Wibbly-Wobbling Through Doctor Who: Part Three

My time travel journey has finally reached a decade that my parents were conscious for!

When regeneration was first introduced to Doctor Who, it wasn’t immediately clear that it would have an impact beyond introducing a new lead actor. When One turned into Two, there were important differences between the two actors’ portrayals of the Doctor, but everything else about the show felt more or less the same.

Not so with the beginning of the Third Doctor’s era in 1970. As soon as the credits roll for his first serial, “Spearhead from Space,” it’s clear that everything has changed. For one thing, the show’s in color now! And none of it looks like it was filmed on a cardboard set! Furthermore, the entire premise has changed. The last Second Doctor serial set up a major change to the show’s status quo, and in a rare move for almost any era of TV, it actually followed through. The Doctor is no longer adventuring around the cosmos, picking up human companions, and meeting weird aliens. Now, having been exiled by the Time Lords, he’s stuck in 1970s England with a nonfunctioning TARDIS, and the weird aliens have to find him instead of the other way round. This is at least made easier by his friendship with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who is now the head of UNIT, a paramilitary organisation dedicated to investigating and neutralising alien threats.

“You know, Jo, I sometimes think that military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.”

But the most important change this era brings regards the Doctor himself. Jon Pertwee’s performance isn’t just a slight departure from his predecessors; it takes elements of their performances and gives them a depth and reality that seemed beyond the show’s capacity in its earlier years. And a shift in the writing certainly helps. By this point, the Doctor has already been growing slowly more heroic and action-oriented, but now he is, for the first time, cool. He wears stylish frills and capes! He knows kung fu (well, “Venusian Aikido,” anyway)! He’s got a gadget, a gizmo, and a witty one-liner for every occasion! Pertwee plays the Doctor like James Bond’s eccentric bachelor uncle, and it just works. Even in his duller stories, he’s always fun to watch.

And those dull stories are few and far between, at least compared to the first two Doctors. To be fair, a lot of Third Doctor stories are at least half an hour longer than they should be, especially in his final season, but it’s rare for one to be completely without merit. The writers do a surprisingly good job of coming up with new ideas while being confined to Earth, and some of the creatures introduced during this period will go on to become iconic and recurring threats: for example, the Silurians (lizard people from the Silurian period who hibernate beneath Earth’s surface), Sontarans (warlike potato-shaped aliens whose extreme dimness causes one of them to get stuck in the Middle Ages), and the Nestene Consciousness (an alien hive mind that can control plastic–much scarier than that sounds) to name a few. But by far the most important villain introduced during this era is The Master.

“Nobody could be more devoted to the cause of peace than I!”

Since the Third Doctor is so much more Bond-like than his predecessors, it makes sense that he would have a classic moustache-twirling archnemesis. Enter Roger Delgado and his rogue Time Lord, another runaway from Gallifrey (oh yeah, we finally find out the name of the Doctor’s home planet in this era) who is obsessed with ruling as much of the universe as he can–and is also more than a little obsessed with the Doctor. He’s introduced early in the first season of the new era, and proceeds to all but take over the show, appearing in nearly every serial of the following season and continuing to show up as an occasional threat, up until the actor’s tragic death in 1973.

The Master feels like a necessary addition to the show, for a few reasons. He’s the first recurring enemy to be treated as the Doctor’s equal, and the first to have a personal connection to him. He’s also the first major Time Lord character other than the Doctor, so he’s an extra window for the audience into that culture and the lore associated with it. And after over a decade of our heroes fighting inhuman monsters who want to wipe out all life in the universe (or some variation thereupon), it’s nice to have a relatively fun, low-stakes villain who usually just wants to hypnotise people into making him Space Pope or something. His relationship with the Doctor is almost heartwarming in how amiable it usually is; the two may spend all their screen time fighting, but there’s always a sense that, if things were a bit different, they’d be best friends–or even something more. Anyway, Delgado always looks like he’s having the time of his life in the role–especially when he gets to wear silly outfits.

It truly takes a Master to pull off this spandex.

On a slightly more serious note, the Master’s presence helps to humanise the typical good-vs.-evil conflicts that drive Doctor Who stories. Which is a major theme of #3’s tenure. Ironically, the first Doctor to show skill in hand-to-hand fighting, and the first to work with the military on a regular basis, is also the first Doctor to make pacifism an important part of his personal philosophy. While #1 was often positively gleeful about destroying his enemies, and #2 was perfectly willing to do so, #3 will go to great lengths to avoid killing anyone, and will always do his best to negotiate peace, even between humans and tentacle monsters. (Daleks, of course, are the exception, as always.) This seems to reflect a larger change in the show’s political philosophy as well.

I didn’t talk much about the political messaging in earlier seasons of Doctor Who, because, to the extent that there was any, it mainly amounted to basic British boomer stuff like “Nazis bad,” “British Empire good,” and “Get these hippies off my lawn!” (Or at least, that’s how the earlier stories read to my 21st-century American sensibilities.) But come 1970, something seems to have shifted in the BBC writers’ rooms–or maybe having the Doctor confined to a contemporary Earth setting just provided more opportunities to comment on current events. Whatever the reason, the Third Doctor is noticeably more political than his predecessors–and that’s almost always a good thing. The episode that introduces the Silurians is a poignant anti-Cold War parable. Several serials come with environmentalist and anti-nuke messages. There’s a weird amount of positive Buddhist, pagan, and Communist representation (the weirdest and possibly poorest-aged example is that the Doctor is canonically friends with Chairman Mao!). Overall, this era of the show puts a lot more effort into portraying the dignity and humanity of all its characters (including the aliens). Gone are the faceless armies of pure evil that can be dispatched without a second thought. In this era, when an evil lizard dies, you’re supposed to understand where that evil lizard was coming from, even if you still think he’s evil.

And…even if he looks like this.

Of course, I’d still very much hesitate to call the Third Doctor’s era progressive. The show still doesn’t have any non-white characters to speak of, and it even uses actors in yellowface to portray Asians on at least one occasion. While it criticises some of the British government’s then-current policies in a vague, general sort of way, it’s still assumed that the royal family is all good (to the point that their absence in one serial is a sign that the Doctor has landed in an evil parallel universe), and the British military is still portrayed as mostly well-intentioned, if occasionally misguided.

And then there’s the matter of companions. To be fair to the writers, when the Third Doctor era begins, their hands are tied to a certain extent when it comes to giving him a companion. Since he’s no longer traveling the universe, he can’t be whisking humans off on a whimsical adventure anymore, but he still needs a “Dr. Watson” type to act as an audience surrogate. The writers’ first solution to this problem is to have UNIT give him an “assistant”: Liz Shaw, a competent scientist who takes an interest in the Doctor because of his extensive knowledge of the universe…and who is unceremoniously written off the show after one season. She’s replaced by Jo Grant, who is the embodiment of the type of ditzy blonde that people who don’t watch Doctor Who assume all companions are. She spends most of her screen time being irritating and useless, mainly existing so that the Doctor has someone to mansplain the plot to. She does level up in bravery and cleverness towards the end of her run, and she and the Doctor develop a rather heartwarming father-daughter sort of bond, but even at her best, she’s a huge step down from the likes of Zoe or Barbara. Despite being a little more forward-thinking in other areas, the Third Doctor’s era might be remembered as the show’s most sexist period–if his final season didn’t introduce Sarah Jane Smith, arguably the most iconic companion in Doctor Who history. She’s smart! She’s funny! She has a real job (journalist) that’s often relevant to the plot! She never, ever wears a miniskirt! Could this be the final nail in the coffin for the show’s patronising attitude towards female characters? I guess only time will tell (but it’ll look pretty suspicious if the Doctor doesn’t start picking up male companions again soon).

“There’s nothing ‘only’ about being a girl.”

Overall, I had a lot more fun with the Third Doctor than with his predecessors (and I didn’t mind them at all!). It’s starting to become obvious why this show had so much more staying power than other early sci-fi TV. Sure, it’s goofy, but it’s always so sincere and thoughtful that it’s hard to begrudge the goofiness, especially when there are so many moments of brilliance sprinkled into it. By the end of the Third Doctor’s run, his TARDIS is fixed, he’s got a well-established archenemy and a few new minor villains, he’s traveling with a new-and-improved companion, and the show in general has never looked better (literally or figuratively). The future (and past, and present) are looking bright for this show.

Best Serial: A much harder decision than in either of my previous Doctor Who posts! I think I’ll have to go with “Terror of the Autons.” Not only is it the story that introduces the Master, it’s also the first serial to be genuinely creepy at times, even by today’s standards. Never underestimate the scare factor of a department store mannequin–especially back in the ’70s! Honorable mention goes to the Third Doctor’s final serial, “Planet of the Spiders,” though, because, in spite of its extremely uncomfortable use of yellowface, it’s the first Doctor send-off that feels appropriately dramatic and emotional. Also, the villains are a matriarchal society of murderous spider puppets, and what’s not to love about that?

It’s all fun and games until one of them moves!

Worst Serial: “Planet of the Daleks.” Dalek episodes, especially in the early years of the show, have to walk a fine line between making the titular monsters comical or intimidating, and this serial went too far in the first direction. I love laughing at a capsized Dalek as much as the next Whovian, but it’s not enjoyable if they never feel like a threat before that. Like most of Season 10, it also has a lot of filler and annoying nothing characters. Honorable mention goes to “The Three Doctors,” not because it’s a terrible serial, but because it doesn’t live up to the hype of being the first multi-Doctor crossover. William Hartnell (who was in the final stages of his fatal illness at the time) only appears on a screen, the Second Doctor acts completely out of character for the sake of manufactured conflict with the Third, and the threat hardly feels epic enough to justify a crossover in the first place.

Best Companion: Sarah Jane Smith, easily. I do miss the days when the Doctor could have more than one companion, but her energy makes up for the lack of a larger group. I always prefer it when the Doctor’s companions feel like his equals, especially when they also don’t have objectifying outfits. I just wish Sarah Jane was introduced earlier in the Third Doctor’s run. Fortunately, Sarah Jane is also the first companion to stay on the show after a regeneration, so she’ll be sticking around for a bit.

“Just like a daisy, it was. I looked at it for a moment, and suddenly I saw it through his eyes. It was simply glowing with life, like a perfectly cut jewel. And the colours–the colours were deeper and richer than anything you could possibly imagine. It was the daisiest daisy I’d ever seen.”
“And that was the secret of life?”

Regardless, I’ll look back very fondly on the Third Doctor’s era. He has precisely the balance of whimsy, heroics, and wide-eyed idealism that I’ve always thought are essential to any version of the character, plus a flair for drama that few other incarnations have matched. When you’re an immortal alien who’s seen just about everything in the universe, past and future, it’s important to keep up a sense of style. And so far, the style of Pertwee’s Doctor is unmatched. But I have peeked ahead enough to know that a certain scarf is coming to challenge that statement…

Dune: Desert Power, Faith Power, Film Power

When Denis Villeneuve’s first Dune movie came out, I didn’t feel like giving it a full review, because as much as I loved the world-building and visuals, I very much felt that it was only half a movie. I didn’t have much to say without seeing how the filmmakers would resolve the story in the sequel.

Well, now the sequel’s here, and I do indeed have Things to Say. So this will sort of be a review of both movies, just with a stronger emphasis on the second. It will also contain spoilers…but keep in mind, this is a franchise based on a 60-year-old book in which the main character is prescient and everyone’s unavoidable destiny is spelled out a quarter of the way in. Plot spoilers are kind of irrelevant.

Dune and Dune: Part Two
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writers: Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth
Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgard, Oscar Isaac, Austin Butler
Music By: Hans Zimmer
Cinematography By: Greig Fraser
Rated PG-13 (Contains knife fights, explosions, and a talking foetus)

Let me see if I can break down the plot of these movies:

10,000 years in the future, Arrakis is the most important planet in the universe. A harsh desert world, it’s the only place where the hallucinogenic substance known as spice, which powers space travel in the galaxy-spanning human empire, can be harvested. As a result, it’s been fought over for centuries by the Great Houses that manage the empire, all of whom have oppressed the native people of the planet, known as the Fremen. At the beginning of the first movie, House Atreides is ordered to take over the planet from its previous governors, the brutal Harkonnens, as part of the emperor’s latest political machinations.

Paul Atreides (later Paul Muad’Dib Usul Atreides) is the most important person in the universe. He’s the young son of Duke Leto Atreides and his concubine Lady Jessica, a member of the all-female religious order known as the Bene Gesserit, whose clairvoyance, mental manipulation, and control of their own reproductive systems are the semi-secret power behind all the galaxy’s thrones. To Jessica, Paul might be the Kwisatz Haderach, a being with power over time and space which her order has been trying to breed into existence for generations. To the Fremen, his arrival on Arrakis heralds the fulfilment of a prophecy about the Lisan al-Gaib, a messianic figure who will liberate the planet. To Paul himself, both destinies are a burden forced on him against his will, and his prophetic visions show them leading to tragedy and horror. But as he survives a massacre by the Harkonnens, joins the Fremen’s fight for freedom, and falls in love with one of their warriors, his desire for revenge and drive to protect what he has left draw him inexorably toward the future he fears.

“A great man doesn’t seek to lead. He is called to it.”

I need to start by laying my cards on the table and saying that I think these movies, taken together, are the most magnificent example of science fiction filmmaking in recent memory. I don’t usually compare other genre blockbusters to The Lord of the Rings, because it’s kind of like comparing the winners in a middle school art contest with Michelangelo, but when I look at the sheer scale and ambition of the Dune movies thus far (particularly Part Two), and the level of craft and attention to detail that went into every aspect of their production, it’s the only comparison that springs to mind. Every costume, lighting choice, and prop feels like it has an intention rooted in millennia of lived history. The invented languages sound like they actually mean something. The sandworms look like Lovecraftian gods come to life, yet when someone rides them, the cinematography and sound design make the audience feel like we’re right there with them. Every set and location, from the grand halls of the colonial palace on Arrakis, to the endless sands of the desert, to the Harkonnen gladiatoral arena bathed in black-and-white infrared light, feels real and solid and at the same time so colossal that it should dwarf the human drama playing out against it–and, at times, in the first movie, that’s what happens. But by the second movie, every actor’s performance has grown to fit their world, and the themes of power and destiny feel so epic in scope that it doesn’t seem right to explore them any other way.

As you can probably tell, Dune is a large-scale sci-fi saga with a ton of lore behind it, even considering how much of the book was cut to make it adaptable for film. But in a nutshell, it’s a story about power–the different forms it takes, the kinds of people who seek it out, and what it does to those who wield it. The first movie sets up a world of precariously balanced factions, all fighting for control over the galaxy in their own unique ways. The Harkonnens rely on brute force, which comes to a head in the second movie with the introduction of Feyd-Rautha, a sort of foil for Paul who is mainly considered as a potential leader because of his ferocity and sadomasochism. The Atreides, led by the most compassionate of the players we see, try diplomacy (which doesn’t work out well for them). The Bene Gesserit use emotional and sexual manipulation, plus their ability to see into the future and concoct long-term strategies. Against all of them are set the Fremen, who use “desert power”–fierce communal loyalty and the ability to cooperate with their own environment to the detriment of intruders. Over the course of two movies, Paul learns to wield all these forms of power, but he isn’t able to “win” Arrakis until he adds one more to the mix: the power of faith.

“Your mothers foretold of my coming! Fear the moment.”

These movies, especially Part Two, treat religious fanaticism with the same existential dread that Oppenheimer used for the atomic bomb. Scenes of worshippers gathering around Paul are scored with the most ominous bass riffs Hans Zimmer has put his name to since The Dark Knight. The glimpses we see of his prophetic visions are consistently nightmarish, and every actor’s performance becomes scarier the more they believe in “the prophet Muad’Dib” (especially Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica, who truly earns the “witch” label sometimes thrown at her in the second movie). Because the power of film is to compel empathy through visuals, it’s always a bit risky to make a movie in which the audience isn’t meant to root for the protagonist–and, indeed, the scenes of Fremen conquest in Part Two look so awesome that I fully expect them to create a whole new generation of misguided Paul fans (if not Feyd-Rautha fans–Austin Butler is ridiculously charismatic in that role). But Villeneuve has at least made a brave effort to show what a trap it is to marry religion with political power. For all the huge scale of his worldbuilding, he knows how to make the story’s themes personal by focusing them on a few key relationships.

In a slight change from the source material, the movies show that different regions of Arrakis have their own beliefs and customs, with the Fremen in the embattled north being more sceptical of the prophecy (or at least, wanting to believe the Lisan al Gaib would be Fremen), while those in the harsher south are labeled “fundamentalists” and are much more ready to believe in whatever saviour a tattooed Bene Gesserit might point them at. These different perspectives are represented by the two major Fremen characters: Chani, Paul’s love interest; and Stilgar, the leader of the desert fighters he joins to strike back at the Harkonnens. Despite being in love with Paul and believing in his strengths as a leader, Chani spends most of the movie resisting her people’s belief in the prophecy, seeing it as just another way for foreigners to manipulate and enslave them. And the audience knows she’s right, since it’s revealed in the first movie that the Bene Gesserit deliberately planted the prophecy in order to pave the way for a potential Kwisatz Haderach to arise on the planet. So Chani becomes a much-needed audience surrogate and moral compass to balance out Paul’s increasingly dangerous quest for power, which is something I always felt was missing from the book (which might be an unfair assessment, since I haven’t read the sequels yet–don’t hate me, book fans!).

“You will never lose me. Not as long as you stay who you are.”

Stilgar, on the other hand, represents the fundamentalist belief in a militant messiah, and his character has a very different journey. When he’s introduced in the first movie, Javier Bardem plays him as a desert-wise, no-nonsense leader who distrusts foreigners but is willing to give Paul and his mother a chance because of his religious beliefs. And when, in the second movie, those beliefs start fixating on Paul, it’s mostly played for laughs at first. But after a certain point, it becomes clear that Stilgar’s idea of the Lisan al-Gaib has superseded his friendship with the actual person who’s been fighting alongside him, and that’s when the entire movie takes a darker turn. The Fremen’s faith in Paul is portrayed as a trap–both for them (it results in them being subjugated by foreigners to a greater degree than ever before) and for Paul (no matter how destructive he knows his rule will be, he can’t back out of it after a certain point).

In Stilgar and the other Arrakis freedom fighters, we see how turning Paul into a religious symbol degrades their friendship, and even their respect, for him as a human being. And when he decides to fully embrace that symbol, it breaks down his humanity and his ability to relate to other humans. I’m not usually his biggest fan, but I think Timothee Chalamet deserves a lot of credit for selling the transformation from an idealistic, sheltered prince to a charismatic yet terrifying dark messiah. It’s such a dramatic shift, yet he makes it believable. And the filmmakers do a great job of making the audience feel the shattering of Paul’s bond with Chani. By the end of the second movie, Paul has achieved all his goals, but has also destroyed all the relationships that were important to him, and is now trapped by his own followers on a path that will inevitably lead to more destruction.

“Lead them to paradise.”

Because of their ambition and scope, I dared to compare the Dunes with The Lord of the Rings trilogy–a comparison that might become even more apt in the future, since a third Dune movie has been announced–but in reality, they’re very different beasts, simply by virtue of their source material. The Lord of the Rings (book and adaptation) is a classic hero’s journey, set in a world of fairly black-and-white morality, in which the good guys’ rise to power is a sign of a happy ending. Dune, on the other hand, has the bones of a heroic fantasy (young, inexperienced “chosen one” gets thrust into a war by some older mentors, goes through a journey of struggle and transformation, and defeats his enemies in a symbolically satisfying way), but without the “hero” part. While Paul is definitely more sympathetic than the Harkonnens, he’s also not above using brutal tactics to achieve his goals, which aren’t any more lofty than personal revenge and survival. And his rise to power is unequivocally portrayed as a tragedy, not a triumph.

In other words, it’s a lot easier to draw parallels between Dune and real-world politics. The Fremen’s struggle for freedom, against an empire that wants to harvest their resources regardless of the impact on their planet, obviously brings to mind the various Western proxy wars over oil and land in the Middle East (which, unfortunately, might resonate with 2024 audiences even more strongly than 1960s book readers). And to Americans, in an election year during which one party is getting louder and louder about its desire to turn the country into a militant theocracy, a warning against charismatic leaders who use religious rhetoric as a weapon feels pretty timely. It’s just as true now as it was in the ’60s: blind faith in a human being whose version of paradise just so happens to include giving them control over their followers’ lives doesn’t lead anywhere good. Even if they look like Timothee Chalamet.

“This prophecy is how they enslave us!”

Personally, though, I’m just excited to have a movie like this again–a real, big, explosive action movie that also reminds me how much my nerdy little heart loves things like alien planet ecology and futuristic religions. I haven’t been as happy to see a movie in IMAX, or geeked out as hard about the backstory and lore behind it, since…well, since Denis Villeneuve’s last sci-fi movie. There are simply no other directors doing it like him. Throw in the incredible cinematography of Greig Fraser, Hans Zimmer actually caring about a project instead of tossing it to his interns, the most breathtaking costume design I’ve seen in a long time courtesy of Jacqueline West, and a cast filled out by some of the best actors working today–and you have something approaching a perfect sci-fi movie. It’s not quite there–I have a few complaints. I wish the pacing wasn’t so dramatically different between the first and the second movie; I wish the editing had made a few plot points clearer in Part Two; and I wish both movies were longer. I also think the concerns many Muslim and Middle Eastern critics have about the movies toning down the Arabic influence from the books are valid (though I think there’s too much nuance to get into them here). But considering the book’s reputation for being unadaptable, and considering how dull and formulaic most mainstream sci-fi movies have been lately (looking at you, Star Wars), Dune hits like water in the desert.

I’m eagerly awaiting the adaptation of Dune Messiah–and hopefully I won’t have to wait for centuries!

12 Days of John Carpenter, Part 2

The 12 days of Christmas are over, so it’s time to finish the 12 days of Carpenter!

And just to shake things up, this list will be ordered from worst to best instead of chronologically. Again, “worst” in this case is relative–all of these movies come highly recommended. It’s just that the latter half of the man’s career contains his greatest masterpieces, so I really want to highlight those.

7. Escape from L.A. (1996)
“You may have escaped from New York. But this is L.A., vato. And you’re about to find out that this fucking city can kill anybody!”

Plot: It’s Escape from New York, but more so.

My Thoughts: This often gets categorised as one of the “bad” John Carpenter movies, but I just can’t see it that way. Yes, the special effects look awful, which is pretty inexcusable for a movie made more than a decade after its predecessor and with a much bigger budget. Yes, the entire plot is just a rehash of the first but with Los Angeles swapped for New York. And yes, everything about it is ten times goofier. But to me, that’s all part of the charm. In many ways, this movie feels like what its predecessor was meant to be: an over-the-top, campy satire of American fascism. It may not be quite as beautifully atmospheric as the first, but its attitude is more consistently in-your-face, which in some ways makes it a more satisfying watch. Escape from New York feels like it was made by someone who maybe sympathised with the protagonist’s nihilistic worldview, but was mostly just using him to tell a fun story. This movie feels like it could have been made by Snake Plissken. It reeks of genuine, seething hatred for LA, Hollywood, and the tyranny of “civilisation” in general. Its message is charmingly genuine, but it still doesn’t take itself seriously enough not to add a surfing scene and a life-or-death basketball match. Which makes it tonally perfect, in my opinion.

By 1996, Carpenter had released at least half a dozen of the best horror and sci-fi films of his generation, and all but one of them had been flops, both critically and commercially. It’s easy to understand where his resentment towards the filmmaking industry came from, and why this was his last movie with an ounce of the old creative spark. The few movies he released after this are horribly generic and mean-spirited, besides being technically sloppier than anything he did before. So Escape from L.A. really feels like his last hurrah. And because it is a grand finale of sorts, it manages to do what very few unnecessary sequels have been able to accomplish: complete its main character’s arc in a satisfying way. Even people who hate most of this movie have to admit that it has a great ending, and in fact the only possible good ending for Snake.

Score: 7 out of 10 basketball dunks

8. Prince of Darkness (1987)
“YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED BY THE HOLY GHOST. YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED BY THE GOD PLUTONIUM. IN FACT, YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED!”

Plot: A quantum physics professor enlists a group of grad students to help him with an unusual assignment from a Catholic cardinal: figuring out how to contain a cylinder of green slime that supposedly embodies an ancient evil guarded by the church for centuries. Only now, its last official guardian has died, and the cylinder is leaking (which may or may not be related to the strange visions leaking into everyone’s dreams).

My Thoughts: One of the many things that tend to put me off exorcism/demon possession movies is their sameness. Every trailer for a demon possession movie seems to recycle very similar imagery and plot points, mostly from The Exorcist of course. But this is one entry in that subgenre that feels radically different. It might be Carpenter’s most original idea, which is saying something. Reimagining the battle between good and evil as a balance between physical forces in the unseen quantum level of reality remains fresh to this day, and allows the story to marry science and faith in a more seamless way than most religious sci-fi.

“This is not a dream…not a dream…we are broadcasting from the year 1 9 9….“

It’s also weird as all heck. This movie has everything: people dissolving into swarms of bugs, deep philosophical conversations between Donald Pleasence and Victor Wong, Alice Cooper stabbing a guy with half a bicycle, Jesus being an alien, uncanny dream sequences, zombies, rogue computers, and, of course, tons and tons of green slime. Nothing about it is what you would expect from a typical supernatural horror film, but the score and the cinematography build such a potent atmosphere of dread that it all works. Strong performances (especially from Pleasence and Wong) help, too.

Out of all the Carpenter movies that touch on religion, this is, naturally, the most blatant, but it’s still hard to nail down how he feels about the whole thing. The Catholic Church as a whole gets a pretty bad rap here, but the only priest we spend time with is a stand-up guy who turns out to be right most of the time. The whole “Jesus was an alien and the Devil is a primordial antimatter creature” mythology sounds like something a Catholic school graduate would come up with the first time he got stoned in college, but it also feels in keeping with a genuine desire to balance scientific progress with ancient wisdom. In the end, I don’t think it matters very much, because Carpenter makes clear that humans (including brilliant scientists) don’t have much hope of ever truly understanding the cosmos. As always in his films, the best we can do is face the truth we do know, however horrible it might be, and save whatever we can.

Score: 8 out of 10 broken mirrors

9. They Live (1988)

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

Plot: A down-on-his-luck construction worker stumbles upon a pair of sunglasses that reveal the truth about the world: that it’s run by evil aliens who have brainwashed humans into being their obedient slaves.

My Thoughts: This movie is a thing of beauty. If the pacing didn’t fall off a bit in the second half, it might be my favourite movie on this list. It’s as big, dumb, and obvious as Rowdy Roddy Piper in the lead role, and it spends its entire runtime raging against capitalism, the police state, and authoritarian propaganda with all the subtlety of two large denim-wrapped men beating the tar out of each other WWE-style in an alley for 15 minutes.

“It’s a new morning in America. Fresh, vital…the old cynicism is gone. We have faith in our leaders.”

They Live is the great American movie. It perfectly captures all the anxieties of being a non-billionaire in this country, triumphantly reveals that we are being exploited and brainwashed by an elite class that is completely removed from the sufferings of the working people…and concludes that the solution to this problem is to shoot guns about it. I don’t think anyone has ever been clearer about what it means to be an American–particularly a white male American–than John Carpenter in the 80s. The scene where the unnamed protagonist puts on the glasses for the first time has rightfully been memed to death, but there are so many other great moments, too–the alley fight, the encampment bulldozer, the bum-turned-tuxedoed collaborator, and the hilarious jab at Siskel and Ebert at the end. This film was made at the beginning of Carpenter’s disillusionment with Hollywood, and it shows, but it doesn’t feel angry the way Escape from LA does–it’s having too much fun. I absolutely love Roddy Piper and Keith David in this, and it’s not because they give Oscar-worthy performances. It’s just because they both seem so happy to be there.

Out of all John Carpenter’s movies, They Live is the one I would most consider a “comfort film.” It’s impossible to be sad while watching this movie. Sadly, as long as the American empire continues to be what it is, it will remain timeless. And timelessly cathartic.

Score: 9 out of 10 “OBEY” signs

10. Starman (1984)

“Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you? … You are at your best when things are worst.”

Plot: A grieving widow happens to be the first human to encounter a stranded alien–who takes the form of her deceased husband.

My Thoughts: This movie is one of the best examples of Carpenter’s willingness to experiment and step outside his comfort zone. Some fans think it was a response to Spielberg’s ET stealing some of The Thing’s thunder, because there’s a definite Spielbergian tone of hope and humanism that clashes wildly with most of the director’s previous films. Whatever his motives may have been in making it, it’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. Karen Allen elevates her role to that of a highly relatable and sympathetic everywoman–easily the best female character in JC’s filmography. Jeff Bridges manages to make the “Starman” feel genuinely alien while also conveying real emotion, and all without seeming completely silly–possibly the most impressive acting of his career. Considering that it’s one of the few Carpenter scores not written by Carpenter himself, the soundtrack is transcendent. In a resume full of bleak, cynical films, Starman stands out as a beacon of hope in humanity, full of romance and compassion.

And yet, it’s still very much a Carpenter movie. The US government is unquestionably the villain of the piece, unable to appreciate the wonder of first contact with an alien species because they’re too busy trying to figure out how to weaponise or exploit it. There’s a bit of body horror in the Starman’s introduction, as he rapidly grows a human body from infancy to adulthood. And, of course, the movie never shies away from the harsh realities of grief. Karen Allen plays her “romance” with the Starman as a strange kind of final goodbye to her husband, and it’s as tear-jerking as it sounds. While this is a heartwarming movie in many ways, it’s never sentimental. And that’s really what makes JC’s first foray into more blockbuster-friendly sci-fi special–it doesn’t feel forced at all. Despite his habitual bleakness, the guy was still able to pull out a sincerely optimistic story that mimicked what was popular among mainstream audiences at the time while remaining consistent with his own style. Not every director can do that.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

And…it still didn’t help with this movie’s box office returns. But that’s because general audiences don’t appreciate art.

Score: 10 out of 10 Dutch Apple Pies

11. In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

“A reality is just what we tell each other it is. Sane and insane could easily switch places, were the insane to become the majority.”

Plot: Insurance fraud investigator John Trent is tasked with finding out whether the disappearance of bestselling horror writer Sutter Cane is a publicity scam or the real deal. The investigation takes him on an increasingly surreal journey into the New England countryside, where something–or someone–seems to be toying with reality.

My Thoughts: There are two things that, in my opinion, instantly improve any horror movie: Lovecraftian vibes and Sam Neill. This movie has both. The third film in Carpenter’s unofficial “apocalypse trilogy,” after The Thing and Prince of Darkness, it’s often cited as the weakest of the three, but it’s my personal favourite. I mean, it has an amalgamation of H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King literally rewriting reality via horror paperbacks! I am physically incapable of not loving that. And unlike the other cosmic horror movie featuring Sam Neill that I’ve seen, Event Horizon, it’s also intelligently written and features some of the most beautiful shots in the genre.

By the way, when I say this movie is Lovecraftian, I don’t just mean that it has tentacle monsters (although it does, of course). It captures my favourite aspect of cosmic horror: the idea that ideas, themselves, can threaten life and sanity, and that simply learning about Things Man Was Not Meant To Know can be deadlier than any tentacle monster. After all, what I find frightening about people who seem to be having paranoid delusions or believe in conspiracy theories is the quiet, whispering suspicion that they may be right. This movie plays with that fear very effectively. It also has the most bizarre and dreamlike imagery of any Carpenter film, which is saying something.

“Do you read Sutter Cane?”

And it’s also just a wee bit goofy. A big reason why I rank Mouth of Madness above the other two apocalypse trilogy films is its sense of humour. A lot of this comes from Sam Neill’s performance as a stubborn sceptic prone to sarcasm even in the face of obviously supernatural events, but there’s also a parade of hilarious side characters who show up throughout the movie. And, fittingly for a movie about a writer messing with his creations, JC throws in a few meta jokes as well (“Not the Carpenters” comes to mind). Overall, though, this is just a perfect Halloween movie: it’s scary and unsettling, but it’s also a lot of fun.

After all, if the world’s gotta end, the best we can hope for is to go out laughing, right?

Score: 10 out of 10 Johnny Boys

12. Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

“It’s like I told my last wife, I says, ‘Honey, I never drive faster than I can see, and besides that, it’s all in the reflexes.'”

Plot: Hyper-macho truck driver Jack Burton agrees to help his friend Wang Chi rescue his kidnapped fiancee from a gang in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but he quickly finds himself in over his head in an underworld of martial arts and sorcery.

My Thoughts: This is Carpenter’s tribute to East Asian cinema, from before it had a wide audience in the U.S. It’s also a complete anomaly in his filmography. Where most of his movies are slow-paced, this one moves at break-neck speed, with a new character, plot point, or bit of worldbuilding thrown at the audience every couple minutes. Where other Carpenter films are light on the action (even if they’re marketed as action movies), this one has some of the best martial arts fights in America. Where other movies on this list, even the optimistic Starman, take a dim view of society and human nature in general, this one is overflowing with goodwill for mankind and wonder at the world. Is it racist? Probably. Is it sexist? Most definitely! Do I care? No, because it’s the most fun I’ve ever had watching a movie.

“Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to ‘get it.'”

Now, to defend my enjoyment of this problematic ’80s movie, I do want to point out that it does something very progressive for its time: cast the white male lead as an utter buffoon. Typically, especially in Carpenter’s heyday, American movies about a white man entering an unfamiliar culture cast that man as a white saviour–somebody who innately understands the culture as well as the people born into it, and protects the helpless natives against outside threats with his supreme manliness. Heck, it’s still a common trope today–look at the Avatar movies. But in this movie, Jack Burton has no clue what’s going on from the beginning, and he never, at any point, gets a clue. Most of the movie’s humour comes from his constant assumption that he’s come to save the day, when in fact he’s just the bumbling sidekick to the Chinese and Chinese-American heroes on their quest. Of course, since Jack Burton is played by Kurt Russell, he’s the most entertaining thing in the movie, but David Dun, Victor Wong, and James Hong certainly give him a run for his money. There’s still no excuse for reducing the only female Chinese character to a voiceless Maguffin, but that’s par for the course for Carpenter women.

Anyway, problematic or not, it’s impossible not to get caught up in this movie’s joyful energy and insane visuals. It’s a rabbit hole of crazy, with more weird monsters and fight scenes at every level. And the effects all hold up almost as well as those from The Thing (even though it had a much lower budget). The score is one of JC’s best, even boasting a theme song with lyrics. It’s insanely quotable, every character is unique and memorable, and Dean Cundey’s cinematography is as perfect as ever. I can understand why some Carpenter movies didn’t make money (Prince of Darkness wasn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser), but the fact that this one was a flop genuinely baffles me. Not only does it tell a wildly fun story, but it seems to do so in a quintessentially ’80s way. It couldn’t have been made in any other decade. In fact, even Carpenter would never make a movie as silly and outside the box as this one again. He went on to make a few more masterpieces, but all of them have a more cynical edge, and eventually he descended into mediocrity. It’s quite sad, really.

But Big Trouble in Little China still exists, in all its claymation prop, tank top-wearing glory, and watching it should be a cure for cynicism in anyone. If you haven’t, do yourself a favour and rent it from your local library. It’ll restore your faith in humanity–or at least in humanity’s movies. And then, do yourself another favour and watch the rest of the movies on this list. They got me through the last semester of grad school; they might get you through some stressful times, too.

“We really shook the pillars of heaven, didn’t we, Wang?”

Score: 11 out of 10 Pork Chop Expresses

So there you have it: all of John Carpenter’s movies (worth mentioning, anyway). Again, I highly recommend all 12, especially for cold weather and hard times. It looks like many of us will have lots of both this year, so it’s a great time to revisit the work of a master who was endlessly pessimistic about human institutions, but persistently hopeful about the ability of honest humans to endure. Long live John Carpenter!

Wibbly-Wobbling Through Doctor Who: Part Two

Last time I talked about Doctor Who, I focused on the First Doctor, and the…somewhat lacking early seasons of the show. In my watch-through, though, I was very happy to discover that the show gets better quite quickly.

All it takes is Patrick Troughton.

“Life depends on change, and renewal.”

Doctor Where?
But before I start talking about why the Second Doctor helped solidify everything good about Doctor Who, it’s worth pointing out one of the big downsides of his tenure in the role, which was entirely out of his control. I mentioned last time that several episodes of Classic Who are missing, thanks in part to the BBC’s cheapskate habit of recording over old episodes. But for the most part, you can watch the First Doctor’s tenure, even with the missing episodes, and not feel confused. A few later companions come and go without any explanation, but there’s nothing terribly memorable about the post-Ian-and-Barbara companions, anyway.

Unfortunately, it’s different for the Second Doctor. His entire first season is missing–including the episode where the First Doctor regenerates into him. It’s arguably the most important episode of the entire show–the one that introduced the concept that would allow Doctor Who to continue forever–and it’s missing! At least the soundtrack for the Second Doctor’s first serial was released years later with some dodgy accompanying animation, so you can still sort of watch his debut. But if you want to see the introduction of his longest-running companion, Jamie McRimmon, you’re out of luck.

“Our lives are different to everybody else’s. That’s the exciting thing! There’s nobody in the universe can do what we’re doing.”

Building a Doctor

Even with the missing footage of his debut, though, the Second Doctor makes an impression the minute he enters the picture. I truly think that most of the character traits modern fans associate with the Doctor originated with Patrick Troughton’s portrayal. The exact nature of regeneration was still a bit murky when it was introduced (it wouldn’t even be called “regeneration” for years to come), so it’s a little unclear at first whether he’s supposed to be a new character entirely, or just the same old guy with a different face. Troughton’s performance clarifies things. He acts like he remembers all of his predecessor’s adventures, but his personality couldn’t be farther removed from Hartnell’s. He’s childlike and silly in a way the First Doctor never was: playing a flute (badly) to get out of answering questions, pulling goofy faces to distract opponents, and generally behaving like a space clown–up until the moment he needs to get serious. Playing dumb to put an enemy off-guard, then revealing that he’s been ten steps ahead of them the whole time, would become the Second Doctor’s signature move, and Troughton, with the help of a rumpled suit and a Beatles haircut, sold it completely.

Partly, I think, because of this performance, the writing for the Doctor improved quite a bit during his run. He started becoming explicitly heroic. The First Doctor had been an amoral scientist who usually only helped others when it suited his own interests, but the Second goes out of his way to stop invasions, prevent disasters, and generally help the innocent wherever he ends up in the universe. He’s also a lot more openly affectionate towards his companions. It helps that he has the same two for the majority of his surviving serials: Zoe Heriot, a scientist from the distant future, and the aforementioned Jamie, a Scot from the 18th century. They spend so much time together onscreen that, by the end of the run, they feel like the tight-knit TARDIS family all companion groups should be. With his dishevelled appearance, goofy mannerisms, and penchant for risky schemes that pay off against all odds, the Second Doctor gives big “fun uncle” energy, with his younger-than-usual companions filling in the role of gullible teenagers willing to go along with him.

“Will we ever meet again?” “Again? Now, Zoe, you know that time is relative.”

Attack of the Lore of Doom

Unfortunately, while the Doctor himself was more fun in his Second incarnation, the stories he wound up in were often pretty formulaic. Having abandoned all pretense of being educational, the show was trying to go in a more action-packed, sci-fi direction, but the writers simply couldn’t think of any monsters better than the Daleks, so too often the TARDIS crew just found themselves fighting invasions by boring Dalek clones–usually in a human military or research base made of Britain’s finest cardboard. The Second Doctor’s seasons featured the first uses of the title formula “The [Aggressive Noun] of [Ominous Adjective],” which most serials would follow for several years to come, and with a few exceptions, the stories weren’t much more imaginative than you’d expect from that sort of title.

However, one very impactful story element was added during the Second Doctor’s era: lore. During Hartnell’s time in the role, we viewers didn’t learn much more about his character’s backstory than was revealed in the very first episode. We know the Doctor is an alien from another time who was exiled from his home planet, but the show is uninterested in explaining why, or where and when this planet might be. Half the time, the show’s writers treat the Doctor like an eccentric human, and half the time he reveals magical alien powers out of the blue to solve whatever story problem he’s facing. Towards the end of the Second Doctor’s last season, his identity and past become more clear. We’re introduced to the Time Lords, a race of super-advanced aliens who have the power to travel through time and space, but don’t believe in using it to do anything other than observe the universe. The Doctor, we learn, was exiled for meddling in the affairs of other times and places. It’s also confirmed that Time Lords are functionally immortal, that they have telepathic abilities, and that it’s commonplace for them to travel by TARDIS. And with those little tidbits of lore, the show stopped being an episodic collection of unrelated adventures, and took its first steps toward becoming the byzantine labyrinth of tangled continuity that it is today.

The Time Lords, before they acquired a fashion sense.

And honestly, I think Doctor Who is all the better for it. I love worldbuilding in my science fiction, even when it’s silly, and the Doctor desperately needed more depth as a character. So even though the Second Doctor doesn’t have as much surviving screentime as some other regenerations, he played an undeniably pivotal role in creating the show we all know and love.

The Second Doctor Era (Seasons 4 1/2-6)

Best Serial: “The War Games.” This lengthy epic is what introduced most of the lore discussed above, as well as a character who fans widely believe is an early regeneration of the Doctor’s eventual archnemesis, The Master. Despite its cheesiness, it’s big and bold enough to feel like the sendoff the Second Doctor and his companions deserved. Honorable mention goes to “The Mind Robber,” just for how weird it is. I wish there were more Doctor Who stories with unicorns.

Worst Serial: “The Dominators.” Out of all the show’s failed attempts to recreate the success of the Daleks, this serial features the worst example thus far–at least, in terms of effective villainy. The Quarks are kind of cute, but that’s clearly not what the story was going for. Also, it’s one of the Season 6 episodes where Patrick Troughton appears to be losing interest with the part–or with the writers, which would be understandable.

“Just act stupid. Do you think you can manage that?”

Best TARDIS Crew: Zoe and Jamie are really the only viable option, but I would pick them anyway. They’re genuinely the most entertaining pair of companions in the first decade of Doctor Who. I love how Zoe, despite being the first companion to whom the term “eye candy” could be applied (what with her tendency to wear glitzy miniskirts), is consistently treated as the Doctor’s intellectual equal, and rarely fills a “damsel in distress” role. That job more frequently falls to Jamie, a lovable himbo (the first of many in this show) who is in a constant state of confusion about what’s going on, but always tries his best to help anyway. The trio is delightful together, and their eventual departure is genuinely sad.

With the Second Doctor’s regeneration, the black-and-white era of Doctor Who ended, and the show reinvented itself for the second, but hardly the final, time.

Psychedelic regeneration scene, go!

12 Days of John Carpenter, Part 1

2023 was a weird year for movies.

Due to strikes, boneheaded executive decisions, and various scandals, several movies I was anticipating this year were delayed, had limited releases, or were outright canceled. This also happened to be the busiest year of my life so far, so I didn’t get out to see very many of the movies that were released.

But what I did manage to do was watch every single theatrically released movie ever directed by John Carpenter.

In the unlikely event that anyone needs an introduction, John Carpenter is a prolific filmmaker whose influence on movies in general (but especially horror) can hardly be overstated. He directed, often wrote, and usually composed the soundtracks for 18 films between 1974 and 2013, when he retired to focus on his music. Personally, I like his filmmaking style for a few reasons, and the most important is his honesty. Even though all of Carpenter’s movies were intended to please general audiences (he’s never been an arthouse director), they never feel like studio-mandated or focus group-tested projects, which might be part of the reason that so few were commercial successes in their own time. In his heyday, he was always willing to experiment with new styles and genres, while giving each movie a fresh, original twist of its own.

The man, the myth, the legend.

That honesty comes with a healthy dose of cynicism. This particular auteur is not one of those horror directors who set up their protagonists with a peaceful, happy life before putting them through the wringer. On the contrary, almost all of Carpenter’s movies begin in hell and find a way to go lower, whether the hell in question is crime-ridden 70s LA, even more crime-ridden futuristic New York, the frozen wastes of Antarctica, or *shudder* the suburbs. The “heroes,” such as they are, tend to be the only people willing to face up to the world’s cruelty and unfairness without shrinking from it (and this is often their only redeeming character trait). This underlying bleakness gives a grounded feeling to even Carpenter’s most fantastical films, and ironically allows many of them to have pretty uplifting conclusions. And even when they have high budgets, there’s a blunt, unpolished honesty to his movies that I appreciate, especially in contrast to so many of the big studio-produced films of today.

However, towards the end of his career, John Carpenter’s cynicism (and increasingly bad luck at the box office) started to stifle his creativity, and his last few movies feel more and more phoned in. But I don’t really feel like talking about his mediocre period. So, in the spirit of the holidays, I’m going to write about my 12 favourite John Carpenter movies, one for each day of Christmas (which is still ongoing until January 6, lest we forget). They will be listed roughly in chronological order, and they will be rated on a scale of 1 to 10. Don’t be put off if some get a lower score–I highly recommend all of them. I even recommend watching them as a festive movie marathon! The score for each is relative to Carpenter’s absolute peak.

1. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
   “It’s a goddamn siege!”

Plot: When Los Angeles’ toughest gangs team up to attack a defunct police headquarters, a Black cop is forced to team up with a white murderer to defend the ordinary citizens trapped inside–and hopefully survive the night themselves.

My Thoughts: I consider this to be Carpenter’s first “real” movie. (His earlier feature, Dark Star, is a padded-out student film, so it doesn’t quite count in my book.) And it sets the tone for much of what would come later. It’s a low-budget, extremely simple, gritty crime thriller that reeks of ’70s LA (as in, I feel like I know what LA literally smelled like in the ’70s after watching this movie). Calling it a crime thriller is a bit misleading, though, because this is, for all practical purposes, a zombie movie. The “interracial gang alliance” is comprised of nameless thugs who don’t speak, have unlimited ammo, show a complete disregard for personal safety, and seem to have no goals beyond causing as much death and destruction as possible. Several scenes and plot points are ripped directly from Night of the Living Dead. Why Carpenter didn’t just make a zombie movie is probably between him and George A. Romero, but I suspect that at this stage of his career, he may not have had the money for makeup.

The seeds of Carpenter’s style are all very present in Assault on Precinct 13. It’s got his slow pacing and gradual build-up of suspense. It’s got his bleak, cynical outlook on the world (the plot is kicked off with the murder of a child) and his wannabe progressive, often uncomfortable handling of race. It was still somewhat rare at the time for white filmmakers to cast Black actors in major roles, let alone as authority figures, so I suppose the movie’s very sympathetic Black cop protagonist somewhat balances out the inhuman way the multiracial gang members are treated. Inhuman antagonists would also become a trend for Carpenter–it’s rare for his villains to have clear motivations or to be sympathetic in any way. This movie also showcases Carpenter’s distrust of authority, which would become even more pronounced later in his career. The reason cop and criminal have to team up is that the higher-ups in the police department have stopped caring about their neighbourhood and won’t send help.

“I’ve never had much faith in anyone coming to my rescue.” “Maybe you’ve been associating with the wrong kind of people.” “I’ve worked with police officers for five years.”

Most importantly, though, this is the first movie that John Carpenter scored, and that is critical to its appeal. The minimalist electronic soundtrack drives the action, sets the hard-boiled mood, and elevates the entire movie. It’s pretty amazing how a low-budget action flick can stand out among the rest with just a simple “dun da-da dun-dun.”

Rating: 6 out of 10 Vanilla Twist Ice Cream Cones

2. Halloween (1978)
“I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply…evil.”

Plot: Fifteen years after murdering his sister as a young child, Michael Myers escapes from a mental asylum and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, IL, where he interrupts the babysitting business of local high schooler Laurie Strode.

My Thoughts: It’s probably an exaggeration to say that this movie did for Halloween what Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol did for Christmas…but I don’t think it’s a huge exaggeration. It’s certainly not exaggerating to say that this movie singlehandedly codified and popularised the slasher genre. All the tropes are here: a masked, unstoppable killer; a bunch of interchangeable teenagers who get killed for having sex; a pure, virginal Final Girl; and even an unlikely sequel hook (which would lead to a decades-long franchise of ever-diminishing returns). As far as story and characters go, it doesn’t really have anything interesting or unique to say, at least not to me, as someone who’s seen a few of the other slashers it inspired. But it’s easy to understand why other horror fans and creators found it so inspiring at the time: the creepy yet festive autumn atmosphere it creates is incredibly potent, and all the more impressive considering the movie was very obviously filmed in sunny southern California. And Michael Myers succeeds where many slasher villains have failed in being a truly unknowable, supernaturally unkillable murder machine. He’s exactly the kind of monster who is stronger for having no motive and no relevant backstory.

Probably my most controversial John Carpenter opinion is that I don’t enjoy Halloween as much as many of his other movies. It was his biggest hit at the box office, and it’s arguably what he’s best known for among the general public to this day. But it has so many derivatives nowadays that watching it doesn’t feel very special–and slashers aren’t my favourite horror subgenre anyway. Also, Laurie Strode is just objectively one of the worst Final Girls in the business. Can’t even pick up a knife to save her life. Disgraceful.

“It was the Bogeyman…”

But there are a couple of things I do appreciate about this movie: the soundtrack is another classic, featuring possibly the best theme Carpenter ever composed; and the cinematography by Dean Cundey, who would continue to work with Carpenter for all of his peak years, is more beautiful than it has any right to be on this movie’s budget. I also appreciate the slow, steady buildup of suspense before anything violent occurs in the present, which amplifies Michael’s terror and is something a lot of modern horror movies don’t seem to have the patience for.

It’s also fun to see the original Thing from Outer Space playing on a TV at one point in this movie. An excellent bit of meta-foreshadowing.

Rating: 6 out of 10 Jack O’ Lanterns

3. The Fog (1980)
“Get inside and lock your doors! Close your windows! There’s something in the fog!”

Plot: When a mysterious fog bank rolls in over the 100-year-old town of Antonio Bay, California, a radio DJ, a drifter, and a few local sailors are confronted with a ghostly threat and the town’s long-buried secrets.

My Thoughts: This is the perfect cozy horror movie. It’s spooky and suspenseful, but not too violent or gory, and, like Halloween, it creates a potent atmosphere that easily draws the viewer in. Like all good ghost stories, it deals with the theme of past wrongs coming back to bite their perpetrators in the present, and a California town with an old Spanish mission is the perfect setting for a story like that. I think it’s also the closest Carpenter ever came to writing female characters with agency. Not that the radio DJ protagonist in this has the most compelling arc ever, but at least she’s a POV character with a real job and motivations that don’t involve attraction to a male character. This is balanced out, of course, by a subplot in which Jamie Lee Curtis randomly hooks up with a much older Tom Atkins, who is treated like the male lead even though he has no direct connection to the plot–but, you know, it’s something. And it’s rare for Carpenter to give women in his movies even that much.

“To the ships at sea, who can hear my voice, look across the water, into the darkness. Look for the fog.”

This is also the first of many Carpenter movies to portray the Catholic church in a sort-of-but-not-entirely negative light. Like several later films, this one features a heroic priest, but also places the blame for the supernatural threat squarely at the feet of the church (it turns out that the ghosts are taking revenge for something an earlier iteration of the town church did and covered up). I suppose it’s just another aspect of JC’s problems with authority–individual priests, like individual cops, can be cool, but the larger organisation is always going to be portrayed as morally ambiguous at best.

Rating: 7 out of 10 Foghorns

4. Escape from New York (1981)
“About an hour ago, a small jet went down over New York City. The President was on board.”
“President of what?”

Plot: In the distant future of 1997, crime in the U.S. has skyrocketed so much that the entire city of New York is converted into a maximum-security prison. When the President’s private jet gets shot down over the city, the government has no choice but to send in war hero-turned-criminal Snake Plissken to rescue him.

My Thoughts: The best thing John Carpenter ever did was cast Kurt Russell. That man and his beautiful mane of hair improved the guy’s ’80s period more than any other single factor. And he’s especially essential to this movie. There are two things the viewer needs to know about protagonist Snake Plissken: 1) He is the coolest human ever to wear an eye patch; and 2) He does not give a single shake of his cigarette about anything, especially not the establishment or continuation of “civilisation.” Kurt Russell fully embodies this attitude, playing the character with a permanent sneer and a gravelly voice that almost, but not quite, edges over into self-parody. This is a movie in which the main villain shows how wealthy he is by driving a car with chandeliers hanging on the hood, so it’s very important that the lead actor plays it completely straight throughout. The magic of Escape from New York is that it’s based on an utterly ridiculous concept, but it takes itself so seriously that it wraps around to become awesome.

“You going to kill me, Snake?” “I’m too tired….Maybe later.”

Kurt Russell aside, I love the post-apocalyptic atmosphere created here. It’s very light on fight scenes, or any kind of action, considering that it’s usually billed as an “action movie,” but it doesn’t matter. The point of this movie is to immerse oneself in a grim, yet badass, post-apocalyptic environment, and to join Snake as he revels in society’s breakdown and the stripping away of all pretense of just authority or a moral ruling class. It has probably my favourite Carpenter soundtrack for casual listening, and there’s a scene where Snake shoots a Snake-sized oval into a wall and then breaks through it like the Kool-Aid man. Every few scenes a weird new side character, like the Cabbie or the Brain, is introduced by telling Snake they know who he is, but they thought he was dead.

I adore this movie.

Rating: 9 out of 10 Presidential Uzis.

5. The Thing (1982)
“Nobody trusts anybody now…and we’re all very tired.”

Plot: As the personnel at an Antarctic research base prepare for winter, they get a surprise visit from a dog, which is chased into their camp by Norwegian scientists who promptly crash their helicopter and die. When the all-male team of scientists and engineers investigate the dog’s origin, they slowly realise that it is actually a malevolent shape-shifting alien, capable of impersonating anything–or anyone.

My Thoughts: I’ve mentioned this movie briefly before, because it was one of several horror movies I watched while I was quarantined in 2020 and getting diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Maybe because I’ve experienced some of it firsthand, I have a special fascination for body horror in movies, and this might be the best example of that subgenre ever made. Monsters, even alien monsters, are a dime a dozen in the horror genre, but it’s extremely rare for a movie monster to be scary by itself. Human imaginations and effects budgets don’t usually allow for creatures that look truly alien and frightening on their own. Most filmmakers have to create terror by making the monster do extra horrifying things to people, or by showing it as little as possible and relying on fear of the unknown. The Thing is one of the few movies that doesn’t have to use either of those crutches–because just looking at its monster is enough to scare even seasoned horror fans. And it stays scary for the entire film, because it’s constantly changing shape and revealing itself in newly disgusting ways. I don’t think it can ever be replicated–certainly not with the weightless, sterile computer-generated images that make up most “special effects” these days.

“I don’t know what the hell’s in there, but it’s weird and pissed off, whatever it is!”

Then there’s the paranoia, the isolation, and the threat of pure cold that surrounds our boys in this movie. Even though Kurt Russell once again winds up as the most sympathetic character, every member of the team gets a unique personality and, by the end, a unique way of breaking down into insanity. They all feel so believable and real, which makes the threat feel almost real, too. And even though shape-shifting things from outer space haven’t visited Earth (that we know of), the more mundane horrors in this movie are very real. Going on a snowy expedition with the boys always sounds like a good idea…until literally anything goes wrong.

What else is there to say? This movie was a critical and box office failure when it was released, but the freakier filmmakers have been chasing its brand of terror ever since, and they’ve all fallen short. Nowadays, it’s pretty universally considered one of the greatest horror movies ever made. I certainly consider it the best horror movie John Carpenter ever made. It’s a must-watch winter movie for me. Specifically for the “first goddamn week of winter.”

“Trust’s a tough thing to come by these days. Tell you what, why don’t you just trust in the Lord?”

Rating: 10 out of 10 Dog Tongues

6. Christine (1983)
“Let me tell you something about love, Dennis. It has a voracious appetite. It eats everything–family, friendship–it kills me how much it eats. But I’ll tell you something else. You feed it right, and it can be a beautiful thing, and that’s what we have.”

Plot: Nerdy teenager Arnie Cunningham buys a used 1958 Plymouth Fury on a whim and experiences a sudden change in his fortunes–he grows more confident, he gets a girlfriend, he’s able to stand up to bullies, and his new car has a mysterious way of maintaining itself after fender benders. Unfortunately, Christine is also a bit of a jealous car…

My Thoughts: This is Carpenter’s only Stephen King adaptation, and I think that’s kind of a shame, because he seems to really get what makes King’s work appealing. I haven’t read the book that this movie is based on, but I’ve read enough of his other writing to recognise the made-up crude sayings, the deep understanding of young male angst, the bizarre supernatural elements (which I’m sure were toned down for the movie), etc. But it’s all tied together with the usual Carpenter slow-burn style, some truly beautiful visuals, and, of course, a killer soundtrack.

“Okay…show me.”

This one might feel like a bit of a letdown if you watch it right after The Thing–its violence is much, much tamer, and of course, a regular-looking car is never going to be as inherently scary as that movie’s creature. But personally, I love this movie for how non-silly it is. You would think that a movie about a killer car would be at least as campy as Escape from New York. But this movie just treats the car like any other character, framing her desires and emotions as clearly and centrally as Arnie’s–which arguably makes her the strongest female character Carpenter ever directed, funny enough. The toxic romance between her and Arnie works well as a commentary on American consumer culture–particularly the tendency for men to conflate their masculinity with their possessions–and it works equally well as a typical motivation for an atypical slasher villain. Honestly, the only thing that puts this below some of the other horror films in this series, for me, is the ending–which I find just a tiny bit anticlimactic. But at least, unlike Halloween, this one hasn’t spawned any terrible sequels (knock on wood).

Rating: 8 out of 10 George Thorogood Needle Drops

To Be Continued in Part 2!

Barbenheimer: An American Experience

As a film fan, one of my favourite things to happen this year so far has been the Barbenheimer phenomenon.

In case you’re less online than I am, here’s what I’m talking about. Several months ago, it was announced that Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s social satire/toy commercial, and Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s 3-hour biopic of the man behind the atomic bomb, would both be released on the same day. The Internet went wild with memes comparing the two movies to each other, planning double features complete with themed costume changes, and even mashing both films together into a wholesome abomination called Barbenheimer. And when July 21 came, a lot of people made good on the hype by turning out for both movies. They’re crushing the box office right now. I did my double feature a week late, as a Thursday matinee, and the theatre was still packed.

It’s easy to see why releasing these two movies together tickled people’s fancy. In terms of budget and star power, they’re the biggest movies of the year not attached to any existing film franchise, they’re both made by acclaimed directors, and their tones and subjects couldn’t possibly be more different. But after seeing both movies, I think they might have even more in common than that. After all, they’re both movies about the products of American ingenuity, they both look at the legacy of those products with a critical eye, and they are both surprisingly existential meditations on the meaning of humanity and its place in the universe.

So I’m going to review them together. Because when I lean into an Internet meme, I lean all the way in.

Oppenheimer
Writer and Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Cillian Murphy
Music By: Ludwig Goransson
Rated R (Not all the banging is bomb-related)

Barbie
Director: Greta Gerwig
Writers: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Margot Robbie, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Will Ferrell
Music By: Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt
Rated PG-13 (Contains the words “vagina,” “penis,” and “patriarchy”)

1. The Stories
   Oppenheimer recounts the career of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, switching back and forth from his early studies in nuclear physics to his brief flirtation with the Communist Party (and certain Communist Party members), to his work as the head of the Manhattan Project in charge of creating the atomic bomb, to the personal and global fallout that resulted from the project’s success.

In Barbie, Stereotypical Barbie is living the dream in Barbieland, where women do everything and men are just…Kens. But when she starts going through odd changes (she gets flat feet, cellulite, and thoughts of death), she must journey to the Real World, with Ken in tow, to discover the truth about herself. Meanwhile, Ken discovers the patriarchy and returns to Barbieland to spread the word to the other Kens, threatening both the Barbies’ status quo and that of the Real World.

“They won’t fear it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they’ve used it. Theory will only take you so far.”

2. The Art

I think part of the reason the contrast between these movies’ aesthetics became such a meme was because each movie creates its aesthetic so well. Both these movies have very distinct, intentional presences on the screen, and neither of them is what you would expect from blockbusters made in the 2020s.

Oppenheimer is a three-hour movie that mostly consists of people talking in offices. It has a bleak, muted colour scheme perfectly matched to Cillian Murphy’s piercing blue eyes and drab brown suits, sometimes shifting entirely into black-and-white. Yet it’s paced, scored, and edited like an action movie, moving at breakneck speed between time periods and locations, driven by Ludwig Goransson’s frenzied score and sometimes broken up by moments of brilliant natural colour, like the representations of nuclear energies and the spectacular Trinity Test scene. This helps to give the movie’s very personal, intimate focus on a single man’s life the weight of global significance without actually showing any footage of the war or the bomb’s immediate aftermath. On paper, it’s not “cinematic” in the way that other Nolan movies might be, but I definitely don’t regret seeing it in IMAX.

Barbie is a Lisa Frank-style feast for the eyes, bright and peppy and, especially, PINK. The Barbieland scenes are a tribute to old Hollywood filmmaking, using matte paintings and transparently-constructed sets to create a live-action cartoon setting. The Real World scenes are mostly shot on location with natural lighting, but scenes in the Mattel offices paint them as a different kind of cartoon, with unrealistically symmetrical cubicles and a more sickly shade of pink lighting. The soundtrack is, likewise, made up of catchy bubblegum pop with sometimes subversive lyrics. Ryan Gosling’s showstopping musical number “I’m Just Ken” is the best part of the movie, and it will be an actual crime if it doesn’t win a Best Original Song award at the Oscars.

“Actually, my job is…beach. Just beach.”

3. The Tone

But of course, the real reason for the meme is the difference between the two movies’ tones–or, at least, how their tones were presented in the trailers. Oppenheimer is supposed to be an extremely serious drama, while Barbie is a light-hearted, silly comedy. In reality, both movies deal with a high level of existential dread, but they do it in different ways.

I’ll admit, I was initially a little nervous about what Nolan would do with Oppenheimer’s story. I like Christopher Nolan, but I think he has some bad habits as a filmmaker, and his last few movies seemed to be leaning into them more and more–incomprehensible dialogue, nonsensical plots treated far too seriously, boring characters, etc. And his films’ politics, such as they are, always seemed to lean a bit conservative and pro-establishment, which I thought might be a problem when portraying one of the worst atrocities ever spun as a victory to the American people. But the actual movie proved my fears unfounded. Oppenheimer humanises its subject (largely thanks to Murphy’s incredible performance), but it never attempts to excuse or downplay the horror of his crimes. Some might say that the complete absence of any Japanese people or other victims of the bomb lessens the movie’s impact, but I’m not sure I agree. I don’t think I can imagine anything that could drive home the evil and futility of the Manhattan Project more effectively than the scene in which Oppenheimer gives a triumphant speech to his fellow scientists after Hiroshima, while the reality of the bomb’s effects slowly bleed into his surroundings. It’s one of the most chilling, anxiety-inducing moments I’ve seen in a film outside the horror genre, and it’ll stick with me for a long time.

“You don’t get to commit the sin and then have everyone feel sorry for you when there are consequences.”

Ultimately, the story of the bombings from the Japanese perspective is not Christopher Nolan’s story to tell (and the Japanese have been telling it pretty well themselves for over 70 years now). He specialises in telling the stories of tortured men in suits, and Oppenheimer is maybe the most tortured, be-suited man who ever existed in real life. As such, Nolan’s style and tone fits his story as well, if not better, than any other story he’s ever directed. The contrast between Oppenheimer’s idealistic pursuit of radical scientific knowledge early in his life, and the horrific consequences of that pursuit later on, is beautifully illustrated with Nolan’s trademark nonlinear storytelling and use of visual metaphor. And while it may be just one man’s story, that story becomes a microcosm of the Atomic Age as a whole. I left this movie feeling a deep sense of dread, and I think that’s exactly what the filmmakers intended.

So Nolan’s achievement should not be underestimated. But hear me out: I think Greta Gerwig’s summer blockbuster is even more ambitious than his. Barbie‘s tone is indeed the opposite of Oppenheimer‘s. It’s hilarious. I don’t know if I’ve ever laughed out loud in a theatre as much as I did during this movie. The humour is silly and relatable in ways that could appeal to both kids and adults–at least, those who grew up with Barbie dolls. From “Depression Barbie” to Ken’s obsession with horses, every punchline hits. The Ken dance battle/”beach-off” is probably the best thing I’ll see all year. But this silliness is mainly a vehicle for delivering a sincere, heartfelt critique of the patriarchy and the expectations it places on women. I’m not sure if all the movie’s attempts to explore that theme work (more on that later), but the tone definitely works better than I expected it to. After half an hour of fake sets, wigs, and pop music, I was surprised at how moved I became at a quiet moment when Barbie meets an older woman for the first time and tells her that she’s beautiful. It helps that the humour is grounded in the very realistic ways girls play with dolls and use their imaginations, so the more heartfelt moments feel genuine as well.

“I want to do the imagining. I don’t want to be the thing that’s made.”

4. Themes

Both movies are doing well overseas as well, but the Barbenheimer phenomenon itself seems to be pretty US-centric, and…I don’t think that’s an accident. Somehow, watching a movie about the atomic bomb followed immediately by a movie about a mass-produced plastic toy feels like the distilled essence of being American. But on its own, which movie explores its political/cultural themes in the most coherent way?

Well, Oppenheimer does an excellent job of showing that, like quantum physics, the legacy of American empire is a paradox. We’re a nation ostensibly built on the idea that “all men are created equal,” and indeed, most of our accomplishments (including the Manhattan Project) have been the result of bringing together people of different classes, religions, and ethnicities to work toward a single goal. And yet, throughout our history, we’ve worked hard to narrow down the definition of “men” to include only the suit-wearing white men who have always held power in the West (and let’s not even think about bringing women into the equation!). We’re so hellbent on “winning” against other nations, or any group of people we perceive as “the other,” that we often don’t care enough to consider the long-term consequences of our actions. Men like Oppenheimer might start out with good, or at least neutral, intentions, but our culture’s constant drive for profit, for tangible results, for a win, easily warps their ambitions into an all-consuming desire for raw power and personal significance. And in Oppenheimer’s case, the results are catastrophic for literally the entire world. Throughout the film, we often see visual representations of how the scientist imagines the quantum realm he studies. In the beginning, it’s a beautiful field of light and energy connecting everything–one of Oppenheimer’s teachers compares it to music. Later on, these visions are replaced with the explosive energy of the Trinity test. Finally, at the end of the film, we see his vision of the future–a wave of fire covering the entire earth, set in motion by his careless and irreversible actions. It’s an incredibly haunting note to end on, both for the character and the audience.

“Is it possible they didn’t talk about you at all? Is it possible they talked about something more important?”

And the perfect mindset to bring into Barbie! Why yes, Margot Robbie, I do think about dying!

Like Oppenheimer, Barbie is a movie about an American icon reckoning with her place in history. But Barbie isn’t a dreamer whose imagination leads to terrible places; she’s an imagined object onto which dreamers project their ideas about women. As the prologue makes clear, Barbie dolls were created to give girls a way to play at being something other than a mother. Because Barbies can be anything (the President, an astronaut, a doctor, and, yes, also a mother), for generations they’ve inspired little girls to think they can be anything, too. But they’re also a corporate product, mostly produced by men for the purpose of making money. As such, they are often limited to presenting the kinds of women who are deemed most acceptable in a patriarchal society–and that’s an awfully small box for a girl (or woman) to fit her dreams into.

In the movie, this is represented by the contrast between Barbieland and the Real World. When she goes to the Real World, Barbie expects to be welcomed as a hero who has solved all of women’s problems (because that’s how it is in the imagination-fueled Barbieland!)–only to be confronted by the truth that, not only have women’s problems not been solved, but a lot of women hate her for her unrealistic beauty and stereotypical femininity. Meanwhile, Ken’s arc is all about finding an identity outside of Barbie. He tries to feel empowered through patriarchy, but when he finds out that it requires him to dominate Barbie instead of having a relationship with her (and doesn’t involve horses), he’s left unsatisfied. Ultimately, both Barbie and Ken realise that being a human of any gender is far too complicated to be represented by a toy–and that any product we are sold, including reductive ideas like patriarchy, will fall short if we try to use it to define ourselves.

“I’m just Ken/And that’s enough/And I’m great at doing stuff…”

Of course, that’s a bold argument to make in a movie that is, essentially, a feature-length commercial for Mattel products (and Chevy, for some reason). The movie tries to lampshade it with elements like the all-male Mattel executive board, who are willing to rubber-stamp any idea for Barbie as long as it will make money, and a fourth-wall-breaking acknowledgement that “Margot Robbie is the wrong person to cast if you want to make [a] point” about unrealistic beauty standards for women. But there’s an argument to be made that this movie’s reach fundamentally exceeds its grasp, considering the type of movie it is. Then there’s the potentially muddled messaging of using the Ken struggle to show the difficulty of defining oneself apart from the opposite gender, while also using the Kens to make fun of male privilege.

But here’s where I can’t help but compare the two halves of Barbenheimer: Many criticisms can and will be made about Oppenheimer, and I’m sure some of them will be fair. But I don’t expect any of them to be about how it’s a “bad representation of men.” Because we all know that men can be more than one thing, and that J. Robert Oppenheimer did not represent all men. We haven’t gotten there with movies about women yet. There’s still an expectation that any woman in the public eye, even if she’s a doll, must on some level stand for all women. Whether fictional, real, or plastic, women are easy to hate and hard to defend because we all expect them to fit into some type of box labeled “feminine”–and the box is constantly changing size. The Barbie movie probably won’t resonate with all women, and it certainly won’t resonate with all men (especially not Zack Snyder fanboys), but it doesn’t have to. Just like women don’t have to be everything–we can just be ourselves. Some of the movie’s messaging got a little muddy for me, but I found that part of it very wholesome.

“I’m just so tired of watching myself and every other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.”

5. Conclusion

Barbie and Oppenheimer are two ambitious, thoughtful films made by people who really care about their craft and are willing to take risks to bring their vision to the screen. In a time when artists are being disrespected and exploited left and right, and when studios are trying to replace them with mindless computer programs, it’s encouraging to see two movies like this drawing such a huge and enthusiastic audience. I recommend seeing them as a double feature if you’re able, or separately if you’re not, but I think both warrant multiple viewings to really unpack the complex themes they’re exploring.

And as the summers get hotter, it’s nice to remember that, while we Americans are always on the brink of destroying ourselves and/or the world, at least we know how to party on the way out.

Wibbly-Wobbling Through Doctor Who: Part One

The last couple of decades have been, in some ways, the golden age of TV. The age of streaming brought with it higher production values, better acting, better writing, and more creative storytelling than the small screen had ever seen. While plenty of trash still exists, recently standards for TV have risen so high that it almost seems pedantic to distinguish between the big and small screen at all, except when it comes to the length of the storytelling format. This is, overall, a good thing, of course. But there’s a downside to it as well.

There was a time when it was normal for shows to have a bad first season, and eventually find their footing around the middle of the second. Even shows that were highly regarded for their whole run had dud episodes, and they still kept going. Shows used to be able to weather a little mediocrity now and then for the sake of great long-form storytelling. But with the proliferation of streaming services and the mysterious, never-disclosed user data that determines their success, shows need to be brilliant from the opening credits onward, or they’ll be cancelled after one season (and sometimes even brilliance can’t save them). This has made me nostalgic for a simpler time…a time that gave birth to Doctor Who.

Anyway, right now all of Hollywood is striking, so what better time to marathon all 60 years, 14-ish Doctors, and 100+ seasons of a quirky, low-budget British sci-fi show?

Full disclosure: I am what’s known as a NuWho fan–someone who got into the show with the 2005 reboot (and I was late even to that party). I lost interest somewhere around the middle of the 12th Doctor’s run, due to my frustration with showrunner Steven Moffat, tried and failed to get into it again with the 13th Doctor, and then got distracted by other things. But now, since I have nothing better to do, I’ve decided to go all the way back to the beginning and analyse how this show became so long-lived and so beloved, where the flawed charm that drew me to the series in the first place came from, and whether Moffat really is the worst thing ever to happen to the Doctor.

Since there’s so much Doctor Who to wade through, I won’t be analysing every episode, or even every season. I’ll instead be giving my impressions of each Doctor and their era on the show–and I’ll be doing so in multiple parts.

“If you could touch the alien sand and hear the cries of strange birds, and watch them wheel in another sky, would that satisfy you?”

Doctor who?
Let’s start with a criminally brief summary of what I’m talking about. Doctor Who is a British sci-fi series produced by the BBC, and, as previously mentioned, the longest-running TV show of its kind in existence. Episodes have aired regularly from 1963 to the present (barring a 14-year hiatus when the show was “indefinitely postponed” though never officially cancelled), and the franchise has expanded to include spinoff shows, books, comics, radio dramas, video games, and more. It’s always been fairly popular in the UK, with a cult following elsewhere among the types of nerds who learned Klingon before Google existed. But it really hit the mainstream with a “reboot” (actually just a continuation with a more modern look) in 2005.

What has allowed Doctor Who to continue for so long is the nature of its protagonist. The Doctor is an immortal alien who travels through space and time, usually with a couple of human companions, using a powerful but unpredictable ship called the TARDIS–which usually disguises itself as a 1960s police telephone box. The Doctor’s immortality comes from their ability to “regenerate” an entirely new body, complete with a slightly different personality, anytime the old one dies. This allows the show to recast the Doctor whenever an actor leaves the show without disrupting continuity, and it also provides an easy way for new showrunners to reimagine the look and feel of the show without alienating the audience. Even though there’s a backlog of nearly a thousand episodes at this point, even without getting into the Expanded Universe, it’s always relatively easy to jump into the show with a new Doctor, even if you don’t know much about the franchise beforehand. So far, 14 different actors have played the Doctor (with another one on the way at the time of this post), and dozens upon dozens of legendary and not-so-legendary British actors have come and gone in the supporting cast. The various writers and other artists who have worked on it vary so widely in style and quality that you never know quite what you’re going to get when you put on a random episode–except that most of it will be shot in a Welsh quarry.

Except that one exciting time when it was a matte painting.

The First Doctor
But it all began on November 23, 1963, when an episode called “The Unearthly Child” aired on British television.

The episode begins with two London schoolteachers, Ian and Barbara, discussing a student they’re concerned about. Susan appears to be 15, but she’s more knowledgeable about science and history than any of her teachers, although she sometimes seems confused about current events, and it’s unclear whether she has a home. Because apparently anti-stalking laws don’t exist in this time period, the two teachers decide to follow Susan after school one day. She leads them to a police public call box (an everyday object in 1963) in a junkyard, where they meet her grandfather, an irritable old man who identifies himself only as The Doctor. He reluctantly explains that he and Susan are from another world and another time, but they’ve been exiled for unknown reasons and are now wandering through the cosmos in the police box, which is much bigger on the inside and is really a ship in disguise. When Ian and Barbara express disbelief about all this, the Doctor kidnaps them to a different time period. And so the adventure begins.

The First Doctor’s era perfectly illustrates my point about TV: this show would never have made it to a second season if it aired today. Its production quality is very low, even by 60s TV standards–one of my favourite “special effects” is an ice cave represented by what looks to be cling wrap draped loosely over the walls of the set. The show didn’t have the budget to reshoot many scenes, so a lot of flubbed lines and stray equipment are left in the finished product. Many episodes are missing entirely (or survive only in audio form) because the BBC was so cheap at the time that they would record over old episodes of their own shows! (The phenomenon of missing Doctor Who episodes has entire sections of the internet to itself.) Unlike the rebooted series, “classic Who” tells its stories in the form of serials that usually stretch anywhere from four to 10 half-hour episodes each, and the First Doctor was not usually lucky enough to get stories that actually merited such a runtime. After the intriguing first episode, “The Unearthly Child” serial quickly devolves into a story of political intrigue between cavemen, with none of the absurd humour that might make a plot like that bearable. With some exceptions, that’s pretty typical of First Doctor stories. According to some sources, Doctor Who was originally pitched to the BBC as an educational family show (hence why the first two companions were teachers). It seems to have abandoned that concept pretty quickly (I can’t imagine what kids could have possibly been meant to learn from the “we shrunk ourselves” serial), but the writing maintains the self-serious, exposition-heavy, slightly condescending tone I associate with bad children’s TV for far too long.

Complete with rampant cultural appropriation!

But from its very earliest days, Doctor Who had two things going for it. The first is the premise. The Doctor and the TARDIS can take you anywhere, any time. Sure, most of the places they went in the early days looked like cardboard walls with some pipes stuck on them, but it’s hard not to get hooked by the sheer possibility of a show like that–especially if you’re a part of the young target audience. And I’ll give the First Doctor era this much–they did try to go to some spectacular places. Unlike in some later seasons, very few episodes take place on then-modern Earth, and while a lot of the alien creatures are transparently actors in suits, their costumes at least tend to exhibit more effort than the “funny ridges on forehead” look that Star Trek would come to rely on a few years later. Then there’s the ongoing mystery of the Doctor himself–where did he come from? Why was he exiled? How old is he, really? The show waits a long time to answer any of these questions, which gives the audience a chance to use their imaginations. Add to this, that the Doctor’s companions are mostly average, working-class British people who get whisked off on the adventure without really seeking it out, and the show becomes the most appealing kind of fantasy: the kind that could happen to YOU!

But speaking of aliens, I think the second thing the show had going for it from the beginning was the Daleks. They’re introduced in Doctor Who‘s second-ever serial, and from the minute one of their plungers appears onscreen, they’re the very definition of a classic B-grade monster. They look ridiculous: like big saltshakers armed with toilet plungers and whisks. Their high-pitched monotone voices turn their every line into comedy gold. But–and this was rare at the time and still is today–they’re also unmistakeably alien. It’s made clear in that first serial that those pepper pots are just their outer shielding, and there’s something horrifically mutated inside, which, crucially, we never get to see. There’s no reasoning or bargaining with them, because they’re a faceless inhuman entity. And while their specific plans change with every First Doctor appearance (and most of them are, to put it kindly, very stupid), the one thing that stays consistent about the Daleks is that they hate everything that isn’t a Dalek, and are willing to go to any lengths, up to and including the destruction of the universe, to wipe out other life forms. Before the Borg, or Skynet, or the xenomorphs, the Daleks were the original unstoppable genocide machines of sci-fi. And none of those later monsters ever do anything as entertaining as when a Dalek falls over and waves its plungers helplessly in the air. These guys rightly set the standard for Doctor Who villains–and to some extent, for sci-fi villains in general–for decades to come.

They’re certainly one way for a bunch of British men to process their childhood trauma about the Nazis.

THIS! IS! NOT! A! METAPHOR!

This may or may not be blasphemous to old-school Doctor Who fans, but I honestly think the weakest link in the show during the First Doctor’s era was the Doctor himself. I’m sure William Hartnell was a fine actor, but he was in poor health for most of his time as the Doctor, and, in my opinion, he didn’t have the kind of wholesale commitment to the bit that actors need to make a cheesy sci-fi show work. Of course, it doesn’t help that the writers took a long time to figure out what kind of character the Doctor was–in some early episodes, he comes across as a genuinely unpleasant, amoral scientist who is willing to put his companions in harm’s way just to study an interesting planet and is reluctant to help anyone outside his group, which would be an unthinkable trait for any other version of the character. But even after the writing gets a bit more consistent, Hartnell never seems to be taking the role seriously. And the first rule of acting in a cheesy, absurd role is that one must take it seriously.

Still, he has his good moments–usually in the episodes that were actually intended to be funny, or in the rare moments of human feeling the writers gave to the Doctor. And, especially towards the end of his run, the sheer imagination of the rest of the show often makes up for his failings.

“Your ideas are too narrow, too crippled. I am a citizen of the universe, and a gentleman to boot!”

The First Doctor’s Era of Doctor Who (Seasons 1-4 1/2):
Best Serial – “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”
I really love the apocalyptic atmosphere of this one, made more effective by the knowledge that the show was able to create such a convincing image of destroyed London by shooting near real bomb sites left over from World War II. Also, this serial marks the first time a companion leaves the TARDIS life for good, and it’s one of the First Doctor’s few genuinely emotional moments.
Worst Serial – “The Gunslingers”
If I never have to hear that mind-numbing Western ballad they kept playing in this serial again, it will be too soon.
Best TARDIS crew – Ian, Barbara, and Susan
I like that all three of the original companions are pretty smart, capable people in their own right who just happen to be thrown into a bunch of absurd situations (although Susan does get saddled with the “damsel in distress” role a few too many times for a Time Lord). They build up a very believable friendship over the course of the show, which helps to fill the emotional void often left by The Doctor.
Best villain – The Daleks, duh. See above.

Tune in next time for the Second Doctor, and the introduction of the second-most menacing villain in Doctor Who history–The Lore!

Arachnid Identity in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

In Hollywood, there are bad movies and there are good movies. And there are some movies that are so good they force an entire genre, or even medium, to evolve. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was one such movie. It gave mainstream American animated films a new style and look to aspire to, after years of Disney and Pixar setting the standard. It also started a trend of action movies centering their plots around some kind of multiverse. While Spider-Verse‘s impact on animation was unequivocally positive, in my opinion, the multiverse trend has been more of a mixed bag. The concept, on its own, has a lot of potential as a story vehicle for exploring universal themes, and a few other movies have recognised that (Everything Everywhere All At Once being the obvious example), but when a big studio blockbuster introduces a multiverse, it usually becomes a cynical, utilitarian way for the studio to show off all the intellectual property they own. Results tend to be creatively lacking and kinda gross.

Thank goodness the Spider-Verse sequel is finally here to show us how it’s meant to be done.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson
Writers: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callaham
Starring: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Jason Schwartzman, Karan Soni, Daniel Kaluuya, etc.
Music By: Daniel Pemberton
Rated PG (Contains superhero action violence, some mild cussing, and a little punk rock attitude)

Miles Morales has been his universe’s one and only Spider-Man for over a year, and things are going great–except that his Spanish grades are slipping, his parents are growing suspicious of his double life, he misses the Spider-people from other universes (especially Gwen Stacy), and there’s an annoying new villain in town called The Spot, who keeps trying to become his archnemesis. When Gwen shows up in a dimensional portal and tells him she’s joined an elite society of Spider-People who protect the multiverse, Miles thinks at least half his problems are solved. But it turns out that nothing is quite what he expected it to be–not the Spider Society or its leader, Miguel O’Hara; not The Spot; and not even Miles himself. The deeper he goes into the multiverse, the more he’s forced to question what it truly means to be Spider-Man.

At two hours and 20 minutes, with a new gag, Easter egg, character detail, or bit of foreshadowing in almost every frame, Across the Spider-Verse is a whole lot of movie–especially for one that ends in a “To Be Continued” title card. And I have a lot of thoughts about it, which I’ll try to articulate in as organised a fashion as possible. But my main opinion is that it’s just as unexpectedly brilliant and creative as its predecessor, which I didn’t think was possible, considering how brilliant and creative I already expected it to be. If the third movie sticks the landing, which seems likely, I think this trilogy will be the new gold standard for Spider-Man storytelling–maybe even for superhero storytelling in general.

“It’s more of a meta-commentary about what we call art…but it’s also art…”

Let’s start with the “spectacle.” I’ve been told (by various academics and film critics) that there’s a difference between plot-driven, visual effects-driven blockbusters and more serious, artistic “character-driven” movies. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with that, because the movies that usually get categorised as “plot-driven” or as simple eye candy are often just as character-driven, if not more so, than the average realistic drama. Superhero movies, especially, live and die by their characters–nobody would care about the MCU if they didn’t start by loving Iron Man, or Black Panther, or (like me) Rocket Raccoon, and there’s a strong argument to be made that more recent Marvel films have been less successful precisely because they’ve become less character-driven.

Across the Spider-Verse has plenty of spectacle. Just like in the first movie, every Spider-Person and every universe has its own unique animation style, but in the spirit of making everything bigger for the sequel, we actually get to spend screentime in five different universes and see hundreds more Spider-Folk, all interacting with each other in the same action scenes. I don’t know enough about animation technique to guess how it was done, but I noticed art inspired by Leonardo da Vinci sketches, punk zines, vintage newspaper comics, anime, and, of course, several different Marvel Comics artists. Somehow, all these styles work together to create fluid and spectacular action scenes, featuring 3D, 2D, and stop-motion characters all swinging through a modern art museum, a hyper-populated futuristic Indian city, a gravity-defying space elevator, and more. There are backgrounds that change colour to reflect the characters’ emotions (in Gwen’s universe), narration boxes and visual sound effects that show up to match the action (in Miles’s universe), and visible drawing lines that extend past the objects they outline (Miguel’s universe). If any movie could be accused of being “eye candy,” it should be this one.

“If this isn’t nice, what is?”

But even the visual choices in this movie are all about character. Spider-Man India’s universe is brightly colored and busy to reflect his bubbly, optimistic personality (and also accommodate a culturally Indian aesthetic). Spider-Punk changes his look from frame to frame because he’s a rebel who doesn’t “believe in consistency.” Only Miles gets thought boxes, because he’s the point-of-view character, but both he and Gwen get background animations to illustrate what they’re thinking about in their most dramatic scenes. Some modern animated movies are so hyper-realistic, or use such a consistent 3D cartoon aesthetic, that it’s easy to forget they were made by people, and not just a computer. Across the Spider-Verse never lets the viewer forget the human beings behind it–there are always little intentional “flaws” or comic-style artistic flourishes that make sure their thoughtfulness, creativity, and attention to character detail are always on full display. It makes the animation feel particularly refreshing, especially at a time when big tech executives are desperately trying to make audiences believe that AI programs can replace artists.

Because this is a character-driven movie, the spectacle always serves the story, and not the other way around. When the action hits, it hits hard, but there are also long stretches of time devoted to quiet conversations, and some of the most dramatic moments happen with little to no action or dialogue at all. Daniel Pemberton’s score, as well as the R&B songs contributed by Metro Boomin, are fine-tuned to every emotional beat, ready to amplify what the characters are feeling to such a degree that it feels like being directly injected with empathy as a viewer.

“Too punk rock to give your old man a hug?”

So what kind of character-driven story is this incredible technical achievement telling? Well, like any multiverse movie that actually tries to live up to its premise, Across the Spider-Verse is about identity and purpose. Miles has gotten pretty good at being Spider-Man, but he’s different from the other Spideys in some important ways. And just like his mother worries that an Afro-Latino kid from Brooklyn might struggle to fit in at Princeton University, he struggles to prove he deserves a place in Spider Society–both to himself and to the rigidly rule-bound Miguel. Meanwhile, Gwen has a parallel arc about “coming out” as Spider-Woman to her cop dad, and there’s a running theme of struggling parenthood among all the older characters. The first movie showed us that “anyone can wear the mask” and be a hero–but the sequel asks whether being a hero means the same thing for everyone, or whether different people can do it in different ways. Miles thinks he can protect his family and protect the multiverse at the same time. Miguel, on the other hand, believes that being Spider-Man always means sacrificing personal relationships for the greater good–and he’s willing to violently enforce that interpretation.

Eagle-eyed fans of geeky stuff will have noticed the meta-commentary happening here. One of the biggest problems with superhero comics–and, to some extent, superhero media in general–is that they tend to be slaves to the status quo. Established characters are never allowed to change, grow, or improve their lives to any significant degree, because that would alter the way audiences see them and the ways they can be marketed by the company that owns them–or, to use Across the Spider-Verse‘s language, “disrupt the canon.” For example, Peter Parker has been married to Mary Jane before in the comics (as Peter B. Parker is in this movie), but Marvel forced him out of that marriage in 2007 and has steadfastly refused to restore it ever since, even though there’s a very vocal demand for it among fans, with some editors claiming that it made Spider-Man less “relatable.” There’s a similar issue in the literary world, as well. Early on in my literature education, I was taught that Joseph Campbell’s formula for the “Hero’s Journey” (a 12-stage story structure that is supposedly consistent across all ancient hero myths) could be applied to every book, movie, and comic ever created–or, at least, all the ones that could be reasonably said to have a “hero.” But I’ve since learned that more literary critics are starting to reject that idea, as Campbell’s interpretation of ancient mythology was heavily biased towards a male, Christian, Western idea of heroism that has never been shared by all writers, let alone all real-life heroes.

“I hate the AM, I hate the PM, I hate labels.”

Into the Spider-Verse, as a classic superhero origin story, follows the Hero’s Journey formula almost perfectly, to the point where I’ve used it to teach the concept to high school freshmen. But Across the Spider-Verse is committed to shaking things up. Despite the universe-hopping that forms so much of the plot, this movie isn’t really about a journey away from home–in fact, the most complete character arc in the story, Gwen’s, doesn’t reach its climax until she returns home. The struggle the heroes face in this movie is not about facing an ordeal and being “reborn” as different people (the cornerstone of the Hero’s Journey), but more about accepting who they already are. Miles’ entire conflict is about proving that he doesn’t need to change who he is to fit someone else’s narrative. He’s a hero because his background (including a couple of parents who show him great examples of unconditional love) made him want to help people, and not because he fits into some generic hero mold. And that’s why the very specific, unique art styles used for each character serve a thematic purpose as well. If “anyone can wear the mask,” then that means everyone can wear the mask differently.

“Everyone keeps telling me how my story is supposed to go! Nah. Imma do my own thing.”

Of course, we’ll have to wait until the story resolves next year to find out exactly how the filmmakers feel about the rules of being a hero. But I think it’s safe to say they value joy and optimism over forced tragedy in their storytelling. Because Across the Spider-Verse, despite a few sad moments, is a joyful movie. It seems to have been made with love by talented people who wanted to make it, and as we’ve seen multiple times this year already, that’s really the only secret to making a good blockbuster movie.

Also, I just need to say: Spider-Punk is life. Hobie Brown forever.

Of Raccoons and Men: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

This week I attended what will probably be the last midnight showing of a Marvel movie that I ever pay to see. I came away with two main thoughts: 1) my body does not react as well to midnight showings as it did in 2014, and 2) James Gunn might be the best superhero movie director working today.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Writer and Director: James Gunn
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Chukwudi Iwuji, Vin Diesel, etc.
Music By: John Murphy and the greatest hits of the ’90s and ’00s
Rated PG-13 (Contains a truly upsetting level of animal abuse–seriously, think twice before bringing a small child or hardcore animal lover–and the first f-bomb in the MCU)

Plot:
Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, the Guardians of the Galaxy (now consisting of Peter Quill/Starlord, Rocket, Groot, Drax, Mantis, Nebula, and Kraglin) are patching up their new headquarters, the floating space settlement of Knowhere. Peter is still mourning the loss of Gamora, but otherwise things are pretty calm around the little family–until an out-of-the-blue attack leaves Rocket gravely injured. To save their friend, the rest of the Guardians must find and confront his creator, the evil scientist known as the High Evolutionary.

The Guardians of the Galaxy movies have always been among my favourite products of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I’m not alone in that. In hindsight, the first movie’s release in 2014 was a watershed moment for superhero movies–and, to some extent, for blockbuster cinema in general. Studio after studio has tried to replicate James Gunn’s weird, colorful, 70s-infused vision of space adventures and his balance between irreverent comedy and serious drama. But it’s never quite worked for anyone else. Especially in recent years, Marvel movies have been derided for leaning too hard on jokes and pop culture references, and the practice of using a classic pop song to punch up an otherwise mediocre action scene has become a cliche. Some people say Gunn’s style of filmmaking has always been terrible, and blame him for popularising it. But while I certainly don’t judge anyone for not liking his style, I do think there’s a specific reason why James Gunn has been able to succeed where so many of his imitators have failed. And since I think the final installment of the Guardians trilogy is Gunn at his absolute best, I’m going to use it to try and explain that reason.

Creeps and weirdos, the lot of them.

James Gunn has several talents as a filmmaker. An impeccable ear for music is one. Vol. 3, like its predecessors, is full of great needle drops, with Radiohead, Beastie Boys, and Florence + the Machine providing the highlights. His ability to find great talents and get their best work out of them is another. It truly feels like everyone involved cared about this movie, from the main actors, who all turn in their best performances of the series, to the visual effects artists, who create some of the movie’s most emotional moments through their work on the CGI creatures. Lesser creators may have used the generic space station and alien sets that Disney already has in abundance for a movie like this, but the Guardians team take us instead to a delightfully disgusting organic corporate office in space, an alternate version of Earth populated by mutant animals, and, of course, the head of a dead god which makes up the Guardians’ HQ. Gunn’s galaxy consistently feels big and diverse in a way that even Star Wars rarely manages (with the exception of Andor, of course). And it really shouldn’t be surprising to see an action movie where all the action is well-lit and filmed in easy-to-follow long takes, but in the current Marvel landscape, it’s worth pointing out that this movie manages that.

But what really sets this movie–and this trilogy–apart from the other superhero stuff crowding the entertainment landscape is its focus on character. There is so much love for the Guardians and all their supporting cast poured into every frame of this film. Everyone gets a chance to shine, not just by themselves but in their relationships with each other. We get to see the bond Nebula has formed with the rest of the team after her redemption arc. Drax and Mantis’s relationship has thankfully evolved past hurling insults at each other, and Mantis in general really comes into her own this movie as the glue holding the team together. Quill has finally matured past the need to prove himself better than others at every turn, and the alternate Gamora is just as badass as the original, if a little crankier.

But the main star of the film is Rocket. His plight kicks off the plot, his ultra-tragic backstory is the emotional heart of the story, and he’s the character who grows the most on-screen. And, given the themes of the film, he’s the only character who could have anchored it. The entire trilogy has been about a group of broken and flawed people finding redemption through their love for each other. So it’s incredibly fitting that the final film in their story isn’t about an epic quest to save the world, or even the galaxy, but just about them trying to save each other. Vol. 3 makes explicit what has always been the implicit message of the trilogy: that every person (and raccoon) has value, and that no one is beyond redemption except those who treat others as less important than themselves. It’s incredibly significant, I think, that the stealth protagonist of the trilogy is a humble rodent who was intended to be a throwaway experiment in someone else’s pursuit of glory. It shows that there’s really no such thing as a side character–everyone has their own worth, and every life has a purpose outside of its usefulness to the powerful.

“The story has been yours all along. You just didn’t know it.”

That’s the real Gunn magic, I think–the reason why his superhero stories are so much better than most. Too many directors who try to adapt comic books for the general public either try to downplay their characters’ inherent ridiculousness, or treat them like a big joke. Gunn creates characters who are ridiculous, sure, but in the ways that real people are ridiculous–as a cover for their insecurities, or as a way of coping with trauma, or just out of a plain lack of common sense. But because he sees them as real people, he can also take their struggles, triumphs, and losses seriously. The fact that this movie’s main protagonist is a talking raccoon doesn’t take away from its dramatic weight at all–in fact, it adds to it. And even the background characters get this treatment. There are minor aliens and animal hybrids that get whole story arcs in this movie, and they all feel earned even with limited screentime. In one of this movie’s final scenes, there’s a cheesy little plaque in the background that says “Everything Grows from Love.” The Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy clearly grew from love for its characters, its audience, and everyone who worked on it. And that’s why it’s the magnum opus of the MCU.

A few words of warning: although it has plenty of comedy, just like its predecessors (and the comedy actually works consistently, which is never a guarantee with Gunn), this is a very dark and violent film by Marvel standards. The High Evolutionary is, by far, the most vile villain in the MCU, and I can think of several scenes that are likely to traumatise young children. It’s a fair tradeoff, in my opinion, for creating some of the most satisfying action in a recent superhero film, but, you know, just be aware.

“THERE IS NO GOD! That’s why I stepped in!”

It’s also worth mentioning that these are not perfect movies. I can find nits to pick with all three Volumes, even the last one–plot points that don’t make sense, character motivations that are underdeveloped, jokes that don’t land, and the odd effects shot that doesn’t quite work. But when you’re making a superhero movie in 2023, a time when irony and cynicism have largely defined genre filmmaking for the last decade, sincerity covers a multitude of sins. And this is one of the most sincere, heartfelt stories I’ve had the pleasure of watching on the big screen since the pandemic. None of the flaws really feel worth pointing out.

I’m sure there will be other Guardians of the Galaxy films, as part of the never-ending stream of Marvel content that Disney will continue to churn out until the end of time. But now that my favourite hero team has been given a graceful conclusion, I think I’m done with the franchise for a while. At the very least, I won’t be going to any more midnight showings. I am very grateful that James Gunn has moved on to work with my favourite comics company, because Superman couldn’t possibly be in better hands. But the Guardians of the Galaxy deserve their happy ending.

“Into the forever and beautiful sky.”

And so does everyone. Ever since the pandemic, I’ve been increasingly reminded of how little human life matters to the people who run society–as if the only people who “count” are those who live in mansions and have the word “executive” somewhere in their title. It may not be much, but it’s refreshing to see a mainstream piece of art that so wholeheartedly affirms the importance and worth of every living thing, from baby raccoons to 40-year-old screw-ups to weird cybernetic mutants with blue skin. In a world run by High Evolutionaries and their delusions of superiority, it’s necessary to tell stories that affirm the worth of all things as derived from their existence, rather than from anything they own or produce.

All that to say: it’s been a good 9 years with this bunch of misfits. I’m gonna miss them.

Women, Power, and the Oscars: A Review of Tár and Women Talking

I think it’s time I admitted to myself that I enjoy the Academy Awards. Everyone is entitled to enjoying at least one piece of trash TV, I figure, and for me it’s the Oscars. I like listening to rich, drunk celebrities try to sound relatable or profound during their acceptance speeches; I’m fascinated by the behind-the-scenes politics and intrigue; and, despite how trivial it all is, I do care about which movies and artists get awarded, and which ones are snubbed. So every year, I try to at least watch all the Best Picture nominees, so that I can get properly excited or mad about the final results.

I’m especially interested in the awards this year, since 2022 marked the official Return of Cinema after COVID. There were some noticeable trends in this year’s movies, whether they catered to broad audiences or arthouse film buffs: for one thing, the movies got bigger. By and large, the most talked-about movies of the year were extremely long and stuffed with special effects, over-the-top action, and bombastic performances by recognizable movie stars. And also, just like their audiences, movies seemed more keenly aware than ever of the various power imbalances in our society. Even when the attempts at commentary came across as clumsy (like in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), or when they happily licked the boot (like in Top Gun: Maverick), the increasingly obscene gap between the haves and the have-nots was impossible to escape at the movies last year. And it’s equally impossible to escape at the Oscars. Even if the year’s most incisive social commentary was snubbed for occurring in horror films, there are still plenty of nominees that examine the impact of power and privilege on all classes of society. Two, in particular, which I happened to watch back-to-back, seem to be in a conversation about the relationship of women to power. And that’s what I’d like to talk about today.

Nominee Number One: Tár
Writer and Director: Todd Field
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noemie Merlant
Music By: Various classical composers (no non-diegetic soundtrack)
Rated R (Contains naughty words and tales of naughty deeds)

Lydia Tár is the most successful female orchestra conductor in history, and an accomplished composer in her own right. But as she prepares for a performance with the Berlin Philharmonic, she is haunted by the misdeeds of her past, which threaten both her relationship with her long-time partner, Sharon, and the legacy she has built up around herself.

Nominee Number Two: Women Talking
Director and Writer: Sarah Polley
Starring: Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, etc.
Music By: Hildur Gudnadottir
Rated PG-13 (Contains descriptions of sexual abuse and trauma)

In an isolated community devoted to a fundamentalist Christian sect, the women have recently learned that some of the men have been repeatedly drugging and raping them while they sleep. A few perpetrators have gone to jail, and the rest of the men have gone to town to bail them out. Left on their own for the first time, the women have less than 48 hours to decide between three courses of action: Do Nothing, Stay and Fight, or Leave.

On the surface, these two films have very little in common with each other (other than their focus on female characters). Tár is a big, dramatic, wildly entertaining film that takes elements from multiple genres–horror, comedy, romance, etc.–to create a spectacle that is impossible to look away from. Women Talking, on the other hand, goes out of its way to avoid spectacle. Using harsh, cold color grading and brutally matter-of-fact narration, it consists almost entirely of a conversation between about a dozen characters in a barn. Despite its PG-13 rating, it’s the most difficult watch out of all the Oscar nominees I’ve seen so far–which might be why, compared to the other nominees, few people seem to be talking about it.

So what links these two films, in my mind?

Well, let’s start with the themes explored in Tár. There’s a lot going on in this movie–commentary on the relationship between art and artist, a side-eyed critique of “cancel culture” discourse, explorations of the long-lasting effects of cultural appropriation, and probably more that I don’t understand enough about music or film to catch. But to me, the most interesting thing about this film is that it’s a man’s story. Literally–Todd Field originally conceived of the main character as a man before writing the role for Cate Blanchett instead. And from a modern audience’s perspective, everything about a plot where an eccentric “genius” destroys their legacy with their own hubris and sexual misconduct brings to mind a male figure. We’ve seen that movie hundreds of times, both in real life and on the big screen, and it has almost always starred a man.  But this isn’t just another case of a female character written by a man who just feels like a male character with the pronouns swapped (I’ve seen that movie plenty of times, too). In this case, I think Field was very intentional about changing the gender of his protagonist.

“I start the clock.”

Lydia herself seems to want to be perceived as masculine. She prefers to be called “maestro” rather than “maestra;” in one scene, she introduces herself as her daughter’s “father;” and in the New Yorker interview that serves as her self-introduction to the audience, she casually dismisses the idea that she could have faced any discrimination in her male-dominated field due to being a woman. We’re given no indication that Lydia actually feels like a man, in the gender dysphoria sense. But to quote Cate Blanchett’s other most iconic role: Lydia Tár, above all else, desires power. Power over other women, power over other musicians, and, most importantly, the power to control the narrative about who she is and what she’s accomplished. These are all powers that have been exclusively held by men for most of history–both in the real world and in film. So when Tár wants to exert power (whether it’s over the orchestra, or over a bully at her daughter’s school), she uses masculine titles.

As I’ve said, “giving the powerful their comeuppance” was one of the most widespread movie themes of 2022. No matter the genre or audience, it seemed that almost every filmmaker wanted a chance to show at least one rich idiot getting humiliated last year. The Oscar nominees (despite being selected by some of our country’s richest, most powerful idiots) were no exception. But most of the year’s contributions to the “Eat the Rich” genre were content to show a role reversal between the haves and the have-nots, and to stop there. For example, another Oscar nominee, Triangle of Sadness, portrays a group of wealthy yacht passengers being shipwrecked on an island. To no one’s surprise, they don’t know how to survive on the island, so a Filipina cleaning lady from the ship becomes their de facto ruler, and the final third of the movie is all about said cleaning lady exploiting the helpless passengers in the same ways we watched them exploit poor service workers for the first two thirds of the film. It’s somewhat cathartic, in its way…but it leaves something to be desired, in my opinion. At the end of a movie like Triangle of Sadness, the world is still oppressive, violent, and unjust. All that’s changed is the genetic makeup of the person doing the oppressing. And this sort of limited imagination seems particularly common in movies designed to “empower” women. I can’t count the number of movies and shows I’ve seen where a female character’s arc consists of being accepted into the ranks of a male-dominated sphere, without either the character or the story ever questioning whether that sphere needs to change. Too often, the kinds of characters propped up by Hollywood as “female role models” are the same old violent, controlling warriors for the status quo that most male role models have always been. With more makeup.

“There’s no glory for a robot…Do your own thing!”

Tár (the character, not the movie) suffers from the same lack of imagination as Hollywood. When we inevitably learn that the entire mythology she’s created around herself is based on lies, it becomes clear that she has deliberately modeled herself after wealthy, white, male composers and conductors because those were the only people held up to her as “great.” Rather than imagine a world where she could succeed on her own merits, and be considered great in her own identity, she instead tries to, in her words, “obliterate [herself].” The world has only taught her to admire one kind of person, so she makes herself that kind of person–from the title to the suit to the long train of used, abused, and discarded women left behind in her wake. Making the main character female in a movie like this was a brilliant choice, because it strips away all the baggage the audience may carry from the #MeToo movement, or the many recent “cancellations” of prominent male figures for sexual abuse, and just lets us look at the raw dynamics in play when one rich, powerful person tries to control their world and the people “beneath” them. And it shows very clearly that it isn’t any better when a woman does it.

Interestingly enough, we never see any of Tár’s victims onscreen (although their maybe-literal ghosts haunt her throughout the film). Women Talking, in contrast, shows us the same power dynamic, but only from the perspective of the victims. Even though the whole movie is about sexual assault, we never see the face of a single rapist. The title is truth in advertising: the women do nearly all the talking, while the only sympathetic male character listens and takes notes. The main subject of their conversation is whether it’s possible–or even right–to seek justice for what has happened to them. Over the course of a movie-length conversation, secrets are revealed, motives unraveled, and relationships frayed and strengthened. One woman, Janz, outright refuses to take any action against her abusers, out of fear that it would be the same as defying God. Another, Mariche, is conflicted with feelings of guilt for “allowing” her husband’s violence. Salome is so filled with rage over her young daughter’s abuse that she outright threatens to kill the men responsible. As they talk, the whole group comes to realise that the enemy they face is not so much the individual men who attacked them, but the entire system in which they have existed.

“Hope for the unknown is good. It is better than hatred of the familiar.”

The women eventually reach a consensus that the root of their trouble is not in the attacks themselves, but the fact that they’ve never been able to speak about them before. They live in a world where everything belongs to men, including the language they speak. They’ve never been able to tell their own stories, true or otherwise; none of them even know how to read. And it’s this power, this control (the kind that Lydia Tár wants more than anything) that allowed the men’s violence to continue for so long. But from the very beginning, when we see the onscreen text “What follows is an act of feminine imagination,” the movie is giving the power back to the women. Through the language of film, which only allows the audience to identify with what they can see and hear, these characters are able to tell their own story in their own way. The question is what they will do with that power.

The three options laid out at the beginning of the movie represent not only three courses of action for the characters in the story, but also three ways in which other stories have dealt with the problem of violence against women. Until fairly recently, even in fiction, women were expected to silently put up with abuse from men, at least when those men were their own husbands or relatives. Most movies from before the turn of the millennium wouldn’t even have framed violence against women as a major problem, and even when they did, it was still generally a problem to be solved by men. More recently, it’s become expected for women in film to be “empowered” by becoming like their oppressors, in the sense that they occupy traditionally male roles and preserve them with the kind of physical and emotional violence typically expected of men. Another kind of movie (a very popular kind) would have ended with the women taking violent revenge, and maybe ending up as the colony’s new rulers.

“I will become a murderer if I stay.”

But the women in this movie have a third option available to them: Leave. Leaving their colony means losing everything they’ve ever known, but it also means leaving behind the cycle of violence and the system that perpetuated it. As spelled out by one of the main characters, Ona, leaving means a chance for a new kind of community, based on cooperation and friendship rather than power and control. And eventually, (spoilers) nearly all of them agree that this is the best option–not only to keep themselves and their children safe, but also to keep themselves and their children from becoming like their attackers. The movie makes it clear that this is not an easy decision; but it’s made possible by the close communal bonds that unite the women, and by their faith. One remarkable thing about this movie is that, even though they’ve never been able to read the Bible on their own, meaning that everything about their religion was taught to them by their rapists, nearly all the characters are still clinging to their faith by the end. The older women admonish the younger ones by quoting Scripture, they pray over all their decisions, and they end their long conversation with a hymn. Even in the midst of the worst religious abuse imaginable, the women of this movie are able to see past the ways men have twisted their religion, and discern that at its heart, it is “built on love,” in Ona’s words.

I’ll admit that Women Talking felt particularly powerful to me because I could relate to this aspect of it. While I’ve never experienced any abuse comparable to what is depicted in the movie, I can relate to the struggle of separating faith in God from the failings of the people who taught it to me. And while the movie, which is based on a true story, portrays an extreme example of the way religion can be used to subjugate women, the roots of that subjugation still run deep in the mainstream church, as they do in most institutions. In any kind of community, when men are the only ones allowed to hold positions of power, the only ones able to tell the community’s story, it leads to a silencing of women (and others who don’t fit the mold for power). That silencing doesn’t always result in rape or violence, but it makes it much harder for the community to deal with those things when they do occur. When confronted with that distortion, that power imbalance in the church, some women (and others who are likewise underrepresented) choose to silence their own objections and fall in line. Others turn against religion altogether, sometimes militantly so. And others go out into the unknown, to try and find a God who listens to the powerless and the voiceless.

“Your story will be different from ours.”

If achieving equality, as a woman, looks like adopting abusive, controlling habits the way Tár does, then I don’t want it. But Women Talking offers a more hopeful way of dealing with inequality. By refusing to participate in the system that abused them, the women in that story gain the opportunity for peace, true community, and even the possibility of forgiveness for their attackers. They don’t try to punish them or carry out vengeance, even though a woman like Salome’s desire for it is completely understandable–because, in the end, what would that solve? So many movies about power imbalances leave the audience with nothing to learn except that “abusers are bad.” Women Talking goes beyond that, showing that individual abusers are less of a problem than a culture that legitimises abuse–and, ultimately, imagining a different kind of culture.

I’d highly recommend both these films. They’re extremely effective at telling their stories, and they both feature some of the best acting and writing of the year. Which one you prefer will depend on taste, of course, as well as how much talk of sexual violence you can handle (neither film depicts it visually, but Women Talking does show some of the aftermath). Personally, I’d like to see more movies like these: movies with majority-female casts and complicated, flawed, conflicted female characters. And I would really like to see more movies that imagine a world beyond the system of oppressor and oppressed. I’d like more stories like that in the real world, too.

And when Women Talking inevitably loses the Oscar to Tár or (heaven forbid) that awful Avatar movie, I will try to remember what it taught me about the value of nonviolence.