Jacket, No Tie

Avast, here there be long text posts.

[rickthaniel]

Korrasami: “Man, it sure is great hangin’ out and savin’ the world together. Turns out I think this is a more than friends thing! Let’s chat about it later and kiss and stuff!” Lumity: “Ahhh! Teenage gay panic! Cute school dances and flirty sports matches! We are cute and awkward but we like each other so much, and we’re growing together!” Catradora: “I went to WAR for you because I LOVE you and I HATED you because you LEFT me and we almost destroyed EVERYTHING because the TENSION BETWEEN US BROUGHT REALITY ITSELF TO ITS KNEES but now we are TOGETHER again and the only way for us to save ALL OF EXISTENCE FROM BEING COMPLETELY ERASED is to FINALLY PROFESS OUR LOVE thereby RESTORING MAGIC TO THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE and ending a conflict that’s THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD but we are STILL VERY SOFT.”

[rickthaniel]

Trial Slice-of-Life Avatar Fanfic

Tbh I’ve never written fanfiction before but wanted to try some in-universe stuff as a writing exercise. Had a lot of fun and will likely continue on my own, but am curious if there’s interest for this kind of thing here? If people would want to read it? My suspicion is it’s not really the kind of thing folks would be into, but maybe I’m wrong! So be gentle I guess but figured I’d put out a little trial piece. If you’d read more of this, I’d love to hear from you!

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The first morning, Kuyon awoke a full hour before dawn. It was the heat that did it, he thought – but then again, it could have just been the change in surroundings. Time off the water always took some getting used to. His first sea voyage as a child was fraught with sickness and insomnia, even though his mother had done everything she could to make him comfortable during the long journey south. The fear of the ocean itself was still present then – strong in him – and he worried that if he dozed off at the wrong moment, the ship would be swallowed up in his sleep. Years later, when he took his first post on a ship, it took him three months to finally get comfortable with the constant, quiet movement.

Now, it was the opposite. Being on land was what gave him restless nights. But it certainly didn’t help that the Fire Nation was also about as hot as the name suggested, even before summer had begun. It wasn’t just the heat either. It was the weight of the air, the dampness. So different from either of the homes Kuyon had known. As a child, it had baffled him how a city built on ice could be so very, very dry. And when he heard the stories of masters pulling water from the air itself, he’d been so excited to try – only to discover that in the heart of the Water Tribe, there was nothing in the air to bend. Maybe that was why the technique was only mentioned in distant rumors – something waterbenders did in foreign places.

Kuyon had unintentionally become that waterbender. Of course, this particular visit wasn’t his first to the Fire Nation, but every other time he’d only seen the ports, and he’d had the welcoming belly of the ship to fall asleep in. Besides, Ember Island didn’t feel like those places. For all the blackened, rocky shorelines and volcanic landscape that was the nation’s signature, he somehow expected the beach would not have sand. A rock beach would have been more fitting, but the stones on the island were smooth – nothing like the jagged rocks he’d seen elsewhere. And for all the explosions that had created the surrounding islands thousands of years ago, Ember Island felt serene. Despite the fact that it was a resort, Kuyon hadn’t actually expected it to feel peaceful. He didn’t think the Fire Nation could have peaceful places.

Unable to fall back to sleep, he got dressed in the dark and walk out to the beach. It was still black out, but there was enough starlight to see the way down to the water. The moon was barely there – just a sliver of a thing in the sky – and that too might have contributed to the restlessness he felt.

It wasn’t that he felt weak when it was waning. It was a latent thing – a scar of fear left over from when he was eight and saw the full moon in the sky go dark. From his window, he could see the warriors’ water fall, limp and useless, and he was sure at that moment that he was going to die. Even at such a young age, it had been instilled in him that men of the Northern Water Tribe did not run from a fight. But when the sky went red with the blood of the spirit – as the story would later be told – he saw the men if his tribe flee in panic. Every month since then, a part of him still feared that when that sliver vanished, it would not come back; that the sacrifice the chief’s daughter had made would wear out somehow.

At the water’s edge, Kuyon sat down in the sand and felt the edge of the tide wash over his toes. With his left hand, he gently pulled with its ebb and flow, barely bending it, just following the water’s lead. The breathing exercise had always calmed him, especially during his early days in the South Pole. At the time, his mother told him they were going to rebuild their sister tribe. Years later, he realized that most of the northerners who joined Master Pakku’s expedition were really looking to rebuild themselves. They had either lost someone in the siege, or were exhausted of hiding behind the city walls, waiting for the war to end. A whole generation had lived and died while the North was frightened to sail too far from home, and when reports started coming of what had been done to the benders in the Southern Tribe, an even greater fear set in.

In those early days in the south, his mother would take him down to where the ice became water and show him how to breathe into the tide. The same night he saw the moon go dark, Kuyon saw the great spirit rise from the waters of the city and wash the invaders out. It had taken weeks to sort through the wreckage left by the decimated navy, and though the spirit had saved them all, it had frightened him too. In the whole voyage south, he’d never spoken to the Avatar. Part of him had wanted to of course. At eight and twelve, the two weren’t so far apart in age. But despite his quiet demeanor on the ship, Kuyon was afraid of the airbender, for the same reason that for that whole journey he was afraid of the sea beneath him. That thing those two had become together – the boy with the tattoos and the spirit of the ocean – had both saved him and terrified him on the night the moon was killed. Pushing and pulling the tides with his mother, he remembered that the ocean could be peaceful too.

Even the water was different in the Fire nation though. The waves that splashed up on the sands of Ember Island were frothy and white; nothing like the perfect blue of the northern waters, or the icy stillness of the south. Once, after word had come that Ba Sing Se had fallen, he’d asked his mother why the Ocean Spirit didn’t simply appear on the shores of the Fire Nation as it had during the siege of the north. “It could wash away the whole army,’ he’d said, almost pleading with her, “like how it washed away the ships. Why doesn’t it?” Of course he knew vaguely that the spirits didn’t work that way, but his mother didn’t tell him that at the time. Instead she just sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulders, and said “I don’t know, Ku. I don’t know.”

Feeling the pulse of the Fire Nation’s ocean, Kuyon watched as the bottom of the sky began to bloom with pink, then orange, then yellow light. He focused his gaze on the water’s surface out by the horizon, in search of the thing that had brought him there, but with no luck. It would still be a few days before the migration passed by. Until then, he’d have to get used to sleeping in the heat.

Some members of the Water Tribes had developed a scorn for sunrise over the course of the war. Kuyon had never understood that. It was a beautiful thing, still.

The sky alight with early morning, he pushed himself up off the sand and began to walk down the beach, toward the town square that lay inland a ways further along the shore. There was no one else in sight as he went. Kuyon wondered if Ember Island’s stream of wealthy vacationing Fire Nation aristocrats had slowed in the past decade; if the shadow that had loomed over the country for the last fourteen years in the wake of its defeat extended even to the tourist industry. The families who owned homes here had taken major hits in reputation to be sure, but their fortunes likely suffered as well. He’d heard that the new Fire Lord had ousted most of Ozai’s true loyalists from the inner workings of government, but he doubted those expulsions meant any real severity for families with so much ancient wealth and power.

Strolling up the beach and through one of the town’s winding footpaths, Kuyon came eventually to a small plaza. Shops and restaurants lined the perimeter of the square, but almost all were still closed. Only one tea shop seemed to be awake at such an early hour. Inside, Kuyon found a tidy arrangement of wooden tables, and a small counter at the back. A woman, maybe ten years his senior, was wiping down one of the tabletops when she glanced up and saw him standing in the doorway. She squinted at him, straightened, and tucked the rag into the front of her apron.

“Would you like a table?”

“If you’re open.”

“Just the one of you?”

“Yes.”

She gestured from one wall to the other with an open hand.

“Wherever you like. What are you drinking?”

“What do people usually get?”

She walked behind the counter, pulled a set of spark rocks from a drawer he couldn’t see, and started a pot of water boiling.

“Our ginseng is the most popular.”

“I’ll have that then.”

She nodded and set to work. It was terribly quiet, despite the faint breeze that made its way off the water, through the plaza and into the room.

“Is this your shop?”

“Me? No. My uncle owns it. And I should warn you he only takes Fire Nation money.”

“I can pay.”

“I guess so if you’re staying around here. You a tourist?”

“I’m a fisherman.”

“Are you on vacation?” she asked, leaning over the counter toward him. Her hair was black like his, about as long, but worn up in the Fire Nation style. Her face was hard, but Kuyon couldn’t tell if it was because of his clothing or something else entirely.

“I guess,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to see the tiger dolphin migration. It only happens every four years, and they should be coming right by here in the next few days.”

“They got you in a shack down there?”

“It’s all I could afford. My ship’s in port at Hing Wa Island for the week, so I managed to get a little time away.”

“You should have stayed with them. Hing Wa is gorgeous this time of year. It’s ash banana season.”

“That’s why they’re there. My captain’s hoping to turn over our recent hauls for as much of the harvest as he can. They’re becoming something of a delicacy in the Earth Kingdom.”

She came out from behind the counter carrying a tray, the teapot and two small porcelain cups arranged on it, and set it down on the table in front of him. Steam rose from the neck of the pot. Without a word, she sat down in the chair across from him.

“Let it sit for another minute,” she said. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Please.”

“It’s just that I’ve never met a member of the Water Tribe before.”

Kuyon feigned shock, glancing down at his blue tunic, the blue rings on his fingers, the blue armband with the Tribe’s sigil.

“How did you know I was Water Tribe?”

She laughed.

“Which Tribe?”

“Both. I was born in the north, but we moved south when I was eight.”

“When you were eight.”

“After,” he said. “After the siege.”

She nodded, her arms crossed on the table before her, staring straight at the teapot and the steam rising between them.

“My husband was a technician on the Ilah’s Pride. It was one of the first ship’s to make contact with the wall. At least, that’s they told me.”

Kuyon looked at her, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She picked up the teapot and poured them each a cup, but he hesitated to take his, suddenly tense and wary. Then she took a sip from her own and laughed again – a sharp, barking laughter.

“It’s not poisoned if that’s what you were thinking. I’m not a hateful person, really. And that whole naval crusade was an absurd vanity project to begin with.”

“Still,” he said, “I’m sorry. I saw what happened to those lead ships. It terrified me as a kid.”

“Yes, well, that’s what we get I suppose. Wei Ko should have known better than to join the navy. But that’s where all the advancement was in those days. He thought we needed the money. And why am I telling you all this?”

“I don’t know. You haven’t even told me your name.”

“Sung.”

“I’m Kuyon.”

“Well, I’d keep your head down while you wait for your dolphins, Kuyon. There’s a lot of naval heritage on Ember Island, and most folks won’t be as accepting of those Water Tribe colors as I am.”

[rickthaniel]

I Ranked all the Idiot Guards in Avatar: The Last Airbender so You Don’t Have To

Today, all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender are up on U.S. Netflix, and I expect the internet will soon be buzzing once again about the show that some of us (correctly) hold as the greatest of all time. With quarantines still keeping us all at home, and the country’s collective conscience scrambling for knew things to binge, this is a great opportunity for those who haven’t seen the show since childhood to give it a rewatch, as well as for new viewers to experience its magic for the very first time.

I, a true believer, have of course watched the show every year since it finished its run back in 2006, and I thought with this new wave of binging ahead of us, I might as well put that time to good use for the public. But what to write about? A deep dive into the history and lore? Analysis of the greatest bending duels? Good ideas, sure, but there’s another topic that’s been on my mind for a long time, and now seems like the right moment to finally address it.

There are a lot of idiot guards in Avatar. Like, a lot. Every time I watch the show, I am struck by how many nameless background dudes are completely incompetent at their incredibly basic job – guarding – and for years I have pondered who the best dumb guard in the whole series is. Today, I hope to clear that up with a definitive, scientific ranking. I present to you now, The Top 7 Dumb Guards in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

A few rules before we start:

First, for the purposes of assembling a truly definitive list, I sampled not only dumb guards from Avatar, but from its sequel series, The Legend of Korra as well. This will undoubtedly draw me some flak as Korra is not as universally beloved as its predecessor, but since both shows came from co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Mike DiMartino and shared writers, directors, and even some voice talent, I’m lumping the two together to bring you the best guard-related content out there. There will be spoilers for both shows, beware.

Secondly, I will be rating each guard or guard-group in four categories: Dumbness, Guardness, Comedic Timing, and Memorability, on a scale of 1-5 for each. This is, after all, science.

Lastly, I want to throw out a few honorable mentions who, for various technical reasons, did not make the cut:

Honorable Mention: The Engineer Who gets Frozen in The Drill

This guy has no lines, contributes nothing, and is technically not a guard. But he does look very, very silly, and Katara’s amazing “Hi” after freezing the poor man solid is enough to get an honorable mention from me. It kills me every time.

Honorable Mention: Detectives Lu and Gang from Korra Season 2

Like the last guy, these two are not technically guards, and they appear in too many episodes to qualify. In a show filled with great comic characters, most of their contributions in the laugh department I can take or leave. But they are extraordinarily dumb, and that counts for something.

Honorable Mention: Literally Serena Williams

This one deserves a shout-out solely for the queen herself, who cameoed as Uncle Iroh’s prison guard in Airbender’s third season simply because she was a big fan of the show. She cannot be on this list, as this is a list for dumb guards and not queens, but I include her here so we can all remember this beautiful moment in pop culture history.

Honorable Mention: Aunt Wu’s Bodyguard/Butler/Secret Lover (?) in The Fortuneteller

Our last honorable mention is technically a guard, as he stands by Aunt Wu’s front door and, well, guards. He is not, however, dumb. No no no, anything but. He is a suave, devil-may-care, smokin’ fellow with all of one (maybe two?) lines, and he deserves recognition for stealing the twenty seconds of screen time he gets with his sexy self. Seriously, the two pictures I have here are the only two shots he appears in. But just look at this guy:

We must stan.

And now, to the actual list.

Number 7: The Macaroon Guys

Show: Korra               Episode: The Calling, Season 4, Episode 4

Dumbness: 3       Guardness: 2       Comedic Timing: 2        Memorability: 1

Starting off our list are these two bozos who kidnap Ikki in an attempt to find the avatar. They devise a plan to trick her into telling what she knows, but it is doomed to fail as Ikki is a clever airbending prodigy, and they are, you guessed it, a couple of dumb guards.

The main attraction here is how one of these guys finds a bag of snacks Ikki’s mom packed for her, Jinora and Meelo, and that he seems genuinely touched by the handwritten notes inside, which he somehow believes are written to him. He keeps trying to convince his Mario-ass-lookin’ to try a macaroon, and is repeatedly rebuffed. That’s good comedy.

In the end, these two are knocked out in a single blow from Jinora and Meelo. They are quite dumb, and the macaroon bit is pretty good, but sadly they overstay their welcome – unbecoming for guards – and therefore land at the bottom slot.

Number 6: The Southern Raiders Crew

Show: Airbender         Episode: The Southern Raiders, Season 3, Episode 16

Dumbness: 3        Guardness: 2       Comedic Timing: 4         Memorability: 1

The Southern Raiders is one of the darkest episodes in either show, even standing up against some of the brutal events of Korra’s later seasons. It’s a beautifully written saga about trauma, grieving, and vengeance. But don’t worry – there’s one good laugh in there too.

After discovering the location of the Southern Raiders fleet, Zuko and Katara launch a night attack on the lead ship to try to kill the man who killed Katara’s mother, who as it turns out, isn’t there. Seconds before she leaps aboard the ship’s deck, waterbending power peaked beneath the full moon and driven by revenge, we see the crew of the ship, sitting around, shootin’ the breeze. One guard, a particularly dorky looking fellow, is in the middle of a funny story, but he only gets as far as “So there I was, right?” before he is wept into the sea in a single waterbending attack.

The clip really only works in motion, and I encourage you to watch for it on your next viewing, because while this poor guard does not last nearly long enough to make it any higher on our list, that one line gets me every. Single. Time.

Number 5: The Messenger Hawk Messengers

Show: Airbender         Episode: The Beach, Season 3, Episode 5

Dumbness: 4        Guardness: 4       Comedic Timing: 2         Memorability: 2

Oh baby are these two dumb. Just barely making the top-five spot are the two fire dudes who spot Aang swimming in all his shirtless, tattooed glory. Excited at having discovered a national security threat at their incredibly dull, incredibly remote outpost, these absolute boneheads write a letter to the Firelord to clue the big man in. Sadly, their messenger hawk is intercepted by Combustion Man and never makes it to the royal palace.

The reason these guys get bumped up to number 5 is their establishing shot, where one guy fans himself gingerly while the other picks his toes with the hilt of his sword and then sniffs it. It’s classic physical comedy, and it never gets old. These guys are morons of the highest caliber, and they deserve recognition.

Also they were almost definitely killed by Combustion Man so like, you know, pour one out.

Number 4: The Earthbending-Lemur Guys

Show: Airbender         Episode: Imprisoned, Season 1, Episode 6

Dumbness: 4        Guardness: 3       Comedic Timing: 3         Memorability: 5

Textbook dumb guards here, head to toe. So, the gang’s in a town where no Earthbending is allowed, but Katara’s new friend Haru gets caught and thrown on a prison barge. Determined to save him, our heroes devise a plan to frame Katara for earthbending by having Aang levitate a boulder with a wind blast from underneath, sending her to the same prison barge to enact a rescue.

Simple, right? Except for these dumb, idiot guards who, seeing the trick play out, believe it is actually Momo the lemur, not Katara, who is earthbending. In fairness, we know that some animals do have bending abilities, and Momo does look particularly awe-inspiring in this pose:

It’s one of the most iconic moments from the show’s early episodes, frequently quoted and with good reason. The whole set up here is comedy gold, and we’re rewarded with some of the dumbest guards in the whole series. How Haru managed to get caught by these schmucks is honestly a mystery unto itself.

The only real thing holding these guys back here is that Momo, Katara and Sokka carry most of the comedy on this one. The guards are dumb, sure, but they’re only part of the equation.

Number 3: The Push-Up Guys

Show: Korra               Episode: Old Wounds, Season 3, Episode 6

Dumbness: 4        Guardness: 5       Comedic Timing: 5         Memorability: 2

I know, I know, this one’s a bit of a wildcard pick – a very brief moment from a fairly late Korra episode. But these two really exemplify the dumb guard lifestyle, and their lack of notoriety is the only thing keeping them this low on the list.

Lin Beifong is wandering the grounds in Zaofu, inspecting security, when she comes across two guards lounging against the side of a building. And in one line, these two cement themselves in the dumb guard pantheon:

          ACT I, SCENE I, enter TWO DUMB GUARDS

          Guard 1: [Leans on wall]

          Guard 2: How many push-ups did you do last night?

          Guard 1: …

          Guard 2: …because I did like fifty.

          END SCENE.

Gold. Pure gold. This, right here, is everything a dumb guard should do – guard something, be a little delinquent, deliver a good one-liner, and exit stage right. Lin immediately chastises these two for being so dumb, and so bad at guarding, and that’s the last we see of them. Sadly, this moment is rarely remembered, so it sits at the bronze medal position.

Number 2: The Pentapox Boys

Show: Airbender         Episode: Return to Omashu, Season 2, Episode 3

Dumbness: 5        Guardness: 5       Comedic Timing: 4         Memorability: 3

In our current global situation, plague-based comedy is a particularly tricky thing. Dumb guard-based comedy, however? Timeless. In this episode, the Aang Gang helps the citizens of Omashu, now conquered by the Fire Nation, escape their city by pretending to have come down with a deadly illness called pentapox. Pentapox, of course, does not exist.

When our heroes first enter the city at night, coming up through the sewers, Sokka is “attacked” by adorable creatures called purple pentapuses (pentapi?). The suckers on the pentapi’s appendages leave marks on his neck, and when the crew comes upon a group of guards, they ask what’s wrong with him.

Cute, right? “He has pentapox,” Katara says, always the quick thinker, and Sokka immediately plays along – coughing, stumbling, the whole shebang. Rather than question these mysterious children, oddly out way past curfew, our boys follow the dumb guard playbook and immediately buy the whole thing.

“I think I’ve heard of pentapox,” the leader says to his companions in a rising panic. “Didn’t your cousin Chang die of it? We’d better go wash our hands. And burn our clothes!”

It’s a hilarious moment, and while the guards exit appropriately on cue, they pop back up later to confirm to the city’s governor that yes, pentapox is real, and he should let all the citizens out. Just ask cousin Chang.

But even guards this dumb cannot claim the top spot. That blue ribbon is reserved for…

Number 1: The Birthday Boys

Show: Airbender         Episode: Sozin’s Comet Part 3: Into the Inferno, Season 3, Episode 20

Dumbness: 5        Guardness: 3       Comedic Timing: 5         Memorability: 5

Here it is – the gold medal. A set of guards any fan of the show will recognize. After capturing one of Ozai’s airships with Suki and Toph, Sokka pulls a classic Han Solo and calls the whole zeppelin crew to the bomb bay for “hot cakes and sweet cream,” to celebrate a “very special birthday.” No one questions this, despite the fact that the airship is flying to the Earth Kingdom to help burn it down. But never mind genocidal military operations, there’s a birthday to celebrate!

And that’s how we come to this scene – a beautiful comic break in the middle of the Airbender finale. Two regular guys, fully clad in masks and battle armor, making awkward small talk at a work party before plummeting into the sea. It’s almost heartbreaking when another soldier approaches, so happy that the captain remembered his birthday, only to realize seconds later as the bomb bay doors open that it was all a terrible trick.

It’s relatable, hilarious, and a desperately needed moment to breathe during a wild ride of an episode. Yes, I admit, these aren’t exactly guards in the traditional sense, but the fact that they’re voiced by the show’s two creators makes up for it, and the resulting scene is an instant classic.

And there you have it – the definitive Avatar ranking everyone was clamoring for. And please, Mike and Bryan, if you’re reading this, give me a spin-off show about Aunt Wu’s doorman. He is a man of great mystery and I must know his secrets.

[rickthaniel]

The Last Jedi’s Most Important Scene is the Lightsaber Battle it Doesn’t Have

The first time I saw The Last Jedi, I thought I liked it. It was weird, and not in the way I expect from Star Wars. It surprised me. Some of the comedy felt a little too Marvel, some of the drama felt a little too Hollywood, and most of the casino scenes felt way too boring, but I really thought I liked it.

The second time I saw The Last Jedi, I knew I loved it. All my original problems remained, but they were overshadowed by the unexpected brilliance of Kylo and Rey’s relationship, the beautiful subtlety of Luke’s final arc, a bevy of spectacular action scenes, and a poignant overriding theme of success from failure and life from death. Characters fell and grew, from fighters to leaders, from cowards to warriors, from teachers to masters. But my favorite scene was the one I look forward to in every Star Wars film – the big climactic lightsaber fight. That spark-flying clash of good versus evil. It’s the most important scene in the movie.

You probably noticed, it’s not actually there.

Or is it?

Sure, there’s the big throne room battle, which is a fantastic scene, but it’s not actually a lightsaber fight. The swords never clash. The scene is incredibly important, but more on that later. Then there’s the confrontation between Kylo Ren and Luke’s astral projection. Again, no blades ever make contact. It’s not a fight, it’s a stare-down with lunges. Lightsabers only clash one time in the entire movie – the flashback scene of Luke standing over Kylo as a child. We see the scene multiple times from different points of view, mainly because it’s one of Last Jedi’s most pivotal plot points. It’s the moment Luke lets fear overcome him – the ultimate failure for a Jedi – leading to Kylo’s full turn to the dark side.

So how can there be no fight? It’s a staple of the franchise. There are posters strictly designed to show each duel in chronological order. You know the ones. On one side a Jedi, on the other side a Sith. That’s the classic showdown. And that’s exactly why Last Jedi’s big lightsaber battle – the most important scene in the movie – doesn’t exist.

Because the Jedi and the Sith truly are gone. Because Old Things die. Because everything Luke says about the Jedi’s hubris, their failure, and their need to be extinguished is true. Because Yoda burns the tree down, and Rey wears gray robes. Because the iconic lightsaber battle is the ultimate representation of a universal binary that The Last Jedi ends.

It’s not news that one of the movie’s biggest themes is the idea that within the cycles of dark/light, death/life, failure/growth there is a consistent balance between these things. It’s not a constantly flipping coin, it’s a snake eating its own tail, a perpetual, cyclical process where both pieces are happening in perfect synchronization. Fighting against this balance, as Luke calls it during Rey’s meditation, never really works out for the characters in the film. It’s the reason Luke’s attempt to contain the inevitable rise of darkness in Kylo ends in disaster. The playing field is constantly leveling itself.

So why not abandon the binary altogether if both sides unquenchably need each other?

That’s the question The Last Jedi asks throughout. It’s the reason it’s so weird, and it’s the reason it works so well. Kylo and Rey both try to answer it in different ways, and while they both strike close at times, they’re both left searching when the credits roll.

Remember when I said those two not-lightsaber-fights were still incredibly important? Think about the throne room scene from a geographical perspective. In every duel in the seven previous core films, we see two force wielders, one from the dark side and one form the light, staring each other down. They are at opposite ends of a spectrum about to joust. It’s a classic binary orientation.

This makes that shot where Rey and Kylo go back to back so much more than a cool badass moment. That’s the moment where the tables turn. Instead of facing each other from the outside in, they meet in the center and face apart. They’re not opposites, and they’re not the same. They’re simply two people starting from a mutual point and going in two different directions.

For Star Wars, that’s a huge polarity shift.

If you haven’t read Mike Klimo’s piece on Star Wars Ring Theory, I highly recommend it. It gives an incredible explanation for the way Star Wars combines cyclical narratives and role reversals as the cornerstones of its storytelling. For our purposes here though, the important part is this: Star Wars has always been a story about how both sides – light and dark, Jedi and Sith, Republic and Empire – can be equally bad.

When Kylo Ren faces Luke Skywalker in what he thinks is about to be that classic lightsaber duel, he is hoping desperately for that idea to hold true. He wants to fight Jedi Luke, Hero Luke, the Luke who tried and failed to restore the Order, who learned from Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi, who abides by the strict dogma of the old Jedi Knights. He wants a battle in the classical sense, because he wants to become the true Sith warrior Snoke told him he never could be.

He gets a different Luke. He gets a Luke who is tired of fighting and just wants to rest. He gets a Luke in both black and white robes, who knows his failures and his victories, but who ultimately just wants to vanish into the ever-promising horizon, transcendent from binaries that only cause chaos. Kylo Ren doesn’t get that simple Jedi hero, so he can’t be the simple Sith villain. Instead, he has to live on as something much more complicated and far more interesting. When the Falcon flies away, Rey and Kylo share one final moment. Snoke is dead, but their minds remain bridged, because they are standing back to back facing in opposite directions. Because the binary broke when the lightsaber did. Because the duel they were supposed to fight never happened.

[rickthaniel]

The Sound of Silence in Planet of the Apes

I feel like nobody’s talking about War for the Planet of the Apes. The critics are talking, and the box office is talking, but the people are silent, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. War is, in my mind, the peak moment of series that has blown past every other competitor in the realm of PG-13, nine figure budget blockbusters. DC, Marvel, Mission Impossible and F&F, they all generally fall short of Apes for story, scale and substance. Exceptions exist, like this own year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming and Wonder Woman, but on the whole the rest just doesn’t measure up. Not since The Dark Knight has a film of this scope and caliber done so much so well. So why isn’t anyone talking about it? After a lot of thinking, I have a theory. It’s the reason I believe these movies aren’t getting the vocal attention they deserve, and it’s the thing that makes them stand out so starkly from the monochromatic backdrop of modern Hollywood: Planet of the Apes is quiet.

You see it in the calming vistas and beautiful establishing shots. You hear it in those frequent moment of jungle noise and nothing else. The idea of sound and silence is the driving thematic force through the whole trilogy, and with this idea as the series’ philosophical cornerstone, Apes transcends the hollowness of its contemporaries and sets itself in a whole different league.

To really break apart Apes’ use of sound and silence, I want to look at it through a few lenses, and I want to start by talking about silence in the special effects. Before going to see War, I rewatched Dawn with my brother who’d never seen it. When we got to the climax battle, the duel to the death between Caesar and Koba on the tower, and the battleground itself began collapsing beneath them, my brother said, “Huh. That looks expensive.” He was referring of course to the scene itself, the animated amalgamation of girders, pipes and apes, all bending and contorting in a giant computer-generated fireworks display. It looked expensive. And it was.

But the whole movie was expensive. At well over $200 million, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is in the VIP box for film budgets. The CGI aura emanates from every shot, but it wasn’t until that tower fell that my brother took notice. In a world where every film with a noteworthy effects budget uses it make as many star cruisers and laser blasts, as many explosions and faceless robots, as much noise, as possible, Apes uses its quietly. It builds believable characters in a believable place. And that’s enough.

It’s no secret that Hollywood is suffering from effects-fatigue. It’s the reason Valerian bombed while War did so well financially. Those explosions and collisions that Luc Besson dazzled us with in 1997 do nothing for us now. We expect them, and not excitedly. No matter how many aliens you model on screen, or how many missiles you shoot, the wow factor is gone. So, Matt Reeves went a different way. He took that money and built a world with it. A world that doesn’t look expensive. And he filled that world with a compelling community of characters. When everyone else was competing to see who could make the most noise, Apes created a beautiful silence.

That silence that carries over into the trilogy’s pacing, which is the next piece I want to talk about. While all three have been marketed as action films, none of them really are. Rise is a disaster movie with only one real action scene to its name. Dawn is a post-apocalyptic drama that raises the ante to two fights in the film’s second half. War has elements of a war film, sure, but its equal parts western and prison story at the same time. Every chapter is a distinct piece. That’s what happens when the narrative dictates the franchise, instead of the other way around.

Look at the virus subplot in Rise. That virus is the most important plot device in the whole series, bringing about both the rise of ape society and the fall of man, but we only see it on screen to the extent that it affects Caesar. It’s his story after all. The global spread of the disease and the ensuing downfall of civilization is relegated to a motion graphic in the ending credits, which sounds absurd, but that’s where it belongs for the purposes of the narrative. The same thing happens in Dawn when the human colony contacts Woody Harrelson’s extremist military base. The plotline is there through the whole second chapter, but we don’t see it brought center stage until War.

By deftly weaving these arcs, Apes successfully dodges the trap of cliffhanger and instead creates a compelling, interwoven story. A story with a quiet momentum. It never rushes itself or loses focus, but it also keeps everything in frame. Even the dialog has a calm, peaceful pace. When Caesar speaks in Dawn, we feel how difficult it is. The language doesn’t come naturally, and he constantly struggles to find the right words. The trademark fast banter and witty quips of the blockbuster are replaced with slow, careful dialogue, the noise replaced with silence.

Lastly, I want to talk about how Apes uses silence as a narrative device. From the very beginning, the shifting fortunes of man and ape hinge on their polarized methods of communications. When Caesar learns to speak, it’s through sign language. And when he builds his brotherhood, his family, he uses the same foundation. Everything from school lessons to council meetings are conducted in silence in the ape society. It’s not about being the loudest. It’s about what you have to say.

The humans, on the other hand, shout and riot. The soldiers in War start the day with organized battle cries. Gary Oldman controls the chaos of his city in Dawn with a megaphone and a stirring speech. They talk and shout and eventually, all too ironically, lose their voices altogether. All their noise ultimately amounts to nothing, merely embodying the chaos, violence, and madness that defines their downfall. The apes, on the other hand, say something. The difference is, they say it in silence.

There’s a lot more that sets War for the Planet of the Apes and its predecessors apart, like the methodical development of Caesar’s character, and the genre-bending nature of the franchise as a whole. I also know that for all my praise, these movies aren’t perfect. But I do honestly think, at a time when so much in the theater looks so similar and so empty, that there is something unique and important about Planet of the Apes. The fact that I felt more in three lines of subtitles in War than two hours of noise in anything else is incredibly significant. And I hope people start talking about it. Because it matters, it really matters, that there is a movie out there with a $150 million budget that wants people to sit down in a theater and read.

[rickthaniel]

Spider-Man Deescalates the Superhero Arms race

Spider-man does not appear in the intro to Spider-Man: Homecoming. That’s because, at the time of the intro, Peter Parker is seven years old. He’s off somewhere in an apartment in queens, watching the Avengers battle Loki over and over again on the TV. A second grader, utterly mesmerized by the heroes on the screen. When The Avengers hit theaters, my little brother was in the second grade too. Like Peter Parker, he fell in love with Iron Man and Captain America after they blew up NYC in that 2012 climax. They excited him. They inspired him. They showed him, and young Mr. Parker, a heart and a spirit that Marvel has struggled to find since. And now, as Peter Parker comes of age with his latest screen debut, he brings that heart, that soul, back to a genre that has been desperately wanting it.

Since Iron Man first armored up in 2008, escalation has been the name of the comic book blockbuster game. Bigger names, bigger casts, bigger battles. More stars, more effects, more money. From Marvel to DC, escalation has defined the genre, and superhero fatigue has settled in. Hard. Homecoming is not the cure. It is not the new direction, the shift in business strategy, the shining herald of what’s to come. It is, however, a damn good respite, a brilliantly colorful bastion that reminds us why we all got hooked in childlike glee on these movies in the first place. It joyfully recaptures that superhero spirit by looking backwards instead of forwards, prioritizing personality over pizzazz, and fully understanding its own limitations.

Momentum is the key to escalation. It’s the reason Marvel announces films five years in advance, and it’s the reason we’ll stick around through every credits sequence from now ‘til judgement day. The MCU is always looking forward, dazzling us with the next installment before the last one even hits the screen. Very rarely, in this race to the never-ending finish, does anyone stop and take the time to look back. The franchise never surveys its accomplishments. It never gives us time to breathe. The ostensible appeal of a united film universe is the breadth of lore that can be developed over time, but what does that matter if we never get the chance to revel in it?

This is where Spider-Man offers a well-needed break. It takes the time to look backwards instead of forwards. The villain’s whole backstory hinges on the repercussions of that giant battle from the first Avengers. Peter Parker’s entire understanding of himself and his place in the world comes from a culture where Captain America conducts the pacer test and the Age of Ultron is taught in tenth grade social studies. Hell, five minutes in we get an extensive “and now, from Spidey’s perspective” take on Civil War. And it works. It’s funny. For the first time in years, we get to gaze back at all those ticket stubs we bought and remember why. It takes us back to that original Avenger Promise and all the glorious, goofy fun that came with it.

That goofiness shows through every corner of Homecoming, a movie that prioritizes being silly over being loud. There may be no award here for most bombastic comic book romp, but there is a trophy case of personality and heart. Tom Holland’s biggest exploits include catching an elevator, holding a boat together, and swinging on a jet plane. Nothing of the army-battling, world-ending caliber we’ve come to expect. There’s high-budget hijinks to be sure, but compared to the hordes of faceless robots, ridiculous space fights, reality distortions and twelve-man battle royals that have inundated us for years, Spidey’s set pieces feel refreshingly pedestrian.

In fact, Michael Keaton’s blue-collar Vulture repeatedly shows disdain for, and fear of, Tony Stark and the rest of the crew. He’s a thief, not a supervillain. All he wants is to take his score and get out. He’s not here to bend space-time, commit genocide or take over the universe. And in that same vein, Peter Parker seems more interested in accidentally webbing innocent people and buying deli sandwiches than halting the apocalypse. Tony Stark shows up a handful of times just to remind Spider-Man of this. Stay close to the ground, he says. Be a friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man. Know what you can do, and know what you can’t. Know what you’re good at, and know what you’re not.

That’s the real power of Homecoming. It limits itself. It understands that not every hero is Thor, that not every fight is a war. “If you’re nothing without this suit, you don’t deserve it,” Stark chastises Peter after his best attempt at a major action sequence goes awry. An action sequence is only as compelling as its hero, after all. In one breath, Robert Downey Jr. addresses Spider-man, and Spider-Man. Don’t rush to graduate so quick. Focus on the character, on the spirit, on the things that made people like Peter Parker and my little brother care in the first place.

About a month ago I watched Iron Man for the first time. It was the only MCU film I’d missed. The first one. And I was fascinated to discover how…quiet, it was. When the credits rolled, I felt satisfied because for 126 minutes Robert Downey Jr. made me smile, and he made me care. Almost a decade later, Tom Holland has made me do the same. Spider-Man: Homecoming feels like it fell out of an alternate timeline where the blockbuster arms race didn’t reach such ridiculous heights. A timeline where the character was enough. Where success wasn’t measured by an effects budget.

I know I’m romanticizing. In the end, this is just the next piece in the Marvel Cinematic Machine, a machine that keeps turning no matter what I think. But it’s a piece that stands out, that feels unique in itself. There’s far more that makes this movie special, like the diverse and brilliant cast, the smart twists, and a level of nuanced social commentary unparalleled in a movie of this style and caliber. Someone smarter than I can, and surely will, write those pieces. But when I walked out of the theater, I was satisfied to say, “That was special. That had heart.”

[rickthaniel]

Avatar Aang, Feminist Icon?

“Who’s your favorite character?” I hear that question come up a lot over Avatar: The Last Airbender, a show particularly near and dear to me. Iroh and Toph get tossed around a lot. Zuko is very popular. Sokka has his fans. But something I’ve noticed? Aang very rarely gets the pick. When he comes up, it’s usually in that “Oh, and also…” kind of way. Which is strange, I think, considering he’s the main character, the titular airbender, of the entire show.

I never really thought much about it until a couple weeks ago when I finished my annual re-watch of the series and found myself, for the first time, specifically focused on Aang’s arc. Somehow, I never really paid that much attention to him before. I mean sure, he’s front and center in most episodes, fighting or practicing or learning big spiritual secrets, and yet, he always feels a little overshadowed. Katara takes care of the group. Sokka makes the plans. Zuko has the big, heroic Joseph Campbell journey. Aang…goofs around. He listens and follows and plays with Momo. And yes, at the end his story gets bigger and louder, but even then I feel like a lot of it dodges the spotlight. And here’s why:

Avatar casts the least traditionally-masculine hero you could possibly write as the star of a fantasy war story. Because of that, we don’t see Aang naturally for everything he is, so we look elsewhere.

To show what I mean, I want to talk about some of the show’s other characters, and I want to start with Zuko. Zuko is the hero we’re looking for. He’s tall and hot and complicated. He perseveres in the face of constant setbacks. He uses two swords and shoots fire out of his hands. He trains with a wise old man on ship decks and mountaintops. Occasionally he yells at the sky. He’s got the whole 180-degree moral turn beat for beat, right down to the scars and the sins-of-the-father confrontation scene. And if you were going into battle, some epic affair with battalions of armor-clad infantry, Zuko is the man you’d want leading the charge, Aragorn style. We love Zuko. Because Zuko does what he’s supposed to do.

Now let’s look at Katara. Katara doesn’t do what she’s supposed to do. She doesn’t care about your traditionally gender dynamics because she’s too busy fighting pirates and firebenders, planning military operations with the highest ranking generals in the Earth Kingdom, and dismantling the entire patriarchal structure of the Northern Water Tribe. Somewhere in her spare time she also manages to become one of the greatest waterbenders in the world, train the Avatar, defeat the princess of the Fire Nation in the middle of Sozin’s Comet and take care of the entire rest of the cast for an entire year living in tents and caves. Katara is a badass, and we love that.

So what about Aang? When we meet Aang, he is twelve years old. He is small and his voice hasn’t changed yet. His hobbies include dancing, baking and braiding necklaces with pink flowers. He loves animals. He doesn’t eat meat. He despises violence and spends nine tenths of every fight ducking and dodging. His only “weapon” is a blunt staff, used more for recreation than combat. Through the show, Aang receives most of his training from two young women – Katara and Toph – whom he gives absolute respect, even to the point of reverence. When he questions their instruction, it comes from a place of discomfort or anxiety, never superiority. He defers to women, young women, in matters of strategy and combat. Then he makes a joke at his own expense and goes off to feed his pet lemur.

Now there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, and it’s the one that shielded Aang from the heroic limelight in my eyes for ten years. The reasoning goes like this: Aang is a child. He has no presumptuous authority complex, no masculinity anxiety, no self-consciousness about his preferred pastimes, because he’s twelve. He’s still the hero, but he’s the prepubescent hero, the hero who can’t lead the charge himself because he’s just not old enough. The problem is, that reasoning just doesn’t hold up when you look at him in the context of the rest of the show.

Let’s look at Azula. Aside from the Avatar himself, Zuko’s sister is arguably the strongest bender in the entire show. We could debate Toph and Ozai all day, but when you look at all Azula does, the evidence is pretty damning. Let’s make a list, shall we?

Azula completely mastered lightning, the highest level firebending technique, in her spare time on a boat, under the instruction of two old women who can’t even bend.

Azula led the drill assault on Ba Sing Sae, one of the most important Fire Nation operations of the entire war, and almost succeeded in conquering the whole Earth Kingdom.

Azula then bested the Kyoshi Warriors, one of the strongest non-bender fighting groups in the entire world, successfully infiltrated the Earth Kingdom in disguise, befriended its monarch, learned of the enemy’s most secret operation, emotionally manipulated her older brother, overthrew the captain of the secret police and did conquer the Earth Kingdom, something three Fire Lords, numerous technological monstrosities, and countless generals, including her uncle, failed to do in a century.

And she did this all when she was fourteen.

That last part is easy to forget. Azula seems so much her brother’s peer, we forget she’s the same age as Katara. And that means that when we first meet Azula, she’s only a year older than Aang is at the end of the series. So to dismiss Aang’s autonomy, maturity or capability because of his age is ridiculous, understanding that he and Azula could have been in the same preschool class.

We must then accept Aang for what he truly is: the hero of the story, the leader of the charge, who repeatedly displays restraint and meekness, not because of his age, not because of his upbringing, not because of some character flaw, but because he chooses too. We clamor for strong female characters, and for excellent reason. But nobody every calls for more weak male characters. Not weak in a negative sense, but weak in a sense that he listens when heroes talk. He negotiates when heroes fight. And when heroes are sharpening their blades, planning their strategies and stringing along their hetero love interests, Aang is making jewelry, feeding Appa, and wearing that flower crown he got from a travelling band of hippies. If all Aang’s hobbies and habits were transposed onto Toph or Katara, we’d see it as a weakening of their characters. But with Aang it’s cute, because he’s a child. Only it isn’t, because he’s not.

Even in his relationship with Katara, a landmark piece of any traditional protagonist’s identity, Aang defies expectations. From the moment he wakes up in episode one, he is infatuated with the young woman who would become his oldest teacher and closest friend. Throughout season one we see many examples of his puppy love expressing itself, usually to no avail. But there’s one episode in particular that I always thought a little odd, and that’s Jet.

In Jet, Katara has an infatuation of her own. The titular vigilante outlaw sweeps her off her feet, literally, with his stunning hair, his masterful swordsmanship and his apparent selflessness. You’d think this would elicit some kind of jealousy from Aang. There’s no way he’s ignorant of what’s happening, as Sokka sarcastically refers to Jet as Katara’s boyfriend directly in Aang’s presence, and she doesn’t even dispute it. But even then, we never see any kind of rivalry manifest in Aang. Rather, he seems in full support of it. He repeatedly praises Jet, impressed by his leadership and carefree attitude. Despite his overwhelming affection for Katara, he evaluates both her and Jet on their own merits as people. There is no sense of ownership or macho competition.

Contrast this with Zuko’s reaction to a similar scenario in season three’s The Beach. Zuko goes to a party with his girlfriend, and at that party he sees her talking to another guy. His reaction? Throwing the challenger into the wall, shattering a vase, yelling at Mai, and storming out. This may seem a little extreme, but it’s also what we’d expect to an extent. Zuko is being challenged. He feels threatened in his station as a man, and he responds physically, asserting his strength and dominance as best he can.

I could go on and on. I could talk about how the first time Aang trains with a dedicated waterbending master, he tries to quit because of sexist double standards, only changing his mind after Katara’s urging. I could talk about how Aang is cast as a woman in the Fire Nation’s propaganda theatre piece bashing him and his friends. Because in a patriarchal society, the worst thing a man can be is feminine. I could talk about the only times Aang causes any kind of real destruction in the Avatar state, it’s not even him, since he doesn’t gain control of the skill until the show’s closing moments. Every time he is powerless in his own power and guilt-ridden right after, until the very end when he finally gains control, and what does he do with all that potential? He raises the rivers, and puts the fires out.

Aang isn’t what he’s supposed to be. He rejects every masculine expectation placed on his role, and in doing so he dodges center stage of his own show. It’s shocking to think about how many times I just forgot about Aang. Even at the end, when his voice has dropped and his abs have filled in, we miss it. Zuko’s coronation comes and we cheer with the crowd, psyched to see our hero crowned. Then the Fire Lord shakes his head, gestures behind him and declares “the real hero is the Avatar.” It’s like he’s talking to us. “Don’t you get it?” he asks. “Did you miss it? This is his story. But you forgot that. Because he was small. And silly. And he hated fighting. And he loved to dance. Look at him,” Zuko seems to say. “He’s your hero. Avatar Aang, defier of gender norms, champion of self-identity, feminist icon.”

[rickthaniel]

Riverdale is the Most Stylish Show on Television

You should probably watch Riverdale. If you like small town murder, retro aesthetic and trashy teen drama, you should absolutely watch Riverdale. If you don’t have the same appreciation for that combination as I do though, you should still probably watch it. Soon, if you can. Not because it’s flawless (oh, it’s flawed) or because all the characters are complex and nuanced (oh boy are they not) or because the writing is always smart and deft (oh dear me), but because Riverdale has something television could use a lot more of. Style.

I’m not talking about the pseudo-lynchian vibe or the way the town itself feels stuck decades in the past despite a modern setting, though those are both part of it. I’ve heard the show described as both a Twin Peaks-like and a poor man’s Stranger Things, and while neither of those classifications are entirely wrong, I think they do Riverdale’s unique contributions to the medium a disservice. Where these other shows cemented themselves in sci-fi and cosmic horror, Riverdale feels almost gothic. It never touches the level of John Carpenter nostalgia of the latter, nor the shiver-inducing surreal quality of the former. What it does do is look very, very pretty.

Riverdale’s spectacular use of color shows from frame one, when two red-headed teens in snow-white garb appear on screen and walk slowly towards a shimmering waterline. The whole scene jumps. Pulses. Vibrates. And it only gets better from there. From the neon-lit booths of Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe to the snowy maple woods of the Blossom family syrup empire, the entire show oozes style like sap from a vein. Even simple shots – a house, a car, a bedroom – blast out brilliantly, whites on reds on greens, subtle sepia tints, perfect architectural symmetry. It’s gorgeous.

And the style doesn’t stop at the colors. It reaches from the 80s synth underscoring and the dreamlike flashbacks to Cole Sprouse’s gloomy teenage narration. Riverdale could not have a more appropriate name, as the town itself quickly becomes the show’s most intriguing and dynamic character.

Now it doesn’t all work all the time. The slow motion football plays and cheer squad numbers feel like they fell out of alternate universe where Zach Snyder directs teenage romcoms, much of the dialogue falls painfully short of that beautiful, so-scripted-it’s-perfect high school zen that Buffy the Vampire Slayer played off so deftly, and it can be hard to distinguish when the drama is parody from when it’s just bad writing. Make no mistake, Riverdale does not succeed in all its ambitions. But damn if it ain’t something to look at.

Of course there are other shows that gain major props on behalf of their style, but they don’t quite hit the same marks. For all they’re comic book inspiration, Arrow, Supergirl and The Flash just don’t leap and dance the way Riverdale does. Game of Thrones has incredible production values and a gloriously realized world. No one would argue that. But the goal of that world and that production is to make a fantastical place feel grounded. The same can be said of HBO’s Westworld. This is not a knock against them. I have a strong love for Westworld, and of course these shows have moments of incredible grandeur. But their main objective, at which they succeed, is realism in the midst of total unreality.

Riverdale’s goal is the opposite. It takes the Archie Comics universe of girl-next-door Americana and makes it feel like some beautiful, wild fantasy world of biker gangs and shady businessmen. It’s ridiculous. Sometimes so much that you’ll laugh. But ultimately, the vision of the storytelling and the talent of the cast make it feel fresh and exciting. So please watch Riverdale. TV’s never looked this good.

[rickthaniel]

The Avenger Promise or: How I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 despite its squandered potential

This weekend I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Since I’d let a few weeks pass post-release, I was surprised to find the theatre just as packed as I’d expect from opening night. The world, like me, must have all been anticipating the sequel to what, in retrospect, might be the standout success of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. The original Guardians was stylish, witty, delightfully cast and coated head to foot in retro aesthetic, which in a pre-Stanger Things world felt totally fresh.

Unfortunately, Guardians 2 doesn’t hit that same stride. Mind you, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Dave Bautista really comes into his own with a bevy of smart/dumb one-liners, Bradley Cooper continues to build a strangely compelling character in Rocket Raccoon, and the soundtrack, opening up with a full-on dance sequence to ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky,” may even surpass that of the original. But through it all, Guardians 2 feels like it’s struggling against its own ubiquitous, monolithic creator, like a passionate kid trying desperately to convince his parents that a degree in music is just as valuable as enrollment in the business school.

See, in 2008, Marvel made us all a promise. The deal was, that if we all behaved and came out to support their summer superhero flicks, they’d reward us with a big, star-studded crossover event. The Avenger Promise. We all learned to sit patiently through every end credit sequence for that inevitable glimpse at the final chapter, the little tidbit to keep us satiated. The names were huge. Who wouldn’t be excited about Thor, Captain America and Robert Downey Jr.’s flamboyant Tony Stark? Every chapter, with varying success, established its own distinct world, its own feel, its own draw. Each one began and ended on its own power, and when Joss Whedon brought them all together four years after Iron Man’s screen debut, everyone cheered. I remember being absolutely certain that The Avengers would flop. There was no way they could take four years of hype built up over four different movies, throw together all that star power in two and a half hours, and walk away with something that would satisfy. But they did.

Five years after that success, however, the Avenger Promise has become a weight on the back of every Marvel film. Remember when they talked about the different stages of the MCU? The PowerPoint slides numerating franchise plans years into the future? We’re living that future now, and I have no clue anymore what stage we’re at. It’s gotten so that half the trailers before any movie you care to see are MCU trailers, and we all sit through the Dolby logo at every closing credits, be it for Pixar or Tarantino, because we’ve been conditioned to expect that little nugget at the end. The oversaturation of the superhero genre and Disney’s cinematic dominance has been talked to death, so I don’t want to dwell, but the scale just keeps getting more unbalanced. And now, it’s starting to really starting to harm itself.

Guardians 2 has, if I counted correctly, four individual scenes spread throughout the credits. Some were foreshadowing, others were simply comic relief, but I realized somewhere between the third and fourth that the movie feels less complete because of it. Captain America began and ended, with enough of a wink and nod to get you excited for Steve Roger’s inevitable thawing. It was the same with Iron Man and Thor. Guardians, on the other hand, feels like a stepping stone.

The appeal of the first movie was its distinct style. It felt more like an extra-campy, 70s sitcom rendition of Star Wars than a superhero film. The action was solid, and the ties to the rest of the universe were there, but it worked on the merits of its quirky individuality, which now seems threatened by the very circumstances that gave it breath.

As much as I loved Karen Gillan and Michael Rooker in the first film, I find it a little odd that they, among other minor characters from Guardians 1 (remember Yondu’s backcountry first mate?), all become so central this time around. Everybody has an arc, a speech, and a hug-it-out moment of resolution, which is…nice…but it feels a little bizarre in a franchise that already boasts five major leads. Add Kurt Russell’s Ego to the mix and you have a cast of eight major players, more than the first Avengers even with Sam Jackson thrown in. That’s absurd, and it made me wonder why such a huge crew was necessary.

By the third act (if you can call it that, the movie has a weirdly one-act feel with everything pretty much happening in the same spot), I figured it out. Because somebody needs to be in danger. Because somebody needs to deliver the emotional gut-punch. Somebody’s arc needs to wrap up, one way or another, and it can’t possibly be any of the five protagonist. No, they’re arcs are waiting on Infinity War and Vol. 3 and whatever follows in MCU Stage 12. Every personal moment with the core cast felt weightless because their brand status is now abundantly clear. They’re protected from on high from any permanent character shifts, any major change in dynamic, any real danger at all. Instead, the movie spends half an hour speed-grinding a minor character up to the party level just so somebody can have a real moment. It comes off alright, but it doesn’t avoid feeling shoehorned in by the multi-billion dollar guardian angel that is Disney. For all the Fast and Furious family talk, the character inclusivity still seems like a scheme to keep Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and the other three headliners in narrative stasis.

Even Rocket’s arc, which to me felt subtle and interesting, loses a ton of weight by the fact that this movie is just the latest piece of a massive puzzle that I have an ever-diminishing interest in finishing. Infinity War holds none of the allure for me that the first Avengers did in 2012. Thanos has been hiding in the credits too long for me to care anymore. Will I see it? Yes, they got me. For a big dumb fight with theater surround sound, I’ll toss eight more bucks Disney’s way. The machine keeps turning, and I’m a part of the problem. It just saddens me to see a really brilliant property like Guardians kept from its true potential, its uniqueness and creativity crushed under the heel of the MCU business model.

When Ego helps Starlord unlock his god-powers, Chris Pratt grins and promises to “build some weird shit.” There’s a glint in his eye. He’s psyched. But all too soon, Ego reveals the price of those resources – life as a “battery,” fueling the assimilation of everything he’s ever known. Guardians 2 is almost too good of a self-prophecy. And while the jokes still play, the music still bumps, and a lot of the style remains, it hurts to watch something great be crippled by its obligation as a cog in an endless expanse.

[rickthaniel]

Logan is a Western, and it Changes Everything

Logan makes every other superhero film in the past fifteen years look like a cheap parlor trick. For two hours and twenty one minutes, it locks you in and makes you watch a movie that doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. It’s uncomfortable and messy and it doesn’t satisfy. Wolverine’s claws are uneven and his kills are ugly. People die with no last words, no proper sendoff and no closure. Logan provokes visceral reactions time and again, not because it’s violent, but because it’s painful, and everything else now looks plastic by comparison.

From the top, let me say I hope this doesn’t come across as some edgy rant arguing for more gore and profanity in superhero films. That’s not my point. I should also confess that I have no experience with the X-Men comics, or with comics at all for that matter. I’m not arguing that The Avengers would have been better with a few more fucks given. All I’m saying is that Logan changes things, and the rest of the genre needs to take notice and adapt.

I expect words like “raw” and “gritty” will be thrown around a lot in discussing Logan. I’m hesitant to use that vernacular because it’s the same language people use to describe The Dark Knight, and the two really aren’t that comparable. They both step outside the box of contemporary comic book movies, but where The Dark Knight is a thriller, Logan is a western, and therein lies the difference that makes Hugh Jackman’s final outing so important.

In the modern Hollywood superhero archetype, the greater message to the audience is apparent to the characters. Superman is a symbol of justice and goodness, and he understands that just as well as we do. In The Dark Knight, Batman represents the basic human struggle between morality and chaos that thematically pervades throughout the whole film. Both forces are at work in Bruce Wayne, and The Joker and Two Face bring that inner conflict into the spotlight. And Batman gets this. He understands he’s a symbol in some broader thematic picture.

In a western, Batman doesn’t get it. We get it, and therefore we have certain expectations about how Batman is supposed to act and how the plot is supposed to go. Batman doesn’t see the deeper significance of his circumstances, so his actions don’t match our expectations. He doesn’t stop to consider what he’s supposed to do in a narrative sense.

The Dark Knight is clean. Maybe that’s controversial, but it shouldn’t be. Yes, Rachel dies. Yes, Harvey Dent succumbs to The Joker’s twisted social experiment, and yes, Batman takes the fall when he shouldn’t have to. But that all makes sense. It fulfills the thematic ends we anticipated when we bought our tickets. We understand what Batman and Joker represent, and we’d be shocked if the movie ended happy. In the end, we get what we paid for. It’s clean. It satisfies.

Logan does not satisfy. It isn’t clean because no part of it understands the rules it’s supposed to follow. Professor X insists on being crass, pathetic and generally wrong about everything, despite our presumption that he’s meant to be kind, strong and wise. Characters die in the middle of fights, dazed and confused with no forewarning, no tidy arc or epiphany and no greater thematic significance. And when they’re buried, Logan offers no words to explain why. It doesn’t resolve the major plot points revealed in the film’s third act. It refuses to give us the explanations we demand. Hell, the whole crux of the plot is that Wolverine’s powers have stopped functioning properly. He doesn’t work the way he’s supposed to.

I also expect Logan will see a lot of comparisons to last year’s Deadpool. After all, the two films mark the first two consecutive steps in Fox’s ongoing experiment in R-rated superhero movies. The difference is that Deadpool puts a filter on the established tropes of the genre, while Logan takes a filter off.

At no point while watching Ryan Reynolds bloodily slice up extras and spout crude one-liners did I see Deadpool as some new norm. It doesn’t feel natural, it feels off. In a good way mind you, but off nonetheless.  Logan, on the other hand, makes everything else feel off. Suddenly, every prior film Fox, DC and Disney have ever put out in the genre looks fake. Where’s the ugliness? Where’s the pain? I’m not asking Chris Hemsworth to start decapitating people in Thor: Ragnarok, but looking back now I can’t help notice all the lines, all the actions, all the moments that felt stiff and unnatural. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been primed and focus-tested, there’s no revelation there. The Hollywood blood was visibly coursing right beneath the skin, and everyone accepted it. But now Logan has cut an adamantium gash and the Hollywood is spilling out, impossible to ignore anymore.

Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine holds a pedigree as old as the contemporary superhero film. Tobey Maguire’s masked debut in Spiderman made such a huge splash upon release in 2002 that lots of people forget it was preceded two years by the original X-Men. Long before Robert Downey Jr. became an idol for American children, Hugh Jackman and Wolverine laid the early groundwork that would become modern comic book blockbusters as we know them. The X-Men franchise built the foundation for the genre’s multibillion-dollar card tower, and in one breath James Mangold blew the whole thing down and showed us all what a façade it was.

Up until now, superhero flicks have been Hollywood’s Top 40 pop hits. Sure Batman might switch into a minor key and Deadpool slapped a parental advisory label on the cover, but they still played on the same stations. Logan composes in a whole different time signature. It’s new and different and feels unnatural, and it can’t be ignored.

[rickthaniel]

Rogue One’s Characters don’t Matter, and that’s the Point

After my first viewing of Rogue One I thought the characters were flat and undeveloped. Stirring speeches and dramatic change-of-heart moments all felt unearned and out of place.

After my second viewing I filled in my formerly perceived holes with rose-colored patches, citing genre standards and embarrassingly-detailed expanded universe knowledge to strike down any external accusations.

By the time I walked out of my third viewing, I realized I was right both times. The characters don’t change, but that’s by intention. All of them that is, except for Bodhi, the defected imperial cargo pilot and true protagonist of the film.

While Rogue’s story seems foxed primarily on Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso and Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor, they are not the main characters here. It can be hard to cut through the thick layer of Disney, but I believe the elegance of Rogue One lies in its ability to cover up its more abrasive content with a mirror-sheen of family-friendliness and blockbuster bang. While the film seems to present moral triumphs and heroic travails on behalf of both Erso and Andor, they remain, like most of the cast, unchanged, following the same dogma from beginning to end without a real opportunity to grow or change course.

Let’s start with Jyn. The ostensive picture painted of Jones’ truncheon-wielding heroine is a woman operating outside the Rebellion’s cultish ruleset, a fighter who chooses to fight again because of her own moral code. In reality, however, she never had a choice.

Jyn’s first adult appearance on screen shows her in prison, arrested on charges of general delinquency, and using a false name. The clear reason for the latter is to avoid association with her father, a chief engineer for the Imperial weapons program, but the implications of her name change are more significant. By abandoning her identity and the ramifications of it, what might be referred to in the spiritually world of Star Wars as her destiny, Jyn reaches the penultimate dead end of being physically imprisoned.

Only upon being unwittingly sprung by the Rebel Alliance does Jyn re-accept her old identity, a decision that thrusts her back into a life of war. Jyn’s attempt to escape her former reality railroads in a prison cell, and returning from that deviation leads her inevitably back to her father, a reunion that leaves her no choice but to finish the work he began. None of this makes her character any less powerful or intriguing, but what seems to be self-motivation and free agency ultimately turns out to be nothing of the sort. Jyn’s path back to the rebellion is dictated by a duty to her father and his values, rather than by her own beliefs.

The character of Cassian Andor reveals a similar dilemna. From Luna’s first scene he establishes Cassian as a ruthless killer, a soldier willing to do whatever is necessary for the ideals of the Rebellion, ideals that supersede his own independence. However, in Rogue One’s middle act Cassian seems to undergo a transformation, coming to terms with his own humanity to overcome indoctrination by the Rebel cause and spare Jyn’s father.

In actuality, Cassian’s shift is much less severe. By the middle chapter he has already seen the destructive power of the Death Star firsthand and understands that whatever further damage Gaelon Erso could do to the galaxy is insignificant in comparison. In choosing not to shoot him, Cassian doesn’t overcome the influence of the Rebel cause, but merely of certain authority figures within the Rebellion. The film seems to suggest that recognizing fallibility in authority figures is the same as recognizing fallibility in the ideals they represent, but that is not the case, and Cassian never makes it to the latter. In fact, his defiance of the Rebel council to attack Scarif at the end of the movie is done specifically to uphold the same overriding idealism that drives him to the end, rather than to overcome it.

Just like his droid companion K-2SO, Cassian has been programmed to oppose the Empire at any cost. While K2 seems quite organic throughout Rogue One, Cassian attributes his personality to hacked circuitry, a manual override that forces the droid on a set course of action. And Cassian himself is no different.

With all this laid down, it seems that Bodhi, the Imperial cargo pilot turned Rebel, is the only character with true growth and independent development, and therefore Rogue One’s true protagonist.

First note that Bodhi is the only character who leaves the empire by choice (different from K2’s reprogramming). He speaks proudly of his intention to “listen to what was in my heart [and] do something about it.” Now of course Bodhi can’t fully escape the influences of external indoctrination that drive his fellow rebels, but the difference is that unlike them, every outside influence on him should be one that drives him away from the Rebel cause, making his actions quite contradictory to his programming.

Bodhi’s experience with the Empire as a cargo pilot is peaceful and supportive, quite antithetical to Jyn and Cassian’s backgrounds of pain and tragedy. In addition, his first experience with the Rebellion upon defecting is to be cuffed, kidnapped and extensively tortured by Saw Gerrera, an experience that should have drastically suppressed any desire to join the Rebellion. But despite that, Bodhi continues to voluntary fight the Empire, not because they have wronged him, or because he was conditioned to despise them, but because his own moral compass drives him to take matters into his own hands.

Not even the more ancillary characters can boast the same. Chirrut and Baze, the guardians of the Kyber temple, join the fight out of desperation at having lost their home to the Empire, and out of spiritual obligation to combat the dark side of the force, an obligation they have carried their whole lives.

The aforementioned Saw Gerrera is a walking testament to the dangerous consequences of living according to external doctrine rather than internal decision. In fighting so brutally to support the rebel dogma, Saw fully loses himself, both in mind and body, and dies with his only hope that “the cause” will continue on.

Rogue One fans have praised its status as a film about war, rather than simply a film about Star Wars. To take this one step further, Rogue One is not a film about war, but a film about the ideologies and indoctrination that lead to it. Be it familial, political or spiritual, every member of the cast fights and dies in the film’s third act for reasons outside of their own personal identity, and so become tools of abstract doctrine. All but Bodhi.

As the final battle winds down there’s a sort of domino-effect. Each character sacrifices himself or herself in turn to bring the Alliance one step closer to victory. It’s a very powerful sequence that sees every character you’ve come to know over the past two hours give their last full measure without hesitation.

All but Bodhi.

Bodhi hesitates. As he hunkers down behind a hodgepodge pile of boxes, cable in hand and radio relay just meters away, he stops. To transmit the Death Star plans he has to traverse a field of crossfire, and he stops to wonder if this cause that has brought him only trouble is worth his life. Then he checks himself, stands up, does the only thing he can live with, and dies.

[rickthaniel]

Disney Owns the Casual Moviegoer

I don’t go see that many movies in the theater these days. It’s expensive, it’s a hassle, and most films lose little in transition to the living room. A couple times a year though I’ll still go out to the movies, either because I think the big screen and booming surround sound would make for a significantly better experience, or because the movie has created a zeitgeist I want to be a part of.

In 2016 my excursions included Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Finding Dory, Captain America: Civil War and multiple viewings of Rogue One. Now I know my habits don’t prove a national trend, but I’ll let you piece together the common factor here.

Of the top ten highest grossing films of last year, Disney released six, with Finding Dory, Rogue One and Civil War taking gold, silver and bronze, and Moana clocking in at number 12. The company released a total of 13 theatrical features in 2016 and has already announced detailed plans through 2019.

Disney’s relatively recent property acquisitions of Marvel and Star Wars have built steadily for years now atop the already highly successful combination of Pixar, Disney Animation Studios and live action releases like this year’s The Finest Hours and The Light between Oceans.  

All this is to say one simple thing: Disney has acquired a monopoly on the casual moviegoer. While it would be ridiculous to deny the prevalence of rival superhero franchises from DC and Fox, or the occasional success of animated competition from DreamWorks and Illumination, the fact is these other kids on the block are falling short at most turns. Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad both did well at the box office but were eviscerated by fans and critics alike. DreamWorks’ showing with Kung Fu Panda 3 fell well below most of its animated contemporaries, and while Fox found major success with Deadpool at the beginning of the year, the film’s R-rating brought it to an entirely different audience, a tactical surrender to Disney’s family-friendly dominance the studio will repeat with 2017’s Logan.

It’s not just property acquisition that’s granted Disney its huge success, it’s the fact that they have consistently delivered for years on all fronts, drawing positive reviews and award nominations with every new blockbuster or happy-ever-after. They’ve gone from brand recognition to a name people infallibly trust, while any other contenders struggle to play catch-up or move on to entirely separate demographics.  

I saw Batman v. Superman in the theater this year as well, but I don’t think I’ll make it back for the next one. I want DC and other studios to succeed, but while they fumble around and find their footing Disney’s track record keeps gaining ground. Art house and Oscar-bait still hold film buffs in tow, but the casual moviegoer out for a fun action romp or family-friendly adventure will pick the name they know and trust. That’s not inherently a bad thing, as that trust has been justly earned, but Disney’s cultural dominance is no joke anymore, and it looks to only continue growing.

[rickthaniel]

Laugh a Little

Last week a friend of mine told me that she had started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer at her boyfriend’s urging. Immediately I was excited that she was starting one of my favorite shows and asked how she liked it so far. “Well,” she said with a chuckle, “It’s kind of silly, isn’t it?” I was taken aback, robbed of the glowing praise I’d hoped to hear. “Well, yes,” I replied, “but that’s kind of the point.” I tried to explain that part of what makes Buffy great is its ability to balance comedy and drama to bring in the best in both. That the silliness was essential to the rest. But to my dismay, it seemed silliness no longer fit in a generation when Game of Thrones, House of Cards, The Man in the High Castle, The Walking Dead, and numerous other shows reign supreme with a constant flow of death and drab color palettes.

After contemplating my friend’s assessment, I realized that a good number of the other shows I love could easily wear that moniker. Silly.  Shows like Buffy, and Mad Men, and Doctor Who. Animated shows like Rick and Morty and The Legend of Korra. They make you laugh, but they also make you think, balancing moments of levity with powerful, serious. I always loved silliness. To me, it added another level of depth to the stories and characters I loved so much, and the frequent humor enticed me to keep watching. So why was “silly” suddenly a mark of criticism? Why was mixing comedy and levity into serious stories, what my friend called silliness, now seen as polluting a show with immaturity?

People say we live in a “golden age” of television. The boom of streaming services and dedicated networks has heralded an abundance of high-budget, high-quality programming that is unprecedented. In the past five years especially, this has persisted majorly through the swell of previously mentioned dramas. From Breaking Bad to Daredevil, our screens have been overtaken by stories of moral corruption, betrayal, crime, tyranny, and death. Discussion of these shows has begun to center less on the story itself, and more on whether characters will survive the next episode.

Now I’m not saying for a second that these shows aren’t well-crafted, enjoyable, or even deserving of their serious tones. I’m also not saying that this generation of viewers is obsessed with doom and gloom. Comedy too has flourished in the past 15 years, establishing many exceedingly popular shows among young audiences. And I’m certainly not claiming that there aren’t some more recent shows, like Orange is the New Black, which still find balance between the serious and the silly.

What I am saying is that it’s curious that a generation that loves television, and that loves to laugh, has come to view a healthy dosage of lightheartedness and laughter in serious dramas as undesirable, or silly. Aforementioned exceptions aside, there now exists a vast polarization between the serious and the silly, segregating the two to a much starker degree than ever before. And what’s more, these modern shows’ grittiness and severity are praised for how “real” they make the stories seem. Tragedy is visceral. Because the world is a flawed place, and bad things happen every day. Right?

Well, for me I think it goes a little different. I think that if we’re going for realness, life looks a little more like Buffy. There’s ups and downs, and they each mean more because of the other. There’s a time and a place for seriousness in storytelling, but I don’t think it should be a yardstick for quality. We shouldn’t take a show any less seriously because it frequently incorporates humor. If anything, I think it reflects even more skilled writing, and a defter, less emotionally exhausting story.

And yet, modern audiences continually return to these dreary dramas, perpetuating the schism between genres. Because ultimately, our generation wants nothing more than to be taken seriously. We like to laugh and have a good time, but compartmentalized away from the things that really matter. We avoid silliness because it makes us feel childish. But here’s the thing: life is silly. The world is silly. It makes them real. Removing that silliness just enforces a false perception of maturity. But we would do well to remember this: you don’t need to be completely serious to be taken completely seriously.

[rickthaniel]

Creed Succeeds on Pedigree

          Nothing in film frustrates me like derivative writing. That said, Creed is both derivative of the original Rocky in many ways, and at the same time an excellent film in its own right. Between powerful performances by both Stallone and Jordan, a heartfelt script and some of the most visceral cinematography you’ll see on screen (you really need to see the fights in this movie), Ryan Coogler’s outing into the Rocky world wins on all counts. The fact remains however, that Creed coasts to these praises on the same decades-old formula that made Rocky an instant sensation. Creed is derivative. But it’s derivative in its originality.

          See, Rocky isn’t an original story. We all know this. Underdog takes on insurmountable challenge, stumbles at the end of the second act, and comes back to thunderous applause by doing that which cannot be done. What made Stallone’s breakout hit matter above the cacophony of clichéd, copy-and-pasted genre films out there is that within that framework it tweaked the beats just enough to surprise you. Rocky’s loveable goofiness and his unique relationship with Talia Shire’s adorably uncomfortable Adrian set him apart from other Cinderella stories. It was his charm and indomitable spirit, not some final achievement of victory, that made millions root for the Italian Stallion. And in the end, when the dust settled and Creed remained the champ, you felt no less the victor. Because as Rocky, beaten and bruised, called out for Adrian, you understood that it was being better than he was, not better than his opponent was, that earned Rocky his cheers.

          This framework fits pretty well around Creed’s shot at the title. All the hits are there, from running down the streets of Philly to the true love story, all the way to an ending so on-the-nose that it nearly teeters over homage into eye-rolling territory, but not quite. What makes Creed work is that just like Rocky, it adjusts enough of the formula to keep you tensed and pleasantly surprised. The film’s first two scenes show a hard, battered Adonis Creed growing up on the streets of Los Angeles fighting cheap dives in Mexico, only to lead into a shot of the same man sitting at a desk in a tie, doing financial reports. This first bait-and-switch heralds the movie’s incredible knack for originality in the midst of cliché. A seemingly rudimentary cancer plotline develops into something much more meaningful, and the final fight brings so many angles that it’s nigh impossible to foresee the outcome.

          Perhaps the films best surprise, however, is revealed in the final moments when Adonis, beaten and bloodied, utters his true motivation for being there: “to know I wasn’t a mistake.” Creed’s illegitimacy is never hidden during the previous two hours, but every action and motivational monologue indicates a simple motivation of proving oneself. This revelation of Creed’s deeper reason displays a rare deftness of storytelling. A character’s deepest purpose doesn’t need to be excruciatingly pulled out in a tear-jerking dialogue in the middle of act three. It can be dropped in the middle of a fight, in a single line, in the last minutes of screen time.

          It’s these touches that make Creed excel. Minor adjustments to familiar archetypes make the whole story feel fresh and enticing, while still embracing enough common tropes to bring the expected feel-good ending. Because at the end of the day, Rocky succeeded not only on the merits of its filmmaking, but on the purity of its message. A message that losing doesn’t hurt quite so bad, so long as you fought your hardest. And that giving up is never preferable to finding a new reason to live.

[dailydot]

‘Avatar’ fan makes amazing ‘Game of Thrones’-style credits sequence

[giancarlovolpe]

Oh, how can I not repost this one?

[bryankonietzko]

WOW! EXTRA CREDIT!

[rickthaniel]

Why Buffy Matters

        People keep asking me to justify my love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I have yet to give a half-decent answer. The problem isn’t that I don’t know, or that it isn’t legitimate, but simply that Buffy’s worth is too subversive to explain inn a three-sentence retort. For that reason, I will now attempt to explain why Buffy matters to me, why it should matter to everyone, and how wrong anyone who dismisses it as a silly vampire show really is.                                                                                                                                                               To understand why Buffy matters you need to first understand the road television has taken in the past couple decades. Today’s networks are flooded with Breaking bad, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, House of Cards and their ilk, shows that carry with them inherently dark themes and mature, even depressing  plotlines. Television has evolved to deliver hard-hitting, character-driven, emotional stories with regular consistency, and while a lot of that is owed to Buffy’s trail-blazing plot structure, that isn’t why Buffy matters today.                                                                                                                                           Make no mistake, the strides Buffy made in storytelling are enough to justify its significance, but nobody cares. See, the thing about trendsetting is it ceases to be relevant once innovation kicks in. I could argue that The Wire would never have spawned its renaissance if not for the influence of Buffy, but that’d be missing the point. So here it is, here’s why Buffy matters now, not 15 years ago, not as a museum piece, and not just for tween girls.                                                                                                                                                                        Buffy matters because it takes pubescence and young adulthood seriously. As I mentioned earlier, TV has a reputation today of showcasing the most robust selection of mature, deep programs in the history of the medium, and there is some truth to that. The increasing prevalence of shows like Mad Men and Downton Abbey and their popularity is a fantastic phenomenon, but those shows aren’t the ones appealing to young adult audiences. Those shows are Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, etc. And while these all have deep themes, high production and complex storytelling, they also possess what I believe to be a lack of respect for that audience. And that, simply, is why Buffy matters.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Picture this: There’s a dinner party full of middle-aged, upper-middle class adults, friends through their church, or the PTA. They’re all sitting at a long table, very posh, crystal chandelier, the whole shebang. And over in the other room are their kids, ages 11 to 17, doin’ their thing. Now the man of the house is discussing his latest business venture down by the head of the table, and as he does his 14 year old son comes walking past on his way to the bathroom. He stops to add a comment to his father’s conversation, at which the gentleman turns to his son and says to refrain from rudely intervening in adult conversations. Hearing this down at the other end of the table, one of the guests, a teacher at the local high school, turns her head and simply says “Your son may know more than you think.” This is the lower income bracket’s representation at our little gathering, so naturally the patriarch responds, sharply yet politely, with the assurance that “He simply doesn’t understand these things. He’d be happier talking about video games in the other room.”                                                                                                                                           You see, Buffy may not be the deepest, most serious or best produced show. But what Joss Whedon did was understand the reality of what it means to be 17, what it means to feel loss, what it means to grow up, to be unsure of yourself, to change in a way that scares you, to have your trust broken, all the struggles of youth that are trivialized in “mature” society has something that will eventually be dealt with and grown out of, just as it always has been. Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead have a lot of depth. There’s plenty there to analyze and appreciate. Yet I think they feel a need to saturate themselves with nudity and violence to maintain a viewership that “simply doesn’t understand these things.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Maybe they’re right. Maybe those kids that watched Cartoon Network grew up to only want that in a post-pubescent form. But Buffy shows that there can be more. Buffy strives to not only deal with the real issues of youth with respect and sincerity, but also goes beyond that to weave much more mature themes beneath the surface. That’s why I stand by Buffy, and why everyone, at any age, should give it the chance to surprise them.

[rickthaniel]

Jurassic World is a Kid who Found his Dad’s Gun

           Last night I went to see Jurassic World, and it wasn’t until the credits rolled that I realized I didn’t like it. For the last two hours I had been so caught up in dinosaur fights and Chris Pratt’s Chris Prattism that I briefly forgot this movie should never have existed. The fact that I forgot is probably the only accolade I can give the film, and I did enjoy my time with it. I wouldn’t even say that it’s a bad movie. But make no mistake, I didn’t like it, and I’m sorely disappointed with the treatment it was given.

           I really don’t want to dwell on shop talk too much to break Jurassic World down, but just briefly I’ll say there are some cool dinosaur bits, the effects are cool if not always entirely convincing, and Chris Pratt remains decent at playing himself, if you’re still into that. On the flipside, the writing is uninspired and corny (and I try my hardest not to use that word), almost every character is flat and uninspired, the plot contrivances rely a bit too heavily on suspension of disbelief, and there’s never any real sense of danger. That being said, if those were my only problems with Jurassic World I’d probably be fine with it and even recommend it as a fun theater flick.

           The real problem with Jurassic World is the real problem with Jurassic World. That is to say, somehow, accidentally or ingeniously (but almost definitely accidentally), the park itself reflects the movie. Bear with me here. Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire character sees the entire park as a spreadsheet of stats and percentages – park attendance, guest satisfaction, etc. She also believes that the only way for the park to thrive in an evolving context is to keep introducing bigger, scary attractions with “more teeth.” Claire crafts the park under the assumption that people only want to be entertained if it’s as big and bombastic as possible. They want to be blown away by cheap thrills. Claire has no respect for the sheer wonder of what she’s created, and ultimately it leads to ruin.

           What I’ve just described to you is the Hollywood philosophy of blockbuster filmmaking. We keep getting bigger, crazier, louder every year because that’s what the people want. I could say they don’t, but the numbers show otherwise, both in Jurassic World attendance and Jurassic World attendance. The thing is though, that was never John Hammond’s vision for Jurassic Park, or Steven Spielberg’s. In the original film Hammond says the whole point of this endeavor was to “Give [the people] something that wasn’t an illusion. Something that was real.” He was never after cheap thrills, his park was set to open with nothing but a gift shop and a car tour. No, Hammond’s goal, was wonder. Amazement. Amazement, not at dinosaurs doing backflips or being scary, but at their sheer existence. And that’s the same view Spielberg had on the original masterpiece. We didn’t need dinosaur fights or an Indominus Rex because seeing that pan-up shot of a brontosaurus was enough. And while I’m not saying CGI alone is enough to dazzle audiences anymore, just as Jurassic World couldn’t survive on one attraction, I am saying that wonder and amazement are still possible in film. Audiences can still be dazzled in ways that don’t involve explosions or monster battles.

           There’s one character in Jurassic World, the rich Middle Eastern magnate Simon Masrani who owns the park, who seems to get the idea. He understands the point of the park and the true vision for it. But as the “eighth wealthiest man in the world,” he doesn’t have time to maintain all the inner workings of one side project, even if he wanted to. In the same way, I believe Spielberg still understands what made Jurassic Park great, that it was majesty and not intensity, that it was wonder rather than thrills. The original film had an introspection to it that showed the true magic of Jurassic park was that it could never actually exist, as the ambition was too great. Jurassic World proves this to be true, but fails to really show the consequences or even discuss that there are consequences at all. Spielberg is a man who can’t be in charge of every project these days, so he resigns himself to an executive producership and is ultimately unable to make his vision real, much like Masrani.

           I could keep going about how Jurassic World tries to justify its own horrendous product placement by pointing out that the park is a corporate sellout, or that the few (if admittedly well done) homages to the original film feel more obligatory than appropriate, but there’d be no point. The fact of the matter is this latest entry has no soul to it. The constant references to Jurassic Park don’t even feel disrespectful so much as misguided, like the creators fully misunderstood the legacy they were trying to live up to. To close, I’m going to let Dr. Ian Malcom summarize the problem with Jurassic World: “You wield it like a kid who’s found his dad’s gun. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it.  You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it.”