A Quick Word, Quick Picks

Tags

baby driver, cinema, movie review, movies, the shape of water, thor ragnarok

The following contains spoilers for Thor: Ragnarok, Baby Driver, and The Shape of Water. You’ve been warned.

It’s ya boi.

How’s everyone’s 2018 going so far?

I took a break from this page so I could work on some other projects, and now I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, and perhaps see if I can extend my reach a little more. Will I succeed or peter out again? I dunno. What I do know is that I’ve been consuming a lot of media lately, and thinking a lot about the messages within them (as I’m wont to do). To commemorate my return, I’m going to talk about three movies that I’ve seen this year that I really liked, and talking about little aspects of them that I enjoyed.

Let’s do it to it.

The Importance of Using The Immigrant Song in Thor: Ragnarok Twice

The third film in the Thor series and the (oh fuck) seventeenth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor: Ragnarok is a fun little movie full of humour and charm. It delights with wild amounts of bloodless carnage, colourful worlds and characters, and ends with the beautiful and timeless message that any empire built on blood and deception is one that deserves to fall.

The film deals with the emergence of the villainous Hela, who is Odin’s exiled daughter, a death goddess and a walking manifestation of Asgard’s grim past. After many long years in exile, her seal is undone by Odin’s passing, and she raises an undead legion to take over the nine realms. Seeing the peaceful world Asgard has become, Hela believes her world to have lost its way and seeks to regain its former glory as a conquering empire (almost as if she’s trying to make Asgard great again or something). Throughout the film, the characters refer to Ragnarok, the great apocalypse wherein Asgard falls into ruin, and make strides to defeat her and save their world. However, over time the protagonists realize defeating Hela and destroying Asgard are actually one and the same, since her life-force is linked to their realm. With their homeworld destroyed and Hela defeated, Thor and the gang of weirdos he recruited off-world leads a band of Asgardian refugees, in search a new home.

What was especially interesting to me about the film was the fact that Ragnarok is bookended by Led Zeppelin’s The Immigrant Song, which plays during the first and last fight scenes of the film. The song itself is about a band of Vikings on their way to battle, fighting for glory, and the belief that they will be whisked off to Valhalla should they fall. However, in the context of the film The Immigrant Song relates to certain events that unfold throughout Thor: Ragnarok. This is made even more evident in one of the trailers, and if you saw the film and want to follow along here are the lyrics, courtesy of Genius.com.

Why twice, though? Well, the idea of an eternal cycle plays a key part in many mythologies, including old Norse myths. The Earth realm of Midgard is said to be surrounded by Jörmungandr, a snake eating its own tail (a symbol of eternity that goes back as far as ancient Egypt and Greece), and that a pair of humans would emerge from the wreckage of Ragnarok and help the world begin anew. Thor: Ragnarok, much like the Ragnarok of old, deals with the death of the old world and the emergence of a new world. Repeating Zepplein’s The Immigrant Song not only straight-up tells us what to expect in Ragnarok when it is first plays, but also announces that our story has come full circle, that the old cycle has completed, and that a new Asgard is ready to emerge.

The Condition of the Cars in Baby Driver

 

I saw Baby Driver on the plane ride out to Tokyo this autumn, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Edgar Wright is a much better homage director than Quentin Tarantino, in my opinion, and I enjoyed the twists and turns Wright’s take on a heist film took, especially with the way Wright played around with the protagonist’s development. The titular Baby is a getaway driver for a gangster who coordinates heists. Struggling with tinnitus that he developed after a car accident when he was younger, Baby drowns out the ringing in his ears with music he plays from his headphones constantly. As the film progresses, he starts to develop a relationship with a waitress at a diner he frequents, and begins to see the cracks in the work he does, and moves towards escaping his employers’ grasp and becoming a free agent.

One visual cue that stood out to me when I was watching Baby Driver was how the cars that Baby drove got more and more wrecked as the film went on, and how that tied together with Baby’s doubts and desire to flee from his situation. In his introduction, we see that while Baby has a devil-may-care attitude, he’s still a competent driver and an expert at weaving through difficult traffic, drifting gracefully and effortlessly between the lanes and leaving police cruisers in the dust. We see Baby as someone who’s always in control and who’s done this job expertly, all without leaving a scratch on his ride of choice. This changes during the second heist depicted on-film, as the robbery of an armoured car goes south and leaves a guard dead. Baby’s resolve is shaken. Suddenly, he can’t drive as well and he’s making mistakes, damaging his car along the way.

As he’s forced to do more and more unsightly work, he becomes more and more distracted, as well as more and more destructive – towards both his colleagues and the cars he’s basically shoved into far too often. All this culminates into a confrontation with former colleague Buddy, where he crashes his last vehicle during the fight, and it bursts into a great ball of flame. The cars being wrecked in Baby Driver don’t just exist for the sake of a fireworks show, but are also representations of Baby’s imprisonment. They are the cage he is forced into, and bit by bit he rips those bars off until he’s finally free.

Quick aside, though: I must say that watching this film after Kevin Spacey was outed as a creep during The Great Purge of Hollywood painted his gang leader Doc, a preening older man who tries to groom the young protagonist into an unwilling accomplice, in a much different light. I guess it’s good to play to your strengths?

Hand Imagery in The Shape of Water

Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water combines a love of monster movies, fairy tales, and the defiance of authority by miscreants and marginalized people, tropes and elements prevalent in a good number of the director’s works. The film follows Eliza, a lonely and sexually-frustrated mute cleaning lady working at a government facility who meets a mysterious asset being housed there against its will: an amphibious River God that looks like the Gill Man from the Black Lagoon films. The two strike up a friendship and, eventually, a romance, and Eliza helps the creature escape.

What I especially like about Del Toro’s body of work is the fact that he sprinkles subtle visual details throughout each film. In the case of The Shape of Water, I was taken in by the way hands are used. For example, let’s take a look the story’s main antagonist, Colonel Richard Strickland. Like many Del Toro antagonists, he is an Adonis-like figure who becomes wounded or marked in a way that haunts him throughout the narrative (case in point, Angel’s broken nose in Cronos or Vidal’s Glasgow Smile in Pan’s Labyrinth). In this film, Strickland’s fingers have been torn off by the River God during an interrogation gone wrong, and a good part of his arc in the film is about him struggling with the limbs that were reattached to his body.

As the story progresses, it’s clear that the surgery didn’t take. The fingers bleed and start to rot, with Strickland refusing to do anything about them until finally he rips them off as he becomes determined to track down the monster that escaped him, effectively casting off a part of his humanity. It’s important that these were from the left hand, too, since that is where one’s wedding ring is placed in modern Western European cultures. Strickland is a married man with two children, although it’s very clear that his perfect family is just an accessory to him. When he covers his wife’s mouth during sex (with the bleeding hand no less), he indicates his lack of interest in her well-being, and ripping the ring finger off in the third act suggests that he has no reason to go back to them.

Conversely, Eliza and the River God’s relationship is strengthened with the use of their hands. When Eliza and the abducted River God first meet, their initial point of contact is with hands on the glass, with Eliza’s palm tracing over the container before tapping on the glass, resulting in the River God slamming a palm against the interior. Later, when she reaches out to him again, she teaches him words in Sign Language. Non-verbal communication becomes their main mode of communication, and tender moments between Eliza and the River God are punctuated with both physical contact and Sign Language.

What’s more, it’s shown that the River God can heal people by touching them, demonstrated midway through the film when he heals an ally’s injured arm and reverses his hair loss. It is also the River God’s touch that heals Eliza as well; Eliza is shown with scars on her neck that had been there since she was a child, damage that prevents her from speaking. In the last scene of the film, after Strickland tries to kill them both and fails, the River God not only saves her from death but also turns those scars into gills that allow her to breathe underwater. However, for Eliza, there’s a different kind of magic at work. Her hands have gifted her lover with the gift of speech, and his touch has not only healed her wounds, but also her heart.

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A Quick Word About “Little Witch Academia’s” Stance on Celebrity Worship

Tags

anime, little witch academia, television

Disclaimer: The following has a number of spoilers for Little Witch Academia, a show which wrapped up just now. Be advised. Also, watch Little Witch Academia.

I loved Little Witch Academia.

I know my articles have focused quite a bit on Japanese pop culture as of late (and with my huge post on Persona 5 on the way, let me say you’re not out of the woods just yet), but hear me out. Studio Trigger routinely produces some high-quality stuff, from anti-fashion slobberknocker Kill La Kill to heartwarming sci-fi drama Kiznaiver, but it was their first in-house production, a short film called Little Witch Academia, that turned a lot of heads. Recently, Academia was turned into a 25-episode television series, and aired its final episode this week, and it was good. Damn good.

There’s a lot I love about this show. I love all the cues the animation team took from western animation, and the distinctly Looney Tunes-esque feel of some of the humour. I love the swells of the music and the art direction, and I can’t wait to track down any art book that spawns from this production. I love how much of a goof the protagonist Akko is, and how she’s both loud and obnoxious with all the grace of a winged hog but also driven and deeply compassionate. I love how she never comes off as completely annoying, and how I ended up rooting for her as early as the first episode. I love how the girls aren’t sexualized. I love how diverse the cast is, and how –

What? Oh, yeah, you read that right: the girls aren’t sexualized. Okay, sure, the skirts on the uniforms aren’t exactly regulation length, but Little Witch Academia steers clear of the gross tropes found in any other anime series featuring an all-girl school. There’s no moment where potential love-interest and Justin Trudeau-lookalike Andrew Hambridge walks in on Akko in the changing-room. There’s not an onsen or a beach episode in sight. There aren’t any jiggle-physics or panty-shots or leering camera angles on the girls as they slept or lounged around. It’s not a creative decision I expected from the same company that made tits-akimbo slap-‘em-up Kill La Kill and its thong-clad protagonists.

All these elements are Good and Great, but what I really like about the show is what it has to say about idol worship, celebrity culture, and inspiration.

Our premise is simple enough. Atsuko Kagari, AKA Akko, is an aspiring witch attending the illustrious magic academy Luna Nova. Akko stands out because she’s not only the sole Japanese student at this school, but also the only one who doesn’t come from a family of sorcerers. Akko was inspired to become a witch because she loves magic and is a huge fan of witch-turned-performer Shiny Chariot, whose stage shows she attended when she was younger. However, Akko struggles with magic, and seems unable to properly perform it.

After her first excursion to Luna Nova goes south and Akko finds Chariot’s old wand in the middle of a forest, Akko becomes more driven to accomplish her dreams. Despite her difficulties with mastering the mystic arts, from her inability to ride a broom to her comically clumsy attempts at advanced magic, Akko still plans to become a witch who can make the world smile as Chariot once did.

What Little Witch Academia makes clear is that there’s no point in becoming the next iteration of the person you idolize. Not only are your experiences radically different from the people you want to be like, but if you were to meet your idols and express that desire then they’re likely to tell you that’s a bad idea. The series does, however, say that your relationship to your passions should be unique to yourself, and if you wish to become like someone you admire in the career you want to be in, then maintaining your identity is integral.

This is demonstrated as early as the fourth episode, when Akko’s friend Lotte is given the opportunity to write future iterations of her favourite book series. Rather than take up the torch, Lotte admits it’s best for her to remain a fan of what she loves rather than be a contributor, because rooting for the people you admire means more to her. Then, in episode 11, Akko is offered a prosperous future by a spirit, identical to Chariot’s in every way, but in exchange for Akko’s past and memories. Akko then refuses this offer and exclaims that she does not want to abandon her identity just so she can become another Chariot. Later on, Akko learns that attending Chariot’s magic shows actually hindered her ability to use magic, and that while she does have the passion and commitment needed to be a witch, her obsession with her idol ultimately hobbled her.

This is crucial because celebrity culture – particularly in the arts – is obsessed with this idea of the next generation of entertainers. Recently, for example, I came across articles that pondered whether Mahershala Ali was the next Idris Elba, or whether Tomi Adeyemi or Samantha Shannon were the next JK Rowling. In the eyes of the public, an artist is not allowed to stand by their own merits. They have to be compared to another household name.

Little Witch Academia, meanwhile, explicitly rejects that idea. It makes it clear that Akko’s passion for magic and a bright future should not be confused with her obsession with her idol. The fact that the ultimate symbol of Akko’s magical hobbling is her ability to fly hammers this point home. Comparing yourself to your heroes weighs you down, and you’re not able to reach your potential if that happens. She does take many cues from her idol, especially in the final battle with a demonic missile the main antagonist fires when she puts on a Chariot-worthy light show for the world to see. However, by giving it what I would best describe as an Akko-worthy spin, it’s as much her own thing as it is a tribute to her idol, and in the closing credits we are treated the moment we’ve been waiting for since the very first episode – Akko’s first flight on her broom.

For Akko, her journey is not about becoming the next Shiny Chariot – it’s about becoming the first Atsuko Kagari.

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A Quick Word About “Oshiete! Gyaruko-chan’s” Subject Matter

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anime, anime review, galko, galko-chan, oshiete! galko-chan, please tell me galko, review, television

The following has spoilers for a twelve-episode series you can probably watch in an hour or two depending on how you pace yourself. Anyway, be advised, I guess.

Against my better judgment, I ended up watching all twelve episodes of Japanese web-anime series Oshiete! Gyaruko-chan or Please tell me, Galko! Against all logic, I ended up enjoying all twelve episodes of Japanese web-anime series Oshiete! Gyaruko-chan or Please tell me, Galko!

I think it’s because, back in the dark days of high school, I was super-into this one Japanese cartoonime called Azumanga Daioh, a show adapted from a newspaper comic about six high school girls and three of their teachers embarking on oddball – but still somewhat grounded in reality – adventures together. I liked it because it was a breath of fresh air for popular high school-based anime series that seemed to focus on either power levels and long-winded fights or one boy’s quest to never get a girlfriend despite having multiple options. Azumanga was just about six kids goofing around, playing off of each other’s quirks, and trying to make sense of the world, and that was refreshing.

Let me be clear: I don’t believe Oshiete! Gyaruko-chan has inherited that fire from Azumanga. That, in my opinion, would be something like Turning Girls, a show about four women facing the onset of their thirties and figuring out what kind of adults they are. What’s more, much unlike Azumanga, Oshiete! Gyaruko-chan does its damndest to pack in as much cheesecake as possible.

That said, I found something fun about Oshiete and the way it messed around with the idea of how a character is perceived versus who they really are. Challenging stereotypes is the name of Oshiete’s game, illustrated well with the main protagonists. Title character Galko is kinder and more empathetic than the spray-tanned airheads she’s modelled after, and her comrades Otako and Ojou – the nerd girl and the rich girl in any other series – are similarly well-realized. Otako is a biting intellectual who teases and criticizes everyone around her rather than be the subject of ridicule herself; and Ojou, despite being wealthy beyond compare, is far from an erudite and is in fact quite vapid and clueless.

There’s also the matter of what these characters are often discussing, which leads to the biggest misdirection the pastel-coloured web-toon has to offer. Oshiete! Gyaruko-chan is – to the show’s benefit and detriment – unbelievably frank and lurid. The main characters are always talking about extremely personal topics that wouldn’t be touched in any other show about girls-being-girls, such as period cramps, comfortable toilet paper, and, uh, “shaving.”

Immediately, I was recalling another series of this stripe that I didn’t think I’d enjoy, and that was HBO’s Girls. I thought the first season was tight enough for me to not give a shit about anything after it, and while I’m not sure I’d give it a re-watch, I appreciate the fact that Season One exists at all.* It served as a nice counter-balance to shows like Sex In The City, which are notoriously bloodless and safe and tell a story from the perspective of four upper-class working women. HBO’s Girls, meanwhile, showed four middle class white women getting drunk, doing drugs, having awkward on-screen sex, and trying to figure themselves out. One of the protagonists even catches HPV, something that would never be addressed in any given Julia Roberts rom-com.

That’s why Oshiete left me so interested, really. I’ve been in it for a minute as far as anime goes, and over the years I grew increasingly vexed by the “throngs of cute girls servicing one guy” series that were in excess. Shows like Kanon or Hanankyo Maid Tai always presented their female leads as stylized archetypes and objects of desire rather than real people, and the series I’ve caught glimpses of that tried to ride Azumanga’s coat-tails did little but present their audience with cute archetypes but cut out the lead males to make them more “available” to the audience, as it were.

While Oshiete! Gyaruko-chan does this to some extent, it has the courtesy to be, well, uncourteous in its characters’ conversations, while being sure to have fun along the way. I take comfort in knowing that some of the teen boys and manbabies watching this will cringe when the protagonists end up discussing whether they prefer pads to tampons.

Really, the biggest slight against Oshiete is the fact that all these characters are in high school. I mean, I get that many anime series are set in high school because that’s largely the target audience because they’re more likely to have the most time and disposable income in a work-‘til-you-die country like Japan, but it’s still an unnerving trend and I can’t shake the feeling that all this is somehow feeding into someone’s weird fetish. Especially when the characters are talking about their hypothetical sex habits. Like, ugh, send the animators home to their wives, please.

That being said, this Bridesmaids-meets-Breakfast Club combination was not something I expected out of a show like Oshiete. I appreciate it for what it is, even though I can’t wholly recommend it to anyone who isn’t already a fan of the “young ladies hanging around” subgenre. It is, as I said, a far cry from Turning Girls (WHERE’S SEASON TWO, YOU MONSTERS?!), but as far as these kinds of anime series go, it’s a welcome needle against the balloon.

* It was a shame that the story of Girls chose to focus on four white protagonists rather than mix-and-match the characters’ ethnicities and sexualities, since doing so would open up some super-interesting discussion points about, say, being Black or Asian or Gay in modern-day New York. Maybe HBO could tap Ava DuVernay or Shona Rhimes for their next project? I dunno who’s free.

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“Ghost In The Shell’s” Major Mistake

Tags

cinema, ghost in the shell, masamune shirow, rupert sanders

Disclaimer: This has spoilers for the new Ghost in the Shell movie. Do you care? I don’t.

I ended up seeing Rupert Sanders’ Ghost in the Shell and boy howdy was that ever a movie someone made. I know the biggest talking point being thrown around is why the main character isn’t an Asian woman, and maybe the movie would have been better if they cast a Japanese actress to play the Major, but visibility is the least of this film’s problems. Take it from someone who actually saw the bloody thing when I say that an all-Asian cast could not have saved this film because it is dull and has very confusing characterization.

This review is coming to you from someone who saw both films and Stand Alone Complex. I haven’t powered through the manga yet because it’s, like, enormous, and there’s a lot of material from Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell universe that I haven’t touched yet. While I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this franchise, I also feel like I understand enough about GITS to know what its core ideas are.

At its core (unless I’m mistaken), the GITS series is about transhumanism and AI ethics, all wrapped up in a cyber-noir thriller that name-drops different theorists and philosophers like mad. It asks what defines a human in a world where people can plant their brains into synthetic bodies and where anything from comfort droids to AI-controlled tanks could gain sentience and start making demands. It shows us how quickly that world would fall apart, the cracks that would form in such a society, and how people can take advantage of the memories and lives of others.

Rupert Sanders wanted nothing to do with any of this. In fact, in an interview with Vanity Fair, he was quoted as saying “I locked Masamune Shirow in the basement and I’m not letting him out! Anyuck-nyuck-nyuck.”

…Excuse me.

Let’s get this out of the way: yes, the movie is very visually impressive. The CG is nice and the aesthetic is well-realized. The monolithic holograms and neon lights of this new Tokyo the characters explore are all intricate and interesting to look at, and there are certain scenes and images that do stand out on their own. Furthermore, some of the synthwave that plays in the background is, yes, atmospheric, but ultimately utterly forgettable. Seriously, I tried to recall one track from this movie and all the memory centres of my brain could give me was a long and drawn-out hum.

As for the actual movie part of this movie, well, that’s where Goat in the Shill: Scarlett Johansson Complex falls apart. A lot of visual set pieces from the first film are revisited for the sake of reminding people that this is a Ghost In The Shell movie – the Major’s body being assembled, a naked-esque Major cloaking and shooting up a room full of dudes, the fight with the amnesiac truck driver, the night diving scene, and the fight with the spider-tank – but the nuances are stripped from them. They’re loaded down with slow-motion shots and the cool professional demeanour of the Major Kusanagi we knew is replaced with Scarlett Johansson’s standard cop-on-the-loose character.

One of the scriptwriters for Goat in the Shill commented that the film had about seven writers working on it, and can I ever believe it. The quality of the script jumps around, the story’s the most basic thing you could do with the setting, and the characters’ decisions don’t always make sense – like, why did our main villain Cutter decide to take control of the spider-tank himself? Isn’t he the president of a huge company? Shouldn’t he have employees who do that for him? At what point was it ever established that Cutter was a man who liked to get his hands dirty? It’s true that GITS Actual doesn’t have much room for character exploration, which is itself another identifier of the show. However, the opportunity to maybe address that was given to the filmmakers, and they fumbled hard.

What we have is a film that’s as much of a betrayal to the source material as the Wackowskis’ adaptation of V for Vendetta, which notoriously took a story about life under the Thatcher era and explored the ideas of anarchism versus fascism and turned it into a “George Bush is bad” film. That same boiling-down of basic ideas is present here. Gone are the deep questions of whether a machine can be human – or, indeed, if a human can be human – and what would happen if machines attained sentience and, say, a desire to procreate. What we have instead is a Jason Bourne movie. We have the bog-standard plot of “an evil corporation stole my identity and memories, and now I am out for revenge.”

Then there was the matter of that identity the villains of the movie stole, and man alive did they shit the bed with this one. In the film, we learn that the character of Major “Mira Killian” was not a refugee whose parents died in a boating accident, but a Japanese anti-technology activist named Mokoto Kusanagi who was abducted by Bad Corporation Hanka, had her memories wiped, and then placed into the synthetic body of Scarlett Johansson. So, yeah, she’s literally been whitewashed. And then after the president of Hanka is killed by Aramaki (“Beat” Takeshi Kitano) AKA The Only Interesting Character In Goat In The Shill, Kusanagi keeps the body that was forced upon her for a year and symbolizes the destruction of her old self.

See, that could have been interesting. The idea that Kusanagi’s identity was actually destroyed by a rich white corporate-type and she ends up on a mission to become herself again could have been an interesting character arc. Hell, it would have even been a good jab at the Hollywood bigwigs who wanted to keep Kusanagi as Scarlett Johansson because the idea of Black Widow in a flesh-tone bodysuit sounded more bankable to them. It would have been a great admission on Sanders’ part, as if to say “Yeah, we know this was divisive and sorry for deceiving you.” Then you could turn it around at the end and have Motoko played by Ellen Wong or Tao Okamoto or Anna Akana or whoever’s free for a weekend of filming.

So this film was a bust. A pity. At the very least, we hope can hope for a Japanese studio’s rebuttal to this boilerplate mess. And if we do get it, it better be the version we all were asking for: ninety straight minutes of Rinko Kikuchi in a body-suit breaking dudes’ assholes and shouting Marshall McLuhan quotes over kabuki music.

Motherfucker, I wouldn’t leave the theatre.

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What Happens On Skull Island Stays On Skull Island

Tags

cinema, king kong, kong skull island, legendary pictures, movies

Reader, I come to you with a broken heart. Have you ever invested so much into something that it consumed you? Have you ever felt a passion so strong that you genuinely believed that the object your affection was something that could define the rest of your life?

Do you know what it’s like to have that, and then lose it? Watch it slip through your fingers and make you ask yourself “Dear god, what did I do wrong?” Well, I do. I know that feeling all too well. And I’m here to share my story with you.

Kong: Skull Island is … a little mediocre.

Yeah, that’s what I get for being on the hype train. I was hoping that Legendary Pictures was finally going to be doing something interesting with this IP, especially since the Good-to-Bad Kong Movie Ratio, or GTBKMR, is so staggering even by giant monster movie standards.

Why, though? My theory is it’s because of pedigree. The original 1933 King Kong was a science-fantasy special effects rodeo designed to distract viewers from the fact that there was a Great Depression going on. It was built on the same grounds as jungle-themed adventure fiction, complete with popular themes from that era such as battling animals in harsh environments, cruel and weird pastiches of native groups, and blonde white women being in peril so they can be rescued by blonde white men.

King Kong survived as a film, however, because of its special effects and brutally-choreographed fight sequences between fantastically-animated prehistoric monsters. It was a fine movie, to be sure, but it was a product of the time, and so it’s hard to make that lightning strike twice in different eras. They did try, mind, but outside of the two King Kong movies produced by Toho Pictures, King Kong’s filmography is little more than a sequel (Son of Kong, also in 1933), two remakes (from 1976 and 2005), and a sequel to one of those remakes (King Kong Lives, from 1986).

This is, of course, to say nothing of the various family-friendly animated series based on Kong, as well as the one direct-to-video animated musical which no doubt bombed the moment someone at Warner Brothers uttered the words  “direct-to-video.”

My excitement for Kong: Skull Island came from the fact that they weren’t just going to be retelling the original film’s story again. The idea of a King Kong movie where we do not leave Skull Island until the very end was an exciting prospect. That was, really, the best part of any King Kong movie.

I’ll give credit where credit’s due. Kong: Skull Island’s basic trajectory and cinematography are good. A lot of thought was put into the world-building and development of Skull Island itself. Everything pertaining to the monsters and the monster-fights were well-crafted and choreographed, and whatever music that wasn’t pilfered from someone’s Best Of The ‘70s mixtape is atmospheric and striking. Even the weird natives who are there to be weird natives had some interesting elements to them.

So what went wrong? Well, our protagonists are plagued by beasts far worse than swarms of monsters and giant gorillas: bad characterization, half-assed acting, and appalling dialogue.

Poor acting and bad dialogue in a giant monster movie are both par for the course, mind, but you can still have a great movie without them.  Sadly, we have several big-name actors phoning in their lines or speaking with the grace and subtlety of a palm tree spearing a helicopter. The only two actors in the film who were of note were probably Corey Hawkins and John C Reilly, but they were forced to play off of the rest of the cast. Samuel L Jackson and John Goodman might as well have been playing caricatures of themselves, Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson fell flat, and Jing Tian spent most of the movie staring into the distance or delivering what few lines she had like she was at a library.

Then again, quality acting couldn’t have saved the film from its overloaded script and clumsy characterization. Kong: Skull Island’s dialogue is Age of Ultron bad. Firstly, I could have mixed up 90% of the characters’ dialogue and nobody would be able to notice. Secondly, and here’s some screenwriting 101 for you, when dealing with audio-visual storytelling medium where the audience’s role is passive, one has to ask “should a character be talking at this moment and if they do, then will it be important?” Instead, the editing team seemed to say “a character should be talking at this moment and it doesn’t matter if they say anything important.” Characters will just express what they’re thinking or feeling, rather than just showing it to the audience or demonstrating it in a clever way.

Now, that could have been done right. If Kong: Skull Island’s dialogue was properly-cheesy, it would have probably flown better. Cheesy dialogue is charming and light like a good Jack Kirby comic, or over-the-top and nonsensical like Deep Blue Sea. Bad dialogue is droll and heavy, and worst of all it is distracting.

Look, I didn’t want Kong: Skull Island to be high art, and in many ways I’m glad that it’s not. I just didn’t want it to be, I don’t know, average? And I feel like that’s what the studio settled for – a well-designed world bogged down by a boilerplate cast and half-assed writing. At least with Peter Jackson’s King Kong, flawed though it was, we got more of a sense as to who our protagonists were and felt some level of empathy for them when they were eaten by monsters. Carrying over some aspect of that to this film – with either a smaller cast struggling to survive or a larger and better-defined cast getting whittled down – could have made the experience on Skull Island more exciting, and it would have made the tense moments all the more tense. Instead, I found myself going “who died and why do I not care that they’re dead” every time a monster ate or crushed someone.

Despite all my harsh words, though, there is this weird trepidation that I’m feeling. It’s almost as though warning friends and colleagues and strangers on the internet about this film is somehow treasonous. At least this film is far more visually inspired than half of the other remakes, adaptations, and reimagined properties floating around out there. I mean, have you seen the trailers for the Power Rangers movie? It feels like I’m doing the world a disservice by not recommending this film. Yes, the acting and writing are painful and most of the cast is indiscernible from one another, but by god is this movie colourful, creative, full of life, and damn good to look at. I almost want to recommend it to my fellow kaiju groupies to spite the grimdark tones and Twilight-style colour-coding of modern adventure cinema. So, I am going to recommend it. I have to recommend it. But I’m also going to tell you to catch it on a half-off day at the theatre, or get it when it’s released at home and just leave the room whenever the human characters start talking.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that. I feel …strange and bloodless now, and my heart is ever-so heavy. I need some time alone. I invested so much energy into this, and I don’t know what went wrong, but I need to heal and see some other movies. Maybe some time apart will help, and maybe there’s a chance of reconciliation later, but right now it feels like Legendary Pictures made a monkey out of me.

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Go Big Or Golion: “Voltron’s” Legendary Remake

Tags

dreamworks, joaquim dos santos, lauren montgomery, voltron, voltron defender of the universe, voltron legendary defender

Disclaimer: some spoilers for the first two seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender ahead. Be warned.

PREAMBLE: IN THE SKIN OF A LION

Voltron: Defender of the Universe was one of those series that never did anything for me as a child. The show was one of the many Japanese exports brought over to English-American television and altered heavily to take out all the swearing, blood, and boobies. Canadian and US television did not have an anime boom in the way Mexico or South America did, but we had our (edited and highly sanitized) share.

Voltron was the Americanized name of the Japanese mecha anime serial Beast King Golion, and had a plot that was simple enough to follow. Set in The Future, it follows five soldiers caught in an intergalactic war between the good planets of the universe and Emperor Zarkon’s/Daibazaal’s forces from Planet Doom/The Galra Empire. Said soldiers land on an alien planet and meet Princess Allura/Princess Farla, keeper of five giant robot lions that form into a colossal mech called Voltron/Golion. Six episodes in, one of Voltron/Golion’s pilots is gravely injured and unable to fight/straight-up murdered, and Allura/Farla takes up his seat. The remaining forty-six episodes of this epic involves our colour-coded pilots beating up Zarkon’s/Daibazaal’s armies and towering Robeasts/Beastmen once a week.

I remember finding a VHS containing four random episodes when I was a child, but never seeing – or really wanting to see – anything past what I saw. The animation from the end of two episodes was repeated, the monster designs weren’t anything to write home about, and I couldn’t wrap my head around a giant combining robot where all its parts were basically the same vehicle with a different coat of paint. The fact that all of those vehicles were lions, whose heads made up the feet and hands of the same robot was particularly jarring. Is it practical to have mouths instead of digits?

You can imagine my surprise when I’d heard from a couple of sources that the new series being produced by Dreamworks was actually watchable. It wasn’t the first remake of Voltron that I’d heard of. Mike Young Productions put together an animated series called The Third Dimension that nobody remembered, and Nicktoons was responsible for a remake that …Well, look at it. I was gun-shy at first, but when I learned that two of the executive producers were Justice League Unlimited and Avatar: The Last AIrbender alumni, I got curious.

After watching both seasons, I can confirm that it’s good.

Not just watchable-good, but good, as a show and as a remake. Here’s why!

PART ONE: WE BUILT THIS KITTY ON ROCK AND ROLL

A good remake is one that draws from the original source material as much as it acknowledges the changes in the cultural zeitgeist that happened since it first came out, taking the best elements of that original property and creating something new and fresh. Legendary Defender does that in spades, pulling from both Voltron: Defender of the Universe and the original Beast King Golion. Not only do characters share the names of the original Japanese cast and their American counterparts, but it’s also not afraid to go into some dark territory while never losing its light-hearted side.

See, Japanese media didn’t experience the same moral panics as the US and never had much of their content edited or censored. For decades, Japanese children grew up with some pretty brutal stuff, and the mecha subgenre had its share. Major characters would die, monsters would get ripped to shreds in really gory ways, and a fair bit of sexual situations would find themselves onscreen. Not enough to warrant a blue rating, mind, but there was certainly enough cheesecake to fill a pervert’s bakery. This isn’t to say that American animation didn’t have its more adult moments. Secret of Nimh ended with the main antagonist getting straight-up stabbed in the back. You would just be hard-pressed to find something like that on television.

Netflix, however, isn’t cable television, so the rules of engagement are different. This means that serialized shows can tackle hairier topics that network television doesn’t go near, like a superhero serial where the protagonists fight the embodiment of male privilege or an LGBTQ-friendly prison drama (which shat itself in Season 4 but that’s another article, really).

This is, in part, because of pedigree. Showrunners Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim dos Santos worked on Justice League Unlimited, which killed half of its antagonists in a deep-space explosion, and Avatar The Last Airbender, which tackled themes of genocide and abusive parenting. Both of these shows were able to introduce some heavy ideas to Saturday morning cartoons, sensibilities that were brought into Legendary Defender with gusto. For a start, nobody “goes into exile” or is “recovering on a planet somewhere” like they did in Defender of the Universe; people die and whole planets are destroyed as Zarkon expands his empire.

Despite all this, everything about Legendary Defender feels fresh and fun. The art direction is slick, making a humanoid robot made of lions not the most out-there idea in this universe. Voltron itself is well-realized, given a smoother look and lacking that huge family crest that frankly looked really clunky. The synthwave/orchestral score are incredibly atmospheric, and mixes well with both the fight sequences and the more relaxed moments. The writing’s surprisingly good, and the character beats are particularly strong.

Moreover, this new series shakes up its own genre. Legendary Defender pulls from the past thirty years of science fiction pop culture, coating it in a thick Voltron paint. This goes beyond the show’s use of alien metric and the occasional reference to popular anime; Legendary Defender takes the Voltron set-up and converts it into a space opera like Firefly or the remake of Battlestar Galactica (speaking of references, Emperor Zarkon’s sentries and drone ships are very Cylon-esque). This is a universe rife with alien civilizations, dark and mysterious magic, and – of course – giant monsters, and Legendary Defender is eager to explore every corner of it. It is still very much a toy commercial, as all mecha series invariably are, but one that abandons the monster-of-the-week formula in favour of building a world of intrigue, espionage, and a full spectrum of mortality. Not every agent of Zarkon’s is necessarily evil, not every antagonist has evil intent, and not every good guy is good at being a good guy.

PART TWO: DRAMATIS VOLTRONAE

There’s a lot to like about Legendary Defender’s interpretation of the main cast. They take the basic moulds of the Voltron/Golion characters, as well as archetypical characters in shows like these, and throw in one or two new elements to make them more appealing. One look at our pilots alone illustrates this well.

Forming the head of Voltron in the literal and metaphorical sense is Takashi Shirogane, AKA “Shiro,” a no-nonsense born leader and all-around Good Guy. He’s the straight man of the unit; even-tempered, precise, and never one to screw around. What sets him apart from other generic Hero Team Leaders, however, is that he suffers from PTSD after being tortured by the Galra for a year. His memories of his time as their prisoner fighting in their arenas has made him wise to their ways, but has also hindered him greatly. So much so that he’s actually made serious mistakes because something will set off a traumatic flashback.

Forming Voltron’s arms are Pidge and Keith. Katie Holt, AKA Pidge Gundersson, is a huge nerd with huge nerd hobbies but capable of holding her own in a fight. Despite her geek tendencies, she’s so dedicated to finding her family, other captives of the Galra, that she develops some lone wolf tendencies that put her on par with actual lone wolf Keith Kogane. Keith himself attempts to fit the “too cool for this trash” mould, being the token cold and distant loner, but his lack of self-control makes this difficult to manage. His patience is tested constantly, and he fails that test often.

Making up Voltron’s legs are Lance and Hunk, who play double-duty as capable gunslingers and comic relief. Lance McClain clearly fancies himself a Captain Kirk-type lothario and man’s-man, but lacks the authority and charisma, and with some insecurities that he needs to work out. Hunk Garrett is the heavy-set goofball, but is a bit more grounded than Lance and wears his heart of his sleeve. He’s also a capable scientist, a skilled chef, and a great judge of character.

What helps make the pilots stand out is the fact that the weapons formed by their bayards – Voltron Paladin-issue tools – reflect some aspect of themselves and how they function in the team. Hunk and Lance use firearms because they tend to work from the sidelines. Theirs are support weapons, which also work because they form the legs – parts of the body used to the support the rest of it. Since Pidge and Keith make up the arms, they utilize melee weapons. Keith’s longsword illustrates how he puts people at arms-length. Meanwhile, Pidge uses a katar attached to a retractable cord, alluding to her hacker sensibilities (since it, y’know, uses a cord) but also the connection she still feels to her family despite them being so far away.

Shiro’s bayard is in Zarkon’s hands until the end of season two, but he has his own weapon – the mechanical arm the Galra outfitted him with during his time as a prisoner of war. It doesn’t have any forms, but on its own it’s capable of carving through steel. Among the Galra, Shiro was known as “Champion,” and served as a pit fighter for their amusement. Such a tool was probably intended to mark Shiro as one of their own and make him into a more formidable fighter. Shiro now uses it against them, being sure to get right in close and show them what they’ve made. He has taken this symbol of his servitude and their mistreatment of him and weaponized it for his own gain.

Rounding out our team are Coran and Allura. Coran is less mature than his original version, but fills the role of “huge goofball who’s the voice of reason as needed” neatly. Allura is really worth talking about, though. Legendary Defender’s princess takes the best aspects of the original Allura/Farla and amps them up. Legendary Defender’s Allura remains the chief matriarch of the crew, but is depicted here as a confident and capable ship captain and military commander. The original Allura was extremely girly and prone to needing rescuing, whereas Legendary Defender’s Allura is a bit more hardened.

This Allura is as much of a fish out of water as our Earthling protagonists. Ten thousand years passed since she and Coran froze themselves in cryogenic sleep and parked their castle-ship on a distant planet. Now they’re the last of their kind and fighting what looks like a losing battle against her fathers’ arch-nemeses. She’s wary of whatever new allies come her way, even and especially when they’re ex-Galra soldiers, but she has good reasons. Ten thousand years have passed and she doesn’t know where the lines have been drawn. Despite all this, she’s able to put her skills in diplomacy and strategy to work, knowing when to take the fight to Zarkon and when to pull back.

Speaking of Zarkon, the upgrade to the villains is particularly noteworthy. Zarkon’s sorceress Haggar (known in Japan as Honerva) has gone from being a mincing Witch of the West knockoff to being a shadowy mystic commanding an army of black-clad druids in skull masks. Zarkon himself has been given a considerable upgrade. No longer clad in a devilish toga and comically-large crown, Zarkon’s new look screams Video Game Boss from his bulky layered armour to the colossal mech with wings made of swords that he pilots at the end of Season 2. As for who he is, there’s something about the fact that Zarkon was originally one of Voltron’s pilots that tickles the mind as well. Obviously, the show’s not over yet so we don’t know why he turned evil, but it puts him on an interesting level that goes beyond Standard Space Despot.

It also makes him a good parallel for Shiro, the current Black Paladin. He’s an image of power overtaking morality. Shiro is The Goodest Boy of the Paladins, so looking at Zarkon shows how he could turn out if he ever lost his way.

There’s a little more to Zarkon’s character than this, but in order to delve into that we have to take a look at how this show handles the Robeasts.

PART THREE: LARGE AND IN CHARGE

Whether you’re talking about Sailor Moon or any given super sentai serial, the core problem with the monster-of-the-week scenario is that it’s very predictable after a while. The protagonists have a problem, a monster comes in and either contributes to or represents that problem, and then everyone comes together and defeats this elaborate multi-armed metaphor with friendship or a huge gun or whatever. Legendary Defender does the unthinkable by throwing the monster-of-the-week angle out of the reboot of a series known for having monsters every week – and it’s great.

While each Robeast fight in both seasons of Legendary Defender certainly have a Boss Fight feel them, something else came to mind. You see, horror movies (bear with me) understand that the appearances of a monster have little to do with the creature itself. The makeup of a monster is incredibly important in highlighting how alien and bizarre it is, but overall what their appearances in the narrative mean for the characters matters more than how many times they appear on screen.

This was how I felt watching the Robeast fights. We were always teased with their appearances here and there, building up to these huge monster-on-robot fights that Voltron is always known for, but each fight came with so much narrative weight. The battle with Myzax the Gladiator solidified the team’s ability to come together, but also contributed significantly to Shiro and Pidge’s character arcs. Drazil was this ultimate manifestation of toll being taken on the living planet Balmera, which had been mined for its crystals to the point that it was on the verge of death. Finally, Prorok’s appearance as a Robeast not only established Galra rebel group The Blades of Marmora as a trusted ally, with one sacrificing himself to stop Prorok’s rampage, but told us so much about what Zarkon wants out of his soldiers.

Originally a Galra commander, Prorok acted out of loyalty to Zarkon but went against him thinking Haggar was using the Emperor for her own gain. Turning him into a mindless automaton establishes Zarkon as someone who doesn’t want generals who think for themselves, but yes-men who obey his wishes. That’s why so many of Zarkon’s soldiers are robots. Disposable robot footsoldiers being destroyed en masse is cathartic for the viewers who don’t want to think about whether their robot wives will miss them. On the other hand, it shows Zarkon’s not up for debate. He has an empire to run, and dissent of any kind – even if it might be in his best interest – is not to be tolerated.

Plus, there’s something to be said about this affinity for these giant hybrids of machine and animal held together with dark magic. Zarkon and Haggar could easily just plant a bomb in a cat and release it in Allura’s castle, but instead they settle for sending out the equivalent to sentient dreadnoughts. Each colossal Robeast they send out exudes power and deadly intent, and the fact that Zarkon has some level of control over them is telling. This especially works when he arrives on the scene at the end of Season 2 in that aforementioned mecha suit. Does this tell us something about Zarkon’s nature? Does he somehow miss the feel of sitting in the pilot’s seat, being in command of something a thousand times more powerful than his puny self? Is he reflecting on his halcyon days as he is recovering after that battle where his castle was trashed and the Black Paladin’s bayard – his bayard – was finally taken from him? Time will tell.

 FINAL WORD: THE PRIDE OF DREAMWORKS?

 Of course, I could be reaching with this three thousand-word post about a reboot of a giant robot cartoon from the 1980s. On a base level, I like it because the designs are fun and it has space and monsters and mecha with swords slitting things up. It appeals to the anime nerd/kaiju groupie in me and, really, I could say just that.

Instead, I found that there’s something to be said about this overall theme of a dynamic group of individuals taking on a despot and his drone army. This was one of the principal ideas behind Star Wars that made it so popular. The Empire and the First Order were led by fascists in jackboots commanding armies of uniformed thugs devoid of any discernable identity, challenged by teams of deeply complex citizens from other worlds and cultures united by a need to free themselves of tyranny. It’s a pretty universal story, one that gets retread fairly often but worth retelling every time.

So, yes, this is why I was so keen on Voltron: Legendary Defender. It’s exciting, funny, engaging, and has a few more layers than its predecessor. Go check it out.

Oh, and consider me excited for Season 3. Apparently, we’re going to get Prince Lotor, Zarkon’s handsome douchebag son, and I can’t wait for the throngs of fans to get all cow-eyed over him and forgive all of his war crimes because he is a hot boy who is misunderstood. Bonus points if he’s voiced by Tom Hiddleston.

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A Quick Word About “John Wick’s” Folklore Trappings

Tags

action, analysis, baba yaga, cinema, folklore, john wick, john wick chapter 2, keanu reeves, neo-noir, noir, review, the wild hunt

Some possible spoilers for John Wick and John Wick Chapter 2 ahead. Be advised.

The neon hellscape of the John Wick films is a fast and brutal love letter to the noir genre and world mythologies. While both films have very basic premises, there is much to be said about their themes and framing. Well beyond the heavy soundtrack, wild action sequences, and the idea of there being a bizarre set of rules and codes of conduct shared among criminals and assassins is this unifying idea about the mythologizing of underworld activity.

It is no mistake that folklore, mythology, and superstitions feed into the world of John Wick, that the concierge at the Continental is named after the Greek afterlife’s ferryman Charon, or that Ares, Santino’s chief enforcer in Chapter 2, shares her name with a god of war. John himself is nicknamed The Boogeyman, a monster believed to share its name with the hobgoblin, an Old English house spirit. The current interpretation of this figure is something that abducts and eats children who misbehave. He feeds into his Boogeyman role well, disappearing in and out of shadows and spending both movies hunting after naughty young mobsters.

Among members of the Russian mafia, however, Wick’s given the nickname of Baba Yaga, an old witch who lives in a chicken-legged house and rides around in a mortar and pestle chasing after anyone who crosses her path. One interpretation of Yaga is that her home, hidden deep in the darkest woods, is surrounded by a fence of human bones. This is a fitting image, given that John Wick lives in isolation, and is an old hitman with a lot of red on his ledger.

When the connections to folklore started becoming more and more prevalent, it occurred to me that even John’s dogs and car carry strong imagery. In Western Europe, there were a multitude of stories about a force called The Wild Hunt, black-clad huntsmen led by the old god Wodan AKA Odin, accompanied by massive dark hounds and riding on great black or white horses (depending on which interpretation you read). The Hunt itself was supposed to be a herald of disaster, war, and plague, and that anyone who witnessed them would likely die. Wodan’s Nordic counterpart Odin was said to be accompanied by two wolves and rode an eight-legged horse.

Though John is named after the Boogeyman and Baba Yaga, much of his appearance borrows from the Wild Hunt. John wears a lot of black, which matches the colour of his car, a 1969 Mustang (the mustang itself being a breed of horse). What’s more, John is accompanied by two dogs, albeit at different times in his life – a beagle, a type of hound bred for hunting hares, and a pit bull, a dog bred for blood-sports. What’s more, John is more than a silent killer. Like war god Wodan, he is a violent harbinger of destruction, murdering anyone who gets in his way and sparing only a select few as it suits his needs.

The overall look of both John Wick films does more than add an eerie aesthetic, contributing to the mysterious world of the films’ hoodlums and killers. Dark hallways with hints of blue light, gothic antechambers illuminated with candles, faded orange glows in old buildings, underground bathhouses coloured like blacklight paintings; notice how these lighting and colour schemes often appear as John Wick is out on missions or fraternizing with other ne’er-do-wells.

This interplay is perfect for the dark and colourful world of criminal activity. Criminals and folklore creatures are sometimes predatory in nature, or seek out those who bother them in their domain, or are bound by rules or codes of honour. There is even a shared language here; the realm of criminal activity is openly referred to as an underworld, a place depicted in myths and religions as a subterranean den for the dead and damned, ruled over by hosts of devils and horrifying deities. As such, it’s like John, our good psychopomp, descends into the underworld itself during these moments.

Criminals and bandits occupy a similar space in our minds when we think of impossible-to-believe figures. Consider Adam Worth, the inspiration for Professor Moriarty, a bank robber who escaped prison and became the anonymous founder of a massive criminal syndicate; Irish-American gangster Hell-Cat Maggie who filed her teeth into fangs and fought with brass claws; or Australian gangland queens Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, whose exploits were depicted the great historical comic series Rejected Princesses. This is to say nothing of criminals like Charles Manson or anarchist hacker Joseph “Doctor Chaos” Konopka, who themselves almost seem like comic book supervillains.

Hearing stories about gangsters and murderers brings us into the same world of terrifying creatures and mischievous spirits. We can hardly believe that someone could rob a bank or commit some kind of horrible crime, that someone is capable of leaving their empathy at the door. As such, we call these people monsters and animals, and try our hardest to distance ourselves from them as much as possible.

John Wick tells us we can’t. John Wick reminds us that these monsters do not exist in the realm of the metaphysical. They are as human as we are, and that is a difficult thing to believe.

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A Quick Word About “Atlanta’s” Surreal Humanity

Tags

analysis, atlanta, atlanta (tv series), donald glover, hiro murai, television

Disclaimer: The following contains spoilers for the first season of Atlanta. Proceed with caution.

The old adage goes that truth is stranger than fiction, and all one has to do to prove that point is look up pictures from any given Burning Man festival. Chances are that you, good reader, have that one friend who seems to be a shit magnet and attracts trouble wherever they go. My own father grew up poor and worked as a travelling musician and has seen his share of dive bars, close calls, oddball encounters, and human misery throughout his life. What is great about these people is that these experiences season them, and they are always willing to share them with you.

Writer, musician, and actor Donald Glover is that person in your life. Anyone familiar with his stand-up sets like Weirdo and the more out-there tracks produced by his Childish Gambino persona knows this well. His new television series, Atlanta, is a love letter to the strange and scary side of life. Glover himself commented that the events in Atlanta were based on things he and the staff experienced in their own lives. The end result is a show that is both highly surreal but also deeply human because of those aspects.

Atlanta follows Earnest “Earn” Marks, a Princeton drop-out struggling to support his on-again off-again girlfriend Vanessa and their daughter Lotti. While at his job at the airport trying to sign people up for credit cards, he learns that his cousin Alfred has become an internet sensation and independent rapper named Paper Boi, and teams up with him in a bid to improve both of their lives. On its own, the premise is a rags-to-riches story we know, love, and can relate to. However, it’s what orbits that premise that makes it so distinct.

The series utilizes certain key tropes popularized by what’s known as the screwball comedy genre. Screwball Comedies were a popular type of farcical cinema during the Great Depression, designed to invert the principles and values of regular cinema and comedies. The standard screwball comedy would show upper-class people as snobby and inept and romance as rife with troubles, all with a script full of sharp dialogue and humour that sometimes ventured into out-there territory.

We can see aspects of this genre as early as the first episode. Much of the humour is dark and even a little heady, and makes it clear that this series is not exactly a laugh-a-minute comedy. Earn and Vanessa have a strained relationship, with Earn sleeping at Vanessa’s place despite her planning a date for the night. A mysterious and sinister stranger on a bus who is aware of Earn’s circumstances comforts our hero shortly before violently demanding Earn take a bite of a Nutella sandwich he prepared while talking to him. The show is even willing to tap at its own fourth wall as Lakeith Stanfield’s character Darius comments on a moment of Deja Vu in the cold open which repeats (if partially) at the end of the first episode. The criticisms of classism prominent in traditional screwball exist here, too, with a dose of racism mixed in for good measure. This is especially shown with the white DJ who Earn uses to promote Paper Boi’s career, one who’s all-too keen to casually drop pejoratives in front of Earn despite not using them in front of any of his black co-workers.

Opening episodes are meant as primers for telling viewers what they can expect later in the series. They lay out the themes and style of the series, the basic structure of each episode, who our protagonists are and what kind of characters we can expect later. Atlanta sets this up expertly. The themes of classism and racism are revisited with Earn’s harrowing experiences in police custody in the next episode, and in Episode Nine when he and Vanessa attend a Juneteenth party hosted by a rich couple that fetishizes the plight of black people. Vanessa and Earnest’s tumultuous relationship is explored further, showing the both of them struggling to work things out and fall in love again. Earnest and his friends go on a series of exploits that are as entertaining as they are deeply unnerving.

What’s more, that strangeness is revisited time and again as well, from satirical commercials to choices of targets at a shooting range, but whatever experiences the characters have are not outside the realm of possibility. Even the invisible car from Episode Eight seems like something that could be made, given the push to develop invisibility tech. This is all to say nothing of the mannerisms and observations of the Human LSD Trip that is Paper Boi’s friend Darius, who is basically the spirit of the series made manifest. Darius is regularly cracked out and seems to operate on moon logic, but does have one foot on the ground at all times.

Other series will skirt around the edges of difficult subject matter and oddball situations, but won’t take the plunge for fear it will turn into an extended PSA or the later seasons of Family Matters where Urkel builds a machine that turns people into Bruce Lee. Atlanta’s willingness to get raw and enter bizarre territory without overdoing it makes the show more uniquely human and adds something to the struggles and perspectives of our protagonists. By embracing this, Atlanta becomes more than a show worth binge-watching and blossoms into this poignant and beautiful serial about the odds stacked against black youth, the struggles of becoming an entertainer, and what it really means to need another human being.

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A Quick Word About Arrival and the Power of the Human Mind

Tags

arrival, cinema, science fiction

Spoilers for the movie Arrival ahead. You’ve been warned.

There’s a dearth of intelligent science fiction in cinema. This doesn’t mean that there’s a lack of science fiction cinema with some clever ideas. We’re always going to be saturated with stories of interstellar battles and weird-looking aliens (such as Luc Besson’s adaptation of Valerian and Laureline, which I am stoked for). However, there is a distinct lack of films that use a science fiction or fantastical element to explore aspects of humanity, films that call for a blend of style and substance rather than sacrificing one for the other.

Thankfully, this is what I got with Denis Villenveuve’s Arrival, a slow-burn sci-fi thriller adapted from Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life. The film follows a translator who’s been hired by the government to try and communicate with a race of aliens found on one of twelve huge space ships that have landed on Earth for whatever reason. As she discovers their written language and begins to translate it into English, she finds herself bombarded with visions of a possible future involving her unborn daughter, and she realizes that learning this language is rewiring her brain and allowing her to perceive time in a nonlinear way. This comes in handy when she finds herself having to use this ability in order to prevent the aliens from being destroyed by impatient warmongers abroad and on the home front.

What I just wrote was the plot of the film, mind; not what Arrival is about. Let’s go into that here.

See, Villenveuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer understand that you can write stories about monsters and space ships all you want, but it doesn’t mean anything if there’s no heart, soul, or functioning brain behind it. Top-tier science fiction, like all good media, puts a mirror in front of its audience and shows us how ugly and beautiful we are. Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain explores our fear of death; Spike Jonze’s Her asks us why we form relationships; Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca and In Time explored classism through two different lenses; and now we have Arrival to talk to us about the power of the human mind.

Oh, sure, the film itself talks a big game about the nature of time and how language works and how a guns-and-glory attitude is little more than a lack of self-control made manifest. If anything, though, it’s more of a pseudo-Lovecraftian story about our ability to process impossible things.

In addition to being known for gross racist tirades, horror author H.P. Lovecraft was notorious for fiction that pitted against the unknown, telling stories about good and inquisitive folk coming across something difficult or impossible to comprehend and being driven mad by what they saw. Arrival kicks that idea square in the head. This is demonstrated when Amy Adams’ character Louise Banks first boards the alien vessel and is treated to the strange adjustments in gravity. In this scene, the hallway she arrives in starts to zoom out or in, and shift as is to impart onto the viewers the vertigo she’s feeling. We also see this with the long and dizzying shots of the alien ship on our first approach to it, or when Louise starts to study their language and it begins to affect her mind.

What’s important about the strangeness of the aliens and their technology is that we become adjusted to them. After the initial encounters, the tricky camerawork and angles take a backseat so that we anticipate the aliens and their language and the shifts in gravity, just as Louise does. Yes, we will encounter strange things, but we must grow accustomed to that and face it head on, understanding bizarre things on their own bizarre terms. This is especially important because this idea ties into the film’s more overt theme of language.

Language is complex, an alien entity in of itself, and all individual languages contain certain words or concepts that are unique to each language set and society. Here are some examples: the Spanish verb estrenar refers to wearing an article of clothing for the first time; verbs in Vietnamese don’t conjugate, and so tenses must be expressed contextually; and there’s a Japanese expression for when a man flirts with two different women at the same time that translates to “having flowers in both hands.”

It doesn’t end with mere vocabulary. To the average person, English sentences, Chinese characters, Nordic runes, and Urdu script all look like they were scribbled down by someone completely bonkers. Yet, when you actually sit down and force yourself to speak, read, and write in that language, you start to understand its nuances and turns of phrase, and how the speakers of that language may or may not think, and your own way of thinking actually evolves in order to understand it.

Really, this is what the film is trying to tell us; not that language is cool or that time is convoluted, but that seemingly-impossible things only seem impossible because we do not understand them. It’s a film that rewards the inquisitive, that tells its audience to ask questions, no matter how ludicrous, in order to gain a better understanding of the world at large. It tells us that exploring unfamiliar territory and making an effort to learn something new is its own reward. Arrival encourages risk and critical thinking, saying that learning and thereby knowing something you thought was unknowable makes you stronger and better.

Rather than posit that flying too close to the sun will burn you alive, Arrival encourages its audience to build a ship powerful enough to fly right into that fat orange bastard and pop a sick wheelie across its burning surface.

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I ain’t afraid of no remake

Tags

cinema, fandom, ghostbusters

PREAMBLE: THE GHOST OF FRANCHISE PAST

I can’t remember whether I first learned about Ghostbusters through the TV show or the toys, and I’m not sure if that matters. In the mid-eighties, so many franchises that were marketed towards children was a television show with a colossal toy line tied in, and they bled together seamlessly. It’s pretty plain to see – at least in the part of my brain that wears a tinfoil hat – that there was some insidious angle to this method. Perhaps it was to indoctrinate a generation of people into embracing mindless consumerism so big businesses could spend years getting away with horrible crimes against humanity by dangling newfangled baubles in front of the doe-eyed masses. I’m pretty certain this is how everyone is able to ignore all of those pesky child labour reports.

Oh, good, I’m already veering.

I was drawn to the show because I always loved monsters, and luckily for me Ghostbusters provided plenty. Each malformed face or gangly body that made its way across the screen filled me with delight, and it was a joy watching them get blasted and sucked into floor-traps. When I learned about the live-action films, I couldn’t wait to watch them both, and gladly absorbed them when I got the chance.

After that, my interest largely waned. I do remember briefly getting into Extreme Ghostbusters when I was technically far too old for such a serial. Past that, and one issue of the comic I’d read where the heroes didn’t fight the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that were advertised on the cover, I’d distanced myself from the franchise. It existed in the back of my mind, though. My interest was reignited when Bob Chipman released an analysis of the first film, and it left me so impressed that it actually warranted a re-watch. Well, I had it playing in the background while I was doing other things, but shush, I’m making a point.

So, imagine my surprise when I learned that Paul Feig was working on an all-female reboot of the franchise. “Hot damn,” I thought to myself. “I’ve never seen Bridesmaids and I’m not rushing to see it, but a lot of my friends said it was really good. Maybe I’ll give the new film a shot! I’m sure it’ll be great!”

We all know how everyone else felt.

When the trailers dropped, it attracted ire from a number of sides. The whole internet ignored everything else that happened on March the third to get mad and opinionated about a remake. While there were true believers in the film’s quality, there were complaints that whatever new film the studios cranked out wouldn’t have had the same staying power or appeal that the first film did. There were, also, rumblings among the more foul ranks of the internet who thought that the film was part of some leftist agenda to destroy masculinity, that having an all-female Ghostbusters would somehow bring about the end times for men. Even Sony itself got in on the action and used the vitriol from the grosser old-guard fans as marketing fuel, in a gesture that very much screamed: “See this movie or the terrorists win.”

I’m not here to talk about the internet misogynists, though. Everyone else already did that for me. Hell, the film itself already did that for me. I’m here to crack a different nut. I want to know what it is about this film that has left people so deeply polarized, and I want to give some of the significantly-less odious critics and naysayers the benefit of a doubt. So, let’s ask: what is it about a remake of a thirty-two-year-old comedy movie about ghosts that put the world on its head?

 

PART ONE: A SPIRITED ADVENTURE

Let’s get one thing out of the way: yes, I saw the film the day it came out, and sorry, but I didn’t hate it. Let it be known that I didn’t fall head-over-heels in love with it, either.

If you’re looking for a review, here it is. The film itself had a lot of really fascinating components that I was really hoping to see explored in greater depth. Stringing all of these aspects together into a narrative, however, didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth. Not every joke landed, but the ones that did stood out. Not every ghost looked good, and I wanted to know why some ghosts looked like pilgrims and death row inmates while others looked like parade floats and dragons. There were ideas in there that I liked, though: the swarm of ghost rats rushing out of the subway, the executed prisoner still conducting electricity from his time on the chair, and the colossal Uncle Sam/Baron Samedi figure skulking around in the trailer. All good.

On the characters, some of their beats were off by a country mile. Erin and Abby were interchangeable, and it would have been good to see more tension between them, especially if Wiig played up the angle of Erin being more of a frumpy academic while McCarthy kept to her character’s childlike wonder and attitudes. That being said, Patty and Jillian were fun to watch on screen. I especially liked how Jillian’s immature mania bled away whenever she spoke about tech or her new friends, and also welcomed Patty’s blunt observations of the world around her while bringing a deep knowledge of history to the table. I also appreciated the gender-bent dumb blonde stereotype that was Kevin. I’ve known a few guys who have gotten away with all kinds of crap because they were handsome and charismatic, despite not being as knowledgeable or as together as they looked, so it was nice to see that lampooned.

Then there’s Rowan. To be honest, there were a lot of missed opportunities here. It’s interesting to see how other kinds of people would flourish in a Ghostbusters universe, and bringing in a Unabomber/Elliot Rodger figure into the mix was a curious decision. Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a one-dimensional caricature, with the actor hamming up each line, and no clear idea as to how he gained the know-how to summon spirits and increase their power beyond reading it in Abby and Erin’s book. It would have been interesting if he was Abby’s first assistant, someone Abby had to let go of because of his creepy tendencies and obsessions. That would have added more to Abby’s character and contributed an interesting arc to her story, knowing that she had actively trained the film’s antagonist and creating a problem that she and her new team would have to fix.

Despite my criticisms of Feig’s Ghostbusters, it’s not like Reitman’s original film was perfect, either. It bothers me that Winston’s role was minimized in the final version, given that the original character was meant to be an overqualified ex-marine rather than just a working class hero, but even with that change he would have been an interesting addition to the cast early on. Dana merely existed to be proven wrong about Venkman, and in the middle of all that be kidnapped by the big bad and turned into a preening seductress until the all-male cast rescues her. Walter Peck’s sudden introduction in the third act annoyed me to no end, because he came out of nowhere and seemed to be there to put a wrench in the team’s plans. You could have easily had Lewis shut the power at the firehouse and had the team arrested for destroying city property, and it would have had the same effect. Plus, characterizing Peck as an environmentalist with genuine concerns is uncomfortable at best.

There’s no denying that both of these films hit the right notes for so many people. Whatever I have to say about Feig’s Ghostbusters is pointless. People liked it. At the very least, the general consensus was that it was fine. Patty and Jillian’s presence have black and lesbian moviegoers throwing up the horns with joy. Bigger than all of that, kids love it, with boys and girls buying the toys in droves.

The passion and investment in the franchise must be perplexing for people who aren’t familiar with the development. How exactly did all this start? Let’s step back for a minute – like, way back – and have a history lesson.

 

PART TWO: RAISED INTO A LIGHTNING STORM

Not much in Ghostbusters was all that new. Ghostbusters was hardly the first supernatural comedy, nor the first property to use weird science to capture or monitor entities from beyond the veil. William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost Finder is an excellent example of that. Even the Filmation serial where Ghostbusters got its name from had a device that sent spirits back to the netherworld.

It was, however, a product of the era’s attitudes, particularly towards science and spirituality. The film was birthed by Dan Akroyd’s interest in the paranormal, and in the bevy of articles he’d been reading on quantum physics and pseudoscience. Plus, as other, better analyses of the franchise have detailed, the first Ghostbusters film was itself a reaction to both Satanic Panic and the past hundred years or so of paranormal investigation literature. It took the ideas of people who wondered whether or not ectoplasm could be collected, and the fears of our plane of existence being invaded by otherworldly horrors, and decided to put clown wigs on them both. This wasn’t the only string in the film’s bow, mind. The lead actors’ collective star-power, by-products of their time spent on Saturday Night Live, was a big draw.

Then the second film came out, and everyone responded with a collective shrug. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone who follows the sequels to comedies. However, I think the main reason for Ghostbuster II’s failure was because the animated series had been running for a couple of years prior to its release, and it almost seemed like the producers pushed to make the film more like an extended episode of the cartoon. I can’t exactly blame the studios for their reluctance to make a third film, or even consider it, given the second film’s critical failure and fan favourite Bill Murray’s increasing disinterest in sequels in general.

Plans for a Ghostbusters III were laid, but over time it slowly dawned on moviegoers and the fandom that it might never come to pass. Certainly, there must have been some diehards who saw how everything from Terminator to Bridget Jones’ Diary were getting some extra films in their roster and were holding out hope, but the death of Harold Ramis must have been the final nail in that coffin. In fact, reading through Reddit threads and comment sections, that seems to be a prevailing complaint from the Ghosthead ranks (once you filter out everyone whinging about “Feminist Propaganda,” that is). The fans think they deserve a sequel. They’ve been dedicated to the cause for so long, and had been holding out hope for over two decades, only to have their hopes finally dashed.

I have a few questions on that matter, personally. First and foremost, would anyone really embrace a direct sequel to the original films, decades after the last film in the series came out? Bringing back the original cast for one last hurrah wouldn’t exactly save it, neither would a direct passing of the torch to the next generation of talent. Look at some of the other “long-awaited” sequels and see how well they handled that concept. Hell, Tron: Legacy and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should have set off some alarms that a Ghostbusters III this late in the game was not a good idea.

Secondly, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with remakes, or reimagining a beloved property. While many remakes are by nature lazy or overblown attempts to make decades-old lightning strike twice, they can be welcome if they approach it from a different perspective and somehow connect the property to the current zeitgeist. John Carpenter’s The Thing is one of the best horror films out there. Not only did it draw more from the original story, but it also tapped into the collective hypochondria experienced in the 1980s as the HIV epidemic spread. Speaking of monster movies, many know that the original Godzilla was a manifestation of post-nuclear terror in Japan, so it’s imperative for the titular beast of Shin Godzilla to represent the fears of post-Fukushima Japan. Plus, couldn’t it be said that reimagining old Shakespeare plays so that they take place in any number of new settings, from 18^th Century Denmark to 20^th Century Chicago, part of the appeal for modern fans?

This isn’t to say that anyone is in the wrong for being against remakes as a concept. Believe me, I was there with you when the first trailer for Total Recall hit. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should always throw our hands up and cry foul when an old property gets a new coat of paint – especially if it might become something special to a new crop of film fans.

And that, good reader, is what I saw.

 

PART THREE: THE PHANTOM OF THE CINEPLEX

I went to see the film in the middle of the afternoon, because at the time I was working evenings and weekends. The theatre I went to was packed. It was full to the brim with parents and their children and gaggles of excited teenagers. There was one seat left in the house, and it just so happened to be next to one of the biggest haters in the world. This young man, who for some reason left the house in track shorts and what looked like a wool blazer, sat there with his arms folded and harrumphing throughout the whole film.

As the movie played on, there were a lot of jokes and moments that didn’t exactly hit me, but the audience seemed to love them. The saltier-than-the-Dead-Sea fanboy barely reacted to anything he saw. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him looking around the room, eyeballing the crowd and trying to understand why they were enjoying the film more than he was. In the end, he left five minutes before the movie finished, and his visible disgust was drowned out by the huge pops from a room full of families and teens. I’ll never understand why that young man spent thirteen dollars for a ticket on the opening weekend for a film he knew he wasn’t going to like, but the whole experience gave me pause.

What I came to understand was that this film was not for me, or for my generation of fans, but tailored more for the newer generations. That’s why the comedy doesn’t affect me, or why the visual effects irked so many people, or why the Ghostbusters in this new film have a slew of gadgets designed to dismantle and incapacitate spirits rather than simply sealing them away. To try and get inside the head of a massive faceless corporation for a minute, it’s evident that Sony realized that Ghostbusters hit home for a lot of children, and that the past thirty years of merchandizing was directed at children first, then collectors and diehards second – many of whom were most likely the first generation of children that the film spoke to.

So, no, Feig’s new film is not the Ghostbusters I grew up with. It will never be that film, because that film was already made and it has already left its mark. For those of you who are genuinely mad at the film’s existence for legitimate reasons (and not because you now have to share the hobbyist playground with girls and apparently you think that’s a bad thing for some reason) check your shelves or Netflix queues. I guarantee you that the original film hasn’t been destroyed. All your old toys and lunchboxes are still where you left them. Harold Ramis’ grave hasn’t been unearthed and a Sony rep didn’t take a shit on his body. All these things, and whatever fond memories you have with them, haven’t gone anywhere. They are still with you, and continue to be.

In the end, remakes are not the destruction of art. They are alternatives. It’s like a cover of a popular song, or a Mona Lisa with anime eyes and a Freddy Krueger hand. No, they’re not original, and they don’t always work, but they do deserve a chance to disappoint or impress you. The other alternative is that you could just not see the film and do something else with your life.