The Godfather Part III (1990)

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola

Written by: Coppola and Mario Puzo

When tasked with concluding the third “Skywalker Saga” Star Wars trilogy, J.J. Abrams found himself in a bit of rut. While the first two instalments in the series were solid-to-very good, their appeal largely rested on their references to past Star Wars films, rather than the struggles of their new protagonists. As such, Abrams made the highly questionable decision of bringing a major character back from the dead. 

Abrams’ choice was a clunky one, but his motives were understandable. The revival of this villain gave his final film a degree of oomph, and tied it together not only with its predecessors, but with the entire Star Wars cannon.

The Godfather Part III has the opposite problem. Set twenty years after Part II, the film starts strongly with its depiction of a gray haired Michael Corleone being honored in a Catholic ceremony. While his sister Connie (Talia Shire) and ex-wife Kay (Dianne Keaton) show up, the previous two films killed off their share of characters. Tom Hagen, Michael’s lawyer and adopted brother, is also arbitrarily absent. 

The film instead brings in two new protagonists: Michael’s daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola) and Sonny’s out-of-wedlock child Vinny (Andy Garcia). Vinny has ambitions to become involved with the Corleone family, and this causes problems for three reasons: 1) Michael has seemingly succeeded in de-criminalizing the Corleone’s operations 2) Vinny seems like more of a brawling hothead, than a calculating godfather and 3) Vinny and Mary quickly fall in love.

Part III undoubtedly entertains due the ways the aged Michael stands out. Al Pacino’s voice gravelled between Parts II and III. He no longer comes across as the good-boy gone bad. Instead, he is a partially declawed patriarch, eager to be liked, but unable to imagine a world where he doesn’t relate to people from a position of power. Even this strength, however, has a subtle weakness. When Michael defends himself to Kay he explains that he got dragged into mob life due to the noble intent of wanting to protect his family. This explanation ignores that the moments that truly caused Kay to dread Michael are not manifestations of his mob-life per se, but rather of his adherence to social conservatism (belief in revenge, belief that he (and not Kay) is the head of his family, etc). While Michael may not be a reliable narrator when it comes to evaluating his morality, the film’s handling of his moral arc seemingly ignores this nuance in the equation.

Michael’s son Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio) also features in the movie. A promising opera singer, Anthony clearly rejects the idea of following in his father’s footsteps. This is a subversive choice given the symbolic implications of Anthony being present when Michael’s father Vito died, but it is consistent with the film’s observations about mafia power. No don is like those before him. Vito was natural patriarch. Sonny was a natural fighter, but perhaps not a natural leader. And Michael had to alter his personality to rise to the challenge. Anthony may seem like Michael’s natural successor, but Coppola and Puzo rightly realized that the odds of a good-boy going bad were low enough, that the phenomenon would not repeat within a single generation.

Perhaps if Anthony had closer ties to mob life The Godfather III could have more coherently tied the series together. Then again, there are behind the scenes explanations for why the film feels like a slight misfit. For one, Francis Ford Coppola did not see his works as a trilogy, but as duo plus an epilogue. He wanted this film to be called The Death of Michael Corleone, a title consistent with the film’s unique take on the titular character. The studio, however, found the title unacceptable.

Another key point is that Tom was cut from Part III’s script due to a pay dispute with actor Robert Duvall. Tom always struck me as an odd figure in the first two films. He had a unique personality, but not quite unique enough to justify his constant presence. It appears, however, that Coppola’s intent with Tom was to slowly build up a rivalry between him and Michael. Unlike their brothers, Michael and Tom were men of brains not brawn, and both served the family eagerly. That a fight would eventually break out between the adopted, meritocratic second-in-command, and the equally canny hereditary power older seems only natural in The Godfather’s universe.

Part III also gets flack for Sofia Coppola’s acting, which was undoubtedly flung all-the-harder due to her being the director’s daughter. Coppola’s first scene, one in which she flirts with Vinny, however, is solid. Her voice only turns to monotone in later scenes when she shares somewhat expositional dialogue with Vinny about his criminal behavior. Much like Michael and Appolonia, in the first film, Vinny and Mary’s relationship evolves from one of flirtation to one of passionate love almost immediately. Perhaps the problem therefore, is not Sofia’s acting, but Ford Coppola and Puzo’s failure to write good lines and scenes in the build up of relationships.

The blessing and curse of The Godfather Part III is that it doesn’t have a “Palpatine is back” moment. Coppola and Puzo are good at what they do, and as such their work is an entertaining one, rife with great cinematography and memorable characters (Connie has evolved from innocent bystander, to spoiled family princess, to family co-conspirator). But is the film a true closer? Does its ending have the dramatic effect its writers would have hoped for. Unfortunately not. That said, that Coppola and Puzo made not one, but two movies (in the same series!) that are considered to be amongst the best of all time is a huge accomplishment. One can hardly blame them that Part III only in B+ territory.

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Directed by: J.J. Abrams Written by: Abrams and Chris Terrio

Damnit Disney!

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, a young man named Luke Skywalker, and his two robot sidekicks experienced the archetypal hero’s journey arc, inspiring generations of diverse film fans. Two decades after introducing Luke to the world, George Lucas decided to launch a prequel Star Wars trilogy to mirror the first: a villain’s journey to counter the hero’s journey. Less than two decades later a sequel trilogy was launched. And with that launch, the balance in the force was shattered. Gone was a pair of trilogies on good and evil. Now there are three trilogies united only in that they feature common characters and families.

If you read that paragraph as jaded, you’d be correct. Upon seeing The Rise of Skywalker I couldn’t help but observe what Disney had done to the series. A narratively visionary cinematic text was extended, without literary justification, because such a series could sell.

But don’t let my cynicism break you. The Rise of Skywalker is no pointless Lion King remake. The people behind it were undoubtedly inspired and put passion into their work. For all its sloppiness, The Rise of Skywalker is still quite enjoyable. It almost has a “so bad its good” feel to it, except its not actually that bad.

“Disney’s hand” is detectable in The Rise of Skywalker in the film’s opening title crawl. Since new Star Wars movies started coming out under Disney’s ownership, all of them have appealed to nostalgia. Spinoff film Rogue One featured a CGI recreation of  a long dead actor who played a generic, but prominent role in the first Star Wars film. Solo, another spinoff, features a surprise twist, revealing a certain character to be alive and well. And the sequel trilogy itself features numerous characters who resemble those from the past: Maz Kanata is Yoda, BB-8 is R2-D2, Captain Phasma is Boba Fett, etc.

Anyway, if you want to enter the Rise of Skywalker with absolutely zero spoilers, stop reading here. That said, the title crawl for The Rise of Skywalker is provocative in that rather than simply providing a little context (ie the established protagonists are on a certain planet x years after the last film), it instead rushes the series forward. “Palpatine is back,” it announces bluntly!

This title crawl speaks both to why I love and can deride The Rise of Skywalker. On the one hand, the hit of nostalgia worked. I was happy to see Palpatine again, and got a kick out of seeing his interactions with the trilogy’s new characters. On the other hand, I still sensed the clunkiness of the film introducing a game changing villain out of nowhere.

Palpatine aka Darth Sidius (played in all three trilogies by Ian McDiarmid), has a fairly minor roll in the original Star Wars films. He is a flat character by design, who exists primarily to provide an infrastructure of evil from which the more complex Darth Vader can differentiate himself. In the prequel trilogy Palpatine has a more prominent role. However, with the exception of the prequel trilogy’s final film, he isn’t the most recognizable character (when I first watched The Phantom Menace as an eight or nine year old, I can’t say I paid much attention to the identities of the bland, politician characters).

In short, when Palpatine is introduced to the sequel trilogy, he’s not a character who can be brought in subtly. Instead he has to be announced: Hey remember that guy? He was Darth Vader’s boss and now HE’S BACK!

And once Palpatine is back, he does not have much to offer, save for McDiarmid’s wonderfully sinister delivery. Once again he is a very powerful, yet one-dimensional super villain. And while his return from the grave makes sense canonically (the character preached about immortality in the prequel trilogy), it cements the sequel trilogy as one about nostalgia-gimmicks, rather than one that truly explores ideas untouched by the previous Star Wars  series.

The Set Up

Not all of The Rise of Skywalker’s messiness can be pinned on those who created the film. The film, it seems, was once intended to be centred around Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), a goal that on the one hand could not be abandoned, but on the other, was rendered near impossible by Fisher’s untimely death.

The sequel trilogy’s three young protagonists: Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac), are somewhat mild mannered compared to their predecessors from the original series. While nominally about its new characters, The Force Awakens’ is really Han Solo’s belated coming-of-age tale. The second sequel film, The Last Jedi, then centres around Luke Skywalker having come-of-age and and needing to come back again. 

The Rise of Skywalker, by contrast, did not have a beloved older hero to focus on. Instead, it was forced to truly centre its young protagonists. This proved a challenge, since the sequel trilogy’s previous two films went back and forth on who exactly their protagonists were.

The Force Awakens presented itself as a tale with two compelling protagonists: Rey, who leaves behind a life of oppression and abandonment to become a warrior, and Finn, who defects from the stormtroopers (showing that there are faces behind those masks), to join the rebellion. This two-hero structure felt fresh and could have been promising.

In The Last Jedi, writer-director Rian Johnson found more screentime for the series’ supposed third protagonist, Poe, but in the process he de-emphasized the significance of Finn. In the context of Johnson’s film, this did not feel like a sacrifice, however. The Last Jedi sought to give the sequel trilogy a purpose other than being a sequel. The Last Jedi subverted the moral standards of the previous Star Wars films, by suggesting that mystical hereditary orders like the Jedi, need not be the be-all and end all of heroism. Johnson hammered down this message by adding a fourth (and non-magical) hero to the group, Rose Tico (Kelly-Marie Tran), as well as by including a sequence in which a group of impoverished children express their interest in joining the rebellion.

While The Rise of Skywalker maintained continuity with The Last Jedi, it threw away its proletarian vision. Rose is relegated to near-cameo status, and the idea of new people joining the rebellion is depoliticized and represented as a mere convenience. That said, while J.J. Abrams threw away one of Johnson’s characters, he didn’t make up for what Johnson did to one of his own. Finn is not restored to his co-hero status from The Force Awakens. Instead, he, along with Poe, is portrayed as a mere travelling companion to Rey (along with Chewbaca (Jonoas Suotamo), BB-8 and C3-PO (Anthony Daniels)). While the film’s iteration of its three protagonists has a youthful, comradely charm to it (Rey, Finn and Poe take on a Harry, Ron and Hermione vibe), the underdevelopment of Finn and the abandonment of Rose still feel like frustrating plot holes.

What Could Have Been Done

The Rise of Skywalker does a lot to endear itself. C3-PO’s prominence in the film makes up for what the other two prequel films forgot (that the original, and even the prequel trilogy, were in a way defined by the prominence they gave to their hapless droids). Another of the original series’ actors (Billy Dee Williams) also appears in the film, but while his presence is a nice surprise, it also doesn’t do much for the plot. In short, Rise of Skywalker’s problem is not one of entertainment value. Rather, it was a film that I liked enough to leave me frustrated that it didn’t push itself to be the classic on paper that it is pretending to be in my heart.

Ideally, The Rise of Skywalker could have found a way to take Rian Johnson’s themes from The Last Jedi to some sort of conclusion. In my review of The Last Jedi I wrote of the cleverness of the sequel trilogy being centred around two young villains: the Vader-idolizing Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), an arguable allegory to the online far-right. The Rise of Skywalker, however, arbitrarily cuts Hux’s screentime, introducing another officer in his place, General Pryde (Richard E. Grant). Pryde’s only purpose seems to be vaguely resembling Grand Moff Tarkin. Furthermore, the film also undermine’s Johnson’s attempt to question the importance of heredity in the Star Wars universe.

That said, even if J.J. Abrams decided he didn’t want to continue down Rian Johnson’s ideological path (and in fairness, perhaps Johnson’s ideas were too completely iterated to be expanded upon in a sequel), there are still ways The Rise of Skywalker could have made itself, and its trilogy, more thematically coherent. The sequel trilogy relied on characters from Star Wars’ past to give it charm and character development arcs. The Rise of Skywalker may have originally intended to do that through Leia, and ultimately did it through Palpatine, a character who is, again, intentionally written to be flat, thus limiting his dramatic utility. 

I propose that if The Rise of Skywalker truly wanted to work with Palpatine, truly wanted the power of the series’ past, and truly wanted to bring all nine Skywalker Saga films together, than the actor they really should have brought back was Hayden Christensen (he played some friend of Palpatine’s called Anakin in the prequel trilogy). While admittedly, he would have to have appeared as a force ghost, this would not have been too much of a stretch given the beyond the grave powers that the sequel trilogy applied to two other characters.

Star Wars is a massive franchise. It has made George Lucas a very wealthy man. Still, the fact that the series was one person’s passion project, contributes to the way that I enjoy it. It’s an action series, but one with roots in mythology and cinema, and one with a sense of humor. Disney has eroded at that charm: eroded, but not destroyed. The Rise of Skywalker is the first Star Wars film, where Disney’s erosion is unmistakably visible. But unless you’re Anakin and “don’t like sand,” I’m sure in your heart you’ll find, the force is still with this one.

Knives Out (2019)

Written and directed by: Rian Johnson

With a relatively short filmography to his name Rian Johnson can be said to be “Mr. Subversion.” In 2012 he scored praise for Looper a film rooted in the mind-games of time travel, and in 2017 he polarized fans with his contribution to the Star Wars sequel trilogy. With Knives Out it would seem Johnson took a step back from the identity he cultivated with Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In the words of A.A. Dowd “[Johnson is] unwilling to betray [our] trust [and thus] opt[ed] for a reasonable outcome over an overwhelmingly shocking one.”  In short, Knives Out is not a film defined by a shocking plot twist. That does not mean, however, it does not find a path to being subversive.

We live in a society where movies are marketed based on the actors they star. Knives Out is a murder mystery about the death of 85-year-old crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), and his family members played by Jamie-Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Katherine Langford, Chris Evans, Jaeden Martell and Riki Lindhome are the suspects. Throw in a cop played by Sorry to Bother You’s Lakeith Stanfield and a cartoonish detective played by Daniel Craig, and you have what, certainly by indie standards, is a star-studded movie. If one saw trailers or even just the poster going into Knives Out, one might expect it to be an ensemble-based comedy film, where each character is given ample time to develop their quirk. In the actual movie, however, that’s not the case. The film ends up zeroing in on one murder suspect in particular: Thrombey’s nurse, Marta (Ana de Armas). In other words, Knives Out may lack the provocative moments Johnson gave us in The Last Jedi, but its overall structure is a subversive one.

I should disclose here that I’m perhaps not the best reviewer to comment on Knives Out. I get anxious in films that revolve around the potential incarceration of one or more characters, and as such I may not have been a in a mental position to take in the full scope of the film’s humor. That said, when it comes to the film’s subversive plot structure I feel comfortable in saying its one I didn’t quite care for while watching the movie, but came to appreciate retroactively. During the film, I absolutely wanted to see more of its ensemble cast. It seemed liked a writing omission for Johnson to act like he had created all of these characters, only to reduce our memories of them to a few lines at the beginning of the feature. The brilliance of Johnson’s decision to turn his ensemble-whodunnit into a drama about Marta, however, is that it serves as a statement on justice and how it is misrepresented in fictional mysteries.

Marta is presented as a well-liked, caring nurse who cannot tell a lie (I won’t spoil the interesting way in which that comes out). In a standard mystery novel that would just be information: information that could be used to establish Marta’s innocence, or provocatively twisted to prove her guilt. Johnson, however, is too empathetic to write his characters in such a way. In Knives Out innocent or guilt isn’t a random, unpredictable answer to an eclectic series of facts, but is instead rooted in the overall nature and social status of its characters.

Despite my respect for its attempt to add morality to the whodunnit-genre, I do have a slight political disagreement with Knives Out. While the film seems to be a commentary on economic inequality, its rift is not actually with wealth, but with the entitled-mentality that wealth tends to produce. As a result the film is less nuanced and human in its examination of entitlement as say Arrested Development is, and less insistent on positing an alternative morality to that of the entitled rich as is Beatriz at Dinner. The true injustice of wealth lies in the fact that our world is one of limited resources, and so long as that is the case, the wealth of some will always come at the expense of others. Knives Out ignores this material problem with wealth, instead making the issue an a-material one about righteousness vs selfishness.

Another question about the film’s politics is how it deals with the issue of manslaughter. While this is a hard subject to discuss without spoiling the film, a segment of the movie’s plot hints at how tragic accidents can render people vulnerable to the full force of the criminal justice system. This is an issue the film ultimately dodges, but I was left wondering whether it is a subject Johnson contemplated in a moral/political manner, or whether it is a mere fact in his mystery: an exception to his general effort to non-randomize truth and justice.

Knives Out draws its appeal from a combination of funny lines and eccentric characters. Like all mysteries it also offers a tense viewing experience, (though I couldn’t help but the feel that the logic underpinning its mystery wasn’t actually one that audiences could engage with along the way). Overall it is an entertaining work, with a depth that resonates only after one leaves the theatre, punctuated with stylish lines and moments that viewers won’t easily forget. 

Hulk (2003)

Written by: James Schamus, Michael France and John Turman

Directed by Ang Lee

Two of the key motifs in Ang Lee’s 2003 adaptation of Hulk are Frankenstein, and the Star Warsian idea that anger is but a sub-emotion of fear. Superficially perhaps, these ideas do not sound like much: Hulk is green, Frankenstein’s monster is green, “big deal.” However these motifs set up Hulk to be a superhero film like no other.

A common recipe for superhero films is giving their hero(es) sass, arrogance, a pinch of situational comedy and, of course, a healthy does of action scenes. The incredible thing about Hulk is it succeeds as movie not by slightly re-tinkering this formula (à la Deadpool) but by discarding it entirely (granted, Hulk predates the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe). This approach may explain why the film did not do well at the box office. Indeed, the scenes of pre-Hulk adult Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) are a little slow. Nonetheless, Hulk’s uniqueness is ultimately a rewarding experience. With Marvel movies now coming out at a one-after-another rate, its easy to become cynical about superhero movies and feel like if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Hulk, however, truly feels like a standalone idea for a story: one that simply happens to feature a mutated, superpowered individual.

Hulk features five main characters, each with a unique motive and a different relationship to Bruce Banner, a young scientist who becomes the film’s titular hero/monster. The most unequivocal villain is Glenn Talbot (Josh Luas). His lack of complexity, however, is well juxtaposed with his ultimate pettiness as an adversary. He’s a Draco Malfoy-esque bully, and is ultimately subject to a comic-book-homage gag (director Ang Lee occasionally framed the scenes to resemble comic book panels). Yet another adversary is General Thunderbolt Ross (Sam Elliot), a character who can be heartless, but because he acts in the roles of soldier and protective father, he comes across less as evil than as set in his cold ways, adding a level of mystery and tension whenever he speaks.

The film’s third adversary, meanwhile, is its most compelling and confusing. Nick Nolte stars as a janitor whose behaviour at times mirrors the cold protectiveness of the General, at times is purely sinister, at times is radical and at times is purely affectionate. In so far as The Hulk is Frankenstein, Nolte is Victor. His character’s psychology is too all-over-the-place ever to be fully coherent, but in the context of the film it works: perhaps because we are implicitly seeing him through the monster (Hulk)’s eyes, and not through his own.

The main cast is completed by Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly). She is introduced as Bruce Banner’s still-friends-ex-love-interest. In most superhero films, the story would no doubt follow Bruce Banner’s attempt to achieve self-actualization and win her back. The Hulk, however, avoids this predictable path, for a subtler relationship of affection. Betty and Bruce empathize with and act on behalf of one another throughout the movie, despite a constant spectre that their relationship could be further damaged by Banner’s angry side.

Through these five characters The Hulk sets up a series of compelling emotional clashes that I found far preferable to the dearth of action scenes the film omitted. Where the film does use action, it does so to advance its dramatic message. We see The Hulk in action just long enough to see what he can do: enough to show why the General dehumanizes him, and enough to see why pain inevitably claws at his and Betty’s understanding relationship. The film’s action-emotion balance is also, again, at the heart of its themes. Frankenstein is a story of two misfit characters, doctor and monster, who despite being individually sympathetic figures end up pitted against one another. The monster’s story is made specifically tragic because he is largely a victim ,not of his actions, but of how his appearance leads him to be perceived. This is a problem that ultimately pushes him in a more violent direction. This is the story of Hulk a hero who unequivocally does not want to be a hero, as it seems his superpowers can only lead to him being perceived as a super-villain.

Meanwhile, the anger-is-fear motif, also factors into this Frankensteinian story. The emergence of Hulk is a cruel cycle, in which a character terrified of the angry part of himself, is made to feel vulnerable to the world, and as such, lets his anger and self-loathing grow stronger. This motif does come at some costs. When we first see Banner get angry it feels awkwardly sudden (up to this point he is a sad-eyed mild mannered character, who is never described as angry, only “emotionally removed”). This is not to say, the motif was not overall effective, however, the script and or direction should probably have been tinkered to either show Hulk’s anger earlier in the film, or to make it more clear that it’s a sudden consequence of his being mutated.

Thematically, in short, Lee’s Hulk is a good piece: it would translate well as a short story, stripped of all the (already limited) graphic action scenes it boasts. The film, however, is also strong visually, combing simple but colourful, Americana backdrops (in contrast to the generic urbanity of many superhero films), intentionally unrealistic animations of molecular biological reactions and, of course, the comic book panels (which, though sometimes an afterthought, do help nail home the film’s commitment to emphasizing character presence over chaotic action scenes). I realize some viewers and critics felt it lacked “Hulk smashes,” but I can’t help but feel such cravings got in the way of their appreciating the far stronger blow of Bruce Banner’s Frankensteinian pain.

 

Robot & Frank (2012)

Written by: Christopher D.  Ford, Directed by: Jake Schreier

The title of Robot and Frank sets a high bar. The film shares a name with the famous actor who plays its protagonist (Frank Langella) paired bluntly with the plain but inevitably provocative word “robot”. Real robots of course may not be very profound entities: they exist to mundanely reproduce the tasks of humans. Cinematically, however, including a robot amongst your cast is an ambitious undertaking. A character can’t simply be a robot. Robots are attention grabbing: we expect them to be interesting, to break with the conventionality we expect from human characters.

One of the reasons why Star Wars captured my (and no doubt others’) imagination, despite my general disinterest in action films is that it makes use of the right kind of robot. R2-D2 and C3-PO are fully articulate and come across as conscious while nonetheless clearly possessing a different quality of consciousness from their human companions. In existing on this slightly different plane  Star Wars’ droids (inspired by the bickering peasants from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress)  add a humorous quality to their films, even when they are not outright engaged in a gag.

Star Wars of course, is largely a kid friendly series. This means certain questions about what it actually means to be a droid: to actually exist in an overlapping, but distinct reality, go unanswered. Sure, its sort of implied that the droids aren’t really conscious, yet the main characters are affectionate towards them, presumably because it would be too disturbing for (especially, but not exclusively, young) viewers for them not to be.

Robot and Frank, meanwhile, is not so much a kid friendly movie. But rather than existing in a differential plane from Star Wars, it represents an adult continuation of its logic. The titular robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) implicitly provokes Frank and viewers to ask if it is conscious, while insistently denying that it is. Robot and Frank is a piece where no one character’s voice is reliable, adding depth to this dilemma.

When I call Robot and Frank ambitious I mean several things. For one, I acknowledge, oxymoronically, that it is quite a simple story. Creating a plot that feels profound, but can also be retold in a few sentences is an achievement in its own right. But unlike say, A Ghost Story, or other films of that ilk, Robot and Frank also embodies the characteristics of more conventionally ambitious films: it is set in an imagined near-future and brings together several plot lines. The plot lines are medium to high stakes, yet they manage  not to be over the top. In all, they form a story with the feel of a fable, but without the associated predictability.

When we are introduced to Frank, it is made clear that his is a story of an old man who has issues taking care of himself. I say issues because the real world is not so black and white. Is he “incapable” of taking care of himself? Is it fair to talk about his age? In the film’s opening scene we are introduced to Frank as he eats a bowl of cereal in his somewhat cluttered house and finds the milk has gone bad.  So Frank is not 100% on top of things: but he still clearly knows that things aren’t ok thus allowing the protectiveness of his two children (Liv Tyler and) particularly his son (James Marsden) to come across as condescending.

Robot and Frank presents us with such situations, leaving it up to viewers to determine exactly who is in the right and wrong. Frank is a morally ambiguous in addition to being ambiguous in his role as a source of perspective. This is what justifies the robot’s place in his story. Though for different reasons, the robot’s degree of morality and degree of self-awareness are also left open for interpretation.

I suppose this is why Robot and Frank feels, almost, like a fable. It’s about an unlikely “couple” who overcome their limitations and learn to be empathetic toward one another. And that’s about all the film offers in terms of a message. Its moral, I suppose, is
“be empathetic,” but since that is such a simple, unpretentious idea, Robot and Frank does not come across as preachy. What matters with Robot and Frank is not so much its message, but how it builds it via meditations on technology and change.

Robot and Frank manages to be a lot of things over the course of its simple narrative. It arguably offers critiques of modernity and hipster capitalism.  It is a tragic work, but barely, as it ends ringing with a restrained optimism: one that suggests reconciliation between generations and worldviews is possible. Robot and Frank can be appreciated for finding this artistically pleasing tonal balance, but I suppose its true importance is in the robot cannon. As I said, robots cannot simply be: they need to be robots for a reason: and in the case of this story, screenwriter Christopher Ford sure found a reason.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Written by: Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan Directed by: Ron Howard

Solo is a film that was released with a lot of weight on its shoulders. For whatever reason, Disney has decided to bombard audiences with new Star Wars films for the past few years, and the last one polarized audiences (yes, reactionary white men in particular but alas their viewpoint is widespread). Solo, like Rogue One before it, is not part of a trilogy: it is a “Star Wars Story” film. Its being “extra” adds another layer of pressure, as viewers will not simply question its quality but whether it deserves to exist.

Rogue One had the advantage of being about heroes whose identity and significance was unknown to most viewers at the time of the film’s release. Solo, by contrast, is about a well established Star Wars hero. As such it risks a mediocrity innate to many prequels: when you know a character’s fate, its hard for a script about them to bear much tension. Early into Solo, I feared the film would fall into this category, especially as I knew A.O. Scott softly-derided the movie as a “filmed Wikipedia article”. As I watched Han fight Chewbacca, for instance, I wanted to be a bit more compelled than I was, but felt the scene’s value was limited by my familiarity with both of these “adversaries.”

Solo, however, manages to work by being the mirror image of Rogue One. While the 2016 film connects unknowns to the main saga, Solo takes a familiar character and tells his story by linking him to figures otherwise independent of the main Star Wars series. Rest assured, however, the necessary links (Chewie, the millennium falcon, Lando, Jabba (sort of) ) to the character of old are there (I’ll throw in that I was disappointed not to see Greedo).

Solo is justified as a piece, not just because of Han’s individual significance to Star Wars, but also because his type of story is one the series has not previously covered. We’ve seen tales of white knights, and white knights-turned-supervillains, but not yet a tale of morally-middle-of-the-road figures. Solo’s story holds onto lots of the aesthetic charm of the Star Wars universe but, for once, it is not a fight between the light-dark binary, and for once, does not rely on the mysterious “force.”

Solo’s unique persona is shaped by the fact that he lives outside of the mythical realms of good and evil. In fact, is is almost as if he lives in a world that anti-heroes have all to themselves. This is a bizarre universe made up of compassionate people who also express quick willingness to kill those who stand in their way. Granted, these threats are not always acted upon, so perhaps are not meant to be taken literally: but they’re certainly not empty. The unpredictably of anti-hero society allows for surprise and confusion. There’s something very touching about seeing two outlaws (not previously revealed to be in a relationship) kiss and there’s something bizarre (an under-explained logic if you will) about a group of armed thieves with a ship refering to another group of thieves as dangerous “pirates.”

Solo, himself, is not an evil character, but he has shades of selfishness and arrogance that can lead him to be problematically self-serving. This too, at times, feels like a problem for the film. Wanting to make their protagonist likeable, the filmmakers imagined Solo not as the outright bad-boy outlaw he was in his first films but as more of a Luke Skywalker with just a pinch more of arrogant flavouring. This makes for an interesting character, but also left me wondering how he could plausibly develop into the Han Solo we know. Luckily, the film ultimately, though not implicitly, answers this question. Han’s story is made up of a series of traumas that could believably come to harden him, even as (and perhaps because), unlike Luke or Anakin he cannot simply break down and cry.

Perhaps one thing for viewers to ponder is whether Solo’s tale resembles Luke’s, or whether it is an entirely different kind of story. Indeed, both Luke in The Last Jedi and Han in Solo have been described as inconsistent with their characters’ original personas. While I disagree with this view (particularly when it comes to Luke), I can’t help but acknowledge that recent developments in the series have indeed shed light on Luke and Han’s similarities. One idea that struck in Solo is that its hero too has paternal issues: less intense and less literal than Luke’s, but they’re there nonetheless.

Action wise, perhaps some of the scenes in Solo are a bit drawn out. Nonetheless, there’s still that Star Wars charm to them. There aren’t lightsabers, but blaster bullets are still infinitely more beautiful to watch than the mundane ammo of other action movies. There’s also a wonderfully shot action scene in which a train snakes around a snowy mountain. One need not like action to appreciate Solo, however, as the film is rich with characters. It introduces, however sparingly, good additions to the Star Wars alien and droid imaginaries (Jon Favreau and Phoebe Waller-Bridge); Woody Harrelson as a thief whose persona I would argue mirrors that of his cop character in Three Billboards Outside Ebbings Missouri; and Donald Glover as Lando, a character who oddly enough seems relatively docile immersed in a world of anti-heroes. The cast is completed by Qu’ira (Emilia Clarke), Solo’s love interest whose exact nature (whatever that means) remains mysterious.

In short, I cannot understand why Solo has flopped at the box office. It tells the tale of an established hero; creatively fills in gaps; balances action and character development and even features a great final cameo. Literally speaking the force is not with this one, but who needs the force when you’ve got the self-proclaimed greatest pilot in the galaxy at your helm.

Deadpool 2

Written by: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds. Directed by: David Leitch

     When I first saw Deadpool it struck me as one of the biggest compromises I’d ever seen: it broke enough rules to call itself experimental, while still meeting all expectations as a big-budget, crowd-pleasing action movie. I was pleasantly surprised by it, I’ll say that much.

I nonetheless did not think Deadpool 2 could be a good idea. Deadpool was interesting as a standalone work, but nothing it featured (fourth wall breaking, referentialism, self-deprecation, and excessive violence on the part of its protagonist) would be interesting when employed a second time around. My thoughts were all but confirmed in the film’s opening scenes in which Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) narrates his killings with Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” blaring in the background.

Then a plot twist happened. I won’t say what it is, and for your sake you probably shouldn’t search it (don’t spoil the future moment). What I will say is that twist changed my impression of what I was watching for the better.

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi succeeded because its writers asked the question “what kind of story should a sequel be?” and got the answer right. Rather than simply revisiting the gags and powers of its characters, it used them as an infrastructural base for telling a new kind of story: one that questions the nature of the Star Wars universe rather than simply continuing it. While I wouldn’t say Deadpool 2 challenges the nature of its predecessor, it also manages to be a significantly different kind of story, that nonetheless, uses the original film as a springboard for its success. Deadpool, as introduced in the original film, is an anti-hero. His motives rarely seem as pure as they should be, as he seems more driven by the prospect of annihilating his enemies than by the ideal of fighting for justice. Deadpool 2 gives us a character with those same traits, but one who has matured enough so that he is also ideal driven. Then the plot twist happens, temporarily shattering Deadpool’s sense of purpose. The result of this trauma is not Deadpool regressing back entirely to who he was at his worst. The shock does, however stimulate various elements of his persona including his hot-headedness and immaturity. In essence, Deadpool is a character created to entertain with his punches and foul mouth, yet he manages to come off as thoughtfully developed.

Deadpool 2 is also bolstered by its supporting cast. Josh Brolin plays an antagonist who is not stunningly original, but is made compelling via the emotional weight laid-bare on his rugged face. Karon Soni, whose character, Dopinder, appears in taxi-cab gags in the first movie, returns as a quasi-side kick in this film. Dopinder is not Deadpool’s only sidekick, however. At one point in fact, Deadpool recruits a whole team of them. While these characters come across as parodies of superheroes, many are in fact (loose) adaptations of Marvel comic characters.

Most prominent among the film’s side characters, however, is Russell Collins (Julian Dennison), an anti-hero in, ironically, a film about an anti-hero. Russel is a mistreated orphan with super powers, and his appearance essentially makes Deadpool Hunt for the Wilderpeople with a big budget. This superficial textual similarity, however, contributes to Deadpool’s originality and effectiveness as a piece of story telling. Hunt for the Wilderpeople tells the story of an orphan bonding with a curmudgeon over a prolonged period while they are chased by a comically, pathetic antagonist. Deadpool 2 challenges Deadpool and Russell to develop similar bonds, but in a very different context: one that is higher-stakes, much faster-paced.

Deadpool 2 is full of silly references, but as superhero films go, it manages to be thematically deep. This depth goes beyond the story of Deadpool and Russell. A prolonged portion of the film is set in a prison, a horrible place in which people’s pain is ignored and inter-inmate bullying goes unchecked. For a moment, it seems, the tough-on-crime logic of super hero movies is paused to critique the school-to-prison pipeline and prisons in general.

Of course, Deadpool 2 would not be a Deadpool movie if it was fully idealistic, and it ultimately maintains its protagonist’s commitment to gore. Even the relatively pacifistic Colossus (Stefan Kapičić (who repeatedly tries to teach Deadpool that killing is not the X-Man way) is implicated in the film’s violent ethos, at one point electrocuting a character in an unmentionable place. Whether this is a shortcoming or not is hard to say. Deadpool 2 ultimately comes across as a pretty strong superhero movie. Whether it could have been more, and whether it needed to be, is a question too abstract to answer.

Black Panther (2018)

Directed by Ryan Coogler: Written by: Coogler & Joe Robert Cole

The one subset of action movies I’ve reliably enjoyed over the years has been Star Wars films. There’s probably more than one reason for this. Part of it may just be how much it’s drilled in to our heads that we’re supposed to love Star Wars. That may explain in part why I was able to enjoy the later fight scenes in Black Panther that bear some aesthetic resemblance to the final battle in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menaces.

Another piece of the puzzle here is that Star Wars, unlike most superhero media, tries to make its characters appealing beyond their tendency to fight. While this trait is most apparent in R2, C3-PO and Yoda, it extends to the franchise’s humans too.

Black Panther doesn’t really have droid equivalents. All of its characters are intelligent, fully capable fighters. The partial exceptions to this logic are Everett Ross; (Martin Freeman) a CIA agents, whose loveable loser affect is simply an illusion of his being overwhelmed by Wakandan society; and Shuri (Letitia Wright), Black Panther (aka T’Challa)’s little sister whose competence comes across as comically exaggerated (she’s a 16 year-old who seemingly singlehandedly invents every high-tech gadget in Wakanda). Nevertheless, Black Panther shares Star Wars’ ability to make you care about its characters beyond their ability to pull a punch.

The result for both films is that even non-action fans can be made to love their action scenes. Why? Because viewers can really appreciate the tension: revelling in a conflict between strong-willed characters while wanting neither to die. This is the feeling I get when watching Rey fight Kylo Ren, and the feeling I get when watching T’Challa face Killmonger.

So for those with no idea, what is this Star Wars of Marvel movies all about? It’s the story of T’Challah (Chadwick Boseman) as he ascends to the throne of Wakanda, a fictional African country. The film follows loosely from events in Captain America: Civil War, giving its beginning a bit of a chaotic feel. Rest assured, however, one need not remember the original film (or have any appreciation of the many facets of the Marvel universe) to enjoy Black Panther. Wakanda is believed by the outside world to exist in dire poverty, but that’s because it is highly secretive about its voluminous access to an all-purpose metal known as vibranium, which in fact makes Wakanda a global technology leader.

Wakanda, however, also maintains a form of government that many of might view as dated. It is ruled by what appears to be a hereditary, male-centric monarchy. The line of royal descent can be interrupted, but only if the heir to the throne/monarch is challenged to participate in combat on a waterfall’s edge. The first depiction of one of these fights is as visually stunning as it is terrifying.

The film’s plot is ultimately driven by fights over vibranium access. T’Challah, along with his lead guard Okoye (Danai Gurira) and Wakandan spy/his ex-girlfriend, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), leave Wakanda in pursuit of Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) a South African arms dealer who has irked a desire for vengeance from Wakandan guard/rhino trainer W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya). The pursuit of Klaue, however, brings Wakanda face to face with Killmonger. The latter villain is more dangerous than Klaue both because of his raw strength and because he actually has convictions (for what it’s worth, Serkis describes Klaue as being motivated by a desire to expose Wakandan hypocrisy, however this is a level of nuance that doesn’t really make it into the story).

Black Panther is in some ways a political movie, a narrative that has broken into the world of social media. Some have argued that its problem is that its heroes, the Wakandan rulers, collaborate with the CIA, unlike Killmonger who as an anti-colonialist is the true hero. This critique in its simplest form is exaggerated. Firstly, the CIA character largely comes across as a feeble tool. Only his fleeting appearance at a UN meeting at the end of the film can be said to legitimize his political work (one could also argue the film creates a problematic good-white, bad-white dichotomy between South African Klaue and American Ross, but that’s a stretch). Secondly, the film makes it pretty plain that one is supposed to sympathize with Killmonger, and even more so with his ideals, regardless of the fact that he fills the antagonist niche. Marvel has already given us a likeable villain in Loki.  Killmonger can easily be understood as a reapplication of this concept, albeit in a more serious context. Thirdly, the film is not as political as some descriptions make it out to be. Both Killmonger and T’Challah have inherited their politics via a game of broken telephone with older generations. Therefore, their ideologies are not fully coherent, meaning their political battles aren’t so much clashes of ideas, but heartbreaking wars between two idealistic human psyches.

In so far as Black Panther is political, however, it raises some interesting issues. One way to describe its political clash is as being between identitarian leftists (Wakanda) who fight for their ability to express their distinct way of being as a people, and universalist leftists (Killmonger, to an extent), who see liberation as coming through global collaboration against colonialism. The film also evokes a similar idea to Ta-Nehaisi Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power (I refer to the title/broad idea of the book, I haven’t actually read it). Coates’ book speaks to the idea that even having a black president couldn’t end racism in America. Coogler’s film takes that idea to the next level by positing that even in a world with a black superpower, global black oppression may not be brought to an end.

Finally, there’s another political question that may not be appropriate to ask, since Coogler and Cole may simply not even have considered it in creating the film. Every Wakandan we see knows the royal family personally. This begs the question of whether Wakanda is in fact a wealthy country, or whether it is yet another case a third world state with a very comfortable, and perhaps blissfully ignorant, ruling class. While I believe Black Panther is supposed to be viewed with the assumption that T’Challah and his comrades are well-meaning in their approach to governance and social-justice, it is certainly possible that Wakanda’s idealistic shortcomings are the result of it being a feudalist and/or capitalist society.

Black Panther has a lot going for it including a diverse visual pallet, gripping tension, and a good range of characters (I’ve neglected to mention appearances by Angela Basset, Sterling K. Brown and Forest Whitaker). Perhaps most importantly, the film features not just one, but two compelling villains (a quality lacking in films such as Thor: Ragnorak). While Killmonger particularly stands out, Klaue is no place filler either: there is something unique to his giggly-murderousness. If you are a Marvel fan, I think its safe to say that Black Panther lives up to the hype. If you’re not, this Marvel-meets-Star-War-meets-Afro-futurism-oeuvre may pleasantly surprise you.

Star Wars Ep VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)

Written and Directed by: Rian Johnson

The Last Jedi starts like all other Star Wars films: with a text crawl and the theme music. Then it gets chaotic, as intergalactic vessels commanded by various rebels and imperial figures take each other on. These early moments of the film concerned me. Was I was about to watch an ambitious but generic action movie: a tale of soldiers more so than characters?

Luckily, and unsurprisingly, my first impression proved wrong..Writer/director Rian Johnson made sure the film’s chaotic density of characters was no accident or shortcoming. While the original Star Wars trilogy featured an intentionally simple story that followed a classical hero arc, Johnson’s film emphasizes that rebellions are not defined by singular heroes. Some heroes are successful but boring. Other heroes are plucky and endearing yet accomplish little. While it is indeed possible that not all of the chaos of Episode VIII is attributable to Johnson’s vision (that the film could have ended several times before it did suggested Johnson may have been under pressure to cover a set amount of content to set the stage for Episode IX), for the most part it is justified, and constitutes an effective reimagining of the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars has done well as a franchise by telling epic tales that prioritize character development over action. While I enjoyed Episode VII: The Force Awakens, a little bit of it felt like a step away from that tradition. Its protagonists: Finn, Rey and Poe seemed the less compelling heirs apparent to Luke, Han and Leia (in no particular order). South Park noticed this and parodied it in their 20^th season, arguing that the appeal of episode VII was shallow: fans liked it because it repeated the formula of the original trilogy (South Park then went on in its hyperbolic fashion to connect this nostalgia to “Make America Great Again sentiments).

Johnson handled this problem by writing a script with a meta-narrative of sorts. Having (presumably seen) Episode VII, audiences enter The Last Jedi expecting a work that draws on The Empire Strikes Back. In some ways this is true: a veteran jedi (Mark Hamill) trains a youngster (Daisy Ridley) on a desolate planet, a (less-redeemable-than-Lando) double crosser plays a role (sadly, Billy Dee Williams does not), a character’s familial status is devastatingly brought to light, a Boba Fett-type somehow factors in, and there’s a little romance to boot. Johnson, however, lulls viewers with the comfort of familiarity, then rudely, and beautiful awakens them with deviations from their expectations. While it is hard to explain this approach further without spoiling the movie, one example is General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson). This character is introduced in Episode VII as the de-facto Grand Moff Tarkin equivalent: a cold villain, who is purely a military figure. Because Tarkin lacked the mythical aura of Vader and Sidius, he, unsurprisingly, was quickly written out of the original trilogy. Hux, however, stays around. Hux also differs from Tarkin in that he is a young man. The same point can be made (to a lesser, more ambiguous extent) about Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) in comparison to Darth Vader. The Last Jedi further entrenches Ren and Hux as a villainous duo that is unlike what the original trilogy gave us. As grizzled veterans, Tarkin and Vader come across as pillars of evil. As mere boys by comparison, Ren and Hux lack that kind of fortitude: but the juxtaposition of their youth and power makes them, in a way, more disturbing than their predecessors.

The Last Jedi is not faultless. Its swarm of characters and highly inter-textual qualities render it unwatchable for those who have not kept up well with the series. It should also be said that this new trilogy has taken away one element of charm of the old series: namely that it could easily be interpreted as the story, not of its human protagonists, but of R2-D2. While the writers of the new trilogy have clearly not forgotten R2 and C3P0, their appearances in this film, as they were in episode VII, are little more than cameos.

That said, veteran fans of the series should find plenty to enjoy in The Last Jedi It is a reminder of just how many characters they are invested in, and how many they can come to be invested in. From Luke’s newfound wry wit, to the various odes to and splits from the series’ past, The Last Jedi is an impressive script and a fitting addition to the Star Wars universe.