This is quite a relief. After what I would consider to be an overall
successful year for cinema in 2015 to be followed by the completely
horrible excuse for a sci-fi movie that was The 5th Wave at the start of
2016, my outlook for the remainder for 2016 had been regrettably
tainted. Rest assured, however, for a hero has come along and redeemed
2016 from the clutches of failure and my bleak outlook. And by hero, I
mean a katana wielding, sex-hungry, overpowered, semi-sadistic,
4th-wall-breaking joker wearing a red unitard who encourages cab drivers
to kill their family members, his roommates to do cocaine, and has no
shortage of dick jokes. Yes, I mean Deadpool.
Marvel has kicked off the superhero genre for year with our quirky comic
book hero Deadpool, featuring Ryan Reynolds as our wise-cracking,
ex-military mutant out to settle a personal score in the X-Men universe.
And I must say, Marvel and Fox Studios deserve praise for this one;
this is one of the few cases where a genre experiments and ventures out
of its comfort zone. I would hesitate to call Deadpool a "superhero"
movie in the traditional sense; there is no readily apparent disaster
threatening the world that only Deadpool, with his mutant powers, can
solve (although one may be implied), nor does our hero exemplify many of
the virtues of the other characters in the X-Men universe, like, say,
Professor Xavier. Rather, Deadpool is best understood as a parody of the
superhero genre, with an anti-hero as the protagonist as opposed to
your traditional hero. And these two characteristics alone already set
Deadpool up to be a noteworthy entry not just in the superhero genre,
but for 2016 in general. Good parodies and anti-heroes are rarely seen
in cinema these days, and to have them done well is a noteworthy feat.
Accordingly, I should say up front that I already have a feeling that
this review may be slightly shorter than most of my previous film
reviews, insofar as I really have no point of comparison for Deadpool (I
will admit that this was a comic series that I had certainly heard of,
but wasn't very familiar with); many of its primary characteristics
don't follow the formula for your typical superhero film, and aren't
meant to. As such, Deadpool is a kind of "lone wolf" in the genre,
rebelling against the norm and setting its own rules. And because of all
of these things, I have to give it a positive recommendation;
it experiments with the genre, making a bold attempt at parody and
shirking the superhero norms with gratuitous violence, sex, drugs,
anti-heroes, and adult humor - and it does it all fairly well.
Deadpool opens up with a
high-intensity, blood-soaked freeway firefight: our hero dives into a
convoy of vehicles and begins assailing the occupants. It's not
immediately clear who these guys are or why Deadpool is so inclined to
stop them, only that he is looking for a man named "Francis". But it is
apparent, at least, that they are up to some type of no-good; they all
immediately pull out automatic weapons and grenades and unload clips of
bullets at Deadpool, all while our protagonist calls out for Francis,
much in the same way a dog owner excitedly calls out to Fido in his
backyard. It is at this point that Deadpool takes us on a flashback of
events leading up to this kill-fest. We learn that he was once referred
to as Wade Wilson, an ex-military commando with a long kill streak and
dishonorably discharged from service. After leaving the military, Wilson
makes a living taking up odd jobs as a mercenary in New York City,
mostly as "a bully who stops other bullies" sort of guy. He spends his
spare time at a shady dive bar run by his friend, Weasel. Weasel's bar
is more or less what you would expect of a place that caters to mercs: a
joint for many of New York's more "unscrupulous" characters to hang
out, a place for drug dealers and con artists, computer hackers and arms
dealers, prostitutes and muscle-for-hire. It is at Weasel's bar that Wade meets the escort girl Vanessa, where both of them detail their
troubled pasts and become romantically involved with each other. We are
then fast-forwarded through the following year after Wade and Vanessa meet,
which more or less consists of a montage of them having wild sex on
various holidays until the Christmas season, where Wade suddenly
collapses. He is then diagnosed with an extreme form of cancer, which
his doctors say is terminal. Devastated, Wade and Vanessa desperately seek
out any kind of treatment they can. One night, Wade accepts the offer
of a man who represents Francis Freeman and his sidekick, Angel Dust,
and is taken to a secret facility where Francis injects him with a
special serum in order to trigger the rapid mutation of his body "under
extreme stress" that promises to cure Wade of the cancer. It is then
revealed that the serum is part of a super-soldier program where Francis
auctions off the survivors to the highest bidders on the black market
for use as obedient killing machines. After realizing this, Wade manages
to escape from the facility, but not before being highly disfigured by
the experiments. Here, we are more or less brought full-circle back
around to the opening scene, where Deadpool is out to get revenge on
Francis and hopefully reverse the disfiguring effects of the experiments
on him, all while trying to reunite with Vanessa.
Assessing the pros and cons of
Deadpool will be a somewhat new experience; there hasn't really been a
film quite like this in recent years, and, as such, it is subject to a
radically different set of evaluative criteria than many other superhero
or action films. Perhaps the two most important things to take away
from Deadpool are its re-introduction of parody into mainstream cinema,
as well as its use of the anti-hero character archetype. Parody seems to
have a kind of "love-hate" relationship with Hollywood; some may, for
example, point to the Scary Movie series as the apotheosis of parody in
modern cinema over the past couple of decades. However, the Scary Movie
series is a good example of parody to the extent that Donald Trump is a
good example of a philanthropist, which is to say, not at all. Contrary
to popular belief, it is certainly possible for a parody to exhibit a
degree of depth and complexity, and do more than simply rely on immature
humor, something that is severely lacking from the Scary Movie series,
or any films like it. I confess myself perpetually dumbfounded by those
who find the Scary Movie series entertaining. However, Deadpool avoids
many of these pitfalls. Wade, Vanessa, and Weasel all exhibit the same
degree of character that we find in many other characters of the X-Men
universe. Reynolds does a great job of portraying Wade Wilson as a
wise-cracking tough guy, someone who approaches life with a notably
morbid and mature sense of humor, like a cross between the completely
"fuck you" demeanor of Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo with the complete lack of seriousness of the Joker from Batman.
And such a persona lends itself well to the task of parody; Deadpool's
lack of seriousness allows him to famously "break the 4th wall" and,
quite literally, give to the audience a sense of lightheartedness to an
otherwise extreme and violent situation. It also allows him to to
provide the kind of commentary on superhero films that is desperately
needed in the current cinematic landscape, commentary that I have been
giving for some time. For example, there is a scene towards the end of
the film where Angel Dust jumps from the deck of a docked aircraft
carrier, but not before Deadpool predicts that she is going to do the
famous "superhero landing" and draws the attention of Colossus and
Negasonic Teenage Warhead to the spectacle. And, sure enough, Angel Dust
proceeds to leap from the deck and slam into the ground in an
earth-shattering fashion, her fist planted firmly in the pavement, her
form displaying a degree of subtle cartoonishness, betraying the amount
of CGI that went into the sequence. Deadpool's point here has been long
overdue in Hollywood; superhero movies have become so cliche to the
point of being predictable, which ultimately undermines the genre
insofar as predictability steals away some of the excitement and action
from a superhero film.
Perhaps even more interesting
than its exploration of parody, Deadpool re-introduces the "anti-hero"
into mainstream cinema. Revisiting the notion of the anti-hero is
something I have been a proponent of for a long time - in a cinematic
and literary landscape dominated by the cliched and generic plot of
"good vs evil" or "good guys win, bad guys die", which hardly ever
reflects the actual complexities of conflicts in the world, it is easy
to see just how detached and impersonal most stories are. I have always
felt that the anti-hero was a literary or film device that is often
underutilized, and allows for an entirely new dimension in the narrative
that readers or viewers can relate to. And for those who aren't
familiar with the concept, an "anti-hero" is a character that is
distinct from a "villain", yet not quite a "hero", a character that may
do all of the right things, but for all of the wrong reasons, or may do
all of the right things, but not in the same way that a hero might do
them. Lisbeth Salander again serves as a great example here: as a
world-renowned computer hacker with a questionable sense of morality,
her persona doesn't lend itself well to society's established notions of
a "hero". However, her uncanny ability to use her eidetic memory and
computer skill to help Mikael Blomkvist uncover the details of a young
woman's disappearance nonetheless lend themselves to what many would
consider to be a good cause. And such is the case with Deadpool;
Deadpool seeks revenge against the man that tortured and disfigured him,
violently cutting down any henchmen in his way with a gay bravado,
ultimately splattering Francis' brain across the pavement, despite the
protests of X-Man Colossus. It just also happens that this man was an
international arms dealer on the black market, fueling international
conflict. Earlier on during the flashback scene, Wade Wilson threatens
to beat down on a young pizza delivery guy, but we find out later that
this guy was stalking a young woman who paid Wilson to intimidate him.
Again, nothing about this situation would normally sound appealing - a
woman hires a merc to assault a pizza delivery boy who turns out to be a
stalker - but the end result is ultimately that a stalker leaves a
woman alone, so we suppose that's ok. There are many people in the world
who, much like Wade or Salander, mean well, but don't necessarily
exhibit the virtues that are expected of them. In many ways, the
anti-hero is a more relatable character for them; Lisbeth Salander is
nothing like Rey from The Force Awakens (other than both of them
being female), but the idea that Rey is the only kind of character that
we should appreciate or look up to (i.e. the "hero" archetype) is wholly
impersonal, detached from the actual happenings of the world.
Much in the same way that it was difficult to highlight the pros of
Deadpool, it is also difficult to highlight the cons. Perhaps this is
due to the fact that there really isn't a point of comparison - as I
mentioned, most would likely point to films like the Scary Movie series
as the high-mark of parody these days, but comparing Deadpool to the
likes of those films is like comparing Stephen King or Charles Dickens to
the various writers of Star Wars fan fiction, i.e. wholly
inappropriate. The question then becomes "what can we evaluate Deadpool
on?" Well, I do think that Deadpool, at times, was trying too hard to be
funny. Many of the various similes throughout the film give way to
this. For example, Weasel's famous simile after first seeing Wade Wilson
again, that he looks like "Freddy Krueger fucked a topographical map of
Utah", quite frankly, is arbitrary and makes little sense. It hints at
that species of "random humor" that leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Humor, when done correctly, is tactful and precise, and may contain some
random elements in it, but is never solely based on randomness. I have
never been attracted to the idea that simply "being random" is funny,
and, much like the people that find the Scary Movie films entertaining,
the people that are amused by "random" humor have always perplexed me.
It doesn't take a whole of skill or talent or purpose to devise random
humor, and random humor often carries little depth or meaning. Weasel's
expression that Wade "looks like Freddy Krueger fucked a topographical
map of Utah" is about as artful and tactful as me saying "your face
looks like a walrus fist-fucked a bowl of Chinese food", which quickly
loses its impact. Perhaps another area where Deadpool missed a good
opportunity is in its use of violence. Specifically, I don't think there
was enough violence; Deadpool had the opportunity to really make a
mockery of superhero action violence, and violence in general, by going
over the top, a la Robert Rodriguez' Machete or Tarantino's Inglourious
Basterds, but didn't. What we got instead was only a slightly gorier
version of what we typically see in superhero films and action films.
Deadpool speeding away from an exploding vehicle while shooting
terrorists is something we would expect of Ethan Hunt in Mission:
Impossible, but if Deadpool really wanted to live up to the expectations
of parody, then we should have seen something similar to that scene
from Machete where Machete swings from hospital floor to hospital floor
using a henchman's intestines, or the ending scene from Inglourious
Basterds where the Jewish-American soldiers are gunning down a flaming
theater full of Nazis and their French sympathizers while Shosanna
Dreyfus' face maniacally laughs in the background. But this may be
nitpicking. I suppose the upside to these criticisms is that they leave
something to improve on if Fox Studios decides at any point to produce a
sequel.
Overall, Deadpool gets my recommendation and serves as a jumpstart to a
year in cinema that will hopefully rival its predecessor. Again, the
best part about Deadpool is that it reintroduces us to the notions of
parody (particularly, "parody with a purpose") and the anti-hero, in a
time where these devices have fallen by the wayside in the current
cinematic landscape. It is something we really needed; many science
fiction and action series over that past several years have presented us
with very complex and immersive world (i.e. Star Wars, The Avengers,
and Hunger Games), which is a very good thing. But every once in a
while, we need something that brings us back down to earth, and provides
a different kind of antidote to the monotony in our lives that is
distinct from the kind of escapism that the aforementioned series provide. Instead of immersing ourselves in the tales of epic heroes and
the fables of distant planets, perhaps we sometimes just need to watch
people have wild sex and then blow each other's brains out while old
people do cocaine in the background. And I am ok with this.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Friday, January 29, 2016
Review - The 5th Wave
The 2016 film season has commenced! And it has a lot to live up to
indeed; as I concluded last month, 2015 may very well have been the year
that Hollywood finally learned how to do a reboot correctly, with the
likes of Jurassic World and Mad Max: Fury Road showcasing the same
degree of imagination that made their predecessors shine. And let us not
forget that Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues to break records and
renew overall interest in the science fiction genre, shattering the
long-standing stereotype of Star Wars fans as fat, neck-bearded white men
with its popularity among women and those men who are not necessarily
fat and neck-bearded (as evidenced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt's appearance
in a Yoda outfit [1]), across a large spectrum of racial and ethnic
diversity (which is also reflected in its cast). Fortunately, there is a
lot to look forward to this coming year; Deadpool is the next big
release that I have on my radar for a review on Feb. 12th, and the rest
of the year is sprinkled with such titles as Captain America: Civil War,
Independence Day: Resurgence, and Star Wars: Rogue One. And yes, I even
intend to suck it up and endure what I am expecting to be the
gut-wrenching experiences of the Ghostbusters reboot and Warcraft.
Though, I don't even think those two films could be any worse than the
sleep-inducing, poor-excuse for science fiction that is The 5th Wave.
The 5th Wave is my first film of 2016, and it had the unfortunate privilege of coming right after The Force Awakens. That said, I don't think one can attribute my poor perception of it to my view being tainted by Star Wars - its rating on Rotten Tomatoes speaks for itself [2]. The 5th Wave is a young adult sci-fi story about a high school girl's struggle to find her little brother amidst a not-too-subtle alien invasion (and any attempts by the aliens at being subtle are so predictable that one would be able to call their bluff immediately). And throughout the whole mess, we are exposed to scenes of adolescent romance, not unlike the fangirl fantasies of the Twilight series, teenage angst, not unlike a high school kid getting mad at her parents for catching her sneaking out at night, and the blind following of some supposedly righteous, macho, high school hunk leader, not unlike Thomas from the Maze Runner series (which, if you recall, was one of my few criticisms of that series). The ironic thing is that, in a film based on an alien invasion, we get to see all of these various facets of a cliched high school girl's life, but we never actually get to see the aliens at all. It didn't take me long to hypothesize that The 5th Wave was based on another trendy young adult sci-fi novel. And, unsurprisingly, I learned after seeing the film that my prediction was correct. Don't get me wrong - I have no problem with young adult fiction (again, my overall approval of the Maze Runner series is proof of this), but, as with everything else, it has to be done correctly, which, I will point out is difficult to do. I was reading Poe, Hawthorne, and Descartes when I was in high school, so even doing something correctly that deliberately aims to be a bar below perfect, such as teenage fiction, is already hampering oneself. Still, I think it is safe to say that The 5th Wave didn't even achieve this bar: as the novel's Wikipedia page describes, The 5th Wave is a novel written by Rick Yancy that has been compared to Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games and Cormac McCarthy's The Road and "should do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires" [3]. LOL.
The 5th Wave opens up with typical high school girl Cassie Sullivan (Chloe Grace Moretz) cautiously walking through the woods of rural Ohio with an M16 (yes, my first thought was whether or not she knows how to use that). She eventually comes across an abandoned gas station where she finds a lone survivor who she, with her itchy trigger finger, proceeds to shoot. It's at this point that we are taken on a flashback and given a brief overview of Cassie's high school life and the events leading up to that point. One night, Cassie and her best friend (I don't even remember her best friend's name - I think it was Liz) are at your "typical" high school house party. And by "typical", I mean roughly a hundred people at a rather secluded three-story house with red Solo cups, kegs, beer pong, and sex. Now, I will admit that I wasn't the most popular person in high school (quite the contrary - I tended to be one of the more controversial ones), but I am confident in saying that high school house parties aren't quite like that. This was more akin to a sports-celebration-macho frat party at San Diego State, not like anything I ever heard of in high school. But I digress. At this party, we are introduced to Ben Parish, Cassie's secret crush and high school football hero, who she is far too bashful to approach (take a wild guess as to what happens between the two of them by the end of the movie). It is during class the next day (apparently, that party was on a school night), that the events of the film start to get "interesting" (finger quotes emphasized): aliens invade. Out of nowhere. In a space ship that just decides to park itself over suburban Ohio. Cassie narrates that the aliens just hang out, dormant, for the first few day, after which the "1st Wave" happens: they unleash an electromagnetic pulse across the country (presumably, the world, but that is never made clear in the film). Airplanes just drop out of the sky and explode. Cars cease to operate. Cell phones and other gadgets become little more than paperweight. Humans are forced to resort to Dark Age sources of lighting and power when the "2nd Wave", a ground-shattering earthquake, happens. Dams burst and flood the country. Tsunamis devour coastal cities. Trees are uprooted. Faults and fissures open up and disrupt the landscape. Again, the body count rises. I should note here that I found myself wondering how the hell the aliens were able to cause a giant earthquake, especially given that the space ship still appeared to just sit there, not doing anything. It's after the earthquake where humans start to form refugee camps and abandon cities when the "3rd Wave" happens: the aliens mutate the Avian Flu into a much more potent form and release it as a plague amongst the remaining humans. Apparently, the aliens weren't watching CNN - Ebola and SARS would have been just as potent without having to take the time to mutate the flu.
It's around the time of the "4th Wave" that Cassie's flashback starts to catch up with the opening scene. Cassie's mother dies of the flu and their father takes her and her little brother, Sam (Zackary Arthur), to a camp of survivors to try and rebuild human civilization and defeat the aliens. Not long after they arrive, however, the US Army shows up and explains that, for the "4th Wave", the aliens have descended from their ship and are now among the remaining humans, assassinating them. The catch is that the aliens have the ability to possess human hosts, making it difficult to distinguish them from those unafflicted. Accordingly, the military proceeds to screen all of the survivors for infection, separating the children from the adults and bussing all of the children to their military base in order to train them to fight the aliens while all of the adults get gunned down under the pretext that they are just an unruly mob. During all of the commotion, however, Cassie gets separated from the group that gets bussed to the military base, including her brother, but also manages to escape the firefight at the camp and flee into the woods after picking up an M16, which she doesn't hold on to for long. It is here that the flashback ends and the rest of the story unfolds. The remainder of the film can be understood as having two main storylines to it: the exploits of Cassie and her quest to get her brother back, and the life of the kids at the military base, lead by Cassie's former crush Ben Parish, who now goes by the nickname "Zombie". And it's from this point that I can say that the rest of the movie is more or less a crossover between Twilight and the Maze Runner, only far less creative and far more predictable, to the point where one could walk out of the theater merely guessing what happens and likely not be too far off. The big "twist" in the story (and by "twist", I mean "most predictable thing in the entire movie") is that the military are the ones who are actually possessed by the aliens and that they are training the kids to be the "5th Wave": armed child commandos who are tasked with going out and eliminating the remaining survivors. And while the children are being trained, Cassie develops a pseudo-romance with another "survivor", Evan Walker (Alex Roe), who, in another poor attempt at adding a twist to the story, also turns out to be an alien, but a nice one. By the end of the film, Evan reveals to Cassie who the military really are while Ben and crew discover the truth through trial and error. The ending scene is a daring rescue by Ben and Cassie to liberate Sam and the rest of Ben's child troopers while Evan lays siege to the military base, prompting an evacuation of the aliens and allowing the head honcho of the aliens, Vosch (Liev Schreiber), to escape, thus leaving the series open for a (god help us) second installment.
It's usually at this point in one of my film reviews that I go over the pros and cons of a film and weigh them against each other. However, I just can't seem to do that in this case. The 5th Wave does absolutely nothing right - it managed to somehow botch every possible aspect of the film so that, try as I may, I cannot find anything good to say about it. The plot was so generic that you would think the writers and producers have a shelf of stock storylines that they just randomly recycle over and over, foregoing the effort of putting any kind of creativity into the narrative. The characters had absolutely no depth or complexity to them, and any scene where they tried creating any semblance of depth or complexity backfired miserably, instead making the scene out to be more melodramatic and silly. For example, when Ben and his newly formed squadron of child soldiers are training at the military base, they are joined by a new recruit, a girl named Ringer, who, within the first five seconds of appearing on screen, proceeds to go up to Ben and announce "I am not taking orders from you" while turning to another boy in Ben's unit and declaring "If you look at me the wrong way, I will punch your lights out", after which she begins to describe how she got kicked out of her former unit for essentially being too "edgy". Effectively, this character might as well have barged into the room and grumbled "grrrr I'm a badass grrrr" and it would have had the exact same effect. This is like the kid in high school who thinks he would be "Mr. Cool" if he walked into the classroom wearing a leather jacket with the collar popped up while referring to his teacher as "daddy-o". Rule No. 1 in effective character development tells us that you must show us the content of one's character, not tell us. It would be one thing for J.K. Rowling to simply tell us that Bellarix Lestrange is a bad person, but it's an entirely different thing to witness Bellatrix impale Dobby with a knife. However, The 5th Wave felt like it didn't even need to follow the fundamental rules of storytelling and thought it could get away with doing the exact opposite.
The romance scenes in the film were also unbearably cheesy. For example, there was a scene not too long after Cassie meets Evan where she stumbles across him swimming in a lake. And, as one can expect from unrealistic young adult romance fiction, Evan is a burly, white hunk with eight-pack abs that can do everything from fighting to cooking to swimming to chopping wood to hunting and everything else that society believes a high school girl's "dream guy" should be. I am pretty sure that Evan was either taking steroids or those abs were CGI for how ridiculous this scene was. Cassie, predictably enough, giggles like a little girl and then quickly withdraws when he glances in her direction. And I can't even say anything good about the special effects in the film, if only because there were no special effects. The entire movie was Cassie et al. running around random wooded areas or buildings. We never see the aliens at any point. No alien technology. Nothing. The ONE characteristic that I thought might have been interesting was the fact that the film took place in Ohio. I am totally for English-language cinema shirking the norm of Los Angeles/New York/London production studios in favor of telling a story from a different perspective. But this is severely undermined when the story sucks. It's a pity because disaster movies are rarely told from the perspective of someone in Midwestern America. We've seen what happens if California were to fall into the Pacific Ocean (2015's San Andreas and 2009's 2012), if New York City were to be attacked by monolithic monsters (2008's Cloverfield), and even if Texas politics were to have a run-in with a Mexican drug lord and ex-Federale (2010's Machete), but I can't think of any recent movies that took place in the Midwest, at least, not any memorable ones.
In short, The 5th Wave is one that you would be best served by just skipping altogether. It is unfortunate that, after the great year for sci-fi cinema that was 2015, 2016 is off to such a bad start. If you are expecting aliens and advanced technology in The 5th Wave, move along. If you are looking for solid characters involved in serious drama, go watch The Force Awakens or The Revenant for a second (or third) time. If you are looking for a good romance story for a quick turn-on, you would probably be better served reading a Danielle Steele novel (which is saying something). If you are a high school kid who thinks that this movie is great, then congratulations - you have absolutely no idea of what art and science fiction really are. That said, I expect the next film on my review schedule to make up for many of deficiencies that The 5th Wave tainted 2016 with already. Deadpool is scheduled to be release on Feb. 12th.
The 5th Wave is my first film of 2016, and it had the unfortunate privilege of coming right after The Force Awakens. That said, I don't think one can attribute my poor perception of it to my view being tainted by Star Wars - its rating on Rotten Tomatoes speaks for itself [2]. The 5th Wave is a young adult sci-fi story about a high school girl's struggle to find her little brother amidst a not-too-subtle alien invasion (and any attempts by the aliens at being subtle are so predictable that one would be able to call their bluff immediately). And throughout the whole mess, we are exposed to scenes of adolescent romance, not unlike the fangirl fantasies of the Twilight series, teenage angst, not unlike a high school kid getting mad at her parents for catching her sneaking out at night, and the blind following of some supposedly righteous, macho, high school hunk leader, not unlike Thomas from the Maze Runner series (which, if you recall, was one of my few criticisms of that series). The ironic thing is that, in a film based on an alien invasion, we get to see all of these various facets of a cliched high school girl's life, but we never actually get to see the aliens at all. It didn't take me long to hypothesize that The 5th Wave was based on another trendy young adult sci-fi novel. And, unsurprisingly, I learned after seeing the film that my prediction was correct. Don't get me wrong - I have no problem with young adult fiction (again, my overall approval of the Maze Runner series is proof of this), but, as with everything else, it has to be done correctly, which, I will point out is difficult to do. I was reading Poe, Hawthorne, and Descartes when I was in high school, so even doing something correctly that deliberately aims to be a bar below perfect, such as teenage fiction, is already hampering oneself. Still, I think it is safe to say that The 5th Wave didn't even achieve this bar: as the novel's Wikipedia page describes, The 5th Wave is a novel written by Rick Yancy that has been compared to Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games and Cormac McCarthy's The Road and "should do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires" [3]. LOL.
The 5th Wave opens up with typical high school girl Cassie Sullivan (Chloe Grace Moretz) cautiously walking through the woods of rural Ohio with an M16 (yes, my first thought was whether or not she knows how to use that). She eventually comes across an abandoned gas station where she finds a lone survivor who she, with her itchy trigger finger, proceeds to shoot. It's at this point that we are taken on a flashback and given a brief overview of Cassie's high school life and the events leading up to that point. One night, Cassie and her best friend (I don't even remember her best friend's name - I think it was Liz) are at your "typical" high school house party. And by "typical", I mean roughly a hundred people at a rather secluded three-story house with red Solo cups, kegs, beer pong, and sex. Now, I will admit that I wasn't the most popular person in high school (quite the contrary - I tended to be one of the more controversial ones), but I am confident in saying that high school house parties aren't quite like that. This was more akin to a sports-celebration-macho frat party at San Diego State, not like anything I ever heard of in high school. But I digress. At this party, we are introduced to Ben Parish, Cassie's secret crush and high school football hero, who she is far too bashful to approach (take a wild guess as to what happens between the two of them by the end of the movie). It is during class the next day (apparently, that party was on a school night), that the events of the film start to get "interesting" (finger quotes emphasized): aliens invade. Out of nowhere. In a space ship that just decides to park itself over suburban Ohio. Cassie narrates that the aliens just hang out, dormant, for the first few day, after which the "1st Wave" happens: they unleash an electromagnetic pulse across the country (presumably, the world, but that is never made clear in the film). Airplanes just drop out of the sky and explode. Cars cease to operate. Cell phones and other gadgets become little more than paperweight. Humans are forced to resort to Dark Age sources of lighting and power when the "2nd Wave", a ground-shattering earthquake, happens. Dams burst and flood the country. Tsunamis devour coastal cities. Trees are uprooted. Faults and fissures open up and disrupt the landscape. Again, the body count rises. I should note here that I found myself wondering how the hell the aliens were able to cause a giant earthquake, especially given that the space ship still appeared to just sit there, not doing anything. It's after the earthquake where humans start to form refugee camps and abandon cities when the "3rd Wave" happens: the aliens mutate the Avian Flu into a much more potent form and release it as a plague amongst the remaining humans. Apparently, the aliens weren't watching CNN - Ebola and SARS would have been just as potent without having to take the time to mutate the flu.
It's around the time of the "4th Wave" that Cassie's flashback starts to catch up with the opening scene. Cassie's mother dies of the flu and their father takes her and her little brother, Sam (Zackary Arthur), to a camp of survivors to try and rebuild human civilization and defeat the aliens. Not long after they arrive, however, the US Army shows up and explains that, for the "4th Wave", the aliens have descended from their ship and are now among the remaining humans, assassinating them. The catch is that the aliens have the ability to possess human hosts, making it difficult to distinguish them from those unafflicted. Accordingly, the military proceeds to screen all of the survivors for infection, separating the children from the adults and bussing all of the children to their military base in order to train them to fight the aliens while all of the adults get gunned down under the pretext that they are just an unruly mob. During all of the commotion, however, Cassie gets separated from the group that gets bussed to the military base, including her brother, but also manages to escape the firefight at the camp and flee into the woods after picking up an M16, which she doesn't hold on to for long. It is here that the flashback ends and the rest of the story unfolds. The remainder of the film can be understood as having two main storylines to it: the exploits of Cassie and her quest to get her brother back, and the life of the kids at the military base, lead by Cassie's former crush Ben Parish, who now goes by the nickname "Zombie". And it's from this point that I can say that the rest of the movie is more or less a crossover between Twilight and the Maze Runner, only far less creative and far more predictable, to the point where one could walk out of the theater merely guessing what happens and likely not be too far off. The big "twist" in the story (and by "twist", I mean "most predictable thing in the entire movie") is that the military are the ones who are actually possessed by the aliens and that they are training the kids to be the "5th Wave": armed child commandos who are tasked with going out and eliminating the remaining survivors. And while the children are being trained, Cassie develops a pseudo-romance with another "survivor", Evan Walker (Alex Roe), who, in another poor attempt at adding a twist to the story, also turns out to be an alien, but a nice one. By the end of the film, Evan reveals to Cassie who the military really are while Ben and crew discover the truth through trial and error. The ending scene is a daring rescue by Ben and Cassie to liberate Sam and the rest of Ben's child troopers while Evan lays siege to the military base, prompting an evacuation of the aliens and allowing the head honcho of the aliens, Vosch (Liev Schreiber), to escape, thus leaving the series open for a (god help us) second installment.
It's usually at this point in one of my film reviews that I go over the pros and cons of a film and weigh them against each other. However, I just can't seem to do that in this case. The 5th Wave does absolutely nothing right - it managed to somehow botch every possible aspect of the film so that, try as I may, I cannot find anything good to say about it. The plot was so generic that you would think the writers and producers have a shelf of stock storylines that they just randomly recycle over and over, foregoing the effort of putting any kind of creativity into the narrative. The characters had absolutely no depth or complexity to them, and any scene where they tried creating any semblance of depth or complexity backfired miserably, instead making the scene out to be more melodramatic and silly. For example, when Ben and his newly formed squadron of child soldiers are training at the military base, they are joined by a new recruit, a girl named Ringer, who, within the first five seconds of appearing on screen, proceeds to go up to Ben and announce "I am not taking orders from you" while turning to another boy in Ben's unit and declaring "If you look at me the wrong way, I will punch your lights out", after which she begins to describe how she got kicked out of her former unit for essentially being too "edgy". Effectively, this character might as well have barged into the room and grumbled "grrrr I'm a badass grrrr" and it would have had the exact same effect. This is like the kid in high school who thinks he would be "Mr. Cool" if he walked into the classroom wearing a leather jacket with the collar popped up while referring to his teacher as "daddy-o". Rule No. 1 in effective character development tells us that you must show us the content of one's character, not tell us. It would be one thing for J.K. Rowling to simply tell us that Bellarix Lestrange is a bad person, but it's an entirely different thing to witness Bellatrix impale Dobby with a knife. However, The 5th Wave felt like it didn't even need to follow the fundamental rules of storytelling and thought it could get away with doing the exact opposite.
The romance scenes in the film were also unbearably cheesy. For example, there was a scene not too long after Cassie meets Evan where she stumbles across him swimming in a lake. And, as one can expect from unrealistic young adult romance fiction, Evan is a burly, white hunk with eight-pack abs that can do everything from fighting to cooking to swimming to chopping wood to hunting and everything else that society believes a high school girl's "dream guy" should be. I am pretty sure that Evan was either taking steroids or those abs were CGI for how ridiculous this scene was. Cassie, predictably enough, giggles like a little girl and then quickly withdraws when he glances in her direction. And I can't even say anything good about the special effects in the film, if only because there were no special effects. The entire movie was Cassie et al. running around random wooded areas or buildings. We never see the aliens at any point. No alien technology. Nothing. The ONE characteristic that I thought might have been interesting was the fact that the film took place in Ohio. I am totally for English-language cinema shirking the norm of Los Angeles/New York/London production studios in favor of telling a story from a different perspective. But this is severely undermined when the story sucks. It's a pity because disaster movies are rarely told from the perspective of someone in Midwestern America. We've seen what happens if California were to fall into the Pacific Ocean (2015's San Andreas and 2009's 2012), if New York City were to be attacked by monolithic monsters (2008's Cloverfield), and even if Texas politics were to have a run-in with a Mexican drug lord and ex-Federale (2010's Machete), but I can't think of any recent movies that took place in the Midwest, at least, not any memorable ones.
In short, The 5th Wave is one that you would be best served by just skipping altogether. It is unfortunate that, after the great year for sci-fi cinema that was 2015, 2016 is off to such a bad start. If you are expecting aliens and advanced technology in The 5th Wave, move along. If you are looking for solid characters involved in serious drama, go watch The Force Awakens or The Revenant for a second (or third) time. If you are looking for a good romance story for a quick turn-on, you would probably be better served reading a Danielle Steele novel (which is saying something). If you are a high school kid who thinks that this movie is great, then congratulations - you have absolutely no idea of what art and science fiction really are. That said, I expect the next film on my review schedule to make up for many of deficiencies that The 5th Wave tainted 2016 with already. Deadpool is scheduled to be release on Feb. 12th.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Reflections on Hedonism
What motivates one to study Philosophy? Or, an even more rudimentary
question, what motivates one? I think the importance of this question is
highly underestimated. Next time you go to work or school or a coffee
shop, look around you. Chances are, there will be other people around -
coworkers, students, baristas, janitors, executives. Some will be
richer, some will be poorer, some will be older, others will be younger,
men, women, single, married, and perhaps any other adjective you can
think of. However you feel inclined to categorize them (or not,
depending on who you are), ask yourself this question: what are they
doing with their lives? And why? Are they having fun?
I constantly ask this question of myself and those around me. In fact, it is a question that has more or less shaped my perspective on life. Earlier this week, for example, I was surfing around cyberspace and found the online profile for a person who was aspiring to be the manager of a Starbucks store. What struck me as particularly bizarre about this was that this seemed to be her ultimate goal in life. She expressed a great deal of enthusiasm about the prospect of entering training for the position, noting that she "loved her job", and that her life was centered around it. In stark contrast, by the time I left my position working in retail and coffee shops, the idea of suicide seemed very inviting. To take it one step further, I also wondered why many of my coworkers hadn't killed themselves yet either. While I was still living in San Diego, I met a girl that aspired to be a "certified public accountant". My initial thoughts after hearing that, if I recall, were something along the lines of "...oh" and "...that sounds...thrilling?...". During my time as an undergraduate at UC San Diego, I recall sitting in a linguistics course on the first day of classes for the quarter. The instructor had asked each of us what our motivations were in taking the course and studying linguistics. I remember my response being something along the lines of "so I can get a better understanding of the most primitive aspects of human psychology", and that this response was sharply at odds with one given by another student. When the instructor finally came to him, his answer was something like "so I can further my skills in French, ASL, and German, and apply for grad school at Stanford, Yale, and UCLA, while also applying for career opportunities in various language labs throughout California", to which the instructor replied, "Oh my, that's a pretty hefty goal". This student then responded "well, I'm just trying to be marketable and successful". Almost immediately, my reaction to this was "what exactly do you think it is you would be successful at?" Even now, I am willing to bet that that particular student is still doing nothing important.
Alas, I have slowly come to the conclusion that virtually nothing most people do is of any importance whatsoever. Humans seem to be just as existential as every other creature that we would like to think we are superior to. We think we build civilizations unrivaled in their structure and majesty, yet one can't help but feel that ant colonies or beehives exhibit more organization and structure than human cities and neighborhoods [1], which can easily become dysfunctional and chaotic. Humans also have a penchant for destruction, as evidenced the sheer number of mass shootings, bombings, wars, and riots that constantly take place around the globe everyday [2][3][4], and one can't help but notice the similarities to swarms of locusts ravaging entire fields of crops [5] or the wild ferocity of the wolverine [6]. It is no secret that humans reproduce in the same way that other mammals do, like dogs and cats, and, also much like other mammals, humans nurse their young and stay in families. And, like almost every other creature, humans have a life span and eventually die (a certain kind of jellyfish is the one potential exception to this rule [7]). If a human gets hit by a car and left on the side of the road, it's hard to imagine that it has some other kind of existential state than that of the rabbit roadkill right next to it. Indeed, when one starts looking at the micro-level, the exact same things happen to the human carcass that happen to the rabbit carcass. The flesh and organs rot and become a nutrient-rich sludge, scavengers pick the meat off the bones, and the vitamins and minerals that result from the decomposition process seep into the ground and fertilize the soil (as the expression goes, the dead are "pushing up daisies"). It seems, then, that our belief in our superiority or uniqueness as a species is misplaced. I can't seem to find what this characteristic is that allows us to think we are significantly different than any other scavenger, any other predator, or any other prey in the global ecosystem, this supposed trait that allows humans to regard themselves as being on some kind of existential level above the food chain. Accordingly, an important set of questions logically follows: we don't seem to regard the behaviors or lives or societies of ants as particularly important, so why humans? Or, of more interest to me, dogs, cats, locusts, bears, snakes, and virtually any other creature don't seem to have these same abstract concepts of good and evil, justice and freedom, vice and virtue, so where do we get them from? Do they actually exist?
Such an understanding of humans provides the context needed to understand some of the questions I asked earlier. When we look at my former classmate, who spent so much time trying to make himself "marketable" and "successful", we can wonder what the point of it all is. After all, at the end of the day, he will suffer the same fate as the person next to him or the ant or the rabbit, and end up as an organic sludge falling off of bones. Did he enjoy the process of becoming "marketable"? Probably not. Yet, he spent so much time preoccupied with it only to end up at the same place as the coworkers, janitors, baristas, students, scholars, presidents, thieves, pacifists, and others mentioned in the first paragraph. And then we can ask what exactly it is that he thinks he would be "succeeding" at? Again, he is just going to die like, say, the book clerk down the street. So who was more "successful" with his or her life - the linguistics student or the book clerk? Perhaps the next question we should ask, then, is what it means to be successful in life.
The previous paragraphs are meant to set the stage for the remainder of this piece, an explanation of, and justification for, hedonism, what I take to be the best answer to the preceding question. It should be self-evident that humans are creatures that all eventually die, either by accident, disease, famine, or natural causes. As such, it seems that one can reasonably wonder what exactly we are supposed to do with this thing in between birth and death called "life", what the point of it all is. It's kind of like giving a child a new toy that he has never seen before. He stares at it, perplexed. "What does this do?", he may wonder, or "what am I supposed to do with this?" Does he keep it and hold it dear? Is he supposed to see it as a fragile object and keep it safe, like a delicate flower vase? Does he play with it? Or does he just throw it away? And what would the consequences be if he just threw it away? Faced with such questions, those naturally curious among the species will venture out to try and find the answers. In many ways, such a drive for answers seems to be the underlying motivation for many of the old fables and stories that humans are supposed to learn from as children. The lessons that one is supposed to learn from the stories of Robin Hood and his exploits against the Sheriff of Nottingham seem apparent, and similar motifs can be found in many other tales. At the same time, humans are also supposed to find answers in significantly more mature, dire stories, from the slaughter of the Trojans in Homer's Illiad, to the madness of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sometimes, humans are presented with conflicting information. Moses' interactions with the Pharaoh of Egypt, for example, or the tales of Nero playing the lute while Rome burns, lead us to distrust the authority of monarchs, yet we are also to regard King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as the apotheosis of virtue. Indeed, trying to find the answer as to what to do with one's life is clearly no easy feat.
Many of our species point to the exploits of others (fictional or real) as the best source of information as to what to do with our lives, but perhaps we should consult other sources. As illustrated above, there is a kind of futility in following in the footsteps of others, which, at least to a degree, seems to undermine the idea (Arthur, for example, suffered the same fate as Mordred, despite all of his amazing virtues). What then? Where can we look for information as to what to do with our lives? The ancient Greeks seemed to have an aversion to equating man to beast (Aristotle's outline of what is good for vegetables, animals, and persons in the Nicomachean Ethics suggests this, and even Lucretius endows men with qualities that animals don't have in Book III of De Rerum Natura [8]). But the similarities to so many other creatures seem so apparent, especially with the advances in modern medicine and Biology, which have come a long way since the time of the Greeks. And the idea of acknowledging the similarities between people and animals is not new. In stark contrast to many other Enlightenment thinkers, Julien Offray de La Mettrie continued the tradition of materialism found in the writings of the Epicureans and Carvaka school of Indian philosophy. Perhaps we should, at least for the time being, entertain the idea of looking towards other creatures for information as to what we should do with our lives, given the seeming futility of pursuing the normal avenues that humans generally regard as "successful".
And what do we learn from observing other creatures, other creatures that we seem so similar to? Well, other creatures don't seem to have the same virtues that humans have. Wolves, for example, don't appear to be concerned with Justice. Lions don't seem to have these notions of "extra-marital sex" and "wedlock" and "purity". One can then wonder why humans value them. But that is a slightly different topic for another time. What we are more interested in is what does motivate these creatures in their daily lives. Clearly, lions or crows aren't aiming to live up to some arbitrary set of virtues, and wolves aren't concerned about a six-figure salary, or being "marketable". Instead, such creatures appear to be driven by their desires. One can observe wolves play, hunt for food, and so on. This should not be construed as the claim that humans need to be "primitive"; indeed, many species other than humans exhibit structure and social interaction sometimes unrivaled by other creatures (again, one simply needs to look at an ant colony for evidence of this). Instead, the lesson that can be learned from observing other creatures is that, contrary to the current structure of Western society, humans, too, can be driven by their desires.
What is hedonism? Simply put, hedonism is the idea that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic bad, and that, insofar as one wants to pursue the good in life and avoid evil, one is morally justified in pursuing his or her pleasures and avoiding pain. Despite my seemingly straightforward answer, there is a lot of disagreement about what this actually entails. Among laypeople, for example, there seems to be a common misconception that hedonism entails constantly drinking and doing drugs and having perpetual sex. At the same time, this understanding of hedonism is at odds with the account of hedonism provided by Epicurus in the Letter to Menoeceus [9]. Sometimes hedonism is motivated by a desire to be an alternative to the status quo of the time, much like the Carvaka doctrine was to the varieties of Hinduism that dominated Ancient India [10]. And all this assumes that we actually know what pleasure and pain even are. David Sobel, for example, spends time considering what pleasure actually is in his paper "Varieties of Hedonism", which has huge implications for our understanding of human psychology; is pleasure a genuine sensation "like a tickle or pins and needles"? Is pleasure simply whatever the person deems desirable at the time of feeling it? Or is something only pleasurable if and only if the person wants the experience to continue into the future (the converse implication is that something ceases to be pleasurable when the person no longer wants it to continue) [11]? Even beyond Sobel's exposition on the various ways we can understand pleasure, further questions abound; to what extent do we forsake other ethical doctrines in favor of hedonism as a genuine framework for human behavior? Exactly what new behaviors does hedonism allow for that other ethical doctrines don't? Is hedonism a truly credible, or even feasible, ethical doctrine? A thorough answer to all of these questions would require more than the one essay that I am writing here, but I will at least try to answer some of them in the remainder of this piece. In short, I hope to show that hedonism is indeed a feasible ethical doctrine and that, despite the contention that it may have with other, more popular ethical doctrines, it does not necessarily entail the destructive behaviors that typically get thrust onto it. My primary argument in support of hedonism has already been hinted at: the similarities between humans and other creatures that are motivated by pleasure. But, for those that still cringe at the idea that humans are like animals, the mere strength and intuition of the ideas underlying hedonism alone should be captivating enough.
I will admit that my primary argument in favor of humans being hedonistic is not logically deductive, but rather inductive: Humans are like all of these other creatures that are motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, so humans should do it too. Such an argument clearly does not establish the tight-knit logical entailments that characterize deductive arguments. Perhaps the strength of this argument instead lies in the seeming self-evidence of its propositions, as well as the arbitrariness of the alternatives, alternatives that appear to have become ingrained in American society as the norm. The similarities that I laid out in the first few paragraphs, for example, seem to illustrate truths that I imagine most people would adhere to; few would deny that humans reproduce in the same way as other mammals, or that ant colonies appear to exhibit a high degree of structure, much like human cities. It would take a large amount of mental gymnastics to argue that a dead human lying on the side of the road is on some kind of higher existential plane as the dead rabbit lying right next to it, when we can observe the exact same decomposition process happening to it as that happening to the rabbit, all other things held constant. Again, I don't think most people would deny this (this may be a dangerous presumption on my part, but that is a discussion for another time). The more questionable part of my argument comes in the second half of it: "so humans should do it too". It does not logically follow that because one creature does something, other creatures should do it too, even if they are vastly similar.
Does this immediately render the idea false and my argument futile? Not necessarily. Another avenue of support for the idea that humans should observe other creatures for guidance on what to do with their lives is what I would call a lack of better alternatives. Such a claim is particularly relevant in the current state of American politics - it is election year, and candidates from both ends of the political spectrum claim to champion "true American values" and want to "bring America back to its roots" and "make America great again". Was America ever great? And if so, when? And what about it exactly was so great? Are these supposedly "great" characteristics the ones that the candidates are promoting? What exactly are these "American values"? Florida senator Marco Rubio, for example, famously suggested that people should not strive to be philosophers, but rather, welders, because "welders make more money than philosophers" [12]. When compared to what I have said so far, Rubio's proposition begs so many questions. Is "making more money" the only criterion we should use when deciding what one should do with his or her life? Many in American society seem to give this criterion a lot of weight and importance, as Rubio does, but such a notion is misguided. For it is not beyond the realm of possibility that someone achieves this goal of earning a high-income, but is absolutely miserable. A senior accountant at an investment banking or law firm, for example, may have a six-figure salary, but could be bored out of his or her mind. And if one's life is boring, we are left to wonder whether or not it's worth living. Conversely, it is possible for someone to have a meager income, but also constantly be enjoying life. I have once written about a bookstore clerk who lives in a small apartment with little more than a mattress to sleep on, but relishes the fact that she gets to be surrounded by the words of Keats and Yates, makes enough of an income to go out to dinner and enjoy a movie on weekends, and perhaps has her share of casual sex, one of several possible examples of a hedonistic life. Thus, we come full circle back to the question I had at the outset of this paragraph: is the life of the accountant or Rubio's welder a better alternative to the life of the bookstore clerk? It doesn't appear to be. And this is not to say that accountants or welders cannot enjoy what they do or experience pleasure in the same way as the bookstore clerk. But, if pleasure is a better alternative to misery, which I take to be self-evident, than suggesting that one should strive to do something that is not necessarily pleasant, as Rubio does, and as many Americans foolishly believe, is misguided. In other words, a human's desire to do something pleasant should outweigh the responsibility to live up to society's standards of "success" if those standards do not necessarily entail something pleasant.
Hopefully this clarifies my comparison of humans to other creatures. Other creatures seem to be driven by what will satisfy them and what they will enjoy. They behave in accordance with whatever their desires may be. A dog or cat or lizard will do what it wants to do. It won't do something it doesn't want to do. As primitive as this sounds, such a framework for life seems deeply profound, and reflected in the ethical doctrine of hedonism. The conflict arises when we compare this doctrine to what is prescribed for us by society. We are slowly conditioned to demonize those who are driven by their desires, and are instead taught to value things like glory, money, and patriotism, which at times appear to conflict with what one desires. Casual sex, for example, is something that is considered taboo, despite the fact that many people desire it. An accountant may achieve the goal of making a lot of money, even though he or she would rather be doing something else. Some people swear unyielding allegiance to a country's domestic or foreign policy without ever really considering whether or not those policies are truly improving their lives. And again, it is not clear what the rational justification is for adhering to these values over pursuing one's desires, particularly when faced with the prospect that humans are like other creatures that pursue their desires and don't appear to have any other existential value beyond that of these other creatures, and the idea that pursuing one's desires is more pleasant than not pursuing one's desires (where the values prescribed for us by society do not necessarily reflect our desires).
I can already foresee several criticisms leveled at this argument. I will take a moment to preemptively respond to some of them here. A critic may argue that hedonism is exemplified by self-destructive behaviors like smoking, drug use, alcoholism, and complications arising from deviant sexual practices, and thus advocating for hedonism is, essentially, advocating for these practices. While I will concede that such behaviors are compatible with hedonism, hedonism does not require or entail them. Epicurus, for example, famously made an argument in the Letter to Menoeceus where he advocated abstaining from small or fleeting indulgences if the reward is a greater pleasure later [13]. On this view, it is perfectly consistent with hedonism for one to refrain from doing drugs, despite the transitory pleasures they may provide, in order to revel in the greater pleasure of good health later. Accordingly, the characterization of hedonism as advocating self-destructive behaviors is a disingenuous one. Perhaps, then, a critic may argue that suggesting that humans should pursue their desires in the same way that other creatures pursue theirs adds a degree of "primitivism" to human nature, which seems to undermine, or run counter to, the advancement of human society. Again, this would be making a large presumption of my theory. Comparing humans to other animals does not mean that humans have to behave like other animals in every way. I am not advocating for humans to strip naked and start grazing around pastures or live in the jungle. Sure, humans share the drive for self-preservation with other animals. This does mean humans need to become tribal and territorial and revert to a kind of "caveman" mentality. The ability and drive for humans to build advanced civilizations is not suddenly rendered useless by highlighting the similarities between humans and other creatures. A critic may then try to point out that hedonism precludes many careers or activities that have become commonplace in American society, or undermines the goal of innovation and experimentation, by describing those career as "boring" or "undesirable". It seems as if the idea behind this criticism is the assumption that people will always find recreation more enjoyable than intellectual or scientific endeavors, and thus there will be a sharp decline in the amount profound work in the arts and sciences because everyone will be too busy enjoying sex, playing games, or partaking in some other kind of leisurely activity. Such a conclusion, however, is a hasty one. Simply put, the assumption that people cannot take pleasure in artistic or scientific endeavors, or that there will always be something more pleasant than the arts and sciences, hinges on a novice understanding of pleasure. Oscar Wilde, for example, wouldn't have written The Picture of Dorian Gray if he instead wanted to go play Poker at a gentleman's club. Sigmund Freud wouldn't have spent the time developing his psychoanalytic theories if he didn't genuinely want to. Heinrich Schliemann wouldn't have devoted his adult life to digging through the sands of Turkey if he didn't honestly have a passion for finding the city of Troy. Such mature pursuits are indeed compatible with hedonism insofar as such mature pursuits are pleasurable. The idea that it is not possible to enjoy such endeavors is an erroneous one.
The aim of the above piece was to re-introduce hedonism as a plausible ethical theory in American society and to remove some of the taboo surrounding it. I do not intend for this piece to be an end-all-be-all source for hedonism. On the contrary, if anything, I think it serves as a good introduction to the topic that merits further investigation. I also aim for it to provide a framework from which one can approach and re-assess our values as a society, as well as some food for thought going into this election season. Despite its contention with more popular ethical theories, hedonism has made a kind of resurgence in contemporary philosophical circles, with a handful of philosophers taking up the lofty endeavor of making hedonism palatable for a more modern audience. The work of Fred Feldman and David Sobel are good places to start, as well as the old classics like Epicurus or Leucippus. Some may call this view nihilistic, insofar as it relies on the idea that humans have the exact same existential value as beasts. Such skeptics, though, would be in denial, as this would require turning a blind eye to all of the similarities that I highlighted in the early paragraphs. It is much more preferable to be realistic, without regard to how "negative" or "positive" a view is, than to just always be blindly optimistic.
I constantly ask this question of myself and those around me. In fact, it is a question that has more or less shaped my perspective on life. Earlier this week, for example, I was surfing around cyberspace and found the online profile for a person who was aspiring to be the manager of a Starbucks store. What struck me as particularly bizarre about this was that this seemed to be her ultimate goal in life. She expressed a great deal of enthusiasm about the prospect of entering training for the position, noting that she "loved her job", and that her life was centered around it. In stark contrast, by the time I left my position working in retail and coffee shops, the idea of suicide seemed very inviting. To take it one step further, I also wondered why many of my coworkers hadn't killed themselves yet either. While I was still living in San Diego, I met a girl that aspired to be a "certified public accountant". My initial thoughts after hearing that, if I recall, were something along the lines of "...oh" and "...that sounds...thrilling?...". During my time as an undergraduate at UC San Diego, I recall sitting in a linguistics course on the first day of classes for the quarter. The instructor had asked each of us what our motivations were in taking the course and studying linguistics. I remember my response being something along the lines of "so I can get a better understanding of the most primitive aspects of human psychology", and that this response was sharply at odds with one given by another student. When the instructor finally came to him, his answer was something like "so I can further my skills in French, ASL, and German, and apply for grad school at Stanford, Yale, and UCLA, while also applying for career opportunities in various language labs throughout California", to which the instructor replied, "Oh my, that's a pretty hefty goal". This student then responded "well, I'm just trying to be marketable and successful". Almost immediately, my reaction to this was "what exactly do you think it is you would be successful at?" Even now, I am willing to bet that that particular student is still doing nothing important.
Alas, I have slowly come to the conclusion that virtually nothing most people do is of any importance whatsoever. Humans seem to be just as existential as every other creature that we would like to think we are superior to. We think we build civilizations unrivaled in their structure and majesty, yet one can't help but feel that ant colonies or beehives exhibit more organization and structure than human cities and neighborhoods [1], which can easily become dysfunctional and chaotic. Humans also have a penchant for destruction, as evidenced the sheer number of mass shootings, bombings, wars, and riots that constantly take place around the globe everyday [2][3][4], and one can't help but notice the similarities to swarms of locusts ravaging entire fields of crops [5] or the wild ferocity of the wolverine [6]. It is no secret that humans reproduce in the same way that other mammals do, like dogs and cats, and, also much like other mammals, humans nurse their young and stay in families. And, like almost every other creature, humans have a life span and eventually die (a certain kind of jellyfish is the one potential exception to this rule [7]). If a human gets hit by a car and left on the side of the road, it's hard to imagine that it has some other kind of existential state than that of the rabbit roadkill right next to it. Indeed, when one starts looking at the micro-level, the exact same things happen to the human carcass that happen to the rabbit carcass. The flesh and organs rot and become a nutrient-rich sludge, scavengers pick the meat off the bones, and the vitamins and minerals that result from the decomposition process seep into the ground and fertilize the soil (as the expression goes, the dead are "pushing up daisies"). It seems, then, that our belief in our superiority or uniqueness as a species is misplaced. I can't seem to find what this characteristic is that allows us to think we are significantly different than any other scavenger, any other predator, or any other prey in the global ecosystem, this supposed trait that allows humans to regard themselves as being on some kind of existential level above the food chain. Accordingly, an important set of questions logically follows: we don't seem to regard the behaviors or lives or societies of ants as particularly important, so why humans? Or, of more interest to me, dogs, cats, locusts, bears, snakes, and virtually any other creature don't seem to have these same abstract concepts of good and evil, justice and freedom, vice and virtue, so where do we get them from? Do they actually exist?
Such an understanding of humans provides the context needed to understand some of the questions I asked earlier. When we look at my former classmate, who spent so much time trying to make himself "marketable" and "successful", we can wonder what the point of it all is. After all, at the end of the day, he will suffer the same fate as the person next to him or the ant or the rabbit, and end up as an organic sludge falling off of bones. Did he enjoy the process of becoming "marketable"? Probably not. Yet, he spent so much time preoccupied with it only to end up at the same place as the coworkers, janitors, baristas, students, scholars, presidents, thieves, pacifists, and others mentioned in the first paragraph. And then we can ask what exactly it is that he thinks he would be "succeeding" at? Again, he is just going to die like, say, the book clerk down the street. So who was more "successful" with his or her life - the linguistics student or the book clerk? Perhaps the next question we should ask, then, is what it means to be successful in life.
The previous paragraphs are meant to set the stage for the remainder of this piece, an explanation of, and justification for, hedonism, what I take to be the best answer to the preceding question. It should be self-evident that humans are creatures that all eventually die, either by accident, disease, famine, or natural causes. As such, it seems that one can reasonably wonder what exactly we are supposed to do with this thing in between birth and death called "life", what the point of it all is. It's kind of like giving a child a new toy that he has never seen before. He stares at it, perplexed. "What does this do?", he may wonder, or "what am I supposed to do with this?" Does he keep it and hold it dear? Is he supposed to see it as a fragile object and keep it safe, like a delicate flower vase? Does he play with it? Or does he just throw it away? And what would the consequences be if he just threw it away? Faced with such questions, those naturally curious among the species will venture out to try and find the answers. In many ways, such a drive for answers seems to be the underlying motivation for many of the old fables and stories that humans are supposed to learn from as children. The lessons that one is supposed to learn from the stories of Robin Hood and his exploits against the Sheriff of Nottingham seem apparent, and similar motifs can be found in many other tales. At the same time, humans are also supposed to find answers in significantly more mature, dire stories, from the slaughter of the Trojans in Homer's Illiad, to the madness of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sometimes, humans are presented with conflicting information. Moses' interactions with the Pharaoh of Egypt, for example, or the tales of Nero playing the lute while Rome burns, lead us to distrust the authority of monarchs, yet we are also to regard King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as the apotheosis of virtue. Indeed, trying to find the answer as to what to do with one's life is clearly no easy feat.
Many of our species point to the exploits of others (fictional or real) as the best source of information as to what to do with our lives, but perhaps we should consult other sources. As illustrated above, there is a kind of futility in following in the footsteps of others, which, at least to a degree, seems to undermine the idea (Arthur, for example, suffered the same fate as Mordred, despite all of his amazing virtues). What then? Where can we look for information as to what to do with our lives? The ancient Greeks seemed to have an aversion to equating man to beast (Aristotle's outline of what is good for vegetables, animals, and persons in the Nicomachean Ethics suggests this, and even Lucretius endows men with qualities that animals don't have in Book III of De Rerum Natura [8]). But the similarities to so many other creatures seem so apparent, especially with the advances in modern medicine and Biology, which have come a long way since the time of the Greeks. And the idea of acknowledging the similarities between people and animals is not new. In stark contrast to many other Enlightenment thinkers, Julien Offray de La Mettrie continued the tradition of materialism found in the writings of the Epicureans and Carvaka school of Indian philosophy. Perhaps we should, at least for the time being, entertain the idea of looking towards other creatures for information as to what we should do with our lives, given the seeming futility of pursuing the normal avenues that humans generally regard as "successful".
And what do we learn from observing other creatures, other creatures that we seem so similar to? Well, other creatures don't seem to have the same virtues that humans have. Wolves, for example, don't appear to be concerned with Justice. Lions don't seem to have these notions of "extra-marital sex" and "wedlock" and "purity". One can then wonder why humans value them. But that is a slightly different topic for another time. What we are more interested in is what does motivate these creatures in their daily lives. Clearly, lions or crows aren't aiming to live up to some arbitrary set of virtues, and wolves aren't concerned about a six-figure salary, or being "marketable". Instead, such creatures appear to be driven by their desires. One can observe wolves play, hunt for food, and so on. This should not be construed as the claim that humans need to be "primitive"; indeed, many species other than humans exhibit structure and social interaction sometimes unrivaled by other creatures (again, one simply needs to look at an ant colony for evidence of this). Instead, the lesson that can be learned from observing other creatures is that, contrary to the current structure of Western society, humans, too, can be driven by their desires.
What is hedonism? Simply put, hedonism is the idea that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic bad, and that, insofar as one wants to pursue the good in life and avoid evil, one is morally justified in pursuing his or her pleasures and avoiding pain. Despite my seemingly straightforward answer, there is a lot of disagreement about what this actually entails. Among laypeople, for example, there seems to be a common misconception that hedonism entails constantly drinking and doing drugs and having perpetual sex. At the same time, this understanding of hedonism is at odds with the account of hedonism provided by Epicurus in the Letter to Menoeceus [9]. Sometimes hedonism is motivated by a desire to be an alternative to the status quo of the time, much like the Carvaka doctrine was to the varieties of Hinduism that dominated Ancient India [10]. And all this assumes that we actually know what pleasure and pain even are. David Sobel, for example, spends time considering what pleasure actually is in his paper "Varieties of Hedonism", which has huge implications for our understanding of human psychology; is pleasure a genuine sensation "like a tickle or pins and needles"? Is pleasure simply whatever the person deems desirable at the time of feeling it? Or is something only pleasurable if and only if the person wants the experience to continue into the future (the converse implication is that something ceases to be pleasurable when the person no longer wants it to continue) [11]? Even beyond Sobel's exposition on the various ways we can understand pleasure, further questions abound; to what extent do we forsake other ethical doctrines in favor of hedonism as a genuine framework for human behavior? Exactly what new behaviors does hedonism allow for that other ethical doctrines don't? Is hedonism a truly credible, or even feasible, ethical doctrine? A thorough answer to all of these questions would require more than the one essay that I am writing here, but I will at least try to answer some of them in the remainder of this piece. In short, I hope to show that hedonism is indeed a feasible ethical doctrine and that, despite the contention that it may have with other, more popular ethical doctrines, it does not necessarily entail the destructive behaviors that typically get thrust onto it. My primary argument in support of hedonism has already been hinted at: the similarities between humans and other creatures that are motivated by pleasure. But, for those that still cringe at the idea that humans are like animals, the mere strength and intuition of the ideas underlying hedonism alone should be captivating enough.
I will admit that my primary argument in favor of humans being hedonistic is not logically deductive, but rather inductive: Humans are like all of these other creatures that are motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, so humans should do it too. Such an argument clearly does not establish the tight-knit logical entailments that characterize deductive arguments. Perhaps the strength of this argument instead lies in the seeming self-evidence of its propositions, as well as the arbitrariness of the alternatives, alternatives that appear to have become ingrained in American society as the norm. The similarities that I laid out in the first few paragraphs, for example, seem to illustrate truths that I imagine most people would adhere to; few would deny that humans reproduce in the same way as other mammals, or that ant colonies appear to exhibit a high degree of structure, much like human cities. It would take a large amount of mental gymnastics to argue that a dead human lying on the side of the road is on some kind of higher existential plane as the dead rabbit lying right next to it, when we can observe the exact same decomposition process happening to it as that happening to the rabbit, all other things held constant. Again, I don't think most people would deny this (this may be a dangerous presumption on my part, but that is a discussion for another time). The more questionable part of my argument comes in the second half of it: "so humans should do it too". It does not logically follow that because one creature does something, other creatures should do it too, even if they are vastly similar.
Does this immediately render the idea false and my argument futile? Not necessarily. Another avenue of support for the idea that humans should observe other creatures for guidance on what to do with their lives is what I would call a lack of better alternatives. Such a claim is particularly relevant in the current state of American politics - it is election year, and candidates from both ends of the political spectrum claim to champion "true American values" and want to "bring America back to its roots" and "make America great again". Was America ever great? And if so, when? And what about it exactly was so great? Are these supposedly "great" characteristics the ones that the candidates are promoting? What exactly are these "American values"? Florida senator Marco Rubio, for example, famously suggested that people should not strive to be philosophers, but rather, welders, because "welders make more money than philosophers" [12]. When compared to what I have said so far, Rubio's proposition begs so many questions. Is "making more money" the only criterion we should use when deciding what one should do with his or her life? Many in American society seem to give this criterion a lot of weight and importance, as Rubio does, but such a notion is misguided. For it is not beyond the realm of possibility that someone achieves this goal of earning a high-income, but is absolutely miserable. A senior accountant at an investment banking or law firm, for example, may have a six-figure salary, but could be bored out of his or her mind. And if one's life is boring, we are left to wonder whether or not it's worth living. Conversely, it is possible for someone to have a meager income, but also constantly be enjoying life. I have once written about a bookstore clerk who lives in a small apartment with little more than a mattress to sleep on, but relishes the fact that she gets to be surrounded by the words of Keats and Yates, makes enough of an income to go out to dinner and enjoy a movie on weekends, and perhaps has her share of casual sex, one of several possible examples of a hedonistic life. Thus, we come full circle back to the question I had at the outset of this paragraph: is the life of the accountant or Rubio's welder a better alternative to the life of the bookstore clerk? It doesn't appear to be. And this is not to say that accountants or welders cannot enjoy what they do or experience pleasure in the same way as the bookstore clerk. But, if pleasure is a better alternative to misery, which I take to be self-evident, than suggesting that one should strive to do something that is not necessarily pleasant, as Rubio does, and as many Americans foolishly believe, is misguided. In other words, a human's desire to do something pleasant should outweigh the responsibility to live up to society's standards of "success" if those standards do not necessarily entail something pleasant.
Hopefully this clarifies my comparison of humans to other creatures. Other creatures seem to be driven by what will satisfy them and what they will enjoy. They behave in accordance with whatever their desires may be. A dog or cat or lizard will do what it wants to do. It won't do something it doesn't want to do. As primitive as this sounds, such a framework for life seems deeply profound, and reflected in the ethical doctrine of hedonism. The conflict arises when we compare this doctrine to what is prescribed for us by society. We are slowly conditioned to demonize those who are driven by their desires, and are instead taught to value things like glory, money, and patriotism, which at times appear to conflict with what one desires. Casual sex, for example, is something that is considered taboo, despite the fact that many people desire it. An accountant may achieve the goal of making a lot of money, even though he or she would rather be doing something else. Some people swear unyielding allegiance to a country's domestic or foreign policy without ever really considering whether or not those policies are truly improving their lives. And again, it is not clear what the rational justification is for adhering to these values over pursuing one's desires, particularly when faced with the prospect that humans are like other creatures that pursue their desires and don't appear to have any other existential value beyond that of these other creatures, and the idea that pursuing one's desires is more pleasant than not pursuing one's desires (where the values prescribed for us by society do not necessarily reflect our desires).
I can already foresee several criticisms leveled at this argument. I will take a moment to preemptively respond to some of them here. A critic may argue that hedonism is exemplified by self-destructive behaviors like smoking, drug use, alcoholism, and complications arising from deviant sexual practices, and thus advocating for hedonism is, essentially, advocating for these practices. While I will concede that such behaviors are compatible with hedonism, hedonism does not require or entail them. Epicurus, for example, famously made an argument in the Letter to Menoeceus where he advocated abstaining from small or fleeting indulgences if the reward is a greater pleasure later [13]. On this view, it is perfectly consistent with hedonism for one to refrain from doing drugs, despite the transitory pleasures they may provide, in order to revel in the greater pleasure of good health later. Accordingly, the characterization of hedonism as advocating self-destructive behaviors is a disingenuous one. Perhaps, then, a critic may argue that suggesting that humans should pursue their desires in the same way that other creatures pursue theirs adds a degree of "primitivism" to human nature, which seems to undermine, or run counter to, the advancement of human society. Again, this would be making a large presumption of my theory. Comparing humans to other animals does not mean that humans have to behave like other animals in every way. I am not advocating for humans to strip naked and start grazing around pastures or live in the jungle. Sure, humans share the drive for self-preservation with other animals. This does mean humans need to become tribal and territorial and revert to a kind of "caveman" mentality. The ability and drive for humans to build advanced civilizations is not suddenly rendered useless by highlighting the similarities between humans and other creatures. A critic may then try to point out that hedonism precludes many careers or activities that have become commonplace in American society, or undermines the goal of innovation and experimentation, by describing those career as "boring" or "undesirable". It seems as if the idea behind this criticism is the assumption that people will always find recreation more enjoyable than intellectual or scientific endeavors, and thus there will be a sharp decline in the amount profound work in the arts and sciences because everyone will be too busy enjoying sex, playing games, or partaking in some other kind of leisurely activity. Such a conclusion, however, is a hasty one. Simply put, the assumption that people cannot take pleasure in artistic or scientific endeavors, or that there will always be something more pleasant than the arts and sciences, hinges on a novice understanding of pleasure. Oscar Wilde, for example, wouldn't have written The Picture of Dorian Gray if he instead wanted to go play Poker at a gentleman's club. Sigmund Freud wouldn't have spent the time developing his psychoanalytic theories if he didn't genuinely want to. Heinrich Schliemann wouldn't have devoted his adult life to digging through the sands of Turkey if he didn't honestly have a passion for finding the city of Troy. Such mature pursuits are indeed compatible with hedonism insofar as such mature pursuits are pleasurable. The idea that it is not possible to enjoy such endeavors is an erroneous one.
The aim of the above piece was to re-introduce hedonism as a plausible ethical theory in American society and to remove some of the taboo surrounding it. I do not intend for this piece to be an end-all-be-all source for hedonism. On the contrary, if anything, I think it serves as a good introduction to the topic that merits further investigation. I also aim for it to provide a framework from which one can approach and re-assess our values as a society, as well as some food for thought going into this election season. Despite its contention with more popular ethical theories, hedonism has made a kind of resurgence in contemporary philosophical circles, with a handful of philosophers taking up the lofty endeavor of making hedonism palatable for a more modern audience. The work of Fred Feldman and David Sobel are good places to start, as well as the old classics like Epicurus or Leucippus. Some may call this view nihilistic, insofar as it relies on the idea that humans have the exact same existential value as beasts. Such skeptics, though, would be in denial, as this would require turning a blind eye to all of the similarities that I highlighted in the early paragraphs. It is much more preferable to be realistic, without regard to how "negative" or "positive" a view is, than to just always be blindly optimistic.
[8] Lucretius. The Nature of Things, III.308-322. Trans. Stallings. Penguin 2007.
[9] Epicurus. "Letter to Menoeceus". The Epicurus Reader. Inwood and Gerson, trans. Hackett, 1994.
[11] Sobel, David. "Varieties of Hedonism" in The Journal of Social Philosophy, vol.33, no.2, 240-241. 2002.
[13] Epicurus. "Letter to Menoeceus". The Epicurus Reader. Inwood and Gerson, trans. Hackett, 1994.
Monday, December 21, 2015
Review - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!
The hype is strong with this one. So strong, perhaps, that this may very well be my lengthiest review yet. But this shouldn't be so surprising - after all, we are dealing with Star Wars here, an intellectual property so colossal that even the most seasoned critic and writer wouldn't be able to contrive a short, concise review of The Force Awakens while still taking into account all of the appropriate dimensions of the Star Wars universe. It's marketing alone already seems to obligate one to give The Force Awakens its due diligence; right now, for example, the film isn't scheduled to be released for about another week, but I already feel as if I can write half this review just setting the stage for what is already a record-breaking release. And the fact that tickets for The Force Awakens have already sold out at theaters across North America in 2015 does, perhaps, hint at something significant; after all, The Force Awakens will be the final film to round out what I would consider to be one of best years of science fiction since the turn of the century. And, in case you need reminding, this is the year that Age of Ultron and Jurassic World both shattered records, Ant-Man and The Scorch Trials were "sleeper" successes, and, as USA Today reports, the National Board of Review recently named Mad Max: Fury Road as the best film of 2015 [1]. The Force Awakens has a lot to live up to indeed. But I wouldn't worry; again, this is Star Wars, and the success of its hype and marketing have already illustrated that the series can still compete as an important player in the realm of science fiction, despite several questionable moments in its decades-long history. And if it's any reassurance, I highly doubt that anything that could be produced in the Star Wars universe at this point could ever achieve the degree of utter failure that Terminator Genisys managed to achieve.
In one sense, the Star Wars films need no introduction or explanation. A film series that spans almost half a century, it has revolutionized the science fiction genre since its first installment (A New Hope) in 1977 (perhaps some credit can also be given the original Star Trek series from the late 1960s with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy). Since then, the original trilogy has rounded out with The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983, a prequel trilogy was released from 1999 to 2005 (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith), a number of spin-offs and peripheral stories have been produced by Lucasfilm (i.e. The Clone Wars), a game studio charged primarily with the development of Star Wars games (LucasArts) had been created and has since been more or less bought out by the monolithic Electronic Arts (much to the dismay of many, not so much because people cared about LucasArts, but more because EA sucks), and Star Wars fans have since earned the distinction of being a new breed of human or sub-species, yet unrealized by scientists, a kind of fanatical cult, unlike the Westboro Baptist Church, but still somehow endowing new meaning on the word "devotion", producing unending amounts of self-insert fan-fiction, more so than any other intellectual property. Now, Lucasfilm has been bought out and Disney owns the rights to the Star Wars franchise. As such, Disney is producing a new sequel trilogy, the first installment of which is The Force Awakens.
But where to start? Perhaps the most daunting challenge in trying to review The Force Awakens is trying to figure out how to review The Force Awakens. After all, an adequate review would take into consideration all of the relevant context and backstory, which includes having an understanding of everything that came before it. And it goes without saying that, in the case of Star Wars, this would be no easy feat, considering that the Star Wars universe is just that, a universe. One would have to try and account for the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, the various official and unofficial spin-offs, the board games, video games, action figures, Halloween costumes, and, regrettably, the fan fiction. I suppose the more important question to ask is what J.J. Abrams (or, perhaps more accurately, Disney) hope to achieve with The Force Awakens. Are we aiming to produce a blockbuster to surpass even A New Hope in terms of innovation? While an admirable goal, this would also be a pretentious one; to presume that The Force Awakens will be more innovative than the original would suggest that Disney is capable of producing such a thing, and, while I wouldn't put it past J.J. Abrams, this seems like an unreal expectation of Disney. Or, if we were more cynical, do we presume that Disney is producing The Force Awakens just to cash-in on the Star Wars cash cow? This seems like a reasonable question to ask of not just Disney, but any studio that is producing a reboot. Yet, I also don't think this is accurate; if Disney was just interested in making big bucks, as opposed to, say, quality cinema, then I don't think they would have enlisted Abrams for the job and given him so much control over its production. Abrams strikes me as a filmmaker who cares about whether or not he is producing quality cinema, so Disney's decision to go with Abrams seems to indicate an intention beyond simply just turning a profit. Or, is Disney trying to reboot the Star Wars series in order to introduce it to a new generation of film-goers? This strikes me as a little closer to capturing the intention behind The Force Awakens. While Disney has recently ventured into more mature endeavors, it has historically kept children as its target audience. As such, it would make sense to say that Disney is trying to take a fictional universe that most adults today would be more than familiar with and introduce that to a new generation.
It seems as if that final question hints at a good starting point for formulating an approach to The Force Awakens. Does The Force Awakens successfully reinvigorate the series for the next generation of science fiction fans and movie-goers? And, reflecting on a point I made earlier, one should keep in mind that, at its fundamental core, The Force Awakens is a reboot, one of several reboots throughout the year. This can perhaps add another dimension to the approach we take to reviewing it; one can assess the merits of the film as a reboot alone, removing it from the larger context of the fictional universe and evaluating it more on its success as a new installment in a series. And it perhaps may be important to weigh it against other reboots of the year - does The Force Awakens, for example, ask the same kinds of provocative questions that Jurassic World asked? And this question would be consistent with the guidelines I laid out for myself in my first review over the summer; much like literature or other forms of visual art, film is a potential outlet of socio-cultural criticism. As such, one can also ask whether or not there are any socio-cultural undertones to The Force Awakens, and, if so, how well the film weaves those points into its overall narrative. Between these points and the questions asked in the previous paragraph, I think I at least have a good idea as to how one should approach The Force Awakens. But, as I hinted at above, in order to adequately review it without being too disingenuous, one has to properly situate it in the Star Wars universe.
The first installment of the Star Wars series (later dubbed A New Hope) was first released in 1977, with a digital remaster released in 1997. It's two sequels, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, followed in the years after. The series focuses on the Rebel Alliance's struggle against the tyrannical Galactic Empire, and the relationships that develop therein. We are introduced to drug smugglers and gang bosses on desert planets, cities suspended in the clouds of far away star systems, rebel bases assaulted in a hail of lasers on planets made of ice and snow, and an ancient, mysterious "Force" that underlies all events in the galaxy, and is revered by an order known as the "Jedi", essentially the futuristic-space-equivalent of the Knights Templar. The core cast for the series consisted of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, and the series more or less put each of them "on the map", so to speak, with their acting careers (only for Carrie Fisher to quickly fall off the map again by becoming a drug addict some time after filming The Blues Brothers). After Star Wars, Mark Hamill went on to a very notable career as the voice of the Joker in almost every animated iteration of the Batman series, while Harrison Ford continued to propel his acting career in history, perhaps most notably as the treasure hunter Indiana Jones, but also as one of the early actors to portray Jack Ryan when the Tom Clancy novels started getting cinematic iterations (i.e. Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games), ex-cop Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, and even as the President of the United States in Air Force One.
The prequel trilogy was released between 1999 and 2005, consisting of The Phantom Menace in 1999, Attack of the Clones in 2002, and Revenge of the Sith in 2005. It tells the story of the conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Trade Federation, the attempts of the Jedi Council to try and quell the conflict, the influence of the mysterious Sith Order behind the scenes, and the subsequent downfall of the Republic, the Jedi, and the Federation, and the rise of the Galactic Empire...and, perhaps the most controversial thing in the entire series, the advent of Darth Vader. As can be inferred from the previous sentence, the prequel trilogy is not very well received. As I start writing this, for example, Graeme McMillan of The Hollywood Reporter writes that "the prequel trilogy...is not only a low-point for the franchise, but for science fiction cinema as a whole, and single-handedly (well, triple-handedly, technically) responsible for breaking an entire generation of fans' hearts in its sheer ineptitude" [2]. And McMillan's assessment isn't without merit; perhaps the most questionable thing in the entire prequel trilogy is the way it develops the various characters. The Phantom Menace, for example, introduces us to Jar Jar Binks, a bizarre character that is meant to serve as a kind of guide for the Jedi early on the series, but ends up being a kind of comic relief, and not a very good one at that. Much like the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy was also responsible for launching the successful film career of several of its actors. Perhaps the biggest success story of the prequel trilogy is Natalie Portman, who portrayed Padme Amidala, Queen of Naboo, although it should perhaps also be noted that Ewan McGregor saw a noticeable shift in his career from more independent films (i.e. Nightwatch) to the Hollywood mainstream (in the years immediately following The Phantom Menace, for example, one can quickly see McGregor's CV expand to include films such as Black Hawk Down and Moulin Rouge).
The lasting influence (or, in the case of the prequel trilogy, controversy) that the Star Wars universe has made on science fiction and pop culture is undeniable. Prior to A New Hope, for example, "space opera" was a phrase usually thrown around in the sci-fi underground, an obscure term usually applied to pulp fiction like the Flash Gordon series. Now, the phrase "space opera" is much more ubiquitous (though, interestingly, not quite "mainstream"), and one researching the Star Wars fictional universe is inevitably bound to quickly come across it. The Star Wars series, including the prequel trilogy, is also responsible for giving us some of the most memorable and influential characters in pop culture today. Even more menial ones, like the generic "stormtrooper", are instantly recognizable, and have even lent their title to a particular phenomenon in cinematography and film criticism (Roger Ebert's famous "Stormtrooper Effect"). Even characters who are featured in the films only a portion of the time, like, say, Boba Fett, have developed something of a cult following. And, of course, many of the tropes and creative concepts introduced by the Star Wars series have at this point infiltrated modern science-fiction and have become ingrained in it. The space dog fights in Battlestar Galactica and Thor: The Dark World bear an uncanny resemblance to the dog fights in A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. The lush landscapes and desolate wastelands of The Chronicles of Riddick and Stargate seem eerily familiar to the landscapes of Hoth, Tatooine, and Endor. One can quickly see the influence that the "lightsaber" has had on the "beam saber" of the Mobile Suit Gundam series or the "psi-blades" of the Dark Templar in StarCraft. And even all of these points still do not capture the extent to which Star Wars has influenced modern science fiction and pop culture, but they are meant to, at least, start to paint the picture.
Now with this very crude background established, I can finally turn to The Force Awakens. And I must say, after having finally seen it, it certainly deserves a large degree of praise, and will likely make my top 5 film list for the year. That said, I should also point out that, in some ways, it doesn't quite live up to all the hype that we have seen leading up to it over the past six months. Specifically, the areas where The Force Awakens shines are its introduction of new, unique characters to the Star Wars universe, it passive commentary on a handful of various socio-cultural issues, and its resistance to utilizing the obscene amounts of CGI that currently permeate throughout modern science fiction. However, the same kind of praise cannot be given to its story; anyone who is even remotely familiar with the Star Wars series will realize that the plot of The Force Awakens is a reimagining of the plot for A New Hope, and the lack of effort in this regard really takes away from what would otherwise be a very solid sci-fi film. At the end of the day, The Force Awakens easily succeeds at introducing the series to the next generation of sci-fi film-goers, and perhaps even presents us with some of the most memorable characters in science fiction, but it had the potential to do so much more.
The characters are perhaps the most intriguing elements of The Force Awakens. We see the return of old classics Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa, played by the original actors Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher, respectively, but it seems as if the overwhelming majority of the hype this time around actually centers around the mysterious Kylo Ren. And Kylo Ren is perhaps the best example of a case where the hype is actually justified. He is, by far, the most unique character in the film, unlike anything ever seen in the Star Wars series up until this point. Portrayed by Adam Driver, Ren fancies himself the spiritual successor to Darth Vader, and, in public and in rumor, he achieves this. He is ruthless and extreme, a student of the Knights of Ren, a sect of acolytes of the Dark Side of the Force, and is one of the most feared warriors in the galaxy. However, his more intimate interactions with the other characters in the film, particularly Rey and Han Solo, illustrate what Kylo Ren is really like: a skilled, but rash young man with daddy problems and bipolar disorder, more akin to the edgy, misguided Anakin Skywalker from the prequel trilogy than Darth Vader (only much better acted). And again, much credit is due to Adam Driver for this performance; at times, I was reminded of Tom Hardy's portrayal of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, a character that, at one moment, seems wise and well-spoken, and the next, displays a huge degree of anger management issues. But, of course, Kylo Ren was not the only character in the film. Perhaps a great degree of credit is also due to Daisy Ridley for her portrayal of Rey. Rugged and humble, Rey lives alone as a scavenger on the planet Jakku, selling machine parts and artifacts she finds for meager scraps of food. I actually kind of saw elements of the Book of Eli in Rey's interactions on Jakku; Jakku seemed like a desolate wasteland, and Rey was a wasteland wanderer, roaming from place to place, trading post to trading post, settlement to settlement, just trying to make a living. Because of such harsh conditions, she has developed the survival skills she needs; she climbs landscapes and machines alike, knows how to run through the desert sands, and has the necessary fighting skills to ward off muggers and thieves. And Daisy Ridley portrays this character as one that is seasoned in all of this; all of these various elements seem like "just another day out on the town" for Rey. That is, until BB-8 shows up. And it is at this point that I should note that BB-8 is probably the next most memorable character from the film. Much like Kylo Ren is to Darth Vader, BB-8 is the spiritual successor to R2-D2. BB-8 is a white and orange droid that rolls around with the appearance of a soccer ball, as opposed to the kind of clunky trash can that is R2-D2. But, despite being a successor to R2, J.J. Abrams actually manages to give BB-8 a personality that sets it apart. Perhaps the best way I can summarize the difference is as follows: R2-D2, while energetic and spunky, was still a droid, but BB-8 is more like a little animal, a playful labrador retriever or a shy beagle, trapped in the mechanical body of a gadget-loaded soccer ball.
Another noteworthy factor of The Force Awakens is the fair amount of cultural commentary present in the film. Perhaps in continuing with the trend started by Jurassic World, The Force Awakens has some very up front feminist tones to it. As one can imagine, most of them center around Rey. Rey is depicted as a strong, fit, and independent scavenger, on both a physical level, as evidenced by the fact that she manages to fight of two would-be kidnappers of BB-8 on Jakku, and on a mental level, as evidenced by the fact that she manages to resist the psychic torture of Kylo Ren. And this is in stark contrast to Ren, who, as mentioned above, does not possess the same strength of will as Rey, at times giving a sort of "confession" to the charred mask of Darth Vader for any deviance away from the Dark Side. She is not the same sexualized support character that Princess Leia was in the original trilogy, instead taking center stage as the main protagonist. And it should be noted that Rey is not alone in making such a statement. Captain Phasma (portrayed by Gwendoline Christie of Game of Thrones fame) is a towering storm trooper commander, ruthless and calculated. It should also be noted that Phasma is apparently not the only woman that is sympathetic to the cause of the First Order; we encounter several women serving the First Order throughout the film, both in the role of soldier as a stormtrooper on the front lines, and as operations officers serving directly under General Hux at Starkiller Base. Again, this is in stark contrast to the original trilogy, where there were very few women at all in the films, and, when there were, they always seemed to be sympathetic towards the Rebellion. And much like Rey, Phasma escapes the over-sexualization that unfortunately characterizes a number of successful sci-fi and fantasy series. Her armor is merely a chrome version of normal storm trooper armor, and, were it not for her voice, one would likely not be able to guess that it was a woman wearing it. As Inquisitr points out, the discussion surrounding Captain Phasma can best be summed up by a comment from one poster on the Star Wars Facebook page, and the rather clever response from one of the moderators [3]. And the feminist statements made by Rey and Captain Phasma are not the only the only points of cultural commentary made throughout the film. Finn (portrayed by British-born John Boyega) represents another shift away from the historical cast of white, male protagonists in the Star Wars universe. This point is especially pertinent for science fiction in general; traditionally, more whites and Asians have been burdened (or blessed, depending on how you want to look at it) with the stereotype of the sci-fi nerd, while African-Americans and Hispanics have largely avoided this. To have a black protagonist in one of the most important science fiction series in history undoubtedly illustrates the potential for a shift away from the traditional stereotypes.
Another characteristic of The Force Awakens that deserves praise is the way that J.J. Abrams decided to handle the special effects for the film. And, in keeping with the precedent set by Fury Road and Jurassic World earlier in the year, Abrams had, much to the benefit of the series, shied away from the grotesque amounts of CGI that characterize the Avengers films, or anything produced by Michael Bay, and preferred to use genuine sets and real props, giving the film a much more realistic appearance and avoiding the silliness that eventually comes with overdoses of CGI. Scenes for The Force Awakens were filmed on location in Iceland, England, and Abu Dhabi, and many of the extraterrestrial characters that Rey encounters on Jakku were realistic props or puppets, as opposed to the artificial appearance of, say, many of the CGI aliens in the Men in Black films. Apparently, it had been the aim of Abrams' production staff all along to recreate the the "real" look and feel of the original trilogy [4]. As I have suggested in the past, the benefits of such an approach are rooted in something much more fundamental than just preserving the look and feel of the "original" Star Wars; while there is nothing inherently wrong with CGI, going overboard with it tends to add a degree of "cartoonishness" to whichever film it is being applied to, and it seems as if the cinematographers of The Force Awakens were inadvertently scratching the surface of this principle when they decided to be more conservative with their application of CGI.
However, despite the above strengths of The Force Awakens, it wasn't flawless. Perhaps the most glaring thing that it seemed to miss the mark on has to do with its plot and story. I will echo what a lot of other critics have said and point out that, in many ways, The Force Awakens is simply a reimagining of A New Hope. The First Order, having risen from the ashes of the Galactic Empire, has a planet-sized space station, Starkiller Base, that is capable of firing a giant laser beam and blowing up planets. Trying to stop them are the "Resistance", as opposed to the "Rebellion", still led by Leia Organa. It turns out, however, that the person who is really capable of stopping the First Order is Luke Skywalker, who has mysteriously vanished, so the Resistance sets out to try and find him. Aware of Skywalker's potential to resist them, the First Order also sets out to try and find him before the Resistance. The movie opens up with Poe Dameron, a Resistance fighter pilot, hiding a map to Luke Skywalker inside BB-8 on the desert planet of Jakku just before the First Order attacks the village he's in. It was at that moment that my alarms started going off; I couldn't help but slightly cringe at the fact that it appeared as if Abrams quite literally subbed in BB-8 for R2-D2 and a map to Luke Skywalker in place of the plans to the Death Star and then called it Episode VII. Still, I felt inclined to give The Force Awakens the benefit of the doubt - "perhaps", I thought, "the plot will get much more interesting by the end". And then it turns out at the very end that the Rebellion, er, I mean Resistance, launches a fighter assault on the Death Star, er, I mean Starkiller Base, just before it can fire its laser beam. Needless to say, I was overall disappointed with how the story was handled. And it wouldn't be as big of a deal if it wasn't such a crucial thing to get right. As I have said in the past, I regard the story as one of the biggest drivers of quality science fiction, and while the story for the original trilogy was great, that does not justify recycling it again here; we've heard this story before, and have already learned from it. Perhaps the argument could be made that recycling the story was necessary in order to properly reintroduce the series to millenials, many of whom have never seen the original trilogy. But this argument baffles me; I'm a millenial, and I saw the original trilogy when I was a small child, and instead of recreating A New Hope in the form of The Force Awakens simply for the sake of introducing it to millenials, one has to wonder why you can't just show millenials A New Hope. And, on a smaller scale, there is one more thing about the plot that struck me as odd: despite the great amount of hype that the character of Captain Phasma got before the film was released, she had a grand total of about two minutes of screen time. Again, I am not the only one that feels this way; as Jason Guerrasio points out, "the flashy Stormtrooper with chrome armor and cape played by 'Game of Thrones' star Gwendoline Christie has been all over the marketing of the film, the captain of the First Order gets the least screen time out of the newest main cast members in the movie" [5]. Guerrasio goes on to attribute this to editing, pointing out that the run time for the film clocked in at over two hours, so, for editing purposed, the producers had to make the choice to sacrifice some of Phasma's screen time. But even this explanation baffles me; each of the Lord of the Rings films clocked in at over three hours, and nobody seemed to care about their run time. As such, I don't quite understand what is achieved by more or less cutting out Captain Phasma when the film still probably would not be as long as a Lord of the Rings film.
Let me finish by returning to the original question I posed earlier about the criteria that we should use to evaluate The Force Awakens: does the film reinvigorate the Star Wars series for another generation of science fiction fans? The answer is a solid "Yes", but again, its not perfect. While The Force Awakens has its moments of pure brilliance, such as the concept and character of Kylo Ren, it also has its blunders, such as its unoriginal story. It's unfortunate that it misses the mark on something so core; its poor handling of Captain Phasma is forgivable, but the recycling of the story of A New Hope compromises one of the most important aspects of good science fiction - an imaginative story that is used to ask important philosophical and social questions. As much as I don't want to say it, this disqualifies The Force Awakens from being my film of the year. But again, I must emphasize that it is still light years better than many of the other films I have seen in 2015, and I doubt I will see a character as unique as Kylo Ren in anything coming out of Hollywood anytime soon. Overall, I think it is a great way to close out my cinematic experience for the year, and, because of the way it balances props and CGI, I think I can safely say that 2015 was the year where filmmakers finally learned how to do a reboot.
The hype is strong with this one. So strong, perhaps, that this may very well be my lengthiest review yet. But this shouldn't be so surprising - after all, we are dealing with Star Wars here, an intellectual property so colossal that even the most seasoned critic and writer wouldn't be able to contrive a short, concise review of The Force Awakens while still taking into account all of the appropriate dimensions of the Star Wars universe. It's marketing alone already seems to obligate one to give The Force Awakens its due diligence; right now, for example, the film isn't scheduled to be released for about another week, but I already feel as if I can write half this review just setting the stage for what is already a record-breaking release. And the fact that tickets for The Force Awakens have already sold out at theaters across North America in 2015 does, perhaps, hint at something significant; after all, The Force Awakens will be the final film to round out what I would consider to be one of best years of science fiction since the turn of the century. And, in case you need reminding, this is the year that Age of Ultron and Jurassic World both shattered records, Ant-Man and The Scorch Trials were "sleeper" successes, and, as USA Today reports, the National Board of Review recently named Mad Max: Fury Road as the best film of 2015 [1]. The Force Awakens has a lot to live up to indeed. But I wouldn't worry; again, this is Star Wars, and the success of its hype and marketing have already illustrated that the series can still compete as an important player in the realm of science fiction, despite several questionable moments in its decades-long history. And if it's any reassurance, I highly doubt that anything that could be produced in the Star Wars universe at this point could ever achieve the degree of utter failure that Terminator Genisys managed to achieve.
In one sense, the Star Wars films need no introduction or explanation. A film series that spans almost half a century, it has revolutionized the science fiction genre since its first installment (A New Hope) in 1977 (perhaps some credit can also be given the original Star Trek series from the late 1960s with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy). Since then, the original trilogy has rounded out with The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983, a prequel trilogy was released from 1999 to 2005 (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith), a number of spin-offs and peripheral stories have been produced by Lucasfilm (i.e. The Clone Wars), a game studio charged primarily with the development of Star Wars games (LucasArts) had been created and has since been more or less bought out by the monolithic Electronic Arts (much to the dismay of many, not so much because people cared about LucasArts, but more because EA sucks), and Star Wars fans have since earned the distinction of being a new breed of human or sub-species, yet unrealized by scientists, a kind of fanatical cult, unlike the Westboro Baptist Church, but still somehow endowing new meaning on the word "devotion", producing unending amounts of self-insert fan-fiction, more so than any other intellectual property. Now, Lucasfilm has been bought out and Disney owns the rights to the Star Wars franchise. As such, Disney is producing a new sequel trilogy, the first installment of which is The Force Awakens.
But where to start? Perhaps the most daunting challenge in trying to review The Force Awakens is trying to figure out how to review The Force Awakens. After all, an adequate review would take into consideration all of the relevant context and backstory, which includes having an understanding of everything that came before it. And it goes without saying that, in the case of Star Wars, this would be no easy feat, considering that the Star Wars universe is just that, a universe. One would have to try and account for the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, the various official and unofficial spin-offs, the board games, video games, action figures, Halloween costumes, and, regrettably, the fan fiction. I suppose the more important question to ask is what J.J. Abrams (or, perhaps more accurately, Disney) hope to achieve with The Force Awakens. Are we aiming to produce a blockbuster to surpass even A New Hope in terms of innovation? While an admirable goal, this would also be a pretentious one; to presume that The Force Awakens will be more innovative than the original would suggest that Disney is capable of producing such a thing, and, while I wouldn't put it past J.J. Abrams, this seems like an unreal expectation of Disney. Or, if we were more cynical, do we presume that Disney is producing The Force Awakens just to cash-in on the Star Wars cash cow? This seems like a reasonable question to ask of not just Disney, but any studio that is producing a reboot. Yet, I also don't think this is accurate; if Disney was just interested in making big bucks, as opposed to, say, quality cinema, then I don't think they would have enlisted Abrams for the job and given him so much control over its production. Abrams strikes me as a filmmaker who cares about whether or not he is producing quality cinema, so Disney's decision to go with Abrams seems to indicate an intention beyond simply just turning a profit. Or, is Disney trying to reboot the Star Wars series in order to introduce it to a new generation of film-goers? This strikes me as a little closer to capturing the intention behind The Force Awakens. While Disney has recently ventured into more mature endeavors, it has historically kept children as its target audience. As such, it would make sense to say that Disney is trying to take a fictional universe that most adults today would be more than familiar with and introduce that to a new generation.
It seems as if that final question hints at a good starting point for formulating an approach to The Force Awakens. Does The Force Awakens successfully reinvigorate the series for the next generation of science fiction fans and movie-goers? And, reflecting on a point I made earlier, one should keep in mind that, at its fundamental core, The Force Awakens is a reboot, one of several reboots throughout the year. This can perhaps add another dimension to the approach we take to reviewing it; one can assess the merits of the film as a reboot alone, removing it from the larger context of the fictional universe and evaluating it more on its success as a new installment in a series. And it perhaps may be important to weigh it against other reboots of the year - does The Force Awakens, for example, ask the same kinds of provocative questions that Jurassic World asked? And this question would be consistent with the guidelines I laid out for myself in my first review over the summer; much like literature or other forms of visual art, film is a potential outlet of socio-cultural criticism. As such, one can also ask whether or not there are any socio-cultural undertones to The Force Awakens, and, if so, how well the film weaves those points into its overall narrative. Between these points and the questions asked in the previous paragraph, I think I at least have a good idea as to how one should approach The Force Awakens. But, as I hinted at above, in order to adequately review it without being too disingenuous, one has to properly situate it in the Star Wars universe.
The first installment of the Star Wars series (later dubbed A New Hope) was first released in 1977, with a digital remaster released in 1997. It's two sequels, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, followed in the years after. The series focuses on the Rebel Alliance's struggle against the tyrannical Galactic Empire, and the relationships that develop therein. We are introduced to drug smugglers and gang bosses on desert planets, cities suspended in the clouds of far away star systems, rebel bases assaulted in a hail of lasers on planets made of ice and snow, and an ancient, mysterious "Force" that underlies all events in the galaxy, and is revered by an order known as the "Jedi", essentially the futuristic-space-equivalent of the Knights Templar. The core cast for the series consisted of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, and the series more or less put each of them "on the map", so to speak, with their acting careers (only for Carrie Fisher to quickly fall off the map again by becoming a drug addict some time after filming The Blues Brothers). After Star Wars, Mark Hamill went on to a very notable career as the voice of the Joker in almost every animated iteration of the Batman series, while Harrison Ford continued to propel his acting career in history, perhaps most notably as the treasure hunter Indiana Jones, but also as one of the early actors to portray Jack Ryan when the Tom Clancy novels started getting cinematic iterations (i.e. Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games), ex-cop Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, and even as the President of the United States in Air Force One.
The prequel trilogy was released between 1999 and 2005, consisting of The Phantom Menace in 1999, Attack of the Clones in 2002, and Revenge of the Sith in 2005. It tells the story of the conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Trade Federation, the attempts of the Jedi Council to try and quell the conflict, the influence of the mysterious Sith Order behind the scenes, and the subsequent downfall of the Republic, the Jedi, and the Federation, and the rise of the Galactic Empire...and, perhaps the most controversial thing in the entire series, the advent of Darth Vader. As can be inferred from the previous sentence, the prequel trilogy is not very well received. As I start writing this, for example, Graeme McMillan of The Hollywood Reporter writes that "the prequel trilogy...is not only a low-point for the franchise, but for science fiction cinema as a whole, and single-handedly (well, triple-handedly, technically) responsible for breaking an entire generation of fans' hearts in its sheer ineptitude" [2]. And McMillan's assessment isn't without merit; perhaps the most questionable thing in the entire prequel trilogy is the way it develops the various characters. The Phantom Menace, for example, introduces us to Jar Jar Binks, a bizarre character that is meant to serve as a kind of guide for the Jedi early on the series, but ends up being a kind of comic relief, and not a very good one at that. Much like the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy was also responsible for launching the successful film career of several of its actors. Perhaps the biggest success story of the prequel trilogy is Natalie Portman, who portrayed Padme Amidala, Queen of Naboo, although it should perhaps also be noted that Ewan McGregor saw a noticeable shift in his career from more independent films (i.e. Nightwatch) to the Hollywood mainstream (in the years immediately following The Phantom Menace, for example, one can quickly see McGregor's CV expand to include films such as Black Hawk Down and Moulin Rouge).
The lasting influence (or, in the case of the prequel trilogy, controversy) that the Star Wars universe has made on science fiction and pop culture is undeniable. Prior to A New Hope, for example, "space opera" was a phrase usually thrown around in the sci-fi underground, an obscure term usually applied to pulp fiction like the Flash Gordon series. Now, the phrase "space opera" is much more ubiquitous (though, interestingly, not quite "mainstream"), and one researching the Star Wars fictional universe is inevitably bound to quickly come across it. The Star Wars series, including the prequel trilogy, is also responsible for giving us some of the most memorable and influential characters in pop culture today. Even more menial ones, like the generic "stormtrooper", are instantly recognizable, and have even lent their title to a particular phenomenon in cinematography and film criticism (Roger Ebert's famous "Stormtrooper Effect"). Even characters who are featured in the films only a portion of the time, like, say, Boba Fett, have developed something of a cult following. And, of course, many of the tropes and creative concepts introduced by the Star Wars series have at this point infiltrated modern science-fiction and have become ingrained in it. The space dog fights in Battlestar Galactica and Thor: The Dark World bear an uncanny resemblance to the dog fights in A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. The lush landscapes and desolate wastelands of The Chronicles of Riddick and Stargate seem eerily familiar to the landscapes of Hoth, Tatooine, and Endor. One can quickly see the influence that the "lightsaber" has had on the "beam saber" of the Mobile Suit Gundam series or the "psi-blades" of the Dark Templar in StarCraft. And even all of these points still do not capture the extent to which Star Wars has influenced modern science fiction and pop culture, but they are meant to, at least, start to paint the picture.
Now with this very crude background established, I can finally turn to The Force Awakens. And I must say, after having finally seen it, it certainly deserves a large degree of praise, and will likely make my top 5 film list for the year. That said, I should also point out that, in some ways, it doesn't quite live up to all the hype that we have seen leading up to it over the past six months. Specifically, the areas where The Force Awakens shines are its introduction of new, unique characters to the Star Wars universe, it passive commentary on a handful of various socio-cultural issues, and its resistance to utilizing the obscene amounts of CGI that currently permeate throughout modern science fiction. However, the same kind of praise cannot be given to its story; anyone who is even remotely familiar with the Star Wars series will realize that the plot of The Force Awakens is a reimagining of the plot for A New Hope, and the lack of effort in this regard really takes away from what would otherwise be a very solid sci-fi film. At the end of the day, The Force Awakens easily succeeds at introducing the series to the next generation of sci-fi film-goers, and perhaps even presents us with some of the most memorable characters in science fiction, but it had the potential to do so much more.
The characters are perhaps the most intriguing elements of The Force Awakens. We see the return of old classics Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa, played by the original actors Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher, respectively, but it seems as if the overwhelming majority of the hype this time around actually centers around the mysterious Kylo Ren. And Kylo Ren is perhaps the best example of a case where the hype is actually justified. He is, by far, the most unique character in the film, unlike anything ever seen in the Star Wars series up until this point. Portrayed by Adam Driver, Ren fancies himself the spiritual successor to Darth Vader, and, in public and in rumor, he achieves this. He is ruthless and extreme, a student of the Knights of Ren, a sect of acolytes of the Dark Side of the Force, and is one of the most feared warriors in the galaxy. However, his more intimate interactions with the other characters in the film, particularly Rey and Han Solo, illustrate what Kylo Ren is really like: a skilled, but rash young man with daddy problems and bipolar disorder, more akin to the edgy, misguided Anakin Skywalker from the prequel trilogy than Darth Vader (only much better acted). And again, much credit is due to Adam Driver for this performance; at times, I was reminded of Tom Hardy's portrayal of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, a character that, at one moment, seems wise and well-spoken, and the next, displays a huge degree of anger management issues. But, of course, Kylo Ren was not the only character in the film. Perhaps a great degree of credit is also due to Daisy Ridley for her portrayal of Rey. Rugged and humble, Rey lives alone as a scavenger on the planet Jakku, selling machine parts and artifacts she finds for meager scraps of food. I actually kind of saw elements of the Book of Eli in Rey's interactions on Jakku; Jakku seemed like a desolate wasteland, and Rey was a wasteland wanderer, roaming from place to place, trading post to trading post, settlement to settlement, just trying to make a living. Because of such harsh conditions, she has developed the survival skills she needs; she climbs landscapes and machines alike, knows how to run through the desert sands, and has the necessary fighting skills to ward off muggers and thieves. And Daisy Ridley portrays this character as one that is seasoned in all of this; all of these various elements seem like "just another day out on the town" for Rey. That is, until BB-8 shows up. And it is at this point that I should note that BB-8 is probably the next most memorable character from the film. Much like Kylo Ren is to Darth Vader, BB-8 is the spiritual successor to R2-D2. BB-8 is a white and orange droid that rolls around with the appearance of a soccer ball, as opposed to the kind of clunky trash can that is R2-D2. But, despite being a successor to R2, J.J. Abrams actually manages to give BB-8 a personality that sets it apart. Perhaps the best way I can summarize the difference is as follows: R2-D2, while energetic and spunky, was still a droid, but BB-8 is more like a little animal, a playful labrador retriever or a shy beagle, trapped in the mechanical body of a gadget-loaded soccer ball.
Another noteworthy factor of The Force Awakens is the fair amount of cultural commentary present in the film. Perhaps in continuing with the trend started by Jurassic World, The Force Awakens has some very up front feminist tones to it. As one can imagine, most of them center around Rey. Rey is depicted as a strong, fit, and independent scavenger, on both a physical level, as evidenced by the fact that she manages to fight of two would-be kidnappers of BB-8 on Jakku, and on a mental level, as evidenced by the fact that she manages to resist the psychic torture of Kylo Ren. And this is in stark contrast to Ren, who, as mentioned above, does not possess the same strength of will as Rey, at times giving a sort of "confession" to the charred mask of Darth Vader for any deviance away from the Dark Side. She is not the same sexualized support character that Princess Leia was in the original trilogy, instead taking center stage as the main protagonist. And it should be noted that Rey is not alone in making such a statement. Captain Phasma (portrayed by Gwendoline Christie of Game of Thrones fame) is a towering storm trooper commander, ruthless and calculated. It should also be noted that Phasma is apparently not the only woman that is sympathetic to the cause of the First Order; we encounter several women serving the First Order throughout the film, both in the role of soldier as a stormtrooper on the front lines, and as operations officers serving directly under General Hux at Starkiller Base. Again, this is in stark contrast to the original trilogy, where there were very few women at all in the films, and, when there were, they always seemed to be sympathetic towards the Rebellion. And much like Rey, Phasma escapes the over-sexualization that unfortunately characterizes a number of successful sci-fi and fantasy series. Her armor is merely a chrome version of normal storm trooper armor, and, were it not for her voice, one would likely not be able to guess that it was a woman wearing it. As Inquisitr points out, the discussion surrounding Captain Phasma can best be summed up by a comment from one poster on the Star Wars Facebook page, and the rather clever response from one of the moderators [3]. And the feminist statements made by Rey and Captain Phasma are not the only the only points of cultural commentary made throughout the film. Finn (portrayed by British-born John Boyega) represents another shift away from the historical cast of white, male protagonists in the Star Wars universe. This point is especially pertinent for science fiction in general; traditionally, more whites and Asians have been burdened (or blessed, depending on how you want to look at it) with the stereotype of the sci-fi nerd, while African-Americans and Hispanics have largely avoided this. To have a black protagonist in one of the most important science fiction series in history undoubtedly illustrates the potential for a shift away from the traditional stereotypes.
Another characteristic of The Force Awakens that deserves praise is the way that J.J. Abrams decided to handle the special effects for the film. And, in keeping with the precedent set by Fury Road and Jurassic World earlier in the year, Abrams had, much to the benefit of the series, shied away from the grotesque amounts of CGI that characterize the Avengers films, or anything produced by Michael Bay, and preferred to use genuine sets and real props, giving the film a much more realistic appearance and avoiding the silliness that eventually comes with overdoses of CGI. Scenes for The Force Awakens were filmed on location in Iceland, England, and Abu Dhabi, and many of the extraterrestrial characters that Rey encounters on Jakku were realistic props or puppets, as opposed to the artificial appearance of, say, many of the CGI aliens in the Men in Black films. Apparently, it had been the aim of Abrams' production staff all along to recreate the the "real" look and feel of the original trilogy [4]. As I have suggested in the past, the benefits of such an approach are rooted in something much more fundamental than just preserving the look and feel of the "original" Star Wars; while there is nothing inherently wrong with CGI, going overboard with it tends to add a degree of "cartoonishness" to whichever film it is being applied to, and it seems as if the cinematographers of The Force Awakens were inadvertently scratching the surface of this principle when they decided to be more conservative with their application of CGI.
However, despite the above strengths of The Force Awakens, it wasn't flawless. Perhaps the most glaring thing that it seemed to miss the mark on has to do with its plot and story. I will echo what a lot of other critics have said and point out that, in many ways, The Force Awakens is simply a reimagining of A New Hope. The First Order, having risen from the ashes of the Galactic Empire, has a planet-sized space station, Starkiller Base, that is capable of firing a giant laser beam and blowing up planets. Trying to stop them are the "Resistance", as opposed to the "Rebellion", still led by Leia Organa. It turns out, however, that the person who is really capable of stopping the First Order is Luke Skywalker, who has mysteriously vanished, so the Resistance sets out to try and find him. Aware of Skywalker's potential to resist them, the First Order also sets out to try and find him before the Resistance. The movie opens up with Poe Dameron, a Resistance fighter pilot, hiding a map to Luke Skywalker inside BB-8 on the desert planet of Jakku just before the First Order attacks the village he's in. It was at that moment that my alarms started going off; I couldn't help but slightly cringe at the fact that it appeared as if Abrams quite literally subbed in BB-8 for R2-D2 and a map to Luke Skywalker in place of the plans to the Death Star and then called it Episode VII. Still, I felt inclined to give The Force Awakens the benefit of the doubt - "perhaps", I thought, "the plot will get much more interesting by the end". And then it turns out at the very end that the Rebellion, er, I mean Resistance, launches a fighter assault on the Death Star, er, I mean Starkiller Base, just before it can fire its laser beam. Needless to say, I was overall disappointed with how the story was handled. And it wouldn't be as big of a deal if it wasn't such a crucial thing to get right. As I have said in the past, I regard the story as one of the biggest drivers of quality science fiction, and while the story for the original trilogy was great, that does not justify recycling it again here; we've heard this story before, and have already learned from it. Perhaps the argument could be made that recycling the story was necessary in order to properly reintroduce the series to millenials, many of whom have never seen the original trilogy. But this argument baffles me; I'm a millenial, and I saw the original trilogy when I was a small child, and instead of recreating A New Hope in the form of The Force Awakens simply for the sake of introducing it to millenials, one has to wonder why you can't just show millenials A New Hope. And, on a smaller scale, there is one more thing about the plot that struck me as odd: despite the great amount of hype that the character of Captain Phasma got before the film was released, she had a grand total of about two minutes of screen time. Again, I am not the only one that feels this way; as Jason Guerrasio points out, "the flashy Stormtrooper with chrome armor and cape played by 'Game of Thrones' star Gwendoline Christie has been all over the marketing of the film, the captain of the First Order gets the least screen time out of the newest main cast members in the movie" [5]. Guerrasio goes on to attribute this to editing, pointing out that the run time for the film clocked in at over two hours, so, for editing purposed, the producers had to make the choice to sacrifice some of Phasma's screen time. But even this explanation baffles me; each of the Lord of the Rings films clocked in at over three hours, and nobody seemed to care about their run time. As such, I don't quite understand what is achieved by more or less cutting out Captain Phasma when the film still probably would not be as long as a Lord of the Rings film.
Let me finish by returning to the original question I posed earlier about the criteria that we should use to evaluate The Force Awakens: does the film reinvigorate the Star Wars series for another generation of science fiction fans? The answer is a solid "Yes", but again, its not perfect. While The Force Awakens has its moments of pure brilliance, such as the concept and character of Kylo Ren, it also has its blunders, such as its unoriginal story. It's unfortunate that it misses the mark on something so core; its poor handling of Captain Phasma is forgivable, but the recycling of the story of A New Hope compromises one of the most important aspects of good science fiction - an imaginative story that is used to ask important philosophical and social questions. As much as I don't want to say it, this disqualifies The Force Awakens from being my film of the year. But again, I must emphasize that it is still light years better than many of the other films I have seen in 2015, and I doubt I will see a character as unique as Kylo Ren in anything coming out of Hollywood anytime soon. Overall, I think it is a great way to close out my cinematic experience for the year, and, because of the way it balances props and CGI, I think I can safely say that 2015 was the year where filmmakers finally learned how to do a reboot.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Review - Crimson Peak
Ok, it's finally time to get back in to "the swing of things", so to
speak. It has been some time since I have done a film review (since
Ant-Man, to be exact), and October was filled with all kinds of things
to keep me (and the blog) occupied, from defending the antics of Rebecca
Brink to scrambling around the Starbucks Center for Hack Day. October
was also the month that saw a handful of movies that, at least
initially, seemed interesting; The Last Witch Hunter, Paranormal
Activity: The Ghost Dimension, and Crimson Peak, to be specific. I
actually hadn't heard much about The Last Witch Hunter until I saw the
poster for it when I went to see Ant-Man, and, other than realizing it
had Vin Diesel in it, I didn't learn much more about it between then and
its release. The Paranormal Activity series, on the other hand, is a
series that I am familiar with, and, I will admit, is a series that I
actually enjoy, despite the fact that the films consist of little more
than strings of jump-scares tied together by a tissue-thin plot. And,
like The Last Witch Hunter, Crimson Peak is a movie that I had never
heard of until I saw the poster for it when I went to see Ant-Man. What
caught my initial attention was the caption "From the director of Pan's
Labyrinth and The Others".
Between those three, it didn't take long for me to decide to do this review on Crimson Peak. The more intriguing part of the decision process is perhaps that fact that I didn't really have to do much to narrow it down; The Last Witch Hunter reportedly bombed, and, though I said that I enjoy the Paranormal Activity series, I have become more and more disenchanted with it as it has dragged on. And then compare these stats against a film by Guillermo Del Toro, a very talented filmmaker, and the choice becomes almost a no-brainer. In any case, this review will be something different for me to write, and hopefully something just as enjoyable to read, insofar as this will be a review of a horror film, in stark contrast to the action and sci-fi films I have reviewed thus far. And I have been wanting to do a review of a horror film for a while now; as a long-time fan of the genre, with a small collection of the classic black-and-whites (i.e. The House on Haunted Hill and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), I believe I at least have an idea of what it means to be a good horror film.
I must confess that I had a handful of expectations going in to Crimson Peak, most of which were met, though I will say that I was disappointed with regard to others. The expectations I had pretty much stem from the fact that Crimson Peak was made by Guillermo Del Toro, a Mexican filmmaker that has previously showcased a large degree of artistic and fantastic talent. Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno en espanol), for example, with a pure stroke of genius, somehow managed to blur the lines between a children's fairy tale, a fantastic horror story, and an extremely violent adult war film, all presented in the Spanish language, thus adding a new dimension of fiction to Spanish-language cinema. And by no means is Del Toro's genius confined to the Spanish language. One simply need to look at Pacific Rim to see a recent English-language example of Del Toro's talent. What makes Pacific Rim particularly interesting is the fact that it pays homage to the Japanese "mecha" genre of fiction, a genre that anyone who watched cartoons as a child in the 90s, like myself, should be familiar with (Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam Wing should ring some bells here). And it seems pretty clear that it was Del Toro's intent to pay homage to the genre, as evidenced by that fact that he casts Rinko Kikuchi, a Japanese actress, in one of the leading roles. Another aspect of Crimson Peak that led me to have the expectations that I did was the fact that Tom Hiddleston was cast into one of the leading roles. While Tom Hiddleston seems to have become one of the latest fangirl heartthrobs, much in the same way that Benedict Cumberbatch did after Star Trek Into Darkness or Joseph Gordon-Levitt after The Dark Knight Rises and Inception (and much in the same way that I predict Adam Driver will be after The Force Awakens), I actually have a degree of respect for him. Hiddleston is certainly one of the better actors in the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for his portrayal of Loki (a title really only rivaled by Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Tony Stark). Add to this the fact that he has a degree in Classics from Cambridge, a field that, as I have admitted in the past, I have had a long interest in, and he commands a degree of respect from me.
Given this background information on the "who's who" of Crimson Peak, I was already expecting something with much more depth than the other two choices. Given Del Toro's track record with art and storytelling, I knew that Crimson Peak wouldn't rely on the jump-scare gimmicks that Paranormal Activity relies on. This is not to say that Crimson Peak didn't have its moments of suspense, but, unlike Paranormal Activity, it does not use them as a crutch, so to speak (i.e. Crimson Peak doesn't rely on jump-scares as its primary driving force). And, given Hiddleston's more refined and sophisticated background, as well as Del Toro's attention to story, I also knew that Crimson Peak wasn't going to rely on the drawn-out action sequences that I imagine characterize The Last Witch Hunter, which I expect to be closer to Blade than anything Del Toro has produced. At this point, the question then becomes "what kind of horror movie is Crimson Peak?" Well, Crimson Peak is best described as a dark romance, at times invoking elements of a ghost story told around a campfire in the woods, and at other times invoking elements of suspense and mystery, akin to what you would find in The Bone Collector or Red Dragon. If one wanted to try and set Crimson Peak among literary examples, it is reminiscent of Victorian-era romanticism and the gothic novel, more akin to The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Turn of the Screw or the works of John Keats and Sheridan Le Fanu as opposed to the extreme violence, malice, and weirdness that characterize more modern entries in the horror genre, such as the works of H.P. Lovecraft or Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart.
Crimson Peak opens up with one Edith Cushing reminiscing on the funeral of her mother, who had died of illness when she was still a child. One cold night soon thereafter, the ghost of Edith's mother visits the child in the middle of the night and warns her to stay away from a mysterious place called "Crimson Peak", a warning that Edith would not be able to make sense of until years later. Fast forward fourteen years. Edith (Mia Wasikowska) is an aspiring writer in the Victorian period looking to the break the stereotype of female writers at the time by producing a ghost story as opposed to a romance novel, while her father, Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver), is a very wealthy and successful American businessman based in Buffalo, NY. Edith finds herself working reception for her father's business one day when Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston), a young English baronet, walks in with a business proposal for Mr. Cushing to invest in his invention for a machine that is supposed to revolutionize clay mining for bricks. Sharpe's business proposal is ultimately rejected by Mr. Cushing and he has no other choice but to leave empty handed, but not before catching the attention of, and more or less swooning, Edith. What unfolds after that is a blood-soaked love story between Edith and Thomas, which includes the murder of Edith's father, Edith marrying Thomas and moving to his estate in England, the very ominous demeanor of Thomas' sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain), the disappearance of several women throughout Europe, and Edith's ghostly visions. And it is eventually revealed that, because the thin red clay beneath the Sharpe Estate has a tendency to stain the winter snow red, the hill that the Sharpe Estate is built on is sometimes referred to as "Crimson Peak".
Again, there is no question that Crimson Peak is something far more sophisticated than most horror films that have been produced lately, and that it does a large number of things well. Perhaps first and foremost, Crimson Peak actually has a pretty compelling story. The references to The Bone Collector and Red Dragon that I made earlier seem pretty accurate for a handful of reasons; Crimson Peak has the elements of mystery and suspense that characterize The Bone Collector and Red Dragon, and keep one intellectually invested in the film. For example, Carter Cushing is murdered fairly early on in the film, but it is not readily apparent who did it and why. What makes this mystery particularly compelling is Del Toro's genius in its implementation; despite the fact that we are unsure who the murderer was, we are actually provided with a handful of potential suspects as well as a number of clues with regard to a motive. This gives Crimson Peak a kind of "whodunit" dimension, slightly mesmerizing in its own right, like a Sherlock Holmes novel or a game of "Clue". Yet another aspect of the film that is done well that complements this mystery element is its great character development, and, while Del Toro's writing of these characters certainly merits praise, virtually all of the actors deserve credit here, from Hiddleston to Charlie Hunnam, who plays Edith's American love interest that ultimately investigates the mysteries surround the Sharpe siblings. For example, only a half-wit would hastily arrive at the conclusion that Thomas murdered Carter Cushing; someone a little more analytical would realize that the character profile for Thomas Sharpe does not lend itself well to the manner of the murder, or even the initial motive given. Meanwhile, one has to wonder who the shady private investigator that Carter Cushing hires to snoop on the Sharpes, Mr. Holly, really is. Beyond the plot and character development, there are, of course, the overall aesthetics and artistic presentation of the set pieces, very much in Del Toro's signature style. The ghosts, for example, have the same crooked and contorted walk that characterized the child-eating "Pale Man" in Pan's Labyrinth. The hill of red clay that the Sharpe Estate is built on occasionally causes the house to ooze bright red from the walls, contrasting the cool, dark blacks and greys of the paint, sometimes even evoking the famous ending scene of The Amityville Horror. And Crimson Peak ties all of this together nicely with its own share of blood and violence, unafraid to showcase the grim circumstances driving the plot.
However, despite all of these things that Crimson Peak does well, I would hesitate to put it in the same category as Del Toro's greater works. There are two primary things that I think the film misses the mark on, so to speak. First, even though Crimson Peak has a far more sophisticated plot than any other recent horror film, its plot is still pretty generic: a haunted house in Victorian England. Don't get me wrong; I have been a long time fan of Victorian poetry and literature (I do have an Edgar Allan Poe tattoo and Dracula still remains one of my all time favorite novels), and Victorian Britain has served as the setting of some of the most classic ghost stories. But that's the very point that works against Crimson Peak; we have plenty of Victorian ghost stories already. And while adding more of a good thing doesn't hurt, one must compare Crimson Peak to Del Toro's previous work. Perhaps this is just a kind of "artsy snobbishness" on my part, but Crimson Peak seems to lack the imagination or innovation of Pan's Labyrinth; El Laberinto del Fauno situated a very graphic children's fairly tale in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, and did it all in the Spanish language, almost single-handedly jump-starting Spanish-language horror and fantasy cinema (perhaps the biggest title in Spanish-language horror cinema at the time was [REC], and this was still a fairly obscure title until its English-language remake in Quarantine, which is still a relatively obscure title even for English-speaking audiences). Pan's Labyrinth was more or less something unheard of before, unlike Crimson Peak, which feels as if it has been done dozens of times. Even among Del Toro's English-language works, Crimson Peak lacks the innovation of Pacific Rim, which brought English-speaking audiences a live-action iteration of the Japanese "mecha" genre, which hadn't really been done before (at least, not done well). The second big point of criticism that I think can be aimed at Crimson Peak has to do with its implementation of the actual ghosts in the film. Quite frankly, it's not clear to me whether the ghosts were even a necessary part of the film. The plot could have been carried out without them and more or less have achieved the same effect. For example, as mentioned, Edith's mother's ghost makes an appearance in the first five minutes of the film and warns her to stay away from Crimson Peak, but when the time actually comes for adult Edith to heed that warning, she actually does nothing; Edith learns she is at Crimson Peak, but merely reflects on the warning for a brief moment before resuming her day to day activities. In another scene towards the end of the film, when Edith has a better understanding of who these ghosts are, she runs in to one of them in the hallway of the Sharpe Estate and asks it where she should go in order to get to the bottom of this mystery (in an almost "Scooby Doo" fashion), at which point the ghost just promptly points her down another hallway, more or less rendering the ghost as nothing more than a supernatural sign post. It is also particularly interesting that Edith seems to be the only person that can interact with them for the overwhelming majority of the film; one would imagine that an angry, vengeful ghost would seek to haunt and torment his or her murderer, but in this case the ghosts simply seem to relegate themselves to sign post status. And if one were to try and make the argument that perhaps the ghosts are figments of Edith's imagination, then such an interpretation would quickly fail; the ghosts bring about tangible effects in the world, such as slamming doors and throwing balls, things that cannot be experienced by one person alone. Yet despite this, every other character in the movie seems to be more or less oblivious to the ghosts, nor do the ghosts try to bring about anything more substantial than slamming doors.
Overall, Crimson Peak certainly gets my recommendation, and it is, by far, one of the better horror films I have seen in a long time, but it is also not Guillermo Del Toro's best work. It is your pretty typical ghost story, set against the tried and true backdrop of Victorian England, augmented by elements of mystery and romance. However, if one is looking for something more innovative or imaginative, a little more avant-garde than classic, then I would refer him or her elsewhere. The problem with that is that Crimson Peak is more or less the apex of horror films right now, much to my great dismay.
Between those three, it didn't take long for me to decide to do this review on Crimson Peak. The more intriguing part of the decision process is perhaps that fact that I didn't really have to do much to narrow it down; The Last Witch Hunter reportedly bombed, and, though I said that I enjoy the Paranormal Activity series, I have become more and more disenchanted with it as it has dragged on. And then compare these stats against a film by Guillermo Del Toro, a very talented filmmaker, and the choice becomes almost a no-brainer. In any case, this review will be something different for me to write, and hopefully something just as enjoyable to read, insofar as this will be a review of a horror film, in stark contrast to the action and sci-fi films I have reviewed thus far. And I have been wanting to do a review of a horror film for a while now; as a long-time fan of the genre, with a small collection of the classic black-and-whites (i.e. The House on Haunted Hill and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), I believe I at least have an idea of what it means to be a good horror film.
I must confess that I had a handful of expectations going in to Crimson Peak, most of which were met, though I will say that I was disappointed with regard to others. The expectations I had pretty much stem from the fact that Crimson Peak was made by Guillermo Del Toro, a Mexican filmmaker that has previously showcased a large degree of artistic and fantastic talent. Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno en espanol), for example, with a pure stroke of genius, somehow managed to blur the lines between a children's fairy tale, a fantastic horror story, and an extremely violent adult war film, all presented in the Spanish language, thus adding a new dimension of fiction to Spanish-language cinema. And by no means is Del Toro's genius confined to the Spanish language. One simply need to look at Pacific Rim to see a recent English-language example of Del Toro's talent. What makes Pacific Rim particularly interesting is the fact that it pays homage to the Japanese "mecha" genre of fiction, a genre that anyone who watched cartoons as a child in the 90s, like myself, should be familiar with (Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam Wing should ring some bells here). And it seems pretty clear that it was Del Toro's intent to pay homage to the genre, as evidenced by that fact that he casts Rinko Kikuchi, a Japanese actress, in one of the leading roles. Another aspect of Crimson Peak that led me to have the expectations that I did was the fact that Tom Hiddleston was cast into one of the leading roles. While Tom Hiddleston seems to have become one of the latest fangirl heartthrobs, much in the same way that Benedict Cumberbatch did after Star Trek Into Darkness or Joseph Gordon-Levitt after The Dark Knight Rises and Inception (and much in the same way that I predict Adam Driver will be after The Force Awakens), I actually have a degree of respect for him. Hiddleston is certainly one of the better actors in the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for his portrayal of Loki (a title really only rivaled by Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Tony Stark). Add to this the fact that he has a degree in Classics from Cambridge, a field that, as I have admitted in the past, I have had a long interest in, and he commands a degree of respect from me.
Given this background information on the "who's who" of Crimson Peak, I was already expecting something with much more depth than the other two choices. Given Del Toro's track record with art and storytelling, I knew that Crimson Peak wouldn't rely on the jump-scare gimmicks that Paranormal Activity relies on. This is not to say that Crimson Peak didn't have its moments of suspense, but, unlike Paranormal Activity, it does not use them as a crutch, so to speak (i.e. Crimson Peak doesn't rely on jump-scares as its primary driving force). And, given Hiddleston's more refined and sophisticated background, as well as Del Toro's attention to story, I also knew that Crimson Peak wasn't going to rely on the drawn-out action sequences that I imagine characterize The Last Witch Hunter, which I expect to be closer to Blade than anything Del Toro has produced. At this point, the question then becomes "what kind of horror movie is Crimson Peak?" Well, Crimson Peak is best described as a dark romance, at times invoking elements of a ghost story told around a campfire in the woods, and at other times invoking elements of suspense and mystery, akin to what you would find in The Bone Collector or Red Dragon. If one wanted to try and set Crimson Peak among literary examples, it is reminiscent of Victorian-era romanticism and the gothic novel, more akin to The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Turn of the Screw or the works of John Keats and Sheridan Le Fanu as opposed to the extreme violence, malice, and weirdness that characterize more modern entries in the horror genre, such as the works of H.P. Lovecraft or Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart.
Crimson Peak opens up with one Edith Cushing reminiscing on the funeral of her mother, who had died of illness when she was still a child. One cold night soon thereafter, the ghost of Edith's mother visits the child in the middle of the night and warns her to stay away from a mysterious place called "Crimson Peak", a warning that Edith would not be able to make sense of until years later. Fast forward fourteen years. Edith (Mia Wasikowska) is an aspiring writer in the Victorian period looking to the break the stereotype of female writers at the time by producing a ghost story as opposed to a romance novel, while her father, Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver), is a very wealthy and successful American businessman based in Buffalo, NY. Edith finds herself working reception for her father's business one day when Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston), a young English baronet, walks in with a business proposal for Mr. Cushing to invest in his invention for a machine that is supposed to revolutionize clay mining for bricks. Sharpe's business proposal is ultimately rejected by Mr. Cushing and he has no other choice but to leave empty handed, but not before catching the attention of, and more or less swooning, Edith. What unfolds after that is a blood-soaked love story between Edith and Thomas, which includes the murder of Edith's father, Edith marrying Thomas and moving to his estate in England, the very ominous demeanor of Thomas' sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain), the disappearance of several women throughout Europe, and Edith's ghostly visions. And it is eventually revealed that, because the thin red clay beneath the Sharpe Estate has a tendency to stain the winter snow red, the hill that the Sharpe Estate is built on is sometimes referred to as "Crimson Peak".
Again, there is no question that Crimson Peak is something far more sophisticated than most horror films that have been produced lately, and that it does a large number of things well. Perhaps first and foremost, Crimson Peak actually has a pretty compelling story. The references to The Bone Collector and Red Dragon that I made earlier seem pretty accurate for a handful of reasons; Crimson Peak has the elements of mystery and suspense that characterize The Bone Collector and Red Dragon, and keep one intellectually invested in the film. For example, Carter Cushing is murdered fairly early on in the film, but it is not readily apparent who did it and why. What makes this mystery particularly compelling is Del Toro's genius in its implementation; despite the fact that we are unsure who the murderer was, we are actually provided with a handful of potential suspects as well as a number of clues with regard to a motive. This gives Crimson Peak a kind of "whodunit" dimension, slightly mesmerizing in its own right, like a Sherlock Holmes novel or a game of "Clue". Yet another aspect of the film that is done well that complements this mystery element is its great character development, and, while Del Toro's writing of these characters certainly merits praise, virtually all of the actors deserve credit here, from Hiddleston to Charlie Hunnam, who plays Edith's American love interest that ultimately investigates the mysteries surround the Sharpe siblings. For example, only a half-wit would hastily arrive at the conclusion that Thomas murdered Carter Cushing; someone a little more analytical would realize that the character profile for Thomas Sharpe does not lend itself well to the manner of the murder, or even the initial motive given. Meanwhile, one has to wonder who the shady private investigator that Carter Cushing hires to snoop on the Sharpes, Mr. Holly, really is. Beyond the plot and character development, there are, of course, the overall aesthetics and artistic presentation of the set pieces, very much in Del Toro's signature style. The ghosts, for example, have the same crooked and contorted walk that characterized the child-eating "Pale Man" in Pan's Labyrinth. The hill of red clay that the Sharpe Estate is built on occasionally causes the house to ooze bright red from the walls, contrasting the cool, dark blacks and greys of the paint, sometimes even evoking the famous ending scene of The Amityville Horror. And Crimson Peak ties all of this together nicely with its own share of blood and violence, unafraid to showcase the grim circumstances driving the plot.
However, despite all of these things that Crimson Peak does well, I would hesitate to put it in the same category as Del Toro's greater works. There are two primary things that I think the film misses the mark on, so to speak. First, even though Crimson Peak has a far more sophisticated plot than any other recent horror film, its plot is still pretty generic: a haunted house in Victorian England. Don't get me wrong; I have been a long time fan of Victorian poetry and literature (I do have an Edgar Allan Poe tattoo and Dracula still remains one of my all time favorite novels), and Victorian Britain has served as the setting of some of the most classic ghost stories. But that's the very point that works against Crimson Peak; we have plenty of Victorian ghost stories already. And while adding more of a good thing doesn't hurt, one must compare Crimson Peak to Del Toro's previous work. Perhaps this is just a kind of "artsy snobbishness" on my part, but Crimson Peak seems to lack the imagination or innovation of Pan's Labyrinth; El Laberinto del Fauno situated a very graphic children's fairly tale in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, and did it all in the Spanish language, almost single-handedly jump-starting Spanish-language horror and fantasy cinema (perhaps the biggest title in Spanish-language horror cinema at the time was [REC], and this was still a fairly obscure title until its English-language remake in Quarantine, which is still a relatively obscure title even for English-speaking audiences). Pan's Labyrinth was more or less something unheard of before, unlike Crimson Peak, which feels as if it has been done dozens of times. Even among Del Toro's English-language works, Crimson Peak lacks the innovation of Pacific Rim, which brought English-speaking audiences a live-action iteration of the Japanese "mecha" genre, which hadn't really been done before (at least, not done well). The second big point of criticism that I think can be aimed at Crimson Peak has to do with its implementation of the actual ghosts in the film. Quite frankly, it's not clear to me whether the ghosts were even a necessary part of the film. The plot could have been carried out without them and more or less have achieved the same effect. For example, as mentioned, Edith's mother's ghost makes an appearance in the first five minutes of the film and warns her to stay away from Crimson Peak, but when the time actually comes for adult Edith to heed that warning, she actually does nothing; Edith learns she is at Crimson Peak, but merely reflects on the warning for a brief moment before resuming her day to day activities. In another scene towards the end of the film, when Edith has a better understanding of who these ghosts are, she runs in to one of them in the hallway of the Sharpe Estate and asks it where she should go in order to get to the bottom of this mystery (in an almost "Scooby Doo" fashion), at which point the ghost just promptly points her down another hallway, more or less rendering the ghost as nothing more than a supernatural sign post. It is also particularly interesting that Edith seems to be the only person that can interact with them for the overwhelming majority of the film; one would imagine that an angry, vengeful ghost would seek to haunt and torment his or her murderer, but in this case the ghosts simply seem to relegate themselves to sign post status. And if one were to try and make the argument that perhaps the ghosts are figments of Edith's imagination, then such an interpretation would quickly fail; the ghosts bring about tangible effects in the world, such as slamming doors and throwing balls, things that cannot be experienced by one person alone. Yet despite this, every other character in the movie seems to be more or less oblivious to the ghosts, nor do the ghosts try to bring about anything more substantial than slamming doors.
Overall, Crimson Peak certainly gets my recommendation, and it is, by far, one of the better horror films I have seen in a long time, but it is also not Guillermo Del Toro's best work. It is your pretty typical ghost story, set against the tried and true backdrop of Victorian England, augmented by elements of mystery and romance. However, if one is looking for something more innovative or imaginative, a little more avant-garde than classic, then I would refer him or her elsewhere. The problem with that is that Crimson Peak is more or less the apex of horror films right now, much to my great dismay.
Monday, November 2, 2015
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