June 2013 – The Big Frickin' Swede

BFS Reviews: Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Star Trek Into Darkness is a sci-fi Hollywood blockbuster. The Hollywood blockbuster is basically a genre unto itself, loaded with its own pros and cons (“The action is awesome!” vs “Ugh, can they do anything but action?” “Shaky cams add realism!” vs “Enough with the shaky cams already…”). This becomes more of a problem for some because Into Darkness is a Star Trek film–and Star Trek is a thinking person’s sci fi, right? The debate has been encapsulated by fans with a quote from Captain Picard in the movie Insurrection: “Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers?”

In other words, Star Trek is not supposed to be about action.

Balderdash. I’m not a huge fan of the original series, but it had its share of action sequences (and Gene Rodenberry had to rework the pilot to put in more action and make it more palatable to TV audiences–read into that what you will, but it’s been there since the start). One of the best Star Trek films is still Wrath of Khan, and the action and fighting is front and center there. This has only continued over the years with all subsequent movies and shows. Action is a part of Star Trek, and that shouldn’t be a surprise when you consider how varied the show is. It’s a delightful mix of politics, morality, relationships, emotions, and action–focusing on what it needs to focus on to tell its story. Star Trek is populist sci fi, not a niche sci fi film like 2001: A Space Odyssey (no matter how well known that film is, it is not populist).

Star Trek’s stories can be hit or miss, of course, but the stories that come alive are the ones that use any of those elements to explore its characters and ideas meaningfully. This can work in a revenge and action flick like Wrath of Khan or a more cerebral one exploring mortality like Generations. And it can work with a Hollywood blockbuster like Into Darkness.

Speaking of which (that preface did have a point), Into Darkness is stronger than its other JJ Abrams predecessor, which had a villain that liked to sit and brood in some dark throne room before randomly killing some things. The opponents in Into Darkness are allowed more time to develop and establish their motivations, which makes them more interesting foes for the new Kirk and Spock to tangle with. I worry that the opponents might rely a little bit too much on knowing earlier Star Trek stories to appreciate some of the nuances, but there is enough there for relative Star Trek newcomers to enjoy.

The actors playing the protagonists are also stronger in their second time around. Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock are simply a delight to watch. They’re frustrated and intrigued by each other, their friendship growing even as they collide over how they respond to broken Starfleet regulations and the various crises a Hollywod blockbuster is going to throw at them. There wasn’t a scene where they weren’t clicking on all cylinders together. Even better, while they hit on the classic characteristics we know from Shatner and Nimoy in the same roles, they are carving their own way with the characters, not bound to where two actors have gone before… *ahem* it’s all enough to make a jaded movie-goer look forward to seeing them in the next movie.

The rest of the protagonists are a little more hit and miss. Zoe Saldana is allowed stronger dramatic moments than the original Uhura, thanks to her relationship with Spock (a change in this new Star Trek universe that is a welcome one). The script has less room for Chekhov, Scotty, and McCoy, who are reduced to their somewhat cliched parts. Simon Pegg works well within his limitations (he’s good fun as Scotty, even if he’s mostly used for humor), but I just can’t like Karl Urban as McCoy… he’s got the mannerisms of the original, and that’s it. He honestly feels like a caricature or someone spoofing the original McCoy, rather than finding the man in the character.

To JJ Abrams’s credit, he is juggling many things at once, and he’s paying good attention to the main characters and antagonists. That said, like his previous Star Trek outing (and many of the shows and movies he’s made), there are plot holes and strange technological workings that make you scratch your head if you stop to think about them. How is a character able to teleport across the galaxy when the Enterprise generally need to be orbiting a planet before they can beam something to it? The script doesn’t talk about this, even though the script later on won’t allow the crew to teleport someone that is less than a mile away.

Things are going too fast and too fun to make little things like this truly bothersome. The actors all believe in what’s going on and we’re just having fun watching them do it. This is populist sci fi doing what populist sci fi does best–and while it would be nice to have a Star Trek film in the future that explores the quieter side of the universe (or at least something more cerebral), this is still an enjoyable romp in the Star Trek Universe.

An Education Is More Than a Degree

Education Musings

It’s not uncommon for people thinking about education to place an emphasis on the end point, the degree. That’s not a real surprise, of course, since a degree does reflect something tangible and beneficial. However, this focus does lead to some troubling ways of thinking, ways of thinking that are more detrimental than they might seem at first glance.

1. “Cs get degrees”
2. Everyone deserves a college degree
3. Life starts after you graduate

I’ve encountered these lines of thinking numerous times as a teacher and an educator. And while each one of these has an element of truth to them, their overall implications are much more troubling. So let’s take a look at these three statements more closely. Considering this is the season when a new group of high school, college, and graduate school students reach out their hand to get that degree at the end of a course of study, it’s worth putting some thought into what an education actually means.

1. “Cs get degrees”
This is an amusing enough phrase, and it startled me and made me laugh the first time I heard it, considering I was a “gotta get an A or at least an A-” kind of student most of the time. And I have actually had to point out to students that an A- or a B+ isn’t going to sink their chances of getting into law/med/whatever grad school or dream job they want. Employers and graduate schools look at more than just your grades: more, they want to know what you have done and what you can do.

That said, this phrase creates some much more insidious thinking in a lot of different students. They say it in different ways, but they’re all hitting on the idea captured in this phrase. “Eh, I can slack off in this class, it’s not in my major.” “I kind of showed up to most classes and got some things in on time, so I should pass this course.” “Your class isn’t as important as my other ones.” And there are more ways to say it, believe me (I’ve heard those examples and more).

The response to any and all of the lines students can come up with in this train of thought? Bull. Yes, there are times where you have to prioritize between all the classes you are taking, as well as the jobs you might be working to pay for your college (I know all these things well), so I can understand when these conflicts of interest happen. But they happen all the time, with many students every semester. That’s not an occasional pile on of work that can happen to anyone, that’s a consistent pattern of thinking among many different students–a consistent pattern of thinking that devalues what is happening in the education process. How can it not? Rather than being outside of the norm, it becomes the norm to say any class or any effort just isn’t worth it.

How sad is that? Rather than education being a place where students train to be focused and work hard, it becomes a place to set in the worst of habits: phoning it in, procrastinating, not seeing the value of the work you are doing. From the frequent complaints about young workers you hear and see in the news (not to mention all the talk about lost twenty somethings), this line of habit is not uncommon.

So don’t let the simple line fool you. Yes, Cs technically can get degrees (and Cs are average work, not the bad thing that everyone cuts them out to be). But an education isn’t really about a grade or even a degree, but what you have learned in knowledge and in habits. We have grades and degrees as an attempt to show what we have learned, but they are imperfect. If you are going to be able to demonstrate what you can accomplish you have to look beyond the grade and the degree and value the work. Educators aren’t putting in those requirements because they’re evil and want to find ways to waste your time. That knowledge almost always has a value, especially if you go look for it.

And I can say that as a student who has had to sit through the occasional, seemingly pointless class. There are classes like that out there, but if you go into every class thinking they’re going to be like that, you’re right back at “Cs get degrees.” If you try to make yourself and/or your class average, it’s going to be average.

I think we’ll save the last two points for upcoming blog posts.

BFS Reviews: The Great Gatsby (2013)

Movie Reviews

I Great Gatsby 2013 s it necessary to do a spoiler-free review of a movie based on a book that’s almost a century old? Probably not, but there’s inevitably someone out there complaining when someone spoils the end of The Empire Strikes Back (okay, that was me–I couldn’t believe someone had “ruined it” for The Celt. She hadn’t seen the movie, so how could she know who Luke’s father was? Darn spoilery people types…).

In case you’re an oddball (curmudgeon?) like me, here’s your short, spoiler-free review. Baz Luhrmann’s usual penchant for spectacle on an enormous scale is at times a boost and at other times a hindrance to this classic American novel set in the Roaring Twenties. But it’s able to find its heart when it stops trying to party and instead focuses on its characters.

There you go, end of no spoilers.

Seriously, why are you still here if you don’t want them? Spoilers, dead ahead!

*clears throat* While Luhrmann’s past efforts (most notably Moulin Rouge) show that he can use spectacle to enhance his story, he’s more hit and miss with this element in Gatsby. First of all, his modern/historical parties can feel tonally out of place with the 1920s setting. Where Moulin Rouge is frequently tongue in cheek and a musical, both of which allow for more leeway with anachronism, Gatsby is a more serious movie–so the DJs and occasional rap songs feel more out of place than they should. Where the songs work best is when they are integrated more naturally with the scene, with modern songs being sung like they were a current hit of the 1920s (if I’m not mistaken, Florence Welsh of current band, Florence + the Machine, is a singing partygoer lounging on a piano at mid point in the film).

The parties are also overly chaotic. This makes sense for some of them, but a later scene where Nick eats lunch with Gatsby and Meyer Wolfsheim has much of these chaotic party elements for no reason. Yes, it’s a speakeasy, but speakeasies were not continuously neverending parties and that’s not what the scene is about: rather than adding anything, the huge party atmosphere is more distracting than anything else.

Where the parties do work is in their contrasts. While the party Nick attends with Tom Buchanan early on in the movie has many chaotic elements that can detract from it, they do serve as an amazing counterpoint to Gatsby’s afternoon visit with Daisy later in the movie. You can’t help but compare the afternoon with all the party scenes, and this smaller focus on Daisy and Gatsby meeting for the first time in years makes it all the more delightful.

This is indicative of the entire film. Luhrmann’s interpretation first found its feet for me when Gatsby finally arrived. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jay Gatsby is merely talked about for the first twenty or so minutes of the film, and once he enters, he is sympathetically human, understandable, and varied. He’s somehow the suave host of his massive parties, and also the overly dramatic and moody man that knocks on Nick Carraway’s door before meeting Daisy, soaked by a downpour and halfway certain that this moment–the one he has been working to for years–just won’t work. When the movie and its sometimes disparate elements allow him to, we can feel Gatsby’s “immense capacity for hope.” Both its beauty, and its misguidedness.

Its other characters are not always as strong, but a good ensemble. Tobey Maguire is much as we would expect here, but his good-natured moderateness fits Nick Carraway well. Carey Mulligan fits the bill as Daisy, and is much more easily seen as an object of Gatsby’s desire than performances in past films (I’m looking at you, Mia Farrow, you of the obnoxious “I can’t stand ’em” voice). Joel Edgerton is serviceable as Tom, but other than for the film’s final 30 minutes or so, he’s too much of a bad guy. We can see no reason why Daisy has married him or loved him in the past.

Enough. More could be said about the movie and its strengths and weaknesses. Why did Luhrmann decide to make Nick Carraway so traumatized by the events of the story that he is now in a sanitarium? Why did Luhrmann give Gatsby a moment of near murderous rage toward the end of the movie? Why does he over-narrate his movie (when the camera serves part of the function narration does in a book)? Heck, why is Myrtle yet another slender Hollywood actress, when she is described in the book as “faintly stout,” yet able to carry her “surplus flesh sensuously?” Trust me, I could go into these: I did a Master’s thesis on Gatsby, I love the book that much.

Such questions and thoughts would have a point, but miss the better point of the movie. Its soul (as is the book’s) is in Gatsby and his green light at the end of the dock. It comes back to this time and again and finds it once more at the movie’s end… and nothing, not all the unneeded narration or party scenes, nor any of the movie’s other small missteps, can take that away. This, if nothing else, make this version of Gatsby worth a look.