Death of Art, Rise of Skywalker

I admit I have been thrown into nihilistic depression by the last Star Wars and other similar movies this past year. They have not been bad - they have made me wonder whether art is even possible.

Or rather, just when limited to these mega-blockbusters that are the tentpoles of the entire culture. Are they even making anything worth analyzing? Is it worth trying to pick apart the pieces of Skywalker?

This is related to “Justice League.” I liked Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman and had a lot to say about them, but as the series went on, there was less to say about each movie. Justice League had a couple good moments, but was otherwise pablum.

If you have the time, watch this video about “the Snyder cut” that goes deep into the process of making these half a billion dollar budget movies.

And I just have this dark vision of modern cinema. A very high paid actor, standing alone with ping pong balls and velcro taped to the, saying a few lines against a green screen, giving as much fungible footage as possible to give the CGI artists. A dozen hours of this is cut into something resembling a plot, it’s shown to focus groups, and they give feedback on what they can’t follow or understand or who isn’t likable enough. Then months after shooting, the scenes are re-cut, dialogue is added (especially behind a mask or off screen), to make entirely different plots, and remove or add entire narrative lines. The result has no coherence besides being the least offensive thing to the particular focus group. Then half a billion is spent on marketing, the majority of its ticket sales come from viewers the opening weekend before anyone has seen it, and with weak “legs” the movie disappears into irrelevance within weeks.

What is there to even analyze here! There is no auteur’s vision. There is no deep resonance with society that makes audiences remember it, because it didn’t resonate with society. I’d analyze the output of a million monkeys on typewriters if people loved it, just so see what they loved, but no one loves it. Let alone how genre franchises have made it so you are stuck with certain characters or settings, but studios are too cowardly to stick with or plan a throughline for multiple films. You have the weaknesses of using the same ingredients, with none of the benefits of a strong, ongoing foundations.

It’s all depressing and stupid.

I even “liked” a few bits of this movie. The scene on the shattered remains of the Death Star combined the two best actors, an environment that represented Rey’s inner turmoil (which is what Star Wars planets are best at), and some good writing. I didn’t mind the reveal that retconned TLJ. The horror around Palpatine’s presentation was well done. The ForceSkype scenes and fights were good. I went in with low expectations and so did not emerge disappointed.

But I can’t for the life of me think of anything to say about the movie. It’s a melange of stuff intended by no one that sometimes amuses but mostly upsets people.

Here’s what SMG has been able to pull together in a longer form review than usual, but it only arrives at the same point:

First Question: Which ST?

As we all know now, Lucas’ films have a very clear and simple - but very nuanced - story structure. We have two trilogies, OT and PT. The plot is laid out in numerical order, but the actual story is achronological.

4 - 5 - 6 - 1 - 2 - 3

Although there is no literal time-travel in Star Wars, the story is about a time loop. The eternal return of the same. Prophecy. Things are doomed to happen again, and again.

The only good Disney film, Rogue One, is the void at the center of the ring. Despite fitting into the plot between 3 and 4, Rogue One is extimate to Lucas’ narrative. Picture a circle with an ‘R’ in the middle. Everything circulates around it, but it never connects. For Lucas’ satire to function, the leftism of Rogue’s worldview must be pointedly excluded - even if it’s at the core of what Lucas was expressing.

4 - 5 - 6
|....R....|
3 - 2 - 1

So, that’s the groundwork out of the way. Now, how is the ST structured? This is where things get extremely complex.

Barudak posted:

I really loathe these films as a standalone trilogy because a ton of it is confusing as hell without the previous films

To understand the ST, you need to confront this confusion. Unlearn what you have learned. There are so many bad takes because people cannot separate one film from another, and from some “meta” cultural experience:

“Luke saw the prequels!” No, he didn’t.

“Kylo’s a Star Wars cosplayer!” No, he isn’t.

The Disney films do obviously follow Lucas’ plot (to some extent), and they do correctly identify Episode 3 as the end of the Lucas narrative. But, ultimately, they scrap what Lucas established. They’re a new thing. It’s what we call a ‘soft reboot’, subtly easing you into an altogether different narrative.

Here’s proof: in the ST’s backstory, there is only one Death Star. There was only ever one Death Star. There is never any mention of a second Death Star. When Rey walks up to the Death Star wreckage near Endor, she says “it’s the Death Star!” - not “it’s Death Star 2, the Emperor’s personal Death Star, built to replace the first Death Star after it was destroyed near Yavin”.

The “ST” films are set in the aftermath of a big war, but it is not the same war we see in the Lucas films. It’s a remixed version. For lack of a better term, it’s the Stupid Version. There were some mean ol’ baddies who were angry for no reason, and killed one trillion people with a Death Star, but Luke The Jedi inspired Leia’s Rebels to eradicate them all in a blinding rainbow Light of Hope. The Emperor of the baddies was killed by Luke, his Death Star was blown up, and as long as people retained their faith in the Light of liberalism, the baddies couldn’t return....

There is no mention of slavery and racism in the Republic in this stupid version. The Kessel Run isn’t an obvious lie. The fact that the Rebels failed, and Darth Vader (with the Ewoks) ultimately defeated the Emperor, is erased. Instead of being complicit in the rise of the Empire, the Jedi were merely too weak to stop it. Instead of just being a dude with legitimate grievances, Darth Maul is now an evil alien from planet Exogal, who literally all wear black robes. Etc.

So, while TFA seems to follow from Lucas’ films - jumping off from Episode 3 while retaining the same numerical system - it’s a trap. Once you’re in, the door closes behind you. Lucas’ films are replaced with Solo: A Star Wars story, Rogue One, and the yet-unreleased Obiwan film (now a miniseries).

Why? Because Solo is an origin story for Han, Rogue One is a (stealth) origin for Leia, and Obiwan will inevitably end on a young Luke. Each of these characters gets a film where they die, and so each gets an origin story. (Additionally, each midquel re-introduces a key faction: smugglers, Rebels, Jedis). This is why Disney developed a ‘midquel trilogy’ in the first place. The goal is to generate a new six-film continuity to replace Lucas’, without technically remaking anything. Who’s this old guy in Episode 9? Watch Solo to find out. Who is Darth Vader? Watch Rogue One to find out. What the fuck is a Jedi anyways? Watch the new Obiwan series. (This planned structure is likely why Solo was desperately reshot to be unfunny).

4 - 5 - 6 - 1 - 2 - 3 - [S - O - R] - 7 - 8 - 9

Of course, the Disneyverse is in constant flux due to market forces. Although we can think of the Disney films as two trilogies, Solo was also likely meant to start an Expanded Universe of Solo films, which were aborted. Obiwan is now a TV show alongside Mandalorian and a new Rogue One prequel. Meanwhile, even Episode 8 was rendered narratively irrelevant and quietly shuffled away like the Lucas films, to be fodder for references.

Basically, that’s a long way of saying that the Disney films are designed in such a way that you can selectively acknowledge or ignore whatever you want. And that means things can change dramatically, depending on each viewer. Currently, the closest thing we have to an “ST” is Solo, 7, and 9 - a ‘Millenium Falcon’ trilogy, focussed on the ownership of the Falcon (and, to a lesser extent, the Solo family). Anyone reading the films this way, though, will reach vastly different conclusions from anyone following that the ‘official’ (but less coherent) numbered trilogy of 7, 8, and 9.

Second Question: Exogol????

We need to talk about Exogal.

I’m honestly surprised that fans aren’t absolutely furious about this. Undead Palpatine gets all the attention, because everyone loves the prequels, but the actual massive twist in ROS is that literally every conflict in Star Wars was the work of the Exogolians from planet Exogol.

Who’s that weird guy at the end of Solo? In the context of the ST, he’s an Exogolian, wearing the telltale robes of his culture. Exogalians are behind organized crime. Who’s that guy at the end of Rogue One? That’s the Exogolian known as Darth Vader. (According to Wookieepedia, the Exogolian relic from the start of ROS was Vader’s personal “wayfinder”). Who is the “Darth Sidious” Luke’s talking about? Another Exogolian - he destroyed the Jedi. Palpatine is obviously an Exogolian. Rey’s parents were, of course, killed by an Exogolian.

Exogolians are the ‘midichlorian’ twist times a billion, in terms of their devastating impact on the Star Wars narrative(s). But where the midichlorian twist was specifically laser-targeted at New Age horseshit interpretations of The Force, the Exogolian twist is just aimlessly moronic.

But it’s in the film. You can’t avoid it. Sorry.

Exogal is a seemingly-barren planet, home a relatively small (but nonetheless sizeable) population of Sith. Sith is the national religion of the Exogolians, who are otherwise notably multiracial. (The ‘rule of two’ is evidently out, or non-applicable here.) So, when Palpatine says that he is “all the Sith”, he clearly means that he wields the collective psychic power of all the Exogolians in the arena.

But, who’s not an Exogolian? Kylo Ren!!(And probably Dooku). Kylo is now officially confirmed to be not a sith, for what it’s worth. For a more philosophical-type question: did Snoke know he was being controlled?

Anyway, the Exogalians’ sole major industry is Starship production. Note that the stormy, hidden planet and stony arena imagery are a mix of Kamino, Geonosis, and the mining planet from Solo. Implicitly, the Exogolians are the arms dealers ‘selling to both sides’, from TLJ.

Call it a plot hole, but the Exogolians don’t employ droid or clone slaves for some reason. But then, they ask for no money either. They want nothing but manpower. The economics of it are baffling. Who’s building all this?

Anyways, Exogol is a thing now.

Hobo Clown posted:

Who is Snoke supposed to have been a clone of? Is it a poorly grown and rushed version Palpatine? Random Sith mook #6731? Grown from the Force like Anakin but without a human mother?

So this leads us to the next thing:

Third Question: What The Fuck Is Even Going On?

One thing I like to point out is that there never was an "OT", until after Return Of The Jedi. The first three Star Wars films became a trilogy retroactively, because it was never really certain how many films it would take to complete the story. There were plans for multiple Empire Strikes Back sequels, which were then condensed down into Episode 6 (with mixed results). The prequels were the first time that Star Wars films were ever actually planned out as a trilogy, with a definitive ending in mind. So, in a sense, we would not have an "OT" without the prequels' structural role. They cemented things: Lucas' Star Wars is now, definitively, two trilogies that complement eachother.

Now, Disney's approach with the sequels is a sort of worst-of-both-worlds approach. We have the slipshod, improvisational nature of the OT combined with the absolute certainty that this WILL be a trilogy. 'We cannot fail, we won't lose money. We can just churn out anything, with the promise that it'll eventually work.' It's not just Disney that bought into this silliness; Snoke appeared onscreen and fans said "it's going to be great when they finally make a movie about who Snoke is" - oblivious to the fact that TFA is the movie about who Snoke is.

"It's going to be great when they finally make a movie about what happened to the New Republic". TFA is that movie. The New Republic sucked and got blown up.

"It's going to be great when they finally make a movie about what Rey's parents did." TFA is that movie. Rey's parents dumped her on Tatooine because they were dumbasses.

"It's going to be great when they finally make a movie about what happened to Luke". TFA is that movie too. Luke's temple sucked and got blown up. Luke slinked away as a loser.

And Episode 8 simply repeats the above. There's nothing actually subversive in it, which is why it's so redundant. Yet, fans still believed in the power of the franchise over individual films. It'll all eventually work. Episode 9 will fix everything... right?

Nope. Episode 9 also repeats the above. The parents are still dumbasses, and Luke is still a loser. (Were fans really expecting a really good and sensible reason to sell a six-year-old girl into slavery to a feudal lord?) So, getting back to the point: giving Snoke an origin could never 'fix' anything. It had the potential to affect how we interpret the story of TFA, but it could never actually change the story of TFA. Like, so what if Snoke's grown in a vat? That doesn't actually mean anything. Instead of being a quasi-Stalinist 'Evil Pope' figure, Snoke is now a quasi-Stalinist 'Evil Pope' figure who came from a vat. Wow.

Who is Snoke a clone of? Nobody. We're shown in the film that he was built from scratch, and emerged from the vat fully grown. But, even if he were a clone of someone specific, this still wouldn't change the character. He would still be Snoke, the quasi-Stalinist 'Evil Pope' figure who came from a vat. So the ST was always about one thing: a not-very-timely critique of the Soviet Union. Horseshoe theory with Hux. A literal Red Dawn in TFA.

Episode 9 changes absolutely nothing about the previous films. It just moves away from them, by finally introducing something interesting: Rey's realization that she is a bad guy. The true big reveal is that she always knew this, but could never admit it to anyone. She's reluctant to participate in battles because she knows inside that the Republic is fascist. She knows that Resistance are Contras, and the fact that she loves killing scares her.

All the stuff about her parents and lineage is nonsensical dross, but easily tuned out. Palpatine is not Rey's grandfather except in a metaphorical sense. He's the guy who killed Rey's parents and thereby created her. (It's a reference to Conan The Barbarian.) The dagger that killed them is the source of Rey's power, and her passport to Hell.

2house2fly posted:

I think the specific reasons behind it was what bugged people, I've read a lot of "they made Luke into a child murderer!" People probably assumed Luke was blameless and was hiding out on the island planet because he was scared of the villains or something

Fourth Question: Seriously, What The Fuck Is Going On?

It’s vital to never forget that the Lucas films ‘end’ with Vader dying our sins - in what is, narratively, the middle of the story.

Lucas’ point with that twist is that, while the Jedi keep talking about the eventual appearance of a ‘Chosen One’ who will balance the universe, “the Messiah has already arrived; the Event has already taken place, [and] we are living in its aftermath.” (Zizek, my italics)

In other words, killing the emperor doesn’t solve anything in-and-of itself. So long as there is still inequality, the job isn’t done. Vader’s crucifixion - literally the death of God, aka The Force - means simply that there never was an excuse for suffering. We are freed from ‘the energy field that controls our destiny’ - but authentic freedom is a burdensome responsibility.

So, David Fincher was correct to say “Star Wars [is] the story of two slaves who go from owner to owner, witnessing their masters’ folly - the ultimate folly of man.” Lucas’ films can only truly be read two ways: either you believe in Christ and demand an end to droid slavery, or - however well-intentioned you may be - you are on the side of Rome and suffering.

Fincher was approached to do Episode 7, but declined. Three guesses what ideas Disney went with instead.

“Well, if droids could think, there'd be none of us here, would there?"

This line, clearly demonstrating Obiwan’s intense racism, is Disney’s quasi-official political stance. We see it in Black Panther, for example: if black slaves could think, “the sun will never set on the Wakandan Empire.” Black leftists ‘go too far’ and seek to enslave the white race in retaliation. Episode 9, likewise, makes Kylo Ren suddenly an avowed imperialist and - simultaneously - reveals that Snoke was, all along, an organic droid.

Moreso than even the Clone Troopers, who were at least raised from infancy, Snoke is an organic machine. But Snoke is evidently ‘a droid who can ‘think’ and therefore endeavours to eliminate humanity. (Pop Quiz: can you name the other Star Wars character to wears only gold, and sits on a throne as god-king?)

Disney’s policy of ‘anti-imperialism’ sounds appealing, because who can say they like imperialism? But it’s ultimately a trick: anti-imperialism in defence of capitalism is a dogwhistle for anticommunism. A few decades ago, they called it ‘domino theory.’

Anyways, if you’ve seen only the Disney films, Darth Vader is presented exclusively as “a very powerful evil guy”. All reference to Vader as a Christ figure has been scrubbed. But, still: why was Ben so angry? What made him open to Vader’s teachings (via Snoke) in the first place?

It’s not actually a mystery, of course. Ben’s dad trafficked endangered species for the venal rich, and his mom headed some kind of extralegal feudalist death squad. Ben begins thinking commie thoughts, and that is why Luke plots to murder him.

This is not to say Snoke is a good person, of course. He’s still just a quasi-Stalinist ‘Evil Pope’. But the filmmakers still, curiously, decided to make Snoke an enslaved clone-droid - a hybrid of the two most overtly oppressed peoples in the Star Wars. And his sendoff is a big closeup of his tongue drooping grotesquely out of his dead face, like “fuck you, Snoke!” And then Pippin dismisses cloning as unnatural.

December Movie/TV Roundup

Brief reviews of: Parasite, Knives Out, Witcher, and Messiah. Rise of Skywalker will come later. Spoilers follow but if you care you can probably just skip the parts for shows you have seen.

Don Lear: The Irishman

Let’s talk about Martin Scorsese’s the Irishman. It’s hard to talk about this without the context of the director ripping on Marvel superhero movies as “not really cinema”, or without the context of his history of many successful mafia movies. Avoiding those two things, the best piece I’ve read about the Irishman is about the role of Peggy, the protagonist’s largely silent daughter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/29/most-important-character-irishman-is-woman/

The real story of “The Irishman” is that of the deteriorating relationship between Frank and his daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina as a child, Anna Paquin as an adult). In an early scene, Frank stomps off to the corner grocery, Peggy in tow, after his wife (Aleksa Palladino) informs him that the owner shoved Peggy when she misbehaved. In front of his daughter, Frank drags the man out to the curb and stomps him, shattering his fingers. He intends it as a show of paternal loyalty and fatherly protectiveness. For Peggy, it’s a defining moment: The beating shows Peggy what her father truly is.

As Frank’s involvement with Bufalino and Hoffa deepens, both men try to win over Peggy, who is repulsed by Bufalino and drawn to Hoffa’s vision of dignity for working men. And when Bufalino sets Frank up to kill Hoffa, Peggy is the one person who immediately intuits her father’s involvement and makes the moral choice to cut him off forever. The climax of “The Irishman” isn’t the murder. It’s a scene where an aged Frank leaves his nursing home on crutches to queue at the bank where Peggy works, hoping she’ll talk to him if he approaches her at her teller’s window.

It's a good attempt at thematic reading, but it gets the movie entirely long. Let’s talk about why.

Midsommar Midnight

Midsommar is not really a movie that needs my analysis, since it wears its themes on its sleeve so explicitly. What's it about? Oh modernist anomie encountering and being devoured by pre-modern folk tribalism, right.

Contra the advertising of this movie, most of the emotional heart of the movie is the four nihilistic college and grad students looking to find escapism at their friend's "quaint" family summer retreat. The main character and final girl is devastatingly depressed after her bipolar sister commits murder/suicide with their parents at the start of the film. Her boyfriend and his friendgroup are cliche millennial academic types who want to get him out of a clingy relationship while of course doing the right, polite thing for her in the Seinfeld sense of morality without ethics. They are led by their cultist-wolf-in-millennial-sheeps' clothing "friend" to a tight knit community with drugs, eerie and beautiful summer weather, and the promise of fun and research opportunities. Said commune turns out to want to sacrifice them to their god in the aim of cleansing their own sin.

Much of the movie is about the visitors being easily misled by the cultists. It is a movie very much in the vein of mocking the Zizek decaffeinated Other: 

"Today's tolerant liberal multiculturalism as an experience of Other deprived of its Otherness (the idealized Other who dances fascinating dances and has an ecologically sound holistic approach to reality, while features like wife beating remain out of sight.)"

Replace wife-beating here with "ritual suicide at reaching 72 years of age." The visitors are so focused on the dances, and promise of sex, that they don't take seriously the promise of sacrifice. 

But more than that, the cultists use the millennials' own weakness - their lack of community and mutual distrust of each other - to fool them. The folk Harga are all about relying on each other and bonding, whereas the visitors compete for academic prizes or are in relationships that are clearly unhealthy and deteriorating. So whenever the Harga get one visitor alone and victimize them, they are able to lie to the rest of the visitors and blame the out of towner... and their fellow millennials easily buy the bait. Because they can all too easily believe the worst things about themselves.

This unquestioning bond is the Harga's chief strength, and their temptation to our heroine. She has just gone through an unutterable loss, and while her boyfriend knows all the "right" gestures to do in how he is supposed to support her, he can't actually help her move on from the loss. What does she want then?

One of the most notable non-formal things about the Harga community is the disturbing way they share intense emotions. Especially during scenes of pain, when one person is undergoing agony, every member of the town will begin screaming and moaning and gyrating and clawing at themselves, as if they too are experiencing this suffering. (We also see it in the ritual sex scene, so presumably it's not just for pain.) Even when the sufferer is a victim and their pain has been inflicted by the community, they will still practice this radical empathy for it.

When the heroine herself is in extreme pain, having seen her boyfriend participating in ritual sex (set up by the commune), her new sisters fall down screaming with her just as seriously as if they too were cheated on. And this shows what she needed: no one could bring her parents back, and the polite duties of a boyfriend weren't enough, but some family that would scream and suffer alongside her was the only thing that could give her peace. And it's why she joins the commune and betrays her friends, and even wails in agony at the end with someone burning in a sacrificial fire she is responsible for.

***

All of that is the plaintext of the film. There's no subtext to read really. The set design and creepy scenes are very pretty, but nothing about the movie is mysterious or going to surprise anyone, when the themes are laid out so clearly and so early on. The whole runtime gets rather repetitive really, with the same banging of these two cultures together and always to the same effect.

Except for one scene. Plotwise this scene would be the climax, but it's so completely undercut and underwhelming that it's much harder to interpret, and possibly the only twist on the whole endeavor.

This is the scene where our final girl has been crowned May Queen and gets to choose the final sacrifice. She is presented with one townsperson, and one visitor - her boyfriend. We know that she chooses her boyfriend to die. It's the ultimate victory of the cult.

And, we know how this scene is supposed to go. The townperson should be Pelle, the "friend" who tricked them all into coming to the commune, and has also been emotionally seducing her. She can choose who dies: the one who betrayed them all, or the man she can no longer trust. The boyfriend should be arguing for mercy or sanity, the superego voice trying to save itself. And after he says one particular thing wrongly, the newly empowered anti-heroine should deliver some cutting denouncement, like off with his head, etc etc. It's the ultimate showdown of the symbolic elements to cap this movie.

... and we don't get that at all. The non-boyfriend sacrificial possibility is a random cultist chosen by lottery who we've never talked to before. The boyfriend is drugged out of his gourd and sitting on a wheelchair slumped feebly, and doesn't say a word. And our heroine faces her choice with a grimace, but says nothing. She takes no action or agency on screen - the scene just cuts to the boyfriend being sewn into a bear to be immolated. 

This is so weird. We are left to wonder, what did she say or do? Did she gladly call for her ex's blood, or did she just nod sheepishly? How can we even bring ourselves to feel emotion - either pity or anger - for the drugged out boy slumped over? Who even cares about random lottery dude and what does he represent?

It's a sharp turn into apathy, nihilism, and inertness for a film that was on such an unrelenting track until this point. It's like the filmakers just couldn't make the jump to actually connecting with the heroine's decision, or at least assumed the audience couldn't.

Deadwood and the End of Prestige

HBO's decade delayed coda to the beloved Deadwood series came out recently. Is it good, should you watch it? It's probably not going to appeal to anyone who didn't watch the series (and they might as well watch Season 1 if they want Milch's expensive sets, lyrical dialogue, and cutthroat characters.) But it does give fans of the series exactly what they want.

That therein might be the problem, and also the future of prestige TV.

Prestige television, especially in this era of antihero protagonists, has a surprising amount of artistic integrity. They depict a dark and nihilistic world, firmly post-"happy endings." And so they have to end in a way that highlights this hopelessness.

Tony Soprano suddenly faded to black. And at the end of Deadwood S3 they drive off the despicable George Heart by... giving or convincing they gave him everything he wanted, and watching him ride out of town, having killed innocents and sold their dignity to do it. We are denied catharsis. These are bleak endings, fitting their bleak worlds.

Turns out audiences aren't actually happy with that. (See the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad as well, with Walter sitting alone in a cabin.) But what are they going to do, as a strong directorial voice doesn't respond much to what audiences want.

The solution apparently is to end the series like that... and then have a movie that comes back in and fixes that. Even a pretentious director doesn't want to do the same thing in a movie that they already filmed.

I was somewhat shocked at the change in historicity of the show. Deadwood the series fit what we knew of history - Wild Bill died, but Seth Bullock, Al Swearengen, and George Hearst all went on to live big lives afterwards. The movie decides, eh nevermind, let's kill or imprison Swearengen and Hearst anyway. It will give pathos and closure.

And in abandoning history, the movie does this pretty well. We get the same cynical characters, but they manage to wring some good out of the world, the moral people either die heroically or get married and have kids, and the anti-heroes die but on their own terms. It's not a cheery Disney ending, but it's one that leaves a warm feeling inside you. (You know, much like the actual ultimate episode of Breaking Bad.)

It's a pattern that will probably be replicated. If James Gandolfini had not passed on, we could see him take a bullet for his family or have the day saved by Dr. Melfi. Hell, the Breaking Bad movie will probably accelerate this phenomenon from the sentimental ride-or-die ending.