The Truth Ex-Mormons Don't Wanna Hear

 Ephraim Belnap 

The truth you don’t wanna hear? Religion - and Mormonism specifically - will always exist. A lot of younger Ex-Mormons - us - think of the modern Church as doomed and vulnerable, but it isn’t. Sooner or later, its leaders will pivot to the position that will allow it to survive, because when they’re well and truly backed against the wall, enough of them will decide that surviving is more important than making a point. 

Because that is exactly what happened when polygamy was threatened. 

The church was threatened over and over and finally put in a slow stranglehold. And leadership can rewrite the narrative however it wants - God said it was time, God was just testing everyone, individual church leaders were wrong - the truth is that it never would have been repealed if the government hadn’t put the pressure on them. So in fact, the church can be changed by outside pressure. But faced with the chance of self-contradiction which would destroy their credibility, the church was able to adopt a policy that let them satisfy outsiders without destroying their acumens.

The equivalent of polygamy facing the Church right now is homosexuality. There's increasing pressure for the Church to accept it, but all the instructionals and talks have said that it's not okay. There are some people who think that the church is going to reverse its position and suddenly say homosexual relationships are fine. But I disagree. The Church, like before, has endorsed its position too publicly for it to suddenly reverse itself. But doing what they did before would work. Don’t 180 flip to a full endorsement, but switch to not condemning; a covert repealing of the present non-endorsement. 

For example, the pamphlet For The Strength of Youth says only this of homosexuality:

“Homosexual and lesbian behavior is a serious sin. If you find yourself struggling with same-gender attraction or you are being persuaded to participate in inappropriate behavior, seek counsel from your parents and bishop. They will help you.” 

Delete that paragraph. Don't mention homosexuality at all. Suddenly it goes from a bad thing to a simply unmentioned thing. 

In General Conference, just switch to vague language like, “God loves all his children”. The church has already been doing versions of this already for years. Its video campaign on the topic is one example. Church leaders will keep on asking how to handle it, but just say, “We want people to make their own decisions.” Do that for a few years. And then suddenly, it won't be crazy if you start saying, "homosexuality is all right." You'll have a built a precedent of not attacking it. You can say that leaders have aged out and taken their opinions with them. You can say the Church has always had a policy of embracing homosexuality to different extents. And then you can retain your core beliefs while playing ball with the homosexual demographic. 

I'm not sure if this will necessarily need to happen, because it could be that pressure on the Church won't maintain on that particular issue. There's plenty of other things to occupy attention after all. And perhaps the Church won't even choose to do that. It's allowed to make its own decisions. But that seems the best way for it to maintain its alleged credibility and change enough that it doesn't get wrecked by cultural drift. 

Rurouni Kenshin: Part 1

 

I watched this with Mick after seeing it mentioned on a stuntmen channel I follow. It gets a lot of kudos for replicating 2D-animated combat with all the verve and speed of the original, and as so far as I've seen, it delivers. It's based off an anime that's part cartoon, part historical fiction, and it's pretty good. It's basically The Last Samurai from a different perspective. 

The Last Samurai is about Tom Cruise's character just not liking America and getting away from it. Kenshin, in contrast, is about someone who loves his home country and struggles to find the best way to help it. Rurouni Kenshin translates to "the traveling samurai Kenshin", and is about a legendary swordsman learning to use his skill without the brutality he employed previously. It's not so much a rejection of war as it is an attempt to understand it, and to contemplate a world with less violence. It's pretty good. 

If you're an anime fan - that means if you've liked Naruto or Attack on Titan or Death Note or whatever - then you'll like this film. If you liked The Last Samurai, you'll like this film. If you like historical fiction or cool sword fights or handsome Japanese actors, you'll like this film. It's rated R for blood, so heads up, but it's not gratuitous. It's good!

WandaVision - Episodes 3 and 4

 

WandaVision is shaping up to be just as good as its film predecessor.

Source: Marvel

As Wandavision strips away the mystery, we find a sci-fi story tinged with horror. After a third episode of homages - this time to seventies shows like The Brady Bunch - Episode Four pulls back the curtain; set in the "real" world and revealing the conceit of the previous episodes. We see some old characters - Darcy Lewis from Thor and Jimmy Woo from Ant-Man - but also get a new eye in Monica Rambeau (pictured), who serves as the newcomer and audience surrogate. Marvel's mix of plot talk, character moments, and relatability is on point with her. 

Monica (Teyonnah Paris) and Jimmy (Randall Park) contemplate the mystery.

Source: Marvel

While little can be said without spoilers, the show is clearly building up to something, and is using its serialized form to build maximum suspense. Moments we couldn't bother with in film are drawn out to leave us guessing, and references to the wider world are thrown in like Easter eggs. The opening of Episode Four, in particular, gives us an on-the-ground perspective of a Marvel event that saddens and surprises, and the Wanda-centered main plot is slowly becoming gutting.

At almost halfway through its nine-episode run, WandaVision is shaping up to be just as good as its predecessors, and a good herald of what's to come.

WandaVision - Episodes 1 and 2

 After ten years of action-packed boomfests, Marvel's first Disney+ show is a slow-boil mystery that combines the best production possible with infectious leading performances. Source: Disney.

Wanda and Vision are superheroes; everyone knows that. And Vision is dead. Everyone knows that too. But the show we're presented with has him alive and well. And the story we're given is of the two of them as a married couple, not superheroes saving the world. Being so far from the norm, it can feel jarring, but the performances of the two leads and the slick, retro writing render it the same fun ride that Marvel always delivers. 

The premise of the first two episodes is charming; Wanda and Vision are a working man and a housewife in the 1950's; their problems are as simple as hosting his boss for dinner and dazzling at the local talent show. Paul Bettany (Vision) exudes a Dick Van Dyke charm, and Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda/Scarlet Witch) is his Mary Tyler Moore.  But as the episodes end we see a shift in the setting, and it seems like they won't stay in the Golden Age for long. Marvel is doing what they're always doing; using a genre and its trappings to keep their formula innovative. The fact that it feels like a breath of fresh air but also the same world we've always known shows how much this works. After ten years of action-packed boomfests, Marvel's first Disney+ show is a slow-boil mystery that combines the best production possible with infectious leading performances.

It's too early to tell much of the plot right now, but it has all the signs of being a good one. In a mystery like this, it's easy to think of solutions: they're stuck in a fantasy-granting machine, or all of this is a dream of Wanda's sad mind. But the show clearly knows what we're expecting and is making us work for it. It's not so easy to guess as that, for comic fans and casuals alike. With the new episode coming out Friday, we'll be able to guess more. But for now, all there is to do is sit back and wonder.

The first two episodes of WandaVision are now available to stream on Disney+

Legend of Korra Book 2 - 1-4

The odd middle child of the series. Wasn't the first season where we were all happy it was back. Wasn't the later seasons where they fixed everything and made it awesome. Just following up from the weirdness of season one and continuing the show's limp into "ehhhh"-level storytelling with flashes of brilliance and weird takes on things from the original. 

Good points - the show looks as awesome as ever. There's some gorgeous stuff with the bike chase and the spirits and the snow and the Water Tribe architecture. It's just beautiful. It's great to see Aang and Katara's other kids in action. It's great to see Katara. It's great to get into spirit lore. It's great to see the new characters 'cause they're pretty cool. And it's nice to see Varrick, who ends up a fun long-term addition to the franchise that works great. He's like Tony Stark meets Groucho Marx. Wonderful.

Bad things - Ehhhhhh, it's got a lot going for it, but we end up seeing more of the same problems from Season 1. The antagonists are all right, but not too complex, and they end up making the heroes dumber so they don't beat the baddies too quick. Not to hop on this train too fast, but the baddies from Airbender worked because they always had a real reference point, and then had some significant sympathy moments. Season 2's got all this great subject matter with spirituality and heritage and history and exploring the universe's lore a little deeper like a classic fairy tale. But it squanders it with mediocre character beats and a propelling character (Unalaq) who never really becomes complex. 

And the other prong in this bad decisions fork is how they start devaluing the original characters' legacies. Like I said back in the first season opener, the show feels satisfying 'cause it shows the original characters succeeded and have been honored for their deeds. It's very satisfying to see they've grown up and received the happy ending we, the audience, always knew they deserved. But then the sequel goes out of its way to devalue them. Firstly, Katara is nowhere to be found in the Civil War plot, even though she's always been a player in Water Tribe politics and is part of the ruling family. And then worse, they somehow make Aang out to be a bad father, like shamefully and neglectfully bad, even though loving his kids seems like it would be the easiest thing in the world for him. I also touched on this in the season one review, but Aang and Katara feel like they would be pretty good parents. They're very nurturing, they're great partners and friends, and they have positive role models all over the place. We've literally seen them parenting a kid. It would be one thing if they were like, "oh yeah, he gave Tenzin more attention 'cause he's the airbender and sometimes we felt left out." But this is like, serious levels of dysfunction. Like with the previous season, it's a decent idea that gets half-baked and poorly executed since there's two people doing the job of ten.

There's more stuff to go on but there's already too many words in this review. Next section!  

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Great mid-2000's entry to the comic book urban fantasy genre. Watched it as a palate cleanser after the goshawful 2007 Ghost Rider. It has everything Rider has, except it's actually good. 

The premise - continuing from the first film - is that the half-demon protector of humanity nicknamed Hellboy gets a chance to expose himself to the human world, but at the same time the disgruntled elf prince Nuada tries to destroy humanity by activating the titular army. It's a tight little urban fantasy film; people have guns, everyone's kind of snappy in a 21st century way, but they're fighting monsters from classic mythology and the occasional steampunk robot. This is directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who made Pacific Rim and The Shape of Water, so it's full of fantastic, retro-future aesthetics and awesome-looking costumes. Apparently studios tried to mess up the story and he lost funding for refusing to bend with it, so he made these awesome costumes despite budget cuts. 

The plot is pretty straightforward, as described, but the presentation is fun, and while the character dynamics can feel a little stale by this point - boring romantic banter and a villain who hates humanity 'cause consumerism!!1! - it's a much better product than it was at risk of being. The villain is especially compelling, being essentially evil Legolas, with all the unrealistically cool fighting skill you'd expect of him. I'd confidently say that the final duel between him and Hellboy is perhaps the best one-on-one fight in a comic book movie ever, with the highway fight in Winter Soldier being a very close second. 

But yeah, it's pretty fun. It's about two hours flat, it's PG-13 for some swearing and action, and it's basically a good time. If you're a fan of this genre, you'll like this film. If you're not, it'll still be all right. 

Ghost Rider (2007)

Just a frikkin' mess, man. I mostly watched this 'cause we wanted to do a Nicolas Cage night. This movie is a freakin' masterpiece of mid-2000's emo punk film production dysfunction. With the 2005 Constantine and 2004's Hellboy, you can form an unofficial trilogy of the same. Although Hellboy is an order of magnitude better than those other two. 

Comic book Ghost Rider is the story of a cocky, handsome young stunt biker who sells his soul to the devil to save the life of a loved one. From then on, he's cursed to become a Satanic biker at night pushed to punish the souls of the wicked. He's got chains, fire, a stare that burns you up with your sins, super-strength, and an awesome bike. Young, virile, extreme, combative, terrifying. 

The film version is a 43-year old Nicolas Cage (who unfortunately looks it) with a pronounced Southern accent spending twenty minutes total as the skullfaced wonder and the rest of the time as the protagonist of a most poorly scripted romantic comedy. 

The scripting is just terrible. It's like all the worst parts of the Raimi Spider-Man films. The casting is bad; Nicolas Cage was too old for the character and might have been too old in his thirties. The aesthetic is just cringy; gothic and dark without understanding the emotional core of that look. And the plot is just awful; Johnny Blaze is a pawn in a game between super-devils but doesn't understand anything, so it's just him reacting to weirdos until he limps his way to a finale.

The film's almost inexplicable choice to infuse a Western into this story (probably an attempt to "mainstreamify" the stories for a general audience) just ends up making it feel confused. The appeal of the occult-lite, spikes-and-skulls, deal-with-the-devil genre isn't in the building of a community, which is what a Western is always about. The appeal is in the pull between dark and light. The protagonist is always touched by evil, usually the devil, but they're still always trying to do good. Can they escape that touch definitively? Watch to find out! That's not what Ghost Rider is at all, and that's why it's bad.

It's just a frikkin' mess. Incoherent, badly paced, with the wrong choices for everything; an example of a company making a film more than an artist and failing as a result. But it does provide some prime Nicolas Cage faces, so there's that. 

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