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.