23 thoughts on The Phantom Menace

Twenty-five years ago I saw Episode I with a childhood best friend in the theater that sits at the entrance to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida; last night I saw the re-release with my sons at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. I’ve got thoughts.

1. No matter its potential, no matter the what-might-have-beens, no matter the revisionist reviews or retconning or retrievals, three things were always going to keep TPM from being a great Star Wars film: (a) an eight-year-old Anakin; (b) unnecessary narrative nostalgia; and (c) cutesy cartoon schmaltz. We now have forty years’ worth of evidence that these decisions were not departures from the vision of George Lucas, but part and parcel of it. To change course, he would have had to listen to outside voices suggesting that Anakin be eighteen, not eight; that Anakin not be the original builder of C-3PO; that Jar Jar and Watto and Sebulba and “sleemo” and “doo-doo” and ha-ha neighborhood Tatooine slave children taunting “Ani” are neither funny nor endearing, including to actual children. But Lucas doesn’t believe in listening to others, here in his galaxy above all. So there’s no sliding doors moment where Episode I is truly excellent; it was always going to be hamstrung from the start.

2. A partial addition to this list is Lucas’s obsession with “cutting edge” CGI, which everyone but him knows ceases to be cutting edge the moment the car drives off the lot. On re-watch, though, had the film lacked the above three items of dead weight without cutting the gratuitous CGI, it could have held up. So long as the animated characters weren’t cartoonish or racist(!)—a big “if”—then TPM would have been like Terminator 2 or Jurassic Park or Fellowship of the Ring. The “dated” graphics aren’t dated at all: they’re remarkable testaments to digital artistry. Rather than what they became, which is testaments to Lucas’s softness for silliness.

3. A friend told me years ago that a professor of his ruined The Godfather for him by pointing out Diane Keaton’s acting in it. Allow me to suggest that Natalie Portman is the Kay Adams of The Phantom Menace—indeed, of all three prequel trilogy episodes. She’s not exactly spectacular or awful, the way Hayden Christensen is on screen and going for it and not quite succeeding but still, you know, doing a thing. It’s a void, an absence, a null. She’s a non-presence in every single scene. I’m happy to blame Lucas for this instead of Portman, both for his direction and for his writing of the character. (Portman is, after all, a very accomplished actor outside of Star Wars, which was one reason to be excited about her casting!) Nevertheless one-half of the Skywalker twins’ parentage is a zero in our introduction to her. A lost opportunity.

4. The only time Portman is half-alive is when she “plays” her own double on Tatooine and repeatedly butts heads with Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn. But then, the entire handmaiden/queen ruse and its “reveal” is goofy to begin with. I wonder how it played with adults at the time. I vaguely recall being surprised in 1999, yet minus any payoff. The only narrative logic is that it allows Lucas to put Portman in town with Neeson when they meet and befriend Anakin and his mother Shmi. Otherwise it’s a dead end.

5. Given the furor it caused at the time, I have to admit that, on re-watch these many years later, with so many shows and film and canon filled out, I don’t mind the Midi-chlorians one bit. It’s actually rather elegantly done, I must say. Begone, haters! Hier stehe ich und kann nicht anders.

6. There are other clunky bits, not least just about everything related to the Gungans as well as the deep-sea adventure through the planet’s core, plus some of the Trade Federation politics- and alien-speak (again, those accents are shameful). That said … like all the other revisionists, I can’t hate this movie, and there’s a lot to appreciate, even love. Let me count the ways.

7. Neeson’s Qui-Gon is not only a home run: well conceived, well written, and well executed. He may be one of Lucas’s greatest creations. He commands every scene. He’s always in his own skin, comfortable where others are not. His simultaneous uncertainty, confusion, confidence, and resolve are palpable. The hints at his past and his running conflict with the Council are expertly deployed in their ambiguity. He has chemistry with everyone: with Portman, with Ewan McGregor, with Jake Lloyd, with Pernilla August. Neeson somehow single-handedly elevates this movie from forgettable to memorable, at least when he’s on screen (which is a lot). All this is not even to mention the moral gray that Lucas leans into with Qui-Gon. I lost count how many times Neeson lies to someone’s face without a trace of regret. He gambles without promise of gain and doesn’t even stop to inform the queen. What a character! What a performance!

8. Did I mention that Qui-Gon was dead right about the Jedi and the Republic? About its sclerosis, decay, and internal rot? About its detachment from the common good? About its aristocratic self-regard and blindness to the evil in its midst? Neither Yoda nor Mace Windu could see Palpatine standing right in front of them. Palpatine made sure his apprentice killed the only one who might recognize him before it was too late.

9. (This point and the next two relate also, by the way, to The Last Jedi. Rian Johnson understood that Luke had to come to terms, on screen, with the “intra-Jedi” debate between Palpatine, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Yoda. In a sense, Luke—through Ren—had to mature beyond Yoda and Obi-Wan’s vacillating optimism and despair in favor of something less childish, less binary, less yin and yang, without succumbing to the Dark Side. That maturity goes unspoken in the film, but its name is Qui-Gon. Had Episode IX been made by someone as shrewd as Johnson, Rey’s journey and continuation of the Jedi would have made explicit this callback all the way to Episode I: “a new start” for “a new Jedi,” open to the wisdom and worldly good sense of a Qui-Gon Jinn.)

10. Qui-Gon wasn’t just right about the Jedi; he was also right about Anakin, assuming he was indeed the Chosen One (a contestable proposition, I admit). Even if he was wrong about the prophecy, or rather ensured the truth of the prophecy by tragically ensuring Anakin’s training, he was right to see promise and potential in Anakin and the Council was wrong to treat a third-grade child—to his face—like his sadness and fear, after leaving his home and mother behind, were such a psychological obstacle to his learning the Force that they would rather him suffer humiliating rejection before the highest sages of the land. Hm, I’m sure that would have bode well for the virginally conceived Jesus of Midi-chlorian Force powers. They sealed their fate, and confirmed Qui-Gon’s worst fears about them, in that very room, by that very decision. It’s a miracle that Anakin ever repents at all, given his experiences.

11. Think again about those experiences. He’s conceived without a father’s involvement. He’s a slave from early childhood. He leaves his mother before his tenth birthday. He joins an order that not only keeps him from ever visiting his still-enslaved mother for a full decade but also refuses to use their power, influence, and wealth—not to mention their lightsabers—to liberate her from a slavery that the Republic itself outlaws! Oh, and the Jedi also require lifelong abstinence, forbidding marriage and children. Later, Anakin will return on his own to Tatooine to find his formerly enslaved mother kidnapped, tortured, and raped by Tusken Raiders. He will murder all of them for this. Later still, Anakin’s secret wife, secretly pregnant, will die, in part as a result of his lashing out at her with the Force. Then he will be led to believe that his unborn child died with her. Then he will learn that his son lived, but this knowledge was kept from him both by his current master (Palpatine) and by his old master (Obi-Wan)—all surrogate fathers who failed him. Then he will learn that his son has a twin sister, likewise kept from him. Then he will fight and nearly kill his son. Then he will kill his current master, having “killed” (or defeated) his old master, and ask his son for forgiveness before dying of his wounds. (Note: All three of Anakin’s surrogate fathers died as a result of apprenticing him.) Then he will look on from Force-ghost-world as his grandson turns to the Dark Side and murders his own father and nearly his own mother, even as Luke turns away from the force in despair and self-chosen exile. Then, finally, his grandson will join forces with (former Nabooian Senator) Palpatine’s granddaughter to destroy Palpatine himself—whom Anakin, somehow, failed actually to kill in his one and only good deed in life. Having killed Palpatine once and for all, Anakin’s grandson gives his life to save Palpatine’s granddaughter’s. And so the Skywalker blood line is complete: from Shmi to Anakin (and Padmé) to Luke and Leia (and Han) to Ben. Seven Skywalkers, all special, most Force sensitive, some Jedi, all dead and gone, and for what?

12. No, J. J. Abrams, Rey is not a Skywalker, even if she wants to claim the name. And yes, it occurs to me that one of Freddie deBoer’s best essays is a longer and much funnier version of the previous point. Go read him and weep/laugh.

13. Since I’m mentioning writers on these themes, see also Matt Zoller Seitz and Ross Douthat. And Freddie again, who is correct about The Last Jedi.

14. What else does Lucas get right? The politics, the decadence, the transition from planetary democracy to galactic democracy to galactic republic to galactic emergency to galactic empire. He also understands that the wider cinematic and narrative frame of Star Wars is not itself, his own prior creation, but the larger mythic and movie worlds of both Western and Eastern culture. Granting the moments of eye-rolling nostalgia and point-and-laugh coincidences, Star Wars has not (yet) become solipsistic at this time.

15. The music is flawless. Thank you, John Williams.

16. Lucas also nails multiple scenes and images, to the point that some of them remain iconic. The greatest of these is every single frame of the Darth Maul fight. I dissent from the view that Maul should have lived to fight another day; it was wise to kill him off. What makes the duel with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon so compelling—somehow I’d never realized this—is that none of them ever speaks a word. In just about every climactic fight sequence in any action movie, the leads are in constant conversation: cajoling, insulting, persuading, begging. Not here. There’s nothing to talk about. It’s pure visual poetry. Few things filmed since then can match it.

17. Maul is a singular visual creation. You can’t help but stare. As for other characters, Obi-Wan is well written by Lucas and well acted by McGregor, as are Palpatine by Ian McDiarmid and Shmi Skywalker by Pernilla August. I was surprised how affecting August’s portrayal of Shmi is. The only pathos in the movie, with the possible exception of Obi-Wan’s grief over Qui-Gon, belongs to Shmi. She is worn down by the world, yet oddly hopeful, given her experience with Anakin’s miraculous conception and her love for him. She wants him to leave, even as she registers a moment’s hurt quickly covered over by a mother’s affection when she sees his forgetfulness, then remembrance, then acceptance at her remaining behind (as, the movie won’t let us forget, a slave).

August and Neeson share multiple moments together: knowing glances, light touches of arms and shoulders. Squint and you might see romantic tension. On this viewing I saw instead a kind of shared religious sensibility. They both relate to the Force the way Mary and Joseph relate to God. Like Joseph, Qui-Gon is a surrogate and adoptive father (also like Joseph, Qui-Gon dies before Anakin becomes an adult; unlike Jesus, Anakin has major daddy issues for the rest of his life, as do his son and grandson, Luke and Ben—apparently the only way for sons in Star Wars to exorcise their paternal demons is by slaying their father or dying themselves, or perhaps through handing on the line from multiples generations of failed father figures to an adopted daughter figure: this is the only reading of Rey I will allow). Note well that Shmi isn’t passive before Qui-Gon; rather, her fiat mihi is, like Mary’s, an active consent in response to a higher benign power. In this way Shmi and Qui-Gon alike are responsive to a kind of cosmic momentum sweeping them along. They see it, acquiesce to it, float along with it, even at great cost; in fact, at the cost of both of their lives.

18. I remain struck by the fact that when Lucas sat down to write Darth Vader’s backstory he made the child Anakin Skywalker a slave on a backwater planet. I must have seen The Phantom Menace at least a dozen times since 1999, but I had never registered the brief conversation at the Skywalker dinner table in which Anakin explains that all slaves on Tatooine have a chip implanted beneath their skin that (a) can’t be detected or removed by the slave himself and (b) marks them as a slave for life, lest they attempt to escape. This, in what is otherwise, in Lucas’s hands, a children’s fable! Anakin can’t run away, much less hop aboard starship, because his brutal slaveowners will track him down through the cybernetic chip implanted in his body!

Is this a kind of dark foreboding of Anakin’s eventual bodily disintegration and reintegration via robotic machinery? “More machine than man”? A man enslaved by his own passions, by his unchosen transhuman body, metal and circuitry rather than flesh and blood? A man overmastered by a Force he supposed he could manipulate to save the wife he eventually killed? All of which turned on his receiving freedom from slavery without his mother—a motherless origin at this, the source of the most famous “orphan’s tale” in American pop culture? Recall that, in the next film, Padmé comforts Anakin following his slaughter of men, women, and children among the Tusken Raiders, after they took and abused his mother (once she had herself been freed and married by a good man!). I lay all this out to show what was going on in Lucas’s mind as he sketched out the origins of Darth Vader. As seemingly light and occasionally cartoonish as Episode I can be, it has moments of such darkness it makes you gasp.

19. This is a movie about overconfidence. More than once different characters say, “You assume too much.” Or, “I promise you…” followed by an outlandish vow they can’t be sure they can keep or whose implications they can’t foresee. Even my beloved Qui-Gon comes under judgment here. No one knows anything—the only exception is the Sith, who see all. No one else has sight. Everyone is blind while presuming the indefinite persistence of the status quo. And it’s all about to come crashing down around their ears. This is the tragedy of the beginning of the story of Darth Vader. This is “the phantom menace” haunting the galaxy, haunting the Jedi, haunting the Republic, haunting Anakin and his many would-be fathers.

20. So no, I don’t mind the name, either. It’s both accurate and appropriately apt to the Saturday morning genre B-movie serials that influenced the original film.

21. Three final thoughts, each a missed opportunity. The first concerns slavery. Why not make that issue more prominent in the next two episodes? Why not make Anakin an abolitionist? Why not insinuate the issue into the Senate’s bureaucratic machinations and Padmé’s own frustrations? Why not send Anakin back to Tatooine to liberate the slaves—only to have his hand slapped by Coruscant, even to have the slaves returned to their masters by the august Republican Senate? And why not have Palpatine rise to the occasion, offering the power of emancipation to Anakin and Padmé in return for emergency wartime powers? After all, doesn’t he need the military might of the Republic to stamp down the Hutts and other slave-mongering forces? How did this not write itself?

22. Why not let Anakin lose the pod race? The race is well shot, but there’s no urgency or angst because we know he’ll win. What if he didn’t? What if a loss then put Qui-Gon in the position of stealing Anakin away, refusing to honor his bet with Watto and the Hutts? Qui-Gon would do it. And it would make him a hero in Anakin’s eyes, even as it made Anakin resentful and ashamed for having lost and furious at the now-villainous Council and Senate, which would politely instruct Qui-Gon to return Anakin to Tatooine. This plot line, too, writes itself.

23. Oh, Jar Jar. By which I mean: Darth Jar Jar. Do I buy the theory? I want to. And man, there really are odd aspects of TPM if Lucas truly had nothing up his sleeve with this character. His banishment, the fear he inspires in fellow Gungans, the suggestion that he will be punished or even killed once Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan depart, his occasional physical prowess and grace, his crucial role at key moments to catalyze the plot (such as hinting in Padmé’s ear that she should return to Naboo—moments after Palpatine whispers diabolical suggestions in her ear in the Senate—not to mention his fateful vote to make Palpatine Emperor in Episode III). Remember, too, that Palpatine is a Senator from Naboo, so it’s absolutely plausible that he and Jar Jar have had prior contact. He just “happens” to run into the Jedi and incur a life debt. Oh, and how does Darth Maul track Padmé’s ship to Tatooine if they never sent a transmission off world, but only received one? One option: Jar Jar himself found a way to send a transmission, alerting the Sith to their whereabouts.

The notion of doubles (“Always two there are”)—co-equal/rival pairs or even a kind of surreptitious self-doubling—is pronounced in TPM: Republic and Trade Federation, Senate and Council, Amidala and Padmé, Palpatine and Sidious, Sidious and Maul, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan and Anakin. Why not Jar Jar and Darth Jar Jar?

As others have detailed, this would also explain Maul’s death and Count Dooku’s random appearance in his place; it was meant to be Count Jar Jar all along. Had the JJB character not been such a fantastic fiasco and embarrassment from day one, he might have been the Gollum of Star Wars: the first true and truly momentous CGI character, and a secret villain to boot. Was he? Was that the plan?

Maybe. Who knows. On this re-watch, aside from some of the narrative holes, it didn’t seem particularly likely. And it sure seems like we would have heard some leak from Lucasfilm in the last three decades spoiling the secret.

Chalk it up as one more might-have-been in this remarkable might-have-been of a movie.

Civil War

I don’t yet know what I think about Civil War, Alex Garland’s latest. I’ve not read a word from others, though I have a vague sense that there are already battle lines drawn, strong readings offered, etc. I have nothing to say about that.

I do know that Garland is smart and makes smart films. I’m hesitant to trust either my or others’ knee-jerk reaction to a film that’s clearly got things on its mind, a film that is surely not what many of us supposed it would be based on trailers and ads.

I also care not one whit what Garland himself thinks about the film. He may have thought he was making a movie about X, intending to say Y, when in fact he made a movie about A, which happens to say B and C.

Like I said, I don’t have a strong take yet. I do have one possible interpretation, which may turn out to be a strong misreading. Here goes.

Civil War is not about American politics, American polarization, impending American secession, or even Trump. It’s not a post–January 6 fever dream/allegory/parable. It’s not a liberal fable or a conservative one.

Instead, Civil War is a film about the press—about the soul of the press, or rather, about what happens when the press loses its soul. In that sense it is about Trump, but not Trump per se. It’s about what happens to the press (what happened to the press) under someone like Trump; what the reaction to Trump does (did) to journalism; how the heart of a free polity turns to rot when it begins to mirror the heartless nihilism it purports to “cover.” Words become images; images become form without content; violence becomes a “story”; an assassination becomes a “scoop.”

It doesn’t matter what Nick Offerman’s president says seconds before he’s executed. It matters that he say something and that someone was there—first—to get “the quote.” The newsroom lifers and war-time photographers documenting propaganda, unable to listen to one more canned speech spouting lies on the radio, themselves become agents of propaganda. They become what they oppose, a photo negative of what they’re so desperate to capture for their audience. (What audience? Who’s watching? There’s no evidence anybody is reading, listening, or watching anymore. Outside of the soldiers and the press, everybody else appears to be pretending the war isn’t happening at all.)

The urban warfare Garland so expertly displays in the film—better than almost anything I’ve ever seen attempting to embed the viewer on the streets and in the cramped rooms of military units breaching fortified gates and buildings, made all the more surreal by its being set in downtown Washington, D.C.—is therefore not about itself, not about the images it seems to be showing, but is instead a Trojan horse for us to observe the “PRESS” who are along for the ride. And what happens between the three leads in the closing moments tells us all we need to know. One gets his quote. One gets her shot. And one loses her shot, as she does her life, having slowly awakened across the arc of the film to the intolerable inhumanity required of (or generated by) her profession. Another propagandist, though, rises to take her place. There’s always someone else waiting in the wings, ready to snap the picture that will make her name.

There, in the Oval Office, staring through a camera lens, a star is born.

“Real” movies

There are movies and there are movies. There have always been hacks for hire, but these days it’s less hack directors than hack IP that you’ve got to be on the lookout for. Hack IP is prefab by definition. Not so much too many cooks in the kitchen as no cooks at all: pull off the plastic, nuke it, and you’ve got yourself a movie. The next step, namely eliminating directors altogether in favor of A.I.-generated “content,” is only logical.

Sometimes, though, you’re in the mood for a crowd-pleaser. So the other day, when I had a couple nights to myself, I watched the second and third Equalizer films. The trilogy stars Denzel Washington and all three entries were written by Richard Wenk and directed by Antoine Fuqua. I vaguely remembered the first one, and thought it would be a pleasant, if undemanding, way to pass the time. I thought, in other words, that this was a bit of hack IP, brought to life by a hack writer and a hack director.

To my shame! There are movies and there are movies: some are fake, prefab, assembled by committee, produced by a factory, mindless, visionless, voiceless, toneless; and some are not. The Equalizer 2 & 3 are not classics; they didn’t deserve an Oscar. But they’re not fake. They’re not prefab. They’re “real” movies. And I wasn’t expecting that. Fuqua, Wenk, and Denzel surprised me.

The action in both films is well-executed. It’s what happens in between, though, that upended my expectations. Long stretches of “down time” with seemingly stock characters who, all of a sudden, are shown to have an inner life. What appears to be a minor detour is actually a bona fide B plot pulling the A plot into itself.

Wenk and Fuqua care about characters who, in any other Hollywood blockbuster, would be throwaways and caricatures. Ashton Sanders, fresh off his Moonlight turn, plays a teenage boy in the second film drawn into drugs and violence. Through Denzel’s eyes, Wenk and Fuqua train the audience—many of whom might not identify with Sanders’s character; might dismiss him as a problem; might think they already know his fate—to see him as Denzel’s character does: a sweet young boy, full of promise, caught between worlds. I sort of wanted the action movie to stop entirely and just become about this kid’s future.

Anyway. As I say, these films aren’t all-time greats. But “real” movies, however flawed, are always preferable to fake movies, however technically expertly wrought. And these two made me want to take a second look at Fuqua’s filmography especially. I’ve always dismissed him as merely competent, a professional who can work well with stars for big-budget manly movies. That was a mistake on my part. At a minimum, it turns out that professionalism—not to mention perspective and patience—go a long way in a landscape dominated by hack IP.

Marvel on a budget

Why do Marvel’s productions look so bad? Why does Secret Invasion look like it was shot by numbers in about three weeks on an Atlanta backlot the size of a basketball court? Why are scenes so often in cars or indoors? Why are so many actors unknowns or newbies? Why does everyone seem sedated except Olivia Colman?

Likewise, why was Ant-Man 3 so aggressively ugly? Why were the graphics so poor? Is the studio on a budget? Is Disney siphoning money from Marvel to other IP? Is Disney’s current cost-cutting already evident in Marvel’s post-Endgame entries? Is Marvel’s aesthetic on purpose? Are the directors and cinematographers happy with the way the shows and movies look, or is the aesthetic imposed on them from on high?

Either way, where is all the money going? Consider the latest season of Jack Ryan on Amazon. Shot on multiple locations, regularly featuring wide-angled shots of gorgeous outdoor vistas, it looks and feels like a slick action movie with a visual language and a modicum of style. It’s never hazy or gooey the way Marvel (and, for that matters, Netflix) productions are. You can see everything. It’s high definition. Care has been put into the image. And into the acting and writing. Even if it’s just popcorn entertainment, there’s forethought and planning in evidence. Bezos is getting his money’s worth.

You can’t say the same for Marvel. It’s embarrassing. It’s beginning to feel like late 90s primetime television: same production quality, same writing exhaustion, same pseudo serialization. This, from a multibillion-dollar movie studio that conquered the globe over the last fifteen years. Does anyone know why? What’s going on?

I’ve stuck with the movies just for fun. And Guardians 3 was good. But last year I couldn’t bring myself to finish Moon Knight, much less try She-Hulk or Ms. Marvel. I don’t know anyone who did. I sampled Secret Invasion because (a) it’s summer and (b) Samuel L. Now I’m hooked just to see how the car wreck comes to an end.

After this, it’s Loki (potentially solid) followed by a run of shows and movies that are humdrum, eyerolling, or parody: The Marvels, Echo, Agatha, Captain America 4, Ironheart, Daredevil (again), and Thunderbolts. (Deadpool 3 doesn’t count; it’s inherited, won’t follow house style, won’t mess around with MCU canon, and will wrap up the trilogy.) Future Avengers movies keep getting delayed, contain no narrative momentum, and feature no names or actors normie audiences care about. Plus the one interesting thing about the multiverse, Jonathan Majors’ performance as Kang, is unlikely to continue; I assume Majors will be replaced by another actor by year’s end.

When Kevin Feige hired Ryan Coogler and Taika Waititi and James Gunn, it seemed as though Marvel’s productions would have style and panache, built on relative directorial freedom. Sometimes that came through. But in the last few years it’s become clear those were exceptions to the rule. The rule, it appears, is half-rendered sludge on a budget that will always prefer an Atlanta green screen to an actual physical location. At the very moment Tom Cruise is defying death in practical stunts on the big screen. It’s bizarre.

If there’s an explanation, I’m all ears.

Prestige scholarship

No, not that kind of prestige. I mean the kind you find in Christopher Nolan’s movie of the same name, based on the (quite good, quite different) novel by Christopher Priest. Wherein—and here I’m spoiling it—a magician so committed to entertaining audiences and to defeating his competitor uses a kind of real magic, or outlandish science, to make a copy of himself each night, drowning the old man and watching from afar. Why does he do it? Why go to such lengths? Because, little does he know, the trick performed by his competitor, in which he seems to be in two places at once, is a con: he’s not one man but two; identical twins. That’s why he, the competitor, appears to be so superhumanly productive, so supernaturally capable of bilocation. He does exist in two places at the same time. Because he’s not one person. He’s two.

That’s the way I feel about people I think of as super-scholars. There are many of these on offer, but I’ll use Timothy Burke as an example for now. The man writes a daily Substack, almost always with a word count in the thousands. He reports continuously on the books he’s reading, the New Yorker articles he’s reading, the peer-reviewed journal articles he’s reading, the comic books he’s reading, the genre fantasy he’s reading, the novels he’s reading, the Substacks he’s reading—and more. In addition, he reports the dishes he’s cooking, the video games he’s playing, the photos he’s editing, the book manuscripts he’s drafting, the syllabi he’s re-writing, the institutional meetings he’s attending. Oh, and he has a spouse and children. Oh, and he teaches classes; something he’s apparently well regarded for.

Reading him isn’t masochistic for me so much as uncanny. He belongs to this (in my eyes fictitious but clearly all too real) tribe of academics and journalists who appear never to sleep, only to consume and produce, consume and produce, without end or exhaustion. Do they speed read? Are they lying? Do they refuse to close their eyes except for six carefully timed and executed 20-minute naps every 24 hours? Are they brains in vats operating their bodies from afar? Do they have assistants and researchers doing the actual work that comes into my inbox every single day of the week?

No, I don’t think so. They’re really doing all of it. It’s them. No tricks.

Well, except the one. Like Alfred Bordon in The Prestige, there’s more than one of them. Sometimes twins, sometimes triplets; occasionally more. Nothing magical. No futuristic science involved. They just don’t want us in on the secret. Which I get. I wouldn’t either. The result is marvelous, even unbelievable.

It’s prestige scholarship. It’s the only explanation. Good for them.

The Gray Man

Why is The Gray Man so bad? Chris Evans is in top form, while Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas are always game. It could be the script; but then, dumb action scripts have the potential to be elevated by competent direction into quality entertainment, and occasionally even excellent art.

The culprit has to be the Russo brothers. Yet they are the same directors of this scene, which contains more clarity, line of sight, and visual creativity in three minutes than anything in the full running time of TGM. Don’t they know they now live in a world ruled by action auteurs like Christopher McQuarrie, Chad Stahelski, and Gareth Evans? Are there more than three straight seconds of coherent, sustained editing in TGM before a careening drone shot or confusing cut renders the action visual gibberish? Why all the CGI smoke, gas, and fire? Why the constant haze, a sort of vague fog constantly filtering the audience’s sight? Is it cinematographer Stephen Windon’s fault? Someone else’s? Who is spending all that Netflix cash? On what, exactly, other than an outlandish and unnecessary travel budget? Why are the visuals and action of Extraction, another Netflix film produced by the Russos but directed by first-timer Sam Hargrave, superior to TGM’s? Why, why, why?

Does anyone know the answer? I certainly don’t.

NOPE, BCS, TOM, MCU

Some pop culture odds and ends…

Nope. I’ve got little to add to the Discourse here, just a few scattered thoughts. (I saw the film with friends and processed it with them; I’ve not done any online reading besides skimming—and being disappointed with—this article.) First, Daniel Kaluuya remains Jordan Peele’s not-so-secret super-weapon. What an actor. Second, it’s nothing but good for the movies that Jordan Peele productions have become events unto themselves. That’s a happy world to live in, even when Peele doesn’t quite hit the mark, as here. Third, the problem with Nope is the opposite of what ailed Us. Where Us worked at the visceral level of story and characters, it failed at the symbolic or metaphorical level. In Nope, by contrast, the allegory is what’s potent and compelling, whereas the literal narrative has gaps and questions. At times it feels like the plot does X or Y because that’s what the Meaning requires, rather than the significance arising organically from the story. When the allegory calls for the same signifier to mean two or more contrary things at once, the plot becomes unmoored. Having said that, fourth, a couple minor interpretive ventures. What’s up with that shoe? What came to my mind was the monolith in 2001, whose presence always signals a powerful evolutionary or technological shift in a group or species’ agency—and whose first appearance involves apes, tools, violence, and a jump to spaceships (re the last, the dad in the sitcom appears to be space-related in interests or profession). I wonder if, on a re-watch of Nope, mention or flashback or appearance of the shoe would similarly signal not only Gordy’s turn but also key turns in the narrative and/or Jean Jacket’s behavior. I’ll also add, mostly tongue in cheek, that when wondering aloud about the title of the film, what came to mind was Knope, as in Leslie. If Get Out (still his most successful film) was Peele’s rejoinder to the fantasies of well-meaning Obama-era white-liberal post-racism—though it understandably took on new force when someone other than Hillary was elected—perhaps Nope is a rebuttal of the same phenomenon, only applied to Hollywood instead of Washington, D.C. It’s Peele’s Nope to Poehler’s Knope.

Better Call Saul. I’ve been on the BCS bandwagon from the beginning. I’ve written about it briefly before, but mostly I’m just here to stand in awe. Like MBD, I anticipate these final episodes like each is Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Be sure to be reading what Alan Jacobs writes about it. Even DBH is in on the glories of Saul:

I became genuinely addicted, however, to Breaking Bad, which was so much better written than any of the television of my youth—and better written than just about every studio film made since the 1970’s—that it astonished me. It was the perfect balance of Dostoyevsky and Ed McBain, with just a hint of Lawrence Sanders here and Charles Portis there. I did not even mind the somewhat fantastic conclusion of the series. When, however, its sequel (or “prequel”) Better Call Saul came out, I was hesitant to watch it, fearing it would prove to be an inferior product that would only diminish my memory of the original program. But I watched. Now, in its final season, having just returned from its mid-season break, the show is dwindling down to its end over half a dozen episodes; and I am prepared to say not only that it is the better of the two programs, but that it may be the finest wholly original program ever to grace American television (or television anywhere). Like its predecessor, it is a grim portrayal of the gradual destruction of a soul, though now perhaps with somewhat greater subtlety and nuance, and with a richer range of characters. Comparisons aside, though, the quality of the writing has proved consistently astounding, and never more so than in these concluding chapters. Anyone who has followed the story—and I will give nothing away—will know that the final episode before that mid-season break was at once shocking and brilliant. It arrived in its closing minutes at a denouement (ominously announced by the slight flickering of a candle’s flame) that made perfect sense of the entire narrative of the series up to that point, and of the current season in particular, but that was (for me, at least) wholly unexpected until the moment just before it occurred. The construction of the story was so ingenious, and its moral and emotional power so unexpectedly intense, that I was left amazed. I do not know what it tells us about the current state of our culture that good writers have more or less been banished from the movie industry and have had to take their wares instead to television; but I am glad the medium as it now exists can make room for them. I also do not know what to make of the reality that there are television programs so much more competently written than most novels today. But, whatever the case, I can at least assure my three correspondents that, yes, I do watch television, even sometimes when something other than baseball is on; and that, moreover, in the case of Better Call Saul I feel positively elevated by having done so, because the program is a genuine work of finely wrought art.

I’ll add that, though Alan Sepinwall is usually reliable, his most recent recap of the show is strange, and it worries me he might know something about the final three episodes and be unintentionally telegraphing it to readers. He’s done this in the past, where he interprets an episode’s implications in ways no normal viewer would, because screeners or confidential information tugs his mind in an unpredictable direction. All that to say, he suggests over and over both (a) that this is probably our last glimpse of Gene’s future story and (b) that it provides a “happy ending” to Jimmy/Saul/Gene’s story.

A happy ending? What could that possibly mean? Deceiving and abusing an elderly woman and her loser son with a meaningless heist that could get the latter sent to jail, thereby reminding Jimmy of “the good old days” when—wait for it—theft, fraud, drugs, and murder were part of his daily life … this is a “happy ending”? Huh? The story is explicitly and intrinsically a fall narrative, a decline into moral squander and misery. The eminently wise and trustworthy writers and showrunners of BCS may or may not have more Gene in store for us. But even if we don’t return to him, his ending is as far from happy as one could possibly imagine.

The Old Man. Shows like The Old Man are more or less factory-produced for my tastes: The Honourable Woman, The Night Manager, The Americans, Fauda, even season five of Homeland—self-contained, stylish cocktails of spycraft, action, and character, realistic enough to be taken seriously, unrealistic enough to be fun. Le Carré lite, in other words. I was disappointed by the finale of TOM, however, because I thought it was a seven-episode miniseries, not the first of two seasons. I also didn’t realize Jeff Bridges’ battles with lymphoma and Covid brought production to a halt multiple times. Imagine being 70 years old, cancer in remission, Covid finally beaten, and the next day you’re hanging out a window at 70mph playing grandpa-Bourne, shooting back at the bad guys chasing you (and grandpa-driver John Lithgow). Not a bad capstone to a remarkable career.

Marvel. By my count, between May 2008 and November 2025, if Disney has its way, there will have been at least thirty-nine official “Marvel Cinematic Universe” movies. By the time the fifth and sixth Avengers films come out (six months apart) in 2025, my bet is that there will have been even more than what’s currently announced, which means the number will likely cross the threshold of forty movies in a little over seventeen years. And that’s not counting any Marvel characters produced by Sony outside of the MCU. Nor is it counting the Marvel TV shows, which in the same time span should amount to at least twenty-six in toto, which on average run two to three seasons each. So again, in less than two decades, we’re talking one hundred movie hours and hundreds of TV hours.

Now look at quality. From 2019 to the present there have been nine MCU movies. Two have been very bad (Captain Marvel and Eternals), three have been middling (Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and Thor 4), and four have been solid (Avengers 4, Spider-Man 2 & 3, and Doctor Strange 2). People love the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, but they’re actually pretty forgettable; and although the final Avengers entry provided a cathartic conclusion to the previous two dozen films’ worth of story lines, it was bloated and even sort of boring in the middle act.

All that to say, that’s three and a half years of the world-bestriding Marvel Universe, the most successful film franchise of our (all?) time … and it’s a pretty mixed record, when you step back and look at it. Add in the deluge of Disney+ series and their even spottier quality, plus a narratively unclear and mostly uncompelling “multiversal” saga connecting these films to the coming ones in the next few years, and it makes sense that people are writing about Marvel’s “problem” or “crisis.”

Nevertheless, I think that sort of language overstated. Between one pole, which suggests the MCU will keep on breaking records forever, and the other pole, which suggests the MCU is about to crash, I think the correct position lies somewhere in the middle. When characters and properties that people love are featured in a Marvel movie, people will keep buying tickets; see Black Panther 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Blade, etc. When people don’t care, or the movies are bad, people will start to drift away. Instead of seeing 2019 as a peak followed by a steep cliff, we should see it as the highest peak, followed by only very slowly diminishing returns, with many subsequent slightly smaller peaks, with a cliff awaiting only after 2025. At that point, unless they nail revivals of Fantastic Four and X-Men, which somehow spark another wave, a new generation, a seventh “phase,” and thus a third decade of MCU fandom and culture-wide mania, I think that’s when it all, finally, comes to an end—where “end” doesn’t mean “no more popular comic book movies” but “everyone and their mom ceases to reflexively see most MCU movies in the theater.”

Then again, the almighty Kevin Feige has been doubted before. He knew something no one else did fifteen years ago. Maybe he knows something we don’t today. But count me skeptical.

Malick and Scorsese on confession and martyrdom

The two people to read on Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019) are Jon Baskin (in NYRB) and Alan Jacobs (in The Point as well as his blog). One thing I assume others have noted but that struck me in my viewing is the likeness to and contrast with Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016).

Both directors are 1970s auteurs. Both are Americans born during World War II. Both are Roman Catholic in one sense or another. Both have made multiple films featuring explicitly Christian themes. In fact, within the next year or two, both will have directed films about Jesus of Nazareth himself.

Moreover, both A Hidden Life and Silence are rooted in historical events, though the latter is an adaptation of a novel fictionalizing something that happened centuries prior, while the former is an imaginative evocation of a real man’s life and martyrdom, based on his personal correspondence. As it happens, the execution of Franz Jägerstätter occurred less than four months before Malick’s birth.

Finally, both films are about faith under conditions of persecution, the meaning (or meaninglessness) of suffering, the command of Christ under duress, and martyrdom. Scorsese and Malick come to very different conclusions, however.

To be sure, neither film imposes a particular interpretation on the viewer. Personally, I read Silence against what are Scorsese’s evident intentions: namely, to vindicate Rodrigues’s ultimate decision to step on the fumie, i.e., to repudiate and blaspheme the image and name of Christ. He does so, under impossible pressure, not only from Japanese authorities, who are torturing Japanese Christians before his very eyes, but also from Ferreira, a fellow priest who preceded Rodrigues’s time in Japan. Ferreira wants Rodrigues to see that nothing is gained by not giving in. He is the voice of “reason” absolving Rodrigues in advance of his betrayal. At last Rodrigues does the deed. In a long epilogue, we see him going about his life aiding the Japanese in keeping Christianity out of the country. But when he dies and is given a customary burial, his wife slips a crucifix into his hands—on which Scorsese zooms in the final image of the film.

Again, Scorsese is clear: he wants us to approve of Rodrigues, who saved the lives of believers under his care, relieving their suffering, while keeping the faith quietly, privately, silently. Here Scorsese is wrong both in his theological instincts and in his artistic instincts—he need not try to stack the deck so obviously—yet the film remains patient of other readings, including readings wholly contrary to Scorsese’s own intentions.

Now consider A Hidden Life. Over and over, Franz is asked a variety of the same question: “What are you wanting to accomplish? Your death will do nothing. It will make no difference. No one will even know of it. The only result will be the suffering and shame brought upon your widow, your orphaned daughters, your mother, and your village.” Franz’s calculus, however, is not consequentialist. It’s a matter of principle. He cannot do what he believes to be wrong, even if it will make no difference whatsoever. (And it’s worth noting that basically no one knew his story for decades after his death.)

In a pivotal scene late in the film, Franz’s wife Fani visits him in prison. As they face each other across a table, his lawyer gives him one last chance: if he signs a piece of paper, the execution will be stayed, and he will be permitted to work in a hospital—he won’t even have to fight as a soldier. The only price is the oath of loyalty to Hitler.

With the paper before him, Franz’s parish priest joins Fani at the table and makes the following appeal (this is a quote, not a paraphrase):

God doesn’t care what you say, only what’s in your heart. Say the oaths and think what you like.

This is precisely Ferreira’s advice to Rodrigues. And here it is likewise a Catholic priest meaning well. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter if you repudiate Christ; it doesn’t matter if you deny his lordship and pledge yourself instead to Der Führer. What matters is your heart. Think, feel, believe what you like—quietly, privately, silently—so long as you step on the image; so long as you swear the oath.

Franz refuses. And he never sees his wife again. Soon thereafter he is taken to the guillotine. He is killed “for no reason,” “senselessly,” by his own stubborn refusal to do the “sensible” thing, for the sake of others—his own beloved family. The Nazis kill him in a windowless room away from witnesses or crowds. He dies alone. For what?

The film as a whole is the answer. The rationale underlying it, though, highlights the contrast with Scorsese. Who you are is not separate from what you say and do. “You” are not “within.” “You” are your words and actions—full stop. The distinction between the inner self and external behavior is not a division, much less a chasm separating the real from the ephemeral. As Christ promises: “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.”

Confession manifests the self. There is no you except the you who acts in the world. The life and death of Franz Jägerstätter—beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007—reveals this truth, and Malick understands it. Based on the evidence of Silence, Scorsese does not.

Sometimes it’s simple

There is always much hand-wringing in Hollywood and among the writers who cover it when a film that “should have” been a hit is a flop, or at least underperforms. I find this phenomenon baffling. It seems to me that we should only wonder aloud why people didn’t go see a movie if all the following conditions are met:

1. The movie is well-advertised, far in advance, with excellent marketing and especially trailers and commercials that not only make the movie look good but also communicate clearly what it’s about and why it would be worth seeing in the theater.

2. The movie is in fact good—where “good” means at least “entertaining” but preferably also “successful at what it is trying to do.”

3. There was reason to suppose, prior to going into production, that this sort of movie released at this particular moment would be appealing to ordinary movie-goers and thus well-received upon release.

If a film fails to meet any of these conditions, not to mention all of them, then we do not need to ask why it was not popular. (NB: A film not meeting these conditions might still be popular, but that’s a separate matter.) Consider Lightyear. Not one single moviegoer across the past two decades has wondered when Pixar would make the movie inside the movie Toy Story from which the action figure Buzz Lightyear was ostensibly taken as merchandise. This fact alone didn’t doom the movie, though it didn’t help. Blasé marketing and poor execution did the dooming. That’s it. End of story. Question asked and answered.

Most people don’t see a movie on opening night. They go see said movie if and only if they ask friends who did go on opening weekend whether the movie was good. If the answer is no, they won’t go see it. Again, end of story. This isn’t rocket science!

Now take a harder case: The Last Duel. Here we’ve got A-list stars in a period drama directed by Ridley Scott. I watched it for the first time at home last week. The critics were right: it was great—much different than expected—and I wish I had seen it in the theater. Why didn’t I?

Simple: The trailers oversold the generic parts of the story and undersold the original parts. All the stakeholders piqued my interest, but I just couldn’t gear up for another Ridley Scott B+ medieval epic. Once I started reading good reviews a week or two after its release, I considered going—except that, after digging around, I learned that this is a 2 1/2 hour film featuring an extended rape scene portrayed not once but twice. At that point I knew my wife and I would not be paying a babysitter to go see it, even if I thought it probable we would “like” it. Such a movie is worth making (and I’m glad they did), but it’s a hard sell to ordinary moviegoers; see criterion #3 above.

Making popular movies is hard. My claim here doesn’t belie that. My claim, instead, is that it’s not hard to understand when bad movies, or poorly marketed movies, or movies that have neither reason to exist nor prior built-in appeal, do poorly. We don’t have to pretend not to know.

The issue with Kenobi

It’s not that it’s especially good or especially bad. It’s not that it’s revisiting a time period we’ve seen before. It’s not that it involves old characters and a fair bit of retconning.

It’s not that we’re back on Tatooine (for an episode). It’s not that we see kid Luke or kid Leia. It’s not that Hayden Christiansen is behind the mask (or in flashbacks). It’s not that the stakes are lower than usual. It’s not even that it’s serialized TV rather than a movie—though that’s close.

It’s that it feels like TV. It isn’t cinematic: in scope, in style, in ambition, in storytelling. Both its visual grammar (on the screen) and its literal grammar (on the page) are fit for the age of binging and streaming, not for a once-in-a-lifetime must-see cultural event.

There are no stunning landscapes. There is no moving music or even a memorable theme. The action is indistinguishable from other generic CGI-fests today, only somehow smaller. Even with the deep Disney pockets and the Star Wars brand, the show feels like it was made on the cheap: on soundstages, before green screens, with small crews, smaller casts (regular and extra), yet without the modest grandeur of The Mandalorian manufactured by StageCraft.

Compare with Top Gun Maverick, which for all its “legacy sequel” status is so big, so impressive, so jaw-on-the-floor awesome that it’s already the biggest hit in Tom Cruise’s 40-year career. It bends your will into submission by virtue of nothing so much as its self-confidence as pure spectacle.

By contrast, there is neither spectacle nor patience in Obi-Wan Kenobi, no pregnant pauses or non-filler geography. The editing is ho-hum. Viewers find themselves in the land of close-ups, the default setting of television cinematography. No one is winning any awards for this show.

That’s it. That’s the problem. Ewan McGregor is doing yeoman’s work, as ever. Kid Leia is cute. I didn’t mind the Anakin flashback. Nor do I mind looking to the animated series as a template here. But that template is for character, canon, and nuances of character. The visual, aural, and storytelling template is 1977—full stop.

Whether or not the finale lands the plane without eye-rolling, nostalgia bombs, or massive canon-revision—that is, even if the last episode doesn’t ruin anything in the OT and actually turns out to add a thing or two—it will still not have been worth the effort. Kennedy, Favreau, Filoni, et al have to start thinking bigger. They have to start unleashing their writers and directors while resisting, at all costs, the siren song of a Star Wars analogue to the Marvel in-house style, which is no style at all.

The worst eventuality here is not to make something bad, a la Episode II. The far greater sin is to make something boring, even forgettable. And I expect to have forgotten this series by year’s end.

Pseudo-Scorsese

It’s come to my attention that there are discrepancies in the filmography of American director Martin Scorsese. To be precise, certain films attributed to him evidently qualify as pseudirectoria (pseudokinemagraphia? pseudeikonzon?)—that is, instances of unnamed others claiming his name as director of a cinematic artifact, although the evidence suggests otherwise.

Consider three films, released across more than two decades’ time: The Age of Innocence (1993), Kundun (1997), and Silence (2016). Their subject matter, respectively: a historical romantic drama set in the 1870s among the upper class; the life of the Dalai Lama, set in Tibet in the middle of the twentieth century; and the plight of Catholic converts and their missionary priests in seventeenth century Japan.

Are we really supposed to believe that the director responsible for these films is the same man behind the camera—during the same time span!—for Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)? Not to mention Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), and Raging Bull (1980)? It beggars belief.

The visual grammar; the composition and editing; the characters, time periods, settings, and cultures; the dialogue; the feel—it’s all off. Someone else has been posing as Martin Scorsese in plain sight. Any honest comparison between the two groups of films will render the same result; any protest to the contrary is clearly a matter of special pleading.

The upshot: We have a Pseudo-Scorsese on our hands. The time has come to weigh the evidence and thence to sort the “official” or “received” Scorsese oeuvre into those films that are “authentic” or “undisputed” and those that are “inauthentic” or “disputed.” Historical and artistic integrity demands no less.

Personal tech update

It’s been an unplanned, unofficial Tech Week here at the blog. I’ve been meaning to write a mini-update on my tech use—continuing previous reflections like these—so now seems as good a time as any.

–I deactivated my Twitter account on Ash Wednesday, and I couldn’t be happier about the decision. It was a long time coming, but every time I came close to pulling the trigger I froze. There was always a reason to stay. Even Lent provided an escape hatch: my second book was being published right after Easter! How could I possibly hawk my wares—sorry, “promote my work in the public sphere”—if I wasn’t on Twitter? More to the point, does a writer even exist if he doesn’t have a Twitter profile? Well, it turns out he does, and is much the healthier for it. I got out pre–Elon Musk, too, which means I’ve been spared so much nonsense on the proverbial feed. For now, in any case, I’m keeping the account by reactivating then immediately deactivating it every 30 days; that may just be a sort of digital security blanket, though. Life without Twitter is good for the soul. Kempis and Bonhoeffer are right. Drop it like the bad habit that it is. Know freedom.

–I deleted my Facebook account two or three years ago, and I’ve never looked back. Good riddance.

–I’ve never had Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, or any of the other nasty social media timesucks folks devote themselves to.

–For the last 3-4 years I’ve been part of a Slack for some like-minded/like-hearted Christian writers, and while the experience has been uniformly positive, I realized that it was colonizing my mind and thus my attention during the day, whether at work or at home. So, first, I set up two-factor authentication with my wife’s phone, which means I need her to give me access if I’m signed out; and, second, I began limiting my sign-ins to two or three Saturdays per month. After a few months the itch to be on and participate constantly in conversations has mostly dribbled away. Now I might jump on to answer someone’s question, but only for a few minutes, and not to “stay on” or keep up with all the conversations. I know folks for whom this isn’t an issue, but I’ve learned about myself, especially online, that it’s all or nothing. As with Twitter, I had to turn off the spout, or I would just keep on drinking until it made me sick.

–I don’t play video games, unless it’s a Mario Kart grand prix with my kiddos.

–I only occasionally use YouTube; nine times out of ten it’s to watch a movie trailer. I cannot relate to people, whether friends and students, who spend hours and hours on YouTube. I can barely watch a Zoom conversation for five minutes before needing to do something else with my time.

–I subscribe to Spotify, because it’s quality bang for your buck. I’d love to divest from it—as my friend Chris Krycho constantly abjures me to do—but I’m not sure how, should I want to have affordable, legal access to music (for myself as well as my family).

–I subscribe to Audible (along with Libby), because I gave up podcasts for audiobooks last September, a decision about which I remain ecstatic, and Audible is reasonably priced and well-stocked and convenient. If only it didn’t feed the Beast!

–I happily use Instapaper, which is the greatest app ever created. Hat tip to Alan Jacobs, from whom I learned about it in, I believe, his book Reading for Pleasure in an Age of Distraction. I’ve even paid to use the advanced version, and will do so again in the future if the company needs money to survive.

–I’ve dumbed down my iPhone as much as is in my power to do. I’ve turned off location services, the screen is in grayscale, and I’m unable to access my email (nor do I have my password memorized, so I can’t get to my inbox even if I’m tempted). I can call or text via Messages or WhatsApp. I have Audible, Spotify, and Instapaper downloaded. I use Marco Polo for friends and family who live far away. And that’s it. I aim to keep my daily phone usage to 45 minutes or so, but this year it’s been closer to 55-75 minutes on average.

–I use a MacBook Pro for work, writing, and other purposes; I don’t have an iPad or tablet of any kind. My laptop needs are minimal. I use the frumpy, clunky Office standbys: Word, Excel, PowerPoint. I’ve occasionally sampled or listened to pitches regarding the glories of alternatives to Word for writing, but honestly, for my needs, my habits, and my convenience, Word is adequate. As for internet browsing, I use Firefox and have only a few plug-ins: Feedly for an RSS reader, Instapaper, and Freedom (the second greatest app ever)—though I’ve found that I use Freedom less and less. Only when (a) I’m writing for 2-4 or more hours straight and (b) I’m finding myself distracted by the internet (but don’t need access to it); I pay to use it but may end up quitting if I find eventually that I’ve developed the ability to write without distraction for sustained periods of time.

–I’ve had a Gmail account since 2007; I daydream about deleting my Google account and signing up for some super-encrypted unsurveiled actually-private email service (again, Krycho has the recs), but so far I can’t find it within me to start from scratch and leave Gmail. We’ll see.

–I have the same dream about Amazon, which I use almost every day, order all my books from, have a Prime account with, and generally resent with secret pleasure (or enjoy with secret resentment). Divesting from Amazon seems more realistic than doing so from either Apple or Google, but then, how does anyone with a modest budget who needs oodles of books (or whatever) for their daily work purchase said books (or whatever) from any source but Amazon? That’s not a nut I’ve managed to crack just yet.

–I don’t have an Alexa or an Echo or an Apple Watch or, so far as I know, any species of the horrid genus “the internet of things.”

–In terms of TV and streaming services, currently my wife and I pay for subscriptions with … no platforms, unless I’m mistaken. At least, we are the sole proprietors of none. On our Roku we have available Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+, Apple+, HBO Max, and YouTubeTV. But one of these is free with our cellular service (Hulu), two of them are someone else’s account (Apple+ and YouTubeTV), and another is a byproduct of free shipping (Prime). We pay a nominal fee as part of extended family/friend groups for Netflix and HBO, and honestly we could stop tomorrow and we’d barely notice. We paid a tiny fee up front for three years of Disney+, and if we could have only one streaming service going forward, that’s what we’d keep: it has the best combination of kids, family, classic, and grown-up selections, and you can always borrow a friend’s password or pay one month’s cost to watch a favorite/new series/season before canceling once it’s over. As for time spent, across a semester I probably average 3-7 hours of TV per week. I’ve stopped watching sports altogether, and I limit shows to either (a) hands-down excellence (Better Call Saul, Atlanta, Mare of Easttown), (b) family entertainment (basically, Marvel and Star Wars), or (c) undemanding spouse-friendly fare (Superstore, Brooklyn 99, Top Chef). With less time during the school year, I actually end up watching more TV, because I’m usually wiped by the daily grind; whereas during the summer, with much more leisure time, I end up reading or doing other more meaningful things. I will watch the NBA playoffs once grades are submitted, but then, that’s nice to put on in the background, and the kids enjoy having it on, too.

–Per Andy C.’s tech-wise advice, we turn screens off on Sundays as a general rule. We keep an eye on screen time for the kids Monday through Thursday, and don’t worry about it as much on Friday and Saturday, especially since outdoor and family and friend activities should be happening on those days anyway.

–Oddly enough, I made it a goal in January of this year to watch more movies in 2022. Not only am I persuaded that, my comparison to television, film is the superior art form, and that the so-called golden age of peak TV is mostly a misnomer, I regret having lost the time—what with bustling kids and being gainfully employed—to keep up with quality movies. What time I do have to watch stuff I usually give to TV, being the less demanding medium: it’s bite size, it always resolves (or ends on a cliffhanger), and it doesn’t require committing to 2-3 hours up front. I’ve mostly not been successful this year, but I’m hoping the summer can kickstart my hopes in that area.

–If I’m honest, I find that I’ve mostly found a tolerable equilibrium with big-picture technology decisions, at least on an individual level. If you told me that, in two years, I no longer used Amazon, watched even less TV, and traded in my iPhone for a flip phone, I’d be elated. Otherwise, my goals are modest. Mainly it has to do with time allocation and distraction at work. If I begin my day with a devotional and 2-4 hours of sustained reading all prior to opening my laptop to check email, then it’s a good day. If the laptop is opened and unread mail awaits in the inbox, it’s usually a waste of a day. The screen sucks me in and the “deep work” I’d hoped to accomplish goes down the drain. That may not be how it goes for others, but that’s how it is with me.

–The only other tech-related facet of my life I’m pondering is purchasing a Kobo Elipsa (again, on the recommendation of Krycho and some other tech-wise readerly types). I’m not an especially good reader of PDFs; usually I print them out and physically annotate them. But it would be nice to have a reliable workflow with digital files, digital annotations, and searchable digital organization thereof. It would also help with e-reading—I own a 10-year old Kindle but basically never use it—not only PDFs for work but writings in the public domain, ePub versions of new books I don’t need a physical copy of (or perhaps can only get a digital version of, for example, via the library), and Instapaper-saved articles from online sources. I’ve never wanted a normal tablet for this purpose because I know I’d just be duped into browsing the web or checking Twitter or my inbox. But if Kobo is an ideal balance between a Kindle and an iPad, designed for the sole purpose for which I need it, then I may end up investing in it here in the next year or two.

Masterly Spielberg

I’ve written before of my love for Steven Spielberg (whose critical fortunes, having waxed and waned over the decades, seem to have settled into a sort of consensus: whatever your personal feelings for this or that movie of his from the past 10-15 years, it’s undeniable that the man knows where to put the camera), and Tim Markatos, whose writing on film you should read and whose newsletter you should subscribe to, captures perfectly what makes Spielberg so great in his explanation for placing West Side Story at #5 on his list of the best 25 films of 2021:

This movie is so well blocked that it simply embarrasses nearly every other movie released this year (including some of the highbrow fare on this very list). Mise en scène alone doesn’t make a movie (“But what if it does?” whispers the little devil-horned Janusz Kamiński that suddenly appeared on my shoulder), but it matters more for a musical. The Spielberg–Kushner rendition of West Side Story lets the Robert Wise version alone and leans harder into political awareness (a key distinction, I would say, from political correctness) not merely by writing it into the script but also by building it into every material aspect of the production. Sometimes it gets a bit hokey, Ansel Elgort brings all his personal baggage to the screen in a way that will either alienate you or not, but none of that matters because I will watch “America” approximately 300 times once it’s inevitably uploaded to YouTube and be floored by Spielberg’s total mastery of this medium every single time.

I will, too. “Total mastery” is right. In those areas of which he is master, the man is without peer.

Bezos ad astra (TLC, 4)

In his latest newsletter—is it the best going? It’s up there—L. M. Sacasas writes about what he calls “earth alienation.” He uses Arendt and McLuhan’s distinct reflections on the significance of Sputnik as a frame for considering Jeff Bezos’s recent comments about space exploration and colonization. Here’s where he quotes and unpacks Bezos:

During his portion of the proceedings . . . Bezos articulated a vision for the creation of space colonies that would eventually be home to millions of people, many of who would be born in space and would visit earth, Bezos explained, “the way you would visit Yellowstone National Park.”

That’s a striking line, of course. It crystalizes the earth-alienation Arendt was describing in Prologue of The Human Condition. It is, in fact, a double alienation. It is not only that these imagined future humans will no longer count the earth their home, it is also that they will perceive it, if at all, as a tourist trap, a place with which we have no natural relation and know only as the setting for yet another artificial consumer experience. And, put that way, I hope the seemingly outlandish nature of Bezos’s claims will not veil the more disturbing reality, which is that we don’t need to be born in space to experience the earth in precisely this mode.

To be sure, Bezos makes a number of statements about how special and unique the earth is and about how we must preserve it at all costs. Indeed, this is central to Bezos’s pitch. In his view, humanity must colonize space, in part, so that resource extraction, heavy industry, and a sizable percentage of future humans can be moved off the planet. It is sustainability turned on its head: a plan to sustain the present trajectories of production and consumption.

Sacasas comments:

Arendt believed, however, that the modern the desire to escape the earth, understood as a prison of humanity, was strikingly novel in human history. “Should the emancipation and secularization of the modern age,” Arendt wondered, “which began with a turning-away, not necessarily from God, but from a god who was the Father of men in heaven, end with an even more fateful repudiation of an Earth who was the Mother of all living creatures under the sky?”

We’ll return to that Arendt quote. After meditating on the set of issues it raises, Sacasas concludes:

What alternative do we have to this stance toward the world that is characterized by a relation of mastery and whose inevitable consequence is a generalized degree of alienation, anxiety, and apprehension?

We have a hint of it in Arendt’s warning against a “future man,” who is “possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.”  We hear it, too, in Wendell Berry’s poetic reminder that “We live the given life, not the planned.” It is, I would say, a capacity to receive the world as gift, as something given with an integrity of its own that we do best to honor. It is, in other words, to refuse a relation of “regardless power, ” in Albert Borgmann’s apt phrase, and to entertain the possibility of inhabiting a relation of gratitude and wonder.

Go read the whole thing. I can’t do it justice in a few quotes, not to mention the way in which every one of Sacasas’s newsletters is part of a larger, coherent whole. It brought something to mind, though, a recent film that seems to me a perfect example of the phenomenon he is describing, precisely in existential and aesthetic terms. Whether or not it is an illustration or a critique of that phenomenon is an open question.

The film is Ad Astra, which somehow was released only two years ago. (Every pre-pandemic cultural artifact feels much older than it is.) Written and directed by the great James Gray, Ad Astra (“to the stars”) tells of an astronaut, played by Brad Pitt, who goes on a mission to find his father near the planet Neptune, who may or may not have finally discovered extraterrestrial life. Pitt plays his character, Roy, with a perfectly controlled flat affect: his stoic courage is actually the surface of a dying, or dead, inner life. He lacks what he most desires, namely presence: to himself, his ex-wife, his estranged father. Haunted by his mental monologue, Roy’s voyage to the stars to find his father and/or life beyond the human is at once a metaphorical and literal, allegorical and spiritual journey into the heart of darkness.

When the film came out I didn’t write about it in a formal venue, but I did tweet about it. So let me take the opportunity to unfold one of my “Twitter loci communes.” First read Alissa Wilkinson’s excellent review for Vox, then Nick Olson’s lovely thread. (Also a bit from the indispensable Tim Markotos: “Penal Substitutionary Atonement: The Movie flirts with Freud and Nietzsche before finally settling on Beauty will save the world.” LOL.) Now here’s what I said:

Grateful to @alissamarie for this beautiful review of Ad Astra. Couldn't agree more. I'll have to keep pondering whether there's something potentially transcendent there, or if it's as deeply immanent-humanist as Gray's oeuvre suggests.

She's also right that this is the sort of a-theological spiritual art that religious people should celebrate, contemplate, and (quite possibly) read against itself. I mean, what a beautiful film.

It's also something of an anti-Interstellar. What finally doomed that film was its navel-gazing: when we look at the stars, we see ourselves blinking back. Here, Gray's vision is subtly different: the stars are “empty,” but beautiful in their sheer existence for all that.

And that very beauty and wonder of the ostensible nothingness—that the cosmos exists at all rather than nothing—generates not only awe at the mystery of life but love for those closest to us. That's what Nolan sought to accomplish, I think, but failed where Gray succeeds.

The next day I read Nick’s thread and riffed on this tweet of his in particular:

The TOL [Tree of Life] parallels come easily. One way of putting it is that this is TOL without Mother. Maybe in spite of itself, it winds up being a film that’s in search of Mother in lieu of distant Father. AD ASTRA’s “we’re all we’ve got” is also that TOL cut from the universe to the infant.

Here’s what I wrote:

This is good too. If you can accept the father/mother // nature/grace symbology of Tree of Life then apply them to Ad Astra, what you have in the latter is nature without grace, because a creation without a creator.

Then you can read it one of two ways: 1. The father's despair is a proper response to the realization that the universe is bereft of Logos (much less a Logos incarnate), and the son in effect embraces a false consciousness in the face of a potential nihilism.

2. The son's affective embrace of an "empty" cosmos is the proper response because "Man" has been searching for meaning (or ratio) apart from "Woman" (here, a figure for concrete love, rather than abstract wanderlust).

Again, you've got to accept that gendered symbology on the front end, but if you do, and you import it from Malick (and other sources!), then Gray is doing a lot here with his choice of characters. (Also makes me think of what role Ruth Negga serves in the story . . .)

Having said all that, though what I most want is to read the film in the vein of #2, inflected theologically, I have to admit that if I'm going to read the film against itself, #1 is the more penetrating as well as the more provocative route.

The next day I expanded on this line of thought, using an interview of Gray on one of The Ringer’s podcasts, The Big Picture:

In that James Gray podcast interview, he says he wanted it to star someone like Brad Pitt, who brings with him a “myth” or “mythology” that he, Gray, could then deconstruct in the film—referring to Ad Astra as “a deconstruction of masculinity.” Pairs well with the thread below.

Not only is Brad Pitt a global icon of “manhood” or “masculinity.” In Tree of Life he literally plays “Father/masculine” (=nature), as opposed to “Mother/feminine” (=grace) (Jessica Chastain). Gray then makes him a Son who spurns Woman while searching for the absent Father.

And in the process (again, literally) cutting the umbilical cord (in the heavens!) connecting him to the Father, thence to return to Mother Earth—now no Fall but a reditus of the aboriginal pilgrim-exitus—to reunite masculine (nature) with feminine (grace) via the bond of love.

I also had the following “aha” moment:

Somehow it only just occurred to me that Ad Astra opens with ha-adam, the royal Man (Brad Pitt)—husband of Eve (Liv Tyler), whose name (Roy) means "king" (le roi)—literally falling from heaven to earth.

Now I realize Brad Pitt's character's name, Roy, has not only royal connotations (Leroy, le roi, the king) but also a biblical-theological connection (el-roi, Hagar's naming of the Lord as God-who-sees). Roy wants truly to be seen by his father/God—a hope left unfulfilled.

Now recall that Arendt quote from above:

Should the emancipation and secularization of the modern age, which began with a turning-away, not necessarily from God, but from a god who was the Father of men in heaven, end with an even more fateful repudiation of an Earth who was the Mother of all living creatures under the sky?

It seems to me that Ad Astra is, from start to finish, one long cinematic meditation on this question. And whereas my initial reading of the film leaned immanent-cum-nihilistic, I feel prompted to revise that reading in a more hopeful, if still humanist, direction.

Sacasas writes of “Arendt’s warning against a ‘future man,’ who is ‘possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.’” In this respect Pitt’s Roy might be construed as that “future man” who goes beyond himself by his own means but, ultimately, reaches the end of his tether—again, this happens quite literally in the film—before returning to earth to accept the limits of finite human life for what it is: a gift. As given, it is not subject to the manipulations or technologies of man, but as what it is it is good in itself, howsoever concrete, delimited, and therefore subject to loss. The gift is a mystery from without and can only be accepted with gratitude or spurned with ingratitude. Though Gray insists on an immanent frame—indeed, we are given to understand that going beyond that frame is itself a rejection of the gift of finite existence—the film’s closing scene is less a period than a question mark. Roy accepts the gift in love, and as love. But if a gift, then a Giver? If love, then a Lover?

The question is apt for Bezos and his ilk. To escape the immanent as immanent is a rejection of transcendence, not its embrace; the technological sublime is a substitute for the beatific vision, not a means of reaching it. Accept earth as the gift that it is, and you will gain heaven with it. Renounce earth for the stars, and you will lose it all.

An alternative Episode IX crawl

Yesterday I wrote about Episode VIII. Unfortunately, we never saw the promise of that great film fulfilled in a sequel that continued its themes and narrative arc. Instead, we got Episode IX, which was dead on arrival.

When I wrote about IX two years ago—a lot of words, by the way—I mentioned an idea for an alternative crawl that would have opened a much different, far better capstone to the Star Wars trilogy of trilogies. I did have an idea, and a good one, if I’m to be trusted; but I’ve since forgotten it. Thinking about VIII yesterday got thinking about IX again, though, so I thought I’d try my hand at that crawl (which, on Earth-2 and/or in the divine mind, not only exists but is followed by an actual Episode IX film written and directed by none other than Rian Johnson). Here it is:

Princess Leia has died.
Her body lies in state on Naboo
during an armistice granted by Kylo Ren,
Supreme Leader of the FIRST ORDER.

As a grateful galaxy gathers to mourn,
Rey, first of a new order of Jedi Knights,
calls together leaders of the RESISTANCE
to prepare a daring attack on Ren’s faltering rule.

But Rey has just received a shocking message.
Kylo Ren wants to meet her—alone—on
the mysterious planet of Myrkr. Is it a trap?
Old friends and new allies assemble to offer
counsel that will decide the fate of the galaxy . . .

The most important thing about an alternative Episode IX—call it alt-IX—is that it avoid Palpatine, Rey’s lineage, and digitally reconstructed Leia. Instead, the way to honor Carrie Fisher’s legacy and abrupt passing would be to explicitly mourn her in the film’s opening. Create a visually and aesthetically impressive funeral for a royal figure. Moreover, let that opening funeral be a hinge for the plot. First, in that it throws our heroes (Rey and Poe especially) off kilter. Second, though, in that it throws our Big Bad, Kylo Ren, even more off balance. Third and finally, in that it only adds to the poignant open-ended question at the close of The Last Jedi: Will ordinary peoples and systems across the galaxy rally to the side of the rebels against the First Order? Here, not only does the story of Luke’s heroism light a fire across the worlds; Leia’s passing calls them to their senses, and they show up en masse to mourn and remember and celebrate her. That presents both opportunities (now the Resistance has numbers on its side) and challenges (who can be trusted among all these new allies and would-be friends?).

As for Ren, he is shaken to the core by the death of his mother—remember, he couldn’t bring himself to kill her in VIII—and this only exacerbates his ill fit as Supreme Leader. Who wants Millennial Darth for a dictator? Besides, wasn’t Vader second to the Emperor? Dissension in the ranks, doubts about Ren’s true intentions, even rumors of spycraft and sabotage begin to unravel the First Order from within.

So Ren flees to Myrkr, a semi-canonical planet from the original Thrawn trilogy that is home to a species of animal that repels the Force. Think of them like Force vacuums; put enough of them in one place, and Force-users can neither feel nor use the Force. To meet Rey on such a planet offers a kind of neutral playing-field, where they can talk rather than fight.

I don’t have the whole film mapped out. In my mind, Rey goes in spite of her advisors’ wishes, in good faith; nor is Ren meaning to spring a trap. But her friends sabotage the meeting, to her surprise, even as Ren’s enemies, in his absence, enact a coup d’état. From there, battle lines as well as alliances are redrawn, and the fight to the finish is begun . . .

UPDATE: I’d forgotten one other idea (taken from my brother Mitch): If VII is about Finn learning not to run away (i.e., the vice of cowardice) and VIII is about Finn learning not to seek a glorious but meaningless death out of blind hatred (i.e., the vice of recklessness), IX needed to conclude his arc through his learning the virtue of courage through daring but prudent military leadership. And so what he does in alt-IX is sow the seeds of doubt and rebellion within and among the First Order’s storm troopers, who (as we know) are not clones but kidnapped and brainwashed orphan children. It is Finn, not Rey, who assumes command of the Resistance following the death of Han, Ackbar, Hondo, and Leia; and in the final battle, it is General Finn who directs the pincer movement of Poe’s squadrons and revolting storm troopers to seize control of the First Order’s home base of operations on some heavily fortified but centrally located planet. That planet in turn becomes New Coruscant, the staging ground for reconstructing oversight and governance by and for the New Republic, which did not and could not die with the destruction of a few planets (in VII), but survives in and beyond the pitiful reign of the First Order, now destroyed once for all.

Or so I imagine. Indulge me my fan-fic imaginings.

Interpreting The Last Jedi

I’m on record, and have been from the beginning, as a lover of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. When I was on Twitter, I enjoyed having friendly—key word, that—debates with others about it. In fact, just last month I introduced myself to a senior academic at another institution, a person I’ve read but have never met before, and as he shook my hand he said, “Oh, I know who you are. You’re the one who thinks The Last Jedi is a good movie.”

Touché!

What I don’t enjoy, however, is the reception of the movie as filtered through the culture war. When that happens, the terms of the debate are prefabricated, overdetermined, and (worst of all) boring. All heat, no light.

But perhaps what’s most annoying is how shoddy so much conventional interpretation, pro and con, of the film is. It’s not just that people have good or bad opinions, more or less well reasoned. It’s that it’s not always clear they’ve seen the movie, or at least paid attention when they did (in the theater, once, four years ago).

So, granted that talking about talking about Star Wars is potentially insufferable and inescapably meta, here goes. Here is what The Last Jedi is and is not about; here is how (not) to talk about it.

1. “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to” is not the theme of the film. It is Kylo Ren’s view, which is not that of either Rey or Rian Johnson.

2. The theme, or one of the major themes, of the film is what one’s relationship to the past, and to venerable tradition, ought to be. Note that that theme is a question. Johnson is asking the audience, as he asks his characters (esp. Luke, Rey, Ren, Finn, and Leia), to decide what that relationship should be. He gives his answer, though you don’t have to agree with it. In a sense, the visceral reaction of a certain segment of fans to the film is itself their answer to the question. As Matt Zoller Seitz has observed, that means the question was one worth asking.

3. Neither Rey nor Luke ultimately answer the question the way Ren does. Luke is tempted to, but the trio of Rey, Leia, and Yoda change his mind.

4. Luke’s answer is not, however, to receive the past as it is; it is not a bare affirmation of the status quo ante; it is not to be silent about the errors and crimes of his forebears. To do that would only perpetuate the cycle he rightly perceives in the decadence of the Jedi: tradition for tradition’s sake; immunity to reform on principle. That way led to disaster.

5. Rey speaks from want and need, desire and innocence; she doesn’t have an argument to make, only an honest appeal for help. But Yoda does have an argument. Yoda understands that failure need not be absolute. Life follows death, good comes from loss, the young learn from the mistakes of the old. Sometimes a fire is cleansing—though purgation is far from pleasant. The same act (burning a tree, say) can come from opposed intentions: one to purify, the other to destroy. Luke’s impetuous urge to annihilate is a form of the latter; Yoda’s lightning from above, the former.

6. Note well: Yoda does not obliterate the sacred Jedi texts. He knows Rey took them when she left. Nor is he impugning them. He’s telling Luke that they have become for him nothing but “a pile of old books,” unread totems of a lost age worthy of little more than repudiation. Thus fossilized, they are useless for Luke, who has reached the end of his path. But not for Rey. She is a new start for the Jedi—one both continuous and discontinuous with the old order.

7. In short, The Last Jedi is about the sublimation of the past—of history, heritage, inheritance, and tradition—neither its rejection as wholly unworthy nor its pristine persistence into the future. Luke was the last Jedi; Rey now is the last Jedi: the eschatological Jedi, the last of the old and the first of the new. The Jedi will continue, though not without change. The blinkered self-regard and decadent haughtiness shall be no more. Padawans in the line of Rey will be Jedi, to be sure; but what it means to be a Jedi will not be the same as it was in the days before Palpatine.

8. Ren’s solution is wrong, therefore, because he believes that his past—his lineage—determines, must determine, who he is. And yet that lineage includes not only Anakin (himself redeemed before the end) but Han and Leia. That is why patricide and matricide are major themes of VII and VIII (following VI). His parents’ living goodness threatens his simultaneous act of self-creation and self-binding to Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side: he will make himself (in spite of his parents) through forced imitation (of his grandfather—not, note, his maternal grandmother!). Killing Snoke is his second act of patricide; the final duel with Luke seems, at first, to permit him the third and final stroke. But he’s robbed of the occasion, just as Vader was with Obi-Wan. He can’t kill the past: even when it dies, it lives on (“See you around kid”).

9. Whatever one thinks of Johnson’s handling of this theme (and I’ve not said anything about Finn or Leia, both of whom come to terms with their own past and its bearing on the future), the important thing to see is that it is an honest grappling with the story of the seven preceding films. It’s an honest reckoning with the through-line that runs across the prequel trilogy, original trilogy, and Abrams’ semi-remake sequel. The story of cyclical decadence and Jedi failure is the subtext of those seven Episodes, considered as a single narrative, and what Johnson does is make that subtext text. Luke comes to terms with one more Jedi Padawan rebelling and murdering his fellow students, having once more been seduced by the Dark Side, and like Obi-Wan and Yoda before him, he runs away into exile and the consolations of self-pity. And then he realizes this very dynamic, in self-conscious reflection, and decides to throw a spoke into the wheel: no more Jedi; no more cycles of Light versus Dark; no more high hopes dashed by devastating failure, and lives lost in the balance. This is where Luke is when the film opens, and it’s the only honest emotional and spiritual place for Luke to be in, given how The Force Awakens ended.

10. In that sense The Last Jedi is indeed a meta-reckoning, as a film, with Star Wars as such. The failure of interpretation is to see it as Johnson disliking Star Wars, either its story or its fans. Instead, it is Johnson putting Star Wars to the test, and seeing whether it will bend or break. The stress test is substantial, but after bending to the breaking point, it snaps back into place: Rey and Luke, together a sort of Jedi apocalypse, save the day; they fight back the First Order, deliver the Resistance from defeat, and light a spark that will burn through the galaxy, inspiring the apathetic and unbelieving to join the fight that will crush the remnants of the Empire once for all. Johnson, like everyone else, loves this franchise; like everyone else, he wanted his heroes to be heroes. But given the cards he was dealt, given the story he’d inherited, he couldn’t cheat. They had to earn it. And so they do.

At any rate, that’s what Episode VIII is about. It’s about other things too. It’s not perfect. And you don’t have to like it, whether or not you think Johnson succeeded in pulling off this particular set of themes. (I certainly don’t like Episode IX, which I prefer to pretend never happened.)

But there’s no question about what Johnson was trying to do; there’s no ambiguity about what the film is up to in this regard. So far as I can tell, there’s nothing to debate there. It can certainly be fun to argue over Star Wars. But only if we know what it is we’re talking about in the first place.

God help me, an MCU viewing order

Regarding the Superhero Industrial Complex I have always felt ambivalent.

On the one hand, I couldn’t agree more with the long exhausted sigh that is the sum total of film critics’ response to the comic book takeover of Hollywood. I wish it were not the case; I wish we still had a diverse array of mid-tier, mid-budget, middlebrow movies made with style and competence for adult consumption; I wish Hollywood did not let the profit motive, and the current fad of capes and tights, determine so much of its offerings—at the very moment that the theater experience is at risk and quality writers (and directors!) are moving to TV.

On the other hand, I don’t hate the MCU. I think few of the Marvel movies stink, most of them are a blast, and some are quite good. My suspicion is that the critical exhaustion with them is due not just to their colonization of cinema, but also to their not being as bad as critics think they ought to be. (By comparison to J.J. Abrams, for example, Kevin Feige comes out smelling like roses.) Moreover, if the Marvel movies existed alongside and within a healthy cinematic ecology of flourishing diverse films made for adults, teenagers, and children alike, I suspect further that most of the ugh and meh tenor of their reception would be muted, or at least marginal.

So, God help me, though I know they aren’t High Art or Great Cinema (yes, I get it, thank you for the reminder, Mr. Scorsese), I enjoy the MCU, and have enjoyed its run since 2008. And now that my oldest two children have gotten to an age where they can be introduced to these movies, I’ve been doing so, slowly, over the last six months, just as I did a couple years prior with Star Wars.

And I’m here to tell you: it’s been fun. Really fun.

And as we draw ever closer to Thanos In Two Acts, as I like to think of Infinity War and Endgame, I’ve drawn up my ideal viewing order for all 24 films of Phases 1-3, at least for elementary-age boys, since they are the sole two-person viewership of my little experiment. Called it the Sacred Order. Here it is, in all its glory:

Part I: Avengers, Made and Unmade

1. Captain America: The First Avenger

2. Iron Man

3. The Incredible Hulk

4. Thor

5. Iron Man 2

6. The Avengers

7. Iron Man 3

8. Captain America: Winter Soldier

9. Thor: The Dark World

10. Avengers: Age of Ultron

11. Ant-Man

12. Captain America: Civil War

Part II: Fallout, Earthly and Cosmic

1. Black Widow (minus post-credits tag)

2. Spider-Man: Homecoming

3. Black Panther

4. Ant-Man and the Wasp (minus mid-credits tag)

5. Captain Marvel (minus mid-credits tag)

6. Guardians of the Galaxy

7. Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2

8. Doctor Strange

9. Thor: Ragnarok

10. Avengers: Infinity War

11. Avengers: Endgame

12. Spider-Man: Far From Home

What’s the logic? What are the benefits? Answers:

• I like sequences organized by character, event, or theme. So, for example, in Part I there are two sets of three films in a row in which Stark (the man or the family name) is central: IM2–AV–IM3 and later AV2–AM–CA3. This keeps the focus on him and his character arc, as well as the consequences that spin out from decisions he makes. (In fact, Tony reappears two films later, in SM1 in Part II, then disappears for seven full movies. That’s good! It clears the path for others to make an impression.)

• I like as well that the division of the 24-film sequence is divided evenly in two; that it focuses on the run-up to the creation of the Avengers and to its rather disastrous dissolution; and that in Part I, apart from two Thor films, it focuses entirely on Earth (and even those two Thor films spend time on Earth, too). It also makes clear that Thanos has basically no narrative role whatsoever in this run of films; Part II, accordingly, is all about (a) the fallout from the Avengers’ dispersal and (b) the slow march to Thanos’s grand entrance on the scene.

• Part II contains, in effect, three mini-sequences: fallout from the events of CA3, while doing double duty as extended introductions to new, important characters; a more expansive look at the cosmic, celestial, and magical side to the universe; and the two-part Thanos epic as climax of all that came before (along with the SM2 epilogue in a minor key).

• The opening of Part I and the closing of Part II form a sort of inclusio for the narrative arcs of both Steve Rogers (who is in five of the 12 films in Part I) and Tony Stark, both of whom are absent (minus Stark in SM1) for nine straight films in Part II. That’s fitting: we don’t see them for a good while, not only because we need to meet some other folks, but also because they’re separated from each other, and suffering the consequences.

• The space sequence of CM–GG–GG2–DS–T3 as a five-film lead-in to AV3–AV4—plus having the latter two as a back-to-back double-header, rather than interrupted (as they were in real life) by AM2 and CM—is ideal. Ideal for world-building, for developing character and narrative momentum, for opening up the larger scope of the story and beginning to point to where it’s headed. It also makes clear that Thor is a part of that world more than he is of Earth’s, and that his story will continue beyond Thanos, unlike Rogers’ and Stark’s.

• Also: Spider-Man stars in the final three-film sequence, and depending on the chronology of Shang-Chi and The Eternals, I could imagine SM3 coming hot on the heels of SM2, in which case you would get a straight shot of four movies in a row featuring everybody’s—especially my boys’—favorite teenage webslinger.

• Finally, this arrangement of the MCU’s first 13 years makes a clean break both for the huge slate of new Disney+ shows (WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, Secret Invasion, She-Hulk, Armor Wars, Ironheart) and for the next Big Step into space, magic, aliens, and the multiverse. Knowing what’s ahead, then, it seems clear (to me at least) that there really are three major movements of the MCU, rather than four phases (governed by chronology and artificially timed/named Avengers films), and we are about to see that third major movement played out in the next three to four years. Given that Part II is all about fallout from Part I, it makes sense that Part III will in turn be all about fallout from Part II: Wanda’s grief and possible breaking-bad, Sam’s acceptance of the mantle/shield, Loki’s pruning from the sacred timeline and introduction to the TVA, Kang’s multiversal war, Quill’s search for Gamora, Yelena’s search for Clint, Clint’s training of a successor, Fury’s (and Monica’s) exploration of space, Carol’s encounter with Kamala, Strange’s adoption of Peter, Peter’s continued maturity … and did I mention the multiverse? Put all these characters and events and hours upon hours of plot together, and you’ve got a jam-packed Part III as a worthy sequel to the previous two Parts.

That, in any case, is how I see it. My boys are eating it up. I’m having a good time, too. Feel free to ignore. But if this is your thing, and you’ve got intrigued little ones, follow my lead and heed the Sacred Order.

Art tonnage

This weekend I watched Steven Soderbergh’s latest film No Sudden Move (available on HBO Max). It’s a modest period heist film, of a piece with Soderbergh’s proclivity to leaven his Major Releases with minor genre exercises. I always enjoy those exercises, and I enjoyed this one, too. It’s restrained, formally inventive, clever, and draws lovely performances out of actors old and new. I especially appreciated seeing Don Cheadle in fine form. I imagine a whole generation of young moviegoers knows Cheadle solely from his role in the Marvel films, which means they think of him as entirely forgettable and therefore dispensable. Not so! (Perhaps his own Disney+ series will rectify that error? Probably not.)

Soderbergh has likened himself, fittingly, to a graffiti artist. He’s a street performer: he does his art quick and dirty, to please his audience and himself—then moves on. His output, as a result, is quite large. Side projects, side hustles, delivery innovation, technical experimentation, multiple films per year: Soderbergh is a jitterbug craftsman, always in motion. He never sits still, just like his camera.

In this Soderbergh belongs to the Stephen King theory of popular art. Even apart from highbrow versus lowbrow (or masscult versus midcult), this theory eschews a vision of creative labors as necessarily painful and painfully long. If you’re a craftsman, then know your craft and do it when called upon, to the best of your abilities, and with celerity. The fact that you’re paid to do it, moreover, is a feature, not a bug; there’s no room here for the pure genius, tortured, alone, and unappreciated. No, you’ve got an audience—readers, viewers—happy and willing to hand over money for what you’ve made. Serve them! Entertain them!

And if not everything you make it a work of world-stopping brilliance, so be it.

This reminds me of John Grisham’s famed writing routine. Every fall, just in time for the airport-heavy travel seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas, he drops a new novel. After taking some well-earned time off, he outlines in great detail the plan for his next novel. In the first week of January, he begins writing: every weekday for x hours per day. By mid-spring he has a rough draft; by mid-summer, the revisions are complete. Then the manuscript is off the printers, and they publish the book by Halloween. Grisham’s been doing this for more than 20 years. You can set your clock by it.

I certainly don’t think the Soderbergh–King–Grisham model is for everyone. Nor do I think their work is flawless as a result of it. High art is high art for a reason; it takes time, passion, and sometimes pain. But not everyone is meant for such heights. I’m happy to live in a world with graffiti artists and airport novelists. The pleasures they afford are real, and they would be far less and few fewer if their authors weren’t willing to risk some measure of artistic failure and critical dismissal in the speed and style of their creation. May their tribe increase.

An action movie pet peeve

I don’t recall when it first appeared on screen, much less when it became a tired trope, but in the last 5-10 years a certain scene has become a mainstay in action movies (and TV shows). The protagonist realizes he needs the help of A Certain Someone. But either the last time he saw A Certain Someone things didn’t end well, or A Certain Someone is an unsavory character who can’t be trusted. With nowhere else to turn, though, our protagonist goes in search of ACS anyway. And when he finds him, one and only one thing happens. ACS sees him coming a mile away; the two of them fight—often quite brutally—until one submits to the other or, more commonly, the fight results in a draw; then, invariably, they look into each other’s eyes, realize the futility of their conflict, let bygones be bygones, and grab a drink.

Not only has this become an eye-rolling cliché. Most of the time it’s nonsensical. The brutality of the fight suggests unquenchable malice; the violence is bloodthirsty and aspirationally fatal. They’re trying to kill each other. Only, moments later, they’re not; all is well, since (as the plot demands) the protagonist’s needs must be met, and the two must join forces to continue his quest.

I’m the last person to suggest genre conventions are a drag. It’s just that this particular convention is stupid. We know what’s going to happen. The fight is devoid of stakes. And the ferocity of the fighting has no connection to what comes next, often mere seconds later. It’s little more than an annoyance; it’s a box to be checked by the screenwriter or writers’ room; it’s a way to kill time, the plot spinning its wheels; it’s unimaginative, and shows the filmmakers are out of ideas.

I’m looking at you, Mandalorian; and you, John Wick; and you too, Black Widow. To name only a few.

Just stop it already.

Kubrick + Spielberg = ?

I had my cinephile card revoked on or around the birth of my first child (there’s only so much time in the day, you know?), but for the first dozen years or so of this century, I was something of a budding film fanatic. I watched American films, foreign films, old films, new films, art films, popular films. I had lists upon lists of directors whose whole oeuvres I devoured one by one.

I always knew I was supposed to like Stanley Kubrick but not Steven Spielberg; something about internet movie culture, or perhaps film-loving dudebro influence, or some such thing. (Maybe I missed the memo to dislike both of them.) But in any case, I couldn’t help myself: while I certainly found a lot to appreciate in Kubrick—I still remember that first 2001 viewing—I loved Spielberg. Adored him, in fact. And not just because his films are popular or entertaining or tailor-made for my tastes. Spielberg may be king of the high middlebrow, but the royalty is earned: his art, to my young eyes, was evident in all that he made. Ever since, I’ve thought that there’s nothing for a director like him to apologize for, and nothing for those who love his work to apologize for, either.

I still remember twenty years ago, the summer before I turned sixteen, dragging my parents, younger siblings, and extended family visiting Austin for the week of the Fourth to see “the latest Spielberg sci-fi blockbuster.” That sci-fi blockbuster was A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Needless to say, no one liked it but me. Better to say, no one knew what they had just watched. I had an inkling, though I knew I needed to read up and re-watch what I had just seen if I wanted to form a complete opinion.

Armond White (a longtime Spielberg lover) calls A.I. the best film of the twenty-first century. Whether or not that’s true, it’s certainly worth remembering, and reconsidering from a critical perspective. Over at The Ringer, Tim Greiving has a long essay exploring the winding route the film took to make it onto the big screen. He focuses in particular on the nature of Kubrick’s demanding, idiosyncratic development process and the shape of his collaboration with Spielberg, who (after Kubrick’s sudden death in 1999) completed the script himself and directed the film in the spirit and style of Kubrick. The result is a cinematic chimera, in every sense of the word. As Greiving writes,

It’s the end of the movie when this cinematic marriage is consummated, and when there’s both harmony and friction. The 2,000-year epilogue and Monica’s temporary return were what Kubrick wanted, not (as some critics supposed) Spielberg’s feel-good addition. Spielberg is not known for ambiguous endings, and this one is ambiguous: Does David die? Was it all for naught? Is it beautiful that a Monica clone gave him the affirmation he needed and then disappeared—or is it macabre? “For me, A.I. can be tragic, but also not soul-crushing,” says Osment, “because there’s a sense of possibility, and you don’t give a definitive answer to something like that. I really like that. That’s what 2001 did so well. That’s something that Kubrick and Spielberg share.” Robards agrees: “It was different, and chewy, and dense. It did have that Kubrick feel to it, right? Dispassionate. At the end, it was great they got together, but also it wasn’t wholly emotional. I think Steven nailed that.”

That feeling my family (and I) felt when the credits rolled was honest: emotional confusion was the point, or rather, it was the inevitable result of Spielberg channeling Kubrick. In my view, the film is unspeakably sad, and the sheen of Spielbergian family love and redemption—the light, the music, the mother and son’s one happy day in a post-human wasteland in which intelligent machines “survive” without knowledge of their own creators—is what lends it its pathos. Far from masking the tragedy, it highlights it. It gives us what we, like David, think we want. But we, who are human, know better than David, who is not. It isn’t real. Nor is he. That perfect day is artifice. It’s fiction. It’s a false “happily ever after” to a would-be fairy tale that is nothing but one long story of rejection and loss. Which only makes it the more unbearable.

That’s my reading, anyway. The depths of the film, the many interpretations it is patient of, are a testament to its unique creation, indeed to its unique duo of creators. In honor of them, give it a second watch this weekend. You could even make it a family viewing.