Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
So the family and I went to see that new movie that starts off where the previous one left things, with this plucky girl handing a flashlight thing to this grumpy old guy on a remote island. Rumors swirl about whether it’s a liberal crap-fest, and I’m not going to mislead anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, it kinda is. But it’s still a fun movie to watch.
And I’m on-board, still. Looking forward to Episode IX. You can see the worst of the old is only slightly better than the best of the new, so the franchise is on the cusp of recapturing its former glory.
This one lands somewhere in the ball park of the stupid third one with the forest moon and way too many muppets. We’re seeing more pieces emerge and fit into the puzzle of what Star Wars is, why we are/were drawn to it, what spoils things. Whacky talkative sidekicks, while they have their appeal, are so hazardous that filmmakers would be well-advised to leave them unused altogether, they bring nothing that isn’t brought by adorable alien animals. And the adorable alien animals can be built into lucrative Christmas toy offerings, just fine, if they’re kept on the sidelines where they belong. Lucas and Kasdan made a mistake building the Ewoks up into jungle foot-soldiers who were ultimately responsible for achievement of the final victory over the Galactic Empire. The Last Jedi doesn’t make that mistake. But, its story is not crisp, clear, well-structured or strong. It’s messy.
All that really matters, to us, in figuring out whether we’ll buy it or not is: Will the disc make it into the player for repeat-viewings. Yeah, I can see it. The prequels do not pass this test. Not that we took a pass on those, they’re still on the shelf downstairs…sitting…
But, I digress. The new one has positives and negatives. It’s missing the toxic elements, aside from the whacky talkative sidekicks, that ruined the prequels. You know what else there was? The sanitized environment.
I’ve complained to excess, within & outside of the Star Wars universe, of “conference room scenes” which, I maintain, have what it takes to singlehandedly wreck an otherwise great movie. People who have to attend meetings at work, get this, and people who don’t, don’t. If you’re like me, you’re not down with going to work, being called in to some stuffy conference room to sit at a big table with a bunch of other people who are wondering why they’re there, watching a bunch of mundane progress reports proceed about efforts that have nothing whatsoever to do with you, clocking out, picking up the family and spending a huge chunk out of that paycheck for candy, popcorn, sodas, and the privilege of watching more people & creatures sitting at tables in conference rooms.
But, over the years, I’ve found I’m walking that road mostly alone, even among people who work for a living and do have to go to meetings. It doesn’t ruin the experience of everyone else, and so I’ve kept my silence for the most part. Although, some people do at least get it. Who wants to go to a movie to be reminded of work, right? And, I’ve had to modify this as a rule for great or terrible movies. Many a movie has been made better by a conference room scene. The original Star Wars movie, for example. Thunderball. I’ve always been fond of Al Capone’s speech about teamwork in The Untouchables. From this, we see the rule emerge with crystal clarity: Someone has to die. Or, at least, get seriously threatened. If you have that, the conference room scene adds. If you don’t…
For several dozens to sit down at a big table, and listen to one or two people go back & forth for a bit, then adjourn when someone says “good, then it’s settled” — this is no bueno. Thirty people sit, and only two have speaking lines, so you can work it into your story that a decision got made? That’s cheating the audience. There are lots of ways to show a decision got made. This has to be the worst of all of them, the very worst. Anyway. I’ve learned over the years that I am hyper-sensitive to this, and everybody else isn’t necessarily.
So I’ve been given cause to think about this, as the reviews come in on The Last Jedi. It hasn’t got any conference room scenes, it’s full of liberal twaddle but is still fun to watch. The reviews come in, people either love it or hate it. It’s becoming one of those things where nobody has a “meh” in-between opinion. I’m thinking of what my old Uncle Wally used to say to me. “Morgan, the world is made up of two kinds of people: The ones who go around dividing everyone into two groups, and everyone else.” Yeah, the old man was mocking me I’m quite sure. But, this is correct, and this movie proves it. It’s really rubbing some people the wrong way, whereas others, like me, see redeeming features. I can even see things in the original trilogy that went missing for awhile, and have been restored.
Let’s explore for a bit what that is, exactly. In the beginning, what people really paid money to see was the story of Luke Skywalker, who grew up humbly but aspired toward greater things. He embarked on the Hero’s Journey. I was about to turn eleven, at the time, and saw very little overlap between my situation & any future ambitions that interested me. There was no one talking to me seriously about having such feelings, and if they did, & brought it to my attention “You know, there are a lot of others who are in the same boat,” I likely wouldn’t have cared much. Point was, my future was unclear. An unclear future at my age now, causes some measured panic, but when you’re young you tend to be anesthetized to it. Watching Luke stare at the twin suns, as they set, sort of sums up the whole point right there. Luke’s just had an altercation, learned he’s going to be staring at the suns for another year before he can ever hope to move on to better things. When you’re growing up humbly, and you’re ten, this has an impact.
Star Wars, I think, is changing because people are changing. You haven’t seen a lot of movies do this lately, explore the feelings of a youngster teetering on the brink of adulthood, wondering “When am I going to make something of my life?” It doesn’t resonate with young people today. They’re more interested, from what I can make out about them, in strolling through campuses and hallways built by others, than in laying a foundation, making it possible to get the campus or hallway built. And so we have franchises like Harry Potter, and on teevee we’ve got The Librarians and The Magicians.
The thought occurs to me: We are seeing two distinctly separate sub-genres of adventure-drama, being put together for the benefit of two distinctly separate classes of audience. The world, after all, is divided into two groups of people: The ones who do, and do not, lust for adventure in The Badlands.
That’s a term I am coining — I can think of none other — to describe the situation in which you immerse yourself when you travel through the actual badlands. Out there, in the badlands of the United States, if you get yourself hurt, it’s bad. If you find yourself at the mercy of the wildlife around you, for whatever reason; if you run out of water; if you bust a radiator hose, run out of gas, or discover it’s been too long since you changed the oil, it’s bad. Hence the name. In fiction, such a situation brings a flavor of drama that is altogether missing from Coruscant, and Hogwarts.
I mean, just think about it. If the snake bites you, not only are there no medical services available, but there’s no one to hear you holler. No one would ever know. Not for awhile, when the sun is bleaching your bones. In the inner city, maybe you’d be surrounded by hostiles and this would bring a whole different sense of danger. But, that sense of danger would be different. The badlands bring a story that is unique unto itself. Obi-Wan summed it up succinctly: “The Jundland wastes are not to be traveled lightly.” The Old Trilogy, like this new Disney project, writhed away in The Badlands. The Prequels merely poked around a bit with such settings, concentrating for the most part on murky political intrigue in the capitol. This, more than Jar Jar Binks, brought about their ruin. It wasn’t because of what was there; it was because of what was missing.
We see this in the movie that really put Steven Spielberg‘s name in lights: Jaws. Jaws is Beowulf. The hero ventures out into the space, ocean, wilderness — Badlands — to do battle with the creature that has been harassing the citizenry. There is a special flavoring of the drama because if the shark wins, there aren’t even any spectators around to watch, to say “Wow, sucks to be you, dude.” The heroes would simply disappear. The same is true of Spielberg’s earlier debut vehicle, Duel. The hero struggles to defend, not only his life, but his existence in the minds of others. It’s the same situation as with the rattlesnake. If he loses this thing, no one will ever know, he’ll just be a pile of bleached bones in a wrecked car. The tension is not the same as Harry Potter struggling for victory in some competition with all his classmates watching him, and wizened elders calculating scores according to a point system. It’s completely separate from that.
I could add to this list all day. In the genre of psychological thrillers, there are many offerings that are rather low-budget and humdrum, especially from the 1970’s…but they have that ONE thing that makes them memorable. The protagonist, and the agent of menace whatever it is, play cat-and-mouse in some setting of isolation. An island, a building, a canyon, a jungle, the stratosphere, outer space…someplace where defeat would be not only final, but unnoticed.
So it seems we’re dealing with THREE types of people. There are those who see no appeal in the Badlands at all, either in real life or in fiction. There are those who are drawn to the drama of the Badlands in fiction, but have no desire at all to go exploring it in real life. And then I guess there are the ones like me, who are up for a real-life adventure out where no one can ever hear us scream, and it goes without saying we like seeing this situation in our “Hero’s Journey” movies too.
I imagine I have something of a soft spot for this latest movie, because I identify somewhat with Luke. In software development and in IT, I have often halfway “joked” about chucking technology altogether and becoming a goat farmer. The punchline to my joke-that-is-not-a-joke, is that I have no misgivings about technology itself, but I’m disgusted by the way people behave around it, and I’m repulsed by the changes I see being made to my chosen profession, and the efforts to change it further by people who don’t even seem to understand what changes they’re trying to make. When Rey actually does hand Luke his old lightsaber, he takes it, (spoiler, highlight to read) looks it over for a moment or two, and then chucks it over his shoulder, over the cliff; he’s done with this whole “Jedi” business, really, really done. Goats don’t bitch at their farmers about renewing their latest certifications, they don’t crash if two goats have been assigned the same IP address, they’re naturally Y2K compliant…oh yes, I’ve been there, I’ve been there for awhile. Impulse after impulse after impulse washes over me, year after year, to do what Luke did. And for similar reasons.
How important is this observation of mine? Very, I think. We see it in politics pretty much all the time, with President Trump finishing out his first year. The tax cut…that’s Badlands, is it not? It works if, and only if, the citizenry figure out where they put their spirit of independence, and get it back again. Big-government liberals are working hard to proliferate the narrative that a tax cut has something to do with spiraling deficits and financial instability. They’re right, if the people who live in this country are what the liberals think, and hope, they are: enfeebled, ignorant, weak, not having the slightest idea what to do with a bit of extra money, effeminate, dependent…like barnyard animals. The possibility doesn’t enter their consciousness that they just might be wrong, that we might be free-thinking, rugged, capable human beings ready for a foray into The Badlands, ready to create some economic activity of our own, doing something productive with that extra money besides squirreling it away under a mattress. We only have to be more productive than the government, to make this work. It isn’t a high bar. But people who are not ready for such a Badlands adventure, do not understand people who are.
We see it with the Net Neutrality, too. This is the ultimate in pasteurized, over-civilized thinking, since the dispute is over a danger that has not yet emerged. NN, therefore, is sterilization just for sterilization’s sake. It’s pure cowardice, the kind that’s brought us absolutely nothing. “Ooh, let’s stay in bed, there might be snakes out there.” In evaluating our movies and other works of fiction, I’ll not begrudge my Badlands-averse brethren for their preferences that are different from mine.
I only ask they find it in themselves to make room for the rest of us, when we deliberate about public policies out here, in real life? These civilized, sterile and fully serviced settings they crave so intransigently, after all, are here because of us. Someone has to be rugged, at some time. Hogwarts requires a foundation. Before the city can be built, there is a swamp that has to be drained. Someone has to venture out into the untamed territory first. All of human existence cannot work its way through history, inside the polished walls of a cloister. Sooner or later, here or there, now & then, someone’s hands have to get dirty. The cloistered, clean-hands people need the Badlands-venturing, dirty-hands people. Not the other way around.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Not to nitpick, but you did tread on Nerd Badlands here…there WAS a conference room scene. A’member when General Minority-Flyer got busted down to whitey-in-the-background status and then Space-Jesus got wounded? They had a conference where Hooked-nose alien female creature said that Admiral Dye-Witch would “take-charge” of the fleet, which mainly meant being a Babe In Total Control of Herself, although not actually in control of…you know…the lives she was supposed to be protecting.
I actually wanted to make a statement this year, but I have one of those nerd friends that demands that his “birthday present” every December is to watch whatever god-awful liberal-pandering version of Star Wars Disney crapped out. I really want to start calling every thing made after ’83 Star “Liberal” Wars. I’d make it more insulting if I could think of something, but they went out of their way with this one to 1. Make sure everyone knew that the resistance was “Good” because they have minorities and vaginas in control. 2. Make sure everyone knew that white males are Nazi’s, and henceforth bad guys, the resistance will have token white-guys in the background as long as they know their place and remain silent. 3. (…and I’m sure this is what’s causing all those changes in reviews after the fans start to mull over it…) They killed off the two white males that were the heroes in the originals. Who cares, right? They were white. And men. Except that even liberals have nerds, and nerds all over felt betrayed by the ending, as if a million voices cried out in disappointment, and were suddenly silent. And filled with rage.
- P_Ang | 12/23/2017 @ 09:30What P_ang said: This movie DID have a boring conference scene. During the middle of a siege on the main ship no less so it made even less sense.
I easily put E8 as the equal of E2. But you’re right about the Badlands. As I put in my spoiler free review:
- Nate Winchester | 01/01/2018 @ 10:11Well, where I was going with it is that the new Disney movies put the drama IN the Badlands, which the prequels, Tattooine scenes aside, did not.
But I realized this only after you made your comments about it: The animals have not been restored to their former, terrible, malevolent glory. You’re right, they’re a bunch of harmless Disney woodland creatures, which explains why there’s still something missing.
The ultimate return to what people our age “enjoyed” in our youth, would be Jaws. Not this silly tripe about sharks I rent to get a good chuckle, because they’re smart enough not to take themselves seriously…I mean, the very first one, arguably the ONLY really good shark movie ever made. The sheer terror of it. The ocean, the ultimate Badlands territory, and if the predator has decided you’re his dinner, you’ll never know it until you’re yanked under the surface, a fathom or two in a fraction of a second, then the terrible dismembering begins. You’d be lunch already before you ever knew. There’s some movie-fear for you.
I have the impression they’re not making them like this because today’s kids can’t handle it, or don’t want to handle it. Their idea of movie-tension is getting embarrassed in front of a crowd of fellow students at Hogwarts. If you need twice as much tension, make the crowd twice as big, that’s their idea. I truly feel sorry for them if that’s the case.
Three or four summers after Jaws, I was scared to swim in a lake. I still did, but I thought about little Alex Kintner the whole time, every time. This is what would really restore greatness, if we allowed it to happen, Badlands settings WITH truly dangerous creatures.
- mkfreeberg | 01/01/2018 @ 10:59Exactly. Only I’d say the only thing more “Badlands” than the Ocean is Space – which is one reason I think Firefly/Serenity worked so well. Just watch “Out of Gas” for an example. This latest SW movie could have all that. Jumping into deep space and finding your ships damaged. Or going to a planet long abandoned and finding it now overrun by the wilds. All these would be edge of your seat tension and interesting as we watch the new rebels try and carve out a place to hide. Heck the whole idea with Hoth in ESB was that the rebels choose a world as “badlands” as can be because the environment would at least cause as much problem for the villains as them. In SW8, you’re half amazed the bad guys didn’t run into the crystal wolves and follow them into the rebels’ back door.
But yeah, now it’s all about the crowd Hogwarts style. Which has its place and time – and in SW that time was the prequels, where civilization was at its peak then falling.
Kids nowadays have no sense of adventure. The closest they get is shaking hands with someone who disagrees with them politically. Which I think may explain a lot about modern politics. Because it’s when you get out in the badlands that things are put in perspective. The snake or the wolf or the bear doesn’t care whether you’re vegan or not. Shouting at the sky, “I’m a human being and I have a right to be fed!” won’t make a single crop grow or change a berry to non-poisonous. Ranting about your right to healthcare won’t set your broken leg or prevent infection from getting into your wound. It’s at that point you realize: the rest of the universe doesn’t care about our politics and will kill liberal and conservative alike.
And you wonder: where is that SW movie? Instead of Finn turning against the First Order because “OMG someone got shot” what if it was a movie where he was trapped in a hostile environment with a rebel? (Maybe Poe.) And the two of them had to work together to survive? (like SOOOOOO many movies) Then after that, he went to the good side? Oh what could be…
- Nate Winchester | 01/01/2018 @ 12:35