Ip Man (2008)

⭐

Directed by: Wilson Yip, a god amongst men

Starring: Donnie Yen, Louis Fan, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi

This is legitimately one of the best films I've ever seen. It's the perfect mix of martial arts, historical fiction, and drama, so that it's the best of all three. It's about the Japanese occupation of China during World War II, which almost never gets depicted on film. And it's got some of the best character work and action in a movie I've ever seen. This movie is the Rocky of China - so darn good that it spawned three sequels, most of which were also great, because as I said, the story set-up is so darn good!

Premise - in 1939, the man who would become Bruce Lee's kung fu master, Ip Man (pronounced Yip Man), is living in a Chinese village famous for its martial arts. When the Japanese invade during World War II, amid mass starvation and brutality, Ip Man finds his martial arts skill in demand as the Imperial Army seeks to augment its skills with local talent. The resulting struggle will risk his life and the soul of his martial art. 

There's a little bit of Chinese cultural posturing in this (they love doing that), but considering its about the Japanese invasion of China - a famously brutal campaign that Japan has done famously little to acknowledge - it's the most justified instance of it ever. Like I said, it's also a piece of history that almost never gets depicted (the only example I can think of is The Flowers of War) and one of the big jobs film does is show us history we wouldn't otherwise know about. So, awesome!

This is rated R - there's a few moments of gratuitously bloody injuries so the audience knows a hit really hurts, and there's a moment where a man gets shot in the head - but aside from that it's a pretty tasteful and friendly depiction. And even better, it's on Netflix in a lot of countries because it's distributed by China instead of Hollywood, so it's very easy to find. 

Recommend. Watch. It's in my top ten of all time. Now you know.

Spotlight (2015)

Directed by: Tom McCarthy, who played Scott Templeton on The Wire

Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Micheal Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Stanley Tucci

This film was very good; essentially an extension of the real-life journalism it describes. There are very few historical inaccuracies (though there are some), and it helps you understand why the subject is important without relying on melodrama. 

This film is about the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism done by the Boston Globe that exposed Catholic Church cover-ups of pedophile priests. I’ve heard dirty priest jokes as far back as the early 2000’s, and I know they’re older than that, but the jokes weren’t just jokes, and this journalism was apparently one of the modern exposés that actually helped get it addressed on a public level. 

For those who aren’t familiar (so probably most of us), it’s a good piece of history to look at, and helps you understand the power of investigative reporting, something everyone ought to get good at with the Internet flooding everything. On a viewing level, it’s a soft R (I thought it was PG-13) for some language and some frank discussion of pedophilia. But it doesn’t wallow in the awfulness. They talk about it the same way you’d talk about it with your peers. There’s no melodrama or yelling, just facts. They don’t need to emphasize how wrong this is, they trust you know it.

I’d recommend it. It’s on Netflix right now. It’s two hours and ten minutes. If you’ve heard a dirty priest joke or made a dirty priest joke, this’ll help you understand why they’re so prevalent. In issues like this, there’s a tendency by everyone involved to want to downplay the facts, but the point the film makes is that it’s better to face the facts and try to solve them rather than try to cover it up. That’s a responsible way to run an organization. Recommend.

Daredevil: Season 1

Showrunners: Drew Goddard (one of JJ Abrams’ long-time writers), Steven S. DeKnight

Starring: Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Deborah Ann Woll, Rosario Dawson

It’s hard for me to write about Daredevil because we run into what I call the Uncanny Valley problem, but with TV. 

The Uncanny Valley is a concept of human depiction. It says if you’re obviously not human, nobody minds, but if you’re mostly human and get just a LITTLE bit off, you’re going to freak people out a little. Compare C-3PO, for example, to Superman with his face obviously CGI’ed to hide his actor’s mustache. We’re fine with 3PO, ‘cause he’s MEANT to be a facsimile of a human face, not a realistic one, but a face that’s MEANT to look human but subtly isn’t is gonna creep us out. 

That’s what I feel when I watch Daredevil. It tries harder to be realistic than a lot of live-action super-shows do, but that means when it’s unrealistic, you really feel how unrealistic it is. It’s to the point where it might’ve been better off going for C3PO. So 50% of the time watching Daredevil I’m so there for what’s happening and the other 50% of the time I’m so annoyed ‘cause I can see how fake this all is. That’s why I’ve never written about it, even though I love superhero stories and have seen tons.

That said, Season 1 is the closest to being flawless. Got a great reception, established the universe well, did a GREAT job with the characters it introduced. The Kingpin and Daredevil both get acclaim for being amazingly cast, scripted, and acted. 

I specifically remember three moments in the pilot that convinced me this was gonna be a good show:

1. The opening speech in the confessional, which feels like the kind of opening you’d see in a play
2. The chirpy “What time is it?”, “Half past get the heck up!” exchange soon after, which established a good sense of humor
3. The scene near the end where we see Daredevil’s apartments night is bathed in a red neon glow from a billboard across the street, soaking his apartment in atmospheric, comic-book style color with an in-universe justification and an explanation of how he can rent such a nice apartment. That was just *Italian chef kiss*work right there. 

Those alone did a lot of work to keep me watching. The other moments in the next episodes that cemented the loyalty was worked on that stuff. And it shows. 

But, weak points? 

Well, I’m not going to go into detail, but the Karen Page character here always annoys me, ‘cause she feels like a reverse Chuck Cunningham character, who always gets the guys around her killed and then is all sad about it, while then doing nothing to change what brought about their deaths in the first place. Like a honey trap, but with vulnerability instead of sexiness. And then it feels like they try to make her a Lois Lane-type character, but that doesn’t work when Lois Lane is still always crying about how she failed or something. This will continue to frustrate. 

And secondly, Daredevil BFF Foggy Nelson’s hair will always annoy the heck out of me - you’re a law graduate! You should have a permanent haircut figured out by now! And it should be a good one! To be fair, by the time of Defenders he has figured out a permanent cut and it looks great, so I’ll give it a future pass, but it still annoys me here.

And finally, and the biggest actual problem - pacing. I feel like these shows would have benefited from a ten-episode season instead of thirteen, because thirteen forty-five minute increments is long enough where you start having to stretch the story out. There’s always something in each season that feels a little longer than it has to be. In Season Two, it’s the Blacksmith plot. In Season Three, it’s the Bullseye business. In this, it’s the whole business with the Russians, which feels like it spends three episodes fleshing out side characters and then killing them off. Also, the foot-dragging with the real Daredevil costume. The first season gets an excuse ‘cause they probably wanted a cool reveal in the last episode, but that they have the hero wear jeans and Lycra for all the season and then get the absolute tar beaten out of him on several occasions feels like plot that could’ve been avoided if they just started giving him the suit sooner. This is also an ongoing issue that I’ll be revisiting later, but suffice it to say, it’s emblematic of a larger problem. 

But overall, these are small complaints. The show has great atmosphere, great takes on its characters, and great fight scenes, and those are things that will never really decline with the show’s run, and it deserves major props for that consistency. Well done. Loved it. 9/10

An Argument in Favor of Scorsese

The face of Satan. Also the director of Hugo.

The argument that's made about Scorsese films quite often is that his films make criminality look too cool and thus encourage the very thing they're supposed to be condemning. He's pushed the envelope in terms of violence and crime and language in film, and been criticized for it, but he's said that he believes audiences can get the message that criminality is wrong by watching the film, and that they're smart enough to understand the message for themselves.

How true is this?

Well, I'd argue it's essentially true, but also kind of complicated.

DiCaprio and co. about to make a crooked sales pitch in Wolf of Wall Street

The first big problem is marketing. Films have to market themselves as exciting, and that frequently means you can end up with the opposite message of the film being displayed in the marketing. I'd argue, for example, that Wolf of Wall Street's marketing did more to encourage the irresponsible playboy image than the film itself, 'cause the film itself had several notable scenes of him going off the rails, but none - of - the trailers had that! The nature of the marketing is you can't have the whole product, so you just lie and show the most attractive parts. And from there, we can say an image of evil or irresponsibility or criminality is projected into the consciousness. But that's not the same as saying the film itself did that.

De Niro, Pesci, and Liotta posed to commit a murder in Goodfellas

The second point is, some subjects are probably inherently VERY difficult to conventionally condemn. It's been argued that there's no such thing as a true anti-war film, 'cause there'll always be SOMEONE in the audience who sees all the violence and thinks it's cool, and I'd argue that applies to crime films as well. Look at all the criminals who imitated The Godfather and Scarface. Those are both tragedies, but clearly that's not enough! That's not to say an anti-X film is impossible; I'd argue that Eastern Promises and Das Boot both come a lot closer to reaching that than a lot of others; but it's very difficult. You have to accept there's a degree of accuracy that will always be a bit off.

Casino is in many ways the "first draft" of Wolf of Wall Street in terms of spouse relationships and "legitimate" crime

And point the third is, if we're totally honest, Scorsese films do always feel like they spend most of their runtime showing how cool criminality is. But the truth is, that's how he's made these films popular. There's a million films about criminal careers going off the rails, and we haven't heard of most of them, because they were probably pretty boring. Excitement allows the films to reach wide audiences. And from there, he genuinely does show that crime doesn't pay in the end, so he's kind of honey-trapping all audiences - luring them in with a shiny exterior only to reveal an unpleasant reality underneath. So he's really doing what most people accuse him of NOT doing!

There's a whole bunch of discussions that could be had about this, but the baseline statement worth saying is that while Scorsese is by no means some moral exemplar or an example of most ethical filmmaking or anything, he's not actively pro-crime. And his grasp of story and tragedy has arguably conveyed the ugliness of criminality a lot better than most of his peers, so you can hate him if you want, but he's by no means a moral deep end in the entertainment world.

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There's more that can be said about this subject, but that's all I'm gonna say for now. Discussion welcome

The Old Guard (2020)

Directed by: Gina Prince-Bythewood, based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka
Starring: Charlize Theron, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dudley freaking Dursley, and Kiki Layne

This feels like a film I would’ve rented when I was nine not knowing what it was, and then thought was great ‘cause I didn’t have any frame of reference for good action films. It feels average; okay action, all right drama, and it kiiind of explores the premise in an interesting way. I’d recommend it if you’re a Charlize Theron fan and don’t mind seeing some violence, but outside of that it’s not really appealing.

Premise - a squad of immortal warriors in the modern day find themselves under attack at the same time a new initiate for their order is discovered. They struggle to defeat their attackers while saving their newest family member, and potentially facing their own deaths.

Charlize Theron is decently charismatic. The rest of the cast is decently written. Action movies tend to either overdo the violence, underwrite the characters, or badly write the plot, but this managed to balance everything to the point where it feels like a legitimate story, instead of an excuse for stuntmen to beat each other up a few times. It’s violent, but it doesn’t revel in it like a lot of action films do. It’s dramatic, but it doesn’t wallow in the sadness like other dramas do, and it explores some historical questions, but not the way historical films usually do.

Dudley Dursley (Harry Melling) plays an evil big pharma exec in this, intent on exploiting the squad’s immortality 

I guess there’s power in being inoffensive, because apparently this is one of Netflix’s bigger successes and is probably going to get a sequel. That would be nice, because exploring the question of immortal life is one that comics (and I suppose film) have done a number of times to interesting results. The biggest issue of course being, that if you go back even a hundred years, the standards of the time are pretty different, so if you have guys that are THOUSANDS of years old, they’ve probably done some shady stuff. It ties into questions of moral absolutism and how we judge different eras, which I think is a genuinely fascinating question in a time when we’re redefining what is or isn’t okay so rapidly.

Overall, this is okay. I liked it better than some other action films of the same caliber, and I enjoyed the indie roots it clearly has in its graphic novel source material. If we could get more adaptations of graphic novels, we'd all love it. 

Pirates of the Carribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

For me, Pirates of the Caribbean isn't just a good adventure movie, it's what helped define adventure to me in the first place. It had all these things that I didn't know I wanted, and I'll love it for that.

Directed by: Gore Verbinski, a pirate name in itself
Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush

After discussing how Prince of Persia tried to launch an adventure franchise but failed, I wanna talk about Pirates of the Caribbean (the first entry) and how it successfully launched a franchise because it was so darn good.

The big difference between Prince and Pirates - because they both have the same sense of action, directing, music, costuming, pacing, and are produced by the same studios - is that Pirates mixed up the character dynamics. They really did something that was unusual with the Will Turner - Jack Sparrow - Elizabeth Swann trio. And like Prince it isn’t spinning its wheels, it feels like it’s actually trying to say something meaningful. But the difference is that while most characters in Prince were pretty interesting, the central duo of Prince and Princess were not. It was rom-com slap/kiss basic-ness. In contrast to Orlando Bloom’s pining or Elizabeth’s drama or Sparrow’s wild card energy, it feels pretty meh. Hence, Pirates succeeded and Prince did not.

Black Pearl is SUCH a good film, though. It’s only fault is that it’s a little long (2 and a half hours), but that’s not really a fault when the film is good. It does what so many films (including its own sequels) fail to do, which is have a silly-feeling tone, but take the characters’ struggles deadly seriously, and let them guide the plot where it needs to. A lot of funny things happen TO the characters, but they themselves never make light of their struggles. Jack Sparrow’s bravado, for example, is always about getting people distracted so he can get something from them. He’s not just practicing his tight five.

Will and Sparrow also embody that kind of Han and Luke duo that pops up in stories. They're two different stages of maturity; Will serving as the young ingenue (and therefore audience surrogate), and Sparrow as the cocky mentor who shows him the ropes. You add that in to Keira Knightley (whom I would argue is essentially living a Pride & Prejudice plot - "how do I rise above the unambitious goal of simply making a good marriage") and you have a plotline from each of them that dazzles by itself and electrifies with the others. Throw in the ham-tastic Captain Barbossa, and you end up with a knock-out story that frikkin' kills it.

Rewatch this scene - before he even reveals the curse, they foreshadow it with him watching her eat like he hasn't done it in ages  

I could talk about it all day, but suffice it to say, go watch Pirates of the Caribbean. It's on Disney Plus. It's PG-13 - there's one horror scene and a few scary moments, but a very exciting tone otherwise. Worth it. 

Pop Culture Hot Take - We Like Serial Killers Because ...

Old train station in Provo, taken by me on set

I was on a film shoot today (↑) where someone referred to our location as a serial killer’s den, and it reminded me of all the reasons the American occurrence of serial killers and our subsequent interest in them is misconstrued or used to demonize Americans. I'm sure there's plenty of legitimate points there, but I think there's a core to our fascination that legit makes sense. Hence the hot take.

Listed: Four people I'm not even gonna name because they're so terrible they don't need to be remembered. Just remember not to be a serial killer, guys. It's not that dang hard

First thing to make clear, serial killers are just ... the worst. Seriously. I don't know how much detail all the documentaries and movies and special episodes go into, but read a Wikipedia page for most any serial killer and you'll find they were just some a-hole who wanted to hurt people. Even adding in bad childhoods and possible mental disorders and all the other factors, it eventually boils down to "this guy wanted to hurt people, and then he did, usually many times." They are NOT Sympathetic Bad Guys. They are bad guys who long since crossed the line and need to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

 So, why do we have all these forms of media around serial killers (besides the obvious potential for drama)? Why do we have a subculture of actively discussing the most despicable and unworthy of being imitated people in history? Well, I've decided ... it's because serial killers have qualities we admire. Not handsomeness or whatever. On a personal level, serial killers are fascinating because they usually have three qualities we admire.

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One, they're self-sufficient. They have to be able to keep their dark side hidden and that requires all sorts of scheming that makes them more autonomous. We like seeing that quality in people.

Second, they're good at blending in. They have to hide who they are, and like when we watch James Bond or Jason Bourne escape the cops, we admire someone's ability to blend in when the heat is on.

And third of all ... they're hunters. They know how to hunt things down and obtain them. They know how to analyze and track and swoop in for the kill. And that's something we like too! Even when the victims don't deserve it. Hunting is how humanity progressed into civilization, and we still deign to notice when someone is good at it.

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So, the truth is that serial killers, while practicing despicable crimes, are doing so with some of the most fundamentally admirable traits in human memory. And that disgusts us, because we're busy being disgusted by them. But we ARE noticing those qualities! And so we're stuck in a contradictory space where we'll hate that person with all our might, but the smallest part of us is wondering how they do what they do, and if there comes a chance to learn about that on TV, we'll take it!

There's more to the issue than this, but I think that explains a lot of it. I think it's easy to be judgemental and say "people like looking at serial killers 'cause they think they're cool", but I think people have enough moral development to understand they're bad. People keep producing TV about serial killers because they're dark mirrors of what we like most, not just the worst of the worst. And as to the other question, "why are there more serial killers in America than there are anywhere else?" Well, the truth is, other countries don't track serial killers as much. And there are a number of countries that are more violent or unstable than the US. So maybe serial killers are just a luxury of living in places where we keep track of murders, have a decent quality of life, and don't have violence on a day-to-day basis. Food for thought

Prince of Persia (2010)

Directed by: Mike Newell, director of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina
Based on the best-selling video-game series Prince of Persia, by Ubisoft

This was part of Disney's push to create Pirates of the Caribbean-style adventure franchises, and while this film didn't make enough to qualify, it still made $356 million, so clearly it did something right. Video-game roots aside, this was a very good film that stands on its own as an action-adventure classic; action-packed as Assassin's Creed, as somber in tone as Gladiator, as well-directed as a Marvel movie. If there's any one weakness it's that the central love story between the two leads feels a LITTLE more cliché than it had to be ("Princesses, can't take them anywhere"). Aside from that, it's pretty good.

The premise - the royal family of Persia is tricked into attacking a holy city housing a magical dagger, and as competition for it erupts, youngest Prince Dastan finds himself on the run and seeking the mystery of the Sands of Time.

It's very well set-up. It hits this balance of historicity and modernity along with a central theme ("the bond between brothers") and then infuses it with action and performances that bring the setting to life. It's very Disney-flavored - nothing TOO mature or hard to talk about - but that makes it exciting, not boring. I could talk about them all day, but the film does an EXCELLENT job of writing its lead characters (the Persian princes especially) and hitting this balance that feels like it's seriously pondering an issue, not just spinning its wheels to sound mature. The music is excellent - they got the guy who did Narnia and the Shrek movies - and they got actors who really delivered good performances. Ben Kingsley's character doesn't get tons of screen-time, but he turns what could've been a cliché into a layered and refined figure.

It's an hour and fifty-five and costs three dollars to rent. It's not gonna make you re-write your whole life; but it is gonna get you invested and then provide a sense of relief; which, considering its video-game roots, is exactly what it's meant to do. Go have some fun. 

Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Directed by: George Lucas

Starring:  Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid

The Star Wars prequels are not good when viewed in comparison to their influences, but - Episode III has enough solid and genuinely engaging spectacle to qualify for a solid 60+ score out of a 100. And also had two solid improvements in the dramatic department, as well as the story-boarding, editing, and VFX chops that are arguably George Lucas’s real talents, so you’re not coming away disappointed in any measure.

Influence aside, this film really was an improvement. It’s not perfect - there are still MASSIVE disconnects at a few points, where if it were any other film we’d all decry it as unspeakably bad - but after the first two prequels, fans at that point were like, “oh well, it’s not as bad as the others,” and let it slide. The fact that we finally got to see Darth Vader be “born“ probably helped too. Obi-Wan Kenobi, as always, is solidly acted, and Emperor Palpatine gives a performance for the ages. The lightsaber duels hit a peak that will never be reached again, and there was some genuine pathos conveyed at two moments (the Order 66 scene and the “you were my brother!” scene). 

If you’re an American or an average person or whatever you’ve probably seen these films. But if you already own it or have Disney+ or whatever, it’s worth a nostalgic rewatch. At the least, you’ll see all the moments that have become memes. The prequels' pairing of truly dramatic moments with atrociously written dialogue is everything a meme is made of.

Wonder Woman (2017)

Directed by: Patty Jenkins
Starring: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Buttercup from Princess Bride, Danny Huston

This film was a genuine, unqualified success and it’s frikkin’ amazing that it’s as good as it is. Wonder Woman is a two-hour-and-twenty-minute historical superhero action film with the character work of a Nolan film, the action of a high-budget Xena episode, and the creativity of a pure auteur. It’s not perfect; the third act rightfully draws some pacing complaints, and it lacks the complexity of a truly epic film, but ninety out of a hundred ain’t bad, and certainly goes far when the challenges of production were so enormous.

                         

A premise for the uninitiated - Princess Diana is a simple Amazon warrior on a hidden island, but when a World War I soldier (Chris Pine) crash-lands there, she learns of the greater conflict in the world beyond, and resolves to fight it, and seek out the dark god Ares himself.

This film was great. It had good action, good scripting, good character work, good settings. In the comics, WW usually gets written pretty badly compared to the epics Supes and Batman get. It’s not ‘cause she’s terrible; it’s just that most writers don’t know how to make her compelling. But this film did it, in no small part to casting the perfect actress, and giving her the kind of warmth and disarming quality that has never been seen before. 

I also wanna take a second and talk about Chris Pine’s performance, ‘cause they did the PERFECT job with him; too much in any direction would have made him a cartoon character, but the film struck this perfect balance where he feels like a classic American square-jaw, without sacrificing any of the empathy and statesmanship he’s meant to give the story. He brings this humanity and immersion that's just *Italian pasta chef kiss*.

I could talk about this film forever in terms of its writing ability, but I don’t have the space here, so I’ll just say, it’s good. It’s worth seeing. It’s a medium PG-13 with not too many swear words and a little bit of blood, and it’s got a really cute message about optimism and stuff. Recommend. You can rent it for four dollars on any streaming service. Go see it.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Directed by: David Dobkin
Starring: Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Dan Stevens, Pierce Brosnan

A bit long - about two hours total, about twenty minutes longer than these kinds of film last - but a thoroughly pleasant and silly look at one of the most pleasantly silly subjects in existence.

For those not in the know - Eurovision is a kind of American Idol competition where every country in Europe sends an act to compete on live television and then viewers cast their votes for the best act. In typical international fashion, it’s a bunch of silly outfits and farcical pageantry that’s mostly countries playing up their own stereotypes to try to appeal to wider audiences. It’s great. I watched an act for it once that’s just a musical Muppet on a spinning DJ table asking for extra points so it can get to the next round. It’s the peak of international cultural exchange - so unworried about looking strong that it’s comfortable looking absolutely stupid. 

So real-life contest aside, this is also surprisingly workable comedy. The premise is that a pair of lifelong Icelandic garage-banders  (Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams) get a chance to compete in Eurovision and find themselves embroiled in its silly and show-offy world, where hilarity ensues. Along the way, they must compete with Alexander Lemtov (Dan Stevens), the Russian champion, and their own feelings towards each other. There are ABBA shout-outs, Sigur Ros shout-outs, and the friendly national showboating that’s made Eurovision famous. If you’ve watched any European music videos in the last forty years, there’ll be something you recognize.

It works very well. It’s far enough from Will Ferrell’s usual forte that it feels like actual acting, and his pairing with Rachel McAdams makes it a lot sweeter and warmer than his usual films. Combine that with the PG-13 rating and you end up with a genuinely sweet movie with the modicum of Will Ferrell irreverence, lots of silly outfits, and some pretty funny bits. The running gag with the elves is sure to get your laugh at some point. And all jokes aside, the music is genuinely great, the writers taking the time to make something genuinely moving.

Like I said, it’s not perfect. It’s a little long, like they messed up the pacing a little. And not all of its jokes will land right. But I like it better than near every Will Ferrell film I’ve seen (even Blades of Glory!), and at its core, it’s doing what Eurovision does, which is letting countries roast each other, but also affirm that we’re all the same, and isn’t that nice. 

Paternal Emotion in The Last of Us

I honestly had a hard time when I started trying to write this, 'cause it's such a 

deeply fundamental issue. But dangit, it's worth trying. 

The truth is that it's hard to talk about The Last of Us because it strikes so deeply at the experiences of being a parent figure that all of us experience in some way. Even if we're not parents ourselves, all of us have a little sibling or a friend or a figure that we mentor and have tender feelings towards, and TLoU is essentially a parenting simulator where you have to face the worst perils possible for your kid again and again and again.

The real truth is that we're getting a slice of parental experience here ... but that doesn't mean we're getting a slice of parental reality. In real life, responsible parents worry about their kids all the time, but there's more to parenting than just protecting them. Hard as it is to admit, TLoU does a disservice to parenting by minimizing its reality and narrowing it down to a tiny aspect.

I'm gonna be honest here, when I went down the emotional rabbit hole of what someone like Joel must feel like when faced with the ending, it simply is an impossible choice. It goes against every instinct of parenting to allow that ending to happen. The fact that Josef Stalin is considered to have actually done this is an example of how cold he was. To allow one of your kids to die to meet a greater purpose is seen as one of the most merciless things a person can do, and it doesn't matter if it was for a greater purpose.

This is why leaders' families get protected during moments of crisis! It doesn't matter what the math says, if you're faced with an action that may involve getting your kids killed, you're never gonna be able to make that choice.

So, looking at it as a caregiver, it's impossible to choose. But there's a way out of this. Don't look at your kids just as things in need of help. Look at them like people.

It's hard to reconcile, because SO much of your lives and effort have been put into this baby. But the truth is you gotta let your kid be a person. Parenthood is helping a person become lucid enough to make choices on their own, and some decisions are so big a kid deserves to have a say. Think of the parents you know who don't let their kids grow up. There's some serious issues there. But we can do that too, if we don't let our kids develop. It's the scariest thing ever, but it has to happen.

All this is to say - Joel totally messed up when he did what he did, but it's not unexpected that he would do it. BUT it was still the wrong choice in the grand scheme of things.

What Joel did here was the equivalent of moving countries, or taking your kid out of school, or deciding where your kid goes to college. It's a decision they should AT LEAST get a say in. But she never did. And that's the central problem in TLoU's narrative. But I believe there's a solution. I just don't have room for it here. But I will write about it in my next article, where I explain how TLoU could have told an emotionally gripping story AND still given us an ending with meaning. Stay tuned.

Why The Last of Us has ALWAYS been BS

The Last of Us II came out two weeks ago and has been at the center of some gaming community controversy over some of the story choices and how it's "ruined the storytelling", but I'm here to tell you that The Last of Us was ALWAYS complete BS, and has never engaged meaningfully with any of the subtext it's going off of. Like a Christopher Nolan movie (I'm just going two for two here), it's more concerned with articulating some tender personal feelings than it is about actually engaging with the questions of its theme and coming to a meaningful conclusion.

Spoilers for The Last of Us I and II below. It's also written for people who know the story, so it's not really worth reading if you're not familiar. You have been warned.
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The choice presented at the end of The Last of Us is that Joel had to let Ellie die to potentially save the world, or fight back and make her live at the expense of others. But we shouldn’t be asking whether he is right to do what HE did, we should be questioning whether it was right to frame it as Joel's choice at all. We shouldn't take issue with HIS choices; we should take issue with the story's.

The narrative takes pains to show that Ellie is someone with survivor’s guilt who wants to make use of her life in a meaningful way. And when you look at what we see of her life, we understand that; and as someone who is NOT Ellie we feel protective of her and don’t want to see her hurt. But as PEOPLE who have played as her and seen her experiences, I think we can all understand what type of choice she’d have made if she’d had the chance. And as a person she had a right to make that choice. But the problem is the story never gives her a CHANCE to even THINK about making that choice! Her options are taken away from her. And so the story becomes more about manly validation of our fatherly feelings than it becomes about treating your daughter surrogate like a person. It is a false scenario we are given, where she gets cut out completely, and that isn’t OK, say, from a story standpoint.

This is arguably part of what makes the ending stick so powerfully. I remember when The Last of Us came out and all of us were arguing about it. We were stunned by the choices made and the implications that it gave. We’re frustrated by how immoral they are from a certain perspective. But aside from that instinctive reaction, I think we could make the argument that the story destroyed Ellie’s agency in that moment just to make an ending that made you feel sad or fatherly or whatever. If we had gotten to play as Ellie at the end - I think we would all agree - the ending would have had her choosing to sacrifice herself. But we didn't get that! We got Joel's story, not hers! And perhaps that's fair - he's bigger on the poster, he's kind of bigger in the narrative, it's not crazy to have him take priority. But the reality we're facing is that any story continuing past the ending of the The Last of Us exposes just how awful Joel's actions were. And this is what makes The Last of Us II good. Because it so clearly showed how out-of-nowhere and unjust this was from any - other - perspective.

There are MAJOR issues with The Last of Us II - like its predecessor, it takes cues from True Grit and other acclaimed movies. But it fails to make any meaningful examination of its subject matter. This is why I say they're like Christopher Nolan films (excluding the Dark Knight trilogy and Dunkirk). They're not really interested in the implications of the premise - they're interested in exploring the FEELINGS.

"What if we took The Matrix and made it ... fancier?"

Contrast Inception with The Matrix; both about realities that aren’t always real and about learning to distinguish which is which. But Matrix had a serious philosophical question directing the story, while Inception was more about how sad Leonardo DiCaprio is. That's why The Matrix redefined the social and philosophical landscape and Inception just led to us using the word "inception" incorrectly, although at least we're using it.

Or will the blood we shed begin an endless/

Cycle of vengeance and death with no defendants?

If you want a good version of The Last of Us, just watch True Grit, which explores every question of The Last of Us while not being a total bummer. Or Taxi Driver, which is about negativity making you stupid but is actually self-aware about how stupid it is. Or King of Comedy, which does the same but even funnier. Or Logan, which has the same depressing tone as TLoU but at least knows which side the hero should come out on.  Or any other film, really. But when it comes down to it, The Last of Us was always about a morally wrong person making a morally wrong choice, and now the sequel is about him paying for it, so don't act surprised that he ended up unhappy. He earned that crap. And in the end, you gotta ask yourself which was really more worthwhile - hurting others to advance yourself, or letting people make their own choices.

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I was only able to scratch the surface in this article; but this feels like a good place to stop. I could make a whole other article about the feelings of parenting we're discussing, or the precise way The Last of Us II failed to nail its message right, but that's about all I'll do for now. 

Ranting About Writing - Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Godzilla was such a good piece of screenwriting it's making me revisit other great screenwriting triumphs of the recent past. Winter Soldier is definitively one of those triumphs, 'cause there are SO many things that could've gone wrong in the process of scripting this that could've made it terrible, or alienating, or unsuccessful, but they knocked this film out of the park at every junction. I STILL find people talking about how good Winter Soldier is, even though the very reveal of the Winter Soldier’s identity is actually impossible because the man who kidnapped him had himself been kidnapped five minutes before him in the film before. There are SO many potential plot holes that are plugged by good writing and slick directing, and it is just a gosh diddly-darn miracle it turned out as good as it did. People say Marvel films aren't cinema, and they've got a point in the sense that they don't explore massive change and the realities of existence in the way a decent standalone film does, but it's a complete mislabeling to say they aren't storytelling, or aren't doing lots of very thought-out, deliberately-crafted work to give us the outcome we're looking at. Everything about Captain America was milquetoast (if well-executed) before this film, and so was his supporting cast, but this film transformed him into a action hero powerhouse in a well-plotted world who had the realism and the relatability to carry the franchise in his own right. He went from the very background of the Avengers poster to the very foreground of the Age of Ultron poster because of this film. People cared about him! They were right to! 'Cause this film's frikkin' awesome!

Source: Captain America: Winter Soldier, by Ed Brubaker

I've read a fair amount of the source material this film is based on (basically everything by Ed Brubaker) and it's honestly very good for comics, but for a movie it's pretty awful - too many stories, too much continuity, too much comic book stuff that's harder to pitch to general audiences. What the Russo brothers did was translate the typical Captain America comic book-ness into a contemporary film genre people are familiar with (the Cold War "trust no one" action film) and then using modern action film techniques to make it exciting and tight modern screenwriting to keep it grounded. Justice League failed at all of these things, and it didn't have all the continuity demands this had. This works great as a solo film and as part of its larger universe, and it brings a version of Captain America that is eminently likable, cool, and human, something that - I'm gonna be honest here - was not always easy to find in normal Captain America comics. For about ten years in the 2000's, writers tried to do an ultra-realistic Captain America who was as racist and out-of-place as a white guy from the 40's is thought to be, but they took it too far and just ended up making him a total bummer. As Winter Soldier handled in its very first scene, you can hit a balance between antiquated and adapting and not feel fake, and if you really want to make a story about a man out of time and what that would actually look like, well, traditional cinema is a great way to explore that, so it's not trapped by the limits of having to be an ongoing series.

So, in conclusion, Winter Soldier is great. I've seen it so many times it's almost become trite, but it keeps its awesomeness when it comes to the action scenes and the storytelling. The way the characters have been handled in the films following it are a testament to how good the storytelling and character work was, and if we're totally honest, this film was one of the triple punch of Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and itself that led to Marvel dominating the landscape in the 2010's so far. That Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame were so well-received is in part a follow-up to that previous triple punch, and in part only possible because Soldier did such a good job of establishing the characters, expanding the universe, and creating a quality benchmark for action scenes (superhero stories are at their storytelling core just action).

If there's one last thing I'm gonna rant about, it's that Sebastian Stan is an actor who's been almost criminally underused (by regular acting standards) in his role as Bucky Barnes. Dude showed more emotion and depth in his five minutes of mask-less screentime in Winter Soldier than Anakin Skywalker got to show in his entire prequel trilogy of films. He was honestly done a little dirty in Civil War from a character standpoint so the story could progress, but even then he managed to show a whole range of things in his limited time. And in the snippets we've gotten in Infinity War and Endgame, he's given a consistently moody performance that doesn't make you feel like he's an emo, he's just quiet. The great thing about the Marvel TV shows is that he's finally gonna get a chance to flex his acting in a lead role, and considering a lot of the script greatness of the MCU has come from sidelining him until this moment, I think that's a good tradeoff for everyone.

Go watch Winter Soldier. Then go watch Civil War. It's great, guys.