May Contain Spoilers: The Last Jedi

The Last Jedi (2017)

Starring: Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver

Written/Directed: Rian Johnson

Over a year since my last post? No one should ever question my dedication to procrastination. No more excuses. I will strive to write up something once a week, for as long as my sanity holds.

I’m unsure how to discuss Star Wars without the context of my relationship to the brand (and it is, for better and worse, a brand now more than ever). Nostalgia has become, for Hollywood, a well to draw from incessantly. People like me, who grew up with these old, well-loved properties (Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, etc.,) can be transported back to a child-like state by the familiar, re-imagined. Or, these things can shamble on like Romero zombies – weak and forgettable on their own, but deadly en masse. Thirty years from now, what will the nostalgia market pick up and churn out? Will the Jurassic Worlds and Rogue Ones inspire the same affectionate memories? How many times can the same idea echo before it loses all substance?

For me, Star Wars was a huge part of my childhood. I spent hours at home, in break rooms while my Mom worked, and late at night watching and re-watching the original trilogy with a devotion that only children can manage. I collected toys, novels set in the defunct Expanded Universe, and swelled up with wonder at the first announcement of the prequel trilogy. I was young enough to sort of enjoy the Phantom Menace, even though I now recognize what a total mess of a film it is. With Attack of the Clones, something began to feel very wrong, but there remained hope that the final one would restore a purposeful dignity to what I’d endured. Watching Revenge of the Sith, I vividly recall wanting to walk out. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. Star Wars had burned me, tarnished a jewel of my childhood, and I vowed not to be fooled again.

With the Force Awakens, my optimism was cautious. JJ Abrams has done lots of wonderful work, but none without severe flaws. Still, it felt like anything was possible with George Lucas out of the picture. And lo and behold, shortly into Episode VII – the part where they first board the Millenium Falcon and have a fun, exciting chase sequence on not-Tatooine – my eyes welled up with tears. I was enjoying a Star Wars movie. No matter the flaws or ways the plot broke down awkwardly over the next few weeks, no matter the criticism or lowered expectations – I couldn’t be robbed of that feeling and I’ll cherish that film for reminding me of why I loved Star Wars so much.

That said, the bar has been raised. Not-terrible is no longer good enough. I had high hopes for Rogue One and, excepting a few interesting moments and the fantastic Alan Tudyk, it was a huge let down. I understand that many people hold Rogue One in high regard, even comparable to the original trilogy. This is beyond baffling. Rogue One has weak, forgettable characters, contrived and nonsensical plot points, and was fatiguing to watch in the theater in a way I hadn’t experienced since Star Trek: Wrath of Khan Redux.

It seems to be some sort of commonly accepted wisdom that the thing people love so much about Star Wars is the space battles, or the tech gear (blasters, lightsabers, X-Wings, etc.), or the action, or the concept of Jedi. When actually, all of that was just setting details, of which great stories only rest one of three legs. The aspect that really held up and elevated Star Wars was so simple and obvious: the characters. What people remember most from those films was Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, R2-D2, C-3PO, Darth Vader, Lando, and so on. Because the characters were so likable, memorable, and fun, it was easy to forgive that AT-AT walkers are kind of stupid, if you think about it. Or why would there be an open, fatal exhaust port in a super weapon, anyway? Couldn’t they just bolt some sheet metal over it? Adventure films rarely hold up to that level of scrutiny, but it doesn’t matter, so long as the audience is having fun. The Force Awakens was fun; Rogue One was not.

One thousand words in and I’ve yet to discuss the actual film. Take a one year break, but maintain perfect form.

So, the big question becomes: is The Last Jedi fun?

For me, the answer is yes and no.

The characters still help carry the clunky, uneven plot. Even when they are getting the characters slightly wrong, they are still engaging and likable. Kylo Ren works much better in this one as a strange, interestingly flawed villain. Mark Hamill’s performance is delightful, even if for me (and, from what I’ve read, for Mark, too) the direction for Luke doesn’t quite feel right. The cinematography is gorgeous and the action set pieces are visually stunning. I loved Rian Johnson’s films Brick and Looper, and I see his touch in a lot of good ways on this film. I liked some of the ways they bucked the expected tropes and directions for this kind of film. I dug the stuff (mostly) with Luke and Rey (Daisy Ridley is also delightful, even if everything still comes a little too easily to her character). Sadly, I couldn’t fully engage with the movie and enjoy it the way I wanted. Too many things took me out of it.

First, the film is two and a half hours long and feels more like four. The action starts from the first minute and, due to the contrivance of the setup, is essentially non-stop for the entire length. It is hard to have fun watching something so exhausting. Lots of neat, visually gorgeous moments were ruined for me by those nagging questions that don’t instantly pop into my head when the movie is sucking me in.

*SPOILERS FROM HERE ON*

Why is the problem that they are running out of space gas? Why even bring up the idea of space gas? Couldn’t Finn and Rose just go on a gas run? What if, instead of all this, the good guys just kept jumping to hyperspace and, when the bad guys followed, they jumped again? They could set up their computers to keep calculating the jump and have five minutes of fighting, then a jump, ad infinitum. Then, a line about how they don’t know how long the engines can take the toll of constant hyperspace, which feels more believable than them just staying far enough ahead to be out of danger (even though Kylo Ren is able to decimate the lead ship in a Tie-Fighter, a strategy so effective that it’s never attempted again). This is more satisfying as far as stakes, because now we don’t know when the heroes will run out of luck and finally be cornered. This is also an opportunity to see more of the universe. Whenever a character referenced “we have X hours of gas left”, in a film series where these sorts of time logistics have never meant anything, I felt taken out of the suspension of disbelief.

The moment where Laura Dern turns the ship around and totally fucks up the bad guys is visually incredible, but I was wondering why no one thought to try that in the first place. How has space battle gone on for so long without anyone doing so before? Isn’t the life of one person to save thousands well worth it and absolutely thematically appropriate to the Rebels? Or, shit, have a droid pilot the ship for the suicide mission. Not to mention, her sacrifice seems to have no impact other than allowing the heroes time to reach the planet and providing a convenient deus ex to save Finn and Rose.

The drama of Po staging a literal coup because no one could bother talking to him for two minutes only showed that he’s a total idiot and felt so manufactured that I expect to see it on toy shelves, right next to the Porgs, which are just penguins with the cuteness turned to eleven. I can only imagine the room where animators and test market researchers were whipped, over and over, with shouts from Disney execs: “Cuter, goddamnit, cuter! If these don’t sell out for Christmas, you’ll never see your families again!”

Carrie Fisher being blown into space and quietly dying seemed in poor taste, but the scene turned to pure schlock when she flies back to the ship. I guess one way to hide your actors is to have them spend most of the film in a coma, but I actually thought her performance had improved since The Force Awakens and was enjoying her scenes. The moment near the end with her and Luke was genuinely moving.

The side excursion to Casino World could have been fun and interesting, if not for feeling so rushed and the fact that our heroes abandon children caught in slave labor. Finn and Rose even accept their help. But, it’s okay that they will be beaten mercilessly for helping the escape – here’s a secret decoder ring. Long live the resistance!

Again, when the film is fun and engaging, it’s easy to forgive or ignore these distractions. Instead, if the film squanders good will in the first couple minutes by having a character taunt a villain with a rendition of “is your refrigerator running”, we have problems.

I want to applaud a lot of the attempts to do something different. Some of the ways The Last Jedi bucks expectations are welcome and interesting. A lot of the dialogue is very clever: Luke sarcastically asks Rey early on if she expects him to walk out in front of the entire Empire with a laser sword, which is essentially how the climax unfolds; Yoda references that Rey has all the Jedi wisdom that Luke wants to burn, when actually he means she stole the books (which seems out of character and antithetical to the core idea of the film of forgetting the past, but still); the dialogue in general that tries to sound wise is pretty solid stuff.

There’s something inherently problematic about making an adventure film where all of the heroes fail at everything they do: Rey fails to convince Luke to train her; Po stages a coup that almost ruins everything; Finn goes off on a wild side mission which not only fails spectacularly, but ruins the actual good plan that the audience knew nothing about. The only character who really succeeds and grows is Kylo Ren, who is supposed to be the villain. Which, whether you like the concept of the character, thank God for Adam Driver’s nuanced, broken performance.

The film takes the myriad of mysteries and questions that JJ Abrams left behind and says fuck ’em, wrapping each one up with a non-answer. This is one of the flaws I alluded to earlier – Abrams is fantastic at making us wonder and imagine, but not so good at paying off with his answers. From what I’ve read, there was no blueprint left behind to guide this new trilogy, so Rian Johnson inherited an open-ended mess. That he opted to blow those questions up and do his own thing is admirable, in a sense. I think he actually didn’t take it far enough.

The days after I saw it, I kept going over and over these things in my head. I started writing this because I think my wife was growing sick of hearing about Star Wars. So, what I started doing was rewriting the film in my head. One of the biggest problems is with the ending: all of the heroes have gained and accomplished almost nothing and no larger plot has been advanced at all. The most this film accomplished to the story is ridding us of Supreme Leader… Snopes? Snoopy? Snookey? Whatever. I have no idea what to anticipate for the next (final?!?!?!? ha, doubtful) installment, other than Rey will probably fight Kylo. There may be a death star equivalent. Oh boy.

In my version of the film, the setup is mostly the same. We use my idea instead of “space gas”. And, rather than having four simultaneous stories, we narrow down the focus. Once we establish the danger to Leia and the Rebels, we only check in on them a couple times. Po, Finn, Rose, and BB-8 go on a different mission, maybe still to the casino planet. They are desperate for help and resources, so they go seeking aid from their supposed allies. They find the man who sells them weapons, begging for more ships that they can’t pay for. He turns them down, citing his own problems. He says the Empire has seized his asteroid manufacturing station and he might help them if they liberate it. Or get some maguffin he needs from there. This weapons dealer teams them up with Benicio Del Toro (we can’t lose his character), and they go to do this while Rey is training and learning from Luke (their stuff is mostly the same, but with slightly more actual instruction).

On the asteroid, they get captured and discover that Phasma is there – she’s been demoted for her failure in the last film. Seeing a chance for redemption, she plans to bring them in. Benicio’s character overheard them talking about Rey, and still flips on them. Phasma, sensing an even better chance at glory, decides to take them all to confront and capture Luke and Rey. They reach Luke’s island but, through cunning and heroics, they overcome the bad guy force and take the ship, planning to use it to sneak onto the big bad guy flagship.

From here, things mostly play out the same, with Rey going to Kylo and getting caught and the others trying to disable the tracking thing. This time, though, when Kylo betrays Snope, he offers Rey his hand with a compromise: how about instead of killing each other to balance the force, we work together to actually restore peace after 40-odd years of war? Neither Rey nor Kylo has some great investment in the current struggle, forget the Rebels and Imperials (sorry, Resistance and First Order), let’s do our own thing! And Rey accepts, because why not? Maybe it will work. See, now the offer is tempting, which is what evil does, rather than saying “hey, come be evil with me.” I think there’s way to still work in the gorgeous speeder battle on the salt world and keep Luke’s heroic last stand, which was awesome. But now, the story goes off in a totally different direction. Will this uneasy truce work? Kylo and Rey come down together, offering peace to all. This splits the heroes: Leia goes with them, because it’s a chance to get her son back, Chewie says fuck this, he killed Han, Finn knows the First Order can’t really change, Po has to struggle between his loyalty and his bromance, BB-8 is a wild card, etc. The next film is then obviously how this all works out (probably not well). That’s an interesting, new take on the series with a lot of possibilities, and I’d look forward to that sequel.

Pardon my indulgence of fantasy – The Last Jedi didn’t scratch that itch enough. I think the flaws in the film ultimately come from writing to Theme. It was decided that the themes of the film would be: failure is the best teacher, forget the past, and porgs are cute. Instead of staying true to the characters, these themes were imposed on the plot and hit repeatedly in the script. Instead, my opinion is that excellent writing comes from focusing on characters, of which the series had several great ones, placed in a interesting setting, and that the plot and themes will emerge naturally from the characters being characters. You have to trust them to tell their story.

The Last Jedi is by no means terrible. A lot of my issues are nitpicky, or easily fixable. There’s plenty of memorable scenes and images, and the characters still work well and have fantastic charisma. I just can’t help imagining the missed opportunities to make it something truly special, instead of Episode VIII of a series that, let’s be honest, is never going to end so long as the box office holds up. For my two cents, let’s skip all the preamble and boring space opera stuff and get right to Porgs: Genesis Rebirth Redux: A Star Wars Story (brought to you by Disney/Hasbro – “Disbro”) coming soon to a Googleplex near you.

May Contain Spoilers: Collateral Beauty

Collateral Beauty (2016)

Starring: Will Smith, Edward Norton, Kate Winslet

Director: David Frankel

Collateral Beauty is essentially Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol re-imagined by a Freshman philosopher turned armchair psychologist. It’s lazy, pandering, and squanders a high-quality cast. The writing is also insecure in a way that I find very fascinating. To really delve into the stupidity of the plot, I’m going to spoil a lot of key plot details. If for some reason you wish to experience the film as I did – like a cozy baby ripped from the womb and blinded by the harsh, cruel world – turn back now.

It’s such a shame, because the cast really is great. I’m not the biggest Will Smith fan (though his performance in Suicide Squad was surprisingly and unnecessarily full of heart), he really does a remarkable job with what he’s given.  His reactions feel genuine, his eyes are haunted in a believable way. He plays Howard, a brilliant ad exec who hasn’t been able to get past his grief from his young daughter’s death. At the beginning of the film, he’s charming and full of energy – a shame that we don’t get more of this Will Smith – giving a speech about advertising. You see, people only buy things because of Love, Death, and Time. They want to be loved, fear death, and wish for more time. Or, possibly, they buy things because they are hungry. It’s hard to say what category advertising for shoes falls into. The fear of stepping on a rusty nail and dying from tetanus? But of course, this is only in the film to setup the premise.

We flash forward to the present day, where Howard obsessively builds domino structures with meticulous precision, until knocking them down almost carelessly. He walks away without waiting to watch the result. This is… profound? Later, a reason is given for his decision to be an amateur domino architect. Get this: he used to build dominoes with his daughter. If that seems obvious, take a seat, because this is going to get dumb.

Howard’s co-owners (Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Michael Pena) have a problem. Depending on the particular moment in the script, they want to sell/save the company, help/frame Howard, and are greedy/selfless. The biggest issue in the plot falls with these characters, because the movie doesn’t know what to do with them. Are they the villains? Are they a merry band of musketeers? Are they nonsensical, shallow caricatures? Again, it depends on the current scene. It hardly helps that their plan makes very little sense. See, Howard has been writing letters, but not to people, the movie says to amaze us, though most audiences today might ask instead – what’s a letter? That Howard trusts the US postal service to deliver his letters to Death, Love, and Time shows an almost saint-like faith in that institution. However, it does provide the opportunity for the conspirators to get hold of the letters. Thank goodness that Howard didn’t email them or place them in a shoe box, or the movie couldn’t happen.

So, the three musketeers hire actors to portray these concepts in an attempt to gaslight their poor d’Artagnan. This is, initially, solely so they can have the board of directors find him incompetent and allow the musketeers to sell the company out from under him (despite a throwaway line about everyone keeping their jobs). The three of them hop back and forth from selfish greed to selfless deeds in an almost comical fashion. The movie is very confused as to whether this is an attempt to defraud Howard or to Help Him Rediscover Himself. Eventually, they’ve recorded Howard interacting with these actors, but edited the latter out, such that it appears Howard is yelling at nothing. They play this video at a board meeting, humiliating Howard and he finally realizes that he was being tricked. Rather than getting angry, or falling deeper into depression, or punching Edward Norton – his supposed best friend – right in the face, Howard says the most hilarious line of the film: “You did the right thing.”

Of course, there’s a subplot for each of the Musketeers and they are inexplicably paired off with their symbolic actor appropriately. It’s all the most superficial, laziest of problems. Norton is sad because he’s divorced and his daughter hates him (we know this because she calmly says, “I hate you”), Winslet is considering sperm donors to get pregnant (while this is casual sexism, it’s mostly just lazy. There’s no reason given whatsoever for her motivation, other than expecting us to fill in the stereotype), and Michael Pena has cancer, but won’t tell his family. It’s very convenient that Love, Time, and Death just happen to be on their minds. This movie is extremely formulaic, once the symbolism dots are connected, and it blunders through these shallow subplots in obvious, boring ways. It’s incredible how a 90 minute film can feel like three hours.

Does someone repeating over and over that a child died make you sad? We understand a sort of intellectual sadness for Howard, but it never hits home. Like most of the rest, it’s superficial tear-jerking that fails miserably and the script feels self-aware of this. The writing is astonishingly nervous that you aren’t buying it. This is evident in all sorts of moments. When Norton comes up with the idea to use actors, he has to draw inspiration from his mentally vanishing mother and a weird old ad tape from a storage box. He has to meet a perfect troupe of actors in a convoluted, desperate way. The characters are incredulous that their plot will work and it’s like overhearing the screenwriter arguing with himself. The private investigator that they hire is an old woman, and this has to be justified by dialogue. “She blends in well.” Why are you so self-consciously getting defensive, movie? We don’t need some weird explanation about a bribe and federal statutes to understand that she got hold of his letters. This is drawing attention to details that audiences accept easily, if they are executed properly. If I’m told we are meeting the private investigator and it turns out to be an old woman, I can interpret this for myself, thanks. It’s incredible how pandering this film is, considering how much it oozes dumbness.

Howard’s letters are exactly what you would expect. His letter to love is “Dear Love, F*** you.” Actually, it’s “Goodbye”, but I like mine better. Howard angry quotes poetry at the actors, and it’s hideously cringe-worthy. At the board meeting, despite all this effort to make Howard out to appear crazy, the musketeers pretty much give up the ruse immediately. And then Howard just signs the papers, anyway. But, isn’t he now deemed too crazy to sign? The plot moves forward despite itself, trudging to the end. Every plot line is wrapped up in a neat bow, every “character arc” resolved with zero degrees of difficulty. Last chance to avoid the big spoiler:

Howard keeps running to this support group for parents who lost children, and he has wounded chemistry with the female psychologist running the meetings. They flirt, get to know each other, etc. If it’s cliche, at least there’s something compelling in Howard’s haunted reluctance to open up. Anyway, she asks if Howard is divorced, they talk about how they feel about their estranged partners. She shows him a card her ex gave her, which reads: “I wish we could be strangers again…” This was very romantic, supposedly. Well, it turns out that Howard is her ex-husband. This is a plot ‘twist’ only in the sense that the film has lied and misrepresented in the most manipulative way to pull a last second gotcha. Why would she show him the card, if he wrote it? Why would they talk like they don’t know each other? It’s one of the dumbest contrivances I’ve ever seen. And if that isn’t aggressively stupid enough, the final scene hints that maybe those actors really were Love, Death, and Time. Even for low-effort, oscar-bait schlock, the whole thing was unearned and it moved my heart about as much as one of those ads for depression medication. Your time would be spent more efficiently to the same effect by watching those on loop for a half-hour.

May Contain Spoilers: Arrival

Arrival (2016)

Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker

Director: Denis Villeneuve

We live in an era where nerd culture has become pervasive. Comic book movies come out almost every week. Comic Con draws humongous crowds all over the US. Star Trek and Star Wars are thriving in cinemas. At twelve years old, I would have never believed any of it, but here we are. There’s only one saddening part: the geek movies are getting dumber. So, it’s an especially delightful and refreshing experience to see a film where the “science” in the science fiction is treated respectfully, intelligently, carefully.

In Arrival, alien ships have landed across the world. People are panicking and rioting in the streets. The various world governments are responding in the worst ways you’d expect from them. Our reaction, as a species, is to be distrustful and afraid. And who could blame us? Films like Independence Day, Aliens, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers seek to tell us that visitors rarely come in peace. Every thing that happens in Arrival feels like exactly what would happen in real life. What’s spectacularly remarkable about it, though, is that most of it happens off-screen. Instead, we spend almost the entire movie with Amy Adams, who gives a truly wonderful performance. We learn at the beginning of the film that her character, Louise, lost a daughter to a disease. She’s a linguistics professor, brought in by a subdued Army Man played by Forest Whitaker, to help solve the language barrier with the aliens. From the start, the story is grounded in real, human experience and this gives so much more weight to the science fiction elements.

For most of the movie, we follow Louise as she desperately tries to solve the puzzle while time is running out. This sounds cliche, but it’s actually handled deftly and I cannot even describe how relieving it is to not have Bad Government Man to serve as a superfluous, clumsy antagonist. The US government certainly makes choices contrary to our protagonist’s goal, but they make sense. The pressure is subdued – there is no caricature who just starts being a dick because the screenwriter remembered that it’s the third act. Instead, most of the “action” involves studying the aliens and making slow, grinding progress at deciphering their language. If this sounds boring, maybe the film isn’t for you. I overheard people in the lobby complaining about the slow pacing. I found it positively mesmerizing. I was invested in the characters – even Jeremy Renner, who plays Scientist Man with an intriguingly grounded, gentle grace – and was rooting for them more than I did for Doctor Strange. It feels like there are real, high stakes for the characters, personally, and also for the entire world and humanity itself.

I don’t want to get into spoilers, because a lot of the fun lies in the mystery of what the aliens want. It would be heartbreaking to rob someone of the chance to experience this film for themselves. Perhaps it was due to the sort of day I was having (terrible), or maybe it’s because of elements in my own life that I felt reflected (I have a daughter, and the stuff about Louise’s loss hit me hard), but this film left me very emotionally drained. In a good way, mind. There are so many films that desperately, flaccidly pluck at our emotional heart strings. The trailer played beforehand for a film called Collateral Beauty, which is an insultingly made up nonsense term. In it, Will Smith is visited by the embodiment of love, then death, and finally tired movie cliches. It looks sophomoric, sappy, and the trailer was extremely irritating. I’ve heard it’s even more ridiculous than it looks, so I may seek it out for a good hate-watch soon. However, it’s depressing that movies like that can struggle and manipulate to create the effect it demands for you to have, instead of organically letting us engage ourselves with the material. If you want to see a film that is incredibly moving, see Arrival. I’m not ashamed to admit that I openly cried more during it than any other movie that I can recall. It is one of the most haunting, beautiful, intelligent, touching films I’ve ever seen and we could use more like it.

May Contain Spoilers: Fantastic Beasts

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Director: David Yates

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler

Written: JK Rowling

Spoilers: Absolutely

I have always held the belief that the Harry Potter novels do not translate overly well to film. Covering an entire year of adolescent growth in two hours is going to be fractured and dissatisfying. For the installments of the main series, there were films that stood out as better than the others, and certainly there are moments and visuals that are excellent, but they lack – forgive me – some of the magic that the books hold. In this latest addition, JK Rowling attempts to spin a story that is entirely removed from the Potter-verse and yet directly connected. The result is kind of a mess.

Discussing this movie with others, it is constantly compared to the recent Doctor Strange (go see that instead, if you haven’t) and this puzzled me until I learned that Fantastic Beasts is to spawn at least four sequels. Thus, it becomes extremely difficult to judge this movie on its own merits instead of as the building block for the Harry Potter Cinematic Universe. And how many of those do we really need? The success of Marvel has felt like an outlier to me; through a combination of planning, good fortune, and focused story-telling, they’ve created a self-contained creative industry. The attempts to copy the formula have been lacking, short-sighted, and frustrating. It appears evident that any franchise worth billions is taking this approach, each license towering over cinema like a would-be juggernaut crushing our wallets. Eventually, the over saturation and needlessly complicated story lines and requirement for intricate plot knowledge will collapse the bubble and we’ll be free of cinematic universes. The backlash will be glorious. But, Harry Potter.

My wife has an obsessive love for Harry Potter and she had no idea that this movie had anything to do with her passion. So, not only is the title a marketing failure, but it’s a bit of a misnomer, too. The beasts make up a relatively small portion of the running time, instead we focus on dark wizards, bureaucracy, and bizarre romance subplots. It’s such a shame. A film set in the wizarding world, following a group of adventurers exploring the world in search of magical beasts and learning to understand them would be so refreshingly different. Instead, in a Harry Potter film set in the 1920’s about fantastic beasts, there is the most tired threat of all: an evil force is destroying New York City and only our heroes can stop it. I can’t help but imagine JK Rowling pitching this idea to the studio, saying it will be just like the Avengers except, instead of Robert Downey Jr., it’ll have Eddie Redmayne awkwardly emoting for two plus hours. The green light probably came on as soon as she walked into the room.

Let’s pause and celebrate something wonderful about the “old” Potter films – the casting. Child actors are usually terrible and those who aren’t usually grow up hard and get weird. Emma Watson seems like a very talented young actress, and the jury is still out on Daniel Radcliffe. Last I read, Rupert Grint is done with acting and driving around England to give out free ice creams to children. Regardless of their strengths and weakness, the original trio of kids was perfectly cast. Radcliffe might suck in every job he has for the rest of his life, but he was basically a perfect Harry Potter. Alan Rickman turned in one of the best performances of his storied career as Severus Snape. The same can’t be said for Fantastic Beasts. Or maybe the trouble is in how the characters are written. Whatever the case may be, Newt Scamander (Redmayne) is nerdy, clumsy, and awkward in a way that is the opposite of Potter’s endearing, similar qualities. More often than not, he’s irritating. Tina (Waterston) is adequate, if inconsistent. Kowalski (Fogler) has moments where he’s an appropriate presence and others where he’s hopelessly buffoonish. However, he delivers an unforgivable line, when he’s been shown the inside of Newt’s suitcase and discovered a world full of magic creatures, roughly: “I know I’m not dreaming. I’m not smart enough to dream this up.” Of course, JK Rowling totally is. It’s one of the most cringe-worthy examples of navel gazing I’ve seen in a long time. In particular, Queenie (Sudol) would be drawing intense feminist ardor if she weren’t written by a woman.

There are positives to the film. As always, JK Rowling is fantastic at world building. Some of the choices here are hopelessly clumsy (muggles are “no-maj” in America? I hope this was satire on Americans lacking creativity), but overall a lot of the details are interesting and make it feel like a real world, albeit not exactly the one shared by Harry. Some of the set pieces where they are capturing the runaway beasts are fun, although it has to be questioned why the same film would include a cartoon-ish scene of a rhino in heat charging after a human love conquest while our hero fights a monkey for his wand, juxtaposed by scenes of brutal murder. It’s also notable that the heroes…

(SPOILERS FROM HERE OUT)

completely and unbelievably fail at their goal. The poor child that Newt wants to save – it’s even setup that he’s tried and failed before to save a kid in this situation – is literally murdered by “good guys” in front of Newt’s eyes. There’s a little glimmer of hope thrown in to make it seem as though things aren’t what they appear, but you still murdered a child in front of your audience, movie. It becomes hard to remember the cuteness of the scene-stealing little critter that steals everything shiny. Probably the single worst moment of the film is right after the obvious bad guy reveal happens, and all of the wizards are sad that their cover is completely blown. After all, the evil energy thing destroyed half of Manhattan and they had to use magic in front of mug- sorry, “no-majs”. Newt essentially winks at the camera and reveals one of the worst examples of deus ex machina I can remember. For those who don’t know, deus ex machina is a Latin term meaning “God from the machine” and it was used to describe old Greek plays where God would literally be lowered onto the stage at the climax and magically fix everything, because he’s God. Rowling is notorious for doing this in her work – Dumbledore serving often as God, who shows up unexpectedly and fixes everything or gives the heroes a solution to all their problems. It’s easy and lazy. In Fantastic Beasts, Newt gives a blue vial of venom to a giant bird who makes it rain and somehow this erases the memories of everyone in New York for precisely the events of the film. It’s nonsensical, insulting, and extremely boring. Rowling is a very intelligent woman and certainly has heard this criticism, so it is very puzzling she insists on solving her plots this way. I can see certainly see the appeal, though. Finally free of the constraints of the Harry Potter character, she’s managed to marry the worst parts of Potter to the worst parts of Dumbledore, creating a character who is supposed to be awkward, sympathetic, endearing, omnipotent, mysterious, and heroic. The combination fails utterly.

I can’t wait for the Donnie Darko Cinematic Universe. Or the Blade Runner Cinematic Universe. Isn’t Casablanca about due for a remake?