Golden Son (Red Rising)

 “I hate how my body shivers at the idea of glory. There’s something deep in man that hungers for this. But I think it weakness, not strength, to abandon decency for that strange darker spirit.” 

Golden Son, the second book in Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy, is garnering even better reviews than its excellent predecessor. Mr. Brown deftly blends Greek and Roman mythology, sci-fi, fantasy, and dystopian fiction (you can see the influences of Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, Lord of the Flies, and Game of Thrones) into a vast, mesmerizing story of revenge, power, love and betrayal. Mr. Brown noted in an interview with Science Fiction and Fantasy:

"Put simply, Red Rising is a story of rebellion. It is set seven hundred years from now, in an age when humanity has terraformed the planets and moons of our Solar System. The story follows Darrow, a young Red (the bottom tier of this futuristic society) as he attempts to bring to justice the rulers of his society, the Golds, who have enslaved his people for half a millennium. Even if he has to infiltrate their ranks to do it... Golden Son begins several years after the events in Red Rising as Darrow continues in his quest to undermine Gold rule and pave the way for a Red revolution. While Red Rising stayed on Mars, Golden Son explores the far reaches of the Gold empire."

In my review of Red Rising, I noted that I wanted my boys to read about Darrow because of his compelling nobility. He wasn't perfect, but he embodied commitment, faithfulness, love, justice, and a righteous anger that he always managed to aim in the right direction (even if it took a while).

I don’t feel that way about the Darrow in Golden Son. That's not to say I have discouraged my sons from reading it. After all, one can learn the importance of living well by appreciating the reward of virtue or the destruction of vice. Red Rising shows what happens when purpose, character, and nobility bring a stabilizing moral center into a chaotic world; Golden Son shows what happens when that center does not hold.

Jupiter Ascending

“Can you make a modern-day fairy tale in the way you can make a modern-day science fiction story… Can you capture that sort of playfulness again?” - The Wachowskis in an interview with Buzzfeed 

Jupiter Ascending has taken a pounding in terms of art of filmmaking, and rightly so. It's incoherent at times; it's poorly paced; it's both silly and weird; the dialogue is at times woefully lacking; there are two brief scene of entirely gratuitous immodesty and nudity (PG-13); it borrows constantly from other movies (though some of that is meant to be an homage to classic directors or films); the plot holes are monumentally large; and Sean Bean's character inexplicably does NOT die, so that threw me off, too.

Having said that, I found Jupiter Ascending to be strangely endearing in spite of all its inadequacies. Somewhere within the beautifully epic and entirely implausible mishmash of space opera, reincarnation, beekeeping, manga homage and dinosaur evolution, there lurks a story - or at least part of a story - that resonated with me.

The Last Man On Earth: Becoming The Person We Hope We Can Be

I decided to watch The Last Man on Earth after some of my friends commented how much they liked the show. A little online research revealed that critics and audience alike had quite a few good things to say about it.* Thanks to Hulu, I recently caught up on this quietly ascending show. 

The Last Man on Earth is precisely and appropriately named (the creators cite Life After People, The Omega Man, I Am Legend, and 28 Days Later as source material for the idea). After two years of searching, Phil Miller (Will Forte) concludes that he is entirely alone on earth. He drives to Tuscon, moves into a mansion, and resigns himself to an ever diminishing life of porn, booze, junk food and innovative demolition. 

He is given what some would think is the ultimate freedom – all the virtual women and real alcohol you want, with all the time in the world to make the adolescent inanity of Jackass into a reality. We (thankfully) don’t see the porn he uses – we just see how it cannot take the place of real people. We see all the alcohol he consumes – and it’s clear he is numbing the pain. This is the existential collapse of man. Phil’s painfully honest prayers and clever attempts at killing time alternate between poignant and amusing, but his inner life is falling apart as badly as his home. It's Ecclesiastes 1: "“Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless.'” When he acknowledges that he is giving up on life, we get it.

Worldviews in Entertainment: Starting the Conversation

This past week, I had the opportunity to engage with middle and high school students on the topic of entertainment. In the course of four 2 ½ hour sessions, we talked about some popular YA fiction and watched four movies: Maleficent; Captain America: Winter Soldier; The Amazing Spiderman, and Ender’s Game. (Most of them had read or seen Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Guardians of the Galaxy and Divergent,  I was looking for something that was new to them and wasn't about sparkly vampires).

In order to explore the worldviews, we used the following template of questions for a discussion at the end of each movie:

• What’s wrong with the world according to the story? What’s the proposed solution?
• Who are the heroes/villains, and why?
• What does the story suggest are important virtues and unfortunate vices?
• What things does the story just assume (rather than argue) are true or real?
• What does it mean to be human?
• Does the story make a difference between someone who does heroic things vs. someone who is a hero (or someone who does villainous things vs. someone who is a villain)? Is there a difference to be made? 
• What does this movie want you to believe is the secret to a good or meaningful life? Does that work in the real world?
• Does the story make sin/goodness look compelling? Boring? Revolting? Irrelevant?
• Many popular stories confirm either what we hope is true about the world or what we fear it true about the world. Do you see that in this story?
• Is God (or are Christians) present in the story? If so, is the portrayal honest? What about representations of the people and beliefs in other worldviews?