(click images to win a medal)
Friday, February 28, 2014
Thursday, February 27, 2014
#691. Box Office 2013
2013 was another wild year at the movies, deep into the new franchise era, although a couple of high concept original ideas broke into the top ten as well...
People Critics finally take Matthew McConaughey seriously.
1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($423 mil)
The second installment of this adaptation from the Suzanne Collins books marks the first time in the over thirty year span I've covered in this series where a movie featuring a female lead (Jennifer Lawrence) captures the top of the yearly box office.
2. Iron Man 3 ($409 mil)
The Avengers cycle rolls along with this first follow-up to The Avengers itself, Tony Stark attempting to figure out how to move on.
3. Frozen ($384 mil)
Animated movies have become reliably big business (Toy Story 3 and Shrek 2 are two recent examples of ones that reached all the way to the top). This is Disney rediscovering its own groove.
4. Despicable Me 2 ($368 mil)
The prevailing trend in these animated flicks is trying to learn how far you can push the canvas. This is one of the success stories, featuring a quasi-unlikable lead. Although apparently quite likable.
5. Man of Steel ($291 mil)
A movie that is fast becoming known as much for its upcoming sequel as for the controversy about its ending, which apparently solidifies this as a darker interpretation of Superman.
6. Gravity ($269 mil)
The Sandra Bullock love machine remains intact!
7. Monsters University ($268 mil)
This sequel to Monsters, Inc. changes pretty much everything about the concept except the central stars.
8. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug ($256 mil)
The high point of this Peter Jackson franchise was Return of the King winning the crown in 2003. Although I argue this is the best effort so far.
9. Fast & Furious 6 ($238 mil)
One of the unlikeliest successes stories in recent Hollywood lore was the increasing and continuing success of this series.
10. Oz the Great and Powerful ($234 mil)
May have broken the idea that only Judy Garland can sell the L. Frank Baum concept to broad audiences.
11. Star Trek Into Darkness ($228 mil)
Anytime Star Trek is a huge success is still pretty surprising to fans who remember when it became mainstream poison (ever more so) only a decade earlier.
12. Thor: The Dark World ($205 mil)
The fact that Thor can have not one but two successful movies is the true strength of the Avengers allure.
13. World War Z ($202 mil)
A lot of people worried a great deal that this movie wouldn't do well. It did.
15. The Heat ($159 mil)
Bullock strikes again, and Melissa McCarthy proves she's a box office draw.
17. The Great Gatsby ($144 mil)
Leonardo DiCaprio is a reliable draw now. This wasn't always the case. After Titanic he struggled a great deal.
18. American Hustle ($144 mil)
The success of this movie is a great testament to the continuing appeal of movies that don't feature blockbuster effects or animated characters.
20. Identity Thief ($134 mil)
Melissa McCarthy again, in a movie released prior to The Heat. She's most definitely a star.
22. The Wolverine ($132 mil)
Hugh Jackman became an instant star when he debuted this role in X-Men, but has always struggled to translate that into mass appeal when he stars on his own.
23. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues ($125 mil)
Honestly, it seemed at one point that Will Ferrell would have been far happier with all the promotional appearances as Ron Burgundy.
24. G.I. Joe: Retaliation ($122 mil)
Dwayne Johnson is in the same boat as Jackman, really. But he's found a reliable career folding into existing franchises.
25. Lone Survivor ($121 mil)
The mass success of this one was surprising, but there always seems to be a market for war movies actually about war.
26. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 ($119 mil)
The filmmakers behind these quirky movies got a much bigger hit on their hands with The Lego Movie this year.
27. Now You See Me ($117 mil)
One of the bigger surprises of the year.
28. Lee Daniels' The Butler ($116 mil)
A word-of-mouth smash.
29. The Wolf of Wall Street ($112 mil)
DiCaprio and Scorsese strike gold again.
30. The Hangover Part III ($112 mil)
Probably won't be another one, and I bet everyone's fine with that.
31. Epic ($107 mil)
Even though this is an animated movie more than a Colin Farrell movie, I still count this as a Farrell success. He gets so few of them.
32. Captain Phillips ($106 mil)
Tom Hanks is so reliable it's easy to take him for granted, but every so often he can still have a hit on his hands.
36. Olympus Has Fallen ($98 mil)
Of the improbable battle of White House movies, this Gerard Butler movie was the winner. And a rare winner for Butler as well!
37. 42 ($95 mil)
Baseball movies are an underappreciated genre. Maybe this one was more relevant as one of the many success stories of 2013 for movies featuring black leads.
39. Planes ($90 mil)
A surprise success for a Cars variant that wasn't supposed to be released in theaters.
40. Lone Ranger ($89 mil)
This seems like a fine opportunity to remind people Johnny Depp is not usually a huge draw outside the guise of Jack Sparrow.
44. Saving Mr. Banks ($82 mil)
Tom Hanks again, in a movie that I find vastly underappreciated. But it still made a good amount of money. And counts as another success for Colin Farrell, the mostly uncredited third lead.
46. White House Down ($73 mil)
The competition for Olympus Has Fallen.
47. Mama ($71 mil)
A number of horror success stories in 2013, including this one starring Jessica Chastain.
50. The Best Man Holiday ($70 mil)
The unlikely follow-up to a movie released in 1999.
52. A Good Day to Die Hard ($67 mil)
The biggest success of movies featuring action stars of the '80s.
58. Prisoners ($61 mil)
Another success story for the traditional adult drama.
59. After Earth ($60 mil)
M. Night Shyamalan learned along with the rest of us that Will Smith's hot streak is officially over.
62. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters ($55 mil)
These movies are rarely huge successes.
69. Pain and Gain ($49 mil)
Probably the only time Dwayne Johnson will flaunt his muscles outside of an action role.
70. 12 Years a Slave ($49 mil)
Not a huge success, but a good amount for a movie with such difficult subject matter.
76. Riddick ($42 mil)
The problem of trying to create a blockbuster out of a movie (Pitch Black) that wasn't itself a blockbuster is that you have to try hard to make it a blockbuster. Keep trying, Vin Diesel.
82. Carrie ($45 mil)
First starring role for frequent scene stealer Chloe Moretz.
85. Blue Jasmine ($33 mil)
For anyone else this is not a huge success. For Woody Allen, this is a huge success.
87. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain ($32 mil)
Probably helps explain his 2014 success.
92. Grudge Match ($29 mil)
Rocky vs. Raging Bull.
94. Kick-Ass 2 ($28 mil)
Jim Carrey's biggest success of the year. In his defense, he didn't actually star in any movies this year.
97. The World's End ($26 mil)
The conclusion to the Wright/Pegg/Frost trilogy.
100. Dallas Buyers Club ($24 mil)
101. Don Jon ($24 mil)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt's plan for world domination has taken into account that it will take a little time.
102. Her ($23 mil)
Remarkably, Joaquin Phoenix was able to survive I'm Not Here.
107. The Way, Way Back ($21 mil)
Jim Rash is trying to steal Joseph Gordon-Levitt's plan. Don't tell him.
120. The Counselor ($16 mil)
Cormac McCarthy is too old for his plan. He will bequeath it to the car Cameron Diaz humps in this movie.
121. Nebraska ($16 mil)
MacGruber goes straight. (Does not find a Stargate.)
123. Fruitvale Station ($16 mil)
Michael B. Jordan's calling card for Johnny Storm.
124. About Time ($15 mil)
Rachel McAdams will be traveling through time to find a massive hit in time travel movies.
126. Spring Breakers ($14 mil)
Became notorious. Still working on becoming a cult classic.
129. Out of the Furnace ($11 mil)
Casey Affleck is not Batman.
130. Dead Man Down ($10 mil)
Colin Farrell is not a huge box office draw.
137. Before Midnight ($8 mil)
The great indy love trilogy. But they should keep making these.
139. Machete Kills ($8 mil)
Not the box office, however.
146. The Bling Ring ($5 mil)
The latest from Sofia Coppola.
153. Much Ado About Nothing ($4 mil)
After all the chatter about Whedon's Shakespeare and to have only gotten this much in return...
160. The Fifth Estate ($3 mil)
This was a Benedict Cumberbatch movie, damn it. It should have made millions! Oh wait, it did. Just not a lot of them.
176. Oldboy ($2 mil)
Josh Brolin is awesome. But people don't like Spike Lee anymore. So Spike Lee is hardly about to make Josh Brolin a box office star.
178. Blue is the Warmest Color ($2 mil)
It is also a lesbian color, apparently.
179. Austenland ($2 mil)
It may be an Austenland, but it's an Avengers world.
184. The Iceman ($1 mil)
Michael Shannon is awesome! That's why everyone was so upset to see Superman kill him. Because otherwise he's not blockbuster material, alas...
197. Girl Most Likely ($1 mil)
Who would've thought that the biggest winner from Bridesmaids wouldn't be Kristen Wiig?
222. 56 Up ($700 thou)
This is the model the Before... movies should follow. Keep them going!
227. To the Wonder ($500 thou)
Terrence Malick apparently used up his box office clout with Tree of Life.
231. The Reluctant Fundamentalist ($500 thou)
The book was awesome. Glad there's a movie now, too.
243. Ain't Them Bodies Saints ($300 thou)
Casey Affleck only stars in movies with incredibly elaborate titles. Might I recommend Ain't Them Bodies Avengers?
283. Arthur Newman ($200 thou)
Emily Blunt. Why wasn't this movie a bigger success???
290. Midnight's Children ($100 thou)
Based on a book by Salman Rushdie. Can we get the Satanic Verses movie already???
313. John Dies at the End ($100 thou)
Spoiler alert!!!
359. Byzantium ($80 thou)
Neil Jordan is pretty awesome. Here he has Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan to work with.
361. Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon ($80 thou)
Didn't even know there was a second one. Still haven't seen the first one, though.
476. Dear Mr. Watterson ($20 thou)
A companion of sorts to the book Looking for Calvin & Hobbes.
Source: Box Office Mojo
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
#689. Not Ready for the Burden
While Yoda is dying in Return of the Jedi and basically undoing everything he said in The Empire Strikes Back, he tells Luke Skywalker that he didn't tell him the truth about Darth Vader because he wasn't "ready for the burden."
Now, I have to wonder, what exactly is the burden Yoda was talking about? The burden of knowing Vader was his father? That Luke would subsequently rush to fight him, unprepared? I'm thinking it goes a little deeper than that. This is all about the prophecy of bringing balance to the Force. It was never Anakin Skywalker who was meant to fulfill the prophecy, but rather his son.
It's Anakin who buys into the concept of the Dark Side. Trained in the ways of the Jedi, but only at the objections of key members from the Council, including both Yoda and Mace Windu, Anakin becomes a Sith Lord and wipes out most of the Jedi. This is fine for the Sith, because the ancient schism that led to the diverging orders had limited the presence of the Sith to only a handful of practitioners, usually a master and apprentice. I've speculated before that there were probably routinely more of them hanging around, even if they were only in reserve, or proxies, or pawns. Count Dooku, for instance, or Sifo Dyas, both of whom would have had to overlap the career of Darth Maul under Darth Sidious (that is to say, Palpatine, the Emperor). The Jedi always had far more practitioners, including a training academy with rigorous standards for admittance. The thing is, it didn't really matter, then, if Vader killed every existing Jedi. He would have to affect the Force itself, how it was perceived.
To a certain extent, he succeeded in that goal all too well. In a span of a few decades, knowledge of the Force had been almost completely forgotten or marginalized. The Jedi are dismissed as an "ancient religion" by one of Vader's Imperial colleagues, even though Vader himself actively practices a variation on it. Han Solo calls it a "hokey religion." In fact, the common description of the Force as a religion is a telling one, too. It apparently requires belief to sustain its existence, at least in the popular imagination.
That's what the Sith always wanted, likely, to keep knowledge of the Force hidden and suppressed. It wasn't Darth Sidious who created the Sith sect, but no greater adherent was ever likely to be found, someone who used it brilliantly, who rarely used his skills even though they remained great. When Vader destroys the Jedi Order and its remaining Knights go into hiding, the Sith have effectively turned the Jedi into a mirror of itself. This itself would not create a balance, but a staging ground. Both sects still remain. It has become a stalemate.
Vader seems fine to be in a relatively passive position. Star Wars fans tend to distort the record a great deal, and Vader is a prime example of that, along with Boba Fett. Both became instant icons even though all evidence in the material itself suggests no one around them really thought they were so special. Vader is really no different than Darth Maul. In The Phantom Menace, the Trade Federation only becomes aware of his existence after Darth Sidious dispatches him to work in the field. Perhaps a fitting role for an apprentice, but Vader is hardly hiding away the way Darth Maul was, waiting to do something. He's a key member of the Imperial hierarchy, Governor Tarkin's right hand man. He leads troops and commands every situation unquestionably on missions. No one is surprised when he uses the Force, but he doesn't appear to use it often. He hides in plain sight.
Luke, on the other hand, approaches the Force not as a matter of course but as a tool. He uses it like a trick, a get-out-of-jail-free card at every opportunity, whether it's reaching his lightsaber on Hoth or leaping out of the carbon freeze apparatus in Cloud City. He's reckless and never really considers it an art, and certainly not a religion. He sees no difference between his father and Yoda, and only rejects the Emperor's request to join him when he considers what he can lose rather than what he might gain. Anakin was the complete opposite. All his talk of loss only leads him to want more. Anakin fears, but it's Luke's fear that dominates events. Loss was a matter of course for him. He never knew his birth parents.
He brings balance to the Force because he rejects everything that he's told about it. For him, a Jedi is no different from a Sith. That's the key difference. It's not even that he never knew the system that caused all the problems to begin with, the one Anakin had to break. Luke doesn't repair it. He transcends it. He ends the schism. Once more, it's just the Force. But the Force is no longer a religion, worshiped by its practitioners. It's a means to an end.
The burden Yoda spoke of? Yes, it was a matter of confronting the truth about his father, about Luke's own past. But it was a past that extended far past the Skywalkers, something Yoda could never talk about with him, either of them, really. Yoda and Mace Windu wanted to reject Anakin, but they were the ones who most keenly understood what was happening to the Jedi, even if they didn't know why. It was the Sith growing stronger. It was the Sith threatening to do from the other end what the prophecy needed to accomplish. Had Luke known any of this, had he decided to side with the Emperor, the Force would remain a mystery. It would become what the Emperor wanted, what even the Jedi wanted, some sacred tradition that needed to be protected. Yoda and Mace knew Anakin had selfish motives. Yoda knew Luke had them too. That's what he wanted to avoid. But Luke's yearning came from a different place, one that was only possible after his father lost his own inner struggles. Luke understood all too well what needed to be done.
The burden he never needed Yoda to explain was one that didn't consider the Force at all, but a need he had to repair something that had nothing to do with it, to allow someone to fix a mistake on their own. To no longer rely on the Force. To remove it from the idea of a religion. To free it. To bring balance, not between competing sects, but within its practitioners.
Was Luke ready? More ready than Yoda thought, perhaps.
Now, I have to wonder, what exactly is the burden Yoda was talking about? The burden of knowing Vader was his father? That Luke would subsequently rush to fight him, unprepared? I'm thinking it goes a little deeper than that. This is all about the prophecy of bringing balance to the Force. It was never Anakin Skywalker who was meant to fulfill the prophecy, but rather his son.
It's Anakin who buys into the concept of the Dark Side. Trained in the ways of the Jedi, but only at the objections of key members from the Council, including both Yoda and Mace Windu, Anakin becomes a Sith Lord and wipes out most of the Jedi. This is fine for the Sith, because the ancient schism that led to the diverging orders had limited the presence of the Sith to only a handful of practitioners, usually a master and apprentice. I've speculated before that there were probably routinely more of them hanging around, even if they were only in reserve, or proxies, or pawns. Count Dooku, for instance, or Sifo Dyas, both of whom would have had to overlap the career of Darth Maul under Darth Sidious (that is to say, Palpatine, the Emperor). The Jedi always had far more practitioners, including a training academy with rigorous standards for admittance. The thing is, it didn't really matter, then, if Vader killed every existing Jedi. He would have to affect the Force itself, how it was perceived.
To a certain extent, he succeeded in that goal all too well. In a span of a few decades, knowledge of the Force had been almost completely forgotten or marginalized. The Jedi are dismissed as an "ancient religion" by one of Vader's Imperial colleagues, even though Vader himself actively practices a variation on it. Han Solo calls it a "hokey religion." In fact, the common description of the Force as a religion is a telling one, too. It apparently requires belief to sustain its existence, at least in the popular imagination.
That's what the Sith always wanted, likely, to keep knowledge of the Force hidden and suppressed. It wasn't Darth Sidious who created the Sith sect, but no greater adherent was ever likely to be found, someone who used it brilliantly, who rarely used his skills even though they remained great. When Vader destroys the Jedi Order and its remaining Knights go into hiding, the Sith have effectively turned the Jedi into a mirror of itself. This itself would not create a balance, but a staging ground. Both sects still remain. It has become a stalemate.
Vader seems fine to be in a relatively passive position. Star Wars fans tend to distort the record a great deal, and Vader is a prime example of that, along with Boba Fett. Both became instant icons even though all evidence in the material itself suggests no one around them really thought they were so special. Vader is really no different than Darth Maul. In The Phantom Menace, the Trade Federation only becomes aware of his existence after Darth Sidious dispatches him to work in the field. Perhaps a fitting role for an apprentice, but Vader is hardly hiding away the way Darth Maul was, waiting to do something. He's a key member of the Imperial hierarchy, Governor Tarkin's right hand man. He leads troops and commands every situation unquestionably on missions. No one is surprised when he uses the Force, but he doesn't appear to use it often. He hides in plain sight.
Luke, on the other hand, approaches the Force not as a matter of course but as a tool. He uses it like a trick, a get-out-of-jail-free card at every opportunity, whether it's reaching his lightsaber on Hoth or leaping out of the carbon freeze apparatus in Cloud City. He's reckless and never really considers it an art, and certainly not a religion. He sees no difference between his father and Yoda, and only rejects the Emperor's request to join him when he considers what he can lose rather than what he might gain. Anakin was the complete opposite. All his talk of loss only leads him to want more. Anakin fears, but it's Luke's fear that dominates events. Loss was a matter of course for him. He never knew his birth parents.
He brings balance to the Force because he rejects everything that he's told about it. For him, a Jedi is no different from a Sith. That's the key difference. It's not even that he never knew the system that caused all the problems to begin with, the one Anakin had to break. Luke doesn't repair it. He transcends it. He ends the schism. Once more, it's just the Force. But the Force is no longer a religion, worshiped by its practitioners. It's a means to an end.
The burden Yoda spoke of? Yes, it was a matter of confronting the truth about his father, about Luke's own past. But it was a past that extended far past the Skywalkers, something Yoda could never talk about with him, either of them, really. Yoda and Mace Windu wanted to reject Anakin, but they were the ones who most keenly understood what was happening to the Jedi, even if they didn't know why. It was the Sith growing stronger. It was the Sith threatening to do from the other end what the prophecy needed to accomplish. Had Luke known any of this, had he decided to side with the Emperor, the Force would remain a mystery. It would become what the Emperor wanted, what even the Jedi wanted, some sacred tradition that needed to be protected. Yoda and Mace knew Anakin had selfish motives. Yoda knew Luke had them too. That's what he wanted to avoid. But Luke's yearning came from a different place, one that was only possible after his father lost his own inner struggles. Luke understood all too well what needed to be done.
The burden he never needed Yoda to explain was one that didn't consider the Force at all, but a need he had to repair something that had nothing to do with it, to allow someone to fix a mistake on their own. To no longer rely on the Force. To remove it from the idea of a religion. To free it. To bring balance, not between competing sects, but within its practitioners.
Was Luke ready? More ready than Yoda thought, perhaps.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Eponymous Monk #22
(click image to mighty morph!)
To be clear, this does not mean Ribsy is a Communist. He's a consummate gentleman, yes, but not a Communist. But calling people "comrade" is fun all the same!
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Monday, February 17, 2014
Eponymous Monk #18
(click image to iToast)
For those who think I'm testing your patience, this strip is the start of a fun little sequence that will hopefully prove more interesting. The last panel, like the one from two strips ago, also is a reference to one of the original plot points, from the original introduction of Oswald and yes, his footstool-shaped robot, the concept of probability, or rather improbability. Because as in the happiest fiction, improbable developments are a matter of course. Soon there will even be an oblique reference to Vladimir Putin! And the New England Patriots! If you ask real nice, I'll explain that when it comes up...
Sunday, February 16, 2014
#684. Next Generation Rewind: A Most Redeemable Man
When you think of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you probably consider Jean-Luc Picard to be a pretty sober individual who was about as in control of himself as someone can get. And you'd be pretty accurate in that assessment, except the thing is, he wasn't always that way. By the time of "Encounter at Farpoint," he had indeed become that man, but before that, and possibly leading up to that very moment, Picard was in fact in desperate need of redemption. Simply put, if you think James T. Kirk was a pretty wild guy, the Picard prior to when we got to know him would have put Kirk to shame.
And the thing is, even when he was at his best, Picard still needed the challenge to his worst impulses to keep him there.
As any fan of the series knows, Picard lost his original heart not long after graduating from Starfleet Academy after picking a fight with a Nausicaan, a surly brute of an alien he tried to hustle in a game of futuristic pool. If that weren't bad enough, Picard actually welcomed a fight not just with one Nausicaan, but several of his friends as well. He ended up stabbed through the chest. Luckily for him, the doctors of his time didn't consider that a fatal condition.
Yet even after that, he was hardly the model of the perfect officer. The first starship he ever commanded was the Stargazer, a ship Picard lost in a encounter with an unknown enemy (later revealed to be the Ferengi), which he abandoned as derelict. More damning, however, is the unhealthy relationship he fostered with the wife of an officer serving under him, who was even a good friend of Picard's.
All this, presumably, because he was always he told he shouldn't pursue his dreams. Picard's brother Robert considered it a betrayal to the family when the young Jean-Luc decided to enter Starfleet Academy. Picard didn't even successfully pass the entrance exam the first time. Not only did this create a man with something to prove, but someone desperate to strike out and rebel.
Surely this attitude made him stand out among his peers. Starfleet would have been willing to overlook Picard's more self-destructive behaviors, after all having already experienced the career of Jim Kirk he might have seemed like exactly what the captain of the flagship needed to be.
And yet, somehow, by the time he assumed command of the Enterprise, Picard became an entirely changed man, a redeemed man. He no longer resembled the man he once was in the slightest degree. He now appeared to be the polar opposite of that man, in fact. Age doesn't have anything to do with it. Kirk proved decades into his own career that growing older didn't temper his wilder instincts.
So what happened to Jean-Luc Picard?
Well, for one thing, he picked the only first officer who could from the start promise to keep him in check. William T. Riker wasn't even graded a commander yet when Picard selected him, but he'd already developed a reputation of questioning his commanding officers even if it meant jeopardizing his career. With a man like that under him, what else was Picard to do? Surely an older and more experienced man at this point in his career, Picard would at least know exactly what he was doing. Knowing there is someone watching your every move can sometimes be enough to curb your worse instincts.
There was also Beverly Crusher, the widow of Picard's best friend, serving as chief medical officer. This was a tempting affair that had long haunted Picard. They'd never acted upon it, and the presence of Crusher's young son Wesley was itself reason to reconsider whatever Picard had once thought of the relationship. Picard hated kids. And yet, there was something about this boy that reminded him of himself, looking for challenges that were more self-imposed than real, a need to prove he was good enough and not just that but better than those around him, not out of arrogance but a yearning to fill a void. Wesley's void was his father, Picard's best friend. What else was Picard to do but recalibrate in that way, too?
The bartender Guinan first appproached him years earlier, as if she'd known him all her life, and Picard felt the same from the moment they met. In another lifetime they would have been lovers, but this mutual understanding was more an unspoken bond of survivors. What had Guinan survived? Without ever asking her, he always knew she understood him, and it was this quiet compassion that helped give him the strength to improve himself, too.
In fact, Picard surrounded himself with a host of such figures. He wouldn't learn the extent of Data's journey until later, but there was something about the android's humble service in Starfleet that intrigued Picard. He was the only one of his kind, and was capable of great things, but chose to serve as just another officer, and until the Enterprise, that was exactly what Data was. It was Picard who elevated him to a level of importance, and Picard alone who continually championed him.
Worf was a similar figure, the only Klingon officer, and a survivor as well, who had been raised by humans but never lost his love for a people he never knew, him too searching for someone who would accept him for who and what he was.
Geordi La Forge, the blind officer whose ambition was to become chief engineer, but perhaps had never been taken seriously due to his handicap, artificially corrected or otherwise. What else would Picard see in him but a reflection of the family who told him he should stay at home and conform to more common dreams?
Deanna Troi, who perhaps for Picard was Riker's answer to his own Beverly Crusher dilemma. Perhaps it was a way to test his first officer, see if he could still perform to the best of his abilities if confronted with a past relationship he'd never found resolution with, in the form of a woman who also knew what it was to stand between worlds, from her human father to her Betazoid mother. As ship's counselor, Troi's empathic abilities would negate the ability to lie of nearly everyone Picard would encounter. It would also force Picard himself to be truthful.
Tasha Yar, the final member of his senior staff, knew what it was to be a survivor as well. Had she lived long enough, her attraction to Picard might have led to a relationship he could tolerate. Her absence in later years created a void first recognized by Data, as powerful an acknowledgment as any coming from an android more commonly known to operate without the benefit of emotion.
The last and truest test came from Q. Who else but Q challenged Picard so thoroughly, not physically but intellectually? Who else but Q constantly forced him to think of some other way around a problem but the wild impulses Q himself so outlandishly embodied? Who else but Q could manifest the kind of individual Picard had once been? Who else but Q to ensure Picard finally did become the best version of himself?
All these figures forcing Jean-Luc Picard to complete his redemption. Starfleet gave him the chance. It was Picard who completed it.
The movies have a funny way of reflecting this journey. In Generations, Picard's bond with Data is solidified when they're both forced to handle the culmination of their life's journeys. Picard loses his family and his sense of rebellion, Data finally obtains emotions. Yet neither of these developments come happily to them. Their journeys mutually conclude in First Contact, when they're confronted with the easy way out, the perfect oblivion of the Borg, and opt for something greater, the noble ideal that they have come to recognize in each other. Insurrection reveals how Picard always had the strength within himself if only he'd trusted his instincts instead of rebelling against them. On an idyllic world where time can literally stand still, he meets a woman who challenges all his preconceptions, at a time in his life when even Picard believes he's matured because he's aged rather than for any qualities he's possessed all along. Nemesis is the mirror he never wanted to confront, the inner turmoil he outgrew rather than confronted. And what are the results? They're ugly, in fact. Perhaps that's another reason fans never liked this one. Yet the movie also affirms how he overcame his demons, by trusting those around him. Ironically if Picard had ever trusted himself, he might have trusted Shinzon, too, and the resulting crisis averted. Shinzon's suicidal fury, his need to challenge the entire universe in order to feel vindicated in his righteous rejection, is an exact copy of Picard's earlier years. The Reman caretaker Shinzon trusts so implicitly is the opposite of the groundskeeper Boothby who befriended Picard at Starfleet Academy. Picard himself might have still corrected Shinzon's errors, if he had become the troubled youth's Riker, or Guinan.
Picard was at his best when challenged to be the best. At the height of Next Generation's popularity, he came to overshadow Kirk in the imaginations of the fans. He wasn't just Kirk's opposite, but the very ideal of the Star Trek vision that humanity might one day perfect itself. Yet Picard himself didn't reach that point easily. He was by no means a perfect man, but certainly a most redeemable man. And perhaps that's the best that could be said of him, that even if the best version of himself came late in his life, Picard still managed to project an image that suggested he'd always been that way. So what if he wasn't? But thanks goodness he wasn't.
Because as role models go, he's better that way.
And the thing is, even when he was at his best, Picard still needed the challenge to his worst impulses to keep him there.
As any fan of the series knows, Picard lost his original heart not long after graduating from Starfleet Academy after picking a fight with a Nausicaan, a surly brute of an alien he tried to hustle in a game of futuristic pool. If that weren't bad enough, Picard actually welcomed a fight not just with one Nausicaan, but several of his friends as well. He ended up stabbed through the chest. Luckily for him, the doctors of his time didn't consider that a fatal condition.
Yet even after that, he was hardly the model of the perfect officer. The first starship he ever commanded was the Stargazer, a ship Picard lost in a encounter with an unknown enemy (later revealed to be the Ferengi), which he abandoned as derelict. More damning, however, is the unhealthy relationship he fostered with the wife of an officer serving under him, who was even a good friend of Picard's.
All this, presumably, because he was always he told he shouldn't pursue his dreams. Picard's brother Robert considered it a betrayal to the family when the young Jean-Luc decided to enter Starfleet Academy. Picard didn't even successfully pass the entrance exam the first time. Not only did this create a man with something to prove, but someone desperate to strike out and rebel.
Surely this attitude made him stand out among his peers. Starfleet would have been willing to overlook Picard's more self-destructive behaviors, after all having already experienced the career of Jim Kirk he might have seemed like exactly what the captain of the flagship needed to be.
And yet, somehow, by the time he assumed command of the Enterprise, Picard became an entirely changed man, a redeemed man. He no longer resembled the man he once was in the slightest degree. He now appeared to be the polar opposite of that man, in fact. Age doesn't have anything to do with it. Kirk proved decades into his own career that growing older didn't temper his wilder instincts.
So what happened to Jean-Luc Picard?
Well, for one thing, he picked the only first officer who could from the start promise to keep him in check. William T. Riker wasn't even graded a commander yet when Picard selected him, but he'd already developed a reputation of questioning his commanding officers even if it meant jeopardizing his career. With a man like that under him, what else was Picard to do? Surely an older and more experienced man at this point in his career, Picard would at least know exactly what he was doing. Knowing there is someone watching your every move can sometimes be enough to curb your worse instincts.
There was also Beverly Crusher, the widow of Picard's best friend, serving as chief medical officer. This was a tempting affair that had long haunted Picard. They'd never acted upon it, and the presence of Crusher's young son Wesley was itself reason to reconsider whatever Picard had once thought of the relationship. Picard hated kids. And yet, there was something about this boy that reminded him of himself, looking for challenges that were more self-imposed than real, a need to prove he was good enough and not just that but better than those around him, not out of arrogance but a yearning to fill a void. Wesley's void was his father, Picard's best friend. What else was Picard to do but recalibrate in that way, too?
The bartender Guinan first appproached him years earlier, as if she'd known him all her life, and Picard felt the same from the moment they met. In another lifetime they would have been lovers, but this mutual understanding was more an unspoken bond of survivors. What had Guinan survived? Without ever asking her, he always knew she understood him, and it was this quiet compassion that helped give him the strength to improve himself, too.
In fact, Picard surrounded himself with a host of such figures. He wouldn't learn the extent of Data's journey until later, but there was something about the android's humble service in Starfleet that intrigued Picard. He was the only one of his kind, and was capable of great things, but chose to serve as just another officer, and until the Enterprise, that was exactly what Data was. It was Picard who elevated him to a level of importance, and Picard alone who continually championed him.
Worf was a similar figure, the only Klingon officer, and a survivor as well, who had been raised by humans but never lost his love for a people he never knew, him too searching for someone who would accept him for who and what he was.
Geordi La Forge, the blind officer whose ambition was to become chief engineer, but perhaps had never been taken seriously due to his handicap, artificially corrected or otherwise. What else would Picard see in him but a reflection of the family who told him he should stay at home and conform to more common dreams?
Deanna Troi, who perhaps for Picard was Riker's answer to his own Beverly Crusher dilemma. Perhaps it was a way to test his first officer, see if he could still perform to the best of his abilities if confronted with a past relationship he'd never found resolution with, in the form of a woman who also knew what it was to stand between worlds, from her human father to her Betazoid mother. As ship's counselor, Troi's empathic abilities would negate the ability to lie of nearly everyone Picard would encounter. It would also force Picard himself to be truthful.
Tasha Yar, the final member of his senior staff, knew what it was to be a survivor as well. Had she lived long enough, her attraction to Picard might have led to a relationship he could tolerate. Her absence in later years created a void first recognized by Data, as powerful an acknowledgment as any coming from an android more commonly known to operate without the benefit of emotion.
The last and truest test came from Q. Who else but Q challenged Picard so thoroughly, not physically but intellectually? Who else but Q constantly forced him to think of some other way around a problem but the wild impulses Q himself so outlandishly embodied? Who else but Q could manifest the kind of individual Picard had once been? Who else but Q to ensure Picard finally did become the best version of himself?
All these figures forcing Jean-Luc Picard to complete his redemption. Starfleet gave him the chance. It was Picard who completed it.
The movies have a funny way of reflecting this journey. In Generations, Picard's bond with Data is solidified when they're both forced to handle the culmination of their life's journeys. Picard loses his family and his sense of rebellion, Data finally obtains emotions. Yet neither of these developments come happily to them. Their journeys mutually conclude in First Contact, when they're confronted with the easy way out, the perfect oblivion of the Borg, and opt for something greater, the noble ideal that they have come to recognize in each other. Insurrection reveals how Picard always had the strength within himself if only he'd trusted his instincts instead of rebelling against them. On an idyllic world where time can literally stand still, he meets a woman who challenges all his preconceptions, at a time in his life when even Picard believes he's matured because he's aged rather than for any qualities he's possessed all along. Nemesis is the mirror he never wanted to confront, the inner turmoil he outgrew rather than confronted. And what are the results? They're ugly, in fact. Perhaps that's another reason fans never liked this one. Yet the movie also affirms how he overcame his demons, by trusting those around him. Ironically if Picard had ever trusted himself, he might have trusted Shinzon, too, and the resulting crisis averted. Shinzon's suicidal fury, his need to challenge the entire universe in order to feel vindicated in his righteous rejection, is an exact copy of Picard's earlier years. The Reman caretaker Shinzon trusts so implicitly is the opposite of the groundskeeper Boothby who befriended Picard at Starfleet Academy. Picard himself might have still corrected Shinzon's errors, if he had become the troubled youth's Riker, or Guinan.
Picard was at his best when challenged to be the best. At the height of Next Generation's popularity, he came to overshadow Kirk in the imaginations of the fans. He wasn't just Kirk's opposite, but the very ideal of the Star Trek vision that humanity might one day perfect itself. Yet Picard himself didn't reach that point easily. He was by no means a perfect man, but certainly a most redeemable man. And perhaps that's the best that could be said of him, that even if the best version of himself came late in his life, Picard still managed to project an image that suggested he'd always been that way. So what if he wasn't? But thanks goodness he wasn't.
Because as role models go, he's better that way.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Eponymous Monk #16
(click image to embiggen)
Fun fact! The last panel in today's strip features what may be the only reference to the original arc from this story's first incarnation. Spotty and (for those keeping score) the duo of Gerry and Oswald (who later become intergalactic talk shows hosts, before Gerry becomes locked up in an asylum, which even more fun fact! is also the immediate fate for Dorothy Gale in the little-seen Return to Oz, which is otherwise a lot of fun and far more faithful to the original L. Frank Baum material than the Judy Garland movie everyone loves) are the only survivors of this shameless ripoff of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which famously features Earth being destroyed to make way for a new highway (the title was in fact Dictator's Pride of the Galaxy; and this is why it was a very good thing that the story remained a work in progress for nearly two decades); in the story Spotty has deemed Earth unworthy of continuing to exist in his realm, and so he has had it weeded. And now you know more than you wanted to know.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Friday, February 07, 2014
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
Monday, February 03, 2014
Saturday, February 01, 2014
#677. My idea for Star Wars Episode VII...
I know J.J. Abrams is already hammering out the script and everything, and so this is an exercise in futility, but the idea struck me last night and I'm in love with it.
Basically, Tom Hardy is Han Solo's son. It's so perfect. I've been a huge fan of Hardy's for years. As a bonus, he seems to be a go-to guy for franchises already (Batman, Mad Max). And a lot of other people are already acknowledging how awesome he is based on his recent work, starting with the breakthrough Inception performance.
But seriously, do I need to sell you anymore on the concept? Here goes...
The title of this Episode VII is The Rogue's Son. We begin our adventure with a surly Kane Skywalker (that's our boy Hardy) living at the farthest reaches of the galaxy. It's thirty years after the defeat of the Empire, but the most famous names are Solo and Organa, the power couple who ended up becoming the face of the New Republic. Even though he technically did most of the work, Luke Skywalker's legacy has been lost, and so using that surname helps Kane hide better.
Wanting nothing to do with his parents after a rough childhood where he felt like he meant nothing to them while the New Republic meant everything, Kane has ended up a lot like his father. He has no idea, of course. The biggest irony is that he even has his own hand-me-down patchwork ship he's worked on for years, making it his own, so that it's far more impressive than it has any right to be. He drag-races it every chance he gets. But he's not happy.
Word has reached Kane that the remnant of the Imperial fleet is staging a comeback. In his desperation he actually thinks it's a good thing to side with these guys. As a ode to the classic Timothy Zahn novels, we've even got Thrawn in the mix, only instead of being the leading figure he's another outcast like Kane, just looking for a way in. Kane and Thrawn team up to offer their services to the cause.
Standing in Kane's way. An old hermit he knows as Bail. Except Bail is really Luke Skywalker, Kane's uncle and still the last of the Jedi. He's never had success in rebuilding the Order. This also has a way of tying in with all those books about Han and Leia's kids who were among the first of the new Jedi. Because Kane knows he does have access to the Force. But he has no idea how to control it.
In fact, he has a lightsaber, and when Luke reveals his true identity they engage in a wild duel. Until Luke convinces Kane to give his father one last shot.
And so they head home. The reunion is a painful one. Kane and Han engage in another fight. (Come on. You will never grow tired of Harrison Ford in a fight.) But they agree to give it another shot. It's only then that Kane remembers the impending threat of the Imperial fleet.
The thing is, in the rebuilding process the New Republic kind of overlooked matters of security. There hadn't been a real threat in three decades. So it's entirely unprepared to face this fleet. Kane realizes he and his ship are the New Republic's best shot.
And perhaps to set up room for a sequel, Thrawn betrays Kane at the end in order to give the Imperial fleet something to use next time.
To my mind, this is a fantastic idea. Tom Hardy in movies like Warrior and Bronson portrays all the necessary elements, to an almost scary degree, to sell this role. Warrior is a movie about a father and son(s) who find reconciliation difficult. Bronson is about a crass and unrefined brute who can sometimes fake his way into a more civilized mode (that's where Kane's mother Leia would show her influence!).
And it's Tom Hardy. And Harrison Ford. I know they tried it with Shia LaBeouf in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but, and no offense to Shia LaBeouf, Shia LaBeouf is no Tom Hardy. Hardy and Ford are a match made in heaven. And they're meant to be father and son, in Star Wars.
This idea has zero chance of happening, and I'm sure I will be more than happy with whatever Abrams cooks up...but I would love to see this happen...
Basically, Tom Hardy is Han Solo's son. It's so perfect. I've been a huge fan of Hardy's for years. As a bonus, he seems to be a go-to guy for franchises already (Batman, Mad Max). And a lot of other people are already acknowledging how awesome he is based on his recent work, starting with the breakthrough Inception performance.
But seriously, do I need to sell you anymore on the concept? Here goes...
The title of this Episode VII is The Rogue's Son. We begin our adventure with a surly Kane Skywalker (that's our boy Hardy) living at the farthest reaches of the galaxy. It's thirty years after the defeat of the Empire, but the most famous names are Solo and Organa, the power couple who ended up becoming the face of the New Republic. Even though he technically did most of the work, Luke Skywalker's legacy has been lost, and so using that surname helps Kane hide better.
Wanting nothing to do with his parents after a rough childhood where he felt like he meant nothing to them while the New Republic meant everything, Kane has ended up a lot like his father. He has no idea, of course. The biggest irony is that he even has his own hand-me-down patchwork ship he's worked on for years, making it his own, so that it's far more impressive than it has any right to be. He drag-races it every chance he gets. But he's not happy.
Word has reached Kane that the remnant of the Imperial fleet is staging a comeback. In his desperation he actually thinks it's a good thing to side with these guys. As a ode to the classic Timothy Zahn novels, we've even got Thrawn in the mix, only instead of being the leading figure he's another outcast like Kane, just looking for a way in. Kane and Thrawn team up to offer their services to the cause.
Standing in Kane's way. An old hermit he knows as Bail. Except Bail is really Luke Skywalker, Kane's uncle and still the last of the Jedi. He's never had success in rebuilding the Order. This also has a way of tying in with all those books about Han and Leia's kids who were among the first of the new Jedi. Because Kane knows he does have access to the Force. But he has no idea how to control it.
In fact, he has a lightsaber, and when Luke reveals his true identity they engage in a wild duel. Until Luke convinces Kane to give his father one last shot.
And so they head home. The reunion is a painful one. Kane and Han engage in another fight. (Come on. You will never grow tired of Harrison Ford in a fight.) But they agree to give it another shot. It's only then that Kane remembers the impending threat of the Imperial fleet.
The thing is, in the rebuilding process the New Republic kind of overlooked matters of security. There hadn't been a real threat in three decades. So it's entirely unprepared to face this fleet. Kane realizes he and his ship are the New Republic's best shot.
And perhaps to set up room for a sequel, Thrawn betrays Kane at the end in order to give the Imperial fleet something to use next time.
To my mind, this is a fantastic idea. Tom Hardy in movies like Warrior and Bronson portrays all the necessary elements, to an almost scary degree, to sell this role. Warrior is a movie about a father and son(s) who find reconciliation difficult. Bronson is about a crass and unrefined brute who can sometimes fake his way into a more civilized mode (that's where Kane's mother Leia would show her influence!).
And it's Tom Hardy. And Harrison Ford. I know they tried it with Shia LaBeouf in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but, and no offense to Shia LaBeouf, Shia LaBeouf is no Tom Hardy. Hardy and Ford are a match made in heaven. And they're meant to be father and son, in Star Wars.
This idea has zero chance of happening, and I'm sure I will be more than happy with whatever Abrams cooks up...but I would love to see this happen...
Friday, January 31, 2014
#676. The Cephalopod Coffeehouse January 2014
It's that time of the month again. Yes, in different context that means something completely different. Here, it means books. To be clear, we're talking books!
Anyway, now that I've made it pleasantly awkward for everyone...It's time to celebrate the thing that has just made Lord Founder Squid feel terrible about being associated with a blog that can make perfectly innocent talk about books sound so weird. But he knew what I was like when he recruited me. Granted, he had only seen my traveling petting zoo act, and you can't go wrong with a traveling petting zoo (unless it has koalas...they bite), but still. (I had koalas.)
Without further inane adieu, here are the books I finished in the past month:
Anyway, now that I've made it pleasantly awkward for everyone...It's time to celebrate the thing that has just made Lord Founder Squid feel terrible about being associated with a blog that can make perfectly innocent talk about books sound so weird. But he knew what I was like when he recruited me. Granted, he had only seen my traveling petting zoo act, and you can't go wrong with a traveling petting zoo (unless it has koalas...they bite), but still. (I had koalas.)
Without further inane adieu, here are the books I finished in the past month:
- Zealot by Reza Aslan
- Justice League Beyond: Konstriction by Derek Fridolfs and various
- Teen Titans Vol. 3: Death of the Family by Scott Lobdell and various
- Monorama by Tony Laplume
By Tony Laplume??? Hey, what is this, Pat Dilloway's blog??? (I'd provide a link, but he set it to self-destruct because he read so many spy novels last year.)
Technically, I read Zealot at the very end of 2013, but it wasn't included in December's Coffeehouse chat because I hadn't read it by the time I wrote that one. It's ridiculously good, in terms of illuminating certain things if you're open to their illumination without religious outrage (of a...zealot nature). If I'd chosen to write about reading the Bible, which I'm very close to finishing, only weeks away, I might have talked about both it and Zealot today.
But I'm doing the full Dilloway. (This is different from the Full Monty in that neither of us is British and hey! that means "Monty Python" means "Naked Python"...!) I'm writing about my own book. I'm not too concerned about seeming a little full of myself, though, because I know talking about my books on my blog(s) doesn't translate to sales. I do have a whole blog dedicated to talking about my books and writing and such, so this is kind of infringing on my own territory. But still.
And the neat thing is that Monorama is a lot more relevant to this blog than you might think. The whole concept of the "Eponymous Monk" strip I've been running is taken from a few of the stories in this collection, which in turn is based on stories I originally wrote in high school. (When I was creating a comic strip I actually drew.) There's another piece of relevant prelude material here, by the way, which in fact comes from here. Just in case you wanted to see some of the pieces in place. If you at all care about "Eponymous Monk." Although there are not too many spoilers there. That I'm aware of. (Honestly, I'm making all this up as I go along, even the parts I already know myself...)
Okay, so I'm talking about Monorama, one of my own books. (One???) It's a collection of stories I put together from material I had lying around, filled with nonsensical science-fictiony ideas. Some of the stories are incredibly short, so I grouped those together in the opening section of the book. One of them is a novella (not Nutella), and that's at the back of the book. All of it covers basically a decade's worth of my creative output.
The copy I recently finished reading was one I'd given my parents. I ended up picking it up and started reading. (If I was a better editor, which is really clear if you read it for yourself, I would have read all of it when I prepared it for self-publication back in the summer of 2012.) And you know what? I liked what I saw.
This is not a matter of self-aggrandizement. Some of this material I really hadn't read in years. Now, I know I tend to read about as differently from other people as I write, but there's a comfortable overlap between my twin exercises, which I'm always happy to see for myself. I really didn't come across anything that I found embarrassing to have in this book (other than, again, the editing).
Some of the stories, two or three in particular, I knew when I made the collection, I had never actually finished writing, the novella included (which is the longest source material to date for the "Eponymous Monk" strip). I was surprised to find that they still read well, even the novella that somewhat blatantly ends mid-story, or the strict excerpt from another story that ends the collection. They make sense in their own kind of logic, which is to say the internal logic of the storytelling. (And really, any decent story ought to be able to be enjoyed even if you haven't experienced the beginning or ending, which is why I sometimes actually enjoy catching a movie or TV show only in part. People assuming it's the complete story that gives them satisfaction, but really it's the overall quality of the material. No matter what they say.)
The whole point of Monorama was to present material that potential paying readers could sample in order to figure out what kind of writer I am. And again, maybe it's simply that I overlap comfortably my "reader" and "writer" hats (like the winter hat some people wear over their ball caps!), but I'm as convinced as ever that I wasn't mistaken in putting this book out there. In fact, I'm actually a little more proud now, having read the complete book, completely removed from the creative process, and still enjoyed the material.
/full Dilloway
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
#672. Seven epic visions from J.J. Abrams
I've been a fan of J.J. Abrams for a long time. Not as long as some people (the 1998-2002 TV series Felicity was his first project to be heavily touted, but it gained most of its buzz from star Keri Russell's signature hair...and lost most of it when she lost it, although its concept-heavy final season was the first of J.J.'s big creative gambles; the largest impact on his career was the show's focus on emotional character development, which became a signature for every other project that followed; I've never seen a single episode of the series, alas, although frequent acting collaborator Greg Grunberg debuted in it, and that much is probably worth seeing), but long enough. Here are seven projects that have kept me as inspired a fan as he is an imaginative visionary:
- Alias (2001-2006) The saga of CIA agent Sydney Bristow, her father Jack, and the diabolical Arvin Sloane helped launch the popular careers of not only Abrams and star Jennifer Garner, but Bradley Cooper as well. Full of twists and turns and all the Rambaldi creations you could ever hope to handle, this was a show that was always evolving but remaining true to its origins at every turn, including the surprise revelation of the first season major villain, who turned out to be Syd's own mother, Irina Derevko.
- Lost (2004-2010) The only show that could possibly have eclipsed Alias was its immediate successor, which became a full-blown phenomenon that needs no real introduction. Fans loved to eat up its intricate mythology almost as much as they loved to dissect and lament its many developments. Abrams discovered a rich wealth of collaborators for this one, allowing him to move on to other projects in his increasingly high-profile career.
- Fringe (2008-2013) The only way to succeed Lost was to return to the intimate scale of Alias, which worked exceedingly well in Fringe, which unlike Alias pulled the focus closer and closer to its original premise with each succeeding season even while expanding it to increasingly astonishing degrees. Another project where Abrams discovered perfect collaborators, I'm still convinced that appreciation for this one has only just begun.
- Person of Interest (2011-present) The genius of this show is that it's not even considered a J.J. Abrams show, even though it's exactly a J.J. Abrams show. The brain-child of Jonathan Nolan (kid brother of Christopher Nolan) and as such featuring hallmarks of the Dark Knight script, this one is both successfully episodic in ways a broad audience can appreciate week to week, but also featuring a wider arc and classic Abrams character types in Reese and Finch, as well as several Abrams alum (Michael Emerson, Sarah Shahi, who had a minor role in the first season of Alias, and Amy Acker, a major supporting role in its last).
- Super 8 (2011) His first attempt at an entirely separate movie legacy (Abrams directs a lot of famous franchise films, you may know, including Mission: Impossible III), which a lot of people took as a pastiche on early Steven Spielberg but is a thoroughly enjoyable experience in its own right.
- Star Trek (2009, 2013) Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness achieved the impossible, which was to not only make this particular franchise relevant again, but more popular than ever at the box office, which was probably the whole reason he got the assignment to direct the upcoming seventh Star Wars film.
- S. (2013) This is a book, written in collaboration with Doug Dorst, which like most of what Abrams does is a love letter to the medium it's presented in as well as an entirely original and inspired piece in itself. As far as I'm concerned, it solidifies him as one of the great creative minds of our time. With it he emerges in an entirely new light, as arguably the successor of Orson Welles, what the great director of Citizen Kane might have become had he actually been embraced by Hollywood. It bodes well for whatever Abrams does not just in the next few years, but decades. I look back in this retrospective and see not the great things Abrams has done, but what he will do.
Friday, January 24, 2014
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Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
Sunday, January 19, 2014
#668. Extrapolating Mr. Banks
The Oscar nominations came and went a couple of days ago. Saving Mr. Banks was largely absent from them, which in some ways was kind of surprising. In others, it really wasn't. It's a harder film to understand than it first seems, so I'm going to try and make it clearer, because it's a movie experience I really enjoyed.
The synopsis is familiar enough: Walt Disney tries to convince Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers that he's not going to butcher her precious character in his film adaptation. Since we all know the movie was definitely made, that eliminates the suspense. That's the biggest knock against it.
The other major difficulty lies in the presentation of Travers herself. Regardless of matters of strict accuracy, it can't be argued that she fought tooth and nail against the adaptation. It does, however, make the main character in Saving Mr. Banks either incredibly unsympathetic or the victim of a con game that makes Walt Disney of all people the villain.
I'm thinking that's the main reason the reception for the movie has been smaller than it could be, both with audiences and critics. (Despite what they may want you to believe, critics often have a hard time actually being critical, whereas their reviews often reflect whatever their personal criteria for good filmmaking happens to be, usually of the pseudo-highbrow variety.)
So I'm going to explain what seems to me to be obvious, but perhaps isn't as much so as I would like to think.
Basically, Walt is correct when he finally realizes what Travers tried to get him to understand, the eponymous revelation. Mary Poppins doesn't show up to rescue the children, but rather the father. Travers is so busy being acerbic, even to poor Paul Giamatti, that you may not realize she sometimes has points to make. It's not all no-no-no just for the sake of being contrary. And there's a reason why she envisions Mr. Banks as having no mustache.
Because Mr. Banks is her father, Travers Goff.
He's also Bert, which is why she doesn't want so much as a hint of romance between Mary and Bert. That much, the dual character inspired by the same person, is something Travers may have borrowed from the stage versions of Peter Pan, which cast the same actor in the roles of Mr. Darling and Captain Hook. In fact, if you never really thought of Mary Poppins that way, her story is not so different from Peter Pan's at all. Most people today only know her from the Disney movie, ironically enough.
They can know her just as well from Saving Mr. Banks now, too. The whole movie ends up being exactly what Travers always wanted, even if she never realized it.
Travers created Mary Poppins as a way to deal with that flashback element that so pervades the movie, her relationship with a father who in some ways mirrors the banking woes of Mr. Banks (Goff was a banker, too). Her father lived in a fantasy world to escape from the pressure of a job that had too much mind-numbing reality to it. He also drank. He presented his imagination to his daughter, the young Travers, but was less able to hide his attempt to escape a job he loathed from everyone else. It eventually destroyed him.
To a young Travers, her father would have been a magical person like Bert, the guy who introduces whimsy into the everyday world as a matter of course (and yes, who ends up dancing with animated penguins). To a grown-up Travers, her father would end up being the supreme example of what happens to someone when the real world crashes in. She sees her father broken, but she never stops romanticizing him. Mr. Banks ends up being the version of him that she gets to redeem, while Bert is the one who never needs such a thing, who in fact helps Mary Poppins accomplish what her inspiration couldn't: saving, well, Mr. Banks.
The real Mary Poppins was an aunt who came to help out the Goff family in Travers Goff's final days. She swept in just like the later fictional Mary Poppins, and seemed to be exactly what the doctor would have never thought to order, something so contrary that she seemed capable of achieving the impossible. In her own way, a lot like Travers Goff. Except in the real world, Mary Poppins doesn't exist. There was no magical cure. Travers Goff dies.
The grieving Travers grows up still believing in her father. She writes a book, using the imagination her father instilled in her as a girl, but reflecting far more of the real world than her father was ever capable of confronting. Her version is reflected through her father's warped mirror, though. Mr. Banks is more like her father than the Disney version, but still needs redemption from an oppressive job. Mary Poppins shows up. The point Travers becomes okay with the adaption is when the redemptive ending with the kite repair is introduced. Very tellingly.
Also tellingly but never explicitly explained is why Walt Disney is so interested in this story. But the telling feature is in the mustache. Travers Goff didn't have a mustache. Travers is very clear in her desire to keep Mr. Banks with a clean upper lip. But as we know, the movie Mr. Banks ends up with a mustache. Guess who else has a mustache? Walt Disney.
No, it's not because of a promise he made to his daughters. It's all about Elias Disney, and a mildly oppressive youth Walt experienced. He got over it, but it forever altered the course of his destiny. When given the chance, he reclaimed his childhood forever. He made it mandatory for all youths to experience what he'd never known, actually. That's the whole Disney formula. You may think of it as the ultimate kid-gloves entertainment, something so lightweight that you can never take it seriously.
But then again, Saving Mr. Banks is the ultimate version of taking Disney seriously.
Walt wanted to make Mary Poppins so badly because like P.L. Travers herself he ended up identifying with the story. He saw himself as Mr. Banks. Hence the mustache. Hence his equally intractable stance on it, as with all the demands Travers attempted to impose.
You see, the Disney legacy wasn't just a way for Walt to make money, but for him to make sure what happened to him never happened, as much as possible, to another child again. The same as what Travers was trying to do with Mary Poppins to begin with. She was still trying to process her feeling about her childhood. And she had a harder time than Walt did.
That's the whole story of Saving Mr. Banks. That's why there are so many flashbacks to her childhood, and her father, as we head toward the inevitable. Because this is not a story about making Mary Poppins. It's about saving P.L. Travers.
I don't know whether it ever really happened in real life. I don't know if Travers ever allowed the making of the film adaptation of her beloved character to change her life for the better. But it's a way for audiences to benefit the way she hoped they would from Mary Poppins to begin with, why she wanted to make sure the character was taken seriously in the adaptation. Because there was a point to all the nonsense. It wasn't about the nonsense at all, no matter what anyone might think.
Walt got that. That's why he wanted to make the movie in the first place. And the movie about the making of the movie might have finally given Travers what she wanted, even if she herself isn't here anymore to appreciate it.
She fought Walt tooth and nail because he was the embodiment of the cruel machine that ate up and spat out her father. She never saw Walt as the entertainment demigod he was even at that time. She saw him as a silly man making a silly living. The same her father would have said about people taking money so deathly seriously.
To her, turning Mary Poppins into a movie was the same as taking the magic away from it, no matter how much the filmmakers tried to spruce it up. It was the real world once again intruding violently on her, the very thing her father struggled all those years to keep from her. Unsuccessfully. His failure turned into her triumph, and she didn't want to let go. Actually, she didn't want to let go of the disappointment she experienced when she saw past her father's elaborate charades.
She clung to the fantasy, and in the process became grimly impervious to anyone else's magic. Such as Walt Disney's.
No, this is not a commercial for the sainthood of Walt Disney, anymore than it is a vilification of P.L. Travers. It's a deeply nuanced portrait of pain redeemed.
And it's probably the best movie of 2013, no matter if that's acknowledged by the Oscars.
The synopsis is familiar enough: Walt Disney tries to convince Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers that he's not going to butcher her precious character in his film adaptation. Since we all know the movie was definitely made, that eliminates the suspense. That's the biggest knock against it.
The other major difficulty lies in the presentation of Travers herself. Regardless of matters of strict accuracy, it can't be argued that she fought tooth and nail against the adaptation. It does, however, make the main character in Saving Mr. Banks either incredibly unsympathetic or the victim of a con game that makes Walt Disney of all people the villain.
I'm thinking that's the main reason the reception for the movie has been smaller than it could be, both with audiences and critics. (Despite what they may want you to believe, critics often have a hard time actually being critical, whereas their reviews often reflect whatever their personal criteria for good filmmaking happens to be, usually of the pseudo-highbrow variety.)
So I'm going to explain what seems to me to be obvious, but perhaps isn't as much so as I would like to think.
Basically, Walt is correct when he finally realizes what Travers tried to get him to understand, the eponymous revelation. Mary Poppins doesn't show up to rescue the children, but rather the father. Travers is so busy being acerbic, even to poor Paul Giamatti, that you may not realize she sometimes has points to make. It's not all no-no-no just for the sake of being contrary. And there's a reason why she envisions Mr. Banks as having no mustache.
Because Mr. Banks is her father, Travers Goff.
He's also Bert, which is why she doesn't want so much as a hint of romance between Mary and Bert. That much, the dual character inspired by the same person, is something Travers may have borrowed from the stage versions of Peter Pan, which cast the same actor in the roles of Mr. Darling and Captain Hook. In fact, if you never really thought of Mary Poppins that way, her story is not so different from Peter Pan's at all. Most people today only know her from the Disney movie, ironically enough.
They can know her just as well from Saving Mr. Banks now, too. The whole movie ends up being exactly what Travers always wanted, even if she never realized it.
Travers created Mary Poppins as a way to deal with that flashback element that so pervades the movie, her relationship with a father who in some ways mirrors the banking woes of Mr. Banks (Goff was a banker, too). Her father lived in a fantasy world to escape from the pressure of a job that had too much mind-numbing reality to it. He also drank. He presented his imagination to his daughter, the young Travers, but was less able to hide his attempt to escape a job he loathed from everyone else. It eventually destroyed him.
To a young Travers, her father would have been a magical person like Bert, the guy who introduces whimsy into the everyday world as a matter of course (and yes, who ends up dancing with animated penguins). To a grown-up Travers, her father would end up being the supreme example of what happens to someone when the real world crashes in. She sees her father broken, but she never stops romanticizing him. Mr. Banks ends up being the version of him that she gets to redeem, while Bert is the one who never needs such a thing, who in fact helps Mary Poppins accomplish what her inspiration couldn't: saving, well, Mr. Banks.
The real Mary Poppins was an aunt who came to help out the Goff family in Travers Goff's final days. She swept in just like the later fictional Mary Poppins, and seemed to be exactly what the doctor would have never thought to order, something so contrary that she seemed capable of achieving the impossible. In her own way, a lot like Travers Goff. Except in the real world, Mary Poppins doesn't exist. There was no magical cure. Travers Goff dies.
The grieving Travers grows up still believing in her father. She writes a book, using the imagination her father instilled in her as a girl, but reflecting far more of the real world than her father was ever capable of confronting. Her version is reflected through her father's warped mirror, though. Mr. Banks is more like her father than the Disney version, but still needs redemption from an oppressive job. Mary Poppins shows up. The point Travers becomes okay with the adaption is when the redemptive ending with the kite repair is introduced. Very tellingly.
Also tellingly but never explicitly explained is why Walt Disney is so interested in this story. But the telling feature is in the mustache. Travers Goff didn't have a mustache. Travers is very clear in her desire to keep Mr. Banks with a clean upper lip. But as we know, the movie Mr. Banks ends up with a mustache. Guess who else has a mustache? Walt Disney.
No, it's not because of a promise he made to his daughters. It's all about Elias Disney, and a mildly oppressive youth Walt experienced. He got over it, but it forever altered the course of his destiny. When given the chance, he reclaimed his childhood forever. He made it mandatory for all youths to experience what he'd never known, actually. That's the whole Disney formula. You may think of it as the ultimate kid-gloves entertainment, something so lightweight that you can never take it seriously.
But then again, Saving Mr. Banks is the ultimate version of taking Disney seriously.
Walt wanted to make Mary Poppins so badly because like P.L. Travers herself he ended up identifying with the story. He saw himself as Mr. Banks. Hence the mustache. Hence his equally intractable stance on it, as with all the demands Travers attempted to impose.
You see, the Disney legacy wasn't just a way for Walt to make money, but for him to make sure what happened to him never happened, as much as possible, to another child again. The same as what Travers was trying to do with Mary Poppins to begin with. She was still trying to process her feeling about her childhood. And she had a harder time than Walt did.
That's the whole story of Saving Mr. Banks. That's why there are so many flashbacks to her childhood, and her father, as we head toward the inevitable. Because this is not a story about making Mary Poppins. It's about saving P.L. Travers.
I don't know whether it ever really happened in real life. I don't know if Travers ever allowed the making of the film adaptation of her beloved character to change her life for the better. But it's a way for audiences to benefit the way she hoped they would from Mary Poppins to begin with, why she wanted to make sure the character was taken seriously in the adaptation. Because there was a point to all the nonsense. It wasn't about the nonsense at all, no matter what anyone might think.
Walt got that. That's why he wanted to make the movie in the first place. And the movie about the making of the movie might have finally given Travers what she wanted, even if she herself isn't here anymore to appreciate it.
She fought Walt tooth and nail because he was the embodiment of the cruel machine that ate up and spat out her father. She never saw Walt as the entertainment demigod he was even at that time. She saw him as a silly man making a silly living. The same her father would have said about people taking money so deathly seriously.
To her, turning Mary Poppins into a movie was the same as taking the magic away from it, no matter how much the filmmakers tried to spruce it up. It was the real world once again intruding violently on her, the very thing her father struggled all those years to keep from her. Unsuccessfully. His failure turned into her triumph, and she didn't want to let go. Actually, she didn't want to let go of the disappointment she experienced when she saw past her father's elaborate charades.
She clung to the fantasy, and in the process became grimly impervious to anyone else's magic. Such as Walt Disney's.
No, this is not a commercial for the sainthood of Walt Disney, anymore than it is a vilification of P.L. Travers. It's a deeply nuanced portrait of pain redeemed.
And it's probably the best movie of 2013, no matter if that's acknowledged by the Oscars.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Monday, January 13, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
#664. Seven key characters of Fringe
Fringe is the 2008-2013 TV series that stuck around for five seasons mostly because Fox finally listened to a devoted cult audience who realized how awesome it was even though virtually no one watched it. One of the many high concepts developed by J.J. Abrams, Fringe might initially strike you as an updated version of The X-Files with its strange-science-of-the-week format, but it's the resonating relationship between Walter and Peter Bishop that ultimately dominates and pushes Fringe to its own entirely unique and spectacular legacy.
Here are seven key characters (but by no means all of the regulars) from the series:
Here are seven key characters (but by no means all of the regulars) from the series:
- Olivia Dunham - The lead character played by Anna Torv initially very similar to Sydney Bristow from Alias (as Kate would have been on Lost if Jack had been killed off in the pilot as initially planned!), Olivia emerges as the contemplative and soulful heart of the series, whose ties to the dark matters that haunt its past and present are continually explored across two realities.
- Walter Bishop - The troubled genius rescued from an insane asylum in the pilot, portrayed brilliantly by John Noble, Walter's life defines the whole course of the series in ways that take time to understand, though it's his early life's work that gets himself and everyone else in trouble, and his reconciliation with these horrors that gives the series its emotional depth. But yes, he's also the nutcase bursting with hilarious non sequiturs. It would just be a shame to only think of him in that way.
- Peter Bishop - The constant bridge between Olivia and Walter in ways that become more and more important as the series develops, Walter's son as portrayed by Joshua Jackson is the guy you hate to have around but absolutely need, and he becomes quite essential.
- William Bell - Walter's early-career partner in science appears occasionally, and you will relish each visit because he's played by Leonard Nimoy. The climax of the fourth season closes the book on half the series as William thinks he's finally perfected Walter's fondest desires.
- Nina Sharp - You never quite know if Nina, COO of Massive Dynamic (Apple if Steve Jobs had been a quasi-evil genius), is in fact an ally of Olivia's, and Blair Brown plays this ambiguity to perfection. Plus Nina has a robotic arm. She hides it most of the time, but it's still one of the coolest elements of the series.
- Sam Weiss - Sam appears as an independent consultant to Olivia in the second season, and he's yet another voice of the strange who offers reassurance when it seems impossible. His importance is elevated in the third season even though he ultimately makes very few appearances, but his impact remains significant. Played by Kevin Corrigan, who somehow still hasn't been earmarked by anyone for a lead role in something (at the very least, plug him into a franchise like CSI or something!).
- September - One of the most distinctive characters in the series is the bald Observer who turns out to have quite a bit of sympathy for our protagonists, even though the rest of his kind most certainly do not (the whole fifth and final season is all about that). Michael Cerveris played this role so well, it hardly mattered his appearances were always kept to a minimum.
Bonus!
- David Robert Jones - Not to be confused with David Bowie's given name (apparently), the wicked genius played by Jared Harris is the evil counterpart to all the good guys in the series.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Wednesday, January 08, 2014
Friday, January 03, 2014
#661. Faith and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Whatever people are currently saying about Star Trek Into Darkness, it's not really in contention for the title of worst movie in the franchise. There's one perennial contender almost no one will ever question, and that's 1989's Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
The thing is, I'm a fan of that one. I will never argue that it's the best or even a leading contender for that title, but there are too many fascinating elements in Final Frontier for me to even consider dismissing it. For one, it's a great movie for old school Kirk/Bones/Spock, and for another, it's another strong Spock appearance in a movie series filled with them.
And there's the matter of its subject matter. In a lot of ways, Final Frontier is a rephrasing of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in less abstract terms. In the first movie, an old Earth probe returns home in a quest to meet its creator. In the fifth, a Vulcan is on a quest to meet God. Let's just get this out of the way: one of the controversies of Final Frontier is its depiction of a laughing Vulcan, who contradicts just about everything fans expect from Vulcans. That same argument was one of the reasons fans had such a hard time with Star Trek: Enterprise. But Final Frontier itself also calls to mind the two most famous Vulcans in the whole franchise, and the nature of their contentious relationship: Spock and his father Sarek. It doesn't make sense to argue that Vulcans have to be stoic adherents to logic who never have anything to do with emotion when such a famous father and son relationship is presented from the beginning to be so complicated. The 2009 Star Trek update might have even closed the book on that when it presented Sarek coming to terms with why he married the human Amanda. And by the way, I like that Spock/Sarek dynamic far better, and it would open the door to a Sarek who has the traditional relationship with a different son, Sybok.
Gene Roddenberry himself wanted Sybok expunged from canon. This was well before fans themselves started arguing for inclusion/exclusion from canon, even though for years The Animated Series has been on that very bubble (it should be included, by the way). I can think of nothing more foolhardy or pointless than trying to deny that Sybok exists in franchise lore, because he represents the necessary human element of a very alien species. He's the one Vulcan we've met who didn't reject his people's traditions but still looked beyond them. He went in search of something bigger than logic, the very beginnings of logic, by means of a very logical route. He listened to a vision, and the central tenet of any vision is to see it fulfilled. He saw God. He went to see if he could find him. Simple as that. That's the whole story of Final Frontier.
Part of the reason the movie has such a hard time finding anyone who will admit to liking it is its production values. The rock creature from Galaxy Quest is actually the realization of something that was supposed to appear in Final Frontier, something that was possible ten years after the fact, but still out of the realm of feasible possibility in the budding age of CGI cinema. Director and star William Shatner also bit into the trend at the end of the '80s that saw many films try to ape the epic feel of the original Star Wars trilogy, something that proved almost universally to be a very bad idea, because at that time, no one was capable of reproducing the George Lucas magic, not even Lucas himself (Howard the Duck, for instance). Previous Star Trek films had taken cracks at it, but the gears of the Hollywood development process had really only caught up with projects specifically aimed at rather than films greenlit to compete with the Star Wars phenomenon ten years after A New Hope debuted in theaters. Superman and The Motion Picture, for instance, became a reality because studios realized they could do those films because they wanted to compete. Final Frontier and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, meanwhile, happened because studios wanted Star Wars, but had no idea how to do it themselves.
Final Frontier is a very Star Trek approach to Star Wars, to be sure. There's the obligatory cantina-aping scene in Paradise City (worse than the effort in Search for Spock, with an alien I'd love to replace with a Ferengi in some future special edition), for instance. But the fact that the Big Idea of the Force is replaced with the Big Idea of God, it's exactly what Star Trek always tried to do, tackle real world issues as directly as possible in a fictional setting.
The subject of divine beings came up regularly in the original series. Most of the time, it was an occasion for Kirk to smugly assert his own cleverness and moral superiority. The fact that Final Frontier still reached that point ("What does God need with a starship?") but only after real soul searching (he's the only one who resists Sybok's purging of emotional baggage) calls to mind, actually, another Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan.
No, really.
It's at the end of Khan, a movie that posits around the same central issue as its predecessor, The Motion Picture, the question of an aging Kirk. (The first movie does not receive near enough credit for all the ways it continued to affect both the film series and the TV efforts that followed it. People say that one was boring and leave it at that. The whole franchise would not exist without it, and I'm not just speaking of how it revived Star Trek in the literal sense.) At the end of Khan, after Spock has died, Kirk is reflecting once again on his feelings about growing older. "It's a far, far better better thing I do than I have ever done before, a far better resting place that I go to than I have ever known," Kirk quotes, from A Tale of Two Cities, the book Spock gave him at the start of the movie. And I admit, I've never read Two Cities, so I never knew the significance of that line, only that it always felt like the most poetic and best moment of the movie. "I feel young," Kirk concludes, when reflecting on how the recent events have affected him. Two Cities is the less famous of the two books referenced in Khan, the other being Moby Dick (which First Contact later echoes to much better effect). Possibly there is far more significance in its inclusion than I can properly address here without having read it, but apparently Charles Dickens knowingly reflected Christian theology in it, the way Lewis and Tolkien would in fantasy contexts a century later.
The point is, Final Frontier is almost a movie-length extrapolation of that epiphany, Kirk's exploration of issues concerning faith and the importance of being true to one's self. That is the whole point of the Sybok character, who exists in rank contradiction to everything we ever knew about Spock and his father, at first. But he's also an affirmation, and a vital link in a chain never fully explored. The life and career of Spock exists in as many missing pieces as illuminated moments. The way his successor Tuvok in Star Trek: Voyager surprised everyone in the episode "Flashback" by having a Starfleet service record that stretches all the way back to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (even his close friend Janeway) is kind of like the revelation of Spock's brother in Final Frontier. There's everything to validate the relationship, including the way it's presented in the movie. Spock is as conflicted about his brother as Sarek was of his son. Or sons. Vulcans are no doubt masters of passive aggression.
Yet I don't want to bog you down with too much reflection. Final Frontier boils down to an effort on the franchise's part to finally confront the matter of faith in a forthright fashion. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, four years later, borrowed this legacy to considerable effect. Sybok's quest is not invalidated by its results. In fact, the moment the false god appears as Sybok himself is a more compelling exploration of the matter than the rest of the film, forcing the audience to question all over again what to believe.
And we are certainly at a crossroads of belief as a global civilization. In 1989 that wasn't as much of an issue. In 2014, it absolutely is. We're deep in the heart of converting Christmas back to its pagan roots. We have a new Catholic pope who is calling for dramatic reforms, but the majority of people still think of faith in the 21st century as an alternative to atheism. It used to be the other way around, certainly in the years following WWII, when the whole world was struggling to make sense of so much devastation. This is the inevitable result of increasing globalization. More people are more aware of other cultures than ever before. The more we struggle to reconcile new ideas the harder it is to process the old ones. And in the effort to consider all these ideas at the same time, some of them will undergo a change of emphasis in popular thought.
Final Frontier was ahead of the curve. It was ahead of its time. It was as much a reflection of the end of the Cold War as its successor, Undiscovered Country, on the opposite side of the cultural spectrum. It's still a film of questionable overall value, but it's far too resonant to outright dismiss. It's one of the most important statements Star Trek has yet made.
Worst Star Trek movie? It's a debate I'd rather not tackle, really. They all have their merits, even The Final Frontier.
The thing is, I'm a fan of that one. I will never argue that it's the best or even a leading contender for that title, but there are too many fascinating elements in Final Frontier for me to even consider dismissing it. For one, it's a great movie for old school Kirk/Bones/Spock, and for another, it's another strong Spock appearance in a movie series filled with them.
And there's the matter of its subject matter. In a lot of ways, Final Frontier is a rephrasing of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in less abstract terms. In the first movie, an old Earth probe returns home in a quest to meet its creator. In the fifth, a Vulcan is on a quest to meet God. Let's just get this out of the way: one of the controversies of Final Frontier is its depiction of a laughing Vulcan, who contradicts just about everything fans expect from Vulcans. That same argument was one of the reasons fans had such a hard time with Star Trek: Enterprise. But Final Frontier itself also calls to mind the two most famous Vulcans in the whole franchise, and the nature of their contentious relationship: Spock and his father Sarek. It doesn't make sense to argue that Vulcans have to be stoic adherents to logic who never have anything to do with emotion when such a famous father and son relationship is presented from the beginning to be so complicated. The 2009 Star Trek update might have even closed the book on that when it presented Sarek coming to terms with why he married the human Amanda. And by the way, I like that Spock/Sarek dynamic far better, and it would open the door to a Sarek who has the traditional relationship with a different son, Sybok.
Gene Roddenberry himself wanted Sybok expunged from canon. This was well before fans themselves started arguing for inclusion/exclusion from canon, even though for years The Animated Series has been on that very bubble (it should be included, by the way). I can think of nothing more foolhardy or pointless than trying to deny that Sybok exists in franchise lore, because he represents the necessary human element of a very alien species. He's the one Vulcan we've met who didn't reject his people's traditions but still looked beyond them. He went in search of something bigger than logic, the very beginnings of logic, by means of a very logical route. He listened to a vision, and the central tenet of any vision is to see it fulfilled. He saw God. He went to see if he could find him. Simple as that. That's the whole story of Final Frontier.
Part of the reason the movie has such a hard time finding anyone who will admit to liking it is its production values. The rock creature from Galaxy Quest is actually the realization of something that was supposed to appear in Final Frontier, something that was possible ten years after the fact, but still out of the realm of feasible possibility in the budding age of CGI cinema. Director and star William Shatner also bit into the trend at the end of the '80s that saw many films try to ape the epic feel of the original Star Wars trilogy, something that proved almost universally to be a very bad idea, because at that time, no one was capable of reproducing the George Lucas magic, not even Lucas himself (Howard the Duck, for instance). Previous Star Trek films had taken cracks at it, but the gears of the Hollywood development process had really only caught up with projects specifically aimed at rather than films greenlit to compete with the Star Wars phenomenon ten years after A New Hope debuted in theaters. Superman and The Motion Picture, for instance, became a reality because studios realized they could do those films because they wanted to compete. Final Frontier and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, meanwhile, happened because studios wanted Star Wars, but had no idea how to do it themselves.
Final Frontier is a very Star Trek approach to Star Wars, to be sure. There's the obligatory cantina-aping scene in Paradise City (worse than the effort in Search for Spock, with an alien I'd love to replace with a Ferengi in some future special edition), for instance. But the fact that the Big Idea of the Force is replaced with the Big Idea of God, it's exactly what Star Trek always tried to do, tackle real world issues as directly as possible in a fictional setting.
The subject of divine beings came up regularly in the original series. Most of the time, it was an occasion for Kirk to smugly assert his own cleverness and moral superiority. The fact that Final Frontier still reached that point ("What does God need with a starship?") but only after real soul searching (he's the only one who resists Sybok's purging of emotional baggage) calls to mind, actually, another Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan.
No, really.
It's at the end of Khan, a movie that posits around the same central issue as its predecessor, The Motion Picture, the question of an aging Kirk. (The first movie does not receive near enough credit for all the ways it continued to affect both the film series and the TV efforts that followed it. People say that one was boring and leave it at that. The whole franchise would not exist without it, and I'm not just speaking of how it revived Star Trek in the literal sense.) At the end of Khan, after Spock has died, Kirk is reflecting once again on his feelings about growing older. "It's a far, far better better thing I do than I have ever done before, a far better resting place that I go to than I have ever known," Kirk quotes, from A Tale of Two Cities, the book Spock gave him at the start of the movie. And I admit, I've never read Two Cities, so I never knew the significance of that line, only that it always felt like the most poetic and best moment of the movie. "I feel young," Kirk concludes, when reflecting on how the recent events have affected him. Two Cities is the less famous of the two books referenced in Khan, the other being Moby Dick (which First Contact later echoes to much better effect). Possibly there is far more significance in its inclusion than I can properly address here without having read it, but apparently Charles Dickens knowingly reflected Christian theology in it, the way Lewis and Tolkien would in fantasy contexts a century later.
The point is, Final Frontier is almost a movie-length extrapolation of that epiphany, Kirk's exploration of issues concerning faith and the importance of being true to one's self. That is the whole point of the Sybok character, who exists in rank contradiction to everything we ever knew about Spock and his father, at first. But he's also an affirmation, and a vital link in a chain never fully explored. The life and career of Spock exists in as many missing pieces as illuminated moments. The way his successor Tuvok in Star Trek: Voyager surprised everyone in the episode "Flashback" by having a Starfleet service record that stretches all the way back to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (even his close friend Janeway) is kind of like the revelation of Spock's brother in Final Frontier. There's everything to validate the relationship, including the way it's presented in the movie. Spock is as conflicted about his brother as Sarek was of his son. Or sons. Vulcans are no doubt masters of passive aggression.
Yet I don't want to bog you down with too much reflection. Final Frontier boils down to an effort on the franchise's part to finally confront the matter of faith in a forthright fashion. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, four years later, borrowed this legacy to considerable effect. Sybok's quest is not invalidated by its results. In fact, the moment the false god appears as Sybok himself is a more compelling exploration of the matter than the rest of the film, forcing the audience to question all over again what to believe.
And we are certainly at a crossroads of belief as a global civilization. In 1989 that wasn't as much of an issue. In 2014, it absolutely is. We're deep in the heart of converting Christmas back to its pagan roots. We have a new Catholic pope who is calling for dramatic reforms, but the majority of people still think of faith in the 21st century as an alternative to atheism. It used to be the other way around, certainly in the years following WWII, when the whole world was struggling to make sense of so much devastation. This is the inevitable result of increasing globalization. More people are more aware of other cultures than ever before. The more we struggle to reconcile new ideas the harder it is to process the old ones. And in the effort to consider all these ideas at the same time, some of them will undergo a change of emphasis in popular thought.
Final Frontier was ahead of the curve. It was ahead of its time. It was as much a reflection of the end of the Cold War as its successor, Undiscovered Country, on the opposite side of the cultural spectrum. It's still a film of questionable overall value, but it's far too resonant to outright dismiss. It's one of the most important statements Star Trek has yet made.
Worst Star Trek movie? It's a debate I'd rather not tackle, really. They all have their merits, even The Final Frontier.
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