Examining Fandoms through Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker

I had written an introduction for this piece... and then deleted it. And then rewrote it. And then deleted it again.

Look, folks, at the above image. I know it's kinda painful to look at, because the art's mostly cringe, but read that dialogue. Peter, badly done hair and all, is saying something that is so basic, so fundamental, that only low art could pull it off: perfect love drives out all fear. No, I don't know the rest of the context of this comic. I've not read it before. I don't really need to, and frankly I'm not sure I want to! Love and fear cannot coexist. This a basic fact of the universe. Love makes us less and less like animals, and more and more people. A person who has love will see the way of the animal, the way of instinct, know it is an option, but ultimately reject it... because they are not an animal. And cannot be. Now, the trick is that no one's love is perfect. There is always a line all human beings have. And that line is unique to them. But even in failure that person is still far more noble than someone who never had love to begin with.

Let us examine two things the fandoms hate and critique them with this lens, shall we? We'll do One More Day and The Last Jedi.

For those of you who are blessed to not know what One More Day is... well, I'm sorry. You're going to find out if you keep reading. I almost recommend you not read on. For the rest of you who are cursed with the knowledge that is One More Day.. well I'm sorry. For those blissfully ignorant, who wish to lose their innocence: One More Day is the story where Peter Parker and Mary-Jane sell their marriage to Mephisto, a second-rate demonic figure in Marvel lore, because he claims he can save Aunt May, when somehow no one else in the Marvel Universe can.

No, I'm not making that up.

Yes, that's stupid. Just at its base, that may be one of the dumbest things a mortal mind can conceive.

But it happened.

How did that happen? Well, in order to start, I have to introduce you to the beginning of the end of Marvel: the Civil War event. See, One More Day really starts there. The story of Civil War begins when a villain by the name of Nitro blows up an entire school of kids. In the wake of a tragedy that has assuredly never happened in Marvel history before, the mob supposedly screams out for the registration, training, and subjugation of all super-powered beings.

Let us stop, for just one second, and think about how stupid an idea this is.

You are trying to tell people who are smarter, faster, stronger, better than the normal population that somehow, some strange way hitherto not done, they're going to be contained? And that somehow it doesn't go dystopian from there? Look, we've been seeing this sorta thing talked about in X-Men comics for decades. We know where this goes. All the Marvel heroes knows where this goes. This shouldn't be a line any Marvel hero crosses, just to begin with. But somehow Iron Man, the one guy who doesn't do governmental overreach, is the one who decides that he's going to step up and be the bad guy? I could go on about Civil War and how it's actually the character assassination of every single Marvel hero, ever, particularly Bishop, who somehow is pro-registration??? That one really made no sense.

But we're not here for Iron Man and Bishop, are we? We're here for Spider-Man. See, Spider-Man went pro-registration at first. Which is a... weird... move for the guy who historically has wanted to live in the shadows and not really be noticed by anyone, if he can help it. In the main Civil War event Spider-Man publicly unmasked in support of the new totalitarian regime. It's this sudden shock move that has no substantial explanation and is barely talked about in the event itself, until suddenly Spider-Man changes his mind mid-way through with the most paper thin of explanations.

However, in the Spidey comics themselves, I personally think this move was built up to really well. J. Michael Straczynski, the writer of Amazing Spider-Man, really took his time here. He first showed Spider-Man transitioning to becoming a team player, an Avenger. Then Tony Stark helps Peter out when his house is destroyed. He takes him in. Gives him a new suit. Helps the Parkers get through the... wretchedness... that is The Other storyline. A lot of people complain/ed that Peter throwing in with Tony came out of nowhere. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tony Stark was stepping up as a mentor in Peter's life. I actually really liked it. This was actually a really good match, one that I wish Marvel had allowed Straczynski to take years to explore more. Iron Man and Spider-Man's books could have bled together a bit, with Peter having a real impact on Tony's life. It's actually a really cool idea. 

So, when Tony Stark decides to become a totalitarian asshole, it is in Peter's character to at least consider it. Peter's actually a pretty simple character in this regard. He has always wanted to support his family and friends, and Tony had more than earned that much from Peter. So, Peter unmasking was an evolution of the concept of Spider-Man. Peter Parker resolved to stop hiding from people. Encouraged by Aunt May and Mary-Jane that he, himself, is someone worthy of being loved, Peter Parker takes the final step. The fundamental formula of Peter Parker as Spider-Man had changed. And it should have. While this isn't a perfect writing decision but pretending that Peter wasn't coming from a place of love, something that Straczynski had taken most of his arc to build, is just raging stupidity. And pretending that this wasn't a part of Peter Parker becoming the Uncle Ben of the Marvel Universe is just as stupid.

Well, this had predictable results, once Spider-Man decided that totalitarianism, surprise of surprises, wasn't something to back.

Peter handles that well.

Yes, he's throwing a Jeep at the sniper. A whole Jeep. Man, I miss competent Spider-Man writing that's not the current Ultimate Spider-Man run.

Peter goes on a rampage. Sure, this part makes sense. Putting on the black costume is stupid, sure, but the concept of Peter Parker having enough and burning the whole world down because Aunt May was shot is... well... yes. Peter, like all of us, gets tired and eventually the animal is going to win out. Fine with that. So far Peter is acting like someone for whom love has transformed, but not all the way. Because nobody ever is totally transformed by love, not in this life.

And then One More Day. Where somehow in a land of mysticism and tech that's so advanced that it is magic, no one can save Aunt May. Except Mephisto, a second-rate demon that has been knocked around by more than a few heroes in the Marvel Universe. Somehow this dude is able to save Aunt May... if Peter Parker and Mary Jane sell their marriage. Suddenly, the man who has been slowly transformed by the love of his wife and aunt is afraid. Going on a revenge tour for Aunt May getting shot is one thing, but to undo the thing that she created because of her love?  There's a whole host of problems with this decision, but the biggest one is simply that it wouldn't occur to Peter or Mary-Jane as an option. It's almost like there's a totally different writer here!

Oh wait!

See, Quesada, the editor-in-chief of Marvel at the time, basically wrote this issue, using Straczynski's far greater talent to at least attempt profundity. But... I mean... the shift is so profound that everyone caught it. Immediately. Because low art has only one thing going for it: heart. That's what makes it work. It's not technically proficient the way high art is, but it hits something so true so fervently and honestly that you can't help but love it anyways. And One More Day reeks of a total lack of sincerity, in only the way an editor-in-chief hijacking and crapping on a writer's story can stink.

Now, here's where we get to where it gets complicated. Because the public, the mob, is always wrong. Always. The mob doesn't think in terms of truth, but in terms of comfort and power, which are the eternal enemies of truth. Even when they are right, they are right for the worst reasons. In fact, one of the best ways to see if your own thoughts are wrong is to ask what the popular opinion is. And if your opinion matches up to what seems to be popularly said you are in deep trouble and need to change your mind as quickly as possible. The quickest way to figure out if someone who is popular is a charlatan or not is to ask if they repeat the mob's lines back at them and profit from it. 

So, folks who hated One More Day (and there are still a lot of them) couldn't articulate it well, for the most part. Most of the outcry at the time was "Peter wouldn't do that!" or "Mephisto couldn't even provide that sort of thing!" and all sorts of things that are correct but are not right. One More Day's storyline was deeply uncomfortable, so the mob was never going to like it. That's not a guarantee of the story's worth or lack of worth. The mob was ruffled and had some good scapegoats for why it was ruffled. Quesada had invalidated the fundamental law of love, which is that it drives out fear. But mobs don't think, they react. 

Now we're going to get to the really offensive spot: The Last Jedi.

See, Lucasfilm had made a fundamental mistake, way back in the day: they allowed books to be published in the Star Wars universe that could be construed as being in the same continuity as the movies. Nevermind that some of the media released was pure excrement and shouldn't be anywhere near Star Wars. Some of it was more than good enough to be considered in the same canon as the movies. Lucasfilm then made another mistake: they kept doing it. Even though some of it is outright character assassination. Then George Lucas made another mistake: he decided he wanted to make the sequel trilogy. And we know, from the plans that have been discussed, that he had every intention on throwing out pretty much all the previously established work in the books, comics, and videogames. Lucas, realizing that his rabid mob of a fandom would eat him alive, but still wanting the sequels made, sold Lucasfilm to Disney.

So now Disney is facing the same problem Lucas did: most of the EU is crap. The good does not outweigh the bad. They don't want to be weighed down by something that's the definition of a mixed bag. Nothing Disney was ever going to do was going to placate the mob, not if they wanted Lucasfilm to actually make something of some notable quality. And, regardless of how cutthroat Disney is, some of them do actually care about making good content, if not art. So, they wiped the EU out, definitively and openly. It had already been done, more or less, by Lucas, but Disney did what Lucas didn't have the courage to do and openly pulled the plug. They then released the safest thing they could in the form of The Force Awakens. And sure, this kept the mob off them for a little while.

But eventually Lucasfilm had to actually do something fully consonant with what Star Wars has always been about. Which meant something doing something both child-like in its fantasy and uncompromising in its examination of human nature. And they found the director to do it, Rian Johnson. They handed him the reigns, and it went about as well as one could expect: the backlash of the mob, who were still clutching their pearls, wasn't actually as hard as it could have been.

Because, surprise of surprises, Johnson actually made a really good movie!

See, the thing is that Johnson had correctly identified who Luke was. Luke, at his core, has always been a man who wants to run away. From the Tosche station joke, to running away from Obi-Wan to find the burning corpses of his aunt and uncle, to just up and leaving to go find Yoda, to running away from Yoda to help his friends, to isolating Jabba so he could take him out more easily, to leaving his friends in the middle of a freaking stealth infiltration mission so he could face Vader (and then giving up midway in the mission and just resolving to die while taking out the Emperor as quickly as possible)...  just that there's a pattern here, folks. Luke is also deeply concerned about the welfare of others. Luke is also easily prone to rage. 

All three of these are true. 

So, Johnson had Luke do the one thing an older Luke would do: almost fly off the handle at his nephew but then stop himself. Luke almost went back from person to animal, stopped himself, and resolved to try better. And he did it much more quickly than he did as a younger man. That's because Luke has grown as a person, but the line back to animal never goes away. It's just something you learn how to handle. And Luke handled it as well as anyone could.

And then his thirteen foster-children were either burned alive or betrayed him.

Now, I don't know if any of you have had the misfortune of watching a woman go through a miscarriage. Something inside the mother dies with the child. But what most people do not track is that the same thing happens to the father too. When the child dies something happens in both parents. Something in them dries up. They can't quite summon the same energy they did before. A great weight is placed on their shoulders. It never leaves. 

Ever. 

And if this senseless tragedy happens multiple times, you get the exquisitely awful "privilege" of watching someone basically collapse under their own weight. No matter what happens afterwards, no matter how happy they get, their smile is dulled. It will never come back, and you will have the wonderfully terrible experience of remembering that their smile used to be so much brighter before all this. Each of these deaths can take months, years, maybe decades, to accept. It takes everything to do this. I have watched it five times. Each of them piled up on top of the last, until the person was almost unrecognizable due to a back log of the worst tragedy imaginable: the death of five little microcosms that you wanted to protect with all your might but couldn't.

Now imagine if over a dozen of those happens to you, at once, and it was your fault. Directly. How far away from suicide are you? Answer honestly now.

That is a deeply uncomfortable scenario. Anyone who thinks that the mob is going to react to such a thing with compassion has never met people. Or they forgot about 2020. Or they just didn't pay attention. Everyone's going to go "That doesn't make me feel good!" And they shouldn't feel good. But because they're a part of a mob, they're not going to reflect on why they may actually feel badly. They're just going to find the cheapest and quickest explanation to justify why they don't feel good.

Oh, wait, Lucasfilm finally disavowed the EU? Where Luke somehow gets married and has a kid, in the most unlikely and idiotic series of events ever written?

Yup, let's pin it on that.

It's certainly easier than realizing that the death of multiple children under your charge would break you too, isn't it? That requires thinking for yourself. And trying to actually think through things, which means automatically rejecting whatever the mob says, while trying to figure out why the mob is wrong.

Or, you know, you could be one of these charlatans that just feeds whatever the mob spews back at them and call it "reporting" or "commentary".

There are so many ways I could close out this blog that would be less messy. I don't claim, and I don't hope I have never claimed, to be correct in anything. I do claim to be some level of genuine. One could argue that my misanthropy is all that's on display in my blog. As of late I've wondered about that myself. I have never not claimed to be a misanthrope. But, as I continue to go along in my life, I have begun to notice that whatever you may mistake for misanthropy is rooted in something actually quite sane. I have made very wrong decisions with those thoughts. But I am not wrong.

I don't know if anyone reading this agrees or not. I know barely anyone does read. But if you are reading and still see something, thank you.

Eating Crow: FFG Star Wars

 

I have never pretended that any opinion of mine is correct. I have considered writing things that will get more than a dozen reads on this blog and experimented with branding. I have always decided not to, coz I ultimately don’t want this blog to be a brand. I just want people to find someone saying exactly what he thinks, no matter how flawed and sometimes outright outrageous it is. Over the years I’ve occasionally written Eating Crow posts coz I changed my mind on something and think it’s good people read about that on the internet, where everyone is right all the time!

I was wrong about FFG Star Wars. Here's why.

The basics of the game revolve around a set of six dice: the ability, proficiency, boost, difficulty, challenge, and setback dice, pictured below:

Each of these dice share a number of symbols on them that help generate differing types of results. There's a lot of openness in interpretation. While there's a general slowdown from having to sort through the dice, I've found that the amount of richness that can come out of a single roll more than makes up for it. Could you go and have normal dice do this? You can! The core books actually include a conversion chart... and it's a nightmare to use. I wouldn't do it.

The problem?

The dice are about 20 bucks for a package, and in typical FFG fashion there's not enough. You'll need at least two sets of these at the beginning, and you will probably want to just keep getting them until you've got six or seven packs. That's 140 bucks, all told. On just dice.

The core books are also a bit of a money sink. There's three of them, covering the three "types" of Star Wars stories: criminals, military, and Jedi. There's a lot of overlap between them of course, but there's just as much that's unique to that particular book. And they're fun to read! They really are! The FFG folks did a good job making them coffee table books.

About ten years ago I bought all the core books and two sets of dice, over the course of about a year or two, and then went on deployment, got a group together… and hated the game. I was playing with former DnD min maxers in a game that resembled DnD in format… and didn’t play anything like it. Please understand I’d sunk quite a bit of money into this game, was in a place where adapting to a new system was a bad idea (and I didn't really know that) and was criminally short on sleep. I was pretty bummed out, came home, put the books up on my shelf, lost the dice... and then forgot about the game.

The years went by, and then a buddy of mine told me that he really liked the Genesys system and was more than willing to defend it against detractors. I just sorta sat and watched as people came at him about the absurd cost of the system and even its practicality. My buddy went and defended the practicality of the system but made no efforts to defend its cost. I jurst sorta filed it away, while making my own complaints about a system I'd seen not work too terribly well. I respected him for standing up for his beliefs, and resolved to eventually give the games another chance.

Yanno.

Whenever that was gonna be!

And then my kids watched The Skywalker Saga. 

And found those books. And started begging to play. I shrugged, told them sure, and made characters with them. They went acrost the three books, grabbing options and gear relatively evenly. I've not really thought about gear lists in a long time, but boy did I get a new appreciation for them as I watched my kids. For them the gear lists were a direct portal into the setting of Star Wars itself, one that they did everything they could to leverage for their own enjoyment. They just wanted me to read every last item and asked how it worked. And the long prose really helped there, let me tell you! It was actually a lot more fun than I expected, overriding my experiences with the former DnD-heads bitching about they wanted more gear, coz they wanted more options to blow people up with.

But character creation being fun is a nice bonus. I want the game to be good. So I got a set of dice and we went to planet Ord Mantell, where a gigantic kaiju had dropped from the orbiting moon to attack the Imperial base there. And every. Single. Second. Of that session was sheer gold. The kids leaned into the dice, oohing and ahhing over them, asking how they could get more yellows and blues, changing narration accordingly. They understood what the dice were for: crafting an exciting narrative. And they leveraged them as thoroughly as they could.

You really need more than one set of dice to run this game. I'm sorry, but you do. That's about 35 to 40 bucks, just right there. Buy yourself a book and that's a hundred bucks. That. Is. A. Problem. And it's pretty ubiquitous to FFG's money decisions. So, if you don't like FFG, this isn't going to change your mind, and I can hardly blame you.

But.

But.

These two sets of dice solve more problems than most RPG books of the same price. They just do. I'm not gonna pretend to you they don't. And if I can just pick up a set of dice instead of reading yet another blowhard telling me how to fix RPGs I'm gonna do it. Maybe you won't. That's cool. That's on you.The book is really secondary to the dice. All the systems they present work, and they work well, and the books themselves are worth the money you spend on them. 

Together?

Yeah, that smarts.

But honestly, folks have spent hundreds of dollars trying to do what FFG is offering for a fraction of that. And I find that worth my time. And cash.

Star Wars Unlimited: Starter Decks

 

Someone really freaking knew what they were doing here!

I kinda chuckled when I saw this game was coming out. I mean, c'mon folks, Star Wars has had a lot of card games over the years. Some of them are amazing, some of them not so much. They all seem to die ignoble deaths. Heck, the Star Wars CCG has continued for years, with people creating custom cards for the game, as people refused to let it die. I've looked through some of these rulesets and just... I never saw anything I found truly special. I know, I know, that's probably a really heretical thing to say or whatever, but I just couldn't bring myself to really care about anything of the things that I read.

I bought a starter set for Unlimited off reading the rules.

Why?

The base structure fixed two fundamental problems I have with most card games: resource management and the turn order. In Unlimited, Resources aren't a specialized card type, but "normal" cards that you choose to dedicate to that task each round. So instead of just having a specialized card for the task you, the player, must make a conscious choice as to what to give up. Dunno about you, but I think of that as good game design. I like having to make that choice. It gives weight to a part of the process I've usually found annoying. I found later that sacrificing cards to make Resources made the later rounds peculiarly satisfying, as there was a history of what I had sacrificed right in front of me, on the board, reminding me of what had been given up for my victory or defeat.

And then there's the actual round structure: you each take a turn, doing one action at a time. This means that most T/CCG stupidity is fixed immediately. You can't just start making combos and building without someone having the opportunity to stop you. There's more interaction and chances to figure out what your opponent is up to. I actually found myself leaning a bit more into real-life sparring tactics, finding cards that could be built upon multiple ways to try and disguise what I was doing. Sure, that was limited coz preconstructed deck, but there's some bluffing games hiding just under the surface that I really want to get into more.

I'm good with just these Starter Decks, because the basic game flow itself is so fundamentally good. You start off somewhat slowly, playing one, maybe two cards. The choices, few as they are, are extremely important. You don't have a big hand of cards and the ones you dedicate to be resources feel consequential. It hurts to lose them. Every time. You hope you chose wisely. Hope. There's a logic to it, with higher costing stuff probably getting dedicated so that cheaper stuff can be played. And it needs to be played. The ramp up in complexity and intensity is incredible. 

The leader mechanic, where a big damn hero shows up for just the cost of an action after a certain number of turns, creates an additional layer of excitement and tension, as Luke comes out the turn before Vader and can be ready for him, not to mention he can heal himself by equipping his lightsaber, so he can tank a whole hit from Vader. Vader, for his part, might be able to get out a turn before Luke and make sure there's nothing for Luke to defend. 

And meanwhile the engine of war builds into this furious crescendo of death and fury. Because playing a card as a resource is an option, it means that at about round eight you'll probably stop playing resources and play more cards, leading to a much faster experience. The moment we figured out that we didn't have to play the resources was when the game naturally went nuts. It was a really good feeling.

I've played this game about a dozen times per deck, with two other people cycling out and playing as well. All the games have been different, the strategies and mindgames were very different each time. I won't pretend to be a master of this game. I'm sure there's people who are better already. I haven't gotten any more cards yet. I'm going to, but not to patch the system. I'm gonna get it coz I wanna see what happens when I get different leaders and new decks onto the field! Even if you just changed out the leader a lot would change.

Obviously, your mileage may vary. You may not like the constant back and forth or find giving up cards to play others too stressful or whatever. But, for my part? I like games that reward my choices. And Star Wars Unlimited's Starter Decks do that in spades. The game ramps up to a roaring finish that is a lot more than "keep swinging until the game is done". The nature of the choices themselves change. 

And that's why I play games.

Playing the Pokemon TCG As An Adult

This is all Kyle's fault.

I had played the card game as a kid, preferring it to the video games. Not much has changed on that front in the decades, but I'd dropped off as I got older and encountered the inevitable conservatism of teenagers. I always kept my finger somewhat on the game, until my brother-in-law Kyle got me a couple of decks, coz he's Kyle and he's always trying to get my grump self to do stuff. I found that the game worked very differently from when I was a kid... which actually changes the way I remember the game in a really weird way. And it's interesting to see my children play it and what they get out of it.

So for those of you who don't know: in Pokemon you build a 60 card deck. Six of those cards become Prize Cards, which are put to the side. Whenever you knock a Pokemon out by doing enough damage to it you take 1-3 prize cards. Whoever takes all their Prize Cards, takes out all the opposing Pokemon (so that way there's no one to fight), or the opponent has no cards to draw, wins! However, in order to deal damage to a Pokemon you have to have energy cards... which do nothing but attach to your Pokemon, usually once a turn. The inherent problem of the game then becomes getting the energy out of your deck onto your Pokemon in a timely, orderly, and constant fashion, before your opponent does it faster and better. Fortunately the designers realized the inherent limitation of this issue and have provided a lot of really good ways to get through the deck quickly and to find the cards you need to.

The biggest thing about the game is that it is deterministic: with the exception of some attacks, damage is a static and known quantity. You know how much energy they need to pull off an attack, even if you don't know if they have enough energy in their hand. But you do know what they need, and how often they should be able to get energy onto their Pokemon. Because of this you're able to somewhat reliably guess the flow of battle and plan accordingly. This is of course means that the hand is the ultimate resource. Since it is mostly unknown to the opponent, one should keep it as secret as one can. "Cheat" cards like Switch (retreat a Pokemon for free) or Welder (see right), or Boss's Orders (which forces out a Pokemon that your opponent doesn't want now) are the actual game: tricks that you use to outsmart your opponent by controlling the tempo of the game. You are trying very hard to get around that tempo as much as you can, and your ability to do it in a way that surprises your opponent seems to be the core of the game.

Which comes as a surprise to me as an adult. See, as a kid I had sensed that there was a deeper game going on, didn't know what it was, and so I went with the deck archetype that let me cut out the unknowns as much as possible: the Beatdown deck, which always sported powerful basics who, with a little bit of help, could one-shot other Pokemon before they evolved. A good Beatdown deck could clean out an opponent in six turns, right about the point when most "normal" decks had finally gotten going. It was a wildly successful format at the time. The Pokemon folks decided that wasn't how they wanted the game to be played, so they upped the HP on most Basic Pokemon, making one-shots a lot harder to outright impossible, while upping the damage of evolved Pokemon a ton, meaning that even a Stage 1 Pokemon could reliably kill most Basics very quickly. These are good changes, and I'm finding that I'm enjoy the deeper game of Pokemon a lot, not to mention teaching it to my kids. There's this "Look three or four turns ahead" going on, where I'm realizing that killing a Pokemon right now may end the game for me in a few turns, and so I'm having to tiptoe and set up the game so that way when I do move it's going to stick.

The thing that didn't change, however, is the creativity that Pokemon engenders. So many cards, so many ways to combine them, and so many ways for people to express themselves! It's been amazing tinkering with my Charizard deck and helping my kids tinker with theirs. I'm always getting surprised by the things they decide will work that I think obviously shouldn't... only to find that actually? It works out just fine. Ya just gotta be adventurous and see what combines.

Is there a problem of the constantly revolving sets and updating the library so people can keep building? Sure. I'm gonna hafta figure that part out. But I have no intention of competitively playing, or even suggesting it to my kids. At least yet. 

I didn't expect to come back to this game. I'm glad I did. They rebalanced the game, forcing people to actually play the game that was intended in the first place. It's fun making decks, testing them, and recalibrating them. Once I accepted the limitations of the game, I found that I had a fast and furious race to the finish.

But don't think I'm letting this card out of any of my decks, ever.

The Marvels

Okay, I'm about to get really really harsh. And, before that I do that, I wanna say something that literally everybody I have read or watched that has criticized this movie has said, and this includes those supposedly racist conservatives:

Iman Vellani is a pure joy to watch. I have never seen someone enjoy being a superhero so much as her. I wish her all the luck with her career in the world.

This movie is pure shit. My God, it hurt to watch this one. It's not as bad as Thor: Love and Thunder, which I couldn't even get through. But it's shit. The script is dumb, a good villain is wasted, the action is boring as hell, Brie Larson needs to get out of the MCU, and obvious fanbait to keep me watching has become actively resented, and just... Marvel can you please just stop?

So, the script is dumb. Captain Marvel, who murdered billions of people, hasn't been locked up for war crimes, nor does she turn herself in for having committed one of the greatest acts of manslaughter ever recorded... like you lost me right there. Right there I'm done. Why does the rest of the universe trust her? Why the hell does she have a singing husband on a silly planet of singing people? Why is the elephant in the room not acknowledged by anyone but the villain???

Oh, Captain Marvel feels bad about it? Her poor feelings are hurt??

Tough.

People have been imprisoned for life for a lot less.

And that's not where the script keeps being stupid. Why is our villainess, Dar-Benn, a villain??? There's this completely unnecessary mustache-twirling element added to a character who frankly didn't need it. Her planet, her people, are dying. There is absolutely no reason for her to go evil to be the antagonist. Quite the opposite! She's the only one with a sane complaint in the cast! Her going "I'll steal a sun and doom another planet and put someone else through what my people have been" makes no sense at all. If she cares about her people then, on some level, Dar-Benn cares. It would have been far more interesting to see her trying to take out Captain Marvel (RIGHTFULLY), only to relent when she realized that the destroyer of her planet could restore it. A lot could have been done with Dar-Benn to make her a more potent and interesting antagonist and just the sheer lack of imagination hurts.

The action is boring. No, it's not fun. Or even moderately interesting. This movie was clearly designed for a phone-addicted audience. And that's the most effort the action is getting from me, coz clearly it doesn't deserve more.

Brie Larson can be a fantastic actress. I've seen her try. I've seen her care about projects. When Brie Larson gets going in a role she can really dial in and turn her energy way up. And that is nowhere near this role. I can't even call it a character. Modern Captain Marvel is boring as hell, and required the Iron Man level of rehabilitation that the MCU originally gave him. And she didn't get it. She's just comic book Captain Marvel, which is... um.

Okay, quiet part out loud, most of the earlier MCU projects were improvements over what's honestly crap source material. Age of Ultron as a comic book event is awful. Just awful. Civil War is when the comics made character assassination cool. Secret Invasion is just shit.

NOTICE HOW MOST OF THIS IS TIED TO BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS????

Point is.

A lot of the MCU works coz they took good basic ideas from half-wit writers (don't balk, I'm complimenting Bendis's recent stuff by calling him a half-wit) and applied actual effort to them. Are these revolutionary or even vaguely high art ideas? Absolutely not, but they were fun, and popcorn cinema is a legit way to go. But in order to do popcorn cinema right you have to get good actors who care about the source material to play the hell out of the roles, stupidly competent writers who have to scrub the shit stains off diamond-quality ideas, and directors who love the source material enough to be critical of it and know they can do better.

And Brie Larson ain't got it.

The only soul in this production who does is Iman Vellani, and God she deserves so much better than this nonsense.

Also, I'm done with these post-credit scenes. Vellani's was fun coz it's two people who clearly like the source material just riffing off each other, but the alternate universe stuff... it's not working. It's just not. This is exactly where Marvel falls flat on its face, Exiles excepted, and Marvel needs to cut it out. 

Please hire good writers and directors who truly love the source material and give Iman a story worth being so damned adorable over. Junk this phase crap, and just let us see Ms. Marvel scout out talent, have fun doing it, and go back to our fun popcorn flicks.

I know they're not going to do it.

But in my last screams of protest over a franchise that has clearly lost its soul I will not go out quietly.

Oh, there's one bright spot to this. Just one. I can see who the shills are now. Coz anyone who claims to like this trash is most definitely a shill. More and more the conservative right's critiques are looking downright prescient: the supposedly compassionate left reveals their true colors of pro-corporatist and totalitarian zombies, with the most they're able to summon being "this was fun!"...

Seriously? That's the best you can do? "It was fun" is the best you can do???

Dude, Iron Man was a lot more than fun. I'm not claiming it was the best movie ever, but it had heart. It had soul. Tony was driven to do what he thought was right, and to hell with everyone else. Everyone knew they had watched something special. The deniers were met with just raw joy. So they had to shut up. I've learned, slowly but surely, but that such joy is the key to defending controversial things. I used to argue with a lot of people about the merits of The Last Jedi. It doesn't go anywhere, coz people can find any reason to dislike something. So I just tell them that I found the movie so beautiful that it stunned me to silence. I tell them about my friend who called me in tears, because she found the whole movie deeply cathartic. That the movie had communicated something transcendent to the both of us, and it was that simple. The same with The Rise of Skywalker. I got a lot out of the movie, and part of the trick is to meet the angry with the very simple statement: "But it changed me. I'm sorry it didn't you" and to drop it from there. It's not something I'm terribly good at doing, but it is what needs to happen.

There's no joy in the defense of The Marvels. It's just an annoyed "shut up racists", said with no oomph. Coz... well... there's nothing in this movie that's actually fun! Or cathartic! Nothing! It's just hollow nonsense. Defending this movie doesn't make you a good person, or anti-racist, or anything. It just betrays a lack of depth, on your part. I mean, c'mon folks, The Marvels could have been one of those fake movies in The Boys... well that's not quite true, is it? It would have to not have poor Iman in it. 

I hope they do right by her. She should be the new face of the MCU, backed by competent writers and directors, allowed to do what Doudney Jr. did. If there was any justice here that's what would happen. But that would be way too optimistic. 

And "optimism is cowardice", as Spengler so correctly points out.

Toy Story 4

Let's get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first.

There is such a thing as woke. Okay? I don't deny it. It's Marxism in artistic form. And, contrary to what many leftists will tell you, Marxism is evil, flat out. By cutting out the person and just reducing them to where they happen to be in society you create something just utterly... well it's not art. It simply isn't. Anyone who pretends that a character like Riri Williams and Kamala Khan (from the comics, calm down!) aren't woke is lying to themselves. 

So.

Woke is real. Woke is bad. It just is. Go cry if you disagree.

Toy Story 4 ain't woke.

"But- but Bo Peep-". Bo Peep ain't woke. She's got a really unfortunate change of voice actor, yes. But she's got seven years of being on her own, after being shunted around and abandoned. Woody's loyalty to Andy, and thus to Bonnie, is unique to him. It's why the other toys follow him. We've known that for awhile now. There is no reason to think that Bo is just as loyal to a child, so it's not exactly a character change. Bo doesn't have much of a personality in the first two films and if you disagree, you're wrong. Bo's love of Woody's loyalty, one of the few things we do know about Bo from the first two films, is intact here and it's actually one of the reasons why everything works out! She clearly misses having a child to love and the movie shows that, really really openly. It's not subtle, and if you missed it you need to stop watching movies while looking at your phone.

The other big elephant in the room is that nobody saw a need for this movie. Now, to be fair, this has been the general reaction to every single Toy Story movie since the first. Now someone who is actually reasonable is going to say that Toy Story 3 should be an exception. I mean, Andy gives up Woody! It should be over! I mean, sure, in theory, but here's the dirty truth about these movies: they make more of them coz they make money off of 'em. And it has always been that way. That's not a new thing. You can either accept that or not.

I suggest you do, coz this is a really really good movie and well worth its time.

Toy Story 4 picks up a little while after Bonnie gets Woody and Co. from Andy. Woody isn't being played with, which he finds disheartening. But he's a kind soul, so he tries to help out Bonnie, even if he's not wanted. This has... consequences. A lot of consequences. Like, damn, the sheer number of consequences. This, right here, may be my favorite part of the movie: the plot never stops juking left. I was constantly being surprised, as entire characters, situations, ecosystems, are developed right on the spot. They make sense. They're coherent. They add to the world of Toy Story. And I love every step of the way. It takes a lot for me to prefer plot to characters, and here boy howdy do they weave a good plot.

That's not to say the characters are bad. This movie has an embarrassment of riches, character-wise. Bo's voice actor replacement is as unfortunate as the character is well-written. Gabby Gabby is a compelling antagonist, who gets the only redemption arc in the series so far. And even the new stuffed animals, who I would normally cringe so freaking hard at, I find charming, coz somehow Pixar got it just right. 

Ultimately, this wouldn't make a bit of difference if the movie isn't coherent, something that Pixar is well-known for. And the theme this time around is extremely coherent, even moreso than the previous entries: you have to have someone to reciprocate love with. It is not enough to love. You have to be loved back too. And it is worth getting hurt for, over and over and over and over and over again, to find someone who will share love with you. The twisty plot, the character work, it all says this one message, that love is worth it, as consistently as you can ever get.

Is Toy Story 4 a bridge too far? It certainly looks that way, popularly. Reception seems to be mixed to negative. But I think that's a shame. There's some really heartfelt and amazing stuff in this movie. I feel like a better person for having watched it. And, I mean... that's starting to feel more and more like a rarity these days? I don't know, I know that's not just me feeling it. I miss feeling that way more often about movies.

And it does here.

I'm gonna enjoy it.

You do you.

Eternals

What the heck, folks? Just, what the heck?

I ignored this when it first came out. The reviews looked mixed, at best. I hate the less grounded Marvel comics, early Fantastic Four excepted for reasons that don't really matter here. Point is most cosmic Marvel stuff is boring. It removes half the formula that makes Marvel comics actually good (epic powers with grounded and relatable stakes) and chucks it out the window... thus making it DC-Lite. There is nothing wrong with DC. But it is not Marvel, it is something different, and Marvel's constant attempts to do something bigger usually falls flat. Marvel doing cosmic stuff means the stakes have to be really grounded in human emotion, really based in something that's easy to figure out and understand. Guardians of the Galaxy works because the emotions are big, easy to read, and sympathetic. Going big epic mythic heroes doesn't work for Marvel normally.

Had they cut the first forty-five minutes off of Eternals they would have proven me wrong.

After the first forty-five or so minutes this movie is awesome. Yeah, sure, there's a lot of standing around and talking but I like movies like that. Sorry, but I do. I like that most of this movie is just fancy suits and people sitting around and talking about how to handle a problem so freaking that large that nobody can adequately address it. I like that. I like that the issue is a truly no-win. It's about time for Marvel to actually do one of these. I love the ending conflict and its complexity. I love that it's not really a fight, not really. It's family trying to figure things out. For the first time in a Marvel movie since Civil War I actually really like the third act of the movie! I actually felt like it built well! 

Okay, maybe Infinity War, but you get my point. It's been awhile.

But you know what wasn't necessary? About 90% of the flashbacks. Kit Harrington is totally wasted. The very worst of the MCU's tendencies in not making self-sufficient stories are indulged here. The bad habit of putting the actual ending of the movie post-credits continues. It frankly ruins the very end of the movie. I was actually happy with everything up until those last ten minutes. 

I just...

Look. 

Can we finally just agree that what we want is a collective mythology? A real, actual, collective mythology? A summation of collective experiences, organically grown and checked against each other? Can we finally admit that these corporations are trying to control a very real collective need, and that they can't fulfill this need? Can we please, please, please admit that pluralism just doesn't really work? People have never been able to find meaning without others, and that "finding your own truth" is only possible with base assumptions that are given to you. It' a need that Disney has tried to control, over and over again.  I think this gaping hole of a need and Disney's attempts to control it is far more cringe than this movie.

And the first forty-five minutes is almost unbearable.