I Am One With My Past, And My Past Is With Me.

Movies-- and all media, really-- reflect what we bring to them. They follow their own plots, their own stories, their own rules. But experiencing media is a solitary thing that hinges on what we bring with us along the way. Søren Kierkegaard says: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” I think that plenty of time gets dedicated to discussing the manner in which this is true of poetry, of art, but less so of movies and other modern media. The things that are so prevalent that it gets forgotten they’re art as well. We expect them to be universal and all encompassing, to tell one story that we can all get behind and understand in exactly the same way. I have some opinions on that, but maybe they're better served for a different day.

Anyway, what’s the point?

I saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and I think-- Scratch that. I know that my opinion of the film is a direct response to my sense of my past.

First things first: I really liked Rogue One. As anyone familiar with this blog will remember, I love Star Wars. Love it like I cannot even begin to describe or explain. Love it in a manner that makes me defend the prequels, obsessively study Expanded Universe texts, and tattoo my body with its images. I think Rogue One succeeds in retrieving the aesthetic of the original trilogy, something that’s very important for this universe. It shows the audience a side of the Rebellion that isn’t often focused on. The two trilogies are so focused on prophecies and Jedi and the Skywalker family that it becomes easy to imagine the Galactic Civil War as somehow… small scale. Now we have Rebels, and Rebels like we’ve not really gotten a chance to see them before. Rebels who aren’t always walking the high road.

There is a realistic sense of determination and grit to the characters of Rogue One. Cassian’s sense of selling himself piece by piece for a cause that’s taken control of his very soul. Baze’s lost faith in the Force and reliance on violence to make sense of universe that has no answers for the peaceful. Galen’s skill and intelligence being twisted and his knowledge that if he does not create this technological terror that someone else will because the Empire is unceasing.

And Jyn Erso’s discovery that loss and pain are a part of life, that a person can’t live in hiding just because they’re afraid of getting hurt, that sometimes it’s better to feel than to wither beneath an armor made of apathy.

What made this movie so evocative for me was not merely the Star Wars storyline which, don’t get me wrong, is entertaining and well-crafted. There isn’t anything here that someone who likes the other movies wouldn’t want to see. It probably works as an entry point in the series as well, though obviously I’m not really the person to ask about that. I’ve been watching Star Wars pretty much my entire life. Which brings me to my point…

For me, Star Wars could be the very definition of nostalgia of my childhood. You could set a time lapse video to show me growing up and it wouldn’t be inaccurate to have me sitting in front of a television watching Star Wars. I took those years and years of watching these movies in with me when I sat down to watch Rogue One. I took every conversation I’ve ever had about it, every book I’ve ever read about it, every video game I’ve ever played about it, and every friend I’ve ever made through it. That last one is important because generally the most emotional part of the Star Wars movies for me has always been the friendships formed. But this time… this time it was a little bit different.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has a narrative that builds off of a father and daughter relationship. Galen Erso is the scientist building the Death Star. Jyn Erso is his estranged daughter, strong-armed into helping the Rebellion locate him.

Full disclosure? My father died almost six years ago. He died suddenly and he died while we were not on speaking terms. I’m able to look back on him now with love and kindness and forgiveness, but at the time of his death I was a mess of confusion and anger and bitterness. We had not had a good relationship for a long time. We had not spoken in nearly a year leading up to his death. At the time I could only see his flaws-- of which there are many-- and the damage he had done to who I felt I was as a person. Before he died I thought he had ruined me and after, for a while, I was very certain of it because I was swallowed by a grief and regret I didn’t understand. How do you grieve a person you hate? A person who made your life so difficult? A person who you couldn’t even be certain loved you? I didn’t know then. Sometimes, I don’t know now. For the most part though (due to the help of people who I am sure love me) I’ve moved beyond my pain and found a tentative middle ground where love and critique manage to coexist.

So, for me, this story of a lost girl forced to find her father resonated. There is a moment when she is asked where her father is that she replies: “I don’t know. It’s easier just to pretend he’s dead.” (paraphrased) and I felt for her. I felt for her and I wasn’t ever able to stop. Because Star Wars has always been “my thing” and suddenly there was a character here that spoke to me more fully than any of my previous favorites ever had. I’ll never be a cool, smooth-talking smuggler or a Jedi Knight or a hot-shot pilot with an endless stream of witty comments. I have been an angry, defensive young woman trying to bury her heart beneath anger because it’s easier than muddling through anything worthwhile however.

Do you know who showed me Star Wars? Who is integrated beyond all recognition in all my memories of these movies? Who took me out of school to see Episode 1? Who went with me at midnight in costume to see Episode 3? I’m sure you guessed it, but I’ll say it anyway.

My father.

I said that Star Wars is “my thing”, but maybe I should say it was “our thing”.

I won’t go into any of the memories that jump to mind because I don’t trust myself not to cry while typing them out. But, yeah, so Rogue One got me hook, line, and sinker when it put a plot point on a broken father-daughter relationship. Broken in a vastly different way than my own since my dad didn’t build a planet destroying spaceship and I think most of his bad, hurtful decisions weren’t done with the threat of his own life. And, sure, maybe it makes me an easy mark. Maybe it means I bought into something cheap and that I looked passed flaws that other people less emotionally wrought over these characters were able to see. I can see that being possible. Nonetheless, it spoke to me in a way that I understand it didn’t speak to everyone because not everyone’s past in my past.

It is mine, though, and it's what I brought with me into the theater and it's what the screen reflected back at me. There's nothing I can do about that except embrace it.

But, hey. If I can cash in on a shitty point in my life so that Cassian looking at Jyn and saying “Your father would have been proud.” makes my chest swell and tears form in my eyes then sign me up.

The Men In The High Castles.

Breaking months of radio silence here!

I mentioned in a previous post I had read The Man In The High Castle this year and was blown away by it. I’m always borderline overwhelmed by the amount of books I want to read. Sometimes it gets pretty hard for me to just straight up choose a book. I finally bit the bullet and read The Man In The High Castle because Amazon had released a pilot for it. The pilot was AWESOME, and it encouraged me to get off my buns and check this book out before the whole season aired. Well, mission accomplished on that front. The show launched Friday and I had that book finished months ago. The show consisted of 10 1 hour episodes.

…and I watched them all between Friday and Saturday.

Some might call binging on a show for 10 hours crazy, a waste of time, really bad for my health. I wouldn’t disagree with any of that, but I would like to say one thing in my defense. THAT SHOW WAS FANTASTIC. It’s very, very different from the PKD novel (but when watching adaptations of PKD you’ve got to expect that sort of thing) but it’s different without being an offense to the source material. Let me try to elaborate on this.

PKD’s novel The Man In The High Castle takes place in an America that lost WW2. Germany and Japan share control of the country – east coast Germany, west coast Japan. The world building is subtle. PKD never really hits you over the head with the differences in the culture. It’s all just there in the text and understood as being the normal way of things, because in this world it is. However, like most PKD novels there’s something about the reality of it all that just doesn’t seem right. One of the main plot points is the circulation of a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which is written by The Man In The High Castle. It tells the story of an America that beats the Axis in WW2. The novel, obviously, is considered dangerous propaganda literature and sought out to be destroyed. There’s more to the book than that though. There’s something about it, something that seems unexplainable, which brings a sort of hope into the lives of the people that read it. It feels more real than a book should be and a question starts popping up: How did this man come up with this story and make it feel like so much more than fiction? It goes on and on and I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone. Needless to say if you’re familiar with PKD’s work than you can be comfortable expecting some of the same stuff he likes to go into. Mass hallucinations, reality being a construct of the mind, governments being untrustworthy scum.

The show is different. While the characters in the book are just regular people living in this occupied country, the characters in the show are much more active players. Spies, resistance fighters, enemies of the state. The stakes feel much higher here, and I understand the necessity in making that sort of change. People sitting around with the I-Ching for chapters on end wouldn’t make for very interesting television. The changes that have been made—specifically with the character of Joe Blake who is only the briefest shadow of Joe Cinnadella from the book—left me on the edge of my seat. The show is tense in way the book wasn’t. It’s much more an action show, dealing with the way that fascism has changed our country and the fact that people just go with the flow of the government no matter what their moral reservations are. Of all the things that are different though the subtly of the world remains. That subtly is really what gives the show its power. It’s all about the little things: the swastika on the telephone, the unease on the idea of hospitals, the celebration of VA Day. The smallness of the differences in our world and this one and the way the characters have accepted their fates is so unnerving that it’s wonderful.

There’s talks of a second season, and the way it ends clearly leaves it open for more adventures. But I’m happy with this has a standalone one shot sort of deal. Yes, there are questions that are unanswered and yes, there is a pervading sense of hopelessness by the last episode. They only very briefly touch upon what might be going on with The Grasshopper Lies Heavy (a film in the show rather than a book) and the notion of reality vs realities, and that is something I’d like to see resolved… But if it never comes to be, well, I wouldn’t consider this weekend a waste. 

Just check out this opening:

Terminator Genisys: Judgement Day.

Over the weekend I saw Terminator Genisys. Weird spelling aside the movie was great. I’d been on the fence about my feelings for this sequel since it got announced. At first I rolled my eyes. Then I was pleasantly optimistic. Then I read a plot summary and was nervous. Then I saw the trailer and was pleasantly optimistic again. It’s been an emotional roller coaster to say the least. Finally after seeing the movie I thought I could rest easy. It was good! I liked it! Drama over. Except apparently a lot of people on the internet don’t agree with my positive opinion. So, here’s a last ditch effort to get it all off my chest and get myself off this ride.

Over at The Mary Sue, Lesley Coffin wrote a post called Review: Terminator Genisys Warns Us All of Smartphone Updates . I don’t regularly follow The Mary Sue but I do check in and check up on posts relating to things that’ve peaked my interest. After seeing the movie I was eager to hear other opinions about it, especially after my husband and I both liked it but for different reasons. I was definitely surprised to see the less than thrilled review. Especially one that starts so adamantly against the movie.

There are several film franchise whose lore have literally been destroyed by their own massive success and financial demand for sequels. For example, try piecing together the logic of the Halloween films, and your head might explode. But one of the best examples of a franchise not only being unable to continue their success with subsequent sequels, but tarnishing the original’s legacy is certainly Terminator.

Coffin’s claim is valid. Lots of movies and books get totally ruined by beating a dead horse. Now, I never saw Terminator Salvation and I’ve only seen a handful of episodes of The Sarah Conner Chronicles so maybe I’m not the best person to be taking a defensive stand here. But, as I’m sure nearly everyone can agree, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a pretty perfect sequel. This is a more controversial statement to make but fortune favors the bold, I suppose: I really enjoyed Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. I don’t think that either of those sequels did any inherent damage to the Terminator mythos.

I know that people’s complaints about Terminator Salvation and The Sarah Conner Chronicles had to do with the idea that, as Coffin states, it destroys the lore and makes things sloppy. For a movie with a main plot point moved forward via time travel I think we’re already in sloppy enough territory. The movies all center around the notion of having to go back in time and stop Skynet from launching. Anyone with even the slightest bit of interest in the logistics of time travel would start thinking by the second movie about the issues with the time stream. Heck, even the first movie raises some pretty severe questions about the fluidity of a time line and whether or not destiny is fixed or fluid. Rise of the Machines starts to address these concerns for the people that have them. There’s altered timelines and things not working the way that John Conner has been raised to believe they’ll work. If my brief understanding of the television show is correct it deals with this far more heavily and introduces the notion of various time streams.

That’s essentially where we are now with Genisys.

Coffin talks about the changes that have happened that enable Kyle Reese to meet a different Sarah Conner than he has been told to expect. He thinks he’s going back to protect and save a helpless woman (there’s a funny scene here where he doesn’t know what a waitress is because, well, technological apocalypse). However, everything has changed due to the addition of a terminator having been sent back to kill Sarah as a child (makes sense to me) and another terminator having been sent back to protect her. Coffin seems to have been irked by the similarity this bares to Judgment Day, but that similarity is one of the stronger points of the movie in my opinion! Who didn’t love watching John Conner attempt to bring out the humanity of the reprogrammed T-800? Who doesn’t prefer badass Sarah Conner?

The problem is that by going back to the first film and using narrative themes from the second to wipe the last films, this leads to a lot of this movie feeling very old and tired, and comparisons to the earlier films.

So, seeing scenes and visuals from movies that take place in the same universe previous to the movie you’re watching currently but changing those visuals and scenes to form a new narrative and plot makes the new movie feel old? I mean, isn’t it more logical to say that the old movie feels new? That’s how it felt to me. Seeing the opening to the original movie reshot with subtle differences to imply the new timeline was so genius, so effective for me as a viewer that I was holding my breath with anticipation for whatever big change was about to happen. I also felt that by reshooting with these new actors they were given a chance to show off their chops rather than, as Coffin suggests, not letting them shine.

I have never been more impressed with Emilia Clarke than while watching her in this movie. Because it’s impressive enough to see an actress take a role and embody it, but to see Emilia Clarke now only playing Sarah Conner but playing Linda Hamilton playing Sarah Conner? Mind blown. Amazing. (Full disclosure this is one of my favorite film conventions so maybe I’m being biased here.) She is also rightfully badass as anyone being raised by a T-800 would be, but also still possesses her humanity and compassion. It makes the fact that so much is riding on her shoulders more emotionally impacting because the audience can see Sarah Conner the person struggling under Sarah Conner the legend.

Is the movie perfect? No. Is the plot tight? Eh, I could probably poke it full of holes if I put my mind to it. Is it a good movie? Yes. Time travel is hard as a plot device. It’s sloppy, it’s technical, and it leads to more loose ends than it solves. However, I think they’ve done the series justice with this newest installment. They’ve done their best to clean up what they could and introduce a new idea into the franchise. Time changes and so the lore and canon of the franchise must as well. The plots of these movies need to be as fluid as a T-1000 in order to keep up with the consistent time travel and time altering that they hinge upon.

Mad Max: The Review Warrior.

It’s pretty rare for me to see the same movie twice in theaters. There’s a number of reasons. First, I’m lazy as all heck and there isn’t a movie theater in my neighborhood. Second, there’s so many movies out at any given time it seems like a waste to spend time on the same one. Third, movies are not exactly a cheap activity to indulge in. Now that you know that about me here’s something else: I saw Mad Max: Fury Road twice in theaters and I would see it again.

I’m a big Mad Max fan. A few months ago the movie theater that I usually go to (Alamo Drafthouse) had a Mad Max marathon. It was about five hours and it was perfect. I’ve heard people complain in the past about the movies (the first and third seem to be particularly susceptible to critique) being nonsensical and too violent. I’ll be the first to admit that there is a lot of violence in the series and that Mad Max has some gut-wrenching scenes. But in a movie where there are characters named Toecutter, the Feral Kid, and Master-Blaster you’re kind of getting what you paid for at that point. Was I happy when Sprog and Jessie get killed? No, watching a toddler get run over by a maniacal motorcycle gang is harsh. Do I continue to enjoy the movies? Heck yeah.

 

It’s fairly common for a series to get progressively worse the longer it goes on. I don’t think that the Mad Max series suffers from this. Sure, Road Warrior introduces a drastically different world and Beyond Thunderdome has some tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. But the tone is the same on the whole throughout those three movies. The character of Max is the same. He’s a cop pushed to the edge who finds that he is just as much a part of the violent culture of crime that he was supposed to be fighting against. Cue a nuclear holocaust and a man who’s lost everything except his drive to survive no matter the costs. Max can be a bad man. He can do terrible things. He has that potential. That’s what I love so much about these movies is that they don’t ignore that part of him. They just show him continually rising above the culture of chaos that it would be all too simple for him to fall into.

The series is consistent and Fury Road is no exception. At first I was worried. A sequel after 30 years? Recasting Max Rockatansky? Female characters?! George Miller did not disappoint. In Mad Max, Max goes to his boss and says: “It's that rat circus out there, I'm beginning to enjoy it. Look, any longer out on that road and I'm one of them, ya know? A terminal crazy, except I've got a bronze badge that says I'm one of the good guys”. In Fury Road one of the first things we hear Max say is: “It was hard to tell who was more crazy... me... or everyone else”. As a sequel it maintains the themes that have been set up previously. Despite having a massive Hollywood budget nothing was compromised to bring about the story that George Miller started telling in 1979.

Not only did George Miller maintain the integrity of his original work, but he made an AMAZING movie. Visually it’s beautiful. The scene of riding into the sandstorm is breathtaking and made even more stunning once inside. More than the stunning visuals was the exciting story and well-written characters. Max, as always, is a man of few words and Tom Hardy does a great job looking tough and gorgeous. But the other characters: the Wives, the War Boys, and Furiosa? Give me another movie about any of them (preferably the War Boys, I’m a sucker for apocalypse death cults) and I’ll be a happy camper. And yeah, there’s a lot of violence. The whole War Boy culture is built on the idea that they need to die glorious deaths in combat in order to reach their full life in Valhalla. But it’s also empowering. The Wives are on a mission to free themselves from the despot who used them only as breeders and considered them property. Furiosa is on a similar path as Max and it’s nice to see two super badass characters kicking butt and taking names rather than just having Max do all the heavy lifting.

At its heart the movie is about redemption. This is a world where the strong hurt the weak, even if they are only doing it for their own survival or because they don’t know any better or because they’ve been told. Max, who has consistently been seeking something to make him move on from the death of his wife and child, is able to lend a hand to these people seeking their own end. We see Furiosa desperate to go home and clean her slate from years of working for Immortan Joe. We see Nux the War Boy who is dying from the radiation sickness that poisons the land realize that the world is not only the way he has been told.

This movie is fast paced and filled with action (surprisingly little CGI actually!). However, it's not just a dumb action movie. The plot is detailed and there is emotional subtlety to a lot of the characters. The actors have done amazing work with what, according to articles that I've read, wasn't a typically written and filmed movie. I give it an A+ in pretty much every category. Tom Hardy is a perfect recast for Mel Gibson. Charlize Theron is amazing as the one-armed war driver. Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played Toecutter in the first film, is creepy and wonderful as the new villain.  

See the movie for how it looks. See it for the characters. See it for the next installment of Max Rockatansky’s life. But, seriously, just see this movie.