The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Despite the attention lavished on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, and even Star Trek or the Alien universe, I feel like the science fiction franchise most consistent in quality is the Planet of the Apes. Sure, it's not without its duds (Burton's film) and lesser lights (the last original film, the cartoon, perhaps), but the Wyatt/Reeves reboot?/prequel? series of the 2010s defied sequel gravity and only got better as it went along. (To me, anyway. Some would say Dawn was the high point. Either way, War was still good.)

When Reeves left and Disney acquired Fox, I had some trepidation about where the series would go. Happily, it seems like Wes Ball has things well enough in hand, at least with this first installment. While it's not as good as the best of the 2010s series, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was more enjoyable and more substantial than any other existing-franchise entry I've seen in the theater since the end of the pandemic--though perhaps that's damning with faint praise.

Anyway, it's "many generations" after the time of Caesar. He has become a mythic/religious figure. His name is borrowed. and his legacy evoked by an up-and-coming bonobo tyrant who (like King Louie in the Jungle Book) wants the technology of humankind. He needs (ape) slave labor to get it at it and a mysterious, young human woman, so when he captures Noa's village and kills his father, the young chimpanzee makes common cause with the human. 

There are hints of Beneath of the Planet of the Apes in here, and (perhaps unintentional, perhaps not) Biblical echoes with a hero named "Noa," but those are as they should be with an ape installment. The special effects are amazing, and it makes me mad the Marvel Cinematic Universe films often seem sloppy. I guess when your whole premise requires motion capture, you have to get that thing right.

I miss Andy Serkis here like everybody else, but he trained the new cast of apes well. It probably could have been a bit shorter, particularly for a film that is a lot about establishing a new conflict, but I'm not immediately sure what I would have cut.

All that to say, if you liked the previous ape films you should see this one. If you haven't seen any of the new apes films (which lately I've discovered a large group of folks that haven't) then you should see those and see this one.

You can also check out the watch and commentary Jason "Operation Unfathomable" Sholtis and I did of the much less good but still entertaining 70s Planet of the Apes TV show over at the Flashback Universe Blog.

Where'd the Grot Go?

Watching Delicious in Dungeon and Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (which are both great, so watch them), I've noted that both display very D&Dish world, but ones completely without even token gestures toward the gritty and grime of Medievalism. They are grot free, nothing like this to be seen:

This could be put off to the style of anime or cultural differences between U.S. and Japan, but I noted this same thing back in my review of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Compared the production design and costuming of that film to something like Excalibur (which is pretty gritty despite all that gleaming plate) or even Jackson's Lord of the Rings. 

I think it's even in the art of a number of 5e products, too, and in The Legend of Vox Machina animated series (at least the parts of it I've seen).

I'm sure there are counter examples, but these are fairly high profile works in the D&D world, some of them official, so I think we're in a moment where D&Dish fantasy worlds partake of more of a fairytale feel, perhaps, in regard to depict of their environments. Nothing wrong with that, really, just an observation.

Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

I went with most of my gaming group to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves this past weekend. The short review is: we all enjoyed it and thought it was a lot of fun.

That out of the way, I think the way that is good--and the ways that it isn't--are kind of interesting. Fantasy films, like fantasy lit, generally seem at least in part about transporting us to a different world. The best fantasy films attempt to evoke wonder or horror, the lesser offerings at least seem to want to evoke another place or time. 

The Dungeons and Dragons movie doesn't seem much interested in those things. In fact, it doesn't really act like the typical fantasy movie much at all. It has the tropes, to be sure, but it doesn't try to wring a reaction from the audience with them, nor is it concerned with the typical stylistic elements of fantasy storytelling. There are no grubby streets, or seedy, dimly lit taverns. Monsters aren't really scary. Underground passages in the deadly Underdark seem spacious, clean, and relatively well lit. At best it's a dark ride at a theme park, and the magnificent CGI cityscapes could well be some sort of new addition to the Magic Kingdom. 

Honor Among Thieves is a fantasy movie set in the Forgotten Realms, sure, but in a real sense, it isn't a fantasy movie of the usual sort at all. What it is a evocation of what it's like to play a D&D game. The characters (within the bounds of not breaking the fourth wall) get to be as snarky, bumbling, and at times blasé as players at the table. It's like a memorable game session dramatized before you, allowing the D&D-versed viewer to imagine what's going on at the table to create what you see on the screen.

I'd say it's very clever, if I thought that were intentional. Rather, I think it's just the fortuitous consequence of post-Guardians of the Galaxy, action-adventure filmmaking and a script sharp in the sense that it keeps things moving and is filled with as many "easter eggs" as possible. Just lucky, perhaps. Still, no gamer looks askance at a lucky roll.

Other brief thoughts:

• Elves, dwarves, and halflings take a backseat to WOTC IP "ancestries." It wasn't a choice I was expecting.
• To maintain a PG-13 rating, no doubt, things must remain bloodless, which means combat relies a lot on fisticuffs and grappling. I've seen a lot of twitter jokes (well, the same joke multiple times) about "what system would be good for that D&D movie?" but I remarked to my players after the show that Broken Compass might be better at replicating what we saw on screen than D&D.
• There wasn't really a hint of a possible sequel, but that surely won't stop them if it does well enough.

Jianghu Dungeoncrawl Sources

 

After my previous blogpost, fellow blogger and Asian Cinema-phile Steve suggested a couple of martial arts films that actually have some vaguely dungeoncrawlish sequences:

Masked Avengers (1981)

House of Traps (1982)

18 Bronzemen (1976)

Can Willow be Redeemed by Moebius? Let's Take A Look

The original version of this post appeared in 2017. Then, I was criticized by a couple of people for being unduly harsh to the film Willow. On reconsideration, I suppose that is fair, though I still maintain it doesn't quite come together with anything like the same magic as Star Wars. There is now a new Willow series on Disney Plus and the comments I've heard haven't been great, but I'll reserve judgement for now.

Moebius's concept work, which I first glimpse in a magazine around the time of the movie's release is as great as ever. Perhaps it doesn't suggest a weird fantasy Willow or anything that radical, but it does at least suggest to me a decent Studio Ghibli-esque film might have come from the material. Let's take a look and (re-)imagine:

Here's the titular hero and (I believe) one of his Nelwyn fellows. Nothing of the pastoral gentility of a Baggins, nor the too literal "small folk" of the film. These guys make me think of Howard's diminutive and declining Picts in "The Lost Race," but also aboriginal peoples like the Emishi (in Princess Mononoke) or Ainu. A sense of the Nelwyn threatened by humanity (or Daikini) would have been nice. I like the long earlobes, too.

Madmartigan is the rogue with the heart of gold Han Solo type, but with a bit more wastrelness, he could have been a wuxia sort of character or Sanjuro from Yojimbo or Mugen from Samurai Champloo--both of which are great swordsman, too. Moebius gives us a design that completely fits with those characters, suggests a world of ronin or wandering swordsmen of some sort.

So at this point, you might be thinking, "basically he's just going to say Willow should have been more Asian?" So now I'm going to throw you off:

King Kael here (General Kael in the film) is described as "bestial" in the third draft of the script, which he obviously is here. Perhaps he is a lover of Bavmorda transferred by her magic? A reverse Beauty and the Beast (there's maybe a bit of Cocteau's beast about him. Maybe?) Or is he the captain of the flying monkeys, so to speak? Anyway, he fulfills a bit of a Witch-King of Angmar role, so fleshing out his badass villainy would have been good.

Now, it's back to the Asian stylings. The mask suggests (to me) childhood mindwarping courtesy of Bavmorda for the warrior woman Sorsha. Maybe she's just go a slight blemish, but has been convinced its a horrible disfigurement a la (some accounts of) Doctor Doom? Maybe her inhuman beauty as a daughter of the Tuatha de Danaan-esque folk of Tir Asleen is her disfigurement to her witch queen mother? Note that the mask isn't just a human mask, it's go that single Oni horn. Probably means something.

Lastly, I believe this is one of two fairly divergent designs Moebius did for the brownies--but in an earlier script draft Willow and baby get captured by elves who are described as wearing "samurai-type outfits and angry little haircuts." These are guys who (in the script) collect baby tears as part of their gig. Now think of these sinister little guys, like a mashup of the Indian in the Cupboard and the evil faerie of del Toro's Don't be Afraid of the Dark remake. I think we could do without the French accent Lucas specifies for their leader, though.

A Different West

 Being in sort of a Old West/Frontier mood of late, I got around the checking out a couple of things that had been on my list for a while, but I just kept never getting to.

The Nightingale (2019) is an Australian revisionist Western from the director of The Babadook. In it's basic plot, it's a tale of revenge, not unlike Hannie Caulder (1971), but the resemblance to traditional revenge Westerns, even revenge Westerns based around women, really ends at the plot synopsis. It's more interested (like many revisionist Westerns) in examining the plight of indigenous peoples, but it takes the particular angle of the allowing its oppressed Irish woman protagonist to develop empathy, through recognizes the points of similarity between her experience and that of her Aboriginal guide. While perhaps not as brutal the last Australian Western I watched, The Proposition (2006), it is tough viewing in places, particularly the assault on the protagonist and her family. Still, it's a good film on its own terms, and it's always interesting to see Western film tropes and themes played out in places besides North America.

The Wind Through the Keyhole is the last book (to date) written by Stephen King set in the Dark Tower universe. It's outside the main story of that series proper, but includes those characters in framing device. While sheltering from fantastical storm, part tornado and part polar vortex, Roland relates a tale of his youthful days as a gunslinger to his friends. Embedded in that story is another story, a Mid-World "fairytale," that his mother had read to him as a boy, "The Wind Through the Keyhole." This story within a story tells the tale of a young boy living on the edge of the Endless Wood who must contend with a malign fairy, a swamp (complete with a dragon), and his own encounter with that same sort of storm, in a trek across a dangerous wilderness to get a cure for his mother's blindness from the wizard, Maerlyn. 

King's feel for his fantasy world keeps getting stronger. While there are clear points of intersection with our history, he relies less on characters or incursions from our reality (or realities like ours). The Dark Tower novels that were mostly about Mid-World (Wizard and the Glass, Wolves of Calla) were my favorites of the series, and I think this short novel does what they do even better. I wish King would write a collection of other Mid-World tales.

Streets of Fire and the 50s-but-80s Setting

On other social media, Paul "GRIDSHOCK 20XX" Vermeren mentioned he had watched Streets of Fire for the first time after hearing that it was influential to Mike Pondsmith. I've seen people call it "proto-cyberpunk" which means, I guess, that they see it as punk without any cyber. While I can see how aspects of it would influence the aesthetics of cyberpunk, I think it's difficult to say it's "proto" anything. It's really more like an evolutionary dead-in; a path that wasn't taken.

I do think, though, that taken on something closer to it's own terms, it would suggest a pretty interesting rpg setting, not by adding cyber or other fantastic elements, but rather doing action or adventure stuff in a world that never was. For lack of a better descriptor, a world where the 80s was more like the 50s. Or maybe the 50s was more like the 80s would work, but I think the former is better.

The styles of cars and clothes resemble the 60s, but the urban sprawl is more like the urban decay of the 70s into the early 80s--where it isn't exaggerated for fanciful effect. There was a long war, which was aesthetically perhaps more like Korea, but the public perception of its pointlessness and the difficulties its soldiers had upon return resemble more the popular conception of Vietnam. The gangs that are sometimes the bogeymen of 80s films just look more like the gangs in The Wild One than the gangs in Fort Apache the Bronx. I feel like the media presence Chaykin pushes in American Flagg! (which is, of course, set in the future but like most sci-fi speaks to the fears/concerns of its era, the 80s) or The Dark Knight Returns, could be interesting translated to 50s television without loosing much.

So what would the characters do other than what we see the characters do in the film? Well, just pick any present-day set 80s action movie and give it a bit of a 50s veneer.

Army of the Dead and "The Job Gone Wrong" Adventure

I watched Army of the Dead on Netflix this weekend and thought it was pretty enjoyable. Briefly, it's the story of an eclectic group hired to get $200 million in cash out of a Vegas casino vault. The catch being Las Vegas is walled off after having been overrun by zombies, and the government plans to destroy the city with a tactical nuclear weapon in just a few days.

As a combination of a heist film and a zombie movie, it's heist aspect is probably most compelling. There is only mild inventiveness in its zombie aspects, consisting mostly of making that like the "vampires" in I Am Legend--and I don't mean "bad CGI" but instead fast, strong, and able to work in a group. As a heist film, it is less a caper film like Ocean's 11 or Kelly's Heroes, and more a "job goes wrong" film like Reservoir Dogs or Dead Presidents. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's not the first horror film or thriller with larcenous job and a group of competent professionals at its center.

Anyway, I think this sort of set up would make a good roleplaying game adventure, at least for a con game or one shot. A con game or one shot, because there's a very good chance that all the characters (or most) aren't going to make it out a live, so why plan for a future unlikely to happen?

In a con game, you could seed the pregens with hidden motivations that would goad them into derailing the mission, though I suppose you could let the player's make up the characters and just have a random secret motive table.

I think it could be a lot of fun with the right group.

Conan, 1963

What if during the late 50s to mid-60s Sword & Sandals movie crazy, somebody had got around to making a Conan film? Here's my suggestions for the cast of a 1963 adaptation of "People of the Black Circle."

William Smith as CONAN

Former Miss Israel and Bond girl Aliza Gur as YASMINA

Jack Palance as KARIM SHAH

Christopher Lee as THE MASTER OF YIMSHA

Raf Baldassarre as KHEMSA

and Chelo Alonso as GITARA

Gretel & Hansel

Oz Perkins' Gretel & Hansel is based on the fairy tale, but is a different story in many ways. This blogpost will contain some mild spoilers for the film.

Like most fairy tales, Gretel & Hansel takes place in a vague time period that is not the present or recent past. Also like many fairy tales, the place is vague, though it definitely has a old world feel about it. The film has none of the lush atmosphere often present in fairy tales, however. This isn't Sleepy Hollow or even Company of Wolves. Instead, it has the post-apocalyptic spareness of The Road (though it reminds me more of McCarthy's as yet unfilmed The Outer Dark). It's woods are gray rather than verdant. It's habitations are rundown and depopulated. The only place that looks really lived in is the house of the witch, and well, she's a cannibal.

Gretel and her little brother stumble through this wasteland, accidentally take psychedelic mushrooms, and are eventually bedeviled by a witch or witches--a child, a mother, a crone. Where this version differs from the traditional tale (well, besides all the stuff described above) is that this is Gretel's tale, or the tale of how the Gretel & Hansel duo split. The Witch sees something of herself in Gretel and is looking for an ally. There is no gingerbread house. No trail of breadcrumbs to lead our heroine back home.

Like Perkins' previous horror films it is a bit of a slow burn, so it may seem sluggish if you are looking for more jump-scares. Fans of The VVitch should find a lot to like.

Skywalker is Risen

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has not exactly been embraced by critics, though this is unlikely to blunt its box office draw much. Stars Wars fandom is ever hopefully that the dark times are over and what they love above Star Wars will finally be restored (when the fall from grace occurred, depends on who you ask, and probably what point in their life you ask them).

Like Abrams' first Star Wars film, RoS feels like it's trying to jam several movies into one, though the finale draws mostly from Return of the Jedi. It all moves very fast, and largely that's to its benefit, though that means no location develops a sense of place beyond set-dressing and character development is pretty shallow. (This film and the short run-time of the Mandalorian episodes, which are like hour dramas with most of the non-action excised, make me wonder if perhaps SW works best as a modern serial. Certainly the Clone Wars animated series played to those tropes as well to good effect.) It's fine, but it has the upshot of only occasionally (for me) wringing any real feeling from the proceedings, even failing to evoke any appreciation of it on a toyetic level. I saw nothing in this one that makes me want to buy the art book to delve into the design.

None of this is to say I didn't like it. It was a pleasing experience, though the enjoyment was pretty shallow. Only in a couple of places did it evoke any nostalgic feelings for the series' passing (I won't say which scenes for the sake of spoilers), and then only on the level of say the recent finale of The Deuce. Nothing on the level of the death of Spock (to evoke it's closest cultural competitor).

I am curious about the future of Star Wars, which will  probably get me in a theater to see at least one more.

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood...With Cthulhu

Truthfully, I find Cthulhu himself a bit played out, but invoking his name is a nice shorthand for the concept I had in mind. Warning: This will contain some spoilers for Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, so read at your own risk.



In contrast to the rather enervated protagonists of a number Lovecraft stories and pastiches, rpg characters tend to face eldritch horrors with action. Cue Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, the (perhaps unlikely) protagonists of Tarantino's latest, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, who prove surprisingly handy at dealing with kill-crazed hippie cultists, even then intoxicated.

Los Angeles in 1969 is pretty far from Lovecraft country both geographically and conceptually, but their is precedent at least for California Noir as a Lovecraft pastiche setting. (See Kim Newman's "Big Fish," for one.) And if Charlie and the Manson family lurking in the desert and an abandon TV and movie Old West town can't be connected to the Mythos, then what is the Mythos good for?

I could see an initially clash with Manson just being the tip of the iceberg. A raid by the protagonist on the Spahn Ranch would follow, and what horrors would be uncovered?

Of course, the horror need not be cosmic and certainly it can be cosmic without any of the Lovecraft staples, but I think this sort of spin on the film would make a good one shot or con game, at least.

The Saragossa Manuscript Redux

Yesterday, Amazon delivered the blu-ray version of the 1965 Polish film The Saragossa Manuscript directed by Wojciech Has. The film has been praised by the likes of David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Neil Gaiman. Jerry Garcia supposedly helped supply funds to get a full cut of the film restored. I have yet to check out the blu-ray transfer, but the film I know from the DVD version. It has impressive black and white imagery, and an unusual use of music--sometimes its a usual (if quirky) sixties film score, but often it has touches of primitive electronica experimentalism reminscient of some sci-fi scores of the era.

I first went looking for the film in 2010 because of its source material, the novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Count Jan Potocki (1761-1815). The book bears some resemblance to works like the Arabian Nights or the Decameron. It's a fantasy (at least in part) describing the experiences and stories related to a young Walloon officer in the Sierra Morenas of Spain in 1739. It includes gypsies, cabbalists, Sapphic sister Moorish princesses, and hints at secret history. The stories are nested like Matryoshka dolls, with narrators of some stories showing up as characters in others. Neil Gaiman, a fan of the work, has called it "a labyrinth inside of a maze." It combines elements of the gothic and picaresque with eroticism and humor.

The book itself has an interesting history. It's so convoluted in fact that Potocki's authorship was at times doubted. The novel was written in French, and over an extended period in several stages. The first few "days" were published in 1805 in French. Later, the entire manuscript was translated and published in Polish, but then the original complete manuscript was lost, and had to be "back translated" into French for a complete French version. Wikipedia suggests that scholars now think their were two versions: an unfinished one from 1804, published in 1885, and a rewritten, tonal different complete 1810 version. Only the first of these versions has appeared in English, though both are available in French.

Potocki himself is an interesting and character. He was served as a military officer, and was also for a time of novice of the Knights of Malta. He traveled and wrote scholarly studies on linguistics and ethnography. In 1790, he was among the first to fly in a hot air balloon. He also committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Allegedly, this was done with a silver bullet he fashioned himself and had had blessed by a chaplain!

Anyway the novel is well worth your time as is Has's film.

Infinity War

Since Avengers and a shoddily animated post-credits scene, we've been teased with this. So even if, like me, you're beginning to tire of the Marvel Cinematic Formula, then you are probably going to up for this installment. And you should be, because damn if they didn't stick the landing.

In brief: Thanos of Titan (No reference here to comic's original Greek Mythological origin or his actual birth on the Saturnian moon. It's just some planet here.) is after all these plot coupons that have had major to minor appearances in previous films, to crush gemstones from them--the Infinity Stones. He well on his way to collecting them all, when Avengers: Infinity War opens.

What follows is a film structured like a classic comic book crossover with mismatched groups of heroes in different locations try to prevent Thanos or his minions from getting one Infinity Stone or another. Each time they engage them entertainingly. I don't think I felt my interest in the doings flag noticeably over the nearly three hour run time. It is impressive how well paced it is despite the number of location jumps and protagonist shifts. I can't think of any film with an ensemble so sprawling that has done it so well.

And the ending? Well, without significant spoilers let's just say this is the Empire Strikes Back to the Star Wars: A New Hope comprised of entirety of the Cinematic Marvel Universe before.

Are there things not to like? Well, it carries the baggage of previous CMU stuff, so if (like me) you didn't like the "science-fiction"-izing of Asgard and Asgardian, that's all in your face here, starting with Asgardian's sending a distress call like they are Free Trader Beowulf from the cover of Traveller. All you Hawkeye fans (there's gotta be someone) will be disappointed that he isn't in it, and many other characters largely just get brief lines and brief appearances in fight scenes. There is not as much character stuff or dramatic beats here; there just isn't space. In that regard, this is the story of Gamorra, Tony Stark, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Thor, and Thanos, and every one else is showing up just to fight. The CGI is great at times and unaccountably bad in others. Thanos's footsteps always seem too dainty.

And finally, this is perhaps the most comic book of comic book movies, with that fact entailing both good and bad perhaps. This certainly shouldn't be anyone's first Marvel film. It is not as accessible in the way Black Panther or the more comedic Marvel entries like Thor: Ragnarok are.

But overall, I loved it, and if you've been a fan of the other films or even most of them, you probably will too.

A Day When Titans Walk the Earth!

I saw Pacific Rim: Uprising yesterday. My short review: If you liked the first Pacific Rim, you will probably like this one, though I missed some of the del Toro quirkiness. If you didn't like the first one, this one probably won't change you mind about the series.

Anyway, vaguely tentacled blob things from another dimension taking over the minds of those who make contact with them, driving them mad, and monsters rising from the ocean depths made me think of the Cthulhu Mythos. The first movie had me distracted with the name "kaiju" and all that, but it really is a sort of Lovecraftian (in a way Lovecraft himself would have never, ever wrote it) setup.

Now, I know there is a game called CthulhuTech which is mecha vs. Lovecraftian monsters/aliens, but what I think would be cool is something a bit less Neon Genesis Evangelion and more 70s Shogun Warriors! That would be a cool setting, I think.

Annihilation and the Dungeoncrawl

Some relatively non-spoilery ways I think the movie adaptation of Annihilation could inform dungeoncrawls:

1. Relatively mundane creatures with an odd twist can create atmosphere, but also a more interesting threat.
2. Oddly behaving things can create a sense of menace without actually doing anything hostile.
3. Dressing a locale is important. The details don't have to be extensive, but they should set the adventuring environment apart from mundane environments.
4. Even a map-able/navigable terrain can be made to feel disorienting or untrustworthy.
5. The terrain itself may be toxic to the visitor. (Operation Unfathomable already points in this direction, as no doubt others have.)
6. The remains and things left behind by those who went before can provide useful clues, but also add to a sense of dread.

My previous posts on Roadside Picnic-inspired elements might be helpful here, too.

The Last Jedi May be a New Beginning

To be fair, I guess it started with Rogue One, but that was a side story set in the past. (It had more of an EU feel than The Last Jedi.) Still, together they are a trend that will hopefully continue: the evolution of the Star Wars Universe.

Be warned, there will be minor spoilers here, though my definition of "minor" may not coincide with yours.

The Last Jedi is set both sequentially and script-wise to be the Empire Strikes Back of the new trilogy. Not even considering the homages and fan service that link the two, they have a lot in common. Despite their victory in the previous film, the rebellion (or Resistance here) is on the run. Our protagonists are split up, and perusing different goals. New wrinkles are introduced that change the stakes or our protagonists understanding of the stakes.  And, things happen that seem counter to what the first film set up.

Here is where TLJ gets controversial because some of the apparent mysteries dangled by The Force Awakens, come to naught here, rendered irrelevant. Who is Snoke? We may never know, and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't appear to matter. He is another in what may be a long line of hubristic dark lords. Who are Rey's parents? The answer may surprise you, but only because you expect films of this sort to play out a certain way.

That gets to what is best about TLJ: it subverts tropes of Star Wars-type narratives while staying firmly rooted in that universe. Here the hero doesn't always know better than their older, more staid superiors, the odds of a harebrain scheme are important sometimes, the war may not be so black and white, and colorful rogues don't always harbor a heart of gold. These plot points aren't merely subversion for subversion's sake, they mostly lead to character development: heroes get galvanized to greater action; heroes become leaders instead of loners.

Along the way, the usual Star Wars stuff occurs. Lightsabers blaze. Ships blow up. Daring escapes are made, as are tearjerking heroic sacrifices. TLJ never stops being a Star Wars movie, it just broadens a bit what it means to be one.

It's not perfect, of course. The trope subversion means some actions of the protagonists are sort of wheelspinning, and you may not find them engaging enough on their own to warrant their inclusion. Luke's arc from RotJ to here maybe not sit well with everyone. It's believable, but perhaps less than ideal. Inter-Ressistance conflict may violate your view of Star Wars.

It's also saddled with the less than ideal choices made in the first film. How exactly the First Order came to such power is never clarified; in fact, this film doubles down on their puzzling rise. Captain Phasma got punked in TFA, and she does here, too. The relationship of Snoke, Kylo Ren, and Rey, just means that scenes that resemble ESB and RotJ occur, upping the fan service feel. The humor is at a higher level than in the original trilogy, but not (yet) to Marvel Cinematic Universe level.

I'm not sure about this, but my suspicion is that if TFA was everything you wanted in a Star Wars sequel, this film may frustrate you. If you haven't liked any film since RotJ (and you're iffy on that one) then you probably won't like this one either, and really what the hell are you doing wasting your time with modern sequels? Down that road is only heartbreak. If neither of those apply to you, I say check it out.

The Neo-Westerns of Taylor Sheridan

Though occasionally I've seen the term "neo-Western" to mean "a Western made in the last couple of decades," I think the term is most usefully applied to films that deal with thematic material and often locales that are part of the Western genre tradition, but place them in a more modern era and reflect modern concerns.

Actor/writer/director has been three unrelated (other than perhaps thematically) films that are recent exemplars of this genre, though all there also partake of other genres. Each film recalls classic Western plots but manages to do so in a way that doesn't seem rote.

Sicario (2015), directed by Denis Villeneuve, seems at first glance fairly fare from Western conventions. It's a crime story about about government agents going up against Mexican drug cartels. It plays out as a noir with deception and moral compromise the order of the day. Despite it's modern setting, Sicario plays out as sort of an inversion of many late-era American Westerns set in Mexico. The Emily Blunt's FBI agent is not a anglo-savior for the Mexican people. Instead, she's merely a pawn in a game who's rules are concealed from here and are much crueler than she naively imagines. Benico del Toro is the avenger so grim his justice it is without catharsis. It's just another move in the game of horrors. Josh Brolin's affably amoral CIA agent resembles in some ways the gringo schemers of the Zapata Westerns, but Sicario is bereft of any sort of cynical humor regarding the actions of imperialist powers.

Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water (2016) is more recognizable as a Western, being a tale of Texas bankrobbing brothers pursued by an aging ranger (Jeff Bridges). This might be a story decent men driven to law-breaking by predatory money men, or the story of the Law personified by the dogged lawman trying to stop two wrong-doers. In fact, like more nuanced Westerns, it is both. When their chase ends after many a scene of dying, economically crippled small towns and dust two-lane highways, neither side will get exactly the ending it hoped for.

This year's Wind River, Sheridan's directorial debut, again finds a female FBI agent (Elizabeth Olson) out of her depth. This time, a young Native woman has been a murder in the snowy wilderness of a Wyoming Indian Reservation. Olson's agent has help, at least, particularly Jeremy Renner's hunter for Fish & Wildlife, who lends his tracking and shooting skills. Amid freezing vistas and the business of police procedural, grief is as ever-present as the snow. Grief for the decimation of Native cultures and Native families. Grief at the loss of daughters. Wind River could have easily been a story of revenge as many of its Western progenitors were, but again those particulars are handled in a matter of fact manner. Moving on, but never forgetting, is the order of the day.

I'd recommend all of these films, but Hell or High Water feels like the strongest, or perhaps the most unified in terms of theme and action.

Weekend Movies

A saw a couple of movies this weekend, and I both of them made me think of gaming in one way or another:

Everyone will tell you Thor: Ragnarok is the most fun of the Thor installments, and I can say it is the best of that lackluster franchise, but its pleasant in the moment farce doesn't entirely makeup for it's threadbare story, and lack of any dramatic core. What Thor: Ragnarok sort of reminded me of, though, is the conception of an rpg session versus its reality. Thor is the PC trying to cool and dramatic but fumbling. Surtur is the GM trying to present a heroic drama tone, but can't do it due to player interruptions. Goldblum's Grandmaster is the GM darling NPC who the GM finds more amusing than any of the players. In the end, the adventure doesn't come together in the way any of the participants were individually guiding it, but it's still a fun romp.

Free Fire by Ben Wheatley is kind of a more humorous Reservoir Dogs, if the shootout between the criminals near the end of Reservoir Dogs had been two-thirds of the movie. Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, and other character actors are party to a gun deal gone bad for random reasons who wear each other down bullet by bullet, blow by blow. You wouldn't necessarily think a film that spends most of its length following wounded gangsters crawling around the dirt floor of an abandoned factory would be interesting, but it will surprise you. What this one reminded me of was a Boot Hill session. It's all down to the gunfight, injury and the maneuvering for cover and placement. In fact, a little reskinning and you could run a cool modern Boot Hill session with this premise.

Duelling Babysitters

The Halloween season is upon us, and if that puts you in the mood for a horror-comedy about kids who seem a bit old to have babysitters in bloody confrontation with said babysitters, then there are options available for streaming. Before I go into details, I have to warn you that discussion of these films necessitates some spoilers, so if you are particularly adverse, the bottom line is both Better Watch Out and The Babysitter (2017) are worth checking out.


(here we go...)

Better Watch Out is also a Christmas film, and it suggests that Home Alone might have a lot to answer for. Precocious 12 year-old Luke and his medicine-cabinet raiding, bad influence best friend, Garrett seem to have learned its lessons in mayhem well. At first, though, all we know is that Luke has high hopes of seducing his 17 year-old babysitter, Ashley, involving watching horror films. Before his clumsy efforts get too far, there is apparently a home invasion, but all is not as it seems. Suffice it to say, Ashley spends a night trying to escape a pre-teen sociopath amid some gruesome deaths and a few booby traps.

The Babysitter is directed by the infamous McG and is consequently more over-the-top than Better Watch Out, and bit more farcically humorous. Here, the 12 year-old is Cole, who is bullied by neighbors and suffers from anxiety about almost everything, but he does have a very attractive and almost preternaturally cool babysitter, Bee, who genuinely seems to enjoy spending time with him. The downside is that Bee is the leader of a Satanic cult and she and her cult of evil high school stereotypes have sacrificed a guy in Cole's living room after a game of spin the bottle. Cole must find his courage to make it through the night, and in the process deliver improbable and occasionally gory cinematic deaths to the Satanic teens.

So you've got choices: evil charge or evil babysitter. Then again, you could just make it a double feature.