When a Movie Stays the Same But You’ve Changed

For six years now, my family of three have watched “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” the night before Thanksgiving. And yeah, it is still a funny and heartfelt as it as always been. Heck, minutes before any given scene or line of dialogue shows up on screen, I’ll find myself laughing at it. Case in point: when that pickup truck driver arrives to drive Steve Martin and John Candy to the train station.

The other movie tradition is “Home for the Holidays,” the 1995 film directed by Jodie Foster. Holly Hunter stars as Claudia, a forty-year-old single mom who travels from Chicago back home to Baltimore for Thanksgiving. She’s just lost her job, her sixteen-year-old daughter matter-of-factory announced that she’s planning on sleeping with her boyfriend at her boyfriend’s family house, and she’s just counting the hours until she can get back on the plane and fly home. In between, she has to survive being with her empty nest, retired parents (Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning), her straight-laced, bitter older sister (Cynthia Stevenson), and her hyper, over-the-top, gay younger brother (Robert Downey, Jr.). Tagging along with her brother is Leo (Dylan McDermott) who Claudia assumes is with her brother but is actually there to meet her.

The family is dysfunctional and the first time I saw it, that dysfunctionality bothered me. You see, I’m not from that kind of family. I’m an only child of only child parents so growing up, if all the grandparents showed up, there was only seven people in the room. But even when I think about my extended family, I can’t think of any member who doesn’t get along with everyone else.

As the years have gone on and I’ve watched some truly wonderful acting, many of the film’s little moments stand out. It could be an off-hand remark Claudia says to her brother or Downey Jr.’s eyebrow raised to say more than words could say or Durning’s chance answering of the phone and hearing his son’s husband on the other end of the line and this straight-laced, old fashioned man summon up the words to congratulate him while softly touching his son’s face.

But on Thursday night, another scene just walloped me and I should have saw it coming. Late in the movie, on the morning after Thanksgiving when Claudia has to fly home, she walks down to the basement. There she finds her dad, sitting alone, watching his home movies. There, flickering on the white screen, are the images of his past, his children as kids, and he and his wife as they used to be. The film is made to look like it was shot in the Sixties, with slightly overexposed colors.

Her dad, having just experienced the latest in a probably long line of difficult Thanksgiving dinners with his adult children and their families, starts to give his daughter life advice. He recounts a day that he considers one of his best memories. It took place back in 1969 when his family watched as a 727 took off and he and Claudia watched with eyes wide open. They were fearless and that’s his advice to his adult daughter: be fearless and go after Leo.

The subtext of that scene is bookended by the home movies and the last words he says that ends the scene: “I wish I had it [that 727 moment] on tape.” Durning is a retired empty nester whose family has grown up, moved away, and changed. He can’t get back what he had, so he’s comforted with memories and home movies.

Last year when my family of three watched this movie, my son still lived with us. This year, he returned home from his own apartment to stay with us these few days. My wife and I are empty nesters now, and while that scene of this wonderful movie has not changed, we have. We all three have. Life always moves on.

So cherish each and every moment of your life for it won’t ever happen again. And take as many pictures and videos as possible to help you remember. Because one day, we’re all going to find ourselves watching home movies or flipping through a photo album (physical or digital) and remembering our favorite moments of life.

And always be fearless.

I Finally Saw Clerks III

What did you expect from Kevin Smith, a man living on borrowed time?

Back in the summer of 2019, I set out to watch every Kevin Smith film leading up to the release of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. It was a fantastic experience where I wrote about the movies as I watched them, watched no trailers ahead of seeing the film (leading to a shocker in Jersey Girl), and then ranked my favorite films, performances, and scenes.

Being the pop culture geek that I am, folks are surprised to learn that I only started watching Smith’s films 2019. Up until then, he was only a podcaster (and that only since 2012). So I’m watching all of these films as a guy in his early fifties rather than the younger person I was had I watched these movies in real time. As a result, they strike me differently (just look at my favorite Smith film), yet I suspect Clerks III will affect many of Smith’s fans in a poignant way.

Where We Left Off

At the end of Clerks II (2006), Dante (Brian O'Hallaran) and Randel (Jeff Anderson) had steered their lives full circle and purchased the Quick Stop convenience store, the setting of Clerks. Dante finally realized he loved Becky (Rosario Dawson) and opted to stay with her, especially since she is pregnant with his child. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” quipped Randal as the camera panned back, shifted to black and white, to the wonderful Soul Asylum song, “Misery.”

Little did we know how much misery was in store for our pair of clerks.

Spoilers from here on out.

Where We Pick Up

Just like the first two films, Dante opens the Quick Stop, complete with gum in the padlock. The warm feelings you get from seeing this family setting are immediately doused with water when you see an obituary on the counter: Becky, Dante’s fiancée from Clerks II, died. Not only that, but she died in 2006, the year the film was released. What the hell? What about the happy ending we got at the end of II?

Well, there was an ending to that movie, but life went on. And life can throw you curveballs, something Smith himself knows all too well. Back in 2018, after the first of two shows, Smith experienced a heart attack, a widow-maker, the kind of heart attack only 20% of people survive. Smith survived and changed his life, his diet, and his vision of life. He’s living on borrowed time, he says, something that Randal comes around to as well as he survives a similar heart attack.

Unlike Smith (who had an established body of work by 2018), Randal laments what he’s made of his life. “You saved my life,” he tells Dante. “I just wish I had a life worth saving.” These two friends—hetero life mates—love each other (in a total hetero way) and Randal gets the idea to make a movie about the life of a clerk at a convenience store. Naturally, he centers the movie on himself, and he uses all of his experiences (i.e., the events of Clerks and Clerks II) as grist for his mill. Then, just like Smith did in real life, the process of making a movie commences.

Making the Movie Within the Movie

There are lots of in-jokes and familiar nods and winks back to earlier Clerks films and other Smith movies during the middle part of Clerks III. I probably missed a few but I got the gist of them all. They’re all fun Easter eggs for long-time fans.

The Heart of the Story, Part 1: Dante and Becky

It’s one thing to see Becky’s obituary on the counter. It’s quite another when you see Dante heading through a graveyard and you know exactly what’s about to happen. But I guarantee you might not be prepared for the emotional reaction to the ‘talking to a tombstone’ scene, especially when Dante talks with Becky’s spirit. It is here we learn the true cause of Becky’s death: a drunk driver. Dante tells Becky he’s stuck, that he can’t go on in life, but she tries to redirect him. She tries to get him to understand that he’s still living, that he still has a chance to do anything he wants. It is simultaneously heartbreaking and inspirational, and Brian O’Hallaran does some great acting here, the kind of acting that comes from living with a character for nearly thirty years. Sure, it’s only been three movies, but O’Hallaran is pretty much synonymous with Dante for me and a lot of other people.

Dante and Becky have three total scenes together and you get banged over the head with one of Smith’s central themes: life throws you curve balls. You can let them knock you off course, but if you don’t reset, you will wallow in misery, despair, and melancholy. Up until the events of this movie, that’s where Dante’s been for sixteen years.

The Heart of the Story, Part 2: Dante and Randal

I wrote in my review of Clerks II about the surprise I felt when I saw how Smith broadened and deepened the relationship between Dante and Randal. This pair of decades-long friends truly love and care for each other. In this movie, you see it on Dante’s face when Randal is rushed to the hospital. You see it on Randal’s face later on in the movie, but that doesn’t mean they don’t bare their souls to each other. Randal had a fantastic scene in Clerks II, so it’s Dante’s turn in Clerks III.

Brian O’Hallaran and Jeff Anderson might not get a lot of attention in the acting community but they both knocked it out of the park in this movie. Randal turned his speech from Clerks on its head with his new outlook on life, but it’s Dante’s monologue in the Quick Stop that resonates. It is raw, laying bare the agony he’s endured in the years since Becky died. He had his happily ever after but it was ripped away. When Randal counters with “I almost died,” Dante retorts with “Some of us did die.” O’Hallaran delivers these lines as if he endured Dante’s life personally. This scene will find a place on the list of my all-time favorite Smith scenes, but I wasn’t expecting what happened next.

Dante falls victim to a heart attack.

Now, you might roll your eyes at that, but it was foreshadowed earlier in the film. And it compelled Randal to reexamine the type of movie he was making. He realized Dante, not Randal himself, who was the star of the film. He quickly re-cut the movie on his computer and showed it to a bedridden Dante. Then, you see all the old scenes from Clerks, but you also see a present-day Dante in a movie theater watching the movie, a wistful smile on his face. A hand reaches out and takes his. It’s Becky. And it’s then you realize that if Becky and Dante are holding hands, Dante himself is dying.

And he does. There are a lot of good last lines in movies, but for Dante, his final words are incredibly poignant. When Becky asks if he wants to stay and watch the rest of the movie, he replies with utter calmness and pride: “I trust the director.”

The Overturning of a Famous Quote

I’m not sure how many of the folks in my theater were crying when Dante died, but I sure was. Heck, my voice broke a couple of times when I later told my wife the events of the story. Yes, I cry at a lot of things, but these movies and these characters, even over just three years, have come to represent something. I think lots of fiftysomething folks, guys especially, find pieces of themselves in the lives of Dante and Randal.

But leave it to Kevin Smith to take one of his most famous quotes and change it. A running gag in Clerks was that Dante came into work on his day off. To just about everyone, he kept lamenting that “I’m not supposed to be here today.”

Now, in Clerks III, at Dante’s funeral, it’s Randal looking down at his friend’s coffin for the last time and he laments that he [Dante] isn’t even supposed to be here [at his own funeral] today.

That’s a fantastic piece of storytelling.

The Closing Voiceover

As the credits rolled to the deep baritone voice of John Gorka singing “I’m from New Jersey,” the music faded out and Smith returned. He talked about how immensely happy he was to have made this third clerks film and to the career he’s had. But he goes on to reveal a little bit of a scene that didn’t make the movie. It was a voiceover of a 90-year-old Randal Graves reflecting on his own life and all the movies he made after his celebrated debut, “Clerk.” “I always thought that jobs would have been great if it weren’t for the f*cking customers. But as it turns out, these jobs are great because of the f*cking customers.” Smith return and sums it all up. “He [Randal] means it, and so do I. Thank you to everybody who ever walked through that door of that store and made me think ‘Somebody ought to put this in a f*cking movie.’ Somebody did. Thank you.”

Thank you, Kevin Smith, for making movies like this. I may have been super late to the party, but I’m so glad I joined.

The Verdict

Clerks III is a good film with some outstanding moments that should resonate with its audience long after the credits fade to black. It still has some cringe-worthy moments, but none like the donkey stuff in Clerks II. But it is utterly fascinating to watch this film (actually all three Clerks films) about two characters at different stages of their lives by a filmmaker in those same stages. It’s not quick like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (in which he filmed an actor over a decade actually growing up) but it’s in the same spirit.

The Ranking

Back in 2019, right before I actually watched Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, I ranked all the films. After Reboot, I ended up putting it at number 4. I have honestly only seen Reboot one time—during the tour when Kevin and Jay were on hand to take questions—so I’ll have to go back and watch it again. But Clerks III is going to be side-by-side with Reboot. Both deal with getting older and becoming more sentimental, but in different ways. I might give the edge to Clerks III for its ultimately inspirational theme that no matter how old you are, it's never too late to try something new.

In terms of scenes, the Dante and Randal fight and subsequent Dante monologue in the Quick Stop is one of the best written by Smith and acted by O'Hallaran and Anderson. Dante’s scene with Becky at her gravesite is also right up there. And the short moment at end, with Dante and Becky, also ranks as one of the best moments and lines in all of Smith’s films.

When Did Characters Become Meta?

When did characters in stories become self-aware of all the story tropes they are in and comment on those tropes during the story? In short, when did characters become meta?

I’m not quite sure how to pose this question so let me tell you how I got there.

In my SF book club this month, we discussed John Scalzi’s the Kaiju Preservation Society. It is a wonderful B-movie concept: there is an alternate earth where kaiju (i.e., giant creatures like Godzilla) developed and humans did not. The humans from our earth can travel between worlds and said humans study the kaiju and, well, preserve them.

The story takes place in early 2020 and is populated by a bunch of characters, most of whom are nerds. As such, they say and understand a ton of SF in-jokes, jokes that most of Scalzi’s readers will also get. Not a problem. It’s like writing for the choir.

But one of the book club guys made a point: at no time in the book did any of the characters have a Wow Moment, a sense of wonder moment reminiscent of that scene in Jurassic Park when the characters (and viewers) first see the dinosaurs. He went on to posit that basically up to the 1990s, many characters in movies (and books) seemed to exist outside of the present pop culture moment. That is, many characters didn’t have a handy shorthand list of references to speak about.

For example, in the Scalzi book, when something odd came up, all the characters in the book had to do was reference an existing movie moment and everyone (readers included) would know. (I did the same thing when I name dropped Godzilla a few paragraphs ago.) You could make the argument that Scalzi was not bothering to expound or explain something, but I actually don’t mind the shorthand at all.

We started commenting that many movies in at least the last decade+ are populated by characters like this and we tossed around the idea of when it started. Naturally, we arrived at the first Scream movie (1996) where all the characters knew all the tropes of horror movies and actually riffed on them and tried to overcome the killer by using those tropes. The movies of Kevin Smith are full of references like this, and some of the Marvel films reference Star Wars and other properties.

That got me to thinking about the mystery genre. Were there films, books, or TV shows that fit this type of story? The first thing that came to mind was the TV series “Only Murders in the Building.” I’ve not seen any of season 2, but season 1 had the characters basically do what Scream did for horror: narrate, in a meta way, the story they were in, commenting that in a normal true crime podcast cast, this is where a twist would occur…right before a twist in their own story happened. “Castle” had some of that mainly because the main character was a writer.

So, fellow mystery fans, I challenge y’all to help me out: what are some mystery stories of any medium where the characters basically comment on the story their in using tropes of the mystery genre?

All the Feels or All the Logic?

Why do you consume a story?

I use the word ‘consume’ because you could watch a movie or TV show, read a book, or listen to an audiobook or podcast.

My wife watches quite a bit of the true crime shows on TV and various streaming services. She likes to learn the intricate details of how the investigators discovered the culprit and, in most cases, land the perp in jail. She’s way more logical than I am and these shows give her a sense of order and justice. That drive for order is a large reason why she and I both enjoy BBC TV shows and other crime and mystery programs as well as books and movies.

But when it comes to established stories that have more than a twinge of nostalgia, I really enjoy the feels. How does the story make me feel?

I ran across this twice this week. The smaller version is my re-watch of the 1996 Mission: Impossible movie. My twenty-year-old son hadn’t seen it so we all watched it together. The way the movie is constructed—with its descriptions of how they’re going to break into various places and the spy stuff—is something I really dig. In fact, I found myself grinning like a goofball throughout the entire movie. Well, except for the vault sequence. Watching it again, I was in rapt silence.

By the end, I was buoyed by the story and ready to, I don’t know, hang by a wire from the ceiling. The story works, but the feels are fantastic.

The same is true for the Obi-Wan Kenobi finale this week. And spoilers are coming.

I’ve said it before but I think my favorite time of being a Star Wars fan is that initial era from 1977-1980. In those years, the galaxy was wide open and not some family drama. And I associate that feeling most with the first half of Star Wars, while the action centered on Tatooine. As such, I really enjoyed the Obi-Wan show.

From a logical point of view, the writers delicately threaded  this series through established canon and I think they did a great job. It’s a testament to how much I enjoyed the show that even though I knew who lived, I found myself constantly on the edge of my seat. Will young Leia survive? Will Obi-Wan be killed by Vader?

But the finale proved to be one of my favorite Star Wars things. We got an epic lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan and Vader, complete with Hayden Christensen looking out from a seared-open Vader mask. We go a neat and tidy button on Obi-Wan’s infamous phrase to Luke: Vader betrayed and murdered your father.

And we got some fantastic character moments, a feat especially impressive considering the action. In fact, it was the character beats in the final ten minutes that really struck me and brought the tears. Oh, and the inclusion of Princess Leia’s theme from Star Wars? Icing on the cake. That piece of music ranks as one of my all-time favorite themes in the entire franchise and it was used so well.

That last shot? [won’t spoil this one] Perfection.

So, with Obi-Wan, in my mind, I got the logic of the storytelling but I also got the feels. That’s what often sends a story over the top for me. It’s why I enjoyed Jurassic World: Dominion so much. It’s why I dig La La Land, Toy Story 3, any random episode of New Amsterdam, and John Scalzi’s book, Redshirts.

I want the feels, and any story that delivers is a winner in my book.

How about you? Do you want the feels or is logic more your speed?

by
Scott D. Parker

Why do you consume a story?

I use the word ‘consume’ because you could watch a movie or TV show, read a book, or listen to an audiobook or podcast.

My wife watches quite a bit of the true crime shows on TV and various streaming services. She likes to learn the intricate details of how the investigators discovered the culprit and, in most cases, land the perp in jail. She’s way more logical than I am and these shows give her a sense of order and justice. That drive for order is a large reason why she and I both enjoy BBC TV shows and other crime and mystery programs as well as books and movies.

But when it comes to established stories that have more than a twinge of nostalgia, I really enjoy the feels. How does the story make me feel?

I ran across this twice this week. The smaller version is my re-watch of the 1996 Mission: Impossible movie. My twenty-year-old son hadn’t seen it so we all watched it together. The way the movie is constructed—with its descriptions of how they’re going to break into various places and the spy stuff—is something I really dig. In fact, I found myself grinning like a goofball throughout the entire movie. Well, except for the vault sequence. Watching it again, I was in rapt silence.

By the end, I was buoyed by the story and ready to, I don’t know, hang by a wire from the ceiling. The story works, but the feels are fantastic.

The same is true for the Obi-Wan Kenobi finale this week. And spoilers are coming.

I’ve said it before but I think my favorite time of being a Star Wars fan is that initial era from 1977-1980. In those years, the galaxy was wide open and not some family drama. And I associate that feeling most with the first half of Star Wars, while the action centered on Tatooine. As such, I really enjoyed the Obi-Wan show.

From a logical point of view, the writers delicately threaded  this series through established canon and I think they did a great job. It’s a testament to how much I enjoyed the show that even though I knew who lived, I found myself constantly on the edge of my seat. Will young Leia survive? Will Obi-Wan be killed by Vader?

But the finale proved to be one of my favorite Star Wars things. We got an epic lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan and Vader, complete with Hayden Christensen looking out from a seared-open Vader mask. We go a neat and tidy button on Obi-Wan’s infamous phrase to Luke: Vader betrayed and murdered your father.

And we got some fantastic character moments, a feat especially impressive considering the action. In fact, it was the character beats in the final ten minutes that really struck me and brought the tears. Oh, and the inclusion of Princess Leia’s theme from Star Wars? Icing on the cake. That piece of music ranks as one of my all-time favorite themes in the entire franchise and it was used so well.

That last shot? [won’t spoil this one] Perfection.

So, with Obi-Wan, in my mind, I got the logic of the storytelling but I also got the feels. That’s what often sends a story over the top for me. It’s why I enjoyed Jurassic World: Dominion so much. It’s why I dig La La Land, Toy Story 3, any random episode of New Amsterdam, and John Scalzi’s book, Redshirts.

I want the feels, and any story that delivers is a winner in my book.

How about you? Do you want the feels or is logic more your speed?

P.S. I wrote this piece late afternoon on Friday. Later that day, I watched the new Baz Luhrmann "Elvis" movie. Add one more to the feels list. Except this one was tragic. My wife and I just sat there for a few minutes while the main credits rolled. We both had teared up at the end. So we just sat and listened and thought about the creative spirit of Elvis Presley. 

I don't know about you, but when I take in a story in which a creative person is tamped down or abused or taken advantage of, I feel my own creative spirit wanting to burst out and soar.

Jurassic World: Dominion: A Wonderful Summer Blockbuster

I’m not sure what movie some folks watched but it sure wasn’t the one I saw.

When it comes to movies, I make it point not to read any reviews ahead of seeing a movie I want to see. If the trailer hasn’t grabbed my attention and compelled me to watch—or the pedigree of the actors, writers, and director—then I don’t seek out the Rotten Tomato score to sway me. This is not the same with books in which I will happily read and take into consideration the opinions of dozens of fellow writers when they recommend books.

But once I’ve seen a movie, I am curious to know the general consensus and see if it lines up with my experience. When I saw the 2.5 hours of Jurassic World: Dominion (AKA Jurassic World 3 AKA Jurassic Park 6), I was enthralled, entertained, and emitted more than a few utterances of “Yeah!” and “Cool!” It ended the 6-movie franchise quite well, introducing the original Park actors with the new World actors in a way that felt organic. The music was nicely used throughout, including the elegant main theme from John Williams—both the orchestral as well as the softer piano version. There were dino-on-dino fights, a kick-ass motorcycle/dinosaur chase through a European city, and a dino/airplane chase. There were dinos in the water, dinos in caves, and dinos in snow. All things we’ve not seen before.

Well, I’m pretty sure we haven’t. I’ve pretty much got the first movie memorized. The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, a little. Jurassic World I remember decently and I all but forgot World 2: Fallen Kingdom.

But I remember the closing show of Fallen Kingdom well, accompanied by Jeff Goldblum’s voiceover. Dinosaurs now live among humans and we’re going to have to learn to co-exist as best as possible. And that’s how Dominion starts. It shows us a world like that. Granted, it’s not one I’d prefer to live in—don’t need the possibility of my plane flight being overtaken by a pterodactyl—but it is one original author Michael Crichton envisioned and that Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm keeps talking about in every movie he’s in. So in that respect, Dominion gets it correct.

So imagine my surprise when I hop on over to Rotten Tomatoes on Monday night—after eagerly relating all the fun and cool stuff in the movie to my wife who didn’t go—that the critical consensus was so poor. Again, what movie did these folks watch?

Okay, the plot. There are two threads. The World Plot has Owen and Claire trying to protect Maisie from the rest of the world because she’s a clone. Blue the velociraptor lives nearby and has unexpectedly produced a young raptor called Beta. (It shouldn’t be unexpected because “Life always finds a way.”) Bad guys kidnap both younglings and Owen and Claire follow.

The Park Plot involves our three original cast members and boils down to Laura Dern’s Ellie Sadler researching why formerly extinct massive locusts are eating some crops but not others. If they’re not stopped, there will be a global famine, yet the locusts don’t seem to be eating crops grown from seeds provided by Biosyn, the new bad-guy company a la InGen from the Park movies. She makes the assumption—with an assist from Malcolm—that Biosyn is behind both the seeds and the locusts. She enlists the help of Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and they set off in search of proof at Biosyn’s giant lab/breeding ground/dinosaur habitat in Europe.

Which is exactly where the kidnappers are taking Maisie and Beta. Naturally, the World characters and the Park characters will meet—the selling point of the film—and they’ll battle enemies both dino and human. Along the way, there are wonderful set pieces that are the definition of a summer blockbuster. In fact, as Owen is racing through the streets on his motorcycle, trained raptors on his tail, you see the aforementioned plane start to warm up. I leaned over to my son and said, “I bet he jumps into the open plane in midair.” Viola! That’s exactly what happened.

Yes, that entire sequence felt like an espionage film (Bond, Bourne, Mission Impossible) but who cares? It was thrilling. There were lots of other thrilling moments as our heroes fight to stay alive, but not without some humor along the way.

But there are also some great character moments. Goldblum is having a field day as Malcolm, just chewing scenery left and right and I loved every second of it. The quiet moments are also good, like when it’s just Ellie and Alan seeing each other for the first time in decades, subtly lamenting lost time. Yes, their story line got a little bumbly as they tried to escape from the locust lair but it was minor.

I also liked how certain scenes were set up so that you *think* you know what’s going to happen but then your expectations are subverted. Case in point: Goldblum’s Malcolm is stuck holding a flaming piece of a spear-like metal pole and there’s a dino looking at him. In Park 1, he doesn’t know to throw the light source and freeze. Well, I said to my son, I bet he’s learned now. Nope. Not what happens. But it’s way cooler.

Scott Campbell, as the bad guy, plays Lewis Dodgson oddly. He is all bad at one moment and then weirdly like an absent-minded professor the next. I liked that they used him as a character although in the movie, it isn’t explicitly stated that he was the character in the original Jurassic Park who pays Wayne Knight’s Dennis Nedry to steal embryos in the Barbasol shaving cream can. But said can is a trinket in Dodgson’s office as he tries to escape. And I won’t even tell you what happens to him, but if you’ve seen Park 1, you have an idea.

Speaking of that, I like the little subtle Easter eggs like when Ellie takes off her sunglasses in a manner almost identically to Alan from Park 1. Nice touch.

The nostalgic part of me would have liked one last shot of all the Park characters together. Sadly we don’t get that, but we do get some resolution for everyone. And character growth. And bad guys getting what’s coming to them. And dinosaurs. Lots of dinosaurs.

Again, I’m just not understanding why the dislike for the film. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 79% so clearly it’s resonating with folks. It resonated with me quite well and I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

Star Wars Through the Decades

Today marks 45 years since Star Wars debuted. While I didn’t see the movie opening day in 1977, by the time I did, I was hopelessly immersed in a galaxy far, far away. Not only that, but it opened up the broader world of science fiction for me, a world I’ve loved and appreciated these past decades.

I got to thinking about Star Wars and what it meant throughout the years so I did a fun little exercise: how did I perceive Star Wars every five years for the past forty-five years. 

Star Wars at 5 Years (1982)

This was a year from Return of the Jedi—was the title already announced in 1982 as Revenge of the Jedi? This was the spring of my 7th grade year. I had many, many Star Wars toys, the bulk being from the Empire Strikes Back collection. Legos were still a thing as was other science fiction properties, especially Star Trek. I was gearing up for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan debuting in June 1982. Star Wars was always on the radar but with the last movie a year out, it was probably not front and center.

Still, I was and remain a charter member of the Star Wars Generation. It changed me and helped to shape the things I enjoy watching and reading and listening to.

Star Wars at 10 (1987)

I was a senior in high school thirty-five (!) years ago this month. I was heading up to The University of Texas at Austin in August. Music, including high school band, often took center stage of my life, so much so that I tried out for and joined the Longhorn Band.

I actually have no conscious memory of Star Wars from May 1987. The Marvel Comics run had been cancelled in 1986. I still own most of that run, but can’t barely remember any of the storylines. An interesting sidenote to 1983, the year Jedi was released. I was all in on seeing the movie—even paying extra to see it the day before its premiere—and saw it multiple times throughout the summer. But I never bought any Jedi toys. I was moving on from eighth grade to high school. Things were changing for me, just like they were in May 1987. Star Wars, for all intents and purposes, was done. It was wonderful and great and a vital part of my formative years, but that was in the past.

Star Wars at 15 (1992)

Star Wars was back…at least in print. May 1992 saw the publication of Dark Force Rising, the middle book of a new trilogy by Timothy Zahn. 1991’s Heir to the Empire reignited my love of Star Wars, bringing back wondering memories of the franchise and that time of my life. I started talking about Star Wars with college friends and reminiscing.

But, after I’d read Dark Force Rising, that was about it. Batman Returns was a month away and I was eagerly anticipating it. Interestingly, my other childhood favorite thing—KISS—had released their new album, Revenge, in May 1992 and I was spinning that CD constantly. 

Star Wars at 20 (1997)

Star Wars was back…on the big screen. I owned the movies on VHS (still have them) but hadn’t seen them on a theater screen since the early 80s. Now, new special effects were being added to all three movies with the biggest expectation being the Han Solo-meets-Jabba scenes in Mos Eisley. This was awesome stuff. And I really wanted the Biggs/Luke scenes from early in the film to be in there as well. Alas, it wasn’t, and now Han shot second?

But here’s the thing: I loved seeing the old movies again, relishing in my past life, and shrugged off the weird nesses. I knew the movies backward and forward so instantly knew when changes had been made. And I realized during these viewings that this franchise, especially the first two movies, were time capsules. If I let myself just sit and watch, I could be transported back to my younger self. It was magical. 

Star Wars at 25 (2002) 

Yay, a new movie—Attack of the Clones—in the Prequel trilogy. Surely it was going to be better than The Phantom Menace, right? I mean, there’s Anakin as a teenager. Obi-Wan as a badass Jedi. Jango Fett. Samuel L. Jackson and his purple lightsaber. And Yoda as CGI?

Well, AOTC had its moments, but was it better than Phantom Menace? Not really. Looking back to 1999, it is difficult to overstate how excited I was about a new Star Wars movie. That first trailer was so good, but it didn’t live up to expectations. Could it have? Probably not, but at least we were getting new Star Wars movies, right?

I did not follow through and watch the animated series however. Not sure why. I had long since stopped trying to keep up with the novels as well. I read the big ones—especially the novelizations of the movies because they went into additional detail and made for a better story—but that was about it. Star Wars was still important, but it had become one of many things I loved.

Star Wars at 30 (2007)

Honestly, when I think of this year, no Star Wars thing pops into my mind. 2005’s Revenge of the Sith was the best of the Prequel movies. This movie’s novelization was itself the middle book of a little trilogy and I listened to all of them. A nice tidy little story, but then I didn’t read another Star Wars book until 2013’s Scoundrels.

I had finally started reading the Harry Potter books, and in May 2007, I was reading all six then-existing books leading up to the publication of the seventh book in July. Star Wars just wasn’t on my pop culture radar. It was Pixar movies (Ratatouille was in 2007) and things my young son enjoyed.

Star Wars at 35 (2012)

More of the same, to be honest. I’d pull out the soundtracks from time to time and give them a listen. The novels of the Extended Universe were still being published at a rapid rate and I was reading none of them.

I can’t remember exactly when I showed Star Wars to my son. Maybe it was in 2012. But in May 2012, The Avengers had been out a month and I was enjoying the new Marvel cinematic universe. And there was a new Batman movie coming out in July. Star Wars was just one of the things I enjoyed, and mostly not on a day-to-day basis. 

Star Wars at 40 (2017)

In May 2017, we were seven months away from the next movie in the sequel series, The Last Jedi, a movie I enjoyed immensely. The trailer had dropped in April and Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker was back (and speaking!). We were about six months after Rogue One, one of the four most original Star Wars movies made to date. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was the brand-new Marvel movie and Wonder Woman would debut in June.

Had Star Wars been the only major franchise to vie for my attention, it would have earned more attention. But it was just one of many. Perhaps that was one of its lasting legacies.

Star Wars at 45 (2022)

Forty-five years ago today, it started. Ironically, just this past weekend, Colin Cantwell, the guy who designed the X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and the Death Star passed away. We’re getting a hotly anticipated new TV show, Obi-Wan Kenobi, something I’m really looking forward to, not the least of which being a new theme by John Williams.

Television seems to be the place where Star Wars shines nowadays. You have the chance to see new characters, allow them to grow, and not always show the vast galaxy only from the perspective of a single family. I’m happy to follow along with every new Star Wars TV show, watching all the live-action ones (still haven’t started any of the animated series). And I might pick up a book or two along the way. But, like in the heyday of the Extended Universe, I just can’t keep up. It’s a good thing (?) that there is so much because you can drop in here and there, picking up things that interest you and letting other things rest. I know that there are folks out there who memorize every little detail like I did back in the day, but it’s so much more difficult.

Conclusion

Star Wars is special. It’s one of the pop culture cornerstones of my life. It’s a joke in my family that I can’t remember to call a plumber but can still (!) remember random facts from the first movie (like the trash compactor number). Star Wars just is. And it always will be. My interest may ebb and flow, but it never disappears. It’s a part of me, just like it’s probably a part of you, too.

So let’s celebrate Star Wars for what it *is* and not necessarily what you want it to be. It is a multimedia franchise that started forty-five years ago today. It was and remains a story about a boy, a girl, a pair of robots, an old man, a scoundrel and his best friend, and an evil dark lord who welds a mysterious force and a laser sword. It is good vs. evil, the call to adventure, the hero’s journey with a sublimely wonderful soundtrack, and the willingness to stand up to the bad guys, even when all hope is lost. Because one person can make a difference, be it a pilot in an x-wing who can guide a proton torpedo through a 2-meter-wide exhaust port or a film director who has an idea about a movie he’d like to make to recapture the spirit of the movies he himself loved as a younger boy.

It’s that spirit that is at the essence of Star Wars. May that spirit always have a spark of creativity and keep the story going, yet always remembering where it started: in movie theaters forty-five years ago today.

Impressions of The Batman

As I will do for every Batman movie ever made, I saw the new Batman movie on opening day. Lifelong fan of the character than I am, I have thoughts.

There will be spoilers.

Thirty-three years ago, we got a dark and brooding Batman in the form of Michael Keaton. Turns out, it wasn’t so dark, but holy cow was it at the time. Then after a more bright series in the 1990s, we got a darker, broodier Batman in Christian Bale. Then we got Ben Affleck who was dark and broody.

And now we have Robert Pattinson who is uber-broody. Like others have said, he's Emo Batman. And you know what? I'm fine with it. I actually enjoyed the film quite a bit, all three hours of it. And my middle-aged bladder was able to make it through the entire film without compelling me to run to the bathroom. Why? Because I didn't drink a lot of water. But mostly because the movie was rather compelling.

The Voice - Kevin Conroy is all but the definitive Batman for me when it comes to how he does the voice of Bruce Wayne and Batman. Bale's gruff growl became distracting and I particularly appreciated Affleck's voice modulator. Pattinson's low, non-gruff voice worked for me.

The Suit - A fully functional, bulletproof body armor bat suit. I loved the collar. The cowl was also well done, showing all the scrapes he's endured. And I liked that they acknowledged he wears black makeup around the eyes. I loved the gauntlets that could be deployed at a moment's notice. And the use of the taser. The bionic contact lens was a nice touch.

Jeffrey Wright - Can we just get a TV show with him as Gordon? Really, really liked how he stood up for Batman from the jump. We even got a few of the bewildered Gordon moments like when he looks back and Batman's gone.

The Police - Really liked how the cops go from disliking Batman to grudging acceptance. And that scene when Batman and Gordon walk Falcone out and they see all the good cops? Wonderful.

Colin Farrell/The Penguin - Completely could not see Farrell in the makeup. But I really liked his ferocity with the character. Sure, it's a little on the Deniro side of things but Oz is a crime lieutenant. It's was fun.

Zoe Kravitz/Selina Kyle - Her action scenes were fantastic with her multiple kicks per strike. I liked her one-track mind to help find then avenge her friend. And she had some of the few funny parts in the movie.

Paul Dano/The Riddler - Going into the theater, I could not have picked Dano out of a lineup. And I so liked that his visual style was basically a geek. A genius geek, but just a normal guy on whom the world had shat on for years. His monologue in the jail cell was pretty darn fun.

The Riddler's Big Plan - I so love movies when the villain is 25 steps ahead of the hero, and this movie had that in spades.

Batman as Detective - Very, very nice to have a movie like this. Yeah, we've had the big explosion version of the character so why not basically have a PI solving riddles and crimes who just happens to wear a bat-suit rather than a trench coat and fedora. T'was nifty that Alfred helped out with that.

The Fight in the Dark - Maybe 30 seconds, but holy cow, was that sequence awesome. One of the best in all of Bat-movie history. I'd bet money that director/writer Matt Reeves was inspired by the hallway sequence with Darth Vader in Rogue One.

The Finale/Mist Scene - As soon as Batman exploded that fire extinguisher and created a cloud of mist, I knew he was going to jump out of it. Fantastic visual.

And a child shall lead - When Batman, with red flare in hand, goes to help the mayor-elect and others get out of the flooded arena, I so loved that it was the young boy who was the first to take Batman's offer of help. The boy recognized the hero that Batman was and showed the way.

The Ending Speech - I appreciated the mirror version of Gordon's closing speech in 2008's The Dark Knight. This Batman, for all his mopiness, recognizes the need for hope in Gotham. That is an intriguing plot thread to open.

The Mood - I'll admit I was a tad leery of yet another brooding Batman movie, but I was sucked in almost instantly. It was a slow burn movie, punctuated with intense fighting sequences, but I really liked it.

The Music - John Williams's theme to Superman is arguably the greatest super-hero theme every written. Well, not arguably to me. But Danny Elfman's Batman theme is definitely second. When I saw that Michael Giacchino as the composer, I was excited. But a theme like from Williams or Elfman would not have worked in a movie like this. The slow, downbeat score, with the new Batman theme scattered throughout the movie, worked really well. Of particular note was the harp-and-cello piece when Bruce Wayne went into his parents' room.

The Verdict

Up until 2022, there has only been one live-action Batman at a time. That changes this year. Later, when we get The Flash movie, veteran Batman Michael Keaton returns and we'll a second live-action Batman, even if it is a return of an old favorite. That's a good thing, because if you don't like the mopey Batman, just wait. Or watch other versions.

Here's the thing: in the summer of 2008, we got one of the best Batman movies ever in The Dark Knight. Later that fall, we got the equally fun and light-hearted animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Boy did I love that series. And I also liked that year's epic Batman movie. I can appreciate both of them because there is room for Batman to be interpreted in different ways.

This is Matt Reeves's interpretation of 80 years of Bat-stories and the character and situations. As much as I love the brightness of the Marvel movies, Batman works well in this kind of story. Like I mentioned at the top of this post, I was a little leery/weary of broody Batman.

But Reeves's story, direction, and cinematography as well as Pattinson's performance won me over. It did for my wife as well. (Note: she is not a super-hero film fan but loved Bale's Batman, especially The Dark Knight, perhaps the only super-hero movie that she'll start to watch if she runs across it on TV.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and look forward to seeing it again.

Seventy Years On, The Thing From Another World Still Delivers the Goods, And a New Warning

After watching Them! the other week, I decided to keep going and watch my other favorite science fiction film from the 1950s, The Thing From Another World. Released in the spring of 1951, this is a Howard Hawks's production based on "Who Goes There?" a novella by John E. Campbell from 1938. Chances are good you probably already know the plot--either from this film, the 1982 version starring Kurt Russell--but I'll give you gist.

Up in a remote scientific station in Alaska, a team of Air Force men led by Captain Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) and reporter Ned Scott (Douglas Spencer) are sent up to investigate reports of a nearby crash. Dr. Arthur Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) heads the scientific team and his secretary is an old flame of Hendry's, Nikki Nicholson (Margaret Sheridan). The men fly to the crash site and discover what looks to be a tail of an aircraft sticking out of the ice. They spread out to the edges of the dark shape under the ice and what results is one of the my favorite shots in all of science fiction films: they're standing in a circle and they've discovered a flying saucer.

The team also discovers the pilot, frozen in a block of ice. Naturally, they haul the block back to the station and thus ensues the human conflict. Carrington wants to study the alien while Hendry follows the last orders he'd received prior to a winter storm: leave the creature in the ice. No one is happy, least of all one of the guys who is standing watch over the block of ice. He covers the block with a blanket--that just happens to be an electric blanket which is plugged in--and soon, the creature is defrosted. 

After the team recover the Thing's severed arm--the result of a fight with the sled dogs--the scientists realize the alien is actually an advanced form of a plant. Convinced it is intelligent and envious of all the things he could learn from it, Carrington wants to communicate with it. Captain Hendry wants to kill it, especially after they learn the Thing feeds on the blood of the sled dogs and, naturally, two of the scientists it has killed. Interestingly, Carrington is willing to die for science and thinks all the others should be equally as willing.

The ensuing scenes follow the team as they try and figure out how to kill the Thing with the limited resources they have on hand. With this being a black-and-white film, we get some great shots. There's the one in the doorway.

The Thing on fire.

Carrington's attempt to "grow" new aliens from the blood plasma they have on hand for emergencies.

And the finale, where they design a method to electrocute the Thing.

Science vs. the Military

In many SF films, there are always opposing sides to any first-contact issue, and they are on full display here. Unlike 1954's Them, the military guys don't trust Carrington and his scientific team to do the right thing, that being kill the alien. There's a line about the atomic bomb here that's used as the reason scientists can't be trusted. Coming only six years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki--and two years after the Soviets also got the bomb--the fear is palpable. Even the sporadic orders Hendry receives from his superiors wants him to keep the alien alive. But what are humans to do when confronted with a life form determined to survive itself using human blood? In Them, the lead scientist has zero qualms about killing the giant ants. In The Thing, the scientist is willing to die for knowledge.

The Limitations of 1950s Filmmaking

If you've read the novella or seen the 1982 version, you'll know that the Thing can actually shape-shift. Well, not really shape shift but more like it can imitate other forms it encounters, including other humans. Back in 1951, that would be a difficult thing to pull off convincingly, so Howard Hawks dressed up James Arness, the future Matt Dillon himself, as the alien and allowed him to wreck havoc on the humans. 

The Last Warning

I've always had a fondness for this version of the Thing and find it perfectly acceptable for its time. It's a great snapshot of American life in 1951, with the camaraderie of the military men and the discussion about settling down. Sure, it's not perfectly aligned with the novella, but the movie works on multiple levels. It's a basic Kill the Alien type movie while still being about American life in general, less than a decade after World War II and in the early days of the Cold War and the Korean War.

This fear is catalyzed perfectly in the last scene with a great, short speech by reporter Ned Scott.* Finally allowed to send out his story, Scott delivers the following:

Ned Scott: All right, fellas, here's your story: North Pole, November Third, Ned Scott reporting. One of the world's greatest battles was fought and won today by the human race. Here at the top of the world a handful of American soldiers and civilians met the first invasion from another planet. A man by the name of Noah once saved our world with an ark of wood. Here at the North Pole, a few men performed a similar service with an arc of electricity. The flying saucer which landed here and its pilot have been destroyed, but not without causalities among our own meager forces. I would like to bring to the microphone some of the men responsible for our success... but as Senior Air force officer Captain Hendry is attending to demands over and above the call of duty... Doctor Carrington, the leader of the scientific expedition, is recovering from wounds received in the battle.

Eddie: [Softly] Good for you, Scotty.

Ned Scott: And now before giving you the details of the battle, I bring you a warning: Everyone of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody wherever they are. Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!

"Keep watching the skies." A perfect sentence that crystallized the paranoia and fear of the Cold War, where Americans have realized their oceans no longer protected them from attack when the enemy could fly planes over the United States and drop nuclear weapons on our cities. Here in 2021, after a year of living through the COVID-19 pandemic In which our oceans also didn't protect us, what else should we keep watching?

*I've always wondered if Gene Roddenberry enjoyed this film enough to name Star Trek's chief engineer Scotty.

Embrace the Differences: The Raiders of the Lost Ark Novelization

Raiders of the Lost Ark turns forty today. Hard to believe, sometimes. I still remember watching Siskel and Ebert gush over the movie. Youthful though I was--twelve--Harrison Ford had already become my favorite actor because he was Han Solo. Who knew Indiana Jones was just around the corner.

To commemorate the movie's anniversary, I decided to do something I had never done before: read the novelization by Campbell Black. Yeah, I had the book back in the day. Yeah, I remember cracking it open. But I also know I never finished it. Heck, I don't even remember getting that far into the book before stopping it. I have no memory why. Unlike Star Wars--where I devoured every morsel of news, read every book, and bought every comic--I don't remember doing the same thing with Raiders. It is possible I didn't continue with the novelization because of the differences. Now, forty years later, those differences are fantastic.

Raiders is one of my Top 5 all-time movies. I have no idea how many times I've seen it, but those clips in the Siskel and Ebert segment are all familiar. It's probably one of your favorite movies, too. I can "see" the movie in my head when I listen to John Williams's brilliant score. But the novel was a nice breath of fresh air. 

Early Days of the Canon

Campbell Black is the pen name of Campbell Armstrong, a Scottish writer, who wrote over twenty-five novels. Few pieces of information exist on the internet about him, but his bibliography notes Raiders was this third, and final, movie novelization. 

In the one interview he did for TheRaider.net, Black comments that he "wrote Jones as I saw him. An adventurer, yes, but I always felt there was a slight melancholy side to him. I don't think Lucasfilm really approved of this, but from my point of view I couldn't write the novel if I had to base it on the character in the script - I found him shallow and shadowy, all action and no thought, and I wanted to add some kind of internal process to him, which I think I did. Up to a point."

As much as I enjoy the extensive universe other writers created with Indiana Jones (and Star Wars, too), there's something special about a single writer, very early on, looking at stills and the script and crafting a story as he sees it. No canon, no interlaced movies, no franchise, no established backstory, just a script and one writer's ideas on how scenes of a movie can be stitched together into a coherent novel.

Like Alan Dean Foster, who ghostwrote the Star Wars novelization, Black must have had access to an earlier script because the differences between the movie we know so well and the events in the novel are sometimes striking, but that's what makes the experience so rewarding. 

The Movie is Not the Novelization

I'm not sure what happened to my original copy of the novel. I had the version with black on the cover. The paperback I read this week was published in 1989, after Last Crusade, so it has a white cover. Soon after I started reading the South America prelude, I took a pencil and began annotating the differences.

In a movie, editors can make cuts and swipes and change scenes. You can do the same in a novel, but Black provides a lot of connective tissue between scenes. Just how did Indy get to Nepal? Well, Black describes in detail all the travel and driving Indy did, even throwing in a new character, Lin-Su. Granted, he doesn't do the same for the journey from Nepal to Cairo, but who cares.

I enjoyed the languid pace of the novelization. As much as I enjoy the movie and all that it delivers, there's something to be said for the same story delivered via text over a number of days. What Black does is what novels do well: get into the heads of the characters. We hear the inner thoughts of Indy, Marion, and Belloq. They all prove quite compelling in Black's hands, adding layers and nuances to each character. 

Belloq, for example, proves himself more competitive and mercenary than Paul Freeman portrays him in the film. With Freeman, you could almost side with Belloq in his quest for the Ark and the secrets it holds. In the novel, he's depicted very much as borderline insane with his single-minded devotion to getting the Ark and using it before Hitler gets his hands on it. 

Speaking of Belloq, something occurred to me that I never considered in forty years. It's regarding the headpiece to the staff of Ra. Belloq gets his version of the headpiece because the words are burned into Toht's hand. With that, Belloq makes his calculations. Indy, however, needs the Imam to read and interpret the words on the headpiece. Did Indy not know that language?

Key Differences

This is what you want to know, right? Well, let me get to it.

South America 

- The pit over which Indy and Sapito swing is actually obscured. Sapito nearly falls into the pit because he steps into the cobwebs covering the pit.

-Indy takes a swig from a flask as he reaches the idol. [Love this]

Berlin

There are a few scenes not at all in the movie. They are from the point of view of Dietrich, the main German officer as played by Wolf Kahler. Dietrich never trusts Belloq and we get many internal thoughts from the German. It also explains how Belloq came to be employed by Hitler. Later, during the Cairo scenes, we get a few more scenes from Dietrich's POV, irritated at Belloq's pomposity.

Connecticut

It is certainly implied that Indy is a womanizer, all but taking an undergrad per semester. This is part of the apparent--but never explained--backstory with Indy and Marion. Based on the book, she might as been as young as sixteen when the mid-twenties Indy had a relationship with her. 

Cairo

-There's a nighttime scene between Indy and Marion and whether or not they they'll hook up. It includes their actual first kiss and we get the skeevy take from Indy about how well the woman kisses versus the child from his past.

-The Imam who reads the markings on the headpiece is the one who puts into Indy's head the idea that no mortal should look at the contents of the Ark. It is the Imam's warning Indy remembers at the end.

Tanis Dig

-There is no scene between Belloq and Marion where she puts on the dress and tries to drink him under the table. In its place is Marion's seemingly being under Belloq's spell. They actually kiss and she all but succumbs to him. 

-Belloq actually sees all the lightening that floods the sky when Indy and his friends open the Well of the Souls. 

Truck Chase

-Toht is in the car that flies off the cliff. He dies here and doesn't get his face melted at the end.

-Black describes how the Germans discovered which pirate ship is carrying the Ark.

The Island

-We learn how Belloq arranged for him to open the Ark before delivery to Berlin.

-The scene where Belloq challenges Indy to blow up the Ark isn't here.

Verdict

The novelization is a nice addition to the wonderful movie. There is a place for both. Campbell Black's novel is a good story and a worthy addition to the canon we now have, even if much of what he comes up with (how Indy got the bullwhip) is overridden with subsequent movies and books. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and actually might continue with the novelizations of the next three films. 

Side Note

I went and located my copy of the comic adaptation and many of the scenes mentioned here are in there. Perhaps the Marvel comics folks and Black read from the same script.

Sixty-Seven Years Later, THEM! Holds Up

What do Matt Dillion, Daniel Boone, Kris Kringle, and Mr. Spock have in common? They all battled giant ants in 1954.

I can't remember exactly when I first saw this 1954 film, but there's a sliver of a memory from the early 80s when I spent some summer weeks at my grandparents' house in Tyler, Texas and it might've been then. Moreover, I also can't pinpoint when I was re-introduced to this film directed by Gordon Douglas. Sometime this century. But it has vaulted to one of my favorite 1950s-era science fiction movies.

I watched it again over the weekend, first time in a few years, and boy does it hold up well. It is sixty-seven years old this month, and still packs some genuine suspense, especially during the anticipation of first seeing the ants and, of course, their sound effect.

The atomic bomb tests at Alamogordo, New Mexico, were only nine years old when THEM was released, and the unknowns about nuclear energy were still being learned. It is nuclear radiation that morphs the common small ant into the giant behemoths we see in the film. 

The opening sequence is gripping and unsettling, as we follow a pair of New Mexico state troopers as they discover a little girl wandering in the desert. She's catatonic, in a speechless state of shock. Even as the troopers, one of whom is played by James Whitmore, investigate what happened to her family and a nearby store owner, they can't make heads or tails of the destruction. It's only when we hear that distinctive sound effect of the ants does the girl react. Cleverly, Whitmore and a doctor do not see the girl rise up from her resting spot, terror across her face, only to lie down again, eyes wide in fear.

That sound effect. Most every time, it precedes the visuals of the creatures, and it adds so much suspense for the viewer. I defy you not to have a little chilly twinge crawl up your spine when you hear it. One of the troopers hears the high-pitched sound and goes off screen to investigate. The last thing we hear is his own death scream. 

What struck me with this viewing is how the first half of the film is basically a crime film. There are the investigators--now including an FBI agent played by James Arness (Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke), and a pair of scientists, father and daughter, played by Edmund Gwenn (Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street) and Joan Weldon--just trying to figure out what's going on. The monsters drop out of their own film largely because of costs, I assume, but the unknown facing the investigators makes for quite an urgent story. The investigators scour news reports and interview eyewitnesses--including Fess Parker (star of the Daniel Boone TV show) as a pilot who saw the queen ants flying west but is thrown in an insane asylum because of his wild story. 

There's even a scene where our heroes discover another nest of ants, the workers protecting both a pair of queen ants and their eggs. Reminded me of Aliens (1986) and how many other monster films. 

A young Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek's Mr. Spock) shows up as a soldier relaying information from the teletype machine.

They finally figure out there's a nest in the sewers of Los Angeles. At this point, we jump to a more traditional monster film: humans hunting the creatures in darkened tunnels, the suspense escalating. That a prime weapon is flamethrowers lends itself to some gruesome imagery of the ants being consumed by fire. 

From a historical perspective, what I appreciate about THEM is how the soldiers and the scientists worked together. The military defers to the entomologists in the discovery of the insects, but the scientists don't want to preserve one for study, a trope in many films of this kind. No, the scientists know exactly what they need to do and work to that end. This is also a year after the Korean War where our military and the government is still held with a certain amount of respect by the civilians. Many of the side characters accept what the FBI agents tell them without question. I bet you'd get quite a different kind of movie nowadays. 

We also get a potential lesson at the close of the film, as the last nest of ants are consumed by flames. "When Man entered the Atomic Age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict." Looking to sixty-seven years to 1954 from the vantage point of 2021, we can see how many of the nuclear fears of the early days of the Cold War didn't pan out, and we're all relieved by it. But in our post-COVID pandemic era, when the origin of the virus is still not fully known, what are our fears now? What might the folks sixty-seven years hence--2088--think of our current fears. Will they pan out, or will they fester into something greater?

Palm Springs: A Time-Loop Rom-Com Full of Emotion and an Intriguing Ending

Friday night is movie night at the Parker house. Last Friday, the wife selected the film: a brand-new movie released on Hulu called Palm Springs. It's a film starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti that is part rom-com and part Groundhog Day. I knew nothing about the film, but it only took me seeing half the trailer to jump on board.

Boy, I’m sure glad my wife found this utterly delightful film.

Samberg spends much of his time on camera in the same yellow swim trunks and red Hawaiian shirt, but he also wears this to a wedding. Who the heck wears a swimsuit to a wedding? A guy who’s stuck in a time loop.

But we don’t know that at the movie starts. All we see is Samberg’s Nyles bored with life and love. Lazy time in a pool, snatching a microphone during the wedding toast, speaking directly to Milioti’s Sarah. Samberg is never without a beer (which made me wonder just how many he opened on set). But Sarah finally meets him as Nyles does a funny dance with all the guests at the party.

They talk, they go out in the desert to make out, only to be stopped by a shadowed man who shoots Nyles with a bow and arrow. The hunter (J.K. Simmons) flees into a cave with a bright orange glow. Nyles follows, but he implores Sarah not to follow him.

She does.

And wakes up on the same day (9 November) in her same bed. She freaks out (who wouldn’t?) and finds Nyles. It is he who tells her they (and Simmons’s Roy) are stuck in a time loop on the day of the wedding. She does what anyone else would do to try and stop it. When she discovers she can’t, she accepts it and she and Nyles begin their courtship.

The Journey in a Rom Com

In just about every romantic comedy, the question isn’t if the pair will end up together, it’s how. Still, it’s fun to see these two enjoying life. Nyles now wakes with a smile on his face and slowly but surely, so does Sarah. But they’re just spending time together and not sleeping together.

Until one night, natch. There’s a short sequence here that is magical that I won’t spoil here, but it left me grinning ear to ear. Even my wife loved it.

But in every rom-com, you have the breakup. Yes, it happens here. Nyles goes back to moping, finally realizing that his life-in-the-time-loop philosophy of carpe diem is wrong and that he’s actually fallen in love with Sarah. He even seeks out Roy to see where his day always starts. Sarah, on the other hand, goes to school. She starts to spend every day on the internet learning about quantum physics, determined to find a way to escape.

Now, at this point, I’m going to say that Palm Springs is a wonderful film. Writer Andy Siara has taken a pair of fun tropes and mixed them together in a nice, twisty film that is pretty darn funny and emotional. Director Max Barbakow unfolds the story in such a way as to reveal new facts the deeper into the movie you go.

For me, having never watched Andy Samberg in anything other than Saturday Night Live, it was fun to watch him morph from his usual type personality on SNL to show some genuine emotion. I only know Milioti from the opening story on last year’s Modern Love TV series (highly recommended), but she shines here. I really appreciated how she changed over the course of the film, and she shows that change with her voice.

Really enjoyed this film, and it felt good to watch something new. I’m going to talk about the science fictional elements in the section below, but make no mistake: it barely factors into this delightful show. Unlike, say, Back to the Future or Star Trek, this is a movie focused on characters. The SF stuff is just there to make the characters interact. So if you don’t like SF, don’t worry. It’s barely there.

But be sure to stay through the first half of the credits....

SPOILER WARNING:

From here on out, I talk the ending. Go watch the film and then come back. And this is all my own conjecture. I’ve not read any other articles, assuming they’re there (I’ll be checking after I write this). And all of this is just a fun thought experiment. The movie stands on its own.




Ready?



So, Sarah figures out how to get out of the time loop. She’s conducted the experiment with the goat. She knows it works because the goat no longer shows up in their time loop.

Okay, I got that. Then she and Nyles shuffle into the cave and as they kiss, she ignites the C4. Boom. Next thing we see, Nyles and Sarah are in the neighbor’s pool…and the neighbors show up. Nyles remarks that he guesses they return on 10 November, which is proof her experiment worked.

Cut to long shots of the desert…and I’ll tell you right now, I was starting to be not 100% satisfied with the ending. What about Roy? (As a dad, after Roy’s little speech, I felt sorry for him.)

The mid-credits sequence proves he also gets out.

But how?

So Sarah and Nyles are now in Regular Time, presumably 10 November and beyond. In the mid-credits scene, Roy comes up to Nyles (now dressed in a suit) and says “You’re girlfriend told me about the way to get out of this loop.” Nyles turns…and doesn’t appear to know Roy. Roy then breaks into a huge grin, knowing the escape is possible.

Again, how? How does Sarah and Nyles essentially go back in time to get Roy out of the time loop?

My first idea is that Nyles was lying to Roy, pretending not to know him but really being Nyles of Time Line A (the one of which we see only one day). That is, the Nyles we’ve seen for 90 minutes. But that still doesn’t explain how Sarah communicated to Roy. Nor how they basically went back in time to 9 November to relay the information. The only explanation I could come up with is a parallel universe.

Side question: assuming Time Line A is what we see—and Nyles and Sarah are caught in an infinite loop—can we assume everyone else in Time Line A just goes about their lives on 10 November and beyond, wondering where Nyles and Sarah are? Ditto for Roy’s family. To everyone else, the trio will have simply disappeared. Erased from existence, to quote Doc Brown.

The other idea is that Nyles and Sarah lived 9 November in as many parallel universes as they did, with every other person living out their days wondering whatever happened to Nyles and Sarah.

But somehow, Sarah communicated to Roy. The only explanation I can come up with is that Sarah figured out a way to go back in time. Heck, she figured out how to break out of the time loop. What’s to say she couldn’t figure out how to go back in. Or at least communicate through time. Perhaps the only thing she can do is communicate back in time, giving Roy instructions on what to do and how to do it.

That’s the only explanation I can come up with.

What are your thoughts?

The Road to The Empire Strikes Back: Episode V: The Movie Re-Watch

It was 40 years ago today that I saw the sequel to Star Wars for the first time. I watched it again yesterday after a long time not seeing it and I recorded some thoughts, including some rather emotional ones about Han and the carbon freeze chamber and what he did.

The video is up on my YouTube channel.

The Road to The Empire Strikes Back: Episode IV: Marvel Comics

Here's a link to my YouTube channel where I discuss the issues of Marvel Comics' Star Wars title in the months immediately preceding the release of The Empire Strikes Back.

The Road to The Empire Strikes Back: Episode II: The Trailers

Today, I continue my video series examining the months and moments and mementos forty years ago leading up to the release of the very first Star Wars sequel.

Episode II focuses on the trailers. I have a little bit of Mystery Science Theater to this episode as we watch the trailers together.

Here's the link to my YouTube Channel.

Have a look and leave a comment letting me know what you thought of the trailer back then and now.

Enjoy!

Avengers: Endgame - The 2020 Summer Movie Season Kicks Off This Week

If you've read my post about the summer 2020 movie season--AKA we're basically not going to have a usual one--I suggested we build out own. I developed a list of movies that came out in years ending with five or zero, thus a nice and tidy anniversary number. Other than The Empire Strikes Back (21 May) and Back to the Future (3 July), I'm still making my own schedule, but there is one exception.

Avengers: Endgame came out a year ago this week. It, along with Infinity War in 2018, was and remains one of my favorite movie-going experiences. The crowd reaction, the anticipation, the talking about it afterwards. It truly was a unique phenomenon.

So I'll be re-watching it this Friday evening. Yeah, it'll be at home with just the family, but I want to remember just how awesome that movie was. Then I'll follow up with some of those YouTube clips of audience reactions to help remind me and everyone just how great it is to sit in a darkened theater and experience a movie with a bunch of other people.

I miss theaters and look forward to returning.

Build Your Own Summer 2020 Movie Blockbuster Calendar

A year ago this week, all of us who loved big-budget action movies and Marvel movies were all chomping at the bit and counting the days before the premier of Avengers: Endgame. It was never a question of if the Avengers would defeat Thanos. It was how. Then, on 26 April 2019, we got our answer.

Endgame kicked off the 2019 summer movie season and it was a pretty good one. Over the years, comic book movies and super-hero movies served at tent poles to the summer season. There was more than one year in which I'd mark release dates on the family calendar hanging on the fridge for all to see. The summer movie season is my favorite season of the year.

In 2020, however, it's a different story. Many of the films have been pushed back already. Wonder Woman 1984 got bumped to August. Christopher Nolan's Tenet still hangs onto its mid-July date, so maybe it'll stay. But most of the others will be fall or December movies. Because nothing quite says Merry Christmas like a Top Gun sequel.

What's a movie goer to do?

I've been thinking it over in recent days and I've come up with an idea: Build your own summer movie blockbuster season.

This is 2020, so the some anniversaries--ten years or five years--are easy to calculate. The biggest movie I was already planning to re-watch was The Empire Strikes Back (on VHS!), which turns forty next month. The other obvious one is Jaws which is forty-five in June. Back to the Future is thirty-five this year. Curious, I paged through the various "Movies in [fill in the blank year]" lists and compiled a list of movies that were released in the summer months going back all the way to 1975. I chose 1975 because I can actually remember going to the cinema that year. And I only selected years ending in zero or five.

I'll post the list at the end of this piece, but my guiding idea was movies I'd actually seen. There are a few exceptions, noted with an asterisk. Those are films I've come to watch but didn't at the time of release.

A couple of Disney films popped up. The Apple Dumpling Gang is, perhaps, the first film I saw in a cinema because I have distinct memories of it. Oh! Heavenly Dog and The Last Flight of Noah's Ark are, I hope on Disney+.

The one oddball is 1980's The Kidnapping of the President. That title stopped me and, it turns out, the film stars William Shatner. That's enough for me.

I honestly haven't made my own list yet, but, as I wrote at the beginning of this post, there will be one exception: Avengers: Endgame. I've only seen it twice and, well, having seen those recent posts where someone synced up audience reactions to a couple of big moments in the movie, I want to revisit again. So, already on the calendar for next Friday, 24 April, is Endgame.

Why do this? Well, to build anticipation. I'm no medical professional, grocery professional, or any other kind of worker whose job is deemed essential and has to venture out into the public day after day. My part in this great Coronavirus year of 2020 is to stay home, stay healthy, and stay out of the way.

So I'm manufacturing a movie release schedule to build up excitement to re-watch some old favorites. And, no: I'm not jumping the gun on them. If there's a movie I haven't seen in a long time that originally was released in June or July--say, Jaws or Inception--then I'm waiting until those dates (or the nearest approximation).

Call me odd, call me weird (which my wife does frequently), but I'm looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to returning to a theater when it's all safe to do so. I love movies, and I really love watching them in a theater.

Here's the list, broken out by year and then by month. Enjoy.


Summer Movies for 2020

1975
Jaws - June 20
The Apple Dumpling Gang - July 1

1980
The Empire Strikes Back - May 21
*Airplane - July 2
The Last Flight of Noah's Ark - July 9
Oh! Heavenly Dog - July 11
*The Kidnapping of the President - Aug 15 (Prime)

1985

A View to a Kill - May 22
Rambo: First Blood Part II - May 22
Fletch - May 31
The Goonies - June 7
Cocoon - June 21
*Pale Rider - June 26
Back to the Future - July 3
*Silverado - July 12
Teen Wolf - Aug 23

1990
Back to the Future Part III - May 25
Total Recall - June 1
Dick Tracy - June 15
Die Hard 2 - July 4
Ghost - July 13
Presumed Innocent - July 27
Darkman - Aug 24

1995

Crimson Tide - May 12
Die Hard with a Vengeance - May 19
Batman Forever - June 16

2000
U-571 - Apr 21
Gladiator - May 5
Mission Impossible 2 - May 24
Chicken Run - June 21
The Patriot - June 28
X-Men - July 14
What Lies Beneath - July 21
Space Cowboys - Aug 4


2005
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith - May 19
Batman Begins - June 15
War of the Worlds - June 29

2010

Iron Man 2 - May 7
Toy Story 3 - June 18
*Knight and Day - June 23
Inception - July 16
*The Expendables - Aug 13

2015

Avengers: Age of Ultron - Apr 13
*Mad Max: Fury Road - May 7
Tomorrowland - May 8
Inside Out - May 18
*San Andreas - May 27
Jurassic World - May 29
Ant-Man - June 29
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Jul 23
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - Aug 7

2019
Avengers: Endgame – Apr 26


**BY DATE**

APRIL
U-571 - Apr 21
Avengers: Age of Ultron - Apr 13
Avengers: Endgame – Apr 26

MAY
Gladiator - May 5
Iron Man 2 - May 7
*Mad Max: Fury Road - May 7
Tomorrowland - May 8
Crimson Tide - May 12
Inside Out - May 18
Die Hard with a Vengeance - May 19
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith - May 19
The Empire Strikes Back - May 21
A View to a Kill - May 22
Rambo: First Blood Part II - May 22
Mission Impossible 2 - May 24
Back to the Future Part III - May 25
*San Andreas - May 27
Jurassic World - May 29
Fletch - May 31

JUNE
Total Recall - June 1
The Goonies - June 7
Dick Tracy - June 15
Batman Begins - June 15
Batman Forever - June 16
Toy Story 3 - June 18
Jaws - June 20
Cocoon - June 21
Chicken Run - June 21
*Knight and Day - June 23
*Pale Rider - June 26
The Patriot - June 28
War of the Worlds - June 29
Ant-Man - June 29

JULY
The Apple Dumpling Gang - July 1
Airplane - July 2
Back to the Future - July 3
Die Hard 2 - July 4
The Last Flight of Noah's Ark - July 9
Oh! Heavenly Dog - July 11
*Silverado - July 12
Ghost - July 13
X-Men - July 14
Inception - July 16
What Lies Beneath - July 21
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Jul 23
Presumed Innocent - July 27

AUGUST
Space Cowboys - Aug 4
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - Aug 7
*The Expendables - Aug 13
*The Kidnapping of the President - Aug 15 (Prime)
Teen Wolf - Aug 23
Darkman - Aug 24