Ready Player One: Community, Power, And True Winners

As a movie, Ready Player One probably deserves both the kudos and criticism it’s been garnering. Yes, it’s a visual feast. Yes, the 80s references are a lot of fun. Yes, it gives only a “meager emotional charge.” It’s also “a cautionary tale about burying ourselves in pop culture while the world burns,” but even that message comes across more clinically than experientially. As The Christian Science Monitor noted, “the message derived from it – that in our cyber age, we desperately need to spend more time in the real world – doesn’t resonate because Spielberg is much better here at virtual reality (VR) than reality.” Yup.

In spite of the mixed reviews, I enjoyed Ready Player One. The book was better – aren’t they always? – but RPO is an entertaining popcorn movie if you go into it expecting no more than that. If you are expecting something to deeply move you, choose another film. 

This is good for what it wants to be: a feel-good, pop culture homage validating our nostalgia for the years when technology was new enough (or we were young enough) that it felt like magic, the years when a screen of any kind could transport us into another world where we could escape from the frustrations and failures of the real world and be the person we always wanted to be in a world that made more sense to us than this one.

But that's not what stood out to me the most.

King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword

I’m a big fan of the King Arthur legend. I read a lot about him when I was a kid; as a high school literature teacher, I forced juniors to read Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte D'arthur; I think I’ve seen all the modern movies and musicals. (Is it weird to have seen the Clive Owen version ten times at least? I’m asking for a friend).

So I wasn’t sure what to expect going in to Guy Ritchie’s recent incarnation of the tale. The critics’ reviews were generally bad (27% at Rotten Tomatoes), but the audience response was much more favorable (78%).  Was it the bombastic, frenetic desecration of a classic tale that borrowed heavily from Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones? Was it a highly entertaining and clever retelling of story never meant to have too tight of a connection to real history anyway?

Well, yes. 

Alien: Covenant

Alien: Covenant, the next installment in Ridley Scott’s Alien universe, provides a passable filler narrative between the disappointing Prometheus and the classic original Alien movie. I say “passable” because my first thoughts when I left the theater were…well, not much, really.

Alien: Covenant is generally getting decent reviews (72% at Rotten Tomatoes), but I didn't think it broke any new ground cinematically or thematically. There just wasn’t much there that initially provoked deep thought. However, if I’m generous, I think the movie may have been trying to offer a story about origins, gods, and the power of creators. Yeah. Let's run with that.

Guardians Of The Galaxy 2

Guardians Of The Galaxy has roared onto the screens as everyone expected. It’s big, beautiful, highly entertaining, and at times surprisingly moving. We can debate whether or not it’s as good as the first one, but one thing is for sure: there is something in this movie franchise that is drawing people in droves. Yes, it’s fun cinema, but I think it’s more than that.

First, it’s a movie about self-identified “a-holes” saving the universe. On the one hand, that bothers me. You’d think we could find somebody – anybody – who doesn’t fall into that category. On the other hand, maybe it’s just an honest acknowledgment that no one is righteous. For every Captain America, there are a thousand Peter Quills; that’s probably a good reflection of real world percentages. The movie is too flippant about the seriousness of many of the offenses of different characters in the movie, but it captures the messiness of human sinfulness mixed in with nobility and honor. Sometimes people end well even if they have not lived well.

Yondu is a great example. On the one hand, we find out that he bravely kept Peter hidden from his demi-god father, Ego, for all these years because he knew that Ego was a terrible man. On the other hand, he is a Ravager (read 'space pirate') who gets kicked out of the club for trafficking children (which he claims he didn't know). On the other hand, he eventually channels Boromir and does his best to atone for his failures.

I long for heroes who are brave, pure, good and true. In Guardians, you are not going to get the full list. There are no King Arthurs or Captain Americas. There are instead people like Peter Quill who, when offered good and bad, will choose to do a little of both. Such is life. I would like to see a story that shows a trend in the characters toward the good not just in their deeds but in their hearts; Guardians Of The Galaxy at least gets us to long for it.

Assassin's Creed

As best as I can cobble together from the film, this is the background of Assassin’s Creed.

There are these assassins, and they have an initiation creed:

Assassin: "Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember..."
Initiate: "Nothing is true."
Assassin: "Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember..."
Initiate: "Everything is permitted."
Assassin: "We work in the dark to serve the light. We are Assassins."

Yikes. (Anti-hero...check!) What is so important that they are permitted to do anything immoral or illegal to serve this vague light?

Apparently, when Eve ate the apple, she exercised free will and as a result seeded the first sin into the world. Since then, everything has gone downhill: violence, greed, poorly made movies, etc. The Templars at some point decided that they would find the apple and genetically undo the damage that has been done (apparently sin is biological). Sounds great, but that also means free will goes out the window as everybody does what the Templars want them to do. The Assassins formed to stop the Templars from doing this.  

Fast forward five hundred years. The modern Templars are on the verge of getting the apple. They have apparently captured all the modern Assassins and managed, through some sci-fi wizardry, to find a way to send a modern descendent of an Assassin back to relive the life of a former Assassin. By doing this, they will be able to figure out where this elusive apple has been hidden for the past 500 years. One super naïve scientist, Sophia, is convinced the Templars will use this power to bring worldwide peace by deleting the genetic basis of violence in everybody (hello, Nobel Peace Prize!). I don’t think it will give much away to say that her plan is not the same as the other Templars.

The Magnificent Seven

I wasn't sure what to expect when I went to see The Magnificent Seven. IMDB summarized the entire movie quite succinctly in one simple sentence: "Seven gun men in the old west gradually come together to help a poor village against savage thieves." I had not seen the original, so for better or worse I had no basis for comparison. I generally like westerns; I was impressed by the all-star lineup; I was intrigued by the previews. I went to see it without reading any reviews so I could experience it unfiltered.

The spectacular cast, the beautiful cinematography, and a story line featuring a small town of peaceful, church-going citizens who are badly in need of rescuing from a profoundly evil robber baron all work together quite effectively. In some ways Magnificent Seven is a classic good vs. evil scenario.  There is some sense of satisfaction as justice rolls down and wash away the violent men who have ravaged the land. The victims are truly victims who deserve our sympathy; the villains have committed genuinely deplorable acts that cry out for our anger. That's important to me in a movie: I want my emotions to match the reality of the situation. A good movie will get us to weep with those who rightly weep and celebrate with those who justly celebrate.

And yet...

Magnificent Seven is more complicated than that. In the middle of this timeless battle for good many smaller skirmishes take place, particularly among the Seven who ride into town as heroes. They are certainly fighting heroically, but... heroes? Maybe not so much.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has been a commercial success ($73 million the opening weekend) as well as a critical success (91% critics approval at Rotten Tomatoes and 79% at Metacritic). I will leave it to others to highlight the acting, directing, special effects, and overall plot. I am going to focus on why this story resonates with us. 

Think of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes as a modern allegory similar to District 9.  D9 used aliens and humans to tell a story about apartheid; Dawn uses apes and humans to tell a story about how fear and hate lead to war (think of the troubles in Northern Ireland, or how  the Arab/Israeli conflict is escalating again as I write this). The story is clearly fiction, but the situations are all too real.*

Everyone had a logical reason for his or her actions. Koba spent his life being tortured by humans. When Caesar tells him he wants to wait for the “human work” to finish (in this case, fixing the dam), Koba points at scars on his body and growls, “Human work.”  Humanity has certainly earned his wrath and distrust.

From the human perspective, the simian flu brought humanity to the edge of extinction. Their fear of the apes is justified as well. One man noted he couldn't look at an ape without getting physically ill. His hatred was illogical, of course. Humans created the virus that the apes spread. But fear and hatred blind people to the truth; the mind will justify what the heart desires.

Warm Bodies: Exhuming Humanity

“Once you’ve arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took.”

Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies has been a surprise recent hit. Though this zombie romance book (?) was originally written for an adult audience, the recent movie targets a YA crowd. If you are tempted to dismiss the story as yet another sign that we are staggering toward cultural annihilation, you might want to reconsider. Warm Bodies gives a sobering, concise and (I’m afraid) largely true warning about the trajectory of a humanity consumed by the worst parts of its own nature.

“What happened to the world was gradual… A smoldering dread that never really caught fire till there wasn’t much left to burn. Each sequential step surprised us…The abandoning of quests, the surrendering of desires, the settling in and settling down that is the inevitable fate of the Dead…

It didn’t take much to bring down the card house of civilization. Just a few gusts and it was done, the balance tipped, the spell broken. Good citizens realized the lines that had shaped their lives were imaginary and easily crossed. They had wants and needs and the power to satisfy them, so they did. The moments the lights went out, everyone stopped pretending… 

I can no longer believe in any voodoo spell or laboratory virus. This is something deeper, darker. This comes from the cosmos, from the stars, from the unknown blackness behind them. The shadows in God’s boarded-up basement… I think we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find until our souls finally hit rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some… dark place.”

This is a zombie apocalypse in which no one is to blame but the collective, growing decay of humanity. The zombies were just the inevitable product of a civilization full of people who were already dead. The plague just removed the facade. 

The Paperboy: Quagmire of Evil

"We are trapped in our own situation...We are in darkness, and cannot see. We are ill, and cannot heal ourselves. We are injured, and need someone to bind our wounds. We are trapped, and cannot break free from our captivity. We are addicted to patterns of behavior that we cannot master. We need an illuminator, a healer, a liberator."   - Alister McGrath, in Redemption

 The Paperboy, based on Pete Dexter’s 1995 novel, was nominated for a boatload of awards in 2012, including Best Actress (Kidman was even nominated for a Golden Globe), Best Film, Best Supporting Actress, Best Ensemble, and Best Supporting Actor. I occasionally watch award-winning movies just to see what is currently considered commendable, and based on the official site summary, this movie sounded intriguing:

“The Paperboy takes audiences deep into the backwaters of steamy 1960s South Florida, as investigative reporter Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) and his partner Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo) chase a sensational, career-making story. With the help of Ward's younger brother Jack (Zac Efron) and sultry death-row groupie Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), the pair tries to prove violent swamp-dweller Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) was framed for the murder of a corrupt local sheriff. Based on the provocative bestselling novel by Pete Dexter (Mulholland Falls, Rush), The Paperboy peels back a sleepy small town's decades-old façade of Southern gentility to reveal a quagmire of evil as dark as a Florida bayou.”

John Grisham meets James Lee Burke, perhaps?  Maybe it would be worth watching. I’m all in favor of a moving story where those who fight for justice wade through the quagmire of sin and defeat evil.  Note to self: next time, check out other reviews first, and read the official blurb more carefully. I foolishly assumed that it must take light to "reveal a quagmire of evil as dark as the Florida bayou," and that the purpose of exposing evil was to deal with it. I could not have been more wrong.

"Looper": On Time Travel, Suicide, and Sacrifice

If you could go back in time and assassinate Hitler when he was still a child, would you do it?  You would have to kill a child who had not yet committed any of the atrocities Hitler would eventually commit, so your victim would still be innocent. On the other hand, by that one act you could spare the lives of millions of others.  Would you be justified in doing so?

What if you found out that young Hitler was full of fantastic potential for good and terrible potential for evil?  Much to your surprise, he was an exceptionally gifted young man with the potential to either make or break the world.  Unfortunately, a devastating psychological and emotional blow made him eventually decide to break it. If you knew who the perpetrator was (though no crime had yet been committed), and that by killing him you could stop the future atrocities of the yet unscarred Hitler, would you be justified in killing the perpetrator who made Hitler a monster?

What if you discovered you were the perpetrator? And what if the only way to stop the Holocaust was to kill yourself?