Mechristopheles

A blog about books, shows, musings, fiction and tabletop game design.

[mechristopheles]

ON BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

The sequel to the 1988 cult hit, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice unspools inelegantly on the screen for 105 minutes and then credits roll. The movie is a jumble of unfinished plots and pitches, which are never explained or fleshed out, but they happen at the audience in an attempt to trick them into thinking there's a coherent movie in front of them.

Sadly, everything needed for a cool sequel movie was on screen but the script didn't want that. While most of the original Deetz actors play the same characters -- obviously not Jeffrey Jones -- but also lacking Geena Davis and Alex Baldwin -- with Jenna Ortega as the daughter of Lydia Deetz. The problem is that there is no major antagonist -- the role handled by Beetlejuice and the Lydia's parents in the first movie. Without a defined obstacle or conflict to build a plot on, the movie slides along with side quests and silly visual puns. Rather than have a distinct villain, the movie juggles Beetlejuice's former wife, a teen ladykiller and Willem Dafoe's bureaucrat but without coherent arcs -- they enter, they occupy some scenes and most of them converge at the muddle at a church at the end where stuff happens. It's movie made from cameo appearances glued together with worldbuilding and nostalgia.

There's a video online of Southpark's Matt Stone and Trey Parker in a lecture about scriptwriting. Parker states that every scene needs to be linked by "But then" or "therefore" which means "but then" the scope of the stakes caused by the initial problem increases or "therefore" the characters suffer the consequences of their actions. The third mode, Parker and Stone warn, is if "and then" links your scenes, your show is doomed slop. Stone highlights their warning by explaining to the students that if you watch a movie and you feel bored or unexcited, the movie's scenes are linked by "and then". This is the core problem with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is an uncooked mess probably because the producers wanted to play it safe. The humour is trite. The characters are flat and only react to events that happen to them. Maybe the director wrote the movie during filming but I recommend you watch the first movie again. I rate this movie one Beetlejuice out of five Beetlejuices.

[mechristopheles]

Thoughts on Longlegs

Here's my mostly spoiler-free review. Longlegs went on too long. It was style over substance, but the style was good and made the flaws, well, most of them, forgivable. Agent Harker always appears watery, as if she just stopped sobbing for hours. Overall, it was a competent movie with choices that spoilt the structure. Rosemary's Baby, Silence of the Lambs and The Omen were strong tones of the movie's beat palate. It was an homage to seventies horror flicks with cheesy Satanists as the villains but set in the 1990s.

The acting and direction were good. Longlegs was a movie in which the audience mostly forgot Nicholas Cage was on screen.

The only significant flaws were the terrible post-production scenes inserted at the beginning. The one being the weirdo psychic test and the following scene with lead character Agent Lee Harker and support characters Agents Carter and Browning in a car. They had staked out a processed crime scene, which was baffling. Then Agent Carter says that the test results demonstrated Agent Harker was "semi-psychic." The problem with these two scenes is that they render two subsequent scenes baffling and irreconcilable. Firstly, in one second-act scene, set in Agent Carter's Office, he expresses his growing irritation, frustration and suspicion at how a dead case with few leads suddenly sprouted new clues the very moment Agent Harker joined the team. Secondly, in another second-act scene, when Agent Carter loses his temper after Agent Harker is present at the death in custody.

There was more to enjoy in Longlegs but the clumsy inserts did fuck it up. Don't establish Chekov's psychic detective in the first act, then ignore it as if it never happened in the rest of the movie. I rate Longlegs four Bloody Zener Cards out of ten for substance but seven out of ten for fun and gloomy, wood-paneled panache.

[mechristopheles]

If this Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe by Jason Pargin, a review

If this Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (ITBE, YITWU) is the fourth novel in the David Wong series. It follows the motley crew (Amy, David, John and Joy) and their attempts to sabotage another existential threat. Like the others, it is a horror novel wrapped around a picaresque black comedy troupe that dips into slapstick.

Spoilers: ITBE is the Wong gang discovering that a cult of disgruntles has formed around a hodgepodge theology that blends incel misogyny, simulation theory and philosophical zombies called Xarcrax. Xarcrax is a supremacist political movement, a prophet, a mechanism for social revolution, a manifesto and the new age when all the prophecies are fulfilled. The term does all the heavy lifting for the cult's ideas because they are ultimately a shallow disguise for a future narcissist's epic rage quit across future timelines. There are many moving parts in the story because the plot is a ridiculously overcomplicated, messy tower of cards (as in all the Wrongiverse novels) but the fun is always the characters and their muddled attempts at do-goodery.

Pargin's novel, as his priors, thrives on the tension between low-brow humour and effortless but insightful digressions into history, sociology, philosophy and the critical examinations thereof. This shaky roller coaster of time travel and cosmic horror hinges on dei ex machina to wobble and wheeze to a reasonable conclusion. It uses eye-rolling jokes as punctuation and spackle to hide bad joints, but it's written with heart, so it deserves love*.

ITBE will never be nominated for a Booker Prize but it's a dirty-secret book where the flaws are the joys of reading it. It's a trashy, B-grade film where we all point and howl at the fishing line yanking up the rubber monster and when the boom mike creeps into the shot. What counts for this measure of ITBE is how spicy it is and If this Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe, is a warm 60 000 Scoville units - maybe too burny for palates refined on white rice but tasty for connoisseurs of junk literature.

*or a temporary moratorium on daily beatings.

[mechristopheles]

Everything Wrong with The Last Jedi

The Last Jedi earned writer-director Rian Johnson a fountain of rage from the internet. What was the problem precisely and why did it manifest in Johnson's movie?

The problem started way back with Episode IV: A New Hope. In the late 1970s, a debut science fiction movie by unknown George Lucas blew away his audience. He took what was derided as a tacky homage to serial shows screened at matinées, and embedded it into public consciousness, overwriting the Western as the bedrock of American mythology in the same way Nirvana's grunge murdered hair metal.

Star Wars launched careers. It was a powerhouse. Even nonsense like holiday specials and ewok movies were forgiven and brushed aside. Two other films followed and completed an epic but satisfying story of tragedy, action and soap opera. Sure, there were glitches and silly nonsense like teddy bears at war, but it was all fun.

Then there were prequels which, while a cultural event, never kept the high of the first trilogy. They were clumsy and patched together with new CGI technology. The faults were plenty. The strength of the original trilogy was that Lucas was part of a creative team. With the prequels, Lucas was the high priest surrounded by an entourage who couldn't say no. It was a dismal failure. The prequels became what critics called the original trilogy tacky. The internet channelled toxic fan nostalgia towards Lucas and the prequels. Lucas, defeated by the backlash, sold off his property to Disney and walked away.    

The news of a new trilogy was heard with trepidation. The prequels existed and fans learned to deal with them. The Force Awakens, helmed by JJ Abrams, was met with thunderous approval from the fan base. This was the Star Wars they wanted to see. It had the spirit of the original with less reliance on CGI and incredible sets. The Force Awakens crushed the box office and earned billions. Star Wars was back at the top of its game. However, there was a small problem. The Force Awakens is shit.

Don't get me wrong, The Force Awakens has excellent production, a great cast and engaging visuals -- everything about it looks and sounds excellent -- but at its heart, it was creatively bankrupt. A Force Awakens is A New Hope fan fiction. The premise is simple: "what if Luke and Leia were swapped at birth so that Leia grew up on Tatooine and Luke was raised as royalty and was discovered by the emperor after he entered the Imperial academy as a teen?" That's all it is. Numerous critics have noticed the beats of A Force Awakens match A New Hope almost precisely. A Force Awakens is boring. JJ Abrams can only raise tension if the characters run on screen and scream dialogue at each other.

As much hate as the prequels got, they were original stories. They had character arcs, drama and plot. Star Wars fans loved A Force Awakens because they sat in a train riding A New Hope's rails. They were suckered. It had another cantina scene, another Yoda and another Death Star. Nobody brought anything new to that show apart from Finn, and he was relegated to side antics as a goofy comic role. The more people thought about the movie, the less sense it made.

Rian Johnson broke A Force Awakens and was right to do so. He made the right decision. Johnson is an accomplished filmmaker. He made great movies before The Last Jedi and continues to do so. Johnson also showed the audience that Star Wars was a setting people could use to tell a million new stories. Rather than make another Skywalker movie, he destroyed it with a hammer. The crappy Emperor 2.0 was killed by Leia and Luke. The rebel empire 2.0 was scattered.

Johnson also showed new stories. He had Rose Tico and Finn engage in an adventure that wasn't a shitty retread of Empire Strikes Back, and fans bitched because it wasn't a shitty retread. If Johnson didn't break the new Star Wars trilogy, maybe the Mandalorian and Andor would have never been made. It's possible Disney's new direction to create new Star Wars content that diverges from the original trilogy came from Johnson.

Everything wrong about The Last Jedi is everything right about Johnson as a creative filmmaker and Star Wars fan.