irreverent_intellectual

Earlier this year, my mother and I watched Agatha Christie's Seven Dials on Netflix. I wrote up a fairly lengthy commentary, which I originally posted to social media. Then I figured I might as well take my notes, edit them for formatting and any grammatical errors, and share them here. I'm also throwing in one point of criticism I neglected to include in the original. This post also includes ending spoilers for Seven Dials the television series, as well as discussion and comparison of the book's conclusion. This is your first and only warning.


Agatha Christie's Seven Dials is a pretty good mystery adventure, overall. Mia McKenna-Bruce is terrific as a brilliant, feisty and driven amateur sleuth, and the rest of the cast turn in great performances as well. The mystery itself is excellently developed, bar a couple hiccups, which apparently were carryovers from the original book.

My mother was sorely disappointed the hot guy from the Bridgerton prequel show (Corey Mylchreest) bought it so early - I hadn't seen the show, but he did have great chemistry with the protagonist for the few scenes they shared. She also couldn't get past the fact that our hero's preferred nickname that most people use for her is "Bundle."

For myself, I was reminded some of the reasons I was never more than a mild-to-moderate Christie fan at my peak. Namely, the pacing in the first third-to-a-half of her stories is often ponderous and plodding, and this had its share of that. Also, I find it takes a while for me to get emotionally invested in the supporting cast/suspects.

But other than that, as far as the characters and plot are concerned, not much to complain about.

Not being a Christie completist, I'd never read the original text, and I made something of a game out of trying to guess which elements were carried over and which were original to the show. According to the Wikipedia summary I looked up after we finished the series, my batting average was pretty bad, although it seems I did correctly identify one prominent alteration. However, as I mentioned, the clunkiest bits of foreshadowing were direct lifts from the book, after all.

I also thought the protagonist felt too modern to be a Christie hero. From my perusal of the Wikipedia summary, I get the distinct impression the TV series significantly raised her levels of intelligence and insight, vis-a-vis the book. It appears Superintendent Battle (Martin Freeman), and possibly Bill Eversleigh (Hughie O'Donnell), as well, played a much larger role in resolving the case in the original. But Bundle in the novel is still apparently competent and plucky enough to be offered a seat in the Order of the Seven Dials at the end.

I further suspect, though with less evidence, that the show inflated her cheerful defiance of familial and civil authority. That was the other component that particularly smacks of being directed at a modern 21st century, rather than period, audience.

Wikipedia informs me the book was poorly received on publication, and having read the summary, I think the alterations were overwhelmingly to the story's benefit. The biggest twist - as opposed to the final twist - is an eminently Christie-worthy reveal, one which had me going, "Of course, I should've seen this, and I didn't," which is frequently my experience of her material, with the exception of the two or three I read after having been spoiled for the ending. But it was entirely original to the show, and the much weaker prior reveals were where the novel tied things off. Huh.

There are some elements, though, that make more sense knowing the context of the book. Some characters show up but don't do much of anything and are too underdeveloped even to qualify as red herrings. Also, Bill's inexplicable plot armor on the train, where going by the conventions of the story up to that point he should've died once and arguably twice. I'm relieved at least one of Bundle's sidekicks survived and wasn't evil, but it was still incongruous. In the novel he, rather than Gerry Wade, was the love interest and Bundle's closest confidant. And Gerry - the first murder victim - was the missing member of the Order whom Bundle replaces at the conclusion, rather than the seat sitting empty for 5 years waiting to get her installed.

Additionally, the whole train sequence in the final act was a show original, and the other passengers are transparently written as video game NPCs rather than plausible characters. They are purely reactive, and after a set of them are chased out of their car at gunpoint, instead of trying to get off the train or inform the authorities or seek some kind of shelter or even attempting to rush the car and overwhelm the two antagonists, they instead settle into their Idle Animations and patiently wait for the standoff to resolve so the protagonist can emerge and issue them further instructions.

But like I said, from what I gathered of the Wikipedia summary, the adaptational changes were on balance, a substantial improvement.

I was also interested to learn this was the last book Christie wrote about this cast of characters. The ending of the show, and especially Battle mentioning a specific mission he has in mind for Bundle, rather than keeping things vague and nebulous like he started, reads to me as the creators' pitch for doing more seasons. They certainly have a promising setup for further adventures, but I kinda figure the status quo is probably too shaken up to adapt the first and only other book in this subseries, and even if they can, that only buys them one more installment. If they do wind up making more of these, I'm curious to see what their strategy will be. I expect I will watch more if they're made, based on the strength of this.

My biggest criticism of the show is in the themes, and specifically the political implications. You're already starting out on tricky ground, adapting an author whose political sensibilities in her novels, when they peeked through, skewed conservative if not reactionary. (I forget which book it was, but the story where a union organizer is fortunately revealed at the end to be a police infiltrator and union-buster, thus establishing his bona fides as a good sort and suitable husband material for his love interest, is seared into my memory.)

Then, on top of it, you have a showrunner whose tenure on Doctor Who has, to my understanding, a reputation for a surface-level progressivism but a deeper underlying conservatism of outlook. ("Conservative" not necessarily in the sense of a spectrum from "conservative" to "liberal" so much as "depicting the status quo and existing systems of power as being essentially positive actors that deserve to be supported.")

And that's certainly my ultimate takeaway from this Seven Dials show. There are what I take as some good faith efforts to update the story to reflect more 21st century sensibilities. But whether from a resistance to straying too far from the original text, or because Chris Chibnall's own attitudes only extend so far, those efforts lack meaningful follow-through.

The villain, for instance, has a scathing indictment of WWI - although even that character falls short of condemning the war itself, instead focusing on how it was conducted and mishandled by the military leadership. And I think we are supposed to sympathize with the character's pain and resentment.

But this criticism is still coming from an evildoer, who's caused a great deal of harm throughout the story for selfish personal motives. It doesn't change the protagonist's attitude toward the British government, and the various senior representatives of the government are ultimately portrayed very favorably. They're basically good people, and their goal of serving the UK's "national interests" is ultimately also in the best interests of humanity at large. Ditto the secret society working to ensure the steel formula doesn't fall into the "wrong hands." While the villain's condemnations are treated as legitimate, ultimately, the British government is still implicitly vindicated by the show.

We also get some fabulous critical perspective on the war and on European imperialism with the backstory of Dr. Cyril Matip in the second episode. (This was the one adaptation change I got dead right: I knew there was no way Christie wrote such a sensitive, insightful, and uncomfortable depiction of a Cameroonian scientist in the 1920s. Sure enough, in the novel, the scientist character was German.)

Matip talks about how his experience of WWI was Africans commanded by white officers fighting other Africans commanded by white officers - I'm not sure whether this pan-Africanist perspective on his part would've been anachronistic, but the point is well made - and laments how he lost his entire family to the European war. He also has terrific retorts to the members of the UK elite who try persuade him they can be trusted, that theirs are safe hands that will ensure the formula won't be abused: The Germans and the French said the exact same thing.

And yet ... he still came to the UK alone, with his formula and his sample, which already puts a lot of faith in their good intentions, and shows his openness to be being persuaded. And in the end, despite the terrific points he raised in that first dinner - plus the way his hosts almost let the formula and sample get spirited away and into the clutches of "dark forces" - the happy ending to the story still has him entrusting his invention to the UK government, with the implicit understanding that they will only use it responsibly. And this, mind you, is set during a historical period where the UK was still maintaining brutal colonial regimes in parts of Africa and Asia. (And to be clear, their current record in those regions is still appalling, they've just updated their methodologies.)

Then the very ending of the show has the protagonist join a secret society which, due to its very nature, has even less public accountability than than the official branches of government. A deep state organization, if you will, with at least one highly placed member of the UK establishment in its leadership, and their mission statement explicitly conflates the "national interests" as defined by the UK government with the well being of humanity as a whole.

Like I said, I quite enjoyed the show as a piece of entertainment. While I have a soft spot for the Flux storyline, there's a lifeless, insubstantial feeling that pervades Chibnall's run on Doctor Who, and Agatha Christie's Seven Dials has it blown completely out of the water. (Not to mention Torchwood, though Chibnall can at least cite "Countrycide" to his credit.) I will happily consume more seasons if they are produced. And at the same time, I also find the underlying worldview deeply insidious.

This post comes with a content warning for some discussion of sexual assault.

Because Netflix dangled it in front of my face and I was contemplating whether to expand my current watchlist a bit, I sat down and watched The Fifth Element last month. I saw part of the middle and the entire final act in undergrad when some of my hall mates watched it on the common room TV, but this was my first complete sit.

That was a fun ride. Bruce Willis is handsome and charming, Gary Oldman is entertainingly despicable without becoming tedious in his sadism, Ian Holm is a treat as the mostly well meaning but often hapless and sometimes duplicitous wise advisor. I think playing a character full of curiosity and wonder and some fear and trepidation at the everyday world is probably more difficult than it looks, but Milla Jovovich really sells the character. Also, I’m sure there’s a lot of richly deserved criticism that can be leveled at the film’s handling of Blackness and implied queerness, but Chris Tucker is phenomenal and easily the best character in a film that was already spoiled for choice, character-wise, before he appeared on screen.

Other aspects hold up less well. The whole nature of the threat is unclear. Holm’s Father Cornelius says multiple times his mission is to save the “world,” singular, and in the climax the planet of shadow is hurtling specifically toward Earth and endangering Earth. But the characters also talk about the way this recurring evil is a threat to all life and if it isn’t stopped the result will be the end of “everything.” And a lot of characters who have no direct connection to Earth go to enormous lengths, many at the cost of their lives, to ensure the evil is thwarted. Maybe the idea is that Earth is a focal point for some reason and its destruction would cause a chain reaction that wipes out the rest of the universe—or causes the evil planet to grow and consume the rest of the universe. Either way, the logical progression from "Earth destroyed" to "all life wiped out" is insufficiently communicated.

Along with the aforementioned racial and queer presentations, the movie includes tasteless running jokes about a deaf character and a nagging mother. Yeesh.

And then, God help me, there’s the love story.

To the movie’s credit, it acknowledges Willis’ Korben spontaneously kissing Jovovich’s Leeloo the first time he gets a good look at her face is awful and unacceptable. She quite reasonably draws Korben’s own gun on him, and Korben immediately admits he was wrong and apologizes. He later muses to himself “shouldn’t have kissed her” when he’s alone back in his apartment. And that initial scene ends with Korben surreptitiously getting Father Cornelius to interpret the phrase Leeloo uttered at him, and is chagrined but unsurprised to learn it means “Never without permission,” just to drive the point home. (The next time Korben kisses Leeloo, he doesn’t obtain her permission either. If you’re feeling generous you could posit he has implicit permission this time, but given that appalling first encounter, it really should’ve been explicit.)

Unfortunately, the movie tries to have it both ways, with Korben’s puppy love infatuation for Leeloo portrayed as sweet and romantic. And since Korben ultimately gets the girl, the long term consequences of this initial transgression on his part are that he is rewarded, rather than punished. Which is emphatically not the right message to send.

Even if I were to create a fan edit of the film that removes all trace of the initial consent issues*, I’d still be left with a love story that’s surprisingly threadbare considering the entire climax hinges on it.

*Not that I possess such video editing skills you understand, this is pure thought experiment.

I was thinking about it in the shower, and found myself imagining a scenario where Korben overcoming his inhibitions and affirming his love for Leeloo was the result of some very last minute reshoots to replace a completely different ending that bombed with test audiences or something like that. I don’t actually think that’s what happened, and I believe the “true love” angle was the plan all along.

... But holy cow, the “emergency reshoots” interpretation makes so much sense the more I think about it.

As it is, I found it hilarious the extent the movie commits to separating Leeloo and Korben, even after he advances from Reluctant Hero to Fully Committed Protagonist, and joins her for the trip to visit the diva and collect the stones needed to defeat the evil.

After that point, they have one brief conversation at night on the starliner before bed, another around the time they commandeer Zorg’s ship to escape the destruction of the Fhloston Paradise and get to Earth, and those are the high water marks for interaction between the two of them before Korben announces his love for her.

Love her? Korben, you don’t know the first thing about her! What sort of music does she like, what’s guaranteed to make her sad and what cheers her up? How does she process overwhelming fear, anger, grief? What kinds of jokes does she like, and what comedy does she hate?

You don’t love, Leeloo. You’re still chasing the fantasy woman you were talking about with your buddy before you even met her. The only difference is now you’ve found a specific person to project that fantasy onto.

I realize a lot of the above is tied up in the fact that Leeloo’s personality is underdeveloped and the whole Born Sexy Yesterday trope, which has very unhealthy implications. I get all that. And I’m saying that even under those constraints, the movie could have done a vastly superior job of making the romantic bond between the two leads more credible, and it just … didn’t.

Okay, that was more time dwelling on the negatives than I intended. It’s true, but like I said, my main takeaway was still that the movie is a fun ride. Shout out again to my problematic fave, Chris Tucker.

I’ll also leave off with an unqualified compliment for the movie. I often see stories where, by about the halfway point, the good guys and bad guys have been clearly established, along with the goals and the stakes, and the rest is a struggle between the two sides to see who comes out on top.

That’s not an inherently bad setup, but I appreciate The Fifth Element going a more atypical route by having multiple factions of good guys and bad guys working partially or wholly at cross purposes converge on the Fhloston Paradise to claim the stones. The additional divisions and conflicting agendas introduce a chaotic element (pun not intended) which makes the whole thing that much more unpredictable in terms of how events will unfold. It’s a technique I wish more stories would take advantage of, and I commend this movie for an excellent application.

This is the second in my three-part series of posts envisioning a version of the Star Wars sequels that, in my view, would live up to the potential the actual sequel films didn't quite hit. To get the background for the project, and my detailed thoughts on the existing sequel movies, you can check out this prologue post; for the comprehensive breakdown of how I would have revised The Force Awakens, you want the first proper entry the mini-series. Next time will be a similarly comprehensive plot breakdown of the final movie in my revised sequel series, along with some concluding remarks.

Today's post is going to be a little different, though. My treatment for the middle of the series is a lot less granular than for the first and last installments: some details, but mostly generalized plot and character notes. If this were an actual project and not a fantasy rewrite, I would, of course, expand these notes into a proper plot treatment, but as it is, I feel little need to develop in any further. That means you're getting a shorter entry this time around. The next post, where I wrap it all up, though, is dynamite, if I do say so myself.

Since there's so little this time around, however, I'm also throwing in the backstory I worked out for some new material I added to the series that have no parallels in the existing sequel trilogy (like the Shodac Alliance), as well as some overarching narrative and thematic elements that I haven't worked out exactly how they would fit into each specific movie in the sequence.

To start off, one running theme I'd want to explore over the course of the sequels is the use of fear as a tool of oppression - with allusions to Yoda's quote from The Phantom Menace: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering" - and the way authoritarian regimes and organizations generate fear of themselves and of scapegoated "enemy" groups to maintain their rule.

Another, related theme I'd want to include is despair; how oppressors manufacture feelings of futility and the inevitability of their own victory to make their enemies give up without even putting up a fight. This was inspired by the very brief exchange in The Rise of Skywalker where Poe momentarily loses hope during the battle of Exegol, only to have his courage rekindled by the arrival of Lando and his makeshift navy. As mentioned in the prologue post, I love this sequence, corny as it is; but there's so much scope to develop the ideas in that little scene and to dramatize some truly insightful points about the nature of repressive systems like fascism, and how to combat them effectively.

In Episode VIII, Luke takes Rey as an apprentice. He believes her arrival is a sign that it’s time for the Jedi to step back out into the galaxy at large, and face the threat he and his fellows have felt approaching for years. The urgency is enhanced by the news that Kylo Ren knows their location on Tython, and will likely be coming after them. There is time set aside, also, for a reunion with Chewie, Threepio, and Breha, and to mourn the death of Han. Threepio and Artoo have a short sequence of their familiar banter. Luke or another senior Jedi also takes a moment to tell Rey and Finn a little bit about the fallen Jedi, Kylo Ren’s former fellow apprentices, whose lightsaber now belong to them. Both are allowed to keep the slain Jedi’s lightsabers; it seems that with the previous bearers now dead, Rey and Finn are meant to have them.
After some time all together on Tython, Rey, Luke—and perhaps another Jedi such as Ahsoka or Tionee—and Artoo depart to follow a lead on the source of the disturbances and enigmatic Force-using warriors Luke has dealt with recently, eventually revealed to be the Shodac Alliance. Along the way, they encounter Kylo Ren, who wishes to defeat and replace Luke, and seeks Rey as a partner in his ambitions for power.
During this mission, it becomes clear Rey has very strong attachments: to Finn, and Breha, and Chewie and Leia, and to Han and her late parents. Ahsoka or Tionne or whoever speaks for Jedi tradition fears Rey’s connections will prove a liability, but Luke argues that while they make her vulnerable, they’re also a source of great potential strength. He reminds his interlocutor how, ultimately, it was his and Anakin’s attachment to each other as father and son that defeated Darth Vader, the Emperor, the Sith, and the Empire. By the end of the film, it is acknowledged that Rey has the potential to be the greatest among the Jedi, specifically because of the strength of her personal attachments.
Meanwhile, Finn, Breha, and the rest of the crew take the Falcon to rejoin Leia and the taskforce, who come to the defense of Esfandia, an Imperial Remnant system on the edges of the Unknown Regions, under attack from a mysterious enemy that also turns out to be the Shodac Alliance. Their efforts fail, and Esfandia is overrun, but in the process they learn that Rey and Luke are heading into a trap. As Leia and what remains of the taskforce move on to try to protect another system, Finn, Breha, and the group, take off to intercept and rescue Luke and Rey. They are aided in the early stages by a middle-aged, red haired human woman, known to Breha as Mara, a former Imperial assassin turned Jedi, who appears to have a history with Luke, expressing affection for him but also a level of tension. Mara knows some of the history between the Empire and the Shodac Alliance, and points the group to where they can learn more, although she has her own business to attend to and can’t accompany them. They are also helped by Lando, who has become part of the taskforce in the wake of Han’s death, and who provides crucial information. Between Mara and Lando, they are directed to Boba Fett, who has knowledge about the Shodac Alliance from back when they and the Mandalorians were a single, unified group. Breha protests that her father already killed Boba Fett, twice, and Lando replies that Fett is a cockroach, nothing kills him permanently.
With the information they eventually obtain from Boba Fett (cameo by Temuera Morrison), the group, joined by mechanic Rose Tico, travel to the planet Mustafar, where Luke and Rey’s investigations have also brought them. Kylo Ren comes to the planet as well, seeking to defeat Luke and take his place as leader of the Jedi Order. During their adventures, early romantic chemistry develops between Rose and Breha.
They find representatives of the Shodac Alliance on Mustafar, including Creskrar and General Chur-Nistreon, who have come there on their own business.
A confrontation ensues, which goes badly for the Jedi and their allies, establishing that Force users like General Chur-Nistreon can equal a Jedi Master in single combat. The battle culminates in Rey and Kylo Ren, locked in a duel, vanishing into a portal to another, unknown part of the galaxy. The Shodac Alliance succeed in their primary mission on Mustafar, and the heroes only barely escape. Luke appears to stay behind and sacrifice himself so that his niece Breha, Finn, Chewie, Rose, and the droids can escape, but this is quickly revealed to be a ruse, and he is with them aboard the Falcon. The galaxy is not yet done with Luke Skywalker.
The film ends with Finn, Breha, and company, meeting with Leia, Chak, Lando and the remainder of the taskforce, as well as many of the Jedi of Tython, on the planet D’Qar. Given all they’ve been through, they determine the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant, as well as various other galactic powers such as the Hapan Consortium and the Chiss Ascendancy, will unite against the Shodac Alliance. There’s a suggestion the taskforce would dissolve, but instead, it becomes the central coordinating military body for the defense of the galaxy. The Jedi, as well, agree they must step up to help protect the galaxy from the Shodac, and specifically from Force-users like Chur-Nistreon, though Luke warns that this will mean an increase in the cosmic disasters they were helping prevent through their work on Tython, based off the partial understanding he gained of Project Cataclysm from the confrontation on Mustafar.Finally, it is agreed that Finn, Breha, Rose, Chewbacca, the droids, and a Jedi escort will take up the mission of locating Rey and Kylo Ren, rescuing the former and capturing the latter, as they both have information or have incorporated substances that are critical to both Project Cataclysm, and the Shodac invasion plan.
There is a dialogue-free final shot of Rey and Kylo Ren lost in a perilous location, clearly realizing they must work together for their continued survival. Roll end credits and theme music.


Luke’s character arc, played over Episode VIII and concluded in the final film, revolves around whether to hang on to the stifling, constraining, self-abnegating traditions of the old Jedi Order, as advocated by Ahsoka or Tionne; or to reject the old ways and start the Jedi anew, as advocated in various ways by Rey and then Breha. In the end he finds a synthesis which preserves the best aspects of the former Jedi Order while dispensing with the more oppressive parts, such as the rejection of personal attachments.

Leia’s character arc, over the same period, involves her struggling with the shortcomings of the political order she’s helped rebuild, and coming to terms with the fact that the flaws in the structure of the Old Republic were complicit in the rise of the Empire, and that similar flaws in the structure of the New Republic are complicit in the ascent of the First Order. She is informed in this quandary by Finn, who was taught about how the Old Republic was corrupt and largely controlled by Core world aristocrats without regard for the small people of the galaxy or for those on the Outer Rim; and while Finn knows that much of his First Order indoctrination was a pack of lies, it seems to him that in these matters they told him the truth, even if the solutions they provided were unconscionable. Another character, perhaps Admiral Ackbar or even Mon Mothma, or a character pulled from Legends continuity, represents idealistic faith in the institutions and structures of the Republic, Old and New. Paralleling Luke’s arc, Leia comes to find a better form of equilibrium, something that surpasses the failures of the past.

And those are my thoughts on the middle film and various bits of overall lore. Tune in next time, for a more in-depth discussion of how I would write the final sequel film, based on changes I've made to the first and second ones.

I think it's uncontroversial at this point to observe that the Star Wars sequel trilogy as a whole wound up being a disappointment for many. The folks at the now defunct Film Rescue podcast did a whole series on fixing Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, which is ultimately what inspired this set of posts.

For you see, as much as I love the first sequel movie, The Force Awakens, I find that my biggest frustrations with the trilogy had their seeds in that initial film, with followup installments merely aggravating the situation.

Therefore, if I were in a position to "fix" the sequel trilogy, I would start with The Force Awakens. As I said, I still love the movie, and quite a lot of the material I would retain - but I would also make a number of minor and major adjustments to steer it away from what I perceive as the serious pitfalls it fell into, and eventually dragged the rest of the trilogy into as well.

So, starting with the next post, I'm going to share an in-depth plot breakdown of my personal ideal version of what Episode VII could have been. I should stress that this is my own vision for what the best version of the sequel trilogy could have looked like, based on my unique understanding of what Star Wars is all about and my specific tastes as a creator and a viewer. I don't claim to speak for some amorphous entity called "the fans"; and I know that some of my decisions would likely be rejected even by those segments of fandom whose attitudes are closest to my own.

I feel like I remember hearing somewhere that George Lucas' mandate for Star Wars movies was to give people what he wanted, rather than what he or they thought that they wanted. And I guess I'm enough of an auteur at heart that this is also my philosophy for my sequel movie rewrites.

However, before I go into exhaustive detail about what I think the sequels should have looked like, I think it would be wise to go into exhaustive detail about what I think of the actual existing sequel trilogy, so you can know where I'm coming from. While, as I said, the trilogy as a whole is widely agreed to be a disappointment, folks' specific criticisms are much more diverse, with perspectives on the second movie, The Last Jedi, being especially divisive.

It may be important to establish my own thoughts on the movies - which parts I thought were strengths and which I consider weaknesses - to frame the changes I would make to the sequel trilogy, as well as the elements I would retain.

Now, let's talk about the movies, starting with ...

The Force Awakens: Loved it when it first came out. Love Rey, love Finn, like Poe and BB-8 and Maz Kanata well enough, love the use of return characters. Every so often I still quote Poe “So who talks first? Do I talk first? Do you?”

I think it was a masterful creative move to make the new crop of heroes characters who are not directly connected to the heroes of the original and prequel trilogies, but people who can form relationships with them and be inspired by them. This was muddied by later developments, of course, but I think the instinct was rock solid. I also respect the confidence of the movie in holding Luke back until the very final scene and giving him no dialogue. Han’s death is probably the best example of killing off a legacy character in media (as I referenced in my Pacific Rim: Uprising review).

Rey is an instantly likable and endearing character, and while the parallels between her and Luke are obvious, she’s sufficiently distinct that she doesn’t come across like a gender-swapped carbon copy. In particular, while Rey, like Luke, is preoccupied with her birth family, it manifests in wildly different motivations and goals. In the original Star Wars, Luke seeks to reunite with his father, if only symbolically, by following in Anakin’s footsteps and leaving his back-rocket dustball of a home planet to become a heroic Jedi Knight. Whereas, in The Force Awakens, Rey’s motivation is to reunite with her family physically, by returning to her dustball of a home planet as soon as she’s finished playing courier for the Resistance. She might dream of excitement and adventure like Luke, but her priorities keep her oriented toward a simple, mundane life until the plot renders such a return actively untenable. And yeah, she comes into her Force powers ridiculously easily and ridiculously quickly—just like Luke did in the Original Trilogy. It’s a power fantasy, just go with it.

Finn is even more original than Rey: a defector from the bad guys and a coward trying to save his own skin and those of his immediate friends. This is unlike any other protagonist we’ve seen so far in the movies. I guess he kinda fits the Han Solo role, but while John Boyega is also instantly likable as Finn, he projects a very different sort of charisma than Harrison Ford. Finn is more of a hapless everyman than a charming rogue, and Han was, if anything, overly reckless—remember him and Chewie charging after a contingent of retreating stormtroopers in the Death Star during their escape sequence? Both are motivated to walk away from the good guys, but Han comes at it from a perspective of “not my problem” primarily, and self-preservation secondarily. Again, the similarity is close enough to be evocative, but also distant enough to establish Finn as a unique and vibrant character in his own right.

And I’m going to say it: after six movies fronted by cis white men like myself, I love that for this new trilogy, Abrams cast a woman and a Black person as his two primary protagonists. The Star Wars universe is a fantasy world that’s supposed to be bigger and more expansive than our own world, so its heroes should come in all genders, races. shapes, sizes, what have you. If your protagonists are consistently and incessantly white people, and particularly white men, that just makes your fictional universe feel that much smaller and more parochial; an insulated curiosity that belongs in a museum rather than a movie theater. And that’s before even we get into any social justice questions about the necessity for all people, regardless of gender or skin color, to have characters of every race, gender, ability status, body shape etc. to look up to and admire.

Coming back to archetypes: if anything, it’s Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron who comes closest to replicating Harrison Ford’s roguish charm, but in other respects he’s more similar to Leia: a competent Rebel leader, committed to the cause, and determined to get the job done. I know Poe is a fan favorite, but personally, I prefer the way he’s used in this film: he gets a great couple of scenes at the beginning, has a nice reunion with Finn in the middle, and plays a background supporting role there and in the finale. For me, the Poe character works best in this secondary role, rather than as one of the main foci of the movies.

I didn't notice romantic chemistry between Finn and Poe at first, though I see where that interpretation is coming from now. I did clock substantial romantic chemistry between Finn and Rey, and found it really appealing. Rey gets over her initial hostility very quickly, and while they occasionally rub each other the wrong way after that (and Finn has a couple borderline-creeper lines), for the most part they get along swimmingly. I love their unabashed mutual excitement and admiration for the others' piloting/shooting prowess, respectively, after the initial chase sequence in the Falcon against the First Order TIE Fighters. More power to the Finn/Poe shippers, even though I don't share your preferred pairing. But I'll never understand how the general consensus view after this movie was to look at Finn and Rey and go, "Ah, they're just really good friends." Are you sure we were watching the same film?

However, there are aspects of the film I dislike, that have only been magnified in hindsight. I think that cleaving the plot so closely to that of A New Hope, and making the villains variations on the ones from the original trilogy—rather than going the Thrawn books or prequel films route and coming up with distinct villains that aren’t so closely riffing off Vader, Tarkin, and the Emperor—set the sequel films on a path to recycle the original trilogy, rather than building their own distinct story, and I think that’s unfortunate for both the movies and the new characters.

I get that the filmmakers felt they needed to communicate “Star Wars is back” after the alleged failure of the prequel films. That’s fine, I think the prequels are terrific, but I understand a lot of people don’t share my opinion. I thought the opening ten minutes hearkening back to A New Hope was clever and neatly executed. I thought recycling the entire plot of A New Hope was massive overkill, and a disservice to both films, robbing the first of some of its uniqueness, and squandering some of the second’s potential to tell its own compelling story.

I also feel the filmmakers failed to think through the storytelling implications of redoing A New Hope farther along the timeline. In the past, I’ve railed against the way Legends undermined the impact and accomplishment of the original and prequel trilogies and the enormity of Anakin’s redemption and the heroes’ victory in Return of the Jedi by having another Skywalker descendant fall to the dark side and bringing back both the Sith and the Empire in the Legacy Era. I have the exact same criticism of The Force Awakens; it’s less obnoxious than Legends, since at least it didn’t throw in character assassination along with the imaginatively bankrupt “let’s have one of Anakin Skywalker’s heirs turn evil, too”; but it’s still incredibly disappointing.

Or, to take a smaller example: while Han’s death sequence is tremendous (well, minus the interminable pause before Kylo Ren activates his lightsaber, anyway), this is the departure of a character who has been beloved by fans for decades. Whereas, when the original Star Wars came out, audiences only had an hour or so between meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi and seeing him perish. The impact of losing Han is that much greater, and I think the heroes needed to score a larger victory than “yay, we blew up the Death Star! … Again.” to balance it out. This is not a big deal by itself, but I think it serves as a microcosm of The Force Awakens’ failure to appreciate the full ramifications of recycling old material in a wildly different context. And, unfortunately, in doing so it set a precedent that the remaining sequel films ultimately were unable to break out of, and the contextual flaws only magnified as the series continued.`

Additionally, I’m going to be an extreme minority voice and say that Kylo Ren really doesn’t work. This was crystallized in a discussion I had after The Rise of Skywalker came out, with a fan who opposed Ben Solo’s redemption because he felt a fairy tale conclusion like that was grossly inappropriate for such a non-fairy tale character. He raised a great point, but by the exact same token, I submit that such an aggressively non-fairy tale character is grossly inappropriate for Star Wars, where being a fairy tale is the whole point.

Ironically, with his rage and entitlement and obsession of his own interpretation of the past, Kylo Ren is a pitch perfect caricature of the kind of toxic Star Wars fan the franchise has become infamous for ever since The Last Jedi came out. In other words, Kylo Ren works exponentially better as a commentary on Star Wars fandom than he does as a character in the Star Wars universe.

Equally heretically, I find Adam Driver hilariously unconvincing in the role. He’s supposed to be a weak, pathetic young man who is, by that very token, also incredibly dangerous. And, well, whenever he has his mask off, Driver absolutely convinces me on the first half of that equation, but not the second. I know he’s capable of turning in great performances—see, for example, Spike Lee’s BlackKklansman—but a galactic dictator, even a fundamentally weak and pathetic one, nah, I’m not buying it.

The Last Jedi. Great movie. Best of the sequel series, hands down. I love Rose Tico. I love the doomed bomber run against the First Order’s heavy weapons ship. I love Ahch-To as a setting—though the name definitely needed work. I love the cinematography, with so many gorgeous shots. I love Rey’s interactions with grumpy old Luke. I love grumpy old Luke’s conversation with wise ghost Yoda. I love Poe taking the piss out of Hux, because the latter’s villain speech in Force Awakens was so over the top that yeah, he totally deserved to be made fun of. I love Leia showing her Skywalker side and saving herself from being blown out into space, even if the shot itself looks kinda silly. I love Rey being a nobody, although I’ll come back to this point later.Poe’s storyline isn’t my favorite—though Laura Dern is fantastic as Vice Admiral Holdo—but I appreciate how it uses the tropes of adventure sci-fi to make you think he’s got the right idea, even though the movie has already telegraphed he’s all wrong. I love how, in the confrontation with Snoke, he, and Rey, and Kylo Ren, all see the future correctly, and all completely misinterpret what they see. Adam Driver aside, I love Rey and Kylo Ren’s team-up battle against Snoke’s Praetorian Guard. I’m lukewarm on Holdo sacrificing herself to save the Resistance, but I love the shot of the Holdo maneuver tearing through the heart of the First Order fleet, and accompanying use of strategic silence in the film’s score. I thought the inversion of Return of the Jedi and Empire Strikes Back was pretty clever, going from the big confrontation on Snoke’s flagship to the desperate last stand on Crait. I’m glad both Finn and Rose survived; I’m not convinced either of their deaths would have felt earned. I love Luke’s final scene with Leia. I love him going out with a laser sword to face down the whole First Order by himself, just as he sarcastically predicted at the start of the movie. I love his duel with Kylo Ren, and how he focuses on evading the latter’s attacks rather than matching the villain’s aggression, which works so well even before you get to the twist. I love his parting words to Kylo Ren, and I adore the Obi-Wan sacrifice fake-out. I think Luke’s death is handled pretty well—a big death that is earned—but I’m also disappointed that it kind of overshadows the fake-out, which was kriffing brilliant. I’m also disappointed that he dies saving his sister and the remains of the Resistance from such a mediocre villain as Kylo Ren, but we’ll come back to that. I love Rey lifting rocks in the big climax to save her friends and the last survivors of the Resistance. I love the message that the Force is for everyone, that anyone could be a potential Jedi, though I have a note on how it’s communicated which we’ll address presently.

I think The Last Jedi is a superb followup to The Force Awakens, but, unfortunately, that means it was saddled with the latter movie’s regrettable baggage. Said baggage including subpar villains; Kylo Ren; Kylo Ren as played by Adam Driver; the mystery of Rey’s parentage; and a slavish devotion to the original trilogy that director Rian Johnson had to take the whole 2+ hour runtime to advance the story past. “We should get past the original trilogy and tell new stories going forward” is a thesis I can absolutely get behind … it’s just a shame that, with The Force Awakens as the setup, Johnson needed to make an entire movie to communicate that thesis. I’m not going to pretend those first three Thrawn books are beyond reproach by any stretch, but Zahn definitely had the right idea in taking the tropes and trappings of Star Wars to tell a new story from the word “go,” rather than taking two thirds of his story cycle just to get out from under the shadow of the original movies. Likewise, whatever else you say about the prequels, Lucas certainly put the work in to tell new stories rather than retreading old ground to excess.

The mystery of Rey’s origins always struck me as a weak story thread. You only really had a couple of probable choices: she’s either a Skywalker, a Palpatine, maybe a Kenobi, or she’s a random nobody. None of those options would’ve constituted a surprise deserving of the big mystery buildup. My favorite fan idea for the Rey twist is that she’s the granddaughter of Lor San Tekka, Max von Sydow’s character from Force Awakens. That certainly would have been a surprise, and would tie her to a previously established character who had a tenuous connection to the Jedi. But also, it raises the question: so what? How would the revelation that Rey is a relative of Lor San Tekka affect her actions and her character arc going forward?

It’s gotten me to think a lot about why the “I am your father” reveal worked in Empire while later twists failed to measure up. So, here’s my hypothesis on what makes an effective plot twist:

First, as I said before, it has to be surprising. Once you’ve already done “parent was something unexpected and upsetting,” viewers are primed to expect something similar a second time.

Second, it has to recontextualize what you’ve shown before, without invalidating it. Everything going on with Darth Vader in A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, as well as Luke and Obi-Wan’s conversations about his father, take on a completely different meaning once we learn they’re one and the same. Attentive readers may have noticed that, going by this example, you can actually fudge the “without invalidating what you’ve already shown” stipulation—Obi-Wan calling Vader “Darth” in A New Hope, and the famous “from a certain point of view” line—and get away with it if your twist is good enough. This stuff isn’t ironclad, just general guidelines: and if you’re going to ignore those guidelines, you’d better make sure your payoff is an absolute whopper, which isn’t really compatible with “seen it before.”

How is The Force Awakens different if Rey’s parents are nobodies? That was one of the possibilities I contemplated at the time, so not much at all for me. How about if she’s a San Tekka? I don’t really see anything, since she and Lor San Tekka never meet, and he has no further bearing on the plot after handing off the map to Poe and BB-8 and getting murdered by Kylo Ren. Rey Palpatine definitely puts the movie in a new light, but it still breaks the first principle, and doesn’t have nearly enough wow factor to justify doing so.

Third, it has to change the trajectory of the affected character’s actions going forward. Luke’s whole attitude toward Darth Vader is completely shifted in Return of the Jedi, based on his knowledge that Vader is not his father’s killer, but his actual father. Vader’s treatment of Luke, as well, is colored by this knowledge throughout the third movie, and his pivotal action hinges upon this plot point from Empire. You could potentially have had Vader redeem himself and kill the Emperor for different reasons, but then the whole flavor of that character turn, and the themes it conveys, would’ve been something different. Not necessarily worse, but different.

Whereas, how would Rey being a San Tekka change the course of her character in the remainder of The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker? I can’t think of any obvious ways personally, since, again, her only relative is dead, and doesn’t leave any dangling plot threads in need of resolution behind.

Rey Nobody kind of affects the arc of her character, though to my eyes it’s neither as strong nor as clear as Luke’s in the original trilogy. Rey wasn't particularly invested in her parents being special people, that was Kylo (and the audience, because Abrams telegraphed her parentage being a Big Deal in The Force Awakens). She was invested in the prospect of reuniting with them someday, so learning they rejected her—as this movie has it—and are dead means she's finished pursuing that plot thread, but it's been on the back burner since the middle of the previous film anyway, and humble origins change her self-image not at all.

Honestly, Rey Palpatine doesn’t affect her arc much, either—none of her actions in Rise of Skywalker are specifically motivated by the knowledge of her familial connection to the Emperor. Sure, she gets a bit scared she might fall to the dark side, and decides to give up on the galaxy and go into seclusion on Ahch-To (gesundheit) like Luke, and she takes the name Skywalker at the end of the movie; but you could’ve gotten her to the same place using different motivations with only a couple minor tweaks to the script. Likewise, the Emperor’s plan to transfer his essence into Rey’s corporeal body and replace hers didn’t have to hinge on her being a genetic relative (also, that was a weak plot point anyway, but I’m getting ahead of myself).

So for me, the mystery of Rey’s parentage was a doomed enterprise out of the gate. Thematically, I love the solution to the mystery Rian Johnson provided; but narratively speaking, I found the reveal unsatisfying.

As I mentioned earlier, I love the message that the Force is for everyone, that anybody could be a potential Jedi. That said, in a patriarchal, white supremacist society, making your poster child for “anybody could be a potential Jedi” a nondisabled white boy (not even in any alien makeup) at best gives your message less teeth than it ought too have.

While we’re on the subject of Canto Bight, this film has an entire subplot where two of the main characters visit, essentially, Space Monte Carlo, and the creative team still didn’t have a role for Billy Dee Williams to return as Lando Calrissian. Not putting him in the first movie was bad enough, but teeing up the perfect opportunity and then not including him in this one, either? For shame.

I know Luke’s arc is controversial. It’s not the direction I would’ve taken the character, personally (as you’ll see next time), and I was initially conflicted about what I thought about it.

I think for many people, one of their primary takeaways from the original trilogy is that Luke embodies idealism, nicely contrasted with Han’s cynicism in the first movie. This is a trait that the early Expanded Universe especially ran with in regard to Luke’s characterization. (It’s also, incidentally, why Mara Jade was such an excellent foil for Luke, especially early on, with her cynicism, bitterness, and seedy background nicely complementing his idealism, tranquility, and good old boy upbringing. It’s also why Mara’s later appearances, even those written by Zahn, don’t hold up to the same level as the original Thrawn cycle—after Mara mellowed out as a character, the differentiation between her attitude and Luke’s became less sharp.)

All that said, the former idealist turned cynic, who has to re-discover his idealism, is a perfectly good arc for a character, and Hamill and Johnson depict it impeccably. While, again, it’s not the direction I would’ve taken Luke’s character, I don’t find it unreasonable, and I’m mostly satisfied with how his story plays out in this movie.

I’ll also say this: you may disagree with Luke giving up on the Jedi and abandoning the galaxy, but at no point anywhere in the Disney canon does he save the life of a foe, assure them he’d never let them fall, then decapitate them. Oh yeah, I still haven’t forgotten that little incident, much as I’d like to. Anyone telling you the old Expanded Universe was better than Disney canon without a Death Star sized asterisk for the Legacy Era has either forgotten its existence, or doesn’t understand the first fucking thing about Luke Skywalker and shouldn’t be trusted if they told you Tatooine has sand. There’s plenty of legitimate criticism of decisions made in the sequel trilogy, but in each and every example you can point to, Legends did it first, and almost invariably, did it even worse.

Also, I know there are folks who take exception to this movie for non-sucky reasons, and that their criticism not infrequently gets lumped in with the more asinine backlash. If you’re one of those people who have genuine substantive objections, please know that I respect your critiques, and believe they deserve sober consideration, even if I ultimately don’t share your attitude toward the film as a whole.

The Rise of Skywalker:

… Okay, not gonna lie, this is my least favorite Star Wars movie. Which is not to say it’s actively bad. It’s not; it’s just mediocre. But mediocre is still a letdown for the capstone of a nine-movie main saga, especially as it also serves as the culmination of all Star Wars canon to date.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Like with the first two movies, I’ll start off with some major positives. I love Harrison Ford’s cameo, and how his scene with Kylo Ren parallels the scene where the latter kills Han in The Force Awakens. That’s probably my favorite scene in the whole movie, Adam Driver notwithstanding. It’s a fantastic payoff to Han’s sacrifice at the end of Force Awakens. I love Ghost Luke raising his X-Wing out of the water for Rey to use on her mission to Exegol. Those were the two scenes for me where the movie seemed to be in conversation with the previous films, and building on earlier material to provide it greater significance in hindsight – as opposed to just throwing in references for the sake of reference, which is how most of the material hearkening back to previous entries in the series comes across, unfortunately.

I’ve heard it suggested that a number of elements in The Rise of Skywalker served as a rebuke or refutation of The Last Jedi, in light of the backlash the latter film received. In some cases, I think that's a credible accusation, but I agree with an online poster I read at the time, who argued that Luke catching the thrown lightsaber and admonishing Rey for casually chucking it from her reflects the culmination of his character arc in The Last Jedi, rather than a repudiation of it. In other words, I believe Luke as presented at the end of The Last Jedi would have reacted much the same as he does at this point in Rise of Skywalker.

It’s late in the game, but at last they brought Billy Dee Williams back as Lando Calrissian, and gave him quite a decent role, I thought. And they didn’t kill him off, thankfully. It’s corny as all get out, but I genuinely love the scene during the Battle of Exegol, where Poe is losing his morale and lamenting there are “too many” Final Order fighters—only for Lando to fly in with a citizens’ armada and assure him, “There are more of us, Poe. There are more of us.” That and the exchange between the Final Order officers, where Pryde—I think it’s Pryde—asks what fleet it is, and his junior officer replies it’s not a fleet, just … people. Like I said, corny as hell, but it worked for me.

I also think it was neat they got Denis Lawson back for a cameo as Wedge Antilles.

I thought Rey and Kylo Ren “visiting” each other, in Sense8 parlance, was a really cool element. Their battle taking place simultaneously on Kijimi and Kylo’s flagship is beautifully realized visually, serves a plot purpose in the immediate moment—alerting Kylo of her location—and provides setup for the lightsaber handoff between Rey and Ben Solo at the end of the movie when the Knights of Ren jump him on Exegol. That was good filmmaking.

I see the argument about the movie being a bit toothless, making out as though it were killing off several supporting characters, and eventually walking those deaths back. Personally, I’m relieved they walked back most of those deaths—even if the way they did so was cheap, I didn’t feel like the original deaths were earned, or that the film carried the dramatic weight to justify them. Better a botched death that gets walked back than a botched death that becomes permanent, in my book. I’m glad that, with the exception of Leia, the characters I’m emotionally invested in all made it out. (Though apparently Nien Nunb bought it in the final battle—I never would have gathered that from the movie itself, though. That does seem cheap, but I’m not too dismayed. Also, sorry to Snap Wexley fans.)

I like Leia and and Luke’s Force ghosts showing up to support Rey at the end of the movie, and I was relieved there specifically was not a Ben Solo Force ghost included. I understand I’m in the minority here, but I really dislike the character and I additionally think Adam Driver was terrible in the role.

I am glad Ben Solo was redeemed, ultimately, but not out of any concern for him particularly. While I approve of Rey taking the name Skywalker at the end of the movie, I don’t see her as the true heir of the Skywalker-Solo family considering she only interned with the original trilogy generation for a year, a few days to a few weeks, and less than two days, respectively. So if Ben Solo is effectively the last scion of the heroes of the original and prequel trilogies, then it would be really bleak to leave him as an unrepentant villain.

Furthermore, Ben Solo being redeemed closes the loop on Han Solo's sacrifice in The Force Awakens. I said that scene was great, and it was, but unlike Luke's death in The Last Jedi, it was also incomplete. Luke's sacrifice saved his sister and the remainder of the resistance. Han's saved nothing, accomplished nothing tangible for the good guys in the moment where it occurred. It was terrifically staged, but it was also a setup that necessitated an equally strong payoff somewhere down the line. Perhaps this could have been accomplished in some other way than leveraging his son away from the Dark Side eventually, but it would be a pretty tall order to accomplish. (As you'll see in a later post, I came up with a somewhat different payoff for Han's sacrifice, but I also shifted around several key details in my narrative so it doesn't land quite the same anyway.)

Then, too, philosophically, an unredeemed Kylo Ren would undermine the power of Darth Vader’s redemption in Return of the Jedi, and the message that no one is so far that they can’t recover their humanity, and instead reinterpret it as “Yes, actually, some people really are so far gone that there’s no hope for their reform” with the often unstated accompanying postulate that the only thing to do with such people is either to kill them, or lock them in a cage and throw away the key, both of which have strong authoritarian undertones. (Although, as I type this it occurs to me that if Abrams and Terrio had somehow devised a means to redeem the Emperor, while leaving Kylo Ren still a villain, that honestly would have made the message of Return of the Jedi even stronger, and would have constituted an evolution of the themes of the previous trilogies, rather than a tired recapitulation.)

So now we’re moving on to items I partially liked, or kinda appreciated, or liked a little bit.

I thought Jana, Naomi Ackie’s character, the stormtrooper who, like Finn, rebelled against the First Order, was great in concept, and well acted—it’s just a shame the movie gave her so very little of substance to work with.

I love the implications that Finn is Force-sensitive; I wish the movie had done more to make this ability intrinsic to the plot and/or characters in some fashion.

I knew Hux was going to help our heroes as soon we got the setup for their execution, but I dug his rationale, “I don’t care if you win; I just need Kylo Ren to lose.” Seemed pretty perfunctory how he was killed off soon after, but I’m not broken up over it, and I think it’s highly in keeping with Hux as a character that he does a shoddy job of covering his tracks and gets made almost instantly.

I always thought there ought to be some kind of explanation for who Snoke was rather than him being this random ultra powerful Dark Side wizard who popped up out of nowhere, and the answer this film presented was simple, effective, and straightforward. Similarly, I respect the movie’s efficiency in closing out one major potential loophole from the previous movie: why not use the Holdo Maneuver all the time? Because it was a million-to-one shot that just happened to pan out, and she was out of any other options, but it would be daft to make such an enormous gamble an integral feature of one’s battle strategy. Fair enough.

And while I’m opposed to bringing Palpatine back at all, I thought having Merry from the Lord of the Rings’ character speculate on how it could’ve happened was a decent way to paper over that question, again without dragging it out unduly.

I am not at all a Finn/Poe shipper, and even I found it highly obnoxious that they went out of their way to give Poe a cross-gender love interest. At least Jana has a point to her character, and the suggestion of romantic feelings between her and Finn is a lot more ambiguous; there are no such excuses for Keri Russell’s Zorii Bliss. All that said, I have to give the filmmakers props for having Poe model how to take romantic rejection in a healthy, respectful, and mature way. Even during the final victory celebrations where, from a narrative perspective, you'd expect the two attractive young people of different genders to make out or share a romantic moment, Poe sends her a wordless proposition, which she declines by shaking her head. Poe’s response? Smile of acceptance, a little shrug as if to say “it was worth a try,” and return to the party.

Popular media in the USA is awash with stories where the male protagonist “gets the girl” at the end, to the point where it’s become an expected trope. I fear that at worst, this glut of narratives can help nurture a certain level of entitlement in impressionable boys and young men: they come to assume that if they comport themselves in a way they see as emulating how a male protagonist is supposed to act, they also will be rewarded with romantic/sexual affection. Such male entitlement is only exacerbated by the rise of online misogyny and hyper-patriarchal influencers—we all know who I’m referring to. Which is why it says so much that the flagship movie of one of the biggest media franchises in human history goes out of its way to depict one of its male leads be rejected romantically by a female character, and accept that rejection as a valid response. Disappointing, sure, but thoroughly valid, with nothing to do but take the L and move on. For mainstream US pop culture, it's downright profound.

And also, yes, it’s immensely shitty the way the movie takes a Death Star blast to the most popular queer pairing in the sequel trilogy to make its very good observation about romantic rejection. Many things can be true at the same time.

As for Leia’s story in the movie—I think the most important thing to realize, first up, is that there was no good way for the filmmaking team to craft a narratively satisfying role for Leia in light of Carrie Fisher’s tragic early death at the age of just 60 in 2016. They only had a choice out of a batch of bad options. So I don’t believe they deserve a great deal of criticism for the approach they took. That said, with the benefit of hindsight, I think they made the wrong call. In some places, I think splicing unused footage from Force Awakens works pretty well; sometimes it’s hugely awkward. And unlike, say, Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One, Leia doesn’t actually do anything of substance in her scenes to merit her inclusion. (I recognize the Moff Tarken appearance in Rogue One is also controversial, I’m just saying I could make a stronger narrative case for its inclusion than Leia’s in The Rise of Skywalker.)

Knowing how it turned out, I would have followed my sister’s suggestion, before Rise came out, that the movie open with Leia already deceased, and Lt. Connix—the character played by Carrie Fisher’s real-life daughter—giving the eulogy. Apart from avoiding all the shaky visuals and unnecessary scenes, this would also provide reason for the characters in the film to be mourning her absence throughout, just like the cast, crew, and fans. We could see a pre-redemption Kylo Ren wrestling with the loss of his mother, and we could have Rey pass along a final message to him from Leia during one of their mid-film duels. You would lose the scene of Leia reaching out to Kylo in her final moments of life, and tipping his internal balance toward redemption, but I’m sure that with a little more brainstorming they could’ve found a tenable alternative.

All right, we’ve discussed the good, and the so-so, it’s time address the actively bad points about The Rise of Skywalker.

First off, can we talk about Finn’s role in this movie? Because for the most part, he’s just along for the ride. He has a couple pretty good scenes, such as bonding with Jana, but they're few and far between. He plays a vital role in bringing down the Final Order fleet during the climax, but there’s nothing intrinsic to Finn specifically as a character in it—they just needed someone to do the job, and he fit. He has no character arc to speak of. Is there, like, a non-sexualized version of the Sexy Lamp test—because I honestly wouldn’t be surprised Finn in this movie were to fail it. This is a monstrously disrespectful way to treat the second biggest protagonist in your trilogy, and it’s an especially bad look when he’s also one of the fairly few prominent Black characters in the film franchise. No wonder John Boyega was upset by his experience with The Rise of Skywalker; the top brass at Disney and Lucasfilm owe him an enormous apology.

And poor Rose Tico got even less of a role than Finn. I’ve read somewhere that she was held back from greater participation because the filmmakers felt they needed a character to play off Leia, and Rose made the most sense. Whether that’s true, or an excuse intended to save face, the bottom line is that it was a bad call, and it had the effect of at least partially validating the most hateful and bad faith backlash the sequel trilogy received. Rose was a great character, and she deserved a more prominent role in this movie. Kelly Marie Tran is also owed an apology, as well as for Lucasfilm/Disney’s mishandling of all the racist misogynist dogpiling she received in the wake of The Last Jedi. (And look, if you disagree with me about Rose being a great character, that’s completely legit. But you take that up with the writer/director in that case, not the actor. That’s just basic decency.)

Daisy Ridley was given a big substantial role, at least … but I submit the character arc did the character of Rey a profound disservice. Philosophically, I hate the “Rey Palpatine” reveal, for all the reasons I’ve listed above. Beyond that, though, it’s one more instance of the sequel trilogy regurgitating something people loved from the original trilogy without stopping to consider the context. Pop culture saturation notwithstanding, “Vader is Luke’s father” is a twist that packs an incredible punch in Empire. But once that’s already in the mix, dropping essentially the same twist in the same franchise a second time isn’t going to have the same impact. That’s another thing Force Awakens got right: Kylo Ren being Han and Leia’s son was brought up off-handedly, rather than treated as a major reveal for either the characters or the audience.

Furthermore, “Oh, your family was evil, so maybe you’ll turn evil too” made sense for Luke’s character and his arc. But what makes Rey so great in the first two movies is that, while she occupies the same archetypal orphan hero role, her psychology and vulnerabilities, her goals and motivations, are distinctly her own. Shoving her into a repeat of Luke’s arc from Jedi in the second half of the movie is a waste of everything that made Rey as a character unique, on top of being an example of “more of the same, and not as good.”

Because this movie copies so much of the original trilogy’s notes, it was probably inevitable that the climax would be, well, a repeat of the climax from Return of the Jedi—even though The Last Jedi made a heroic attempt to preempt that plot point by doing its own, moderately more innovate repeat in the final confrontation with Snoke.

But the thing about the climax to Return of the Jedi is, it actually had some interesting things to say. The standard heroic narrative thing would be for Luke to cut his way through Vader and the Emperor and stand over their vanquished corpses. Instead, he throws away his lightsaber and spends the climax curled on the ground, writhing in agony and pleading for help from the man who’s been his fiercest enemy across the trilogy.

And we also see Vader, the bad guy, the living embodiment of evil over the past three movies, turn against his villainous master and take a heroic act. And yeah, sure, critics such as David Brin have pointed out how paltry Vader’s redemption would be if it took place in our world. But Star Wars is fundamentally a fairy tale, and in that context, Darth Vader of all people becoming good is incredibly powerful.

Whereas The Rise of Skywalker has a handful of Jedi Force ghosts talking to Rey, which is neat, but other than that, what does she, or any of the other characters do that surprises and delights us? She affirms “I am all the Jedi,” which is cool and all but has no heft because it hasn’t had much thematic buildup. And she crosses her lightsabers to deflect the Emperor’s lightning attack, which proves to be too much for him so he just sort of consumes himself instead. Many years ago I pointed out how the climax to the original run of the Star Wars Legacy comics invoked the end of Return of the Jedi without bringing anything new or innovative to the table, and you can level the exact same criticism against The Rise of Skywalker. This is the way the Skywalker Saga ends; not with a bang, but with a disappointing thud.

Even the returning Ian McDiarmid turns in a pretty tepid performance, which I never would have credited beforehand.

Again, I want to stress that the movie is not bad, it’s mediocre, and this franchise deserved better. These characters deserved better, including, I stress, most of the ones who were introduced in this sequel trilogy. There was a huge amount of great potential these movies introduced, and it’s a shame how much was ultimately squandered.


Bonus!

While I won’t be touching the two anthology films, I’ll briefly share my thoughts.

Rogue One. Great movie, right up there with the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and The Last Jedi for me. I know a lot of people were bothered by the digital reanimation of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher, but it didn’t bother me. Neither did all the references, with the exception of Dr. Evazan and Ponda Boba jostling Jyn on Jedha, which was preposterous. Threepio and Artoo cameo, though? Sure, that was fine, and made a heck of a lot more sense.

And the movie did something both A New Hope and The Force Awakens could’ve benefited from, which is actually show us some normal scenes of everyday people going about their typical business before they’re hit with a Death Star blast. When it detonates Jedha City, the viewers are horrified having seen a glimpse of the folks who were just eradicated—which is how it should be. The Death Star should horrify and anger us, and Rogue One understood the assignment.

My only serious criticism is that almost all the character development takes place in the first half of the movie. Once the team departs for Scarif, there’s a tiny bit of development for Baze, where he rediscovers his faith in the Force just before he dies, and for Jyn, I guess, when Cassian tells her her father would’ve been proud, and that’s it. Could’ve stood to give these folks a bit more personality work, is all I’m sayin’.

General Draven is a great villain: somebody on the heroes’ side and committed to the same cause, but willing to go behind his superiors’ backs and order the assassination of someone who turns out to be a Rebel sympathizer and the architect of their eventual success. He’s kind of like Section 31 from Star Trek. Unfortunately, the writers of the comics line seem to miss the obvious fact that Draven is a bad guy, and gave him a nice antihero blaze of glory death, which is unfortunate, but I can’t exactly blame the movie for this misreading.

Solo. It was okay. Pretty good, even. Alden Ehrenreich is serviceable in the role, but he’s by no way a patch on Harrison Ford. Donald Glover, on the other hand, is absolutely a believable young Billy Dee Williams. The movie should have been about him. L337—aren’t we funny—was a great character, that the movie unfortunately kept treating as a joke and then unceremoniously killed off, so that wasn’t great. Also, I really, really dislike the implication that Han could have been talking to Chewie in Shyriiwook all through the original trilogy and The Force Awakens, but opted not to. You can theorize all kinds of excuses, but it changes the dynamic and it makes Han a little bit less of a good friend to Chewie, which isn’t good. Also, a lesser point, but I like to think many species just can’t pronounce each others’ languages for anatomical reasons; makes the galaxy feel that much more diverse and expansive.

I appreciated that, in contrast to the typical male speculative fiction hero origin story, and to the Legends backstory written by A.C. Crispin, the film withheld from killing off Han's youthful love interest. I've seen it before, didn't need to see it again.

The plot to the movie was fine. Not brilliant, not bad, it was solid. However, there’s one part which, even if the rest of the movie sucked, would’ve made the whole thing worthwhile, and that’s the uprising on Kessel. The fact that it starts out essentially by accident is risible, but otherwise, that sequence is a banger.

The old Legends material flirted with the prospect of droid uprisings every so often, and the Solo companion novel Last Shot by Daniel Jose Older featured an organic villain who thought droids were superior and used organic limbs to enhance droids. In all these iterations, though, the setup always followed the Terminator/Matrix formula of machines versus organics (including Last Shot, where the main villain was an organic Quisling).

Steeped in this background, I had my mind blown in Solo when the self-liberating droids on Kessel began freeing the enslaved human, Wookiee, and other organic prisoners along with their mechanical fellows. In other words, the droid revolt eschewed the simplistic machine vs. organic perspective of so much science fiction and displayed an admirable degree of class consciousness; recognizing the chained organics were just as much victims of the Pyke enslavers as the droids themselves, and that it was in both groups' best interests to revolt collectively against their oppressors. Legit gets me tearing up every time I think about it.


I’m not going to go over all the TV shows. For the most part, they’re pretty good, but each one has some serious flaw or other that holds it back from becoming a top tier favorite. In terms of quality of writing and production, of course, Andor easily takes the top spot, but for me it’s a little too grim, with insufficient comic relief, and could’ve stood more exploration for how the Force shows up for non-users, that it doesn’t hit the Star Wars sweet spot for me. I can’t fault the storytelling quality, but there’s enough absence of ingredients that for me, personally, make a great Star Wars story—or my kind of story in general, for that matter—that I can’t give it pride of place above the other shows that are more uneven in terms of writing and plot, but feel more like they fit within a Star Wars aesthetic.


And those are my opinions on the sequel trilogy, and to a lesser extent, the rest of live action Disney Star Wars. There are a lot of ups and downs, but I feel it incumbent to point out that even the lowest lows are still orders of magnitude better than the worst aspects of the Legacy era from Legends continuity. As bad as Disney Star Wars gets at times, it could be—and for a good six or seven years it definitely was—way, way worse.

At the same time, however, just because other storytellers did it first and did it even worse does not absolve Disney Star Wars from its own failings. “I’m not as bad as the other guy” is no excuse for mediocrity or creatively bankrupt plot points like making the main villain another Skywalker heir. Star Wars should always aspire to be better.

In tomorrow’s post, I’ll share a detailed plot treatment of how I would rewrite the first sequel film, Episode VII, with write-ups for the remaining movies dropping later this month. Till then, May the Force be with you, always.

Christopher Robin opens with our titular character bidding Winnie the Pooh and all his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood goodbye as he prepares to leave for boarding school. Shortly after his father dies*, and Christopher Robin is told that now he is the man of the house.

*A brilliant departure from real world history: in the universe of the movie, Christopher Robin’s father never lived long enough to publish the stories about Christopher and his friends, explaining why nobody else in the movie has heard of Pooh and the others before.

Fast forward several years, Christopher, now an adult Ewan McGregor, meets Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) on a bus; then we see them dancing; soon Christopher is leaving to fight in the second World War, leaving a pregnant Evelyn behind; he returns three or four years later, reuniting with Evelyn, and meets their daughter, Madeline.

The narrative then skips forward another few years, and comes to rest with Christopher working in the efficiency department of Winslow luggage. His boss, Giles Winslow (Mark Gatiss), informs Christopher that there’s to be a company-wide meeting Monday morning, and if he can’t cut costs by 20% by then, his department will be downsized.

Christopher Robin—who, we immediately gather, already works more than his family would like—reluctantly sends his wife and daughter to the old family cottage in Sussex without him while he settles in to work through the weekend to save his job and those of his subordinates.

However, the mysterious arrival of a certain old friend with a honey fixation practically at Christopher Robin’s doorstep throws a spanner into his plans, eventually sending him back to Sussex as well for a confrontation with his past, and with his own priorities in the relationships he holds most dear.

Okay, so I played up the indie drama in the previous paragraph, but have no fear, this movie knows exactly what viewers want from a story about a grown up Christopher Robin reuniting with Winnie the Pooh and the other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Woods. Moreover, I think it knows what a story about a grown up Christopher Robin reuniting with his beloved childhood friends should give its viewers, and it delivers that, as well.

Before we discuss exactly what makes this movie work so well, though, let’s address the major criticisms: Yes, the character arc of an overworking husband and father learning to loosen up and spend more time with his family is cliché, and the film plays it completely straight. Yes, it also downplays the complexity of its protagonist’s situation: this specific weekend, at least, he has a good reason for staying to work, as people’s jobs, his own included, are on the line. And yes, the too-perfect happy ending to this dilemma, in good Woke Disney fashion, rests on nice capitalism triumphing over mean capitalism. These factors are tiresome, but they serve as a decent vehicle for the story the film is trying to tell—and the story itself is well worth telling.

Also, I should make clear that—since my own childhood connection to Paddington Bear is slight, and my sisters’ nonexistent—I still haven’t seen either of the two Paddington films, and can’t compare how this one stacks up against them. In this article, I’m judging Christopher Robin strictly on its own merits, and how it works as a sequel to the books and previous Disney animated adventures.

So what makes this movie work? First of all, the filmmakers made the wise decision to go all in on the magic realism, rather than playing coy and going, “oh, maybe it’s all just his imagination”—or confirming it’s all his imagination. In this universe, Pooh and company really are living, talking stuffed animals (and flesh and blood animals), who eventually meet Christopher Robin’s family, as well as freaking the hell out of some random Londoners.

At the same time, the filmmakers also avoid making up some preposterous and convoluted backstory for how Pooh and company came to talk in the first place. They just do, no explanation necessary.

Next up, we must give the cast their due. Ewan McGregor is immediately believable as a grown up version of the wise little boy who was both playmate and mentor to Pooh Bear and friends. He’s a mature Christopher Robin, one who’s experienced tragedy and hardship and the soul destroying challenge of living in a cold, uncaring, capitalist society, and has, by his own eventual admission, lost his way in the process—but he’s Christopher Robin nonetheless.

Apart from acting convincingly opposite a bunch of CG stuffed animals*, McGregor walks a tightrope through much of the movie, vacillating between Christopher Robin’s adult obligations and his affection for and indulgence in his old friends from the Hundred Acre Wood. Even when Pooh demolishes several of his kitchen shelves (after tracking honey across his floor and carpet), Christopher Robin’s response is exasperated resignation rather than seething anger. He loses his temper exactly once with Pooh, at a point where it makes sense in the story, and even then, he isn’t really harsh with his best friend, just impatient. All through the movie, he does his best to be kind to his old friends, even though he can’t come out and play with them the way they want him to.

*No small accomplishment.

One of the more difficult types of protagonist to pull off is the one whose main goal involves actively trying to escape the events of the story, as this makes their motivations diametrically opposed to the desires of the viewers. McGregor’s Christopher Robin succeeds in this role better than most by accommodating his friends as much as he feels able, and perhaps a little bit more, but still insisting he has to get his work done and return to London in time for the big meeting.

He also never dismisses his friends or their early adventures as “kid stuff.” When he tells them he’s grown up now as his reason for not being able to keep playing, he isn’t contemptuous, but apologetic. His lesson in the movie isn’t so much relearning the joy of child’s play as learning that it’s okay to indulge that joy sometimes, even when you’re all grown up.

Bronte Carmichael also has a demanding role as Christopher and Evelyn’s daughter Madeline, who loves her father and does her best to hide her bitter disappointment at his constant absence and his stuffy “all work and no play” attitude. In the final third or so of the film, Madeline also has a fair bit of playing off computer animated toys. Either one would be a lot to ask of a child actor, and Carmichael nails them both.

Hayley Atwell as Evelyn has the thankless role of long-suffering spouse and initially dismissed voice of reason. While her role isn’t as memorable as McGregor’s or Carmichael’s, her character’s relationship to both—the love and frustration and determination to push forward in spite of the frustration—are crucial to the film’s emotional story. If her performance were less convincing, it would undermine both Madeline’s and Christopher Robin’s arcs.

Atwell doesn’t have much time playing opposite the CG characters, but thank heavens, she is eventually introduced to them, rather than the movie ending with Pooh and company being “our little secret” just between Christopher and Madeline. It’s also clear that while Evelyn’s pained by her husband’s work obsession and chronic absence, she’s deeply invested in making things work—as one of my sisters put it, this isn’t a story of Winnie the Pooh saving Christopher Robin’s marriage. That makes two more easy pitfalls the movie avoids.

Mark Gatiss is a serviceable villain; one-dimensional, but he only appears in three scenes, so it’s not too grating. He even gets a nicely symbolic comment in his second scene, where he tells Christopher Robin “See you on the dance floor,” unintentionally recalling how Christopher first wooed Evelyn.

The CG cast are intricately animated and beautifully expressive, even if they don’t look like real stuffed animals, or actual animals in Rabbit’s and Owl’s cases. (Not having studied the background of the books, I was previously unaware that Rabbit and Owl were not also based on toys.)

Jim Cummings voices both Pooh and Tigger, which if you have a strong childhood attachment to the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh cartoon like my sisters and I do, is a welcome return to the roles. Most of the rest of the Woods’ inhabitants are recast, but their voices are fitting for their characters: Eeyore is appropriately gloomy, Piglet appropriately timid, etc.. The only exception is Rabbit, voiced by Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi of all people—he doesn’t sound right, but he’s fortunately a third stringer among the Hundred Acre Woods cast, and doesn’t participate in the climactic London adventure*.

*Though this is itself surprising, since from what I remember of the show, and even the 60s Disney shorts, Rabbit was always more of a central character than Eeyore, who does participate in the London jaunt.

Part of what makes the movie work so well is that the Hundred Acre Wood characters remain as whimsical and childlike as ever, albeit transported into a somewhat more mature and adult world. This helps the film build emotional resonance, and also humor. One of the most entertaining aspects of Christopher Robin comes from watching Pooh and friends’ antics, transplanted from the storybook land of the Sussex countryside* to the hustle and bustle of mid-20th century London. While of course it was necessary to revisit the Wood for story purposes, I’m a bit sorry the film couldn’t have spent longer playing around with the stuffed-animals-out-of-water concept.**

*Forests having a millennia-long association with fantastical beings and occurrences in folklore.
**Again, not having seen the Paddington movies, I can’t judge how much or how little this aspect of Christopher Robin mirrors those films.

The antics of Pooh and company help the film maintain its tone. The premise is already drenched in nostalgia, and it would be easy for the whole project to drown in mawkish reminiscences of bygone days. Fortunately, the Hundred Acre Woods characters can be relied on to lighten the mood with their silliness—or occasionally, their practicality—whenever it threatens to become too cloying.

While the film isn’t aggressively nostalgic, it often gets emotional, with plenty of touching moments, such as Christopher Robin tucking Pooh into his daughter Madeline’s bed the night he shows up in London, or persuading his other friends of who he is by dramatically pretending to fight off a Heffalump attack. The movie, like Pooh himself, is a bear of very big heart.

It’s also a very humorous movie. Occasionally, a joke will fall flat, but the comedy lands more often than not. I wasn’t enamored with the running gag of Eeyore addressing Atwell’s character as “Evelyn My Wife,” but his gloomy, fatalistic commentary is otherwise quite amusing, as is Pooh’s amiable doofiness. And as previously mentioned, unleashing these preposterous critters on a modern(ish) urban landscape like London is a comedy masterstroke.

I was mildly impressed by the use of recurrent symbols—not something I expected to be saying about a Winnie the Pooh property. Sure, the line about “Dreams don’t come free. You have to work for them. Nothing comes from nothing” and its multiple variations is a little clunky, but other repetitions, such as the Christopher Robin dancing motif, the “name what you see” game, and the compass helping him find his direction, were surprisingly effective.

The movie also has some fun with the mythology—my favorite part being when Christopher Robin becomes momentarily stuck while crawling through a tree, and remarks, “So this is what it feels like.” The continuity nods are sweet, and not overplayed. The part where Pooh gets himself and Christopher Robin lost by following their own footprints was the only one that didn’t feel like a clever nod to the previous stories so much as a straight copy-paste, and even that serves a purpose in finally getting Christopher Robin to lose his temper*.

*Usually an excruciating scene, but because Christopher Robin is just being frustrated, rather than hateful, it’s not so hard a watch.

Fans of the classic Disney cartoons will also catch a highly reminiscent musical note here and there; but these are brief references to the classics rather than crass attempts to generate goodwill from viewers by invoking the past. Christopher Robin is a film which stands up on its own merits, paying homage to the past without using it as a crutch.

Likewise, the catchphrases are used sparingly and always to good effect.* Why yes, Ewan McGregor can deliver the line “Silly old bear,” and make you believe it.

*I believe they even have omitted Pooh’s “Think, think, think, think, think,” which was always one of my favorites.

Christopher Robin isn’t a groundbreaking work of family entertainment, and it isn’t trying to be. Its highest aspiration is to provide a movie-going experience that will make you laugh, make you cry (or at least get misty-eyed), and walk away from the film with a serious case of the warm fuzzies, and in that ambition it’s an unmitigated success. If you find the premise remotely appealing, you won’t be disappointed by giving it a watch.

Some of Your Blood, by legendary sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon, is an epistolary novel centering around US Army psychiatrist Philip Outerbridge and his treatment of a young soldier going under the pseudonym “George Smith.” George had an exemplary service record, which made it all the more peculiar when he attacked a superior officer for no obvious reason a few weeks earlier. Unfortunately, the superior officer in question and the other major witness to the affair have since perished in military action, leaving George the only one who can explain the mystery, and George isn’t exactly forthcoming. Dr. Outerbridge’s superiors, including his good friend Major Al Williams, are prepared to write the incident off as an unexplained fluke, and want Outerbridge to give George a clean bill of health. Outerbridge, however, suspects something deeper and more disturbing is going on with George. Through a mixture of therapeutic practices and a bit of outside research and detective work, Outerbridge is determined to uncover the truth.

Some of Your Blood is strong on characterization; indeed, a great chunk of the story consists of a character study of George, written as a third-person narrative of his life story so far, submitted to Outerbridge as part of his treatment. I found parts of this section dull even in audiobook format, but it serves its purpose in the story, and never got so boring as to drive me away. Fortunately, the story picks up steam again once we come out of the extended flashback, and rejoin Outerbridge as he tries to get to the bottom of George’s condition, while fending off attempts by Major Williams to have him clear George for duty already.

The latter subplot comes to a head in a series of telegrams between Outerbridge and Williams, which for me was one of the highlights of the book. The social maneuvering at work is brilliant, the banter is terrific, and the exchange does a masterful job of depicting the deep friendship between the two men, even though they’re currently at odds.

At the climax of the story, Outerbridge tells George his diagnosis and goes back through George’s life story, filling in gaps where George omitted crucial details, and explaining the genesis and development of his psychosis. I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable about psychology to assess the accuracy of Outerbridge’s diagnosis and reconstruction of George’s issues; though I can say nothing leaped out at me as obviously false. In any case, I enjoyed this part the way I enjoy a certain kind of science fiction yarn: a plausible-sounding extension of stuff we already know to be true, which leads to a wildly strange—in a cool way—outcome.

Apparently, Some of Your Blood was originally published as a crime story, but these days gets more often sorted under “Horror,” and multiple reviews describe the last section as quite disturbing.

I have my own perspective, but discussing it inevitably means delving into ending spoilers. So if you haven’t already read the book and want to preserve the surprise, stop reading here. Everyone else, please join me after the spoiler break.

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Right, where was I? Oh, yes. Personally, I found the story both more and less horrific than an average modern horror piece. More, because the book does a superb job of setting up its macabre revelations while still making them surprising*; the description manages to be chilling despite both George and Outerbridge remaining matter-of-fact.

*Meaning it neatly avoids falling into the trap famously described by its author: “90% of everything is crap.”

And at the same time less, because the grisly conclusion modern horror has trained me to expect—where George drops the naive, unassuming masquerade and slaughters Outerbridge and numerous hospital staff—never actually occurs. Outerbridge identifies the neurotic behavior George has kept secret all this time*, explains its workings, and tells George they can work together to cure him. Instead of snapping and going on a rampage, George is surprised and pleased, readily accepts Outerbridge’s offer, and that’s it. In this case, the lack of a twist was the most shocking outcome for me.

*Hardly a surprise at this point, given the massive clues dropped throughout the story, including in the title itself, but no less effective for being expected.

So for me, Some of Your Blood is difficult to pigeonhole into a genre. It doesn’t really read like crime fiction or horror to me, and I can’t call it magic realism because there isn’t actually any magic. If I absolutely had to stick a label to it, I guess I’d call it “weird fiction,” but maybe it would be better to leave the story as its own little curiosity.

Theodore Sturgeon was recommended me by a Ferretbrain irregular a few years ago, saying he was an author who displayed great warmth and affection for his characters, even the dysfunctional ones*. This is certainly the case with George, whom Outerbridge and others view with sympathy, even though he’s murdered two people and his imagination habitually fixates on violent and gruesome scenarios.

*Said irregular also asserted his full-length works were inferior to his short fiction; happily, Some of Your Blood seems to be the exception.

The book ends ambiguously, but in this case, it’s justified. While the book portrays George as a sympathetic figure, it challenges the reader to make the final judgment on George’s fate, and by extension, on George as a character*. Which scenario do you pick?

*Although I feel the story cheats by depicting both of George’s murder victims as people whom no one will really miss, with a bit of class stereotyping thrown in for one case. Yes, you can argue he’s not responsible by dint of his mental faculties, and once he’s cured of his compulsion he won’t be a danger anymore, but where does that leave him vis-a-vis the survivors of the people he killed? The book gives a cop-out answer and moves on.

The story also messes with the fourth wall. At the start it tells you, the reader, you’re in Outerbridge’s office, finding the documents which comprise the story in one of his files, but also gives the disclaimer that this is all a work of fiction. Then at the very end, after encouraging the reader to decide for themselves about George, the book says, “now quick, better get out of here. The doctor’s on his way, and if he finds you in here, you’ll have to confront the fact that maybe this story is real after all.”

Unlike many cases, this deliberate subversion of literary conventions feels less like an exercise in showing off the author’s smartypants cred, and more like Sturgeon having a little harmless fun with the medium.

To put it another way, in the case of Some of Your Blood, the ambiguity and fourth wall breaking that often comes across as the author showing off their own cleverness at the expense of telling a satisfying story instead serves to tell the story in a more satisfying way.

Some of Your Blood is an interesting story with good character work, an engrossing plot, and perhaps due to having been published over five decades ago, manages to subvert genre conventions much more successfully than most contemporary deconstructionist works, even the good ones.

This article was originally published on ferretbrain.com, as part of a longer post of mini reviews written by multiple authors. Only my contributions are reproduced here. The article has been backdated to the original publication date, but with some minor edits from its republication here in 2019.

“Remembering Turinam” and “Forests of the Night”

Multiple author anthologies are always a mixed bag for me in terms of my interest and enjoyment. I have little or nothing of substance to say about the majority of stories from the 2013 postcolonial speculative fiction anthology We See a Different Frontier, edited by Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad. This being the case, I’m going to ignore Ekaterina Sedia’s excellent advice in the Afterword that the anthology is best read as a whole, and concentrate on my two personal favorites from the collection. Keep in mind my tastes are subjective, and the stories I like most probably aren’t the best of the bunch. With that stipulation, let’s have a look.

Remembering Turinam

“Remembering Turinam,” by N. A. Ratnayake, follows Salai, a brown-skinned Turian scholar going to visit his dying grandfather. For decades, the Turian culture has lived under the boot of the imperialistic Rytari, their language outlawed, their schools of learning put to Rytari use, their very philosophy of knowledge warped by Rytari utilitarianism.

In a mere eleven pages, Ratnayake paints a vivid picture of both Turian and Rytari cultures. The Rytari are monstrous and despicable, but they’re no cartoon Empire out of Star Wars; they have their complexities and their elaborate institutions and codes which give them an illusion of legitimacy. The former Turians, too, while portrayed as morally superior to the Rytari because of their scholarly pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and their rejection of violent warfare, are never romanticized as an idyllic people.

“Remembering Turinam” is a story about colonialism, a story about genocide. Not so much genocide in terms of wholesale slaughter, but in terms of tearing the heart and soul out of a culture, destroying its language; its values; its sensibilities and its ways of conceptualizing the universe, what matters, what’s real, what people are and can be.

It’s also a story of downfall and complicity on the part of the Turians. We see the way Turians like Salai and his grandfather have had to serve and perpetuate the Rytari oppression of their people in order to survive.

But “Remembering Turniam” is also a story of survival, resilience, resistance, and the potential for redemption and liberation. Turians like Salai and his grandfather might be complicit in their own oppression, but they may yet be able to subvert it.

At first, Salai thinks to drive the Rytari out violently, but Grandfather urges him not to, citing the fall of Turniam, when “We turned our backs on everything our elders had taught us about the fruits of violence being illusory and temporary at best.” Violent resistance will not avail, but neither does Grandfather—or the story—counsel acceptance of Rytari domination, and abdication of resistance.

The key to Turian liberation, if it ever comes, is in the seed of Turian culture which Grandfather passes on to Salai. Turian culture, the ending suggests, with its more enlightened and humanistic beliefs and philosophies, may yet survive and flourish.

As Walidah Imarisha writes in the Introduction to Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements: “the decolonization of the imagination is the most dangerous and subversive form there is: for it is where all other forms of decolonization are born. Once the imagination is unshackled, liberation is limitless.”

Forests of the Night

“Forests of the Night,” by Gabriel Murray, tells the story of a young man who grew up with his Malay mother, but has now been taken on as valet by his Anglo father, Captain Lyons, to live on the Captain’s rural Yorkshire estate. But all is not well in this particular county, as several sheep have been found dead, and the killings quickly spread to encompass dogs and eventually humans. Paw prints are found by the scene of the killings which resemble those of a large tiger. But how could a tiger have found its way into the middle of 19th Century Yorkshire?

This story does a great job of depicting the protagonist’s ambivalence about his white father—a man he admires despite what he recognizes as an often patronizing attitude—and discomfort living in rural England, with all the attendant unthinking Orientalist racism. By the end of the piece, it also evolves into a riveting family drama and an impressively intense thriller story.

The language is both rich and economical, using precision and inference to impart a wealth of information and ideas with only a small amount of words. The explanation of the cat’s true nature takes only a single paragraph clocking in at 29 words total, but between the information already presented in the story and some very basic knowledge of folklore, that’s more than enough to tell the reader everything they need to know.

The story expertly raises tension bit by bit until the reader is galloping up to the climax. The ending is cleverly foreshadowed early on, setting up one of the most perfectly appropriate last lines I’ve read in ages.

Class

I’ve previously savaged Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy, and while I stand behind everything I said in my reviews, in the interests of fairness I feel I should also give my thoughts on Class. For those not already aware, Class is a Doctor Who spin-off, whose eight episode first series aired in late 2016, and was written by Ness.

Class takes place in Coal Hill Academy, the fictional secondary school where Ian and Barbara taught Susan back in the First Doctor’s run, and where Clara Oswald and Danny Pink taught more recently. Apart from Clara’s and Danny’s names on a plaque, and a reappearance by a minor character who only hard core Who fans (harder core than me, anyway) will recognize, it has little direct overlap with the Coal Hill Academy we’ve seen in recent seasons of the parent show.

The main connections to Who are an extended Capaldi cameo as the Twelfth Doctor in the first episode to help the protagonists out of a bind and establish the status quo for the rest of the series, and the tone; the aliens the protagonists encounter and the types of problems they get into feel like they’d be right at home on the new Who. (And if one is sufficiently nerdy, one would be tempted to conclude the living shadow which killed Elton Pope’s mum in the backstory to “Love and Monsters” was one of the villainous Shadow Kin.)

Despite being mainly about secondary school students, Class skews a bit more mature than Doctor Who, content-wise. Some of the deaths are more brutal and gory, the themes are sometimes a bit more intense, and there’s a brief sequence of rear nudity in the second episode (from a teacher, not one of the student characters).

Our protagonists are a group of sixth form students, one of whom is an alien, and their teacher Miss Quill, also an alien. Together they witness the opening of a tear in spacetime in the middle of their school, which the Doctor tasks them with protecting. (The students are almost as quick as your humble reviewer to make the “tear = Hellmouth from Buffy” connection.)

The first three episodes are okay, made more watchable for a number of really effective character moments. Starting with the episode 4 & 5 two-parter, though, the plot begins to catch up with the characterization, and delivers some exciting and emotionally compelling stories—until the finale, but we’ll come to that presently.

The characters are complex and engaging; of the three I had the lowest hopes for, two wound up becoming my favorites, and even Charlie, the alien prince, has some genuinely effective moments.

While I’m hardly an expert, I feel like Ness does a decent job of portraying his Sikh and Nigerian characters, as well as a homosexual romance between two of the white characters, with complexity, sensitivity, and no obvious racist or homophobic f**k-ups. I'm not arguing these depictions are absolutely and necessarily above board, just that they’re not so obviously wrong as to bing my “problematic content” radar.

Also, knowing the writer is Patrick Ness—plus the fact that it’s a new Who spin off produced by Steven Moffat—I’m astonished the series made it a whole six and a half episodes into an eight episode run before breaking out the cheap melodrama, and even then it’s brief. The finale, sadly, is more standard fare in terms of melodrama, with a couple supporting characters getting fridged to make the point that This Time, It’s Serious, and the climax revolving around multiple warmed over moral dilemmas. Even here, the melodrama is only at moderate levels compared to the heights both Who and Ness have delivered in the past.

To give the finale credit, the murders of Ram’s father and Tanya’s mother enhanced the tension and created genuine concern about the fates of April’s mother, Tanya’s brothers, and even the main cast later in the episode. This is a claim often made for character deaths in fiction, and the Class series finale is one of those rare instances where it actually worked that way. However, the two recurring characters who get killed are the two primary PoC parents, which is s dodgy move. Then again, there aren’t many other recurring characters the show could kill off to achieve the same effect, with the prime candidate being a physically disabled white woman, so I guess it’s a no win situation there.

The series also has a running theme debating the ethics of genocide—xenocide, to be precise—ultimately coming down in favor. This would be immensely problematic on its own, but the characters never even ask whether the Shadow Kin are all evil like the Daleks, or whether they just happen to have an asshole King whom they’re obliged to obey; we’re just supposed to take it as read that it’s the former.

Finale aside, most of the moments of sadness, tragedy, and drama depicted on the show feel earned. And even the points of highest melodrama don’t break out the Themehammer, which again was a pleasant surprise coming from the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy. (He has a minor go with it in the first episode, but that’s a brief annoyance at worst.)

I found Class smart, enjoyable, and engrossing, and even the irritating finale didn’t put me off the show, though it makes me worry for future series. If not for the finale, I could give Class a wholehearted recommendation. As it is, I still tentatively recommend the show: if future series don’t amp up the melodrama, they’ll probably be worth watching, if not as good as I was led to expect based on the first seven episodes alone.


Update, January 1, 2018: Extremely belated, but I feel I should point out that Class was not renewed for a second season, and at this point, it looks like the program is finished.

I admit to being mildly disappointed, as the first series ended on a couple cliffhangers whose resolution I was somewhat interested in seeing, and I liked the characters and would’ve enjoyed following their stories through more adventures. But the show wasn’t so good that I’m particularly distraught to see it go.

This article was originally published on ferretbrain.com. It has been backdated to the original publication date, but with some minor edits from its republication here in 2019.

Two years ago, whilst visiting London, my mother, my sisters, and I went to see Disney's Oz, the Great and Powerful at the Surrey Quays Odeon. My mother is a huge fan of the “Oz” mythos, and the rest of us well-disposed to it.

Oz, the Great and Powerful, directed by Sam Raimi*, tells the story of how the wizard came to Oz and became ruler of the Emerald City, and also gives the backstory to the Wicked Witch of the West. As such, it's a prequel to The Wizard of Oz. In fact, it specifically sets itself up as a sort-of but not exactly prequel to the 1939 MGM movie, right down to starting out with a sequence set in Kansas that's entirely in black-and-white (which admittedly, is a nice touch).

*Throughout the body of this article, I refer to Raimi as a blanket term for the many creative forces behind this film, much as I use “Peter Jackson” as a catch-all for the creative team behind the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies. I don't know which decisions about the film were Raimi's specifically as opposed to writers, producers, studio executives, etc.. However, it's clear from interviews that Raimi believed in the story of this movie and was satisfied with the final result; so I think it's reasonable to hold him accountable for the film's many failings.

Unfortunately, it's also a complete trainwreck. The following review comprises a composite of my own reflections upon the movie, and points raised in post-mortem dissection with my sisters.

So let's take stock of some of the most glaring offenses this movie commits.

Problem Numero Uno: Dramatis Personae

James Franco takes on the role of the eponymous magician who goes by the stage nickname “Oz” because his real name—Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs—is too unwieldy. After a disastrous performance, he gets chased by an irate muscle man and makes his escape in a hot air balloon. He subsequently gets picked up by a tornado and blown to a magical land where he immediately meets a beautiful young witch named Theadora (Mila Kunis), who quickly identifies him as the wizard of the prophecy who will defeat the wicked witch currently terrorizing the land, and become the new ruler of the Emerald City.

He's also a gigantic asshole, and an egotistical cad. He mistreats the guy who assists him in his magic act and underpays him, too; he somehow charms numerous young women and tells each she's his one true love (more or less), and with one exception shows no concern whatsoever for their feelings and wellbeing; in fact, he can rarely be bothered to care about anyone else except in their capacity to feed or threaten his own aggrandizement; and he's so generally up himself that even when he's trapped in the middle of a tornado, begging an unspecified higher power to spare his life, he's still promising to do great things rather than e.g., to be nicer to other people and show them the respect they deserve. This was about twenty minutes into the film, and I was already rooting for the tornado to drop the git down a chasm and throw us a protagonist who's actually likable.

It's not that I have a problem with jackass protagonists per se—I'm all on board with Dr. Gregory House and Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man, for instance—but these characters only work if you give them some goals or personalities traits which the viewer can relate to and cheer for. Even if you take the view that House only cares about his patients inasmuch as their medical problems present him with a cool mystery to solve, ultimately he wants to make them better, if for different reasons than you the viewer likely want him to. Similarly, while you may take issue with a lot of what Tony Stark does—as indeed you are supposed to much of the time—you can sympathize with the fact that he's trying to make the world a better place as best he knows how.*

*There are also protagonists such as Griffin Mill in The Player who are just plain horrible and you're not supposed to like, but you watch anyway because they're entertaining, or because they have an interesting story. This is definitely not the type of protagonist Disney and Sam Raimi were going for.

Even when you're doing a Christmas Carol scenario, where the whole point is that your protagonist is a terrible person who realizes over the course of the story how terrible they are and then shapes up, you still have to give the viewers something which will keep them invested in the character up to the point where they make the commitment to change their ways. Oz, the Great and Powerful, doesn't. I'll have more to say on this point a little later, but for now, let's move on to the other main characters.

Unfortunately, apart from the Wizard, the cast of the movie is comprised almost entirely of one-note characters. Glinda (Michelle Williams) is the most fleshed-out, being kind and wise and competent and a good ruler to her people, and inexplicably devoted to her father's prophecy that a Great White Savior wizard who is also called Oz will defeat the wicked witch, and become the next king of the Emerald City. She's perceptive enough to realize right off the bat that the Wizard is full of it, but puts all her faith in him anyway because of the prophecy and because of his Hidden Depths (and boy oh boy are they well-Hidden). With Glinda, we have the story of a woman who—despite being massively more qualified and more committed—pins all her hopes for liberation on the success of a man who displays no particular potential (let alone basic moral character), to the point of willingly laying down her life for him. On which point, yes, she does spend the big climax tied to a couple of pillars with the wicked witches just on the point of killing her off.

Theodora starts out as a complete ingénue, and precedes Glinda as a witch with more power than the Wizard who for some reason has to be rescued by him. She remains kind and unassuming and mind-bogglingly naïve right up until the moment Evanora reveals what kind of man the Wizard is to her, and gives her a poison that withers her heart away. Cue “You wouldn't like me when I'm angry” transformation sequence, and hello, Wicked Witch of the West. From that point on, Theodora is a snarling ball of hatred, obsessed with getting revenge on the Wizard, and no apparent goals beyond that apart from ruining everybody else's day. She makes an immediate, one-eighty degree shift from one-dimensionally sweet and innocent to one-dimensionally nasty and hateful without so much as a hint of gray at either end.

I was originally slightly interested in sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz) because unlike ptolemaeus, I failed to pick out that she was a villain from the word “go”. Once that was revealed, it's obvious she's a scheming dictator with even less clear motives than her sister, but presumably having to do with accumulating power and taking over Oz. This comprises the entirety of her character.

Finley (Zach Braff) is a nice flying monkey who looks like a chimpanzee (as opposed to the wicked witch's flying monkeys, who look more like baboons). After the Wizard saves him from a lion (gee, I wonder who that might be), he swears a Life Debt oath of eternal loyalty to the Wizard, who promptly gives him the task of carrying his heavy luggage case. I'm torn over how I feel about Finley: on the one hand, I'm disgusted by the way the Wizard abuses him—on the other, his “comedic” chatter is massively irritating, and I often wished somebody would just stuff a sock into his mouth already and put an end to his nattering.

The closest thing the movie had to a saving grace for me was the “China girl” (Joey King) whose name we never learn. Sure, she's a plucky little orphan girl for the Wizard to take under his wing as kindly patriarch, but she's cheerful and brave and assertive and the only non-evil character for the longest time who got the Wizard to do what she wants rather than what he wants. Hardly brilliant characterization, but for this movie, “somewhat complex” and “not hideously offensive” and “genuinely likable” is high praise.

She's also beautifully well-realized from a visual perspective. In every frame of every scene she looks exactly like a China doll that's been brought to life, to the point where you have to remind yourself you're looking at (I assume) a CGI creation. At a guess I'd say she's probably the product of a motion capture process similar to the one which turned Andy Serkis into Gollum—but the animation here takes things one step further by making their semi-CG character ten inches tall. This may not sound too impressive—until you get to the scene where she crawls onto the Wizard's shoulder, and it all looks utterly seamless. I still have no idea how they pulled that off.

Even with this character, though, the movie takes a tumble. The Wizard and Finley first meet the China girl when they rescue her from her village, which the witch's flying monkeys have destroyed. The Wizard reattaches her legs with some glue, and then she follows him and Finley on their quest to kill the witch. About an hour later, when the story has reached its low point and everything looks hopeless, the Wizard has a conversation with the China girl where they turn to the subject of her family, and how sad she must be that they're all kinda dead, and how sorry the Wizard is that he couldn't repair them, too. You'd think something that big and emotional would've come up a little sooner.

So much for the main cast.

Problem Numero Dos: Plot

The plot to this movie is cliché from start to finish. Young man from our world transported to a magical one where he's told that he is the Chosen One who must defeat the Evil Overlord and bring peace to the land. There's some tepid effort to mix up the formula a little by having him start out by getting taken to the Evil Overlord, who manages to hide her true nature and convince him to go out and kill the leader of the Resistance, and victory comes not from an all-out assault on the Overlord's fortress but rather by running a giant scam, but it's still bog standard. It has all the generic epic fantasy trappings presented in the same way you've seen them presented at least a hundred time by now, and without any particular luster.

Problem Numero Tres: Gender and Race

Oh god, where to start? I mean Ms. Magazine did a pretty good job—bringing up several points which my sisters and I all missed at the time—but that just barely scratches the surface.

First, I guess, because I can't emphasize this point enough: the Wizard is an enormous prick who thinks nothing of toying with women's emotions, and while the movie clearly doesn't support him in this, it takes a very cavalier attitude toward his misbehavior (as in all other instances). If you're being generous, you might consider that it gives him a slap on the wrist somewhere in there, but that's about it. In fact, it actively conspires to protect him from having to face the consequences of his actions—he escapes one misled girlfriend by getting carried away in the balloon, and the other turns evil so lucky break there, too. Imagine a gender-flipped version of Oz, the Great and Powerful, with a female Wizard treating other people this way, especially in a romantic context—she would be universally reviled.

Then there's the fact that so many women are presented as falling so completely for the Wizard's BS, where the skeeviness is amplified by but not reducible to his utter failure to display any great charm or sex appeal.

And hey look, it turns out the motivation for the Wicked Witch of the West, one of the most iconic villains of US cinema, is that she was wronged by a man and in response, turned evil*. Dig down far enough in a woman's motivation for doing anything important, and you'll find a man, and if what they're doing is also bad, you can also bet that the root reason is something blown all out of proportion as well. *gag*

*Admittedly, there's also the bit with the poisoned apple and such, but the focus of the movie and the point which Theodora keeps coming back to is that the Wizard done her wrong.

Glinda, the most powerful and capable character among the good guys, is defined entirely by her relationships to men. From their very first meeting, she submits herself to the Wizard as her leader and savior because of her unshakable faith in the prophecy made by her father. Every action she takes which doesn't revolve around the Wizard revolves around the late king her father, to the point where it is entirely possible (if not probably) that she never even had a mother, but rather sprang fully-formed from her father's brain like the Greek goddess Athena. And, again, she spends the big climactic scene chained to some pillars at the mercy of the witches, but standing defiant because of her unswerving faith in the Wizard and her father.

There's also Glinda's final battle with Evanora, in which—despite proving herself a match for the other witch in terms of both power and skill—Glinda ends up defeating her opponent purely by accident. I think it was ptolemaeus who pointed out that whereas the (non-super powered) Wizard is allowed to be proactive in bringing down the villains, Glinda is only allowed to overcome one in a way where she ultimately exercises no actual agency.

Oh, and once her power is broken, Evanora's true form is revealed not to be the darkly beautiful Rachel Weisz (though not as conventionally beautiful as Michelle Williams) but a wrinkled old hag with a hooked nose. Classy move, Raimi.

The racial dynamics are not as outright appalling, but they, too, have their own special little spots of skeeviness. For instance, ptolemaeus pointed out that having your protagonist's sidekick be a bumbling, comic relief monkey in a freaking bellhop uniform might just have some unfortunate racial implications. About the best I can say for this is that at least Zach Braff is white, but that just means Raimi avoided making the fail even worse.

I also cringed every time the Master Tinker* (Bill Cobbs), and Knuck (Tony Cox), the trumpeter, displayed subservience toward the Wizard, in a way that I don't whenever, say, Geordi La Forge or Worf defers to Captain Picard, or when Dr. Foreman defers to House, or when Gunn defers to Angel or Wesley. It took me a while after we left the theater to figure out why it bothered me so much, but eventually I realized that, beyond being a Straight Male Savior fantasy figure, the Wizard is quite specifically a White Savior fantasy figure. A white person transported to a strange land populated by slightly weird but basically decent natives who are incapable of solving their own problems and need the outsider to lead them in overcoming their adversity, and the outsider's unique capacity to deliver the natives from their plight is innate to him, rather than based on any sort of practical utility he may possess. I've never seen James Cameron's Avatar, but on reflection, having seen Oz the Great and Powerful, I feel I may as well have, though without even the heavy-handed critique of imperialism and the military-industrial complex.**

*Whose name I initially thought I'd forgotten after exiting the theater, but on further investigation appears not to have been given one at all in the film.
**Also, if we imagine the Wizard as any other race than white, then his treatment of women would bring to mind any flavor of vile racial stereotype about men who are [insert any racial group other than white here].

Problem Numero Cuatro: Morality

I think I've made it clear by now that the Wizard 1) is a loathsome scumbag and 2) never receives any appreciable comeuppance or even an appropriate level of condemnation from the film. This phenomenon extends beyond his “romantic” conquests, in that he treats most of the other characters in the movie—with the exceptions (mostly) of Glinda and the China girl—quite badly most of the time. By the end of the film, he appears to have come around to a point where he's made the choice not treat other people so horribly (mostly) without ever quite acknowledging that his previous behavior was not at all okay, let alone apologizing for it and committing to make amends.

I have a high susceptibility for second-hand embarrassment, and so I hate the obligatory scene where the hero is confronted with just how wrong their behavior has been and they have to make a tearful confession to the companions whom they've wronged. However, I realized in Great and Powerful, that even this overly used and melodramatic sequence is better than no acknowledgment or taking of responsibility at all. Instead, the Wizard ends the movie a reformed but thoroughly unrepentant asshole, and while his treatment of others may have improved, his insufferable smugness and arrogance remain solidly intact.

This is clearly illustrated in the “Wizard dispenses gifts” scene at the end of the film, which I will discuss further in the following section. When Finley's turn rolls around, the Wizard bestows upon him a rare and precious gift, one which he has never given anyone before, “my friendship.” Not—as ptolemaeus pointed out—“you have given me a precious gift in your friendship,” even though Finley has displayed heroic levels of loyalty in putting up with the Wizard's crap and abuse through most of the film. But not only does Finley not get an apology or an acknowledgment of his immense generosity, but the Wizard still considers that he is the one bestowing generosity upon Finley by treating him now as a friend and partner because he, the Wizard, is a Great Man—and the film supports him in this outlook.

Another telling scene is the Wicked Witch of the West Theodora's flight from the Emerald City after her defeat at the hands of the Wizard and the resistance. As she leaves, the Wizard calls out to her, telling her that he knows her descent into evil was “not of your own choice” (or something close to that), and that if ever she turns away from evil, she will be welcome back into the Emerald City. To which the witch replies, essentially, “up yours!” and flies off in a huff.

Both ptolemaeus and I fixated on this sequence, but for different reasons. She pointed out that the Wizard's words are phrased in such a way as to omit any agency in Theodora's fall to the dark side, including his own. Of course, he didn't cause her heart to wither away, but he did play a part in pushing her to that point, and even now, when he has supposedly shaped up and become a good man as well as a Great one, he refuses to own up to the way that he wronged her.

But she's evil now, so that makes his mistreatment of her retroactively okay, I guess? And it also makes her later treatment as a straight-up villain and eventual death okay, too. The point of the sequence is to make it clear to the viewers that Theodora is thoroughly evil now, and no longer deserving of any sympathy. I can let slide the cartoonishly black and white morality—if only because if I didn't, I'd have to jettison upwards 90% of the books, TV and movies I enjoy—but the sticking point for me is that I am being asked to ignore the fact that the only reason she's evil in the first place is because she was forced into it by her sister. This should make her a tragic character, but tragic characters inspire sympathy, and sympathy with the Wicked Witch of the West would make people feel bad about how she's presented and her future death at Dorothy's hands. And we can't have that kind of moral complexity. So the exchange here is meant to close down any interpretive space to read the Wicked Witch of the West as a tragic character, even though that is the most obvious reading of her character arc in the film.

Problem Numero Cinco: “Oz” as Prequel

I'll skip over the numerous minor continuity hiccups such as the geographical origin of the Winkies, Munchkins and etc. and the poppy field apparently being right outside the gates of the Emerald City in this version, because it's not a direct prequel, and because these points fade into obscurity next to the thematic breaks. I'll just mention in passing that at the end of the movie, the Wizard has gathered a small group of friends—one of whom he's upgraded to partner—whom we never see or hear from again, and he's also hooked up with Glinda, who shows every sign of intending to stay in the Emerald City; all of which is pretty hard to square with what we see of the two of them in The Wizard of Oz.

This is ridiculous enough, but the thematic ties it attempts to establish with the 1939 movie are where the film goes completely over the cliff.

In an homage to classic film, this one starts out in Kansas, filmed in black and white, where the Wizard has less-than-nice encounters with his “partner” Frank, whom he verbally abuses and underpays; with an old girlfriend, Annie, whom he rejects so she can marry a “good man”; and a little girl whose legs he fails to heal in his magic act. These three are duly reincarnated in Oz as Finley, whom the Wizard ultimately partners with; Glinda, whom he ultimately hooks up with; and the China girl, whom he initially repairs by reattaching her legs with glue (ahhh, do y'see?) and ultimately makes her part of his family.

But unlike the 1939 film, in Great and Powerful this motif is inconsistently applied. The Wizard's female assistant, whom he cruelly manipulates and pays nothing at all, gets no such reprise and reconciliation; neither do the strong man or the clown who chase the Wizard to the balloon which takes him to Oz. In the original movie, part of the point was that everyone who plays an important role in the Kansas sequence (except Aunt Em and Uncle Henry) has a counterpart in Oz. And vice versa, too, but don't bother re-watching the Kansas segment trying to spot Theodora's and Evanora's originators, or Knuck's or the Master Tinker's, because they aren't there. This movie keeps the original's gimmick but ditches the thematic reasoning behind it.

And it ditches the reasoning in more ways than one. In the 1939 movie, Oz is a fantasy world which Dorothy populated with people from her own life and which she used in some cases to work through her relationships with these people (most notably, her dislike of mean ol' Miss Gulch, re-cast in Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West). The point was not what goes on in Oz, but how those events effect Dorothy's relationships with those people in the real world.

Whereas, in the 2013 movie, it's the exact reverse. The Wizard does not go back to Kansas (and, to be fair, cannot, without seriously breaking canon) and reconcile with Frank, Annie, and the girl with the paralyzed legs*. Again, what could be a tragic scenario is played completely straight, and the viewer is asked to take the Wizard's rapprochement with Finley, Glinda, and the China girl as making up for his failure to do right by their real world counterparts. This effectively flips the emphasis of the the original film: what matters is not what goes on in the real world, but how those events are addressed in the fantasy world. It doesn't matter if bad stuff happens in the real world, so long as it's sorted out in Oz. The fantasy world supersedes the real one**.

*Not to mention everyone else he's screwed over.
**Ironically, in the original book, Oz was a real place, and more important than plain ol' Kansas. In a sequel book, Dorothy, Aunt Em, and Uncle Henry move permanently to Oz, leaving Kansas behind. But as we've established, Great and Powerful situates itself as a prequel to the 1939 movie, not the book, so it's in that context I'm assessing its thematic resonance, or lack thereof.

Next point: I'm not going to belabor this all over again, but 1939's Wizard of Oz was a coming of age story in which Dorothy learned some important lessons about herself and became a better person as a result. You could argue the Wizard becomes a better person over the course of this film (though still a person you'd like to hit in the face with a brick for his smarminess alone), but he learns no lessons other than that he really is as great as he's always said.

Finally, Great and Powerful reprises the gift-giving scene from the original movie while completely missing the point of the exercise. In the 1939 film, the gifts the Wizard gave the lion, the scarecrow, and the tin woodsman were bits of junk, sure, but they were symbolic of the trait which was at the center of their respective character arcs. Part of the point of them being junk was that the items themselves are irrelevant: their importance is purely as symbols, and the crucial bit is what they symbolize.

Knuck and the Master Tinker in Great and Powerful have no character arcs to speak of, so their gifts from the Wizard literally are pieces of random junk he pulled out of his pockets, with no deeper thematic meaning. Finley's gift—the hat the Wizard holds onto throughout the film like a hugely less likable and moderately less racist Indiana Jones—does have some symbolic value, but not in regards to Finley's character arc (which he also doesn't have), but in regards to the Wizard's changing relationship with Finley where he goes from treating him like an annoying serf to seeing him as a friend and partner. His gifts to Glinda and the China girl are also meaningful, not in the sense of pointing to a trait which was part of their character arcs, but in the sense of being the relationships each has built with the Wizard over the course of the film. Giving them bits of random crap to symbolize that as he does with Finley might actually have been a semi-decent way to approach the gift-giving scene*, but even if Raimi had done that (which he doesn't), the failure to give Knuck and the Master Tinker comparable symbols would still leave him with another case of thematic inconsistency.

*Though it would also emphasize the point that these characters are important because of how they relate to the Wizard rather than as characters in their own right—then again, if you're going to tell a story like that, might as well be forthright about what you're doing, no matter how odious.

Another problem with trying to make the movie a prequel to The Wizard of Oz is the casting. There are three major characters from the original who are also main characters in this: The Wizard, Glinda, and Theodora/the Wicked Witch of the West. In Great and Powerful, James Franco and Michelle Williams are clearly encouraged to go their own ways with the characters and make them their own, which is fair enough.

However, Mila Kunis' performance as Wicked Witch of the West is meant to invoke the character's 1939 incarnation, and this was a bad move. I have nothing in particular against Kunis as an actor, but whatever else she may be, she is no Margaret Hamilton. On Kunis, the green makeup effects are not exactly bad, but they don't evoke the same feeling of creepiness as Hamilton's. Also, Kunis' attempt to replicate Hamilton's screechy voice and iconic malicious laugh which have impressed moviegoers for decades is nothing short of pitiable. Raimi would have been wiser to fit the character of his Wicked Witch of the West around Kunis rather than attempting to stuff her into Hamilton's pointy shoes.

Problem Numero Seis: In Praise of Great Men

Throughout the movie, the Wizard is obsessed with the need to become a Great Man. His conversation with Annie early in the film sets up a tension between being a good man and a Great one, with him favoring the second option, no surprise. His final conversation with Glinda (Annie's Oz counterpart) puts forward the conclusion that goodness is better than Greatness (still no surprise), but the Wizard is, in fact, both.

So, while the film ultimately comes out prioritizing goodness over Greatness, it still replicates unquestioningly the Great Man theory of history*. And the primacy of goodness over Greatness is a superb example of telling rather than showing. The viewers are shown no examples of the Wizard overcoming obstacles through the goodness of his heart, and innumerable examples of him overcoming obstacles by the Greatness of his Ideas.

*i.e. that all social, philosophical, technological, and spiritual change in the world is caused by Great Men who articulate some vision which lots of unimportant little people then scurry about doing all the unglamorous work bringing into being.

The Great Man narrative is odious enough in its own right, but its sheer arbitrariness has rarely been so blatant as in Great and Powerful. If ever a Great Man there was, the Wizard of Oz is not one because, because, because, because, because, because of the wonderful things he does, but because, well … he just is. There was a prophecy, he fits the bill, so that's it, he's our Chosen One, everybody quick fawn over every word he says, and be ready to lay down your lives for him at a moment's notice.

I exaggerate, of course—it's actually worse than that. For you see, the only people who act in the manner described above right off the bat are the wisest and most capable character in the film, along with, interestingly, the most gullible. All the other characters are suspicious or hostile towards the Wizard to one degree or another—but the good ones all come around once he manifests an actual Great Idea and proves himself to them as being a Great Man in truth. At this point, Glinda's unswerving faith in the Wizard is vindicated, and the less wise characters who expressed doubts about him are showed the error of their ways. (It's not rubbed in by, say, having a huge-ass lion roar in their faces à la the conclusion of the Prince Caspian movie, but there's the same sense of blind faith winning out over reasoned skepticism.)

In the end, Raimi and the film conclude, it is only by the genius of the Great Man that we will be saved, and woe to any that questions or rejects his infallible authority. He is our leader by dint of his status as a Great Man, and we peons need only accept his naturally occurring authority over us and obey his commands.

Faint Praise

Despite its' many glaring flaws, the film does have its virtues. I've already praised the character of the China girl, both in terms of personality and even more in terms of the visual effects which brought her to life.

The quality of the visuals is not restricted just to the China girl. The cinematography in this movie is gorgeous. All the money which Disney should have put into the script was apparently diverted into the special effects, and the results are impressive. And sure, it's probably all CGI, which I get isn't everybody's thing—but for those who are open to being wowed by computer graphics, the various Oz landscapes on display in this movie are a wonder to behold.

Also, while the main story clashes wildly with both Baum's original style and that of the movie it pays so much homage to, the little background touches, the inconsequential moments of whimsy it showcases evoke a genuine Oz feel. Parts like the biting pixies in the river and the flower monsters in the dark forest feel like they could share a universe with Baum's creation, and they have a certain charm.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that while my sisters and I all despised the film, our mother loved it. Overall, the movie is not incompetently executed, and if you take the story for what it is and don't apply too much critical thinking*, I can imagine it holds up pretty well. Whatever their other faults, Raimi et. al. are very sincere in what they're doing with the movie, and if you can get into that, it's probably a fun ride. I've already given provisional props to many elements of the movie, including the climax. Sure, the story's cliché, but a lot of people like clichés, and the ones involved in here certainly could've been done worse. It's also worth noting that having the Wizard solve so many of his problems by use of stage magic is a pretty cool device, though rather underutilized.

*While I believe critical thinking is important, it's every person's choice whether or not to engage in it, and it's perfectly legit to opt-out for the sake of an enjoyable movie-going experience.

Conclusion

Okay, enough with playing Devil's Advocate. I can sorta get why people like this movie, and I see nothing wrong with liking it for those reasons (and perhaps other reasons I may not have thought of).

That said, while for some Oz the Great and Powerful may be an enjoyable film, it is by no means a good film. It is atrocious, and the social messages which underpin it are nothing short of revolting.

I hated this film. It gave me enormous pleasure in that I had fun eviscerating it afterwards in discussion with my sisters, but that's about the most backhanded compliment I can think of for a movie.

The only reason Oz the Great and Powerful doesn't qualify for my personal “absolute worst” spot* is because the second two books in the “Chaos Walking” trilogy (though no doubt superior in just about every conceivable respect) managed to raise my ire even further. But it was a near thing.

*Outside Legacy of the Force.