-dimensional ambulatory action-toys to begin with makes me think that they’ll likely push each into disconnected caricature until each silly quip sounds more like scripted trailer dialog rather than real character banter.

So as I head into this summer’s first blockbuster, these are my expectations and concerns for the film. Below the asterisks, I will give my review through that lens.

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THE REVIEW:

Ok. Wow. My first impression is...quite contrary for the Cinemasochist. I am surprised just how much I enjoyed the first film of 2017. With all that could’ve went wrong with this, it worked on so many levels. I am sure that I will be the minority here, but I can say with enthusiasm that I enjoyed the sequel more than the original.

Let’s start with some objective analyses of the craft. Of course, this is a psychedelic show of dazzling flashing colors and sounds. Ordinarily in many summer blockbusters, this sort of sensory experience overload comes at the expense of things that should matter like character and theme and plot and general narrative sense. In this case, the light show bordered on seizure inducing at times, but mostly served as punctuation rather than primary spectacle. In fact, there was more than one occasion where I marveled at the traditional cinematography. There were elaborate sets with gorgeous shots that proudly pronounced their grandeur beyond the silly summer film that it was. This won a lot of points for me.

The opening sequence was essentially a complicated single take, and the fact that it was mostly constructed inside of a computer ironically didn’t bother me. It was endearing and fun and set a perfect tone for the rest of the film. The characters quickly reintroduced their main station in the group with their actions and dialog. Drax’s wry, constantly-articulated literalism was a fascinating way to explain finer points of the plot in ways that children could understand while not feeling like the plot was pandering to those children. What a novel device!

The jokes landed. I’d say about 80% or so. I laughed out loud more than a few times. Sometimes the jokes were throw aways that likely got a chuckle due to the packed, enthusiastic theater, but there were a good handful that were unexpectedly clever and got solid, authentic laughs out of me.

As for my expectations...my wants, hopes, and fears for this film compared to what I got. Did it take more chances? I’d say in a lot of ways, it did. This was not a traditional, linear, “meet the bad guy, hear the convoluted plot, plucky heroes overcome great odds to defeat him” sort of thing. Sure, there were elements of those tropes, but even the structure was much more original and pacing unpredictable when compared to the first film.

Maybe more important, there was the single theme of familial relationships that pretty much wove through every minute of film. There were obvious plot points which were absurdly overt. But there were subtleties, too. There were thematic echoes that playfully ricocheted off seemingly unrelated plot points. Writing to theme maintained cohesion in a otherwise less traditional narrative. This was another of the films credits.

As for the antagonist? The main antagonist was compelling enough. I do hate that, in the end, there was yet another giant CGI monster with a lot of punching, but at least this villain was given some time to develop. Now, I’m not saying he was the perfect villain. His motivation was a little sloppy. But his villainy didn’t sink the film into mustache twirling nonsense. And more importantly, there were secondary villains. Each of the villains had a plot arc that traced sub-themes through secondary characters, and they all wove around that theme of family and the subjectivity of the concept.

As for caricature...well, once again I thought that the cast had a lot of charm. The attempts to buck the one-dimensionality and develop more interesting characters was a bit strained, trite, and obvious, but at least we got arcs. At least we saw organic character growth. Again, this should be a primary base for all films, but generally summer blockbusters suffer from their characters being devices to move the plot rather than explore the themes. I thought this did a fine job of giving the characters room to explore the themes and to grow. At least, for a movie that’s targeted towards young teens and popcorn eating.

So as for the three things I was most worried about, the film scored passable on all counts. Again, this is not Citizen Kane here. But I left with a smile.

Some other pleasant surprises - I’m actually very glad that the film didn’t pull the punch when killing off a prominent character. The send off again played to the themes. I loved some of the tiny details. For instance, modern films that have large space battles are often compared to *video game like action sequences*. This film subverted that by actually having the villains piloting space crafts remotely with vehicular interfaces that made classic video game arcade sounds.

There were some really bad moments of movie physics. There were some terrible lines when the film got more sentimental. And I was a little disenchanted by the final confrontation. It devolved into CGI monster punching. However, at the very least, it played more or less by the movie universe’s own rules. Starlord learning to harness the power of the planet to counter his father was suggested earlier in the film. It seemed strained logic that he’d have any level of mastery of it to counter him so handily, but at least it wasn’t some extraneous deus ex machina. This was in line with the plot of the movie and was a fairly logical and inevitable place for it to go.

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

Look, I get it. I’m a cynical bastard when it comes to movies, music, games, political ideologies…just about everything. I can no longer compete in cynical Olympics (Cynolympics, great potential band name…) because I lost my amateur status many years ago. But because I am a professional, I have spent a great deal meditating on how to walk the line between what things subjectively make my skin crawl as bad in terms of my taste versus defining generally objective ‘badness’.

Being that it is so trendy to eviscerate the Star Wars prequels as bad, we watch with an expectation and a level of confirmation bias. When we inevitably see the ‘bad things’, we take it as proof positive of their overall badness and feel validated for buying into the group think. I am both guilty of falling into that as well as capable of looking beyond my distaste of the films to see their failures from a point of objectivity.

To demonstrate, I love the original trilogy, but am aware of many of its flaws and shortcomings on an objective level. Even as the pinnacle of blockbuster cinema, they are not beyond reproach for me. The dialog, most especially the tech jargon, is laughable. There is plenty of evidence of a lack of foresight when it comes to the whole of the trilogy. There are contradictions and lapses in logic in plot points and character motivations. And every time Chewbacca does the poorly-modulated-in-post-production “Tarzan yell” at the end of ROTJ just for some sort of warped perception of what will get yucks from the kiddies, I have to keep from putting my foot through the TV…but I love them. I love universe they create. And on an objective level, they do so many things amazingly well that none of these derogatory things peg the audience (or at least, me, and as evidenced by their continued popularity, most people) down.

The prequel trilogy, however, missed so many important marks, missed them so completely, and missed them so consistently, that the only reason to have a strong love for them is the affinity for the pre-existing universe and mythology; the familiarity of the iconography of and appreciation for the universe of the original films. Without that, they’d have been shrugged off in a sub-Jupiter-Ascending fashion.

With the rising number of prequel-defenders I have seen, I thought I’d articulate some of my strongest grievances while they were fresh on my mind from a recent watch. I’d never seek to belittle someone’s enjoyment of a film, but I’d like to establish firmly that there are overt, objective reasons for prequel-disdain…it’s not a simple matter of following the trend. It’s larger than any one point or element.

I am choosing today to post this, because in 12 hours, I will find out if the folks now at the helm have course corrected. I am just as sure that The Force Awakens will suffer flaws as I am the originals are often times viewed through rose colored nostalgic glasses. As the folks at CinemaSins remind us, no movie is without sin, but if there have to be things wrong, I hope that it doesn’t suffer what I consider the primary plights of the prequels, as called out below.

1. The Unearned Corruption of Anakin Skywalker

This movie’s central focus is the fostering of Anaikin Skywalker’s force abilities and the design of his corruption to the dark side by the impending emperor. This is why these films exist. On so many levels, this, the sum of seven hours of cinema, the origin story of what is renowned by most as the most iconic villain of all time, is handled so egregiously that it’s almost impossible to calculate the number of missteps that threaten to dilute the character’s potency.

I’ll give an example. Anakin discovers Palpatine is a Sith Lord. He himself draws his light saber and contemplates killing him, states that he’d certainly like to. Instead, he informs Mace Windu, knowing that Windu would confront Palpatine (and arrest or kill him). Windu does just that, but Anakin wrestles with fear for his love, suspecting only Palpatine can help him save her from certain death. So he intervenes in the arrest, and ends up being the instrument of Windu’s demise (the same moment that Palpatine’s demeanor turns to that of a comical monster). While I think the handling was abysmal, at least I can appreciate what they were going for with it. But even in that fog-headed state, there is never a moment that Anakin would have considered the Jedi to be evil, something that he comes to articulate a few scenes later just after murdering children. “From my point of the view the Jedi are evil” is a line demonstrating one of three things. One, that the narrative suggestion is that Palpatine had all but possessed Anakin to the point of nonsensical, immoral devotion, which I suppose is plausible, but if the case, it is not explored with enough detail or screen time to warrant that level of sudden, fanatical psychosis. Two, that Anakin was lying to himself in an attempt to justify his actions, which is improbably the case considering he immediately starts talking about ruling over his own empire. Or three, the most likely, Lucas realized he was almost out of celluloid and needed the now-evil-Anakin payoff, so he disregarded the sense of an organic character development to make sure the plot points were hit.

I can believe from the plot established that, by the end of ROTS, Anakin would have been a morally broken character and beginning his path towards the dark side. But nothing that transpired (or at least that is shown on screen) makes me believe that he’d murder children, believe the Jedi institution to be evil, force choke Padme in a jealous rage, or have developed the warped ambition to be the evil overlord of a galactic empire. It’s ludicrous.

They hint at things and tease things that, if expanded, may have leant themselves to these ends. For instance, Anakin tells Padme that he has grown so strong that he can overthrow Palpatine and they as husband and wife can rule together. Now that would have been an interesting alternative rabbit hole for the plot to go down. Imagine a scenario where Order 66 is executed at the beginning of ROTS. Anakin finds himself betrayed by his trusted mentor, Palpatine, and can not fight down the desperation for revenge. Obi-Wan tries hard to quell his thirst for vengeance, having had his own small brush with the dark side after seeing Qui Gon murdered by Darth Maul prompted his own desire for vengeance (hell, at least that scene would be worth SOMETHING in this scenario), but the death (or news of the death) of Padme, perhaps interconnected to his own negligence or actions, causes Anakin to lose the last shred of morality that remains. And then, it’s just a matter of watching Anakin “Vaderize”, realizing that the only way to defeat Palpatine would be to fully embrace the power of the dark side. The back half of the film is Anakin engaged in learning the dark side…a negative iteration of Luke’s Jedi training on Dagobah, really. And then, through full corruption of the dark side, Palpatine can continue to manipulate Anakin, just as Luke’s final full embrace of the ‘light’ side helped him to ultimately overpower the emperor’s manipulation. This all seems in line with Palpatine’s recruitment method if you think about ROTJ…he counted on Luke’s hatred of he and Vader to make him powerful, and ultimately sought to use the corruptive nature of that hatred to make him a servant. The themes are the same as the ones we ended up getting, but something like this would be a much more earned and believable character arc.

Attack of the Clones tried to force fit a moment like this with the sand people, but they were faceless adversaries, it felt like a sidequest, and despite his vengeful action and the conveniently timed death of his mother, he really did get over it quite easily. Three minutes of screen time later, he’s smiling and off to save Obi-Wan (for the record, my least favorite moment of the entire prequel trilogy…even more so than the love sonnet on the Coruscant balcony…but more on that in a minute).

Or if the goal was really to have Anakin believe in the perspective ‘evil’ of the Jedi, why not reveal Palpatine as the Sith Lord very early in the film? Anakin discovers the terrible secret, but we spend some time coming to understand a level of sympathy for the disgraced, forgotten, and maligned ethos of The Sith. Being such a passionate person, he relates to embracing that passion rather than dismissing it as the Jedi code demands. Palpatine serves, again, as Luke’s Yoda, teaching him an alternate understanding of the Force, decidedly different than we’ve come to know via the first three movies. We see the lines of good and evil blur, and Anakin comes to understand the history behind the ideology’s extinction at the hands of the Jedi, causing him to question his allegiance. Again, all of this is hinted at just a smidgen, with admittedly great scenes like the strange space-worm-water-opera. But we never once see Anakin ‘learning the dark side’ or about the Sith the way that a Jedi learns his skill set. We never get a training moment. Ever. Are we to assume that a Sith is just a Jedi who operates out of negative emotions? Because it would’ve been so much more interesting to see Anakin ‘learning’ the dark side, find out why it’s so alluring and powerful, rather than Jedi + anger = corrupted and evil Sith. And if the Sith are just angry Jedi, then there wouldn’t be organized dogma…ok, I’ll get to that in a minute too.

I could continue to take this approach, and try desperately to straighten the threads of plot into lines that make for better narratives, but there are issues I take with the narrative as it stands even if it did make the most compelling version of the story. We never see Anakin train to use the force. Never. Not once. Over the course of all three films. The only tutelage we get from Obi-Wan is general policing instinct. Their teacher/student dynamic is pretty much null. You know what I think was the best Obi-Wan / Anakin screen dynamic? The scene when Charles Xavier is teaching Erik Lensherr how to move the impossible to move satellite dish. Oh wait…that was X-Men: First Class. Seriously, go watch it. Put the pair in different costumes, and even McAvoy’s accent and look is a pretty good match. Performed beautifully, a powerful character moment that was more about their emotional connection than their special powers. If you want an example of what I think the Obi-Wan / Anakin dynamic should have been, look no further. And there is precedent for that – that scene in a totally unrelated IP is an amazing mirror for Luke training with Yoda. The major difference is that in this instance, Erik Lensherr goes on to become Magneto, and when the time comes, uses his ability to finally exact his revenge, sort of damning himself. Damnit, that’s exactly what should’ve happened here…just change the name Erik Lensherr to Anakin Skywalker and Magneto to Darth Vader. Erik/Magneto’s character arc is completely believable, performed with dignity by a highly skilled actor, and sets up a character that we legitimately emotionally feel for into a powerful villain that we hate yet sympathize with. I mean, hell, it even tugged at the World War 2 symbolism in the same way as Star Wars metaphorically does. With a virtually unlimited budget, why again couldn’t we get a moment that even approximated that with the Star Wars prequels and the intrinsic relationship we already had with those characters?

2. Bad Retconning

The prequels were almost entirely fan-service retconning. If a thing was mentioned in the originally trilogy, it was interpreted in some way and jammed in to the prequels. The problem is, interpretations were often contrary to the themes or events of the original trilogy. These ranged from subtle slights to the viewer’s intelligence to downright insultingly pandering. One that’s often not discussed that still bothers the hell out of me was the name Darth being used as a proper title. It’s a silly little thing, but it’s details like this that just made me see the entire universe as being a castle made of sand. Darth Vader was obviously designed to be the character’s taken name. In Obi-Wan’s duel with him in A New Hope, he says, “You can’t win, Darth” in a familiar tone that in no way suggests he’s politely addressing him by his title moniker…he’s not saying “You can’t win, Lord”. Darth was retconned to be a title given to Siths…because, reasons, I guess? It sounded cool? It made us understand who the bad guys were? I’m not sure. And of course, the term Sith itself was never used in the original trilogy. You’d think in all the talks to Luke by the Jedi, “don’t underestimate the Sith” might have been verbiage to come up. Then there’s the whole ‘rule of two’ thing…because the original trilogy had a dark side master and student, the prequels established an inconceivable ‘there can be only two’ doctrine for those following the dark path of the force. But it seemed to only apply as a mythos sound byte. There was Darth Sideous with his apprentice Darth Maul…but there was also *count* Dooku who was always operating…yet wasn’t called Darth…yet was a Sith apprentice…who called Darth Sideous his master. I don’t know…maybe it can be explained better by expanded universe subtext, but…the whole Sith dogma thing didn’t work at all. It seemed to suggest that in the original trilogy, Luke *had to kill Vader* or *join with Vader to take down the Emperor* because there can be only two, which, for me, takes all of the power out of the moral, human quandary and makes it a matter of that silly dogmatism instead. By all indications, giving into to hate and using the force backed by negative emotions made you an evil force user that wasn’t fit to be a Jedi…the concept that there was a group just as regimented as the Jedi that served as an opposing force just felt…wrong. If Sith was just the name for unworthy or banished Jedi or something, it’d be one thing…but…

Some other common instances of bad retconning that people point out often: No, Darth Vader did not give Obi-Wan his light saber to pass on to Luke. Both Obi-Wan and Darth Vader would almost certainly recognize C3P0 and R2. Considering the events of the prequels, it’s virtually impossible to believe wanderlusting-Luke would have known about and been excited over mention of the Clone Wars, but never heard of The Force or the Jedi. General Motti talks about the force as some ancient religion when he logically would have been plenty old enough to remember the Jedi as guardians of peace and justice, and pretty much leading the military unit that he is now a general of….and considering his rank, he may have even been employed or close to it at that time. The fact that the force can not be taught, but is the byproduct of microscopic symbiotes in the blood stream. Storm troopers are clones with accelerated growth and machine-like loyalty, while machines are contrarily self-thinking and rebellious…

Sure, one can go to pains to explain all of these things and sort of hack away at them until they fit into place, but it all seems so convoluted, where as one of the greatest things about the original trilogy was how narratively taught it was.

The point is, it’s as if Lucas created a spreadsheet with things mentioned in the first film…”Clone Wars”, Anakin Skywalker being a good pilot, Jedi being guardians of peace, Obi-Wan being Anakin’s former master, etc…and just started ticking them off the script list, wedging them in however and wherever he could. This retcon approach feels less like world building and more like assembly line production…see any other Star Wars knockoff film that attempts to recapture the magic of Star Wars by including similar structure and iconography for other examples of why this is a bad approach, and cheapened the storytelling of the prequels.

3. Everyone is a goddamn comedian.

So the original trilogy has it all – moments of heightened drama, romance, comedy, action and adventure…of course. It pulls off a great balancing act of blended genres. One of the competent manners in which it achieves this is by giving its characters a particular space to play in. You have the whiney farm boy who will grow to be a powerful hero. You have the agnostic sidekick who will grow to be a great and passionate ally with something to fight for. You have the warrior princess who is secretly leading the rebellion, yet still maintains her femininity. You have the entitled, self serving droid who will become selfless and realize he is an integral part of a bigger story. You have a wise old mystic who is unassuming in stature but powerful in magic. However, in the prequel trilogy, every character is the comic relief. Every single one. Every other line is a distracting quip that would be completely interchangeable with any other character. Anakin joking about not being able to find the speeder he wanted, Obi-Wan taunting Grievous and calling the blaster uncivilized, Padme cracking a joke about aggressive negotiations, Yoda sarcastically calling out the pride found in the older more experienced Jedi, everything C-3PO says, everything Jar-Jar says, Watto poking fun at the Jedi mind trick, the ridiculous pod-race commentators, stupid anti-death-stick campaigns, another happy landing, staying away from power converts, hating it when he does that, she seems like she’s on top of things…like, EVERY line, regardless of circumstance…every third line is a quip. And most of them don’t even pertain to the dramatic voice of the particular character or contribute to the drive of the scene. They’re just cheap lines. In the original trilogy, there were quips as well, but they were at least generally shallow insights into characters, their backgrounds or stations, and their relationships. The prequels tend to turn any scenario into…poor community theater improve night? That’s certainly what it feels like.

And let’s not forget the worst offender…the droids. Never in the history of cinema has a thing annoyed me more than the battle droids. Seriously. Everyone finds Jar-Jar the most annoying element of the prequels, but I disagree. I’d take an army of clumsy gungans over a single battle droid. They’re worthless and ineffectual. As a foil, they are like practice dummies. They never once represent a threat to any of the characters, Jedi or not. As for their mannerisms, you know that whole ‘Roger, Roger’ schtick? The only explanation is that it is an homage to the movie Airplane. But…in Airplane, the captain’s name was Roger, and it was followed by “what’s your vector Victor?” and other word play nonsense. And it was a slapstick Zucker brothers comedy featuring Leslie Neilson. This is f*cking space opera. In Star Wars, not only is it not funny, it makes no sense as a joke, because you know…the droids name ISN’T Roger. Why, by any standard of reasoning, was this a thing that happened? What did it add, in any way shape or form, to the plot? Try and approximate their obnoxious being with anything in the universe created in the original trilogy. Even for prequel-defenders, there is absolutely no defense for this. And seeing as the ‘great droid army’ is supposed to be this epic threat…it really undercuts my investment in all that is happening.

4. The Jedi are superheroes

I anticipate that force-aided Jedi have wondrous powers. They can manipulate energy fields that are created by all living things. But calculating 500 story free fall in the middle of Coruscantian rush hour and grabbing hold of a speeding flying transport without tearing the limbs from your shoulders should STILL not be possible, or at the very least, should be a matter of such extreme improbability and concern that it would cause some level of trepidation or danger (see Harrison Ford jumping off the dam in The Fugitive…danger. We know he’ll live, but HE doesn’t know he’ll live, and without the character having the knowledge of the danger, it wouldn’t have been interesting to watch…contrast that to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, where Marion haphazardly drives off the side of the cliff with a big old grin on her face. Just watch those two movie scenes back to back to understand the difference in the effect it creates…when you have vulnerable versus invincible characters facing what should be a dramatic physical challenge of some sort). Or standing on a foot-thick piece of metal floating on a river of molten lava hot enough to melt through a steel bridge should still instantly cook a hero to ash. Or deflecting a thousand multi-directional laser blasts at the same time. None of these sort of god-like feats that we saw was suggested by the original trilogy, yet the prequels are filled with these moments. It leaves no room for the threat of danger, and without the threat of danger, it’s like watching a kid play with action figures for two hours. The most ‘bad ass’ fights become incredibly boring…the fact that people are swinging laser swords are each other is cool and all, but it needs to have some level of emotional heft, other wise there is zero investment. I need to care about the individuals in the battles. I need to know there is a chance my hero will fail, or that at the very least the hero has a perception that he may fail and is attempting to overcome the odds in order to prevail.

Compare the experience of watching the fight between Obi-Wan and General Grievous for the first time with the experience of watching Luke fight the Rancor. One has tension and drama that demonstrate the character’s growth as a force user, establishing his maturation towards becoming a Jedi. The other just has things that are happening…lots of flashing lights moving really fast and loud sounds. Action scenes in an action movie are critical, of course…but they shouldn’t be gratuitous. They should be complementary to the character development and the themes, not just pad the plot with over-the-top sensory experiences.

5. The Films Are Emotionally Tone Deaf.

This is my biggest problem with the films, I think, as stand alone film experiences. Moment to moment, the tone of them is so disjointed that it never forms the sort of cohesion as the original trilogy. I can cite broad examples, such as comparing the empathic sense of wonder the exploration of the magical Dagobah, where we feel we are part of the experiential journey where Luke is an Avatar for the audience, to Obi-Wan’s detective work on the mysterious Kamino, which just feels sterile and disconnected. But that’s not where the problem is most evident. It’s in all of the small moments, such as in AOTC, when we find out about Obi-Wan’s peril. Anakin has just buried his mother, slid very far down an emotional rollercoaster into his first major brush with the dark side, he’s vulnerable and defeated. His whiny disinterest in saving Obi-Wan seems at least somewhat fitting in his exposed and nihilistic state. Then Padme delivers a silly line, and he gets the big goofy grin as the score turns from brooding and morose to uplifting and adventurous (did I mention this is my pick for the worst moment in the trilogy, and demonstrates in one scene everything that is wrong with the films tonally?). One line of dialog dismisses his heartache over burying his mother, a major plot point that drives the entire first half of the film and is supposed to be his heft towards the dark side. And its emotional heft is gone in an instant. The shift is preposterous. While that’s the most extreme case for me, every character has moments like this, as if the actors themselves don’t understand the material, their emotional states, or how their character would react to those emotional states (read: that’s generally on the director, not the actors…just saying). These sorts of weird, abrupt tonal shifts happen throughout the prequels, both in character’s actions and story points. Anakin is creepy stalker one second, rejected by the more mature and proper Padme, then in the next the suave and irresistible swashbuckler who has captured her heart without the story ever having earned that beat. Palpatine’s flawlessly executed, calculating deception shifts to hokey monster. The suggestion and devoted screen time to allusions of the harsh life of slaves on Tatooine, which in context ends up looking just as comfortable as life on Naboo. Qui-Gon cites tenets of the Jedi while appearing to be morally bankcrupt. It’s painful.

And I really am not sure if I can fully fault the actors. I mean…you have a cast that includes multiple A-listers like Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor...how does one f*ck that up?

Again, nothing I have said here isn’t something that hasn’t already been said. I’m sure people who enjoyed the films will defend some of these points…there is no reason to be defensive. I’m not attacking anyone’s taste. But these are some overall issues I took with the prequels upon a recent watch as I prepared for tonight’s viewing of the Force Awakens. Again, I’m sure that the new film will not be without it’s flaws, but I hope that it doesn’t fall into the trappings outlined above.

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

So, most of my reviews regarding my media consumption habit, especially those that are embraced as pop culture, tend to fall on the side of cynical evisceration. So, just to mix things up, I’d like to swing the other way for a change.

Now, I don’t want to say that Game of Thrones is without its share of problems. While the iconography, set design, and atmosphere are always on par with any cinematic experience, the story is often murky with too many interwoven plot lines, some of which receive no real memorable dramatic arc or satisfying resolution. While I applaud the show for not being condescending, its meandering pace that took six entire seasons to put its characters in their positions to finally be poised for relevance in the fantasy/adventure sense of the word has sometimes felt gratuitous.

But the last two episodes of season six demonstrated the strength in the storytelling of this brutal, often soulless world. It was thematically sneaky, and very deliberate in its chronology.

In episode 9, we get an entire episode of very rare vindication for characters we’ve rooted for. In the GoT universe, generally characters we root for die tragically towards the end of seasons, but in this season, we see Jon Snow, now reunited with his *sister*, defeat the army of Ramsay Bolton to hang his family’s crest at Winterfell. We cheer as Sansa Stark exacts her revenge in the most vile and violent, yet karmically appropriate, way against Bolton. We see Tyrion’s pragmatic council acknowledged, and as a result we see Daenerys show restraint against decimating the slaver’s cities, but still feel cathartic as her dragons dole out justice against the slavers, brutally barbecuing their attacking ships.

Episode 9 was intent on being a long-time-coming catharsis. We cheered for the end result of the violent acts, enacted by the characters we supported against the characters we loathed. In the case of episode 9, we were presented with black and white morality, and accepted the most brutal horror, so long as it supported that morality.

And then, there was last night’s episode 10. As we the audience rode the wave of the gratification of the previous episode’s violence, we were presented with similar levels of grand violence, all characters enacting it having the same level of personal justifications for it, yet each one morally gray on the scale that episode 9 had established. Yes, Cersei murdered those who sought to usurp and manipulate the power of her son, but she also murdered innocents and used the event for her own political gain. Yes, we as the audience wanted to see the High Sparrow and company brought down, so we cheer, but then we acknowledge the calculated motivations of Cersei, and we quickly revert to loathing her. So how are we to feel about her action, once it has all played out? Similarly, we got to see Arya Stark exact some revenge for the Red Wedding, but she didn’t only assassinate Walder Frey...she murdered his children, baked them into a pastry, and fed them to him. This demonstrated not only vengeance, but was an eerie callback to the joy of a twisted sort of sadism we might expect of, say, Ramsay Bolton. We as an audience celebrated at the death of this vile individual, but at the same time, were left unsettled contemplating how the fixation on revenge was corrupting Arya. How are we to feel about this realized vengeance in the face of how it was achieved?

And none of this was explicitly spelled out. It was subtle. It used the conventions of filmmaker to make the point; great juxtaposition of themes and very purposeful cinematography.

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

I was recently tagged by a friend, Brad Cox, in the circulating “Ten Albums in Ten Days” post. The subject of ten life-defining albums likely has a different context for folks like Brad Cox of Skitzo Calypso fame and myself, as rather than discussing which albums had the most influential presence in our lives and help shape their taste, musicians talk about influential albums as things that directly teach them how to communicate with the world. It’s not just enjoyment or the sonic wallpaper to connect nostalgically to a point in life or even mere empathic resonance, it’s more akin to learning and refining a language.

Because of this, I thought I’d give this request the attention it deserves, and put it in one spot, with links and at least a paragraph or two of context for each entry for anyone who cares. At this point in my musical *career* (if what it was could ever have been called that, and knowing that if it could, I’m long retired...), I didn’t think anyone was interested in what helped shape my musical voice. But if you’re here and reading, here you go.

Some of my selections will be obvious choices considering my age, while others are much more esoteric. So without further delay, here is a list of the top ten albums which changed my consciousness and shaped me as both a person and an artist. I’ll also try to provide links wherever possible for anyone who is curious.

10. The Toadies - Rubberneck

(Most influential song for me...after much consideration, Away)

Every 90’s kid remembers the weird, anthemic Possum Kingdom. They might not know it by name, but they’d immediately recognize the gritty, odd time guitar riff, or the howling, almost operatic climax of Vaden Lewis singing “Do you wanna die?! I promise you...my sweet angel...”. Wacky lyrics that allude to vampirism around a small Texas lake fronting an almost live sounding, post-grunge production would transport just about anyone who ever listened to “alternative radio” to a simpler time.

For me, Rubberneck has a special place in helping shape my identity, and the album appeared recursively throughout my life. I first saw the Toadies live at a K-Rock-athon (what a show, in retrospect...Butthole Surfers, Toadies, The Refreshments, Verve Pipe, Reverend Horton Heat, Poe, Seven Mary Three... a bunch more for ten dollars!). I remember Jeremie Lucia being especially enthusiastic for their set. At the time, I only knew that one radio song. They put on one of my favorite performances of the day. I actually bought their CD from the big collective merch table. It marked the very first CD that I’d bought at the show of a band after having heard them play live.

Later in life, I’d be part of a band called Fortune Victims (Jason S Berlin, John Butler - thanks WayBackMachine...this still exists! ha!) with dramatically varied influences (the alchemy of influences was probably the main reason that many talented musicians couldn’t quite congeal). One member loved The Cure, another hated the Cure and loved Dream Theater, another hated the Cure and Dream Theater but loved Nirvana, etc. Yet one band that resurfaced as a weird collective unifier was The Toadies. Everyone in the band seemed to dig them. Perhaps it was because they marked the centerpoint of the influences. They were simple and raucous while being melodically driven with clever earworms, yet at the same time interesting and left of center enough to be unique, with song themes that were different and dark but performed with a maniacal glee. The band that grew out of Fortune Victims’s collapse was Eat Your Neighbors (Jason S Berlin, Jeff Conner, Mark Krida), and that band was heavily influenced right from the start by this album, and the 2001 follow up Hell Below, Stars Above. Eat Your Neighbors even got the opportunity to perform with The Toadies several years later and thank them for their influence.

9. Barkmarket - L. Ron

(most influential song, Feed Me)

Maybe no coincidence, there is a lineage of influence from The Toadies to Barkmarket. As far as influence goes, you can get from The Toadies to Barkmarket through one band, and that’s Jawbox, which is also an irony, as the engineer for Eat Your Neighbors was also Jawbox’s engineer (Drew Mazurek). It all starts to feel a little incestuous!

Ironically, I didn’t find Barkmarket through this channel, so for me personally it was a coincidence. My former boss knew my general musical tastes and asked me the day before I left to go on my first national tour if I’d ever heard Barkmarket. He promised me that L. Ron would be a life changing experience. He wasn’t wrong.

From the ironic, iconic, comically low-fi opening of Visible Cow throughout the album’s completely unique, raw, guttural tones, I was deeply intrigued from the very first listen. Like any great album, it took me several listens to truly become acquainted and comfortable with it. It’s not an album full of hooks or quotable choruses. But something about the tone continued to draw me back, listen after listen, until it became somewhat of a sonic obsession. Frontman David Sardy had a unconventional phrasing cadence for his lyrics that began to reshape my own lyrical structure. This was a dude who had no desire to write radio friendly tunes. He was just a tone junky blazing a path to creating unbridled angst with the sound of his instrument. And that’s something I could get down with!

Come to find out, Sardy wasn’t just a musician. He had become a composer (of films like 21, Premium Rush, End of Watch, Zombieland, and recently Bright on Netflix) and producer/engineer (of bands like Red Hot Chilli Peppers, System of a Down, Wolfmother, Rage Against the Machine).

I always wanted to record with him. I wanted to see what he could do with the thing that I did. I sort of got the chance with the last iteration of Eat Your Neighbors (Dylan Schwacke, Matthew Scott Mayer), as part of filming The New 8-bit Heroes. I got to sit down and interview him for the film, and he let us track for a day in his mixing studio out in Hollywood. It wasn’t a true Sardy session, so it just frustratingly whet my appetite with that curiosity, but it was still really a cool experience to have him sitting at the board while I made loud noises. This track, Passive Aggressive Epithet, (eventually mixed by Drew Mazurek...see how weird all the interconnections are?!) was the result.

8. Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen

(most influential song: One Angry Dwarf and 2000 Solemn Faces)

Once upon a time, I fancied myself a piano player. Long before I picked up a guitar to make loud, aurally offensive noises, I was banging on keys making aurally offensive noises. At that time, there weren’t all that many cool rock and roll piano role models. You had Elton John and Billy Joel, I guess, but they felt as if they were disconnected from my generation...dad rock, so to speak. I could jump back to Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles, and I did love them (especially Ray!), but again, the connection simply wasn’t there. The keytar in 80’s glam rock never spoke to me. Techno had some cool synth things going on, but not a whole lot of just rocking out on the ivories.

And then, I went to John Popper’s Horde Tour, and caught an act that changed my perception of what angsty rock music could sound like. This amazing three piece band played the side stage...loud, bashy grunge like druming backing a standup bass player who ran the jazz instrument through a distortion pedal, and fronted by a charismatic piano player who, at the end of their set, smashed that piano into smithereens with the piano stool. Needless to say, he had me at *smashed piano*.

The thing that is most amazing about this album is the amount of technical proficiency on display while being completely irreverent and uninhibited. There is an almost mystical level of control while being completely out of control that fascinates me, and I always wanted to emulate it. But I know that’s a silly aspiration, as I’ll never be as technically proficient at anything as Ben Folds is at piano on this album!

To date, I don’t think I’ve gone on a long road trip since 1998 where I haven’t played this album front to back. It may seem like an oddity on the list considering my taste for loud guitars and whatnot, but I think that’s because there’s simply nothing else quite like it.

7. A random mix of NoMeansNo songs

(most influential song: Now)

Alright, this one is a little bit of a cheat. This is not a proper ‘album’. However, to me, it was. While on our first national tour, we bonded with

M R Chvasta

and his Atlanta band Light Pupil Dilate (unfortunately, I can’t find any recordings on line or I’d link!) over a mutual love for Barkmarket. It was Chvasta who burned us a CD of a band that we just had to hear, NoMeansNo. It joined with a collection of music that we found while on tour, and for a week or so, passed in and out of random rotation. But while most albums ended up as background noise, something about this CD started to click. Perhaps it stood out due to its weirdness alone. Or perhaps it was hearing in in the context of late night, introspective drives through long stretches of road, where lyrical passages and fun alliteration began to echo in my brain and haunt me with cleverness of writing and relevance as an artist. I’ll give a few examples:

NOW: “Now if I had the courage I'd pour into your jar All the things that I have heard you whisper in the dark And when that jar was heavy With your honeyed confidence I'd put it to my lips and drink its meaning and its sense Its meaning and its sense Well nothing could be plainer Than the things that have been done And there can be no mystery in what is yet to come It's now that howls at nothing It's now that runs and hides It's now that winds its spineless coils and slithers out of sight Your cries above the furrow Draw my fingers like a plow Through tattered ends that twist and bend about the here and now The here is blind and helpless And strives against the dark The Now's a well of shadows where the world has come apart The world has come apart” -or- THE RAPE: “I've been sentenced to all the things I had to do And a naked image grew out of my hands A craftsman without tools, I fashioned these for you Voiceless words and sketches of imaginary lands”

To me, the struggling artist wrestling with existentialism and the futility of the compulsion to create, this was the most evocative sort of poetry. I took many cues from them, and their influence is absolutely undeniable on all of the Eat Your Neighbors albums.

Because there was no true album to reference with links, I’ll link at least most of the songs that I remember being on that long gone recordable CD. It’s loud and weird and raw and bizarre and smart and low brow and wonderful and poetic and irreverent all at the same time. For the punk fans, some tracks also feature Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys.

Now

Cats, Sex, and Nazis

I’ve Got a Gun

Red on Red

Rags and Bones

The River

Bodybag

Two Lips Two Lungs And One Tongue

Stop Talking

The Day Everything Became Nothing

Dance of the Headless Bourgeoisie

6. The Mars Volta - Deloused In the Comatorium

(Most influential song: Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt)

I remember once saying early in our collaborative musical journey to Jeff Conner, long time partner in musical crime, that if he ever caught me using more than two guitar effects pedals he should punch me in the face...that if I couldn’t get the job with clean and distorted and relied instead on sonic enhancements, I wasn’t a good enough songwriter. Part of me still believes that, and I think most of the examples on this list demonstrate my natural proclivity to that raw sound. However, my continued awe in The Mars Volta’s sonic masterpiece Deloused In the Comatorium certainly challenges the potency of conviction on that point!

If memory serves, I believe I owe my first brush with this one to Jon Carroll of early 2000s era Baltimore bands Uncle Joe’s Funeral / Muscle Twin.

This is less music and more a complete operatic soundscape of the likes of which I’d never heard. Classic rock aficionados could point to, say, Pink Floyd or King Crimson, at unsuccessful attempts at referential comparisons. For me, this album virtually created its own genre. It was more structured with more potent hooks than noise rock, but was much too technical and ambient to fit into any other classification. It played with polyrythms and dissonances to create and relieve tension in ways I’d never heard. It generated psychic atmosphere in a way that was hypnotic and demanded attention. Some passages were frenetic beyond sense, while others simple enough to incorrectly suggest silence.

But what drives it for me is the way that the often abstract lyrical content mingles with the often ambient music to manifest these surreal psychological landscapes. The entire album is a weird sort of fantasy metaphor for the coma reality after a failed suicide attempt. It conjures Guillermo del Toro levels of beauty and horror. It’s one of the few albums that I’ve ever experienced that exists in my mind as much visually as it does aurally. Sure, with some music I have a mental image of its performers or some music video I’ve seen that can often be triggered upon hearing, but with Deloused, my brain conjures the entire imaginary landscape, atmosphere, and scenario of something I’ve never actually experienced more vividly than recollection of a dream. That’s obscenely powerful.

5. Folk Implosion - The New Folk Implosion

(Most influential song: Creature of Salt)

The subject of the sonic wallpaper of our imaginations is a perfect segue to The New Folk Implosion. I would be willing to bet that this is an album that almost no one reading this has heard of. You may have some fleeting memory of the Folk Implosion song Natural One from the mid 90s, but that’s about it.

Even if you know who Lou Barlow is, and are familiar with not only Folk Implosion, but also Dinosaur Jr. or Sebadoh, you may be unaware that Folk Implosion ever had any music besides that one stray 90s track. In fact, for a long time, that represented me as well. One day, Jeff Conner introduced me to a song he’d downloaded called Creature of Salt. He knew it was the sort of left-of-center music that really speaks to me (I’m still not sure how he found it). Eventually, I discovered the entire album. I was dumbfounded that I’d never heard it before. It was this deeply personal, lyrically vulnerable, sonically evocative album that was consistently beautiful from start to finish. There was a hollowness to it that spoke to a perpetual state of longing. It was a long, introspective drive on a dreary fall day, bottled in the form of a compact disc.

To date, when I am writing, this is my soundtrack. I can put this on repeat for 8 hours straight, 5 days a week, and it never grows old. At this point it’s a Pavlovian response. When I hear the opening preroll to Fuse, my conscious brain steps out of the way and allows my subconscious to pour out of me.

I actually contacted Lou Barlow a few years back about using a song on The New 8-bit Heroes soundtrack. We had a nice series of exchanges. Apparently, this was a reviled album. The critics eviscerated it. His label hated it. His fans panned it. And the whole thing made him a bit jaded, as it was a very personal, intimate album for him. He joked, “Oh, so you’re the guy who liked that album”, as if to say the album was so discounted, that I was the first to find merit in it.

I can’t stress enough that it’s a beautiful group of songs, and I urge everyone to give it a listen. The link I’ve posted above may not be to the entire album, it was just to a third party playlist that had at least some of the songs.

4. Rezin: Summer of the Braindead Everyone

(Most influential track: C.O.W.C.O.D.)

The first of the *local bands* to make the list. The fact that I’m referring to Rezin as a local band, and that you don’t have fond memories of rocking out to them in your angsty teenage years, demonstrates that the universe is an unjust place. Pete Swindler has the sort of rock and roll voice, communion with his craft, and charisma that musical movements are built upon. The band’s entire catalog would be at home among the pantheon of strong acts from the 90s, like early Soundgarden or Alice In Chains.

It was a shitty Sunday afternoon show at the Thunderdome nightclub in Baltimore (if that sounds like a cool place...believe me, it wasn’t). It was the sort of show where you found yourself playing your heart out for your girlfriend, your drunken buddy, and the bored sound man (that’s not hyperbole, I could give you the name of all three). I remember being completely disinterested in Rezin on name alone, as I was anticipating some bad suburban stoner reggae. But we did the obligatory CD swap, and I think Summer of the Braindead Everyone sat in the passenger seat of my car for a month before I popped it in. The first track didn’t grab me, and I don’t think I listened any farther.

A month or two later, they performed at a show at the infamous Fletchers in Fells Point. It may have been an early Noise in the Basement show, as a matter of fact, but I can’t remember whether we were on the bill or just out to support some friends. I have an acute recollection of hearing Mr. Overhead Projector, and the unbelievable vocal control, creative melodic sensibility, and range of Pete Swindler. This band was exactly the proverbial musical brethren Jeff Conner and I had been searching for. Why had I ignored that poor cd?!

The reason I chose C.O.W.C.O.D. as the most influential track rather than Mr. Overhead Projector is because I feel that song perfectly demonstrates a unique trait of my favorite Rezin songs. At 2:38 in the track, there is a logical bridge that leads to a resolute ending that almost sounds as if it could be its own song. It counters the angst and dissonance of the front half of the song with this resolute, consonant beauty. It retains all of its power while illustrating just how brilliant Pete is at melody construction.

Another great example of this can be found on their Aim Lower album, at about the 2:30 mark of the song Stress Fracture. I may be presumptuous in this assessment since I did not write the song, but I know for my part, I feel like our love for what Rezin was doing and this sort of structure definitely at least influenced Eat Your Neighbors Whiskey Flies (at the 3:00 mark).

3. Pearl Jam: Versus

(Most influential track: hard to pick, but maybe Rearview Mirror)

I mean, it was the first CD I ever bought with my own money. It was the first cd I played in my college dorm room. It was one of two cds that I had on in my car on the way to the first Eat Your Neighbors performance (the other was Badmotorfinger). I have probably played Pearl Jam Versus front to back more than any other album. It would be hard to extract this album from my life without truly upending it.

You probably won’t meet many kids who grew up in the 90s that won’t have Ten, Versus, or Vitalogy on their top ten list. And sure, Evenflow and Jeremy brought the cultural wave, and Spin the Black Circle is one of my favorite Pearl Jam songs. But Versus has a completely unique voice that I always felt was a bit more authentic and personal.

Most times, bands who achieve immense success as Pearl Jam did with Ten turn in a really lackluster sophomore effort. It’s no mystery as to why. Imagine spending years cultivating your sound, hungry for it to be heard, emotion in every nuance, the trials of life feeding every musical impulse. Then imagine the follow up, having to be written to appease the label by a deadline, with the only experience separating it from the last album being 18 months on the road living like a rock star.

But with Pearl Jam, I feel like the opposite happened. Ten was an amazing album with incredible songs, but I still feel like producers and engineers were in control of the sound. Mainstream audiences hadn’t quite embraced the Seattle sound yet, and I feel like Ten still has tendrils reaching backwards towards arena rock, not fully committing to the forward direction of what the band wanted to do sonically. Whereas with Versus, it felt much more like a handful of mics set up in the practice space, capturing them raw and in their element. And judging from the albums that came after, this was more in line with what they wanted to be creating sonically.

2. Tokyo Storm Warning: Demo tape

(Most influential song: it may or may not be called 12 Seconds)

Likely, not one person on my friends list has ever heard the band Tokyo Storm Warning. So let me tell you a quick story.

Jump back in time to 1996. I’m in my first high school band that, as of yet, hasn’t even quite settled on a name. I get a flier at the Horde Tour (whoa...right, that’s the Horde tour that I saw Ben Folds Five perform...) about a call for demo tapes for the upcoming Adirondack New Music Festival.

Excitedly, my cohorts and I (including Mike Visalli...I think he’s the only one on FB) slap together a crappy demo with a “borrowed’ four track recorder from our high school and decide on the name Stark Raving Sane (a name concocted on the spot by the late Jim Kallassy, conveniently at the moment I had the paper and a pen in hand). Against all odds, we get selected to be among the 40 performing acts from all over the northeast, and are slated for a Sunday performance at the Washington County Fairgrounds!

We gathered a bunch of friends together (Amy Heiderich, Lucas Carrier, Eric Wilcox, Michelle Reath Andrews, Laura Parisi, Gretchen Ellinwood to name a few), and had a nice little caravan up to the event, sure that we were about to perform at some major rock concert.

What you see in the above image is approximately the entire crowd.

But we had a blast, smashing garbage cans with baseball bats, getting bras thrown at us from our close friends who sat huddled on a cement divider near the stage, making very loud noises through a very powerful sound system, and getting our first live, off-the-board demo tape recording of our original songs! So as pathetic as it was, it wasn’t a total loss.

On the stage adjacent to us, just after we were finished, a band was performing in this little indoor hangar. This band was incredible. They were making the exact sort of music that I wanted to create. They were the first *independent* band I had ever seen perform live. They were called Tokyo Storm Warning.

I got their demo tape. This is also right around the time that I was first starting to drive. My car only had a cassette player, but most of my music was on CDs, so Tokyo Storm Warning became pretty much the perpetual soundtrack of my car for that very formative part of my life. Remember, that Adirondack New Music Festival was my band’s first *real show*, and was the jumping off point to me pursuing music, which became my entire identity for the next 20 years or so, and now this was the music I was listening to daily, shaping the sort of music I’d come to write. Not to mention, this was the time in my life where my own car meant that budding freedom of adolescence and finding my own identity. This cassette was sort of mixed in and there for all of that.

Then I went to college, and the tape was lost. Here’s the frustrating part - 1996 was a time before bands routinely had web sites. There was no social media. People were just starting to use email. There was no repository for media like YouTube. Hell, their music probably never even saw a digitization, it was probably analogue all the way through. And without the tape, I knew nothing about the band other than their name. Adding to the misfortune, as future search results would prove, there was an Elvis Costello song with the same name...so ultimately, any Google search for more info was fruitless without more info. “Tokyo Storm Warning” + “Music” or “Band” was futile.

I can recall the cassette from memory. I even can now play on guitar some of the songs I remember. But it has now been more tan 20 years...more than half of my life...since I’ve had an actual copy of those songs.

This may or may not be the impetus for an upcoming documentary, by the way.

1. Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

(most influential song: Soma)

There’s not a whole lot I feel that I need to say about this album. If you are reading this, you’ve almost certainly heard it. If you’ve heard it, like it or not, you know how important it was to the musical wave that has still yet to recede. This was also the album that flipped the switch in my brain from being a passive consumer of music to wanting to create music. Specifically, the first time I heard the song Soma. It hit me at the exact right time, in the exact right mood. I first heard this probably right in line with the moment the personal burden of adolescent consciousness hit me. I was 13, jaded over a girl, wrestling with my own identity, beginning to find that the universal truths I’d implicitly believed in as a kid were glorified opinions, you know...all that good teenage stuff that yields all the angst that made so much of the music on this list so popular. My head was in a new place. This song was the first point of focus through that lens. When the song reached its climax, and the guitar let out its series of pained, almost atonal screeches, it changed my entire perception of music and what it could be and what it should be and what it really meant. I’ve spent the time since, about 25 years, trying to create something that has that affect for someone else.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Queens of the Stone Age: Rated R

Soundgarden: Superunknown

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

So here is the frustrating thing. The Last Jedi was full of really good ideas. Not just novel or clever ideas, but genuinely good ideas that both make sense in Star Wars but are also different enough to give the film (and this generation) its own voice. I give the film high marks for that, as it is not an easy feat. The Force Awakens felt more like a traditional Star Wars film than the prequels did, but so much felt like a retread that it alienated many viewers. This film managed to bring some great conceptual ideas into Star Wars and its ensemble of characters and at the same time, carve its own path.

The problem is, every good idea seemed to be mired in a stew of nonsense and contrarily bad creative decisions. Understand, I’m saying this as both a Star Wars fan who rocked my Empire t-shirt to the screening, and also as someone who is able to objectively step back from the compulsion to nerd out over everything that has a light saber in it in order to evaluate it critically. Some of my gripes are from a narrative standpoint as a writer and filmmaker, while some are from my love of the series. I do not seek to dismiss anyone’s enjoyment of the film. However, I also will not let anyone’s enjoyment of the film dismiss my critical analysis and the things that hampered my enjoyment of the film.

Ok, I think those two paragraphs were long enough to fill the space so that no one will see any of the unwanted spoilers I’m about to post. Did you catch that? Spoilers below. Do not read further if you don’t want spoilers. And also, please keep any comments spoiler free!

Let’s dig in. I’m going to begin with some less volatile issues and work our way up to the big ones

THE OVERALL THEME: Why is it awesome? If there is a primer within the film to understanding the film, it’s in the theme, shared by both villains and heroes, to burn the whole thing down. Yoda and Luke burn down the ancient tree, slighting the ancient texts importance. Kylo suggests to kill of everything that will hold you back. It’s an obvious primer to understanding Johnson’s motivation as a director. Burn down the expectations of the franchise to allow something new and interesting to grow in its place. I love his devotion and exploration of theme from different perspectives. I love that the film is supposed to be about something, rather than just a flashy fan service film with laser swords and space battles.

Why does it suck? It sucks because its execution is wonky, and it invalidates a lot of reasons we’re interested in Star Wars as a cinematic universe in the first place. It’s as if someone had a brilliant concept for a novel. The outline treatment demonstrated a genius articulation around its themes, chapter by chapter. But then, upon crafting the thing. the actual prose sucked. Or as if someone had a major moment of inspiration for a symphony, and gathered the most talented musicians in the world, and had a brilliant melody written for it, but the actual orchestration sucked. That’s what The Last Jedi feels like. All of its great component pieces are swimming in a stew of nonsense. For instance...

THE CASINO PLANET: What was great about it? This was, conceptually, a brilliant addition to the lore. It was an obvious thematic spoke that no film had ever truly touched upon. We got a glimpse at the aristocratic elite who profited from the war and had a vested financial interest in its perpetual churning. It afforded them their outlandish, lavish lifestyles. This theme is great topical allegory while still feeling somewhat organic in the universe itself. I liked seeing our plucky heros jab a finger in the eye of this corruptible aristocracy. And I loved seeing the sigil of the rebellion (cousin to the jedi order) be used as a beacon of hope by a resistance. These small moments were probably hands down the best representation of that symbol and the rebellion’s place in the galaxy in all 9 current films. There was this awesome sense of the grass roots underground resistance movement that I’m not sure any other film has touched on since Luke Skywalker exclaimed to Obi Wan with enthusiastic camaraderie , “You know of the resistance against the empire?!”

What sucked about it? The aesthetics for the whole sequence wreaked of the most loathsome moments in the prequels and special editions. We didn’t get something like the glamorous equivalent of Mos Isley’s wretched hive of scum and villainy. We instead got something like the Special Edition Jabba’s Palace musical number with gratuitously added singing CG furry monster. We didn’t get reverent, awe inspiring establishing shots of pomp and spectacle and extravagance that our proxy characters said they were experiencing, we got a series of sight gags and tongue in cheek musical cues. We didn’t get genuine characters, we got silly caricatures akin to the pod racing commentators.

But beyond the aesthetics, the side quest didn’t work as a trough to the plot, either. They were there to find the dude with the flower broach or whatever. They ended up thrown in some sort of brig. Out of sheer good fortune, the guy in the brig with them turned out to be a guy who could help them with exactly what they needed. I mean, in the very next second, this prisoner was breaking out of his prison cell. What exactly was he waiting there for? Why hadn’t he broken out already, if he was capable? It just didn’t make any sense. The film seemed to imply that perhaps this guy was the man they were looking for, and his broach had somehow been stolen, or we’d find that maybe he had a tattoo of the broach or some other tell. Like the guy they’d seen in the casino sporting it was obvious misdirection, as movies do. That would have been cliche, but it would’ve felt right in context. Let’s transition to the problem with that...

THE CODEBREAKER: What was great about him? Other than the stuttering cadence of his speech, this character’s persona felt perfectly in line with Star Wars mythology. More than Poe or Finn or Rey, Del Toro’s “DJ” was a great fit for that exact environment and the themes being explored. He was a morally flexible mercenary, essentially, with an agnostic attitude towards the war so long as he could profit from it. In just a few lines, his character was able to instill in the viewers and the heroes the hypocrisy and unethical nature of the war in general, self validating his modus operandi of screwing over both sides whenever it suited him. This not only worked set against the thematic backdrop of the Casino planet, but it even worked with the overarching graying and questioning of the moral center of our force wielding heroes and villains, even though it was a subplot. That’s an effective use of the subplot to organically serve the core themes.

What sucked about him? I’m just not sure I understand the character’s reality at all. So, he was locked up in the cell on the Casino planet. He could’ve escaped at any time, but instead, just hung out until he had cell mates, then picked the lock and walked away (not in effort to help them, or use them, mind you...just walked away and left them there). He saw BB-8 as a valuable commodity, with his help stole a ship, and then just hung around to be in the right place at the right time to save the protagonists? And then, at some point, though he was never really separated from the protagonists, made contact with the First Order to arrange for their capture? Or had he contacted the first order before even picking them up? But if the latter is the case, rather than enacting the plan for their capture upon landing, why did the whole subterfuge conspiracy wait until he actually had successfully gotten them to their McGuffin? None of it makes any sense beyond plot demand. I am a fan of how he essentially became an inverse Han Solo, in that when the time came to be a hero, he doubled down on his agnosticism and self reliance. That’s a nice mirror for the original trilogy. But the steps to set it up were just plot filler to get Finn and Phasma in a place to have a little battle. I can’t fathom he’d be indifferent to their planned execution, and if it is in his character to be so callous, that’s something that deserves at least some level of exploration. Lando had that similar role in that he was an opportunist where it was circumstantially beneficial to him to help the empire. But we saw the growth in Lando, even in just the few scenes we spent with him in Empire. We don’t get that with The Codebreaker. Even if his ‘growth’ went the opposite direction and pushed him into villainy or moral ambiguity, if we’re going to give him screen time as a character and imply his role will carry any weight at all, we needed to see that develop more. If he was just a flippant character acting as an agent for plot, we needed less.

THE DARK SIDE INFINITY MIRROR THING: Why was it awesome? Visually, this was one of my favorite moments of the film. It was incredibly evocative. Star Wars hasn’t seen as mystical, otherworldly a moment since first exploring Dagobah. The fascinating suggestion of being trapped in ones’ own fate was beautifully illustrated in a cerebral, abstract way. In a world with so much intrigue spawning from magic and mysticism, I want to see more scenes like this to catch up to the nine-film overabundance of laser sword duels and space battles.

Why did it suck? It ultimately meant nothing. And no, it’s not just because it was unexplained. Being vague and open to interpretation is fine. But it did not pay off on the build up towards it. Luke was aghast that her desire was so quickly drawn to this dark place, or that it called to her so strongly. Yet when she finally explored it, it never once felt ominous. Mysterious, sure. Magical, absolutely. But dark? Not at all. The dark side of the force comes from giving in to strong negative emotions. In Luke’s failure in the cave in Empire, he viciously attacks Darth Vader. This is a brush with the dark side, and the abstract consequence it shows him is he himself inside the Vader helmet. That was a lesson in the dark side, by definition of what the dark side is in this universe. Compare that with this brush with a place that is referenced as being such a lightning rod of dark side energy. Rey inquisitively asks the infinity mirror who her parents are, and she sees herself. So, if we’re going to keep the concept of these dark side visions congruent, is that supposed to be showing her that her curiosity about her lineage will lead to her...finding that she is self reliant? Or more literally, that she has no parents? Or was it trying to drive her to darker feelings of frustration? It didn’t serve to teach her a lesson. It didn’t cause her to embrace, nor be tempted to embrace, the dark side. What about this caused Luke so much trepidation? It reminded me of one of those really evocative unanswered questions in the show Lost that, in the end, turned out to have no relevance beyond a cool thing the writers wanted to wedge in there.

THE QUESTION OF REY’S LINEAGE: What was awesome about it? So this is a tricky one to talk about. Frankly, when the reveal came that Rey’s parents were nobody of consequence, I didn’t mind it. I liked that they demonstrated that the force was about more than just the Skywalker clan. I’m very cool with that. It was one of those surprising yet inevitable moments that I thought was effective enough. It could go on to be a very cliche, but relevant, theme that her family will become her adopted family of rebels, and that family goes beyond blood. I think that is congruent with what we’ve seen from Star Wars in the past, even though it’s never been so overt. I think the Obi Wan - Luke dynamic becomes very father and son. Obi Wan declares how Anakin was like a brother to him. I think this sort of theme taking center stage would be fine, and I think I’d much rather see that sort of thing define the Finn/Rey relationship than a romantic one. However, I have a feeling that we’ll be learning that this is a bit of misdirection.

What sucks about it? The fact that Rey’s question of lineage now defines her character and her character’s motivations is truly obnoxious. When she found herself confronted by the weird force conduit infinity mirror, her only question in the context of all things happening was about her lineage. When she found herself in battle with Kylo, the subject to psychologically disarm her was discussing her parents. The problem is, now that we’re moving into the third and final film in this trilogy without any answer (or with the “don’t worry about it” answer that I believe to be misdirection), this theme that so defines her and her journey is irrelevant. Let me see if I can qualify what I mean.

By the end of this film, she has become an incredibly powerful force user. In fact, Luke declares that she is a Jedi, or at least will carry on the Jedi legacy. Yoda declares that she has all she needs to be a Jedi. So...what difference does her parentage make, exactly? What could be revealed in the final film about this that makes any difference at all? Let’s pretend that at the top of the final reel, we find out she is the granddaughter of Obi Wan. Ok...so what? Does she suddenly become more confident in her ability after finding out she has Jedi in her blood? Why would that matter? Or do we find out her parents really were no one, and that the force has selected her at random to be an agent of balance? Ok. So what? Why does that matter at all, other than in suggesting that in this universe, anyone can become a future force user if it is the will of the force? It doesn’t add anything to her character arc. It’s strictly, 100% for our benefit as the audience..

I liked the concept that something about her parentage would tie to Luke’s expression of resignation and inevitability upon seeing her on the mountain top at the end of The Force Awakens. For instance, the wild theory that she was related to (or a modified clone or corporeal vehicle) of Palpatine or some other sith or dark force wielder. Then her parentage becomes relevant to the higher themes being explored or that could be explored. Or, as cheesy and annoyingly obvious as it would be, that she was Kylo’s sister, and that Luke’s fear of training her tied in to the lineage question.

But now it just feels like any true answer makes the questing for the answer inconsequential. If it turns out to be someone important or that we’re connected to, awesome...but it doesn’t really affect her journey other than personal satisfaction of the knowing. If it turns out to be negligible, as suggested in this film, then it’s narrative wasted. “You know this thing that was the crux of two films worth of motivations? Meh...inconsequential to your actual character. You’re a jedi regardless.”

Compare that with Luke’s familial discovery. Finding out Darth Vader was his father conjured the theme of fear that he’d follow in his father’s footsteps, and gave our first tug of sympathy towards Vader, leading to Return of the Jedi’s core revolving around Luke’s attempt to give Vader redemption. Finding out Leia was his sister was, in comparison, forced, but at least it played in to a resolution for the potential love triangle, suggested she was potentially as powerful in the force, and thus made a great way for Vader to illicit Luke’s final temptation into losing control and giving in to aggression.

It seems that the third movie will have to give us some further payoff to the parentage quest, but there doesn’t seem to be any way for it to be integral to the characters’ development. But...when we inevitably find out that her parents were someone important to the series, won’t it invalidate what she as an individual accomplishments? She was able to do amazing things because she was special, as a result of birthright? Finding out that birthright will invalidate a lot of the character being awesome based on her actions. But not making her parent someone important means that we’ve really wasted motivations for two films of her searching for the truth about her lineage. You can see the conundrum this presents.

Again, I actually like the idea that she, someone of no consequence, grows to be strong in the force. But if that’s our theme, then it needs to play into her arc in some way. Like, perhaps she thinks that she only has her abilities because of the mysterious lineage, and finding out she truly is inconsequential causes her to doubt herself at a pivotal time. Right now, the entire thing seems inconsequential and unimportant to everything else going on around her.

REY’S POWERS: What’s good about them? It’s great to see her using the force in a way that seems consistent with the original trilogy. She doesn’t come off as some invincible superhero. She’s still vulnerable. She’s not repelling a billion simultaneous blaster lasers or precisely calculating quarter mile free falls through Coruscant rush hour, nabbing on to a specifically targeted flying speeder without her arms being ripped from socket. Her powers tend not to overshadow her character development. When she does something amazing, it seems amazing, not novel or ridiculous or boring from sensory overload or recursion.

What’s bad about them? You know, in the first film, I felt that her sudden force abilities were unearned. She went from believing that the jedi, and the force, and Luke Skywalker were potentially myths, to learning from Han that it was all real, to force pulling, using the Jedi mind trick, and mastering a light saber with no formal instruction. I thought for sure that in this film, we’d get some insight into a supernatural reason for this, and so I kept how much that bothered me in check. But no, this film doubled down on it.

So let us run down the order of events. Rey thinks that Luke Skywalker and the force potentially could all be just stories, but meets Han who tells her it’s all real. She’s then inexplicably able to do all of the things that force users can do, possibly as a result of Kylo’s weird mind probing. At the end of that sequence, she travels to Luke’s whereabouts to learn the ways of the Jedi from him. She tells him that all she knows about the force is that it’s a power of a Jedi that helps them “move rocks and stuff”. Luke gives her one cross-legged lesson of on top of a mountain about the interconnectivity of things. She trains herself with a light saber. And then she, by Luke and Yoda’s definition, is a Jedi. Yoda’s exact words are that she has everything that she needs to be a Jedi.

Really? I mean, Jedi in the traditional sense went through decades of training with a master. They learn a deep dogma of meditation and peace. They learn about the perils of the dark side and master how to avoid it. We infer that Luke spent years between Empire and Jedi mastering his ability, and had to face down his darkest demons. She swings a light saber unassisted on a mountain top and has one meditative session, and she’s a Jedi? It cheapens what it means and what it takes to be a Jedi, unless this film is suggesting that being a jedi is just something innate, and she has that thing, which likely is a result of her parentage which Yoda is privy to, but then that brings us back to the problem listed above.

THE RETURN OF YODA: What’s awesome about it? It’s been almost thirty years since Yoda has been done this much justice on the screen. For the first time since Return of the Jedi did we get a character whose type if insightful philosophy matched the character we knew in the original trilogy. He looked perfect. His presence was incredible. The scene had a great magic to it that has seriously been lacking from the franchise since.

What sucked about it? There were a few things that bugged the hell out of me about the entire sequence. First and foremost, Yoda’s wacky mannerisms, jovially berating Luke and smacking him with his cane wasn’t in line with the character’s behavior. One might be quick to remind me of their first meeting in Empire, where the quirky little swamp creature playfully messed with Luke and his droid. For those of you who would be quick to say that, I’d say you missed the point of that entire iconic scene. At Luke’s most frustrated with the strange creature’s mannerisms, Yoda closes his eyes, sighs, and admits to a force-voiced Obi Wan that he can’t teach Luke, because Luke has no patience. From that point, Yoda becomes the wise master to Luke’s eager and immature student. Because that is who Yoda actually is, and that defines their relationship through far more off screen time than his silly (and narratively brilliant) ruse during their introduction. We know this because of the vertical slices of their interactions we do see for the rest of Empire and Return of the Jedi. Once Luke’s patience is tested, the true teacher and Jedi are revealed in dialog that says, “A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away…to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing.” The wacky Yoda character never returns, because the wacky Yoda character was a front to test Luke’s patience, not Yoda’s actual personality.

Also, this whole scene was frustrating, because it seemed so paramount to Luke’s character development. As such, this seemed glossed over. In about one minute of screen time, we go from Luke, hell bent on destroying the Jedi artifacts and temple, to Yoda appearing and setting it all on fire (through force ghost created lightning? Now that ability seems that it would have been beneficial to our Jedi friends in previous situations...), Luke’s sudden concern for the artifacts he was about to destroy, attempt to salvage them from Yoda’s fire, Yoda blowing up the temple they’re all held in making salvage impossible, and finally a Spaceballs like “The ring is bubkis...I found it in a crackerjack box” like speech about how negligible the ancient religious texts are (which is ultimately devoid of all meaning in the end anyway when we find that the texts were salvaged by Rey). All of that happens in a flash, before we can even fully appreciate Yoda suddenly appearing. We are led to believe that Yoda chose this moment to appear. Not when Luke was desperate for the guidance to not try and murder his student. Not when the rebellion needed him to prevent the star killer from destroying billions of lives across the multiple planets that made up the remnants of the republic. Not when Han would be murdered by his son. Not for the 30 years where a dark side master rose to power over a new military threat. But this moment. Was it because Luke had turned himself off to the force? And turning himself back on is what made it possible? I don’t know. It just felt like this whole arc really deserved and needed exploration to work, if the point was to illustrate Luke’s arc away from, and subsequently back to, the force and embrace of what he needed to do as the last remaining Jedi. It was way too big a character development to be rushed through that way.

LUKE SKYWALKER: What was awesome about him? If anyone thinks that Luke’s climactic sacrifice scene wasn’t perfect Star Wars, I don’t think they understand Star Wars. The entire end sequence was brilliant, perfect, and will likely go down in the anthology of iconic, defining sequences from the series. The misdirection suggested Attack of the Clones like silliness; thousands of blasters trained on him, leaving a crater of destruction where he stood, only to find the lone Jedi still stoically standing. The initial impression is awe in just how powerful he’d become in his stoic mountain top training. Then Kylo emerges to duel his former master. I fully expected it to cheapen into a prequel-era saber duel of sensory overload over meaningful context. Instead, we get something unexpected and yet amazing. It’s both consistent with the original trilogy’s presentation of the Jedi and demonstrates that Luke (and his light side force use as his chosen method to beset his opponent, rather than a throw down CGI aided brawl) is more powerful than any dumb laser sword duel could have illustrated. In A New Hope, Obi Wan uses a saber duel with Vader to distract the imperial troops and allow for Luke and company’s escape. In the end, he sacrifices himself to achieve these ends, and becomes one with the force. Luke’s ruse echoes the sacrifice he’d seen his former teacher make to the enth degree in a way that pays homage to that without feeling like it’s retreading it. It’s one of those surprising yet inevitable moments.

What sucked about him? Seriously, everything else. Whiny farm boy turned into the galaxy’s savior...who reverted to whiny old man. There’s no part of me that believes it’s true to his character would hide away and mope while Kylo Ren joins mysterious dark force master Snoke, leading the First Order to more imperial victory. Even failure as a teacher leading to the dark side corruption of Ben Solo doesn’t forgive this. Think about it...Luke’s major heroic accomplishment was being the instrument of Darth Vader’s reconciliation and redemption. Darth Vader...The dude who helped blow up Alderaan, was responsible for his teacher’s death, was responsible for his aunt and uncle’s death, tortured his friends, and that’s assuming he never found out about his having killed children, or that he was directly responsible for the emperor’s rise, or any of the other horrors conveyed in other canonical Star Wars stories. But for some reason, the sad feeling that Kylo had a powerful dark side made him want to murder him in his sleep, and then ultimately, run away? I mean, I guess shame could play its part, but it still seems completely contrary to the character from the original trilogy to not actively pursue correction of such a heinous mistake and combat the dark side.

BIPOLAR BEN: Why did it work? I think Kylo Ren’s motivations being rather mysterious and malleable actually serves the character well. Rather than just being evil to be evil, he’s an unstable element that potentially adds moral complexity to the fabric of the story. Many people are turned off by his petulance, but I think it’s a powerful element to play with. Put the power of a dark lord in the hands of a emotionally volatile individual who hasn’t learned control, and it serves as a perfect demonstration as to why so much training is involved in becoming a Jedi, and why passion is so important to control for a force user.

Why did it suck? Unfortunately, I’m not even sure the writers knew exactly what his motivations were from one scene to the next. There’s a part of it that suggest he’s got a little bit of a Joker complex - aspiring to burn it all down to create a fresh start. This is a recurring theme for him. However, he also goes to extreme lengths to placate Snoke, and is terribly affected when Snoke chastises him. So which is it? Did he harbor the desire to rid the galaxy of Snoke, or did he want to be Snoke’s eager, obedient pupil? At what point did he begin aspiring to be the next emperor? Why would he presume Rey would want the same? Why would he assume anyone would follow him? Every scene, in both films, seem to cripple him with inner conflict. And that’s fine, and makes his character unpredictable and interesting to watch. However, these moments make his characterization sloppy. In the original trilogy, we see Darth Vader as the ultimate villain. We loath him. We detest him. And then we begin to learn more, and we begin to sympathize with him. The climax of the entire trilogy is when we cheer for his redemption. In this film, we as the audience know Kylo is a conflicted character right from the beginning. And his entire arc is this schizophrenic dance through these emotional conflicts. I’m alright with blurring the film’s moral center, or examining subjective morality through various characters’ perception, but with Kylo, we’re not getting clear heroic arc (skywalker), and we’re not getting a tragic redemption story (vader), and after Snoke’s death we’re not getting an interesting chaotic supporting character whose conflict serves theme (think Golem from Lord of the Rings). I don’t want Kylo Ren to be like those listed. I’m completely ok with his motivations being different. But at the same time, I want some sense to his characterization, even if that sense is in showing the manic madness and unpredictability that have risen from his study of the dark side or corruption of his force training by Snoke. Right now, his motivations seem to be led by plot and whatever it demands rather than the other way around. SNOKE, THE BIG BAD: What’s cool about him? Nothing. I really think Snoke is a fairly worthless foil. Unless there is some big surprise in store for us in the last installment, which involves his resurrection, he was just a knock off emperor that was less exciting to watch on screen. I guess it’s kind of neat that he’s suggested a few new force abilities that we didn’t know existed.

What sucks about him? In this post original trilogy series of films, Snoke is our big bad. Much like the emperor before him, he is a mysterious figure with a hidden origin, but with an absurd level of devotion from the military fleet and the dark force users. He is feared by our protagonist rebellion, and there is always the sense that he is manipulating events through cold, nefarious calculation. As such, he serves as a proxy for the objective dark pole for our compass with which to navigate the themes of the film. His role in events, his manipulation of Kylo, his interest in Luke and Rey...he is the monster for this trilogy.

Conceptually, I’m alright with Snoke being an ominous force with no clear backstory. After all, we never really got the emperor’s story until the prequels, and he was great. The problem in context of the universe, though, is that we have to accept the knowledge that someone that strong in the force existed throughout the entire Star Wars cannon without ever being referenced. I’m also ok with there being an explanation for this (anything...vengeful jedi post order 66 left to die and be corrupted to the dark side on some remote planet, secret apprentice to Count Dooku, Vader’s padawan, the emperor’s Plagueis-era rival, outer rim observer...whatever), however instead, we get nothing. He’s just the ominous force, and never mind where he was during the original trilogy or prequels or how he became so powerful in the force without tutelage or how he came to take up the emperor’s mantle leading the first order against the republic or why he would do such a thing (or maybe you have to read the Disney novel / watch the extended series to understand it...).

I’m also ok with that question only being teased in this second film, to be explored to heighten drama or thematic power of the last installment. But the character is dead. The big bad is now dead, without any payoff, making it a matter of “And then this guy showed up, and he was powerful and evil...”, and that’s it. Being that he was killed without any tethers to the universe being created made his death rather ineffective. At this point, it’s like a video game where you defeat the faceless final boss at the half way point in the game. That wouldn’t make any sense, because that showdown against the antagonist is supposed to be the climax of theme. In A New Hope, Darth Vader is the big bad. Underdog Luke finds a spiritual connection to the force while agnostic selfish smuggler pirate finds a cause to believe in, yielding the moment when the antagonism in the plot is overcome. In Empire, which turns out to be a tragedy, Luke rushes to face the big bad (again, Vader), demonstrating his impetuousness and ignorance and impatience could yield a dark side temptation, which all plays out during the confrontation where Luke is defeated. In Jedi, the big bad is the emperor, and Luke’s presence causes Vader’s loyalties to re-align. He has a moment of redemption at the climax, where he and Luke join together to take down the corruptive force. This is how climaxes work. But in The Last Jedi, our faceless big bad is killed off at a moment that isn’t climactic. If the theme of the film was centered around the corruption of Kylo, and acting out of anger to strike down Snoke was what ultimately drove him to embrace the power of the dark side, that would speak to the themes that were set up as a climactic moment. But that’s not what happened. His act to kill Snoke was in defense of Rey, no different than Vader’s to save Luke from the emperor, suggesting his redemption. But he wasn’t redeemed. And, again, it turned out not to be the climactic moment of the film. Snoke, then, turned out to be a gratuitous part of the film, used only to push plot, not speak to themes.

Not to mention, the uncanny valley was overt in every Snoke scene. This was a humanoid character. For a movie so dense and proficient with practical effects, makeup, and prosthetics, one would think that Snoke could have been realized without being a CG character. The point of focus that was Snoke ended up looking very fake, which was irksome and distracting.

LEIA USING THE FORCE: What was great about it? Frankly, it was great to know Leia learned to use the force. What sucked about it? Now, forever, the dumbness of the flying through the vacuum of space superhero will be burned into my brain.

Certainly, there were some other things that were explored that I had mixed reaction towards. I kind of liked the Poe / Holdo / Leia thing, but keeping Poe in the dark to the point of having him logically mount a mutiny was needless and dumb. I definitely liked Leia having to be in a position where she sees her command decisions have real consequences, juxtaposed against the dangers of Poe’s spirited but reckless optimism. I loved seeing the opening, very Rogue One desperate sacrifice by Paige Tico. I loved the silent moment of Holdo’s hyperspeed sacrifice. I thought the final moment of the film, seeing the young, mysterious boy force pull the broom while looking off hopeful into the sky was another example of what I want to see more of. But like in all the instances above, the pieces that worked seemed swimming in things that didn’t or were contradictory.

For this reason, I can see why The Last Jedi has been so polarizing. Within myself, I had this polarized reaction. I guess I have to go with my instinct and say that because all of the things the film did right were mired in really questionable creative decisions, as a whole this film failed for me, despite there being a lot to genuinely like about it. Yet I can’t stop thinking about it, days later. So can I call it a failure?

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

THE CINEMASOCHIST: 2017 Summer Blockbuster Review #5: The Dark Tower

THE EXPECTATION:

Again, I have to cheat a bit on this one. I have already seen the film, and have to lay out my expectation after already having watched it, which violates the concept of the Cinemasochist review protocol that I tried to establish this summer. However, I suppose the reason actually plays in a bit to the review. So I think it’s fair to have a moment of recollection of my expectations, and I’ll try not to allow the viewing taint this articulation.

The reason that I didn’t lay out my expectations ahead of time is I had no idea when (or if) I was going to see this in the theater. The reason I didn’t know when I would see it in the theater is because no one would go with me to see it. The reason no one would go with me to see it is because of its abysmal reviews.

To date, I think the worst reviewed film I’ve pontificated about was Independence Day: Resurgence, which sits just around 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. My wife still (very begrudgingly) went with me to see that one in the theater as part of my summer blockbuster cinema-masochism. The Dark Tower sits at a feeble 16%. To suck it up and attend this one is not cinema-masochism. It’s cinema-suicide. So maybe I should change my moniker to Cinemacidal for this one.

But let’s give proper context for this one. Growing up, there were two literary intellectual properties that I always wanted to see realized as cinematic experiences. The first was Lord of the Rings. The second was The Dark Tower series. There is a thread of irony in that, seeing as King was directly inspired by Tolkien’s work. In many of the books’ forward, he suggested that his career-spanning, universe lynchpin, magnum opus was his Lord of the Rings. There are 8 books that make the official Dark Tower series, but it weaves in to some of his most formative non-Dark Tower work such as The Stand, Hearts in Atlantis, Salems Lot, Insomnia, It, Desperation, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Shining...and arguably several other novels and shorts. The Dark Tower is Kings primer. In the novels, the tower is some cosmic center point that supernaturally tethers to *more worlds*. I’d argue that in reality, The Dark Tower mythos is the center point that literarily tethers to King’s entire body of work.

I was first exposed to The Dark Tower when I was around ten or eleven. At the time, I had buddying aspirations of being a writer. I’d grown out of my Christopher Pike phase and had started exploring more science fiction and fantasy. I’d even begun to craft my own base mythos for a literary universe (before I even knew what that was). It revolved around a desert-like physical and psychic wasteland called The Doldrums. At the time, it was a lot of random regurgitation of everything I’d watched or read, but simultaneously was the seed of something that would evolve into my unique creative offering. The new Stephen King book (I had just started to make the jump to his worlds) had just come out. It was called “The Wastelands”. I distinctly remember being in the supermarket and asking my mother if she would buy it for me. It called to me like a strange talisman. Something about the cover iconography and the synopsis and even the name was eerily reminiscent of the silly little sketches of ideas that my brain had been hatching.

At 11, I didn’t make it far into the book. It was the third book in the series, and I had no appreciation for the characters or knowledge of the stories that came before. I had been drawn by *the wasteland* concept and its overlap with the thing I had in my own head. In the first few chapters, the ka-tet (what the hell is that, I thought to myself...) rolled through a magical forest fighting a giant cybernetic bear. It lost me almost immediately and it ended up unread, nothing more than a paperback space filler on my bedroom bookshelf, which is where it reamined throughout all of middle school and most of high school.

I say this to give a quantitative understanding as to my personal relationship with the source material...it goes back about 26 years...more than a quarter of a century. I was invested into that universe for longer than my entire scholastic career, k-college. I was invested into that universe since around the time when M.C. Hammer was all the rage. I was introducing myself to The Dark Tower before my voice changed, before my first date, before the Nintendo Entertainment System had become irrelevant...honestly, my relationship with the Dark Tower series is about as long as the relationship I have with my best friend growing up, who I really became good friends with right around that same time. It’s rather inextricable from my past and growth as an aspiring writer and general creative.

And maybe it’s simply coincidence due to the volume of time I devoted to reading that particular series, but I have so many memories of bizarre, almost supernatural environments where I’d find myself actually reading the books that made the universe continue to have that mystical property of a talisman I discovered on the shelf at Shop And Save. I remember reading my favorite part of the series, the flashback section in Wizard and Glass that sees our hero’s coming of age story, to candlelight during a power outage during a whistling hurricane. I remember while touring with a rock band, sitting in the passenger seat of a beat up Chevy Suburban with my bare feet crossed and out the window, barreling through the deadpan of the southwest US’s deserts as I read about the epic travels of the group through Song of Susannah. I remember sneaking away from my day job to experience the climax of the series fantasy during the very real “summer of cicadas”; while the 11 year and 13 year (is that right?) bugs emerged at the same time to create a fantasy landscape all their own of an oppressive, communal, alien hum and veracious consumption of all foliage, I was reading of Roland’s final trials.

At times, I found myself reading the oddities of the crossing words while experiencing extraordinary circumstances as the reader. It felt as if I had a paranormal communion with the books of the sort that may have ironically been found in the books. Incidentally, even in writing this review, I’m sitting in anticipation of an actual solar eclipse. It’s not hard to understand why I was always curious to see what a cinematic imagining of this mythos would look like.

And in those decades of pondering what a Dark Tower adaptation might look like, a lot of things have changed in favor of that possibility. Peter Jackson managed to give Lord of the Rings a treatment that preserved the source materials gravitas, inviting those not likely to engage with fantasy worlds into the fold of nerds. Marvel launched a successful interconnected web of stories, crossing the TV / Film divide, and demonstrating the endurance of a devoted fanbase. Star Wars now defines pop culture. ComicCon went from an insular haven for geeks to a universally celebrated party.

And storytelling changed in ways that would service the telling of a sprawling tale like Dark Tower as well. Multi-installment serial films are the rule rather than the exception now. Television became a more viable storytelling medium with long running shows of massive scope and budget; from Lost (incidentally, Lost was massively inspired by much of King’s work) to the current staples like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Netflix has joined the storytelling fight, investing in original material, and even paying homage to King’s body of work in the critically acclaimed and wildly successful Stranger Things. Binge watching is no longer an abstract concept, but a regular practice as a way to consume complex or long form narratives.

So if there is ever going to be the perfect time for The Dark Tower, it’s now. For those that don’t have any experience with Roland, his Ka-Tet, and their adventures through Mid-World, imagine this. Take the post apocalyptic desperation of the Walking Dead, draw it against the cinematic fantasy scope of Game of Thrones, and inject the iconography of Westworld...you have something that very closely approximates The Dark Tower. Being that these shows are fascinating, complex, well received by audiences, critically acclaimed, and incredibly popular, it seems the Dark Tower is more congruent to our sensibilities as an audience that it ever has been before. So the burning question is...how do you fuck this up?....

Let’s add one or two layers of insurance that this couldn’t possibly be bad. First, this is the intellectual property that King was once adamant he’d never allow to be adapted for the screen. It wasn’t that he considered it unflimable, but he considered it to be best envisioned by the readers’ imagination and perception rather than solidifying it into definite shape. This was his baby. He was very protective over it. He even turned down an offer by Frank Darabont, who had expertly helmed Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist (ironically, also the first season of The Walking Dead).

In 2007, he had a change of heart. Remember 2007? Remember when Lost was in the middle of its run, and the expert character studies propped against the mysteries of a strange-fiction backdrop kept us tuning in week after week (about three years before we realized it was all a directionless mess with a lot of smoke and mirrors...)? It was unlike anything else on television, and Abrams was more or less regarded as something of a television visionary. Stephen King was a big fan, too. Abrams had been vocal about drawing inspiration from the Dark Tower for his crazy TV show. And upon a symbolic offer of $19 (the number 19 having huge and endless significance throughout the Dark Tower mythology), King optioned the rights to Abrams to finally see this all come to life on the big screen.

King wanted to see this as a series, comparable to Lord of the Rings, or potentially even a television show with the right treatment. Abrams seemed to be the perfect person, and in the perfect situation, to help with making that a reality.

But soonafter, Abrams left the project (presumably to invest fully into *rebooting* Star Trek).

Then Ron Howard picked up the reigns as potential director. A strange fit, but...ok. Howard is certainly a competent director. He has demonstrated range, and I had full faith he wouldn’t take on the project unless he was passionate about it. He had the perfect plan to capitalize on the newfound success of long form television storytelling and punctuate a serial tv show with blockbuster films. It was the perfect plan. Apparently, no one was willing to take the chance on the IP.

And then...Howard also exited as director. Nikolaj Arcel was hired. Akiva Goldsman came on to write the adaptation. If Goldsman’s name is not familiar to you, it should be...but not for positive reasons. He wrote Batman Forever, one of the Divergent movies, The Fifth Wave, iRobot, and some other cinematic tragedies. To his credit, he also wrote A Beautiful Mind, but looking at his full resume, the safe bet would not be in anticipating a quality script. In fact, his recent repertoire mostly consists of forgettable, post apocalyptic young adult adaptations.

To be clear, the magnum opus of King’s catalog could have been helmed by Darabont, was successfully optioned by the Lost team, and inevitably fell to the writer of Divergent and Transformers: The Last Knight.

Ouch.

With a 16% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I went in knowing that all of my fears were justified.

THE REVIEW:

I’m just going to say it. The film was bad. However, I’d like to take the time to point out a problem with treating Rotten Tomatoes consensus as a grade. I think that critics almost unanimously found this movie to be a failure on a pass/fail scale, however, I don’t think a 16% would be a fair grade if it were being graded numerically on merit. There have been worse films that have received higher Rotten Tomato scores, for sure. It did at least a few things right. But so much was so mishandled that no one is likely to remember any of these positive things.

Let’s talk about what went wrong.

First of all, they adapted the Dark Tower as if it had been young adult literature akin to The Hunger Games or Divergent. This isn’t surprising when considering Goldman’s recent film history. They centered the film around young Jake Chambers rather than around Roland, the protagonist in the books. From a studio standpoint, wrapping a complex fantasy plot around an average young kid makes a bit of sense; he becomes the audience proxy. He becomes the lens of familiarity through which we can experience all these new and fantastic things. But in this case, it completely neutered the story’s main protagonist and all of his character complexity and his relationship to the world around him, which is what would aptly make this a Dark Tower film.

Adding to the problems with the adaptation, rather than tell a cohesive story it seems they drew a strange alchemy from multiple books in the series. The script created something that dabbed a finger into a lot of plot points and iconography without really exploring the relevance of any of it. It was sort of like tiny nods to fans with none of the fun that fan service nods usually provide. This led to probably the biggest sin of the film. There was absolutely no gravity to anything. The inherent complexity of the characters and their motivations doesn’t exist. Instead, we get trite expositional dialogue that may as well be delivered straight to the audience.

In the book of The Gunslinger, we are introduced to Roland and his strange yet tangential reality. The entire book generates the foundation for further world building. But in the film, we don’t even truly appreciate the role of the Gunslingers. Think of the first Star Wars movie, when Obi Wan waxes poetic about the Jedi, keepers of peace in the republic, before the dark times. In its context, it suggests so much about this fantasy world that the characters inhabit, and it does so through subtle dialog and expert delivery set against unfolding events. Here, in Dark Tower, we get nothing like that. We get “You’re a gunslinger” and “There’s a tower” and “There are monsters and darkness” and “what happens in one world affects the other” and “one more time round the wheel” and the like. All of these little relevant nuggets we’re given are consistent with the reality we experienced organically over tens of thousands of pages of the books, but as single lines of dialog, they all feel clunky and tacked on, as if someone was taking a completely different script and forcing in pieces in order to market it as a Dark Tower story (think: A Good Day to Die Hard).

For instance, in one scene McConaughey explains to no one in particular that Roland’s guns were created out of what folks on “Keystone Earth” might refer to as Excalibur. It’s a way to wedge in a major part of the multiverse lore in one awkward sentence. This either needed a lot more explanation, or to be omitted completely. As it stood, it felt like villain dialog from a trite story that a C-average middle school kid might write.

I’ve seen reviews that herald the actors as the only saving grace of the film. I didn’t think so at all. Both McConaughey and Elba donned these strange accents and speaking cadences that felt silly and unnatural. It didn’t convey an otherworldliness. It was just distracting. While Elba had the strong, commanding, stoic presence of Roland, he became more of a plot vehicle than complex, morally flexible knight. Meanwhile, McConaughey, an actor I think is very talented, was miserable as the Man In Black. He played it too straight to have the sort of manic theatricality of the Walter from the books, but played it too silly to ever feel like anything more than a one-dimensional foil. It’s ok to have the man in black’s motivations be guarded and cryptic, but then you can’t have him running around spouting gratuitous plot points. In contrast, it’s ok to have him be over the top and some idealized embodiment of evil (though it’s less interesting), but then you have to give him more to do to stand out as more than the average forgettable movie villain.

And then there was the dumb blockbuster silliness. Nothing that Jake experiences over the course of the story gives credibility to him growing as a character. Nothing he learns suggests he’ll to be able to tap his newfound abilities to save the day in the end. The whole “this boy is special” thing played right into the young adult storytelling sensibilities in the laziest and cheesiest way. The climatic moment is horrendous. Roland ricochets a bullet to strike another bullet in air and send it off its predictable course to strike its target? Fantasy physics are one thing, but this defies any sense created by the world itself. It wasn’t exciting. It was meaningless, because even in the film’s own fantastic reality, it was senseless.

Where were the glorious flyovers of the deadpan desert? Where were the demonstrations of Roland’s moral complexity like the showdown in a misguided Tull or the sacrifice of Jake in order to achieve his revenge? Where was the flashback of Roland’s worldview being shaped by the experience of a traitor hanging in his youth? Where were the evocative icons of Mid-World that drew us as readers in, like the demon’s jawbone or the decaying man that Walter raised from the dead? Where was the moment where Roland hypnotizes Jake to reveal a priest had pushed him into traffic to cause his death? Where was the eerie palaver with the man in black that led to Roland’s ten year slumber, only to awaken to his arch enemy’s bones? Like...where was anything that made our first foray into this universe compelling? None of it was there. What’s funny is, I think the actual story of The Gunslinger would’ve been less expensive to film and yet a million times more compelling.

The things that survived: There was a tower, there was a magician that wanted it to fall, there was a gunslinger named Roland that wanted to kill the magician, many words connected. It was just enough to warrant slapping the familiar “The Dark Tower” moniker on as a title.

Every other thing in the film was a out of context icon jammed to prop up a young adult action movie plot that ultimately is about how special the 11 year old kid protagonist is. Honestly, they should’ve changed the names and called this something other than The Dark Tower, because aside from the icons, it in no way resembled the Dark Tower that many of us came to love.

The worst part is, the negative reviews and poor attendance will demonstrate to studio heads that there is no interest in this as a property. As a result, we may never get a true Dark Tower film. This had all the markings of a bad fan film from someone who jettisoned what made the material engaging in favor of his own insignificant and dramatically inferior take on the material.

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

THE CINEMASOCHIST: 2017 Summer Blockbuster Review #4; Spiderman: Homecoming

THE EXPECTATION:

So admittedly, I have to retcon this a little. My wife and I had a rare last minute opportunity to leave the 7 month old with my visiting parents and get a date night in. We had a few choices for movies; Spiderman, The Big Sick, War for the Planet of the Apes, and Dunkirk. She, despite her inner nerd, really disliked the Planet of the Apes films, so I took it off the table. My father also wanted to go with me to see Dunkirk, so that was nixed. It came down to action blockbuster versus date night comedy. I leaned towards the former while she leaned towards the latter, but we were both happy to see either. Both films were strongly reviewed and recommended by people whose taste we trusted. The pebble that tipped the scale was spectacle. She conceded that The Big Sick will have the same level of resonance while we’re curled up on our couch watching it on demand in a few months, whereas the new, big, loud superhero movie would benefit greatly from the theatrical experience and pageantry of going out. And I say this fully aware of the irony in being a person who always talks about wanting more than vapid sensory overload. But I digress.

This last minute opportunity left me me wholly unprepared for review, with no *expectation* or rubric for the film written beforehand. Fortunately, my wife was a good sport and helped me riff a bit about it in the theater, and I was able to at least get a few bullet points down in a note on my phone before the opening credits. Here are those notes, more eloquently articulated.

We both agreed we needed to see a stray from formula. We’re stretched beyond what is reasonable in terms of super hero fatigue, and yet can’t stop watching. It’s almost as if going to these films is perfunctory at this point, whether they turn out good or bad. Or worse...that we’re reluctant addicts! So the first thing that we agreed on was that Spiderman: Homecoming needed to do more than to add to that fatigue. Especially considering that we’ve seen Spiderman iterated twice in the span of contemporary superhero movies. I mean, Amazing Sider-man iteration lasted between 2012 and 2014. If you think about it, Spiderman 3 (2007) was likely finally getting a bluray release maybe three years before preproduction on the reboot. Through 2014, the Marvel universe had already established its foundation with three Iron Man movies, two Thor movies, two Captain America movies, an Avengers movie, and Guardians of the Galaxy, all connected in a canonical web (no pun intended) and moving strongly forward. So to reiterate the character so quickly, and then destroy the character, and now reiterate the character again was cause for concern. We both worried that this had the potential to double down on the whole fatigue thing...not only seeing yet another superhero film, but seeing a retread of a retread of a superhero film, compounding the problem.

One of the other big worries was the villain. It always is with these movies. A strong antagonist is necessary to the genre. And an antagonist should serve as a thematic counterpoint to the protagonist. Yet most end up being mustache twirling foils instead of characters. They are the superhero equivalent of a McGuffin. Superhero XYZ is needed because bad guy is evil, so...plot. Villains shouldn’t feel interchangeable or incidental. In order for us to enjoy the film, a proper villain was as important to us as a strong imagining of the hero. We were coming off Wonder Woman, which exemplified the poorly established villain problem perfectly.

My wife was annoyed at the thought of getting a superhero / teen comedy mashup. But accepting that, she was adamant that if this story was going to be set in high school, the problems and lives of the characters should feel like high school problems and lives. She discussed how so many of these *high school kids*, played by 30 year old actors, have outlandish conflicts, exotic behaviors, or find themselves in scenarios that don’t even make sense in the scope of their own universe; a detached, rich studio writer’s version of his perception of youth, bearing no resemblance to reality.

There were a lot of other points, but those were the ones we were both most adamant about. So that became our rubric.

The Review:

As should happen at the end of any summer blockbuster, both my wife and I left the theater with a smile, which is the initial benchmark for a passing grade. It was far from a perfect film, but it was perfectly enjoyable.

The first thing that the film addressed was one of our main worries. We get no warmup for the hero. Instead, we are first introduced to the man that will become our villain. Blue Collar everyman, played by Michael Keaton. It’s not as if it’s rare for the film to open on the back story of the villain. However, it is rare for a film to go to lengths to posture the eventual antagonist as a logical protagonist. Sure, we’ve firmly established that, even despite infighting, the Avengers are good guys. Yet here we peel back to get at least an inkling of deeper moral complexity that I want from these films. Maybe the apex of this theme comes in monologues or perceptions about Tony Stark. Adrian Toomes (the real name of Keaton’s Vulture) has made a career out of selling weaponized artifacts from Avenger encounters. On the surface, this seems heinous....who would so nonchalantly put such dangerous weapons out into the world for profit? An obvious villain. And then we remember...the lynchpin of our 16-film-and-counting merry band of Avenger protagonists began this whole adventure as a morally agnostic arms dealer. The only major difference between Stark (a hero) at the beginning of Iron Man and Toomes (a villain) at the beginning of this film was that Stark was a pompous, womanizing, self-serving jackass who was a billionaire without the corrupted arms deals, whereas Toomes was a marginalized, blue collar nobody who was motivated by desperation and a fierce loyalty to his family and friends. If we were to put early Stark in a film with early Toomes, we’d likely find ourselves rooting for Vulture, not Iron Man. And this is how the film begins. We see our marginalized everymans cleaning up the mess of the superhumans. It both connects us to the Marvel Universe in a way that we have seldom connected and introduces an antagonist who is hard to easily call villain. Compared to its relative films, setting up the antagonist in this way may be the thing Spiderman: Homecoming does best. And I think Keaton plays it perfectly.

Honestly, this is the sort of counterpoint villain I’ve been looking for as an Iron Main villain - one who somehow subverts or calls attention to the theme of Tony Stark’s caricature of gluttonous, jingoistic America, and calls into question his brand of heroism. Based on the trailers, I really thought the Mandarin was going to do this exact thing in Iron Man 3, but of course we all know how that went (and if anyone needs a reminder of my, the Cinemasochist’s opinion of that film, you can read it here). And in a way, this counterpoint worked as an even better contrast for being indirect. Peter Parker’s idolization of the celebrity of Stark contrasted against confronting the grim reality of a murky reflection. It was a very subtle but very important thread held the movie’s component pieces together.

Did the movie stray from formula? Yes and no. I wouldn’t say it offered us a new take on the genre. And I’m not sure that I’d say that it served the genre conventions better than any of its contemporaries. Instead, it felt like a unique piece of a larger story, which I suppose is exactly what it needed to be. It managed to not be a warmed over origin story, yet it still covered some key touchstones to give the viewer a primer to the character. It showed the same level of naiveté and ineptitude we might expect from a fledgling hero in an origin story while not bogging down run time with the transformation. In that, there was some clever narrative structuring. The tone felt its own, and considering that it centered around a wise cracking super human in a universe full of featured wise cracking super humans, that’s an impressive feat. So while not mind blowing in this regard, the film was perfectly passible.

There were a few other things that I think are noteworthy. There was a moment early on in the film where the camera panned down to Peter’s shoes. I subconsciously expected a glowing Nike logo, and so I was actually jolted by the nondescript, worn out sneakers. Instead of using the moment for pandering product placement, the moment used the costuming to inform the viewer about character in the most subtle way. Little details like this are the things I’m interested in seeing. Yes, it’s true that product placement was all over the film. But in this instance, the film took the opportunity instead to tie Peter’s life to Toomes’s working class antihero more than it did to the heroes of The Avengers.

The stakes of the film also felt proportionately appropriate. It was a personal story, and that allowed the viewer to connect with a character on a level that saving the universe from big dumb cgi monster just can’t touch.

Most of all, the film had charm. Tom Holland carved a place next to RDJ’s Tony Stark and Ryan Reynold’s Wade Wilson in terms of establishing a character identity. Considering we’ve seen two other Spider-men inside of the last 10 years, I’d say that is a huge endorsement.

It wasn’t a perfect film, though. There were a few truly irksome things. Immediately, I can think of three.

First of was the fluid potency of Peter Parker’s powers. To be clear, I understand this is all fantasy and that realistic physics are boring. I’m willing to take great leaps of faith to suspend my disbelief so long as a film’s reality gives me a reason to do so. We all know that Tony Stark would be reduced to a pile of meaty jelly with some of his accelerations and landings. However, one can say “his suit”, and since it’s all pretty fantastic, it’s not really something to argue. Or its OK that Captain America can survive cement cave in, because “super soldier serum*, and I really can’t argue because that’s the fantasy. But when the movie sets up its own rules and then runs contrary, it bothers me.

In this movie, there is a scene where Peter Parker hits his head while he is wearing Tony’s super-spidey-suit. His heads up display lets him know that he has a concussion, and he seems to really suffer physically as a result. But later, with only his glorified sweatpants, he is able to survive a high altitude battle, a plane crash, bludgeoning by Vulture’s super strength, and a series of explosions. I’m ok with the reasoning that Spider-man could survive these things and the effects be negligible, but not at the same time as accepting that he was rendered harshly injured by striking his head earlier in the film. There are certainly worse examples of this sort of inconsistency in other movies, but this movie had a few that distracted me from the fun of the proverbial sandbox.

Somewhat related, there is a moment where Vulture triumphs and causes the warehouse to crash down on Peter, who finds himself buried under the rubble. His stress in this moment is genuine and a great sense of claustrophobia is cultivated. On the one hand, I am extremely glad that he wasn’t saved by some ex-machina device (Tony Stark to save the day again). On the other, I hate that this as a climax saw Peter overcoming the physical obstacle by channeling his sheer will. It bothers me when Superman does it, so I have to also fault Spider-man for doing it. This was definitely meant to demonstrate Peter’s growth in being self reliant, but I just feel there were a million other better ways to handle this theme.

Lastly, when Toomes turns out to be the father of Peter’s love interest, I found myself gritting my teeth. It was going for greek tragedy and ended up teen soap opera. For me, this was a weight on the film. Thankfully, it was used as a device to give the antagonist’s justifications more merit, to conflict the hero, and to crank up the tension (as opposed to being a twist for twist’s sake), but the film lost points with me for this.

All in all, Spider-man: Homecoming gets passing marks. Even my wife, who had wanted to go see *the other movie* was very happy with it. While not a perfect film, and certainly continuing the problematic trend of the gargantuan Hollywood blockbuster machine, it’s another positive blockbuster installment to the 2017 summer season. One or two more over the course of the next month, and this may be the summer to change the cynical heart of this Cinemasochist....

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

THE CINEMASOCHIST: 2017 Summer Blockbuster Review #3

THE EXPECTATION:

In 2008, the clumsy silliness that had defined *the super hero movie* was reimagined as legitimate cinema. In May of that year, Iron Man successfully provided the foundation for what would become the ubiquitous MCU. Two short months later, critically acclaimed event movie The Dark Knight demonstrated what a big budget film based on a comic could be with the right amount of respect for the craft of filmmaking. And at some point that summer, Kristen (at the time, my girlfriend, now my wife) and I began a debate that’s raged on for almost a decade.

Would it possible to create a contemporary Wonder Woman film that would be any good?

She said yes. I said no.

My reasoning was pretty simple. There was a distinct question of evolving audience sensibility. Years before the lackluster Man of Steel (and a few after the depressing Superman Returns), I compared it to why Superman was such a difficult film to get right. Current audiences want more of an anti-hero. Characters like Batman and Wolverine were what resonated and amped audiences. I argued that if a filmmaker tried to turn Superman into an anti-hero, it would invalidate all the things that made Superman Superman, yet if they stuck with Superman formula, audiences wouldn’t enjoy it. At the time, I had only Superman Returns (the latter) at which to point as an example, which aptly demonstrated the point. Ten years later, I can retroactively say my suspicion about the former was also correct, illustrated by the eventual Man of Steel and BvS. This was the backbone of my argument as to why a Wonder Woman film would not work. Not that it couldn’t, necessarily, but that it would be sort of a Kobayashi Maru of a film to make, and that Hollywood would find epic ways to choose every wrong path in service of screwing it up most heinously, as they do (Daredevil, Elektra, the Schumacher Batman films, Fantastic Four, Catwoman...and so on and so forth).

Over the next few years, Marvel’s model tried really hard to change my mind. A Captain America film? How goofy is that going to be? Absurd! Oh...wait, that wasn’t that bad, actually. A Thor movie? Come on. There’s no way to do that without devolving into camp. Oh...well that was completely passable. Make a movie about a sentient tree and talking raccoon saving the day? We’ve reached the point of ridiculous. Oh...huh, that was actually a lot of fun.

For a brief moment, I thought that if Mavel could make Captain America and Thor compelling, then DC had potential hopes for characters like Superman and Wonder Woman.

And then...DC courted Zack Snyder. If there was ever to be a mascot selected for cribbing others’ art while not understanding the source material (and favoring style of substance), he would make a good candidate. If his two Superman offerings were any indication, then a Wonder Woman film set in the same universe would surely be abysmal.

Current critical analysis seems to suggest otherwise, but this is my expectation going in. I’m expecting something that will be pretty to look at, but be vapid, soulless, derivative, and likely not make a whole lot of sense. I’m expecting a mess. Will I end up eating my words? Let’s break down the ways in which this film can fail.

In terms of the character, if this movie takes extensive dramatic license with her abilities or her origin story, I’ll be annoyed. I have no problem with a more general reinterpreting, and I have no problem with a tonal shift, but I don’t want to feel like this is an unfamiliar character.

But more importantly, I want there to be a reason for this story to exist. I want to feel a thematic core at the heart of the story, not just a sensory experience. I want the plot of the film to be wrapped around that core, rather than be a series of things that happen (by the way, you’ll see this on many of my rubrics).

There is also the gender issue, which should be a non-issue. It can be a non-issue if it falls on the side of Furiosa from Mad Max rather than girl-power-sign-toting cast of last summer’s miserable Ghostbusters reboot. Yes, the character is strong. Yes, the character is female. I should never get the impression that the film is trying to draw circles around her strength as a female. What do I mean? Well...think of the female characters in the X-Men universe. Other than the poorly conceived Angel Salvadore (and I’d even argue maybe Emma Frost), they didn’t hammer you with the idea that any of these female characters were extraordinary because they were strong and also a girl. There was no pandering to a female audience. There were just characters that were strong who happened to be of the female gender. This will be a difficult line to tow, and is another reason I have cited as to why the Wonder Woman property will be so hard to get right. There is so much feminism entwined with the perception of the character, yet at the same time so much sex appeal historically...how can that be mitigated to just have her be a strong character, regardless of gender, yet also remain true to the spirit of the character?

Then there is the superhero problem. At this point, I’m burnt out on superhero films and their formula. While on the surface it’s easy to say that I shouldn’t hold that against this film in particular, consider if every summer, 4 movies came out with the exact plot of the Hangover. It wouldn’t take long before we were simply annoyed, and the new movies trying to bank on the formula would absolutely be judged for their lack of originality. Superhero stories and summer blockbusters should not be immune to that criticism. So what will this bring to the table that is new, especially engaging, or otherwise executed so well that it becomes a new standard? I really would rather not see the climax of the film be a punching match with a giant, forgettable CGI monster. The climax of the film should pay off emotionally and thematically, not just on a sensory level.

And on that note, I need to feel real stakes. That’s another problem a film like Superman tends to suffer. In both Superman Returns and Man of Steel, Superman overcame his weakness (kryptonite) through sheer will. He just...tried harder, and it negated the thing that was supposed to weaken or kill him. It’s a thematic cheat, and it feels cheap. On the other hand, when we get obnoxious scope creep and the stakes are “the whole world...nay...the universe!”, that is also usually disconnecting. I want and expect more than that. I want to live vicariously through the hero, and to do that I need some touchstones of identification. Real vulnerabilities, honest relationships, and a journey that doesn’t feel like it was run through the screen-o-matic-5000.

Also, I know that this film is supposed to be part of a larger cinematic universe, but give me a self contained story. Don’t invest copious amounts of screen time setting up the next thing.

So there’s a bit of a rubric for Wonder Woman. After I’ve seen it, I’ll write up my review, and we’ll find out which of us, my wife or I, was correct!

THE REVIEW:

I sat with bated breath, waiting for Kristen to tell me her thoughts. I said nothing, and revealed nothing in my expression as to my opinion of the film. I wanted her honest opinion as to whether she, as someone who was very enthusiastic for the potential of this film, thought that the creatives behind Wonder Woman pulled it off or not.

Her words surprised me. She said, “I guess you don’t have to completely eat your words, huh? Damnit.”

Look, there was a lot to really, really like about Wonder Woman. Especially if you want to compare it to last year’s DC offerings, BvS and Suicide Squad. I’ll tell you what. Before I begin to gut the experience with the fatal flaws we both found with the film, let me start by praising it for what we felt they did right. And honestly, there was a lot.

Gal Gadot surprised me. She was great in the role. In her fish-out-of-water arc, she had a perfect and believable balance of naiveté and confidence. So many other movies have tried this and failed. This one worked (though some of this was probably aided by the fact that we as the audience don’t have much of a reference for early 20th century Europe). She managed great chemistry with all of the supporting cast members. She conveyed authentic emotion and the proper amount of vulnerability to feel real enough. Her motivations were consistent. Like Chris Evans in his role as Captain America, she was able to subvert the potential hokey, campy nature of the character and allow us to intrinsically believe in her and accept her. Also, she managed to be a beautiful, powerful woman without relying at all on sex appeal to sell the character. She was ambiguously attractive, in the way that her male counterparts are in their superhero roles. I can not give enough praise to those responsible for managing to pull this off. She was a superhero. That happened to be of the female gender. Not a *female superhero*. Huge positive check marks in this category.

Chris Pine was also excellent. I did note that he was still channeling his inner Shatner in a few scenes, and there was more than one instance where a more modern colloquialism ended up in what was essentially a World War 1 era period piece (which annoyed me). But I thought he did a good enough job at making the character timeless. His portrayal of a WW1 spy was more than passable. I guess what I am saying is that he never distracted me with Chris-Pine-ness. I bought it well enough, though his role seemed incredibly...insular, I guess you could say? But is that any different than other British spies portrayed in film?

The comedy and quips worked, too. In fact, I’d contend that the reason this film is so highly regarded (and why it’s head and shoulders above other current DC offerings) is that the small moments were compelling. I’ve always said the secret to making a good Superman movie is not in creating a bad-ass Superman, but in creating a compelling Clark Kent. The character moments need to be relatable for us to care about the action sequences. It was as if this film understood exactly what I meant by that. The small moments, the non-superhero-moments really allowed us to connect to and care about the characters. This wasn’t explosion porn. It aspired to be more than a vapid sensory experience. So on that rubric point, I completely give the film a passing grade.

Also, in terms of my rubric, this was a self contained film. Imagine that. A superhero film, meant to be a tentpole in a planned cinematic universe, told its story without trying to artificially wedge in awkward tendrils to what comes next. And it was by large margin the best of the cinematic universe so far. It’s almost like those at the helm are starting to get it!

It’s due to all of these things that I concede that I was wrong. I will now completely admit that for ten years, I have been mistaken. An amazing contemporary Wonder Woman film is completely possible.

Unfortunately, though, this wasn’t exactly it.

There was far too much wrong with the film that weighed it down, and kept it anchored as average compared to the film that was right there under the surface. These things didn’t keep the film from being *good* and plenty enjoyable, and with some moments of brilliance, but they did keep the good film from being great. I think Wonder Woman had the opportunity to set a new standard for the genre. It absolutely did not. Its sum was rather middle of the road as far as these movies go (which, admittedly, is an improvement for DC). And as is often the case, almost all problems were writing problems. So let us dive in to some of the glaring issues.

I had an inkling right from the start that I could anticipate story problems. The film begins with dramatic narration, which leads directly into a flashback, which includes a 5 minute long, rather forced info dump by a character within the flashback, who goes on to narrate, and while this character is narrating, there is an animated flashback. It was narrated-flash-back-ception. Narrated flashback info dump inside of a narrated flashback info dump. This was lazy upon lazy upon lazy. It was, perhaps, the laziest possible way to provide backstory. And to add insult to injury, I’m pretty sure it thought it was being clever. So big loss of points for poor and lazy narrative design right from the start.

Then, before we even get into the meat of the film, another truly irksome thing happened, that then continued to happen throughout the rest of the film. We get great training montages of the Amazons. They’re generally well choreographed with lots of practical effects employed. I’m usually not a fan of Snyder-esque super-slo-mo-everything-action, but that’s a stylistic taste issue and I can appreciate the craft in this case (I could go on as to how this demonstrates Snyder’s style over substance, but since he wasn’t the director here, I’ll omit it...but don’t worry, we’ll get to him in a bit). It was working for me in this instance. I connected with those minor characters. They had a foreign culture that seemed to play by its own rules. It managed to keep from feeling like one of those early 90’s era USA shows (Hercules/Xena). Then, as we caught up chronologically to when the rest of the story would be told, we have a sparring/training session where Diana is squaring off against her mentor. In an act of defense, Diana braces for a blow, clangs her bracelets together, and unleashes a shockwave that topples everyone in her immediate vicinity. She is embarrassed or ashamed of this and runs off to ponder this action at cliff’s edge, where the inciting action for the film occurs. My problem with this scene is simple. Did Diana know that she and her bracelets have this ability? Was she ashamed because to do this was considered in some way a cheat or something? If so, why? And if not...if, as seemed more likely from the reactions, she did not know she had this ability and found it rather by accident, did she have no questions about it? She just accepted that this was a thing that she could do? And if that’s the case, why did she run off embarrassed and ashamed? Why wasn’t she amazed and inquisitive? The context was confusing, but more so because in either case, the motivations for her next action didn’t make sense. They were just because the movie had to get her to point b in order to plot.

And so began an annoying, recursive issue. What exactly were her powers, how aware of her powers was she, and how did she know to employ them? There is one example of how to do this right in this very film, by the way. Early on in the film, we see that she is capable of leaping a supernatural distance to the tower. We see her struggle, and her anticipation to try, and her excitement when she succeeds. It was reminiscent of Peter Parker’s first web slinging or Iron Man’s first *hovering*. We come to accept that this is something that is within her ability to do, and that it is also pushing her ability to its extent, acknowledging that she does have limits and is capable of failure, and that she as a character is ambitious enough to test her own limits. This is great. It speaks to character. It gives us a framework for her ability. So later in the film when we see her jump to the top of the tower to take out the sniper, it doesn’t feel like a cheat. In fact, when she manages to grab a ledge with just her fingertips, my first inclination was to scoff and argue that that’s not how physics or the human anatomy works. But then in the next moment where she starts smashing through the brick wall with those fingertips, my mind settled into the appreciation that at least the film was consistent with an illustration of the strength of her fingertips, so I could suspend my disbelief. These are examples of how to do this well.

But too many times this wasn’t the case. Suddenly, she could stop bullets with her bracelets. This is something she’d have no knowledge that she could do. Is there the suggestion that she anticipated the bullets? That she experienced a slow down of time (damnit, the Zach Synder slo-mo explained?), so she could act to get in front and deflect them? That she had superhuman reflexes? It felt more “well, she can do this because we need her to for plot”. They could’ve earned this beat back on the island, the first time she encountered guns. She could’ve discovered this ability organically, thus been confident about it later. But as it stands, it was just a sudden power that she was confident in employing.

She also suddenly could lift up and throw a tank. Now, I’m not saying that it’s unreasonable for her to be that strong. If we’re saying she’s that strong, fine. But if she is that strong, are we saying its because she’s part god? And if we are, then no combat with her Amazon sisters should have ever been a challenge for her...a finger flick should’ve sent them reeling. Unless they are that strong as well, in which case...are we saying they are strong as a god? And if they are, why? And more importantly, why weren’t they also able to repel or dodge the bullets when the German soldiers arrived on the island?...you can see the rabbit hole of questions this leads to.

She could also remain unaffected by toxic gas. I guess this is also because she is a god and, according to the movie’s logic, can only be killed by another god. But that gives us the immortality problem, where there really is no reason for her to even ever raise her shield. If she’s unkillable except at the hand of another god, she could just walk through a raging firefight unconcerned and come out unscathed. That equates to zero tension unless she is squaring off against a god, and how many gods do we imagine populate the DCEU? I’m pretty sure, as defined within this film’s own info dump flashback within an info dump flashback, there is only Ares left. So this lowers the stakes significantly for the character (like I sated above in the rubric: with Superman’s physical weakness being kryptonite, if he can overcome kryptonite by sheer will, it neuters any tension of attacking him with kryptonite because so long as he has strong will it doesn’t pose a threat). Now, there are plenty of ways to still have stakes and compelling stories with immortal characters, for sure. But they won’t involve winning battles with punching, considering the end result of punching would inevitably be ineffective.

Which brings me to my biggest gripe of the film. The thing that, if done right, could have pushed this over to top to reach its potential in my opinion. It’s a fairly involved point that touches on a lot of things with one central thing at its core, so bear with me here.

We need to have a serious conversation about the villain, the source of conflict for this film, and the themes that played out from the *final battle* sequence through to the end. Because despite the first two thirds of the film being very strong, the third act was a silly mess that brought the film down at least a whole proverbial letter grade. It threatened to negate the good will that the positives of the film had generated. It felt...more like the lackluster DC cinematic universe type movie that I feared it would turn out to be.

First and foremost, the film went almost two hours without Diana squaring off against a big, dumb, CG monster. It almost made it to the end without it. I was so happy about this. But...they, too, just had to take it there. It had to devolve into nonsensical physics and dumb, dark, stylized, green screened, computer generated action. Up to that point, it had grounded its fantastic things inside the scope of real world peril, making this final battle feel like some obligatory, tacked on reel from a much dumber film. We get McTwirly Mustacherson, who is evil because...evil...a thing that only hard punching can solve! Sure, there is that tiny bit of attempt at ham fisted commentary over man destroying paradise, but mostly it’s “join me or die” schtick. Again, the correct way to do this is to study the Magneto / Xavier model. In X-men, Magneto is a villain we can empathize with. In good narrative form, he is a reflection of the hero, and in fact their goals are the same while their methods are different. And we get to see the villain character grow, and we connect with him, maybe even feel sympathetic for him despite knowing that he must be stopped. We have a relationship with him because we get to know him over the course of the film. Even if you want a truly sadistic villain who has no redeeming qualities what-so-ever, you create an interesting villain over the course of the feature, not crammed in to a lazy ten second motion design vision just so you can get to the punching. And you really don’t expect to create a credible villain by doing the hackneyed reveal that a character we have spent virtually no time getting to know or care about is the shocking super-antagonist behind it all, trying to pose as legitimate by entering the script late in the third act and monologuing his perspective. Schumacher Batman era villains were more nuanced. This movie was way better than that.

In fact, let’s demonstrate how the film had the perfect set up for a compelling thematic moment, but how Hollywood fumbled (as anticipated in the rubric above). Diana was on a quest to kill Ares in order to stop all war and bring about peace. This worked beautifully throughout the film as demonstrative of her sheltered naiveté. Our surrogate in these scenes was Pine’s Steve Trevor, not Diana, and that was completely ok. It was ok for us to regard her innocence and idealism through his cynical, pragmatic eyes. We understood the world the way he understood the world, and we both pitied and were fascinated by her perspective. We knew, as he did, that war was an unfortunate and natural trait of man, not the result of manipulation by a deity. They drove at this theme beautifully. They set up the perfect existential crisis for our hero. The climax moment *should* have been when she killed Ludendorff, sure that he was Ares, and the fighting inexplicably continued. That should have been the end of her naiveté and the growth beyond ignorance of the real world. That was the end of her innocent idealism; the end of her proverbial adolescence and entrance into proverbial adulthood in her coming of age origin story. This IS the theme of the film. It’s right there. It’s been there since the beginning, weaving in and out of the script.

Why, then, do we not explore that through to the end? It’s as if the writer didn’t understand the theme to his own story (we’re getting there...). Why, instead, do we get the completely unnecessary reveal of a super-bad-guy CG Ares and a punching battle that ends up completely negating that entire theme (once Ares is defeated coinciding with peace effectively returning to the world)? This really bothered me, mostly due to the fact that I saw the fabric beginning to unravel. That the film had fooled me into thinking it was better than it was over the course of its very strong second act.

But let’s take it even further. Her ultimate boon, which both unleashed her power to its full potential and became the actual climax of the film, was...and you can’t make this shit up...the power of love. She even says so in the most trite ending monologue of any superhero film in recent memory. I’d take a thousand iterations of “with great power comes great responsibilities” over a single, “the key to everything is love”.

What is wrong with this? Oh, let me count the ways. Besides being so on the nose, it is wholly unbelievable. The film never earns the beat that single-minded-of-purpose Diana has the time or circumstance to develop romantic love for Steve Trevor, unless what we want to come away with is that she makes it to the end of the movie with as much naiveté about romantic love as she had about war (but that would take all of the relevance out of this being a sign of character growth, which is what the film uses this to suggest). Even more fantastic is that Steve Trevor has truly fallen in any sort of authentic love with her. They go through a bunch of stuff over a matter of days. They don’t know each other at all. A love story should have never been part of this film. Fascination, admiration, curiosity...sure. To cram in an attempt at a *great love story*...not at all.

And the most important reason it should never have been part of this film, and that it absolutely should not have been the climactic realization that settled out as the articulated main theme, is that it made this the story of Steve Trevor’s heroism, not of Wonder Woman’s. Steve Trevor is the one who demonstrated self sacrifice. Steve Trevor saved the day and fulfilled the movie’s more interesting thematic arc. Wonder Woman just found out she was immortal and punched a CG monster to death to meet the sensory overload quota, I guess? All because she found love. And that is just a tragic disservice to the character. She gets tempted for ten seconds to help destroy humans...and that’s...supposed to be a believable moment of tension to serve as a climax? Again, that’s indicative of a much less smart film than the rest of Wonder Woman portrays. That’s the appeal to the 8 year olds playing with action figures and watching Saturday morning cartoons. “Join me or die! The world must be destroyed!” Blam! Boom! Crash!

What would have been much more interesting (on so many levels) is if there never was a love story. And that she wasn’t immortal. And there never was any particular evidence of Ares. If the reality of Ares is left as ambiguous and mysterious as it was in the beginning of the film. If the wound Diana suffers is from the existential crisis she faces upon finding out the horror of mens’ hearts without any supernatural influence, but the hope that lifts her beyond that crisis found in the very mortal Steve Trevor’s self sacrifice and heroism as they work together to do the impossible and make sure the bombs never reach their destination. The realization that he doesn’t share her immortality, and accepts death to stop other humans from suffering. Fighting the war in men’s hearts should have been the climax, not fighting the CG menace (who could converse via angry whispers through firefights, of course). We should’ve climaxed with theme, not explosions. Making the conflict actually be a throw down with Ares to stop the war (and have it actually work, as the dust clears, dawn arrives, and both sides cease fighting and literally hug) invalidates the whole relevance of that last Chris Pine monologue. Or, if you want to argue that Ares was just a catalyst for war, as he defined in his own unearned mustache twirling monologue, then it invalidates the whole reason for animosity against and motivation to kill Ares as the reason for war (since he’s not the reason for war). Either way, the way it shakes out is a mess of motivations and an undermining of the themes the film spent two hours building. It’s not complex. It’s muddled.

And while we’re at it, if we were going for cheesy end dialogue, it should’ve been about the good found in men’s hearts, not about the power of love. This wasn’t a love story. And it never should’ve been. That should’ve never been the climax, unless we wanted to make a central conflict involve some aversion to romantic love, which also would not have made much sense.

While the direction was strong, the acting was strong, the cinematography and set design all beautiful...who wrote this thing off the rails?

Oh. Zach Snyder. Right.

He didn’t direct it. But sure enough, his name is the first in the credits as having written it. Snyder has proven once again that he a master of making something that works as a great sensory experience, but doesn’t seem to have the capacity to really understand the material beyond a basic surface level.

In the end, I would never suggest to someone that this is a bad film. It’s not. It’s absolutely worth watching, which is much more than I can say for BvS or Suicide Squad. It is more comparable to Man of Steel (better, but comparable), which started with a promising take on the character but devolved in the end into a muted, disappointing version of its potential promise. Kids playing with action figures, the end.

If DC films use this as a foundation, can right their villain problem, and follow through on their more ambitious themes, I think Wonder Woman could mark a significant turn in the right direction. But it was not the new zenith of superhero films.

*Anachronistic post archived from the legacied FB Notes*

THE CINEMASOCHIST: 2019 Summer Blockbuster Review #2; Avengers: Endgame

(Here begins the obligatory padding so that any spoilers are pushed down the page...) So this is 2019 “summer blockbuster” review #2. And it’s not quite May yet. Like an ominous supernatural force, the big-budget movie season has began to expand, devouring the slowly devouring the calendar. I have mixed feelings about that. Blockbuster cinema used to denote its own sort of pageantry. Now, it’s the expectation. Today, the extreme majority of movie theaters are corporate chain cineplexes singularly built for this exact sort of experience. But with the constant one-upmanship as the defining motivator for these films, and the inherent scope creep that comes with it, compromises to the writing and execution of these films is inevitable. For those that love movies, this becomes increasingly worrisome in a medium where a 300% profit margin on a quarter million dollar budget project is considered a failure. Throw that fact against a backdrop where home theaters have facilitated existence of a new golden age of cinematic-scope television, embraced by production companies, which can explore narratives with much more profound depth than a single-sitting film, movies become big budget marketing campaigns for extended content, rather than the extended content being the support for the film.

How is all of this relevant to Endgame (or rather, the eleven year, twenty-two film MCU that culminated in Endgame)? Before the big spoilers are rolled out, let me detour that direction for a moment. My wife and I recently watched through many of the formative Marvel films in preparation for Endgame, some of which we hadn’t watched since their release. For the record, I don’t consider myself a Marvel fan, exactly. I think the MCU has just as many blunders as successes (for instance, one of my first “Cinemasochist” reviews was a very unfavorable Iron Man 3 review), and I think that my relationship to Iron Man perfectly sums up my relationship to the MCU as a whole (which is fitting, all things considered)...I really enjoy RJD’s Iron Man, but I’m not attached to the brand. When it’s executed well, I celebrate it. When it is not, I do not. The MCU doesn’t get any special consideration on the basis that I have enjoyed MCU films int he past.

That said, upon rewatching much of the formative MCU as a single-sitting binge watch rather than spaced out over a decade, many of the creative decisions that bothered me became infinitely more palatable. I appreciated the long-form storytelling arcs of the characters, and how the actors skillfully handled their growth or devolution. It felt much more like an enjoyable television series that had some misfired, less engaging, throw-away world building episodes that forgivably fit into a larger mythos.

And I found that interesting. Over the last decade, long form storytelling has truly replaced the more episodical narratives on television. Marvel films, in introducing a large cinematic universe, took a cue from (or perhaps, influenced. Or both. Chicken, egg...) this trend. They weren’t just creating sequels of successful films. They were creating pushpins that fit on a giant idea board. But therein lies the potential design problem for those that love movies. Rather than concerning oneself with the best creative choices that fit inside a two hour, single sitting package, the long game takes priority. Again, in a medium where 300% profit margin on a quarter million dollar budget is a failure. The significance of the individual film, then, is compromised, as the best vehicle for storytelling any one particular story is jettisoned for creative considerations that might support the bigger picture.

With Endgame being a capstone for the 48 straight hours of story to this point, the analogue is a season finale. That makes it the payoff. On it rests the entirety of the MCU. It is the bigger picture that some films and creative decisions before it were compromised in order to set up.

I think that has been enough padding, so let’s get into it; what worked, what didn’t work, starting with an overall opinion and working backwards.

Overall, the film should be appreciated, if only for the ambition of the thing. At three hours long, it never dragged. The sheer number of threads that worked together was impressive. There were some stellar performances. There were fantastic send-offs and clever nostalgic beats ticked, which helped reinforce the growth of the characters. It was an enjoyable film. It had both tragic and triumphant moments that were legitimately evocative. It did a lot of things right. All this is true, but it was far from a perfect film, or even the film that I feel it could have been. Here is a run down of a few things that disappointed me.

They screwed up time travel. And, of course, this was the crux of the entire plot, so it’s definitely not some moot point. When I say that they screwed up time travel, I do not mean that their interpretation of how time works was flawed. Any explanation for time travel is, of course, fantasy. Instead, I mean that they categorically did not play by their own rules, which is a major writing sin for me. You can be fantastical. You can generally jargon your way past any problem, and suspension of disbelief can carry you through a story. But without at least some level of acknowledgement as to a reason, you can not contradict the jargon that you use to solve a plot problem. In this film, they go to lengths to explain time travel, more or less using the many worlds model of how time travel operates. Banner breaks down the pop-culture inaccuracies of time travel, explaining how going back in time to change things won’t change the present. This is further clarified by The Ancient One, with a metaphysical parallel to Doc Brown’s chalkboard, explaining how changing the past will skewer the timeline and put her reality on a divergent course (if Banner takes the time stone, he will be able to undo the snap, but the Ancient One’s “Biff Tannen-verse 1985” won’t have the time stone for protection and will suffer as a result). Of course, Dr. Strange’s ability to review all the potential realities as a major plot point in Infinity War supports this as well. And we see Nebula blast her past self to death without she herself disappearing from the present (and rippling through the time between, when her absence would have had a butterfly effect on the events, leading to her not being present to shooting herself and causing a paradox). So we’ve got that solidified. It’s a thing. Mess with the past, and it does not affect the present, but instead creates a tangential reality. Fine. That’s your time travel rule in your fictional universe, and I have no problem with it. Until, of course, you break it for an emotional moment. If Steve Rogers travels back to the past, and opts to live his life forward form the 1940s, that means he has created a tangential reality, since that wasn’t a thing that originally happened. He would not show up instantaneously in the present as an old man, because as we’ve established, changing the past doesn’t affect the present, it creates a new reality that those in the present would be unaware of. And if that’s not the case, if he was still existing in the same reality to find himself in the present events, that means he has lived a life of influence on the present’s timeline and was always present-but-hiding through all of the events in that timeline with the foreknowledge of the entire saga. The latter, effectively, is the Back to the Future / Frequency / Bill and Ted / Terminator scenario that the movie tried so hard to dismiss, which makes all of the other potential time-travel-related plot paradoxes that Banner’s jargon solved back on the table as problematic. And the reason it can’t exist this way in the way that it is jargon-explained multiple times in this film (and the reason they can’t just kill baby Thanos to solve the problem) is because the only way for it to have happened at all is if Cap did, in fact, time travel, and second Cap was always present in this reality... but that would make this reality a tangential timeline, since his time travel and change to time is what caused it, leaving the fate of the Captain America’s primary timeline that we’ve been watching through all of these movies in question. The only conceivable explanation that would be satisfactory is if Steve Rogers had lived his full life in the tangential timeline, and had figured out how to travel between the timelines for his old-man-Cap cameo in the reality we were witnessing, but there was no evidence or insinuation of this. For all intents and purposes, it just felt like they shrugged off the major problem that they themselves made it a point to give a solution to in order to give us a plot point.

They screwed up Hulk. Yes, I understand there is a comic precedent for Professor Hulk. But if that’s the explanation, the merged Hulk mythos still had to do with a splintered psyche of Banner into distinct personalities, which is what gave the character, even in Professor Hulk iterations, potential for drama. Out of all characters in the MCU, the Hulk’s inner conflict is a defining trait. He’s not interesting because he’s smart. He’s not interesting because he is green and muscly. He’s interesting because of the dichotomy of his character. His passive brilliance contrasted against his mindless rage, and his struggle to reconcile the two, is what defines him. Making a rageless Hulk is like making a Dracula with no need to drink blood for sustenance. In a cast of superbeings and hyper geniuses, when the thing that makes him him is absent, it just makes him a bland, throw away character. A vehicle to deliver plot dialog and make a few jokes. I honestly expected Natasha’s death, or some other emotional valley, to break his resolve and bring out a yet-unseen suppressed level of rage, which ends up necessary in the final showdown.

They played Thor completely tone deaf. The only thing I can imagine is that they had no idea what to do with his character, so they made him the comic relief. There is an interesting argument to be made about his arc demonstrating his acceptance of humility. His arc began with ascension to the throne being his primary motivator, and being King the ultimate goal. Here, passing the throne to someone he felt was more worthy could demonstrate his evolved sense of selflessness or higher purpose. But one has to stretch pretty far to connect those dots. If there had been any indication that he had a pressing, greater-good need to join the Guardians of the Galaxy, and for that reason, he sacrificed his throne to Valkyrie, that would’ve gone a long way to serving that theme. For me, though, it just wasn’t there.

Hawkeye. As a storyteller, I was intrigued by the choice to begin Endgame with Hawkeye. It was never a mystery that this was going to be the conclusion of the Tony Stark / Steve Rogers arc, and that they would take center stage. So opening with Clint and family certainly raised my eyebrow how the themes of his underutilized character might tie the whole thing up. And while he did get a bump in screentime (and Renner got to show off some extra range in his performance) on his escapade to Vormir, there was really no pay off to the film beginning with him. Seeing him for the first time as Ronin five years after the snap would have carried all the implication we needed. By anchoring the start of the story with Barton that way lead to asymmetry, when Iron Man and Cap got the full payoff. An argument can be made that this was a film about family...Iron Man left a legacy in his daughter, Cap went back to have a ‘normal life’, there were references to the Avengers being Black Widow’s family, Nebula appeals to Gamora by asserting they become sisters, and in that, showing Clint’s family devastated is counterbalanced by families saved and restored in the end. There was no subtlety in that thread. But there were so many facets that were wasted. For instance, Barton’s need for a vengeful outlet was a great commentary on the toxic nature of vengeance, but went largely unexplored. The knowledge that Tony, after his failure, had effectively obtained his life (living off the grid with a loving wife and child) could’ve presented a fantastic point of dramatic tension and theme exploration. I can think of many ways that Barton’s plight could have been a centerpoint of thematic focus, even if the plot remained more or less the same, in a way that would’ve paid off on him being featured so prominently in the opening reel. Instead, I feel like they just had to nudge his character into place for the plot to happen, and had to give him a few more lines to say to set up his spin off Disney+ series.

Girl power. As with Captain Marvel, there it was again. The pandering hammer-to-the-head. The female characters in this universe are already strong. Black Widow is a normal, mortal human with no superpowers that went toe to toe with the Chitauri aliens, Ultron robots, and even the other Avengers. Scarlet Witch overpowered Vision and is so powerful she managed to blow up an Infinity Stone while simultaneously holding off a Power Stone wielding Thanos. Shuri demonstrated she had a level of scientific competence beyond Stark or Banner. Gamora is renowned as the most dangerous assassin in the galaxy. These characters did not need big red circles drawn around their gender. They’re bad ass characters who happen to be female. In these films, there really is no power disparity based on gender. It’s a great level playing field. No one dismisses the women. The issue of gender inequality is not a theme that plays out. So the climactic slow-mo shot of the all-women counter offensive in the epic battle ends up as complete pandering. It suggests that their conflict was wrapped up in their need to prove themselves despite their gender, but that was never a conflict that needed to be addressed for any of them. If they wanted to make that a climactic, thematic moment, fine. Then set it up properly so that it is a payoff for something, otherwise it feels about as cheap as a lazy advertisement trying to pass itself off as genuine art.

The worth of Steve Rogers. He can now pick up Mjolnir, eh? When Thor was punished and banished to earth for acting with petulance, he had to earn himself worthy through trial and sacrifice and a shift in perspective. While Cap is always framed as a pillar of morality and purity, and while he has gone through plenty of qualifying trial and sacrifice, this still feels like a supernatural level of worth that must be earned. The tease in Age of Ultron that he was able to nudge it is inadequate for this, even if the argument was that he could’ve always have lifted it and chose not to for some generous reason. There needed to be something here to denote he had tipped to the hammer’s favor, or that he somehow discovered that he had become worthy of wielding it. But even that wouldn’t explain his sudden expertise in using it to wield and control the God of Thunder’s lightning. And it begs the question, how many other generally good people would have no trouble picking it up? Would, say, Pepper be able to wield it as effortlessly? How about T’Challa or Shuri? Why? Why not? What about average people walking around? I find it hard to believe that in all of Asgard, Thor would’ve been the only one worthy of the hammer, especially considering that he was kind of a douche when we first meet him. What’s the slope and metric on that worthy/unworthy graph line? I have no problem with it being vague, but do take issue with it being a Deus Ex Machina. Vision wielding it in Age of Ultron was significant to the themes being explored in that moment, in a film that already teased it as a theme to explore. Cap suddenly and inexplicably appearing with it in the final battle was a cheap way around a narrative problem, so that we got to see something cool on screen whether it made logical sense or not.

Power scale. I watched Infinity War. I saw the galaxy’s greatest heroes go toe to toe with a maxed out Thanos. Even having four infinity stones (including the Power Stone), he almost lost to just a handful of the Avengers. Now I know he’s a big bad and all, but...if he was commanding four infinity stones and struggled with a handful of them, how was he able to fend off all of them with no stones? This is just one example where I felt the power scale was a bit warped and nonsensical (but to be fair, this is true about all Marvel films).

Stan Lee Cameo. What...that’s it? Really?...