Stranger, Better Things

July 23, 2016 by Joe

A lot has already been written about the new Netflix show Stranger Things, so I’m not really going to take too deep a general dive into it here. Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the overall strong writing, directing, musical score, set design and performances.

This show features a number of teen, and pre-teen, actors and not one of them annoyed me. In fact, I’d say each of their performances holds up nicely against some of the better actors of any age you’ll find out there. Millie Bobby Brown – who plays the enigmatically gifted Eleven – and Finn Wolfhard – playing classically geeky and goodhearted kid Mike – deserve special mention for carrying much of the burden for bringing the viewer back to that age where the world really started changing for them en route to young adulthood.

Stranger Things

On the grown-up side of things, Winona Ryder gives a very nice performance as grieving mother Joyce, who spends much of the season bordering on insanity until she’s proven right. While David Harbour – who plays Chief Hopper – imbues the character with the sort of 1970’s-1980’s era of wry but steady masculinity defined by roles like Roy Scheider as Sheriff Martin Brody, or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.

What I’m more interested in here is taking a personalized look at the influences that inspired creators/show runners The Duffer Brothers, as they are many of the same things that influenced my tastes and own creative endeavors.

But let me first take a quick moment to applaud Netflix for taking a chance on show for such a specific audience, even though it has rather surprisingly found its way to much larger audience. But it reminds you of why Netflix exists, and was so successful, in the first place: taking chances on shows like this one.

Here’s the basic plot, as told from a child of the 80’s like myself (be warned, there will be some spoilers below):

Imagine E.T. but, instead of an alien, the kids find and bond with the girl from Firestarter or Carrie. Together, they’re searching for their missing friend in a similar end-of-the-innocence quest to the one in Stand By Me (of course the kid they’re looking for in Stand By Me is already known to be dead, while the kid in Stranger Things may not be). Either way, the boy’s been taken by a monster not unlike Pennywise The Demonic Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s IT.

Honestly, there is a lot more Stephen King spin present in this show than has been explored in some other reviews. Hell, even the main titles font from the opening credits looks like the vintage cover to a Stephen King novel.

Meanwhile, the teens are dealing with a sort of A Nightmare On Elm Street situation as this same monster presents itself as something that seems to be able to defy the laws of nature and bend reality to its will. This is not far from the truth, as there is some heavy extra-dimensional action happening a la H.P. Lovecraft stories like From Beyond or Dreams In The Witch House.

Lastly, there’s the adult characters’ story arc. This one gets a bit of the short shrift, though that’s clearly by design as The Duffer Brothers know where their bread is buttered here. Still, Winona Ryder gets to lose her mind over a lost loved one like Karen Allen in John Carpenter’s uncharacteristically sensitive Starman. And the other primary adult character, David Harbour’s police chief, ends up having to deal with your classic secret government cover-up prior to he and Ryder confronting the facehuggers from Alien and the shark from Jaws.

That all may make it sound very derivative but, seriously, everything is derivative. It’s just a matter of where you derive from, and how well you adapt it to your purposes. In the case of Stranger Things, they’re pulling from some of my old favorite things and shaping them into one of my new favorite things.

Now, my enjoyment of this show is actually due to more than just it hitting my nostalgic sweet spot. Stranger Things hits the emotional punching bag pretty hard too. It took me across the spectrum from the first tugging of love on my youthful heartstrings in the Mike & Eleven relationship, all the way to spending half of the season finale choked up for reasons I would not have understood until more recent years thanks to revelatory scenes from Chief Hopper’s past. And you better believe it takes a lot to get me choked up.

I do want to make one last mention of the fantastically retro, atmospheric synth-heavy musical score comes right out of John Carpenter’s best work. This is not a surprise, as it was composed by the same people who did a similarly awesome score for The Guest. The songs they licensed and used at key points in the show are amazingly on-point as well.

Speaking of The Guest – that film, as well as films like It Follows, Super 8, and Midnight Special, are kindred spirits in tone and theme to Stranger Things even though none were actually set in the 1980’s. Regardless, I can only hope this means we’re on the cusp of a whole new cinematic movement, as long as it gives us more gems like the ones mentioned above.

Oh and, by the way, in case I didn’t make it clear you should DEFINITELY watch Stranger Things. Believe me, you can burn through those 8 episodes this weekend. In fact, you’ll have a hard time not doing so once you start.

America Is “R”-eady!

April 24, 2016 by Joe

Deadpool just became the highest grossing R rated film of all time, which is awesome, but I’m not here to discuss Deadpool specifically. Rather, what I’m here to discuss is what that film’s success means for the future of film in a more general sense.

The boxes checked off by Deadpool are comic book adaptation, action movie, and comedy film. It would be faulty logic to try and delineate which of these flavors were the biggest reason for it’s record breaking success, as the combination of all three is clearly what led to it. What I’m more interested in is which of those genres will benefit the most from Deadpool’s big win.

We’ll start with comic book movies, as brand recognition certainly factors into box office success. But you can’t really make any more money bringing DC and Marvel characters to life than they already are. These films have made billions of dollars and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Also, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that Deadpool was the first ever successful R-rated comic book adaptation. The three Blade moves were all rated R and – while only the first two were actually good movies – they all turned a profit. Kick-Ass was also received well enough by critics and audiences to warrant an admittedly inferior sequel. The Punisher (2004) and Punisher: War Zone (2008) were not especially profitable, but they were both enjoyable enough to sit down and watch whenever they come on TV some evening or weekend afternoon.

While James Gunn’s Super was very good, it was also an original property, so it may not entirely qualify for this list. But last year’s Kingsman: The Secret Service was a highly entertaining and well-reviewed R-rated comic adaptation. In fact, Kingsman itself did strong enough business to get a sequel greenlit. What I’m ultimately saying is that, even though the money Deadpool made was unprecedented for an R-rated comic book movie, the R rating itself was not.

Comedies with an R rating never really went away. You can track back even just the past 10 years to the films of Judd Apatow and Paul Feig to see that. The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Trainwreck, Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Spy all made money hand over fist and have strong reviews across the board on Rotten Tomatoes. However, those last two movies lead me to what I believe will be the real genre winner here: action movies.

Yes, The Heat and Spy were billed more as comedies than as action movies. But they are really just a slight shift in ingredient measures away from films like 48 Hrs, Lethal Weapon, and Die Hard. Action films used to proudly hoist their R rating before theaters began to crack down on underage viewers buying tickets to those movies. This is why memorable and fun 80’s and 90’s vehicles like the ones listed above, along with movies like Cobra, Predator, Bloodsport, Out For Justice, Con Air, and Face/Off (and numerous more that I could fill out a whole other blog post with) were replaced by a bunch of fairly toothless PG-13 movies.

It doesn’t seem like the general admission crackdown is going away anytime soon (I might write a post about how the overly Puritan mindset of the American public at-large is doing a disservice to entertainers and those they wish to entertain at a later date) but as long as you can make an R-rated action movie that parents and their tween or teen kids are interested in, then we could see a real Renaissance.

There have been some very good non-comic book “restricted” action movies that have come out just in the past year or two. A few that spring immediately to mind are The Guest, Blue Ruin, John Wick, and The Purge: Anarchy. None of these films carried anything approaching even the relatively low $58 million budget of Deadpool, and none of them had anywhere near the full court marketing press as that movie, but I found them all just as enjoyable.

There is still a market for “adult” oriented action, you can tell just by looking at some of the biggest television hits of the recent past. Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones were/are all excellent shows that bring in millions of viewers each week. Every one of those shows is much closer to an R rating than a PG-13 rating and, in fact, three of them are comic book properties. I can also guarantee that nearly half the viewers for these shows are under the age of 18.

You don’t need to be over 18 to want to see this sort of content but, if you are, then you’re not allowed to go to the movie theater and buy a ticket for it. Odds are that 99.8% of them suffer no mental trauma by watching these shows, this I say from personal experience, but now we’re moving back towards that Puritan values problem I mentioned earlier. My point is that, as long as the product is good, and as long as it is advertised and available enough, films of this nature will be successful.

My theory will get its first real test at the end of May when The Nice Guys opens. Shane Black’s last movie was Iron Man 3, so I suppose it brings a little secondhand comic book brand recognition. But he’s more well known for directing and co-writing great R-rated action films like the aforementioned Lethal Weapon and, one of my favorite action-comedies of the last 16 years, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Yes, there are some big stars in The Nice Guys. But this is not the sort of Oscar bait that most R-rated star vehicles are these days. In fact, it looks a lot more like a fun, old school romp in the spirit of something like Deadpool.

Obviously, I’m not banking on this as the be-all, end-all, since most of The Nice Guys was filmed before Deadpool was even ramping up its massive marketing campaign. But it bears watching trends over the next few years, and I’m personally hoping we get more of those vintage style action movies that I remember from when I was technically too young to watch them, but watched the hell out of them anyway.

It would be a nice break from the 21st century assembly line of sterile, overly polite versions we’ve been force fed. After all, the famous line does not go “Yippee Ki-yay, Jerkface!” it goes “Yippee Ki-yay, Motherfucker!”

Batman v Superman v Batman & Superman

March 29, 2016 by Joe

I’m about to lay out my take on Batman v Superman, so be warned, there are massive spoilers ahead.

The majority of reviews were pretty harsh on this movie and, to be honest, mine will be as well. But there were some things I liked about Batman v Superman, so I’m going to hit on those first.

One big positive takeaway was that Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot were both very good in their roles. They really did the best you could expect actors to do considering the material they have to work with. Their performances managed to get me interested in seeing solo Batman and Wonder Woman films. One other sort of character note was that Doomsday was scary as hell, so they nailed that.

This movie, like any other Zack Snyder film (even Sucker Punch), was great looking. Say what you will about his movies as a whole – and I will do so below – but the guy knows how to work an aesthetic. A more specific example of this is that, like in Man Of Steel, the fight scenes were all very well executed and exciting.

Some of the content from said fight sequences were questionable, but you can’t question that they were purely visceral. I’d like to also single out the scene towards the end where Batman systematically takes out a group of thugs is genuinely the best cinematic realization I’ve ever seen of the Dark Knight in full ass kicking mode.

Now for the rest.

Batman v Superman was absolutely joyless. Everyone acted like a dick to everyone else, and it seemed like the movie took place in a parallel world where smiles were punishable by death.

I’ve seen Henry Cavill be charming in other things, like The Tudors and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. But he’s not allowed a single moment of levity in this movie. Superman was all dour and depressed and nothing else. You think that you’d got to at least give the guy a chance to show how simply awesome it is to be Superman, but apparently you’d be wrong.

There’s a montage of him saving people and, in every example shown, he looks like he’s pissed off at having to pull these fools’ asses out of the fire (literally in some cases). That is not Superman. Superman, in pretty much ever incarnation, enjoys saving people and gets a sense a purpose and satisfaction from doing so. Zack Snyder’s version has more in common with Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, a distant and removed God among mortals doing what we must for no other reason than because it’s expected of him.

I’m well aware that Snyder directed a pretty good adaptation of Watchmen in 2009, but he clearly didn’t understand that Dr. Manhattan was meant to stand in stark contrast to Superman. He was written to be a version of Superman who lost his humanity, which is quite possibly the defining characteristic of Kal El. Even clinically gloomy Alan Moore wrote a more relatable Superman in stories like Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow and For The Man Who Has Everything.

Batman, meanwhile, was blowing people up left and right with no regard for whether they lived or died. That works for a certain type of protagonist, but it is not who Batman is. Tossing severe beatings to the bad guys is very much within the Dark Knight’s wheelhouse, and flipping over their cars is par for the course. But Zack Snyder could not lay off the explosions. A flipped car here and there is cool but, for crying out loud, they do not need to explode and ensure that everyone in the theater has no doubt that those dudes are dead.

I was willing to give Jesse Eisenberg the benefit of the doubt in his portrayal of Lex Luthor, even though the trailers gave me some pause. But he played Luthor as a jittery bundle of nerves, which seemed like the exact opposite of an appropriate characterization. I’m all for giving an established character a bit of a different spin, but completely routing out the traditional cold and calculating core of Lex Luthor is doing a disservice to the character.

Which brings up to the real problem. Warner Bros has never trusted the source material for their DC comics adaptations. Meanwhile, Marvel pretty much films the trade paperbacks panel by panel. As such, WB gave the keys to Zack Snyder and David Goyer, neither of whom seems to have any real affinity for the legendarily storied history of Batman or Superman.

Everything is darker, grittier, more violent, and more melancholic than it ought to be. And this comes from a guy who really liked the dark, gritty, violent Dark Knight Trilogy. But it’s just not the right tone for a movie that includes Superman and Wonder Woman. If I had to guess, I’d say the general flaw in their thinking is that they need to makes things as stylistically different from the generally bright and sunny tones of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As a result, they’ve painted themselves into a corner.

Yes, Batman should have some edge and darkness. But Superman is meant to represent the diametric opposite of that. If the symbol on his chest stands for hope, then why is his outlook – and the outlook of this film – so hopeless? BvS just came off as Dark v Darker, and this ain’t Punisher v Wolverine (as awesome as that would be). The filmmakers simply pressed too hard for distance between their brand and the Marvel brand, and ended up in a shadow realm.

WB Films should take some notes from their TV brethren. Greg Berlanti and his team have made a fully fleshed out and realized world that is the closest thing to a comic book brought to life ever seen to television. Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl bring the heart and the fun to the party. In fact, the recent crossover episode they had might as well have been called Supergirl xo The Flash.

But these shows also manage to hit the darker notes when they need to. The big difference being that they don’t start off somber leaving only a deeper abyss to descend into when they want to raise the stakes. When you feel the need to have Superman beaten down by Batman, blown up by a nuclear missile, and THEN stabbed through the chest by Doomsday in the same night to make a point about how hard it is to be a hero, then maybe you ought to reconsider your starting point.

There were other issues with BvS, such as too many nonsensical subplots, and an Apokolips teasing dream/vision sequence that absolutely no one would have missed had it ended up on the cutting room floor. Yes, it was cool to see parademons, Darkseid’s omega symbol burned into the ground and the classic Apokolips fire pits. But all that ate up 10 minutes of screen time that did nothing to serve the story as a whole.

Here’s the thing, I did appreciate the film for what it was. It had a lot of heavy lifting to do in order to be the launching point for a new muti-film franchise. It wasn’t what I’d call enjoyable, but I will certainly watch it again when it’s released on home video, even if I happen to zone out through a good half of it. And I am glad that it had a massive, record breaking opening weekend. A unified DC Universe deserves the chance to exist on the big screen. The upcoming films on the slate simply need to do better in terms of quality.

Maybe giving Snyder and Goyer a little time out, and allowing some DC people like Geoff Jones and CW people like Berlanti a place at the table would be beneficial. I’m not especially hopeful that WB suddenly decides that 80 years of continuous interest can translate to the movies, or that Snyder and Goyer will step back and re-evaluating their vision for the DC Cinematic Universe.

But the world of pop culture and entertainment will be a more interesting place with good, proper DC movies hitting the theaters every year. I just hope they can get out of their own way enough to get it right.

100% Pure, Uncut Narcos

September 26, 2015 by Joe

Pablo Escobar was a drug trafficker, mass murderer and terrorist. Which, of course, means that he happens to make for very entertaining television.

Netflix unveiled their new show Narcos a few weeks ago, and it may have been the purest example of what the streaming service can offer that cable and network TV cannot. The first thing they did, because they must have read my suggestion to do so, is cut the episode order to 10. There is not an ounce of fat on this show or, in other words, this is the pure, uncut stuff.

They also condense several years worth of history into this 10 episodes, rather than try to milk it for a larger episode count. This does mean that the storytelling isn’t quite as rich and dense as something like The Wire, but it does a better job of delivering the goods in a tight, streamlined manner. In some ways, Narcos is like a Wikipedia hole come to life. You look up Pablo Escobar, which leads you to his life, his crimes, his pursuers and his ultimate downfall.

The first episode begins with a title card explaining Magical Realism, which doesn’t really make much sense because Gabriel Garcia Marquez this ain’t. I have to assume that they are referring to the way that events that likely took weeks or months of research in reality, happen because a third person happens to be in the room who says “Hey, isn’t that So-and-So?” on the show. Not that I’m complaining, but it would take someone more scholarly than myself to tell you whether or not Narcos is a legitimate example of Magical Realism. What I can tell you is that I really enjoyed this show.

I’m probably going to tread on some spoiler territory below, so consider yourself warned.

The first thing worth mentioning is Wagner Moura, who portrays Escobar. It’s a killer part and he effectively kills it. It seems that the showrunners and the actor all realize that Escobar was an evil man who deserves no sympathy from the viewers. So, rather that going after sympathy, they go after motivations. Escobar does most of the monstrous things that he does to ensure the growth and survival of his empire, however, he also sees himself as unfairly persecuted and disrespected. We, the viewers, see that there’s nothing unfair about it, but Moura does a fantastic job of showing us things from Escobar’s perspective. Again, this does not elicit sympathy, but it does show us the why of the character.

All of the performances are – at the very least – solid, but the others that absolutely need to be touched upon are Boyd Holbrook and Pedro Pascal (late of getting his head exploded as Prince Oberyn on Game of Thrones) as the DEA agents tasked with bringing Escobar to justice. Holbrook’s Steven Murphy is the audience surrogate, looped into the situation in Colombia at the same time as we are. He also provides voice over narration that is just informative enough while remaining brief, which keeps it from becoming overbearing. Pascal plays Javier Pena, who’s already embedded in the drug war culture at the start of the series, and so is both Murphy’s guide as well as out own. The pair play well off each other and, while they don’t have quite the same depths to plunge as Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in True Detective, they are more proactive and less philosophically brooding.

There are some tropes that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen this sort of story played out before. Corruption rots the core of society as cops, military and politicos are mostly crooked, Meanwhile, the politicians who take on Escobar tend to end up like the drummers in Spinal Tap.

A few more thing worth mentioning without running on too long, is that Narcos is filmed in Colombia, rather than Canada or California, so it doesn’t look like any other show on TV. A deal breaker for some may be that a good half of the show’s dialogue is in Spanish. Odds are this was done so that Netflix can continue it’s endeavors of international conquest, but it also makes sense to me since this show takes place in Colombia where most of the people you meet will not be speaking English.

The only quibble I have is that the show ran at a rate that had me believing they’d wrap the story up in episode 10, so I was a little disappointed that they did not. Still, another season of Narcos is certainly not a bad thing. All in all, I’d recommend giving it a look to most people who like full throttle storytelling loaded up for their binging pleasure. Narcos is much like the mountain of cocaine on Tony Montana’s desk at the end of Scarface, so feel free to overindulge.

A Cannibal’s Last Supper

August 30, 2015 by Joe

To kick things off with a bit of a controversial thesis: I believe that NBC’s Hannibal is a show whose quality that I place on par with contemporaries Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

It’s a very different kind of show than those others, but I find it equally enjoyable. Its lush and sumptuous art design and direction make it stand out from anything else on television. As does its sometimes meditative pacing, which can be a bit of a double edged sword.

As Hannibal concluded its run this past Saturday (which was on NBC’s accord rather than showrunner Bryan Fuller’s) I thought it was a good time to view its greatness and frustrations as a whole.

Major spoilers ahead, so consider yourself warned.

Season one revolved around Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham (fantastically brought to life by Mads Mikkelson & Hugh Dancy) as the co-lead characters, despite only one of them having his name in the title. Graham had been portrayed without much fanfare in the 1986’s Manhunter and 2002’s Red Dragon, so Dancy had significantly less pressure on him. Lecter had been portrayed by Brian Cox, Gaspard Ulliel and (most famously by a wide margin) Anthony Hopkins.

Hopkins won an academy award for playing the role in Silence of the Lambs before revisiting it to diminishing returns in Hannibal (the movie, not to be confused with this TV show) and Red Dragon. SotL made the character an icon, but I will fiercely defend my opinion that Mikkelson plays the character better than he has been in anything other than SotL. That includes Hopkins’ two subsequent portrayals.

But I don’t want to venture too far off course here, and so I’ll bring it back to the show itself. Jack Crawford (a convincingly authoritative Laurence Fishburne) and Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas, given maybe the most active character arc through the series) become more important as the show moves through seasons one. Each episode had a killer of the week that Will is brought in to profile and help the FBI catch, which sounds fairly rote, until you consider exactly how it’s done.

Will steps into the mind of the the killer, which is illustrated in dream-like sequences where the crimes are recreated with Will as the killer. The actual killer is generally revealed halfway through the episodes, so that the show can deal with its true interest: what makes these people do the horrible things they do. It’s this difference that allows Hannibal to surpass anything like the Law & Order or CSI shows.

The real neat trick is how showrunner Bryan Fuller and his team make ghastly things appear beautifully gothic. Dead bodies are positioned like magnificent sculptures, blood flows in a manner that seems to give it a mind of its own. It’s pretty similar to something you might see from a Guillermo del Toro film, almost like the visions of a dark fairy tale.

Hannibal spends most of this first season assisting the FBI in the cases that they bring Will in on, primarily due to his fascination with the impossibly empathetic Graham. He also serves as Will’s psychiatrist, all the while continuing his killings and cooking as the Chesapeake Ripper. At this point it’s worth noting that they always make the meals prepared from human parts look so delicious that it has been widely considered Food Porn.

The developing bond between Hannibal and Will is really the driving force, as they are two sides of the same coin, and Hannibal believes he can flip Will.As things progress, Hannibal allows Will’s encephalitis (an inflammation of the brain do to infection) to go untreated, which takes a very heavy toll on Will’s mental and physical states.

Eventually, Will works through it enough to realize what Hannibal really is, and he tries to stop him once and for all. However, by that point, Hannibal has already framed Will for his own crimes as The Ripper and, in an ironic twist of fate, Jack Crawford stops Will from killing Hannibal. Season one ends with Will in a very familiar looking cell as Hannibal visits him. A full reversal of how most people were introduced to Lecter in the earlier films.

Season two is broken into two halves. The first half involves Will, fully recovered from his illness and sharp enough to take on Hannibal with equal footing. Unfortunately, he’s stuck in a mental hospital with all his allies thinking he’s a cannibalistic serial killer. This doesn’t stop Will from digging deep into his mental reserves and trying to figure out how best to bring Hannibal down.

Will manages to prove his innocence and, once freed, enlists Jack to help him finally get Hannibal. So the second half of season two has Will trying to beat Hannibal at his own game. He uses Hannibal’s curiosity and twisted affection for him to lure him into a trap. The whole game makes for fantastic television, but the finish is where the show makes its first fumble.

Season two ends with every major character, other than Hannibal, lying in a pool of their own blood from a trap set by Will and Jack gone awry as Lecter strolls out of his home. This was a mistake – not only because they didn’t have a season three renewal at the time, but because they missed out on a great opportunity to finally bring about some catharisis for the viewers after two years of Hannibal putting Will through the ringer.

It should have ended the exact same way, but with one major change. Will should have retrieved his gun, and emptied it into Hannibal as he tried to leave. The last shot of the season could have been Will and Hannibal lying across from each other with their blood mingling between them as they watch one another through dying eyes. It would have been a greatly poetic shot for a show that rarely passed on the chance to break out some gory poetry.

Which brings us to season three, the current and final season. Fuller had said that he wanted to do the Red Dragon story for season three, which was previously adapted to varying degrees of success the the 2002 movie of the same name and the 1986 movie Manhunter. For the second half of the season, which ran its series finale just last night, they did a fantastic job of running with that story. Since they kicked it off, the show has been every bit as good as it was prior to the season two finale gaffe.

The problem was with the first half of season three. The pacing of the first seven episodes were meditative, even by this show’s standards. In fact, the first four episodes were spent catching up with all the primary characters some months after the bloodbath at Hannibal’s home.

This would be perfectly fine for a show on Netflix or Amazon, where all episodes were released at once and you can blow through the first couple episodes to reach the point where things really ramp up. But asking your viewers to spend a full month getting back up to speed is asking a lot. Which is probably why they ended up hemorrhaging viewers, and got the cancellation notice passed down at this point.

The story they were telling was perfectly serviceable. It shows Will, Jack and Alana all tracking down Hannibal to Florence, a chance to roll out some gorgeous scenery, using their own methods. In episode five, they ramp up the momentum again by giving Jack his long awaited rematch with Hannibal, which is actually an joyously one sided beating laid down on Lecter. The next logical step was to have Will finally find what was left of Hannibal after the fight with Jack and lock him into that all-too-familiar cell.

But they didn’t give us that. After three years of build up, they didn’t give us the showdown between Will and Hannibal that many viewers were craving. The most frustrating thing about it was that there were two perfect setups in as many episodes for such a clash: one in Florence, and the other at the estate of Mason Verger (originally introduced in the SotL sequel Hannibal, but brought in earlier for the shows purposes). Instead, Hannibal carries a wounded Will Graham home, and then turns himself in.

The next episode jumps three years ahead to kick off the Red Dragon story. Running it over the course of six episodes, rather than a two hour movie, gave the story more room to breath than it previously had been given. These episodes got the show back on track, and may have even been better than any previous story arcs. Going with one killer, Francis Dolarhyde A.K.A the Tooth Fairy A.K.A the Red Dragon (played with the conflicted ferocity by Richard Armitage), for the home stretch allowed the show to open up avenues of greater character depth than it had before.

So, the driving narrative of season three was essentially a three way courtship of sorts between Graham, Lecter and Dolarhyde. The season, and series, wrapped up with another of planned trap going sideways, as Dolarhyde helped Hannibal escape during what was meant to be a fake escape that would lure Dolarhyde in with Hannibal as bait. Hannibal and Will ended up at the former’s secret cliffside home as they awaited Dolarhyde’s arrival.

In the end, Will and Hannibal had to team up to kill Dolarhyde – even though they were both motivated to slay the Dragon for different reasons. Hannibal always wanted to share a kill with Will, while Will wanted to stop Dolarhyde before he massacred another family. The two shared a blood soaked embrace – the blood being their own, as well as Dolarhyde’s – on the edge of the cliff before Will tightened his grip on Hannibal and pushed them both off the into the abyss below.

Graham’s reasons for taking this course of action are complex enough to deserve their own post, but part of the motivation was that he knew this might be the best chance he’d have to finally stop Hannibal. He’d unsuccessfully used himself to bait Lecter in season two, but this time Hannibal steps right into the trap. The trap, unfortunately, was Will himself. This is not exactly the direction that I would have gone in but, after painting themselves into the corner with the season two finale and the season three mid-season finale, it was about as fitting an ended as possible.

The biggest overall misstep that I feel they made was making the subtext of the twisted bond between Will and Hannibal into actual text. That ended up driving the show into a place far less accessible for most viewers. It’s always admirable when creative people do something different, but they still need to leave enough common ground to fit more than a handful of Fannibals.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think this is a great show and I’d highly recommend watching the entire run to anyone and everyone. But the rough patch that ran from the end of season two through the first half of season three has dampened my affection a little bit.

I will no doubt remember the show very fondly, and revisit it again in the future. Mostly, though, I hope to find something to fill this vacancy in my complex, prestigious television viewing slot. Much like Hannibal himself, I’ve developed an appetite for something a bit hard to come by through traditional means. Although, since I’ve never seen anything quite like it on TV before, I’m not sure I’ll see something like it again.

TeeVee Morghulis Or Why Game Of Thrones Must End

August 1, 2015 by Joe

Valar Morghulis – All Men Must Die – and the same can be said about every show on TV. Moreover, for a TV show to be considered truly great, I believe that it needs to have a strong beginning, middle and (perhaps most importantly) end.

HBO more or less just announced that Game of Thrones will run at least eight seasons. It had previously been suggested that they would wrap after seven seasons while, at the same time, HBO execs have said they’d like to see the show run ten seasons. I was personally very happy with the idea of seven seasons, that way they could ride out the momentum they’ve built without losing steam in the same manner that George R.R. Martin has several times in his Song of Ice and Fire novels.

A last season needs to be settled on sooner rather than later, so that the showrunners can set the home stretch in motion and deliver a conclusion on the highest level possible. Seven made sense to me, as that would give them twenty more hours after this past season to get to where everyone already knows the story is going. That being an army of nightmare creatures breaking down The Wall and laying siege to Westeros.

Already in this past season’s episode “Hardhome” we got a good look at the terror waiting to be unleashed once winter eventually arrives. After seeing that episode, I know I’m not the only one who cared considerably less about all the other storylines that were still dealing with political positioning, and smaller personal skirmishes. Assuming there were only two seasons left, I was ready for season six to be the last time winter was coming, and season seven being the madness that ensues when winter finally arrives. All-in-all, I’m just not sure how you can wedge another ten episodes in between there.

Game of Thrones shares DNA with something like Breaking Bad in that it is all clearly leading somewhere. There were events set in motion early on that would lead to a inescapable reckoning. In Breaking Bad, Walter White was diagnosed with terminal cancer and then rose to power as Heisenberg . It was therefore inevitable that either the cancer, or the sins he committed as Heisenberg, would kill him. Everyone knew this was coming, which is why everyone was excited when an end game was promised for season five. If they had tried to milk two or three more seasons out of the story, it would have diminished the legacy of the show.

I can also reference Starz’ Spartacus. They did a great job of going full speed ahead through the entire run of the series. That run lasting only three chronological seasons and one prequel season. Spartacus is a well known legend, and you’d have a hard time finding someone who didn’t know how it ends. With that in mind, it was important to make the journey to that ending as effective as possible, without any sort of lag time. Spartacus is one of the very few TV series that I own on blu ray, so you can draw your own conclusion about how I feel they did.

Lost is a cautionary tale on the flip side of this. I loved that show, even though I remember a couple of the middle seasons being a mess. The problem was that they had promised answers, and waited too long to lock down a time of resolution. The same could be said for another show I loved that suffered from stretching itself too thin over too many episodes – Battlestar Galactica. This show was also had what was, essentially, a single large story arc that required an ending. Part of the reason why both of these shows have sat in my Netflix queue for years with the unfulfilled intention of rewatching them is because they are both at least twenty episodes longer than they should have been.

Episodic shows like Mad Men, or The Walking Dead, or The Flash can run as long as they please. This is because they don’t need to worry about momentum building up over multiple seasons. When done well, an episodic series will build up momentum and deliver a measure of resolution at the end of each individual season. Game of Thrones does not have that luxury. Any time spent not leading towards the finale feels extraneous. In fact, you can feel this sort of stalling in many episodes of Game of Thrones that fall in the middle of each season.

Maybe eight seasons of Game of Thrones will be fine. I certainly hope they manage to pull it off, as it’s probably my favorite continuing series on TV (fare thee well to the already canceled Hannibal). That being said, I know that my attention will still waiver during scenes that don’t push the story towards its inevitable climax. I’d like to revisit Game of Thrones again once it ends but, if they keep driving it until it’s running on fumes like Lost or BSG, then it will likely end up sitting on my HBOGO watchlist as unwatched as those other shows in my Netflix queu.

The Risky Risk Aversion Of Vince McMahon

July 23, 2015 by Joe

There was a WWE special event this past Sunday – they still refer to them as Pay Per Views even though people who have the WWE Network are not actually paying per viewing any longer – called Battleground. It was fine for a non-major event, with some good matches.

The big twist that WWE would like people to be talking about is the return of The Undertaker seeking revenge on Brock Lesnar for ending his WrestleMania win streak. But what the “smarks” and the Internet Wrestling Community (IWC) are really talking about is John Cena winning yet another match that does nothing for him and hurts his opponent.

The opponent in this case was Kevin Owen, who earned a reputation as a big time performer in the indies. He burst onto the NXT scene earlier this year, and possibly made an even bigger debut in a WWE ring a few months ago. Cena won the United States Championship at WrestleMania, presumably with the intention of restoring the credibility of that title by putting it on Vince McMahon’s hand-picked face of the company. The end game was seemingly to bring up a new star who would take the title off Cena and instantly become a main event level player. Owens had, in a very short amount of time, proven that he was the perfect guy to step into that spot.

Naturally, he lost clean to Cena by tapping out in the middle of the ring. This was just the latest in a long line of instances where Vince McMahon – at least over the past few years – shucked away from creating a new main event star in order to retreat to the comfort of a guy who was made ten years ago. It doesn’t always go the same way, sometimes Vince just kills a guy’s push with no real Plan B. I’m sure it’s not all Vince’s doing (you can get a better idea of the sort of “yes men” he surrounds himself with by googling the name Kevin Dunn). The bottom line is that Vince McMahon is, for some mysterious reason, terrified of taking chances on creating new main event stars.

I’m not going to go into how creating new stars back in the Attitude Era led to the most successful period in WWE history – that’s a whole other article. The fact was that Vince was forced to make new main eventers because WCW had signed away all of his current main eventers. The sad truth is that there’s no outside parties pushing Vince any longer, and so he doesn’t feel he needs to create new superstars. Even though, by that same token, there’s no real risk in pushing new guys to the top because WWE is really the only show in town. Thriving profressional wrestling organizations in Japan and Mexico are fine, but they’re not really competition. The same could be said for TNA and ROH who, even after recently pairing up, are still not a genuine threat.

Even with some bright spots popping up here and there, WWE has a very stale product. A big part of the problem is Vince McMahon & Co keeping fresh faces away from the top of their cards, and regularly digging up stars from past eras to take those spots. In this blog, I’m going to explain several instances where they could have gone in exciting new directions before copping out and returning things to the status quo.

I’m only going to go back to 2011, since four years really is a large enough sample size to make my case. Throughout the summer, CM Punk was cutting blistering promos and having exceptional matches. He impressed so much that Vince decided to put the WWE Championship on him at the Money on the Bank PPV that July. After getting one of the loudest pops in recent history for beating John Cena, Punk was written off TV to build up anticipation for the rematch at SummerSlam.

The crowd is hot for Punk all the way up to SummerSlam, and he won that match as well. Of course the end of the match was a bit overbooked, which took some of the wind from it. Not nearly as much, though, as having a has-been who played a very large part in the death of WCW – Kevin Nash – come to the ring, drop Punk and allow lukewarm heel Alberto Del Rio to cash in a Money in the Bank contract to take the title off Punk. Punk then proceeded to have a pointless, several month long feud with Triple H before the powers that be finally realized that Del Rio wasn’t doing anything for the fans and put the title back on Punk at Survivor Series in November 2011.

CM Punk went on to have the longest WWE reign as WWE champion in 25 years and had a series of great matches. He may not have main evented as much as he should have during that reign, but things worked out at least. Dolph Ziggler was not as lucky.

Ziggler is a great worked who, at the time, was a heel who got more cheers than most of the babyfaces that WWE wanted the people to actually cheer for. He won the Money in the Bank contract in 2012, but still was booked to lose a lot more matches than he won – which is really how his career has gone for the most part. On the night after WrestleMania in 2013, Ziggler finally cashed in his contract and won the World Heavyweight Championship from Alberto Del Rio. Del Rio was a lukewarm babyface at the time, and the pop Ziggler got when he won rivaled the massive one that Punk got the year before.

Unfortunately, Ziggler got a concussion off a blown spot and ended up having to sit out for a few weeks. This did nothing to dim his popularity and, when he came back to finally defend his title, WWE decided to make him a full-on babyface. He then proceeded to lose the title back to Del Rio, much to the dismay of everyone other than Vince McMahon. Championships are won and lost all the time, and so the fan naturally figured they would put the title back on Ziggler in short time. But it was not to be. Del Rio held onto the title until October 2013, where he dropped it at Hell In The Cell to Vince’s safety blanket John Cena.

Ziggler continues to be a great worker, in fact he had an awesome moment at Survivor Series 2014 where he was the sole survivor in a match that ousted mega heel group The Authority from power. In an act of atrocious and lazy booking, The Authority was back in power less than a month later. Ziggler, meanwhile, was finally booked so badly for so long that the fans seems to have finally accepted that he’ll never be the main eventer that he should have been.

The arc of Daniel Bryan’s odyssey started in summer of 2013, when he split from a wildly popular tag team with Kane to become the single most over performer in WWE. His unmatched work rate, easy charisma and everyman sensibilities made him the most universally cheered WWE superstar since Stone Cold Steve Austin’s heyday. Bryan was essentially the only guy who every demographic in the crowd were rooting for. Vince and his henchmen are known for going all starry-eyed a very specific type of musclebound human action figure, and so he was not apt to move the undersized Bryan to the top of the card.

But every crowd in every city WWE went to had a different idea, and so Bryan finally got a main event WWE Championship match against (you guessed it ) John Cena. Bryan won the match, and the title, clean in the middle of the ring. This is all the more astounding since Cena only does one or two clean jobs every calendar year. After a few minutes of celebration, Triple H, the special guest referee in the match, dropped Bryan and allowed Randy Orton to cash in a contract to take the title off Bryan.

The next few months went much the same as they had for Ziggler earlier in the year. Bryan never won the title back, and was phased out of the title scene by the end of the year. Randy Orton squared off with John Cena to unify the titles- which was another terrible idea that I’ll have to address in another blog – and the world yawned. The fans, however, would not let Bryan suffer the same fate as Ziggler, and they simply cheered louder and louder for him no matter who he was in the ring with or if he was even in the ring at all.

It took all of Vince’s WrestleMania plans to fall apart – formerly popular superstar Batista came back and got booed out of the building, followed by CM Punk getting sick of the sort of things listed above and simply quitting the company – in order for Vince’s hand to be forced and allow Daniel Bryan to be the star of 2014’s WrestleMania. Bryan became the undisputed champion after a pair of great matches on the same night, and everything seemed right in the world of wrestling.

Sadly, a serious neck injury forced Bryan to vacate the championship, and the fans never truly got to see him have the title reign they were dying for. Of course, had they put the title back on Bryan back in September or October of 2013 like they should have, then we would have had a very satisfactory seven month title reign filled with a number of guaranteed great matches.

After Bryan vacated, Vince could have put the title on another up and coming superstar in an eight man ladder match held in June 2014, but boringly and lazily plopped it back on Cena. It’s worth noting that two guys who I’ll get to in a moment – Bray Wyatt and Cesaro – were also in this ladder match. Cena was then used to put the WWE Championship on part-time bad ass Brock Lesnar.

It may sound like I’m piling on John Cena here, but I’m really not. He’s a fine worker and, after all, he’s not the one booking his programs. That being said, he’s been used over the past year to bury a trio of heels who could have been used to freshen up the man event picture – Bray Wyatt, Rusev and Kevin Owens.

To summarize, a win for Wyatt over Cena at WrestleMania 2014 would have established him as a made man. Naturally he lost in the center of the ring. Wyatt hasn’t even sniffed the main event scene since then. At WrestleMania 2015, Rusev was the undefeated United States Champion who would have gotten a similarly massive boost by beating Cena. So, he also lost in the middle of the ring, and has become a bit of a comedic act since then.

Cena has since brought a lot of credibility and excitement to the US Title picture with his weekly US Title Open Challenges on Raw. But the truth was that he should have just been holding the title until the right time and right guy came along to take it from him. Kevin Owens was that right guy, and this past Sunday at the Battleground PPV was the right time. So, of course, John Cena was booked to beat him in the middle of the ring. Now, this just happened, so it’s not too late for things to work out. But it seems pretty unlikely, and the optimal moment for Owens to win the title has passed.

As I type this, Cesaro is on a run of fantastic matches that rivals Daniel Bryan’s leading up to SummerSlam. His popularity is blowing up, and the fans are ready to see him take the leap into the main event scene. Years of sour experiences have given me very little faith in ever seeing him reach the top of the card, though I’d love to be proven wrong. That being said, there’s no legitimate reason for him not to. Then again, Vince McMahon & Co have never seemed to need legitimate reasons to do any of the stupid things they do.

CM Punk, Dolph Ziggler, Daniel Bryan, Bray Wyatt, Kevin Owens and Cesaro are all guy who could have – or still can – make the WWE main event scene a lot more entertaining. Yet Vince McMahon prefers to dwell in his John Cena-shaped cave. When he does venture out, he brings along part timers like The Undertaker, Brock Lesnar or The Rock, and sticks them at the top of the card until they go away again a month later.

It’s a bummer, but it’s not too late. Punk is gone, Bryan may be finished and Ziggler’s cred may be damaged to the point where he’ll never get his WWE Championship reign. But Wyatt, Owens and Cesaro are still in spots where they can succeed if they’re given the opportunities that Vince gave to John Cena a decade ago.

But Vince is scared of the future, and he’s scared of taking risks even though there’s no genuine risk involved. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no real competition for WWE’s market share. The best hope we, as fans, have is for Vince to finally step down and let Triple H and Stephanie McMahon take over, as they have shown a very promising vision of the future with NXT. Barring that, maybe John Cena will decide that making his living in Hollywood is a better deal than getting bounced off a ring apron every night. I’ve heard only good things about his roles in Trainwreck and Sisters.

Anyway, that’s my diatribe. I’ve been a fan of WWF/WWE for way too long to pull myself away – even though I do fast forward through about 65% of Monday Night Raw on a given week. Still, I’d like to see new stars being made, and new match-ups at the top of the PPV cards.

The most exciting part of pro wrestling, after all, is the fact that it’s a “sport” where the fans actually have an influence on how things play out. Or at least they should. We can’t hit three pointers for our favorite NBA teams, and we won’t catch touchdown passes from the QB of our favorite NFL teams. No matter how loudly you cheer for your team, it’s not really going to affect the outcome of the game. But with pro wrestling, you buy a ticket and you cheer as loud as you can for your favorite performers. The powers that be hear those cheers and sometimes, though less soften than they should, they will give those stars a well-deserved push.

TV shows have production schedules that stop them from changing course on a dime if something is not working. On the other hand, if something is not working on WWE TV, they can flip that story around the very next night. But too frequently they do not. I’ll keep watching, regardless, and I’m sure I’ll keep complaining. Hopefully, though, there are enough of those CM Punk/Dolph Ziggler/Daniel Bryan pops to keep me from becoming disenchanted enough to finally cancel that WWE Network subscription.

Ah, who am I kidding. There’s always that back catalog to keep me on-board. Ironically enough, that might be the exact same stance that Vince McMahon has been taking.

On Time Travel & Terminators

June 20, 2015 by Joe

Terminator Genisys opens on July 1st and, while I am cautiously optimistic that it will be good, I am certainly going to use the opportunity to discuss the use of time travel in entertainment.

I’m no quantum physicist – sorry to disappoint – so I’ll be giving a bit of a layman’s take on the three most frequently used types of time travel. Of course there have been many other types used here and there, but I’ll be focusing on the ones that seem to be the most recurrent. The Terminator film franchise had really made use of all three types, which is why I’ll be using that as a jumping off point.

I will be referring to the theories here as the the Infinite Loop, the Running River and the Parallel Timelines theory. Not exactly scientific terminology but I find them to be fitting, so let’s just roll with it.

The Terminator goes with the Infinite Loop theory, which essentially states that time is a circle. Everything that will ever happen has already happened and will happen again and again and again. Specifically in this case, John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect his mother Sarah Connor from a Terminator sent back to kill her by Skynet, and then Reese ends up becoming John’s father.

The suggestion here is that Reese was always John’s father, and so the future and the past have always been set in stone. By the end of the movie, Judgment Day – the nominal nuclear destruction of the human race – has not been averted. So, humanity is blasted, John Connor leads the rebellion against the machines, Skynet sends a Terminator back in time, John sends Reese back in time to protect his mother, and the events of the film continue on an infinite cycle.

The Infinite Loop is typically used in tragic stories, as it plays with the notion of unavoidable fate always trumping free will. This is why it’s the theory favored by the fairly nihilistic Rust “time is a flat circle” Cohle in True Detective, and Battlestar “all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again” Galactica.

T2 switches gears and uses “no fate but what we make” as it driving mantra. I’m going to skip the details of the film since, if you haven’t seen it, then I’m sure you’ve already stopped ready this blog post. The bottom line is that Sarah Connor, the super annoying preteen version of her son John, and a Terminator fresh off a babyface turn (wrasslin’ reference alert) decide to go ahead and stop Judgment Day from ever happening.

It’s not made clear whether they succeeded in the theatrical release, but several of the home video versions have a deleted epilogue where an elderly Sarah Connor is playing with her grandkids in a park. All of which suggests that Judgment Day was, in fact, averted.

This is the Running River theory, called such since a good analogy for it is that, if a river’s course is diverted at any point, then every point that flows after that affected point is changed as well. However, it is still the same river. This theory is used in stories with happier endings, as it illustrates that we can change our future for the better. The best example of this is perhaps Back To The Future, wherein Marty McFly changes his family’s life for the better after a brief, reverse-Oedipal wracked, visit to his parents’ past.

Terminator 3 flipped back to the Infinite Loop theory and, while I wouldn’t mind blogging about how that movie get a bad rap and is actually pretty good, it would be superfluous to go further into it.

Terminator Salvation, also better than its reputation though still not especially good, doesn’t really have much to do with time travel. As such, I’m going to twist the facts here to get to my last point. It could be interpreted as saying that the future (or the present, I suppose) may not be the same as it once was. In fact, it may be an entirely different timeline.

Parallel Timelines have long been the theory of choice for ongoing stories. DC and Marvel Comics have had several “Event Series” and one or two movies that stemmed from this version of time travel. Buffy The Vampire Slayer had a great episode titled Dopplegangland, where a vampire version of Willow crosses over the the “Prime” timeline. That’s a good specific example of why comic books favor his method – because it allows for different versions of characters to interact with one another. It also enables them with to do things with – and to – famous characters that they otherwise couldn’t (for primarily economic reasons).

The broader explanation for Parallel Timelines is that anytime someone goes back in time and changes something, a whole new future is created from that point forward. The original timeline still exists, adhering to the Infinite Loop rules, but the new timeline essentially falls under Running River rules. But, again, that timeline has not been changed. A new one has simply been created.

Looper, an awesome time travel movie that you should see if you haven’t yet, sits on the fence between Parallel Timelines and Running River, but I always interpreted it more as the former than the latter. The underseen Source Code is a better pure example of Parallel Timelines, where soldier/lab rat Colter Stevens is continually sent back in time to try and stop a terrorist attack on a train. This theory can be bittersweet, as it allows for a happy ending in one timeline, but you know that things still turn out crappy in the others.

The Parallel Timelines theory of time travel actually plays off of a similar philosophical theory. The philosophy states that, to keep it as brief as possible, every decision that every living being makes creates its own distinct timeline. I’m rather fond of this theory, but it would take another couple thousand words to get into.

To bring things full circle, or back to the start of this particular Infinite Loop, Terminator Genisys opens on July 1st and I’m going to check it out. Looks like they’re throwing together a grab bag of every time travel theory mentioned above, and so it may be an unholy mess. But I’m never one to pass on a time travel movie, so I’ll be there.

Thanks for indulging my crackpot take, I’ll be back soon with some news about my own works, so keep readin’!

Joe Mikolay

Author Of The Venator Series

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