Yearly Archives: 2020

5 posts

On the Inherent Hopefulness of The Last Jedi

Methods of Film Movie Reviews Recommended Views

Movie Post for The Last Jedi (AKA “An Appreciation of The Last Jedi by a Middle-aged Cis White Dude, Since Supposedly We All Hate This Movie”)

Even if you don’t give a fig for the new Star Wars movies, you’ve most certainly heard about them somewhere through the grapevine (fig… vine?): they’re either the greatest thing since sliced bread/the original movie trilogy, or they’re those movie things with fans so terrible they make the actors in them cancel their social media accounts… and sometimes their acting careers.

Nowhere is this divide clearer than for the second movie in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, The Last Jedi. Even as a fan of Star Wars and an observer of its fandom, it’s kind of hard to tell where the consensus lands for this one (if such a thing can be found among millions or billions of people) and if there are issues, what those truly are. Some of the complaints can be discounted offhand by emotionally stunted people that probably need some therapy, while others are truly revolting and/or mysoginistic, with supposed “fan” cuts that remove every female giving orders in the movie. We see you, people, and we know what you’re about.

The Red Throne Room in The Last Jedi, a dark, tall throne, flanked by crimson walls. On the more difficult to parse side are comments that can still be rejected fairly off hand. One that repeatedly comes up is that Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi, is a hack: someone that just doesn’t know how to make a good movie. A brief look at Johnson’s body of work makes this infinitely mockable, just based on the strength of Brick and Looper alone (now with Knives Out added to the mix). Even if you don’t want to watch any of of his other movies, the visual power of The Last Jedi alone discounts this claim. You don’t forget things like Snoke’s red throne room if you watch this movie; it is too menacingly gorgeous. Calling Johnson a hack is one of those “internet takedowns” that only work if you’re talking to a group that will already agree with anything you have to say on a subject. You can give each other an electronic high-five or fist bump all you want, but don’t expect the rest of the world to agree with you so easily.

The Actual Problem With The Last Jedi (if there really is one):

Cutting past the misogyny and internet vitriol, one can find a fairly consistent complaint about the movie, its characters and its themes: one which can basically be summed up as the “Luke Skywalker problem.” Fans of the original trilogy had decades to celebrate Luke’s journey, to look up to it and to celebrate it. Adding to the pedestal effect created by the emotional power of the original movies are the Star Wars fiction series that started up in the 1990s with the beloved trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Sure, Luke has some flaws and suffers setbacks in these books, but he’s always the hero—and he emerges in the right and victorious yet again.

The Red Throne Room in The Last Jedi, a dark, tall throne, flanked by crimson walls. The Last Jedi throws this all on its head. Luke has given up, marooning himself on an island on a remote planet that almost no one knows how to find. This act even threw Mark Hamill for a loop: he’s quoted in the special features of the movie (and elsewhere) as not being on board with the changes to his character—but as a professional and a classy guy, he still endeavored to make Johnson’s vision work. To Hamill and many other fans, Luke Skywalker is one of the most hopeful characters in cinematic history, and Rian Johnson’s script seems to do away with all that, presenting a saddened, broken failure of a man at the movie’s opening.

To many, that is the movie’s entire portrayal, with maybe a slight hand wave toward Luke still being amazing at the end of the movie (but not enough to make up for what Rian Johnson and Disney have “done” to their hero). Luke simply isn’t allowed to be his hopeful and heroic self, they claim, nor is he allowed to be an awesome Jedi sage, like Yoda.

Just how awesome is Yoda, though? Yes, he’s able to do things Luke can only marvel at when he himself was learning in the original trilogy, but for all the power and knowledge of the force he demonstrates, both he and Obi-Wan Kenobi are broken old men in the middle three movies: they have flat out failed and are in hiding as well. And worse than Luke, they don’t seem to have changed much from the experience. Kenobi regrets that he did not teach his former pupil as well as Yoda would have done, but the truths they cling to have not shifted all that much.

The Last Jedi is an Affirmation of Luke and the Star Wars Universe, Not a Rejection:

Indeed, it is in Luke’s differences from his mentors that The Last Jedi actually holds true to the character. Hope is a wonderful thing, but you can hope in the wrong direction, and hopes may be broken: is there a depression more complete than failure and disillusionment? Everything Luke worked toward in the original trilogy, and the decades since, has gone for naught. The Empire has re-risen as the First Order, and he almost killed his sister’s (and best friend’s) son in a moment of weakness, allowing that boy to fall to the dark side.

Rather than re-treading the sage mystic routine that characterizes Obi-Wan and Yoda in the original trilogy, the character arc for Luke in The Last Jedi allows him to be a real, flesh-and-blood person. Beyond that, it also allows a viewer to value just who Luke is. We miss Luke’s hopefulness, but we can appreciate it all the more when we see that his hopefulness is what energizes Rey so much. Rey isn’t just the new hero of the sequel trilogy, she’s also the person that reminds Luke of who and what he truly is—and that has very little to do with his failure.

Even though it is the middle of a trilogy, The Last Jedi is also the eighth episode of a saga that is nine movies long. For a story to have power, for a story to resonate with its viewer, it has to find something in itself that will linger with its audience. And in a generational saga like this one, stretching across decades, it’s almost impossible not to consider the impact of legacy.

The Last Jedi asks some tough questions about this saga’s legacy—the legacy that its characters want, and the legacy that its viewers want. In watching it, some viewers seem to want a return to safety, to where things ended in its happy middle. It’s an understandable urge, but one that is not true to the saga that they love (or the world that they live in). Change is what characterizes Star Wars. It saw the end of a government that had lasted for centuries in the prequels, it sought an end to the autocratic regime that replaced that former government in the original trilogy, and now it asks what the future will hold in the sequel trilogy.

By asking the tough questions, Rian Johnson was able to identify the beating heart at the center of Luke, Rey, and the entire franchise: hope. Mark Hamill as Master Skywalker, looking hopefully into the sunrise.

On “Rey Cries All the Time” and the Emotionally Stunted Stupidity of the Star Wars Fandom

Methods of Film Movie Reviews Someone Is Wrong on the Internet

Rey, supposedly played with too much emotion by Daisy Ridley

This post has been a long time coming. I know it’s late to the party, but I’ve hit my breaking point.

As becomes abundantly clear to anyone that reads my blog, tweets, and other writings (or interacts with me for any length of time), I’m a massive fan of genre stories: I even spoke about them for my lecture on writing craft during my MFA in Fiction program. While realism certainly has its moments, genre has a scope all of its own–a way of expanding and commenting on reality.

Which is why I have found the Star Wars fandom increasingly tedious and angering since the Disney sequels began to arrive. Prior to this, disagreements in its community were often nerdily contentious, but mostly understandable. Are the Ewoks fun and cute or a despicable pandering to kiddies? How much and how badly did the prequels actually stink?

Now cue a female main hero and a more inclusive cast, and all Dark Side breaks loose. At the tamer end are cries of “Disney is ruining Star Wars,” while at the dangerous, toxic end are fan cuts that remove all female characters from The Last Jedi and chase actors from social media (or possibly from the acting profession itself, so maybe the prequel era was worse than nerdily contentious?). I play Star Wars games, and it’s ridiculously common for forum posts to casually toss out that Rian Johnson (the director of The Last Jedi) is a hack, and that Daisy Ridley’s Rey is a Mary Sue that can do anything without even trying. But then you also get posts that really lay it all out there and state that “Kylo is better because Rey cries all the time.”

Here’s some simple words for such fans, in the tough-guy speak they seem to adore: fuck you and your emotionally stunted stupidity.

First is the irony of “Crying all the time.” Oh, Rey gets upset about her parents leaving her as a child on a desert planet, where she has to eke out a barren and miserable existence (where she can all too easily envision herself turning into one of the old, shriveled, and dejected women around her)? I hope you also complain about Luke’s abject dismay and horror at learning his father is Darth Vader, you worthless excuse for a person with the emotional capacity of a croquet mallet.

God, look at the completely understandable emotions on that dude’s face. How emo.

And why are you so upset about women in the sequels, you misogynistic excuse for a wart? In the original trilogy, Leia outranked Han (and held her own against his attempts at verbal wit), while blasting up the Death Star, Cloud City, and Endor like the boys. Mon Mothma was the freaking leader of the Rebellion, not Han or Luke. This stuff ain’t new, and I question your ability to know, comprehend, or understand the movies you supposedly are a fan of. Not that I’m surprised, given your ability to hold less sentiment than a teaspoon.

Do we need to expand the discussion on the the diversity side of things, given the racism John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran have encountered? Yes, we do. The Empire was designed by the original filmmakers to be Space Nazis. Space Nazis, not “good people on both sides” occupying some justifiable gray middle space–even if you can maybe question whether the films held the Empire accountable enough, and you can definitely question how it looks when George Lucas and now Disney profit from making their evil empire into playful toy lines and theme parks,

Business ethics aside, did you even notice how the Empire is made up of all white men, while the Rebellion has women, people of color, and different alien species? Or did the super obvious visual difference escape you? You know, the thing that just about everyone praises every Star Wars movie for? No, you were probably too busy imagining you were your Luke Skywalker action figure, slicing things up with your laser sword, rather than opening your calloused heart to the ideals he represented.

Yes, I mentioned your heart, and those annoying things called feelings. I know it’s terrible when we have to deal with them, but you know what happens when you don’t? When you avoid them at all costs? You go and slaughter an entire village of Sand People and eventually a temple filled with children. You go from being the hero with no fear to being the villain that inspires fear. Does any character ever look forward to Darth Vader’s presence, even once? Even Director Krennic, the scrabbling bureaucrat that would sell out his own mother for a promotion, looks on his approach with dread. People will use Darth Vader, but they don’t want him around.

I know, I know, the Dark Side seems cool, given all those movies and toy lines and video games. We all get angry, and it’s all too common for some of us to wish we could reach out mentally and choke someone we find annoying, saying “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” The Dark Side appeals to the side of us that hates being small and hates being hurt.

But here’s the thing. If a story is actually worthwhile, if it’s more than just space ships blasting and lasers pew-pewing (the all too common criticism of anything “genre,” given by the serious “academy” of filmmakers, storymakers, and awards-givers), then what the story says has to actually matter. You shouldn’t want to be Darth Vader–only full of anger or hatred. You shouldn’t find Kylo more interesting than Rey because she has the audacity to show ranges of emotion.

Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose has every right to despise arms dealers and those who profit from war. She’s lived her entire life in a war-torn galaxy: a galaxy torn apart because a bunch of emotionally stunted force users didn’t learn to grapple with their very real trauma. What do the prequels look like if the Jedi hadn’t just preached peace (and lack of emotion), but helped Anakin to save his mother (or at the very least deal with her passing)? Traditions and the continual progress from one supposedly greater need to another allowed a very real cancer to spread.

And of course it’s frustrating that Luke Skywalker lost hope and hid on an island (on a remote planet in space). I wish he hadn’t as well, but it’s a tradition of sorts, in these movies: don’t deal with your feelings, and you get the Dark Side–either through your actions or the lack of them.

Emotions are the reason Star Wars amounts to more than lasers pew-pewing and an epic soundtrack. When you say “Rey cries all the time,” you’re making light of the very thing that gives a soul to what you love.

The BFS Recommends The Dragon Prince

Television and Series Reviews The BFS Recommends

(AKA “Asking Someone Not to Have to Make a Choice is Still a Choice”)

It’s actually become a critical trope in and of itself to say there are no new stories (in other words, every tale is simply made up of well-known narrative techniques). I’ve never been a fan of such over-generalizing, but it is worth noting how a newly created movie or book makes use of all the stories that have come before it. Some can approach things in such a fresh way that they seem completely unlike anything before, much like The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars: A New Hope did when they first arrived. And others can seem hopelessly imitative, like Eragon: it’s still an impressive story for a teenager to write, but the patchwork quilt of its influences is mighty noticeable.

Other stories have such fun with their influences and take them in a powerful enough direction that you don’t much care how standard some of its base elements are. The visuals of The Dragon Prince will be familiar to any watcher of well-known fantasy tales (the Moon Elf kingdom looks a lot like Lothlorien in The Fellowship of the Ring, or the realm of The Night Elves from World of Warcraft), and Frederik Wiedmann’s score would feel right at home in the world of Middle Earth as envisioned by Peter Jackson and co.

What makes The Dragon Prince such a standout for everyone to watch (it is NOT just a children’s animated series, no matter how much the Daytime Emmy’s want it to be) is how it takes these familiar elements in powerful new directions. One in particular that stands out from many previous fantasy films and shows is its inclusivity: Humans and elves are drawn in ways that will remind viewers from this reality of various Earth cultures and regions, but no one in the world of The Dragon Prince notices or makes a comment about another person’s accent or skin tone. That’s just how they look.

Instead, the show uses the very real divisions between the humans and magical creatures of its universe (e.g., elves and dragons) to probe at problems that will very much remind a viewer of our own world. Disgusted and horrified by how some humans gained magical abilities, dragons and elves have banished all of humanity to the non-magical half of their shared continent.

While this action is understandable (human wizards gained their abilities from Dark Magic, which derives its power from the life force of a magical creature: a process that generally means killing the creature for its body parts), there is an element of elitism and arrogance to how dragons and elves treat humans. “You weren’t happy with what you were given,” is a line said in varying ways throughout the show when Dark Magic is brought up. Humans bristling at this separate but not equal treatment is easy for a viewer to appreciate, even if Dark Magic is clearly unsavory and unethical (though its practitioners don’t necessarily see it that way).

Probably the most powerful statement the show creates from its familiar elements is about choice: why are you doing what you are doing, and to what end? Not thinking about the true end of their choices is a consistent problem for its characters, and sets up the crux of the storyline for the show’s three seasons. At its beginning, a group of elvish assassins have been sent to kill a human king and his heir, the human king having himself killed the King of the Dragons previously (out of revenge for the death of someone else). As the viewer learns more, they begin to see that this is just the most recent in a long history of humans and magical creatures pursuing vengeance or power (the one sometimes mistaken for or blended with the other).

Perhaps the most heartbreaking commentary on choice comes through two clear decisions made by one of its characters. At both times, the character wants to avoid the decision: the pain of choosing one direction or another is too great. And at both times, the show’s statement is clear: avoiding a decision is still a choice, in and of itself.

A powerful reminder to viewers from our world, where choosing not to know something is a statement (and a choice) all of its own.

On ‘Opinions, Everybody Got One,” As Opposed to “Us Versus Them”

Musings

(Important, pre-blog post note, as this was drafted three weeks ago: opinions are opinions and not to be confused with facts)

One of my favorite movie lines comes from Platoon and John C. McGinley’s war-weary Sergeant O’Neill: “Excuses are like assholes, Taylor, everybody got one.” A recent article I read in The Atlantic reminded me that you could say much the same for opinions.

In her piece, titled “Singles and Couples Are More Divided Than Ever,” Ginny Hogan describes an added relationship dystopia to the bleakness of our current Covid-19 situation. If one were to believe what she describes, people in relationships are a bunch of arrogant a-holes, flouting social distancing recommendations, pausing their 24/7 lovemaking sessions to proudly tweet that there is no one else they’d rather quarantine with, and rubbing this romantic bliss in their single friend’s faces when they check in to see how they are doing. In a truly baffling passage, Hogan bristles at “coupled” acquaintances and family members asking how she’s doing all alone. “The idea that I need the company or validation of a man so badly[…] is genuinely offensive.”

Hogan walks back some of this straw man hyperbole near the article’s end, yet she still closes her piece with the hope that the rupture between those who are single and those who are in relationships will not persist when the pandemic ends.

The problem with that? Opinions are like butts: everybody got one. Once we’re Covid free, singles aren’t going to stop liking their singlehood for the time being (or for some, wishing and longing they were not single). Relationship holders are not going to stop loving (or pretending to love) their relationship. And meddlesome relatives and friends aren’t going to stop suggesting to the single person they know that the right man/woman/person for them might be just around the corner.

Because why? Let’s check the list, shall we? People have butts. Check. Oh, and yes, they have opinions. Check.

Perhaps I’m taking the article too seriously. Articles gotta articulate, publications gotta publish, and writers gotta write and pay the bills (and have opinions), after all. Just ignore it and move on.

I wish I could, but this is a tribalism–a dichotomy–that I have run into time and again. When I and my then fiancee told people that we did not have an engagement ring, there were choruses of voices, defending the choice to have an engagement ring, and even arguments that Jessica really did want a ring and was just pretending (“Neal,” she said, “I would never play games with you like that”).

And when we decided we were not going to have children? It’s difficult to find a more contentious debate. Opinions among the childfree can range from “we like kids, but don’t want our own,” (an opinion Jessica and I share), to being among the most vociferously hateful I have ever heard, calling those with children “breeders,” (like we’re all stuck in some Mad Max film, lorded over by some neo-gothic warlord in leather pants named Killer McKillerface). On the other side of this divide are those who tell friends and family members considering not having children that “you’ll change your mind some day,” a line of reasoning that builds up to doctors refusing to provide sterilization procedures to adult men and women when they ask for one. And that’s before you even get into the usual grass-is-always-greener argument about who has a happier life with or without kids.

If everybody got opinions, are we condemned then to stand in our wrongness and be wrong and get used to it (no matter how amusing it was when President Bartlett said it on The West Wing)? We could, I guess. We’re kind of trending there more and more, it seems like.

But that’s only if we assume that because we have opinions (and butts), those opinions are also absolutes. Just because Jessica and I didn’t have an engagement ring, and just because we don’t have kids, doesn’t mean we begrudge other people those things. There are elements that are out of control when it comes to engagement rings and weddings, but the ideas at their core are of luminous beauty and nothing to begrudge. Even if I did not find them luminous, it’s a far better world where I allow them to be for others who do find them so.

There are certainly people who would begrudge and not allow, of course, those who would build a wall around those of their own opinion to keep those against them far and away from their vision of how things ought to be, believing that the separation they have created means they will no longer be affected by those they have put on the other side of their fortifications.

What if, instead of focusing on how everybody wants to not be affected by the opinions of other people, we instead realized that we are always affected by other people’s opinions? If we were not already affected by those we call “other,” walls would not be argued for or created. What would the world look like, if we just accepted the reality of everybody around us having opinions–and the requisite differing of those billions of points of view?

There are limits, I know, to humanity’s understanding and capability. But my friends, my friends, we have set up our walls so far short of those limitations.

On “City of Lakes” Versus “Minneapolis is Burning”

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Musings Slice of BFS's Life (memoir)

I lie down this past week and can’t sleep. Not from visions of little coronaviruses dancing, (well, mostly not, anyway): Minneapolis is burning. As the protests over George Floyd’s murder spread across the country, as politicians and society argue over what it all means, as people from outside of the Twin Cities may or may not be trying to co-opt true calls for justice, I can’t stop thinking about the Minneapolis I grew up in–the Minneapolis that I love.

My childhood home stands a mere five miles from the 3rd Precinct building that was burned last week. A year ago during a return visit, I drove through the same neighborhood: the drive filled with the warm ache of memory at the very street signs that seemed to scream Minneapolis to me. And the central location for much of the last week’s activity–Lake Street–is one I know well: I frequently drove down Lake Street while commuting to a substitute teacher job at Minnehaha Academy, the shop-lined urban streets slowly giving way to rows of houses and spreading trees and then a bluff, overlooking the blue and brown swaths of the Missisissippi.

There are a lot of Lake Streets across the country, but it’s particularly appropriate in a metropolis nicknamed The City of Lakes (there are 22 within the city limits). In the hot, humid days of summer, we would bike west to Lake Harriet or Bde Maka Ska (recently renamed from Lake Calhoun, its former moniker inexplicably taken from a notorious States Rights and pro-slavery senator from South Carolina in the early 1800s). I didn’t know then how lucky I was to be within biking distance of a lake with a public beach. I live near nothing like that now, and it’s not lying to say I miss it with the sharp pang of loss. And nothing against rivers, but there’s something about the expanse of a lake that holds the mind more peacefully.

Of course, there are incongruities to memory. Things excised, things brought forward–the mind and desire altering things in ways you don’t realize until reality presents the contrast to you with crystal clarity. During that return visit to south Minneapolis, the Washburn Park Water Tower was just as awe-inspiring as I remembered it to be (how many stone water towers have you seen whose curved bases are flanked by warrior statues?), but the hillside on my old block just wasn’t as steep as I remember it being. A long and gentle decline in actuality, my grade-school memories have equated walking or biking up that thing to Everest.

And then comes this past week, which has me remembering again how my family would generally bike west or southeast for family outings. We’d go north to visit my dad’s work in the downtown area, but there were areas we skipped between there and where we lived, taking Interstate 35W more often than not. I remember always having the feeling that the farther north we went on the residential streets, the more dangerous things got.

Where did I even get this feeling? It was more than the normal fear of leaving familiar surroundings. Was it family? The chatter of kids on the playground and on the bus? It’s one of those social and cultural things we just absorb without realizing it. I’m quite certain I did absorb it, too. A few years back, when my wife and I revealed we had driven down Lake Street on the way to the Mississippi, words were said to the effect of “Oh, isn’t that a little rough?”–an attitude and meaning coded to say it maybe should have been avoided, coding I had seen and heard before for lower income or more diverse areas.

Against the backdrop of my Minneapolis memories are a record needle scratch of hard realities and statistics. Whites are generally happy and healthy in Minnesota, but minorities are much less likely to be in the same boat (education rates follow similar trends). And in Minneapolis, police fatalities flip its racial demographics: in the past 20 years, Blacks make up about 20 percent of the population, yet they account for roughly 60 percent of police fatalities (whites are 60 percent of the population but only account for about 20 percent of fatalities).

So which is Minneapolis? The beautiful memory of my childhood? The burning city raging at its differences and inequities? (The dream or the nightmare, as Ibram X. Kendi stated in a similarly tracked article I was surprised to discover as I wrote this particular paragraph in this particular essay?)

For me–and I may be wrong–both exist. The beauty of Minneapolis is still there this week, in its places and in its people: from the shores of Lake Harriet and Bde Maka Ska to its residents coming together to help their community. And the darkness is still there, from its police terrifying residents off of their porches to “maintain order” to a semi loaded with flammable materials almost plowing down dozens of protestors on Interstate 35W (on the same site of a tragic bridge collapse nearly twelve years ago). Acknowledging the blissful side and not the other leads to a dysmorphic view, as unhealthy as one of those photoshop disasters where people try to make themselves look more attractive and end up with something completely alien. But is it foolish to hope we can change? That we can lessen the nightmare Kendi describes in his article?

We’re too far from any utopia to think it’s closely in reach… and part of our problem has been pretending we do live in a kind of near utopia. The fault lines this belief has created have kept far too many of us up late at night this past week–while lulling some others to sleep with judgmental thoughts for those protesting.

I cannot and should not go back to the security blanket of nostalgia and privilege, to the gentle hum of hammocks in tree-lined backyards and neighborhood games of kick-the-can: yet I can use those images to motivate me, to help me continue to notice the unevenness of the country I live in… and to act in ways that help bring the nightmare closer to the end. For everyone.