The Rise and Fall of Industrial Rock

          I think it's safe to say that the 90s was a strange time for rock music. We saw the more or less linear evolution of Punk and Metal in the late 70s and 80s, two genres that, despite their anti-authoritarian or subversive message, were pretty well-defined. Even the Goth scene, a movement that at times dips into genres beyond Punk and Metal (such as Electronica), was pretty formulaic in its approach to what constitutes "Goth" music. Once the 90s came along, however, rock musicians began to experiment. The traditional formulas of Punk, Metal, and Classic Rock were left by the wayside and we saw the advent of things like "Progressive” rock and "Alternative” rock and “Grunge”. Songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Losing My Religion” signaled a paradigm shift in the approach to rock music in the early 90s, and the quick rise of bands like Nirvana and R.E.M. paved the way other Grunge and Alternative rock acts such as Pearl Jam, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Primus. Everything else was more or less pushed back underground and Grunge was left to define the decade – that is, until the response finally came in the second half of the decade, in the form of Industrial Rock.
           Industrial Rock can trace its roots back primarily to the Goth rock and Electronica scene of the 1980s. One can point to the dissolution of Joy Division and the advent of New Order as an early example of where we begin to see the crossover between rock and electronic music. The Cure were also reputed to implement things like synthesizers and experimental noises into their music (the albums Faith and Pornography can be cited as early examples of this). Covenant and Kraftwerk are also sometimes cited as more electronic influences on the genre. By the late 1980s, the groundwork had been set and we begin to see the genre take shape; Ministry had released their album The Land of Rape and Honey in 1988 and Nine Inch Nails had begun writing Pretty Hate Machine that same year.
          However, the fledging Industrial rock genre, serving as an evolution of the Goth and Electronica scenes of the 1980s, became a casualty of the rise of Grunge and Alternative rock in the early 1990s. The popularity of Nirvana’s Nevermind and R.E.M’s Out of Time brought about an abandonment of the now well-established Punk, Metal, and Electronica, or any off-shoot of them, in favor of things like the down tempo, gritty guitar sounds of Grunge, or the introduction of non-traditional instruments in Alternative rock (such as the mandolin in “Losing My Religion”), or even the fusion of rock with funk and slap bass that we find with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Primus. Despite the success of Pretty Hate Machine, Industrial rock remained something underground.
          Fortunately, the experimental nature of the early 1990s didn't last long. Around the mid-90s, we begin to see Industrial rock rise in popularity, mostly as a response to popularity of Grunge at the time. Nine Inch Nails is usually credited as being at the forefront of the Industrial movement; The Downward Spiral is considered one of the band's finest albums and they found success with songs like "Closer" and "Wish". 1996 saw the release of Marilyn Manson's second album, Antichrist Superstar, in which we can see a return to the dark aesthetic and "shock" performance that we saw with Metal and Punk bands of the 1980s. Adding on to the snowballing success of the genre, Rob Zombie released his debut solo album, Hellbilly Deluxe, in 1998, bringing with it such definitive tracks as "Dragula" and "Superbeast" ("Meet the Creeper" was also notably featured on the soundtrack to Twisted Metal III). It is also in 1998 that Orgy released their cover of the New Order song "Blue Monday", which ranked highly on numerous top 10 and top 40 charts.
          Then, at the turn of the century, everything went underground again. This new century seems to have brought with it the rise in popularity of such genres as "Metalcore", “Post-Punk”, "Post-Hardcore", and “Emo” rock. And while there has been a renewed interest in Metal and Punk (the success of bands like The Casualties and Rancid is testament to this), these genres aren't experiencing growth like they did in the 1980s, and the advent of Industrial in the late 1990s seems to have fizzled out with it (it also probably didn't help that Industrial was briefly associated with a certain high school shooting in the late 1990s either). I think it's safe to say that there hasn't been a new definitive entry in the Industrial genre since the late 90s, and any success that the genre has seen since then has come from its already established acts (for example, "The Hand that Feeds" and "Came Back Haunted" are both successful tracks from Nine Inch Nails). It's a shame insofar as Industrial was perhaps the best innovation in rock music from the 1990s (better than Grunge - sorry Nirvana fans), and songs like "Sin", "The Beautiful People", and "Superbeast" are infinitely better than most things making the stage at modern rock music festivals. This is not a call for Industrial to be given the same kind of mainstream attention as other contemporary acts. On the contrary, much like Punk and Metal, Industrial rock is not designed to have the same kind of mainstream success as certain rock acts today. Rather, this is simply a lament that, while we have started to see renewed interest and innovation in Punk and Metal, Industrial has more or less been left derelict.
          Still, there may be hope yet. Like any other genre, Industrial seems to be evolving. On the one hand, there are those acts that stay true to its rock roots, using heavily distorted guitars and acoustic drums - Godflesh is a good example of this, as well as Millennium-era Front Line Assembly. On the other hand, there are those acts that have gravitated more towards the electronic elements of Industrial, minimizing the use of distorted guitars and relying more on creating the oppressive atmosphere associated with Industrial through the use of synthesizers, keyboards, and drum machines. Sometimes referred to as "Aggrotech", one can usually find the likes of Suicide Commando, God Module, and Combichrist in this camp. It may also be worthwhile to point out that there seems to have been an increased interest in this "Electro-Industrial" genre in recent years, interestingly coinciding with the advent of electronic music in general this century. As long as we recognize these two evolutionary branches of Industrial, we may yet see a resurgence in the near future; the Rivethead culture often associated with Industrial seems to be making a comeback, and the persistent success of acts such as Nine Inch Nails seems to be drawing continued attention to the genre. Perhaps we will even see a repeat of what we saw in the late 90s, where Industrial re-emerges as a response to the current obsession society has with "Metalcore" and "Dubstep" (one can only hope).

Originally written for LIKEYOUSAID Magazine 4/15/2016.

Is 2016 the Most Punk Year in U.S. Politics?

          It goes without saying that 2016 is an important year in American politics. And, by this point, it also goes without saying that 2016 may very well be one of the most bizarre years in American politics. Yes, I am referring to the current election season, culminating with the advent of a new president which, given the current field of candidates, may drastically change our lives forever. Whether or not this is for the better or for the worse would depend on which side of the political spectrum you fall on. Unlike previous election years, our options seem to cover a much broader range on the spectrum; to the left, we have a candidate who aims to bring American politics and culture more in line with that of European and Canadian “democratic socialism”, and to the right, we have a candidate that suggests that building walls on our borders will somehow fix America's problems and that, for those problems that a wall can't fix, we do something to remove those that feel like there's a problem (i.e. deporting immigrants, punishing women who get an abortion, sucker-punching those who disagree, etc.). Given this apparent polarization of American politics, there is a sense in which this is the most "punk" year in election history, and, regardless of which side of the ideological spectrum you fall on, the role of punk rock and punk culture this election season is more important than ever.
          One may argue that this is the most "anti-establishment" U.S. presidential election ever, which, in the most basic sense, captures the spirit of the punk movement. Throughout the 20th Century, American politics fluctuated between being slightly left-of-center or slightly right-of-center, where Franklin Delano Roosevelt is usually heralded as the paragon of liberalism while Ronald Reagan is usually idolized as the ideal conservative. Far-left or far-right wing movements were never widely recognized in American politics. In fact, during the 20th Century, proponents of far-left or far-right ideas were usually scrutinized and persecuted (see the McCarthyism paranoia of the 1950s), and there is even evidence suggesting that proponents of these ideas are still being harassed and persecuted in the 21st Century (as May Day protestor Leah Lynn Plante laments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctdn9xVXSo8).
          Suddenly, however, it would seem as if this election season has evaporated a lot of the remaining doubt and skepticism the American public may have had about far-left or far-right wing ideas. Bernie Sanders, for example, has brought the notion of "democratic socialism" to the mainstream American public, advocating for an amalgam of ideas championed by the likes of former British prime minister Tony Blair and ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, such as a heavy involvement by the federal government in regulating capitalism and universal healthcare coverage. Conversely, Donald Trump has exploded onto the forefront of the Republican Party, a billionaire business tycoon with virtually no political experience, in a party where experience and "traditional" political values are held in high regard, and has seemingly hijacked the spotlight from the conservative establishment. He is an advocate of mass surveillance programs, "closing down parts of the Internet", stopping vaccinations because "they cause autism", and building a wall on the Mexican border to keep "murderers, drugs, and rapists" out, among other things. The popularity of both Sanders and Trump seems to have polarized the American political spectrum this election season, providing an alternative to the slightly left-of-center or slightly right-of-center establishment.
          Such a polarization of the political spectrum has been reflected in the punk scene for a much longer period of time. One can point to the anarcho-punk movement of the late 1970s/early 1980s as an example of the intersection between far-left ideology and punk rock. British band Crass is usually cited as a paradigmatic example, espousing a lifestyle of anarchism, pacifism, and environmentalism outlined in the songs "Bloody Revolutions" and "Big A Little a". Other anarcho-punk bands were quick to follow suit; that same message of pacifism can be found in Antischism's song "Salvation or Annihilation" or Nausea's "Smash Racism". And, of course, left-wing ideology need not be confined to anarchism or pacifism, or even anarcho-punk. California skate punk has often had many anti-authority, anti-establishment, and left-wing views since its inception in the 80s. One simply need look no further than Bad Religion, a band founded on the resistance to the American religious establishment (as suggested by their song "American Jesus"). Bad Religion's albums touch on a broad array of social issues plaguing American culture, from the environmental and cultural impact of unrestrained technological advancement ("Progress" on No Control) to the inherent irrational nature of human "animals" ("New Dark Ages" on New Maps of Hell). And, of course, the California punk scene extends well beyond Bad Religion, and anti-establishment themes can be found in many other songs from many other bands (such as "Skate or Die" from D.I. and "Abolish Government" by T.S.O.L.). Such leftist and anti-establishment themes have even seen some mainstream success with Green Day's 2004 album American Idiot, much to the dismay of punk rock "purists" who maintain that punk rock is something that should inherently be an underground movement. The anti-establishment attitude of punk rock has, at times, been so strong that some bands have even "circled back" and criticized the "punk establishment" itself (Milo Goes to College by the Descendents is a good example of an album that does this).
         To be fair, there are several notable cases of those in the punk movement advocating more right-wing, or even centrist, views. In 2004, The Guardian published an article about those in the punk movement that supported the re-election of George W. Bush (http://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/jul/07/uselections2004.popandrock), which includes an interview with former Misfits frontman Michael Graves, where he notes that "in American mainstream culture, the cool thing to do now is to hate the government and speak out against the war". The article also notes that, when the Ramones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Johnny Ramone famously announced "God bless President Bush and God bless America", in stark contrast to views of, say, Bad Religion or Green Day above. There are even notable cases where those in the punk movement have advocated ultra-nationalist or neo-Nazi themes. British band Skrewdriver is often credited as being at the forefront of this movement, having been a crucial part of the Rock Against Communism movement in the 1970s, in opposition to bands like Crass and The Clash.
          It should be clear at this point how this particular election season, in many ways, has come to represent the same polarization that we have seen in the punk movement for decades. Crass and Antischism were advocating environmentalism and uniting people well before Bernie Sanders decided to run for president (though, it should be noted that Sanders was advocating these things in U.S. politics well before the punk movement even began). Likewise, those in the punk scene who advocate for ultra-nationalist or anti-communist/anti-socialist views would likely find a candidate like Trump more appealing. And it should be pointed out that, of course, Sanders and Trump are not the only ones running for president. If you think that the most progressive thing would be to have a female president, regardless of what her views on various issues are, then you might find comfort in Hillary Clinton. Likewise, if you are a proponent of a centrist way of thinking, you might even consider voting for John Kasich come November.
          Regardless of where you fall on the ideological spectrum, it would seem as if the behaviors advocated by the punk scene are more important than ever. This election season has been particularly brutal - we have seen Trump rallies erupt into violence, nationwide protests that have closed city streets, and armed civilians, who sometimes refer to themselves as a "militia", showing up at rallies and religious centers to threaten and intimidate immigrants. Many people in the U.S. would not find one or more of these things acceptable in a civilized society. Yet, depending on who gets elected this November, these things may very well become the norm. Accordingly, the most obvious way to voice your resistance to these things would be to make sure you vote this election season. For those of you who want to be a little more “pro-active” in your approach to addressing these issues, you might consider taking a page from Antischism or Nausea and participate in sit-ins and demonstrations. As I hinted at in the first paragraph, since this election is so polarized, the results of it may very well radically change the future of our lives forever.

Originally written for LIKEYOUSAID Magazine 4/11/2016.

Review - Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

          The opening paragraph of my film reviews usually consists of a brief introduction and a description of the context leading up to it. However, when it comes to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, I feel inclined to present my reaction to it up front, before any kind of introduction, which, while trying to be as poetic and elegant as I can while staying true to my raw feelings, can best be captured as follows: WHAT IN THE HOLY FUCKING SHIT WAS THAT?? Ok, now that I have gotten that off my chest, my review can continue as normal. I return to the realm of writing after something of a hiatus since my Deadpool review. There were a number of reasons for this, the most pressing of which being recent financial obligations that I have to prepare for, which require that I invest more time into things both at work and outside of work. That, and a lack of films to write about that would generate a decent review (I will admit that I started brainstorming and writing a new philosophical piece last month, but, while working on it, I quickly realized that that particular piece will take some time to produce). Thus, I figured that the release of Batman v Superman would make for an opportune moment for me to come back to writing. And it appears as if superhero films continue to be the flavor of the decade, despite the strong performance of Mad Max, Jurassic World, and Star Wars last year. New to the arena this time around is Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Comics' attempt at entering into the fray with Marvel's Avengers, directed by Zach Snyder.
          Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the second installment of the DC Comics Cinematic Universe, after 2013's Man of Steel, and is meant to ultimately segue into a full-blown Justice League movie at some point in the future. And, in case you've lived under a rock for the better part of your life, the Justice League is DC's amalgam of their most famous superheroes, including Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, who band together to fight evil, not unlike Marvel's Avengers, both of which appeared in the 1960s. The film stars Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Henry Cavill as Clark Kent/Superman, with a supporting cast consisting of the likes of Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Jeremy Irons, and Gal Gadot, and pits our two heroes against Superman's arch nemesis Lex Luthor, portrayed by Jesse Eisenburg. This also marks the first silver screen appearance of Batman since Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, and comes on the heels of Man of Steel, which, while not groundbreaking, is usually considered the most successful silver screen iteration of Superman to date (after a long list of failed attempts).
          The film opens up with a re-enactment of the ending scene of Man of Steel, except told from the perspective of Bruce Wayne. Wayne finds himself running around frantically trying to save friends (and, interestingly, employees) from the chaos and destruction wrought by the final fight between Superman and General Zod. Faced with the sorrow and grief caused by all of the collateral damage, Wayne begins to harbor animosity towards Superman that festers as the film plays on. Fast forward to about two years after Man of Steel ends. Superman has become a kind of "on call" hero figure, appearing around the world to thwart evil wherever it may arise, while working as a journalist for the Metropolis newspaper The Daily Planet as his alter ego Clark Kent. Despite saving the world from General Zod and becoming a kind of celebrity figure, overall doing good throughout the world, Superman also has his share of detractors, including influential public officials in the U.S. Senate. These detractors see Superman as a kind of authoritarian figure, or a figure of unlimited power without any kind of checks or balances. Among them is the young, wealthy business and engineering tycoon Lex Luthor, who, through some shady business dealings around the world, comes across a large chunk of Kryptonite from Zod's failed attempt at terraforming Earth, found not far from a beach off the coast of the Indian Ocean.
          Meanwhile, across the river from Metropolis in Gotham City, Batman continues to live up to his reputation as the mysterious vigilante, using his various gadgets and gizmos to bring evil-doers to justice, who, as far as this film is concerned, are usually petty street thugs. Of course, both heroes get their share of face time in the local media, Batman usually portrayed as a rogue vigilante, Superman as the paragon of righteousness, a messiah to some, a burgeoning dictator to others, including Wayne and Luthor. And it is through the media that Superman develops the perception that Batman is a kind of oppressor, skulking around the underbelly of Gotham to intimidate and threaten the destitute and dispossessed, many of whom have to resort to petty crime in order to survive. While this rivalry is developing, Luthor lobbies certain members of the U.S. Congress to help him weaponize the chunk of Kryptonite he managed to get his hands on as a kind of deterrent to Superman. After his proposal is ultimately rejected, he bombs the U.S. Capitol building, indirectly implicating Superman in the process. Wayne is then given reason to suspect Luthor of foul play, so, after researching recent projects that Luthor has been working on, Batman then manages to steal the chunk of Kryptonite from Luthor and uses it to create a spear designed to kill Superman. Eventually, with a little bit of coercion from Lex Luthor, our two heroes meet face to face and duke it out. That is, until the eventual interference of Lois Lane who manages to convince Batman to help Superman stop Luthor from using General Zod's ship to create an abominable Krypton creature. By the time our heroes put aside their differences, however, it is too late. The creature is released and the end of the film consists of our two heroes trying to find a way to stop it, eventually even getting help from Wonder Woman, who, quite literally, appears from nowhere.
          As can be inferred from my opening evaluation of Batman v Superman at the outset, my overall impression of the film was pretty dismal. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice more or less embodies everything that is wrong with superhero films, arguably even more so than the Avengers. It's difficult to even find a place to start critiquing it, there are so many to choose from. Perhaps the narrative and characters are a good place. Frankly, the story was mediocre and the character development is more or less what I would expect for a superhero movie, which is to say, virtually non-existent. I will admit that, while there are several comic series and superhero movies that I really enjoy (including Batman), Superman was never among them. The Superman series always struck me as boring and uninteresting. Superman is just too ridiculously overpowered - he flies, is faster than "a speeding bullet", near-impervious to damage (unless, of course, he is around Kryptonite), and shoots lasers out of his eyes, not to mention the fact he is jacked with an 8-pack and his pectorals always look like they are about to burst out of his shirt. He has virtually no flaws, and, for the flaws that he does have, they are not easy to exploit. Quite literally, the only creatures that stand a chance against Superman are otherwordly, much like the creature at the end of Dawn of Justice. But then, at this point, we have gone beyond the willful "suspension of disbelief" and completely detached the narrative from the viewers, instead focusing on an absolutely over-the-top fight between two ridiculously overpowered creatures. I continue to find myself perplexed by the fact that people are actually entertained by this - one thing that can make fiction really interesting is watching the characters grow and develop - watch their flaws be exploited, watch them learn from their mistakes, and watch them cope with everyday life, which makes them relatable to an audience. None of this applies to Superman (unless, of course, you're a shredded hunk with an 8-pack who can shoot lasers out of his eyes).
          Of course, the film's problems go well beyond those of Superman. The overall narrative was a minefield of plot holes, arguably leaving more questions than it answered. Why exactly was Lex Luthor so hell-bent on destroying Superman? Luthor was portrayed as one who has a kind of fanatic devotion to the cause of destroying Superman, but his motivating factors are never made clear. Bruce Wayne at least had the excuse of revenge, but Luthor never seemed to have anything to worry about when it came Superman. Was Luthor always this fanatical, even before Superman appeared? Even in the first five minutes of his screen time, Lex Luthor gave off the impression that he belonged in a straight jacket, leaving one to wonder how exactly he got to where he was as the CEO of LexCorp. Granted, a Superman fanboy may try to refer me to the comics for answers and attempt to defend Dawn of Justice's portrayal of Lex Luthor with religious zeal, but this would be a poor cop-out. Chris Nolan's Dark Knight series was able to give an adequate backstory to Bruce Wayne/Batman without having to refer the audience to the comics for answers. Speaking of Batman, there also seemed to be a gross disconnect between this iteration of Batman, and the character archetype set for him in the previous films (and, if I may say so, this iteration of Batman is even at odds with the characterization of him in the Emmy Award-winning animated series from the 1990s). Specifically, there are several points in the film where Batman is portrayed with guns and actually using them to kill people, such as his vision of the future where he leads a resistance against Superman, as well as his big fight scene with Luthor's Russian henchmen while trying to save Superman's adoptive mother. This is starkly at odds with the identity of Batman established for him in previous film iterations; Batman famously doesn't kill people, let alone use guns to harm others, preferring usually to just beat them into submission. It's one thing to reboot a character, or take a character in a different direction (clearly, Chris Nolan's Dark Knight is radically different from the Tim Burton version of Batman from the late 80s/early 90s), but it's an entirely different thing to break away from one of the core traits that has come to define the character. This would be like having Captain America suddenly start fighting for Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, something wholly incoherent with the character.
          The introduction of Wonder Woman and the rest of the Justice League didn't help the film's odds either. In fact, their introduction felt a bit rushed; this is only the second installment of the DC Cinematic Universe and already we have the Justice League assembling on screen. I'm sure this is DC's and Warner Bros' attempt at catching up with Marvel's Avengers, but, as is typical with Warner Bros., they are just making things worse, and are always late to the party (see Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe). There were five installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before the release of the first Avengers film, allowing Marvel to really dig deep into the narratives of each of our primary protagonists, however silly those may (or may not) have been. With DC, however, it looks like they just want to skip to the part where a whole bunch of random superheroes appear on screen at the same time. This is a pity because it makes Wonder Woman's appearance feel very rushed and arbitrary; she is literally given no background at all, other than arguably a random photo from what looks to be World War II, and just shows up out of nowhere to help Batman and Superman fight the Krypton creature at the end. There is so much potential with Wonder Woman; this is her first really big live-action iteration, but the character's background wasn't established at all. And while there is a full-blown Wonder Woman movie in production for a slated 2017 release, it doesn't really help Dawn of Justice for it to be released after the fact. A similar criticism can be aimed at this version of Batman - there is a lot of untapped potential here as well. One of the defining characteristics of Chris Nolan's Dark Knight series is the fact that he tried to situate Batman in the realm of crime drama, using believable villains and mobsters as the scourge of Gotham that Batman is dealing with. This framework inevitably ruled out some of Batman's more "sci-fi" antagonists, such as Poison Ivy or Mr. Freeze. I think there is an opportunity here in the DC Cinematic Universe to really push Affleck's Batman, and perhaps revisit some of these more sci-fi villains that, while wholly inconsistent with the Nolan version of Batman, would seem plausible given what we have seen so far in Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice. Besides, it would take little effort to improve upon Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze since their last silver screen appearance in 1997's Batman and Robin ("WHAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS?"). In fact, on that note, it might even be a good idea to revisit the Riddler as well (one of my personal favorite Batman villains, along with the Scarecrow).
          Is there anything that Dawn of Justice does well? Well, yes and no. The area where I can give praise to Dawn of Justice is in its special effects, but, at the same time, I could also make the case that this works to its detriment. Make no mistake, Warner Bros. pumped a lot of money into making sure that Dawn of Justice was at the forefront of special effects, from Superman's eye lasers, to Bruce Wayne's apocalyptic dreamscape, to General Zod's crashed ship. This is in stark contrast to The 5th Wave, that alien invasion movie from earlier in the year that didn't look like an alien invasion at all, partially because of a lack of special effects. Dawn of Justice is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. But that's also the thing that works against it. While The 5th Wave had no special effects at all, Dawn of Justice feels like it was directed by Michael Bay and seems to have gone completely overboard with its special effects. In many ways, I can't fault Dawn of Justice for this; this seems like the inevitable side effect of having Superman in your movies, and such an addiction to special effects, by this point, seems inherent to superhero films, as evidenced by the Avengers. But again, we can contrast Dawn of Justice and the Avengers with Nolan's Dark Knight series. Another thing that works in favor of Nolan's Batman films is the fact that they are not over-laced with special effects, making them more relatable, and facilitating the suspension of disbelief. It's difficult to maintain that when the primary protagonist just drops in to a terrorist stronghold and begins shooting lasers out of his eyes.
          Overall, my dissatisfaction with Dawn of Justice can be summarized by two major points. First, DC has a tendency to show up late to the party, so to speak, and, as a result, everything seems so rushed and incomplete. Much in the same way the Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe didn't offer anything above and beyond Marvel vs. Capcom, Dawn of Justice doesn't really offer anything that sets it apart from the Avengers. In fact, the Marvel Cinematic Universe at least developed its primary characters by giving them their own individual stories, something sorely lacking from the DC Cinematic Universe. Second, Dawn of Justice appears to have also jumped on the bandwagon of over-done and unnecessary special effects, using that as a mere distraction from an otherwise silly and underdeveloped plot. Like my feelings towards the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I would be much more interested in the characters' individual stories; there are a lot of unique character points that could be had with Batman and Wonder Woman, and I think developing those characters individually would greatly benefit the series before cramming them together into a hodge-podge of convoluted superhero action. On that note, though, this gives us something to look forward to in the Wonder Woman film due out next summer. And, speaking of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now that Dawn of Justice is out of the way, this paves the way for Captain America: Civil War as the next big superhero film coming out in the next several weeks.

          Lastly, I bring some good news for my (currently nonexistent) fans: I believe I have finally found an outlet for my writing in the form of LIKEYOUSAID Magazine. A punk/alternative music magazine based out of Boston, I have been in talks with one of the lead editors to contribute rock-related articles to their cause. As those get published, it is my intention to also post them to the blog. My first submission for the magazine, "Is 2016 the Most Punk Year in U.S. Politics?", should hopefully be making it to the "Features" column of LIKEYOUSAID soon!

Review - Deadpool

          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.

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.

[1] http://time.com/4149092/star-wars-joseph-gordon-levitt-yoda-costume/

[2] http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_fifth_wave/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_5th_Wave_(novel)

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.

[1] http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/an-introduction-to-eusociality-15788128

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/01/2015-274-days-294-mass-shootings-hundreds-dead/

[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26116868

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6780pKtsY4

[5] http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/10-animals-that-are-bad-for-the-environment/locusts#top-desktop

[6] http://listverse.com/2013/06/27/10-most-downright-ferocious-or-ill-tempered-animals/

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii

[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.

[10] http://www.iep.utm.edu/indmat/

[11] Sobel, David. "Varieties of Hedonism" in The Journal of Social Philosophy, vol.33, no.2, 240-241. 2002.

[12] http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/11/philosophers-and-welders-react-to-marco-rubios-debate-comments/?_r=0

[13] Epicurus. "Letter to Menoeceus". The Epicurus Reader. Inwood and Gerson, trans. Hackett, 1994.

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.

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2015/12/01/nbr-names-mad-max-fury-road-best-film-of-the-year/76625652/

[2] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-time-stop-pretending-846139

[3] http://www.inquisitr.com/2384430/star-wars-facebook-page-responds-to-sexist-captain-phasma-armor-comment/

[4] http://mashable.com/2013/08/22/star-wars-episode-vii-film/#4GYnuRE2BgqV

[5] http://www.businessinsider.com/star-wars-the-force-awakens-complaint-2015-12