John Kenneth Muir's Blog, page 5

Guest Post: I Don't Understand You (2025)

I Don’t Understand You, Either

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen

Note: Spoilers ahead—all of which appear in the trailer.

Buried inside I Don’t Understand You is a razor-sharp satire that never fully emerges. In a polarized world where opposing sides seem to speak in code, the concept of a gay couple trapped by cross-cultural misunderstandings feels timely and full of potential. But the film, co-written and co-directed by real-life spouses David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, loses momentum early and never quite recovers.

Dom (Nick Kroll) and Cole (Andrew Rannells) are celebrating their anniversary in Rome while awaiting news from an adoption agency. After being previously duped by one mother-to-be, they’ve now pinned their hopes on Candace (Amanda Seyfried). Meanwhile, they’re invited to dinner by Dom’s Italian uncle at a remote country estate. What follows is a misadventure marked by language barriers, poor navigation, a busted power line, latent homophobia—and eventually, an escalating body count.

The setup plays like Babel meets Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. Like Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning film, Craig and Crano explore how language and cultural confusion sow chaos. A recurring theme is miscommunication: an early gift of pocketknives, intended as a nod to their passion for cooking, becomes symbolic (yes, Chekhov would be proud). A misread road sign leads to a crash. A panicked conversation during a blackout devolves into bloodshed. Even the local police misinterpret their one witness, fueling further disaster. It’s a comedy of errors that builds cleverly—until it hedges its bets.

The comparison to Tucker & Dale highlights the film’s identity crisis. Unlike that film’s innocent hillbillies, Dom and Cole contribute significantly to their own spiral. Yet the script refuses to let them fall. Enter the adoption subplot—a narrative safety net that seeks to exonerate them. After all, can loving prospective parents be held fully accountable? The baby thread feels like a calculated plea for jury nullification, softening characters who might otherwise be compellingly flawed. Lift that element out, and the story might dare its audience to grapple with real ambiguity. Instead, it blinks.

Still, Craig and Crano display a flair for suspense and have a deft hand at spinning grotesque farce into laughs. Their major set pieces are crisply staged, and the tension is often laced with a slapstick edge.

Kroll and Rannells shine as the central couple, radiating both friction and fierce loyalty. You believe these two share a kitchen, a bed, and eventually, parental potential. Nunzia Schiano delivers a touching turn as a nearly blind and deaf chef mourning her lost son—pouring out her grief in Italian to two men who understand none of it. Her monologue lands like a private exorcism. Morgan Spector also stands out as her volatile surviving son whose garbled diction seals his fate.

In the end, I Don’t Understand You is a nasty little black comedy that blinks when it should bite. Strip away the emotional cushioning, and the satire might have left a scar.

30 Years Ago: Waterworld (1995)

Sometimes, mainstream film critics focus too much on the inside-baseball aspects of filmmaking for my taste. 

I suppose that everyone enjoys behind-the-scenes stories of disagreements between lead actors and directors, and tales of woe concerning films that run massively and catastrophically over-budget.  

It’s impossible to take your eyes off a train wreck, in other words.

And yet the problem with this focus on inside-baseball emerges when the same critics draw an explicit connection between behind-the-scenes strife and the artistic merits of a finished work-of-art.  In other words, some reviewers utilize the inside-baseball knowledge to fit into a specific, pre-drawn narrative. 

Using the former factors (behind-the-scenes strife), to judge the latter (artistic merit), is problematic, I submit, because the relationship clearly isn’t one-to-one.  A difficult shoot doesn’t necessarily result in a bad film.  Going over budget doesn’t necessarily mean artistic disaster, either.  And the opposite is also true: a smooth shoot doesn’t indicate that a film is going to turn out terrific.

Certainly, this unfortunate critical paradigm was exposed with both  King Kong  (1976) and  John Carter  (2012), both of which were received harshly by the critical community largely on the basis of behind-the-scenes, inside-baseball factors rather than a judicious consideration of artistic factors.

This fallacy is also true of  Waterworld  (1995), now thirty years old, and a film that, upon release, was clearly marked in the press as a troubled production, and furthermore, the most expensive film of all-time. 

Yet seventeen years later, I don’t know that our knowledge of those facts is vital to a fair assessment of the film’s particular strengths and weaknesses.

Eschewing the inside-baseball stats and figures,  Waterworld  plays as a straight-up and not un-enjoyable transplant of  The Road Warrior  (1982) aesthetic, only in a world destroyed by global warming rather than by nuclear war. 

Kevin Costner’s gilled, mutant Mariner, in other words, is a wet Mad Max who, like his predecessor, is something of a variation on Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, a classic movie character featured in  A Fistful of Dollars  (1964),  For a Few Dollars More  (1965), and  The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  (1966). 

In short, this archetype involves a “stranger” who rides into town and becomes involved in a conflict not his own, and who, largely, is rather stoic, allowing actions speak louder than words.  Similarly,  Waterworld’ s Mariner is frequently tagged as a silent brooder, and by film’s end has even become equated with “Death” Himself for his accomplished – if taciturn -- application of lethal force.

From this...
To this...
To this.Beyond the obvious inspiration the film draws from the  Mad Max  mythos,  Waterworld  succeeds mostly because of the “reality” of the world it assiduously constructs. The film is one of the last sci-fi epics to emerge from the pre-digital age of Hollywood blockbusters and, accordingly -- and for all its apparent flaws -- boasts this heightened sense of texture or verisimilitude. 

Everything (or most everything…) our eyes witness had to be arduously constructed and set afloat, and that herculean effort pays off in a visual and imaginative sense.  You can practically smell the salt water and the burning fuel…

In terms of negatives, Waterworld takes an unnecessary dive into sentimentalism, a wrong turn that  The Road Warrior  never falls prey to, though  Beyond Thunderdome  certainly did. 

The film’s final act also consists of one generic action movie trope after the other, from the hero’s ability to outpace blossoming fireballs, to last minute, physically impossible rescues.  These almost cartoon-like moments tend to mark  Waterworld  as a product of eager-to-please Hollywood, and make it rather decidedly unlike its spare, gritty, Australian source of inspiration.

Still, some of the overt sentimentalism and action clichés in  Waterworld  might be overlooked because of the film’s absolutely original setting, and the skill with which that setting is presented.  The film’s lead characters -- when not grinding the gears of expected generic conventions -- are interesting enough to spend two hours with, certainly.  In keeping with the tradition of the post-apocalyptic genre,  Waterworld  also makes an earnest statement about man’s self-destructive nature.

“Dry land is not just our destination, it is our destiny!”

In a world of the future -- a world of ubiquitous oceans -- the silent, rugged Mariner (Costner) seeks to re-supply at a nearby atoll.  Unfortunately, he is arrested by the local Elders as a “muto” (or mutant) because he has webbed feet and gills behind his ears. 

The Mariner’s arrest comes at a bad time, because the leader of the eco-unfriendly Smokers, The Deacon (Dennis Hopper) is planning to launch an attack there and grab young Enola (Tina Majorino), a girl with an indecipherable map to the mythical “Dry Land” tattooed on her back. 

Enola and her stepmother, Helen (Jean Tripplehorn) free the Mariner from captivity in exchange for passage out of the atoll on his boat.  They barely escape with their lives, and the Deacon commits to pursuing them.

On the high seas, the Mariner and his “guests” have difficulty getting along at first, but soon he becomes fond of the women, and they of him.  One day, the Mariner takes Helen to the bottom of the sea and shows him man’s drowned cities there.  That lost world is the only (formerly) “dry land” he knows of, he insists.

When the Deacon captures Enola, it’s up to the Mariner to rescue her, and more than that, to lead other rag-tag survivors to “Dry Land.”  Enola’s map, properly understood, holds the key to man’s future…

“He doesn't have a name so Death can't find him!”

The quality I admire most about  Waterworld  is its physicality.

That may not be the best word, but it gets the job done in a pinch.  I could also describe this ingredient as “texture” or “atmosphere,” perhaps, but physicality better gets at the film’s rugged and powerful sense of setting, of place.  I love the Rube-Goldberg-style devices, the trinkets from the “old world” re-purposed for  Waterworld’s  tech, and the sheer mechanical nature of the world.  It’s a place of whirring hydraulics, tugging pulleys, fold-out sails, and endless, ubiquitous sea.  As a whole, I find it all rather compelling and even believable. 

As I noted above, most of this setting, at least in terms of the human dwellings and conveyances, had to be constructed and then set afloat.  I like the tactility and verisimilitude of this world, and realize that if the film were made today, it would be a different beast all-together, one “rendered” with digital landscapes and CGI.  
In other words, it would likely seem a whole lot less real.  But some of the little, almost throwaway touches in the film are really quite spectacular, and contribute to the idea that "Waterworld" is a real place, and one boasting a deep and long history.

A world that you can touch.
A world that had to be built.
A world that works.
And a world that speaks of another time.In terms of the post-apocalyptic sub-genre, Waterworld  escorts the audience on an ominous trip to the bottom of the sea, and provides a haunting view of an old metropolis turned to dust at the ocean floor, a clear analog for the Statue of Liberty moment in  Planet of the Apes  (1968) or the “empty cities” of  The World, The Flesh and The Devil  (1959) or  Night of The Comet  (1984).  But that’s as close to conventional end-of-the-world imagery as  Waterworld  gets, instead setting its action on an unending, dangerous, but eminently beautiful sea.  I have always been impressed by the visual qualities of the ocean, a realm that is both beautiful and incredible dangerous.  And the ocean, as we detect in the film, also does a good job of burying secrets…
In terms of its narrative, it’s plain that  Waterworld  owes a great deal to  The Road Warrior,  and indeed, the entire  Mad Max  cycle.  The Mariner, like Max, is a man who lives outside of human society and who boasts some disdain for it. 

Both characters live as scavengers and traders, contacting civilization only to re-supply.  Both the Mariner and Max form meaningful relationships or friendships with children (Enola, and the Feral Kid, respectively), and both eventually come around to the idea of “helping” an endangered civilization find a new home (either Dry Land, or the gasoline truck’s promised land destination in  The Road Warrior ).

Finally, both sagas end with that new home established, but the warrior himself returning to the “wasteland” arena to continue his lonely travels.  Mad Max and the Mariner are violent men with a code of ethics, and so they both realize it is better for them to remain “outcasts” in the wild rather than to seek domesticated lives inside a new culture. In  Beyond Thunderdome , the new city-dwellers light candles for the wanderers who haven’t come home; in  Waterworld,  Enola and Helen watch as the Mariner returns to the sea, the realm that nurtured him.   

In both  The Road Warrior  and  Waterworld,  a central scenario depicted is the “siege” of a pre-existing civilization.  Outsiders on a variety of crafts try to “break in” and pillage either Oil City or the Atoll.  The beleaguered city, naturally, fights back, but the walls are breached by attacking vehicles, either flying motorcycles or launched jet skis.  Both cities eventually fall, leading to a dedicated trek to new home. 

These factors -- the siege and the trek – make the films origin stories of a mythic type.  As Aeneas had to flee fallen Troy to found Rome, so do Max and the Mariner lead homeless survivors to greener pastures…literally in the case of  Waterworld .

In one moment in  Waterworld , we even get a deliberate mirror image composition of a famous frame from  The Road Warrior.   There, in the first harrowing action scene, we saw the savage Wez perched on his motorcycle, another goon seated behind him on the bike, looking at his prey.  We see very much the same framing in view here (also in the first action scene), except, of course, on a water craft instead of a motorcycle.

Despite the obvious aping of the  Mad Max  universe,  Waterworld’s  unique, water-bound setting gives it a lot of “juice,” at least visually speaking.  The images are so lush and convincing you can make yourself forget, essentially, that the movie is a pastiche.

A city shall fall.
And so will this one.

And a child shall lead the people to a better future.

And so will this one.

The bad guys watch.
And so do these bad guys.
As we have come to expect from post-apocalyptic films, there is an environmental message in  Waterworld  that suggests man’s self-destructive nature. The “Ancients” caused rapid global warming, and now, similarly, the Smokers are running through the last of their oil, trying to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle. 

Their need to live that life-style of relative leisure (replete with cigarettes, electricity,and even cars…) dooms the Smokers to a life of war and conflict, stealing what they need from other nation-states/atolls at the barrel of a gun.  The fact that the Smokers inhabit the Exxon Valdez, a poster-child for environmental irresponsibility, pretty much says it all.  And this too is America's fate, if we don't tap alternative energy sources.  We'll have to fight resource wars to maintain our culture's high standard of living.

Even the film’s villain plays into this leitmotif.  At one point, the Deacon attempts to flick a lit cigarette into an open oil tank, an act which could have instantaneous, catastrophic results were he successful.  The message is clearly that he is self-destructive, but there’s more.  By wantonly, thoughtlessly using up the Earth’s resources, we’re essentially lighting a spark that could destroy everything we hold dear too. 

“We outgrew it,” one Smoker says of the Exxon-Valdez, and indeed that’s precisely fear of many environmentalists.  What happens when we outgrow the planet’s capacity to sustain us?

This environment message is leavened some by the film’s many action sequences, which grow progressively less satisfying and less convincing as the film continues.  The opening battles on the sea and at the atoll are genuinely awe inspiring, and feature death-defying stunts.  By the end of the film, however, rear-projection and cartoony explosions dominate the proceedings and some element of reality is sacrificed.

So much of the popular press still terms  Waterworld  a bomb (though it eventually made back its budget and more), but this is hardly a terrible science fiction film.  Waterworld  may not be a truly great science fiction film, but nor is it the epitome of Hollywood disaster, as many still make it out to be. 

Waterworld’s  biggest problem, I submit, is that the film’s first half elaborately sets up a world and characters of tremendous interest, and then the last half spends all its time blowing things up, and resolving all the conflicts with fireballs and explosions.  In other words, it’s lot like many other examples of mainstream 1990s filmmaking.  And yet, the film doesn't open that way at all.  In fact,  Waterworld's  opening is a kind of brilliant "screw-you" to conventional  standards and decorum.  How many Hollywood blockbusters can you name that open with a shot of an established star, like Costner, pissing into a cup, refining his urine, and then drinking it?

And in terms of last shots,  Waterworld  finishes strong. The Mariner heads off to the next horizon and the next mystery.  Perhaps it’s the mystery of his very creation, or the mystery of the end of the world.  It’s kind of a shame we never got to see that second adventure. 

After all, Mad Max and The Man with No Man each got three attempts to get the equation right…

40 Years Ago: The Black Cauldron (1985)

The Black Cauldron  (1985), an animated epic fantasy film from Walt Disney Studios, boasts a long-standing reputation as a box office bomb.  

Reports indicate that the movie, now 40 years old, cost 44 million dollars to produce, and it recouped well under half that amount. 

The movie -- very loosely based on Lloyd Alexander’s award-winning  Chronicles of Prydain  pentalogy -- was also the subject of protracted battles in the editing room. The first PG-rated Disney cartoon,  The Black Cauldron  was also denied a home video release for many years after its theatrical engagement.  

The source of the pre-release conflict?  

The original cut was deemed too violent and much too dark, and roughly twelve minutes were excised from the final cut. Much of the trimmed material involved the final battle, and the deaths of the Cauldron-Born, creatures who are, essentially, skeleton zombies.  Studio executives were so concerned about the film's violence that its release date was pushed back from the Christmas season to the following summer.

Today -- some thirty years after  The Black Cauldron’s  release -- it’s difficult to understand what all the fuss was about.  

This film hardly seems any more violent than any other fantasy film, animated or live action, of the 1980s.  

In fact, in 21st century terms The Black Cauldron now seems like, well, a typical child's movie. It's a little goofy, a little scary, a little emotional and never less than entertaining.

Although the film’s villain, The Horned King remains menacing and effective, he is well-in-keeping with long-standing Hollywood movie villain tradition, which has provided audiences the Wicked Witch of the West, Darth Vader, and other iconic monsters that might accurately be termed “nightmare fodder.”

It’s a little strange to write about it in this fashion, but  The Black Cauldron  was for many years ahead of its time, and now, contrarily, perhaps time has finally caught up with it. Yet I believe it still carries relevant value as a work of art, however, because it pokes and prods at the very narrative structure it adopts.
And what is that structure?  

Well,  The Black Cauldron  is an example of the Monomyth, or the heroic journey. And as I've written before, this is the standard (and oft-repeated) mode of the fantasy genre today. Often to the genre's detriment.

But  The Black Cauldron  seems quite wary, or suspicious of the hero's journey paradigm, even as it apes it. And that embedded conflict signals a creative, imaginative and worthwhile way to tell this story.

In other words,  The Black Cauldron  looks to be your standard issue hero's journey movie, very much in keeping with  Star Wars  (1977),  The Dark Crystal  (1982), or  Krull  (1983).

Scratch the surface a bit, however, and one can see that the film is actually a critique -- or more accurately a rebuttal -- to this popular and pervasive story structure.



"No more dreaming."

A young assistant pig-keeper, Taran (Grant Bardlsey) dreams of being a great warrior, a great soldier who experiences untold adventures.  In real life, his master, an elder named Dallben (Freddie Jones) takes care of a pig, Hen Wen, who has been gifted with the power of prophecy.

When the pig foresees a future in which the Horned King sweeps across the land thanks to the Cauldron born -- an army of zombies -- it is decided that Taran must hide Hen Wen at a cottage on the edge of a forbidden forest.

Unfortunately, the dragon minions of The Horned King capture the pig, leaving Taran to partner with a strange little creature, Gurgi (John Byner), a minstrel (Nigel Hawthorne) and a beautiful princess, Eilonwy (Susan Sheridan) to rescue the precious animal and gain possession of the mystical black cauldron before The Horned King can harness its power.

Unfortunately, the cauldron is in possession of three sinister witches.



"We never give anything away. We bargain. We trade."

The Black Cauldron  is indeed a hero's journey story. It focuses on a young hero who must answer the call to adventure when he hears it. 

Young Taran -- much like Luke Skywalker -- dreams of escaping a life of drudgery, and becoming a great hero or soldier. He actively fantasizes about that life, so much so that he can't focus on the present, or the chores before him.  Instead he is called instead to his visions of majestic adulthood. At one point, Taran literally imagines himself as a knight in shining armor.

Taran is aided on his quest in the film by a mentor (Dallben), and a motley band of friends like Gurgi, Fflewddur Fllam, Eilonwy, and Hen Wen.  Not a one of them is particularly imposing, and yet they travel with Taran on his "road of trials," another crucial aspect of the Monomyth paradigm.  Before the movie's end, they must defeat the villain and make the return home.

As I've noted many times on the blog before, the Hero's Journey has been done to death. It's a 'universalist' concept used and re-used by many movies of the fantasy genre.  Sometimes it can serve as a short-cut to thinking, or innovation, or even imagination. 

Yet  The Black Cauldron  provides an intriguing twist on the material. In the typical Monomyth structure, the young hero rises, succeeds on his trials, receives the ultimate boon (the achievement of the quest) and brings peace to his people or land.

By contrast,  The Black Cauldron  doesn't appear to accept the idea that wars make for great heroes. 

Throughout the film, the screenplay pushes back hard against the very structure it utilizes. Taran is told, flat out, "war isn't a game. People get hurt." for example.  His fantasies of being a great warrior are thus revealed for what they are: childish, juvenile, or unrealistic dreams.  "Is the burning and killing still going on out there?" One character asks, caustically.

War, such dialogue informs us, is not some romantic, rarefied thing in which destinies are forged and heroes rise.  It is ugly. It hurts people.

Later, Taran must make a (bad) deal with the three witches that costs him one object of his quest: his magic sword.  

Again, consider that Luke Skywalker doesn't have to give up his father's light saber in the first  Star Wars . Colwyn doesn't trade his glaive to battle the Beast and save the world in  Krull  (1983).



Yet to accomplish his "heroic" mission, Taran must forsake the very tool that traditionally, marks him as a hero, and allows him to win wars.  He loses his weapon.  He loses his ability to win a fight.

But if you accept that war isn't a game, Taran's trade makes abundant sense. The film's climax follows that point rather explicitly. Taran is not allowed to die in a heroic sacrifice, nor win a victory with a weapon.  Instead, a silly, unimposing little creature, Gurgi -- ostensibly the film's comic relief -- steps up and sacrifices his life instead.  



Thus Taran's quest is resolved through no traditionally heroic deed of his own. Instead, his ability to make a friend is the thing that saved his world from the Horned King.  What he did right was not win a fight, but win a friend.

The antidote to evil, then, according to  The Black Cauldron  is not great strength, not battle training, and not combat.  

Instead, friendship is the key.  

People succeed against evil by making connections to one other.  This idea, actually, is replayed (and replayed well, despite conventional wisdom) in  The Phantom Menace  (1999), a film that features a seemingly foolish creature like Gurgi (named Jar-Jar Binks), who also provides a key link in a "symbiotic circle" of his world. Without Gurgi (or the Gungans, actually) the heroes on their respective journeys cannot succeed. 

Taran is not a great hero in the traditional or stereotypical sense. He is not a great fighter, especially without the gimmick of his magic sword (which he trades away).  He also is not a "Chosen One" with great inherent powers.  Instead, a special pig has the power of second sight, or prophecy.  The hero's special sight, in this case, has been transferred to livestock.

These notions have always struck me as being very anti-hero's journey in a significant sense. 

In terms of villains,  The Black Cauldron's  most powerful moments arrive in the careful enunciation of a subtext about this fantasy world, and about real world history too. 



A cauldron is not just a metal pot, after all, but a situation characterized by “instability and strong emotions.” The world depicted in the Disney film qualifies as being an example of such instability. 

The movie reveals a world in which there seems to be no established force for good, and no functioning infrastructure to stop the sinister plans of The Horned King.  Instead, this villain plans to use the cauldron, and revive the darkness of the past. The cauldron is the container that keeps alive the memory/soul of an evil king from that past. It is thus a repository for all the ingredients of mankind's history, ingredients that may yet endanger peace.  

So  The Black Cauldron  reminds us that the past is never really dead at all. 

Instead, it is always threatening to boil over, to spill into the present with dire consequences.  Old conflicts and hatreds -- prejudice, nativism, violence -- don't seem to truly disappear, only to hide for awhile before bubbling to the surface once more.  And the cauldron, we are explicitly informed, can never be destroyed; just like man's bloody past can never be truly expunged, either.

We have to go on living with that cauldron, just as we have to go on living with the mistakes of the past.  

That’s not a bad motif for a fantasy film, and many of  The Black Cauldron's  stirring, dark visuals, aid in telling of a story in which unlikely heroes rise to quell a new threat to the present. 

As I noted above, the film also makes a powerful point about sacrifice.  Here, a character who is not a great warrior -- nor even tall in stature -- saves the world out of friendship.

The typical monommyth or hero's journey gives us a hero (often selected by destiny or fate) to "answer the call" to adventure.   The Black Cauldron  features a hero's quest, all right, but the hero succeeds not by fighting, not by battle, and not by killing.  He thrives, instead, because of the friends he chooses to make.

It's difficult to understand why Disney saw that as such a "dark" concept back in 1985.  Friendship -- not war and strife -- says  The Dark Cauldron , is the proper antidote to darkness.

40 Years Ago: Explorers (1985)

Two movies wage a war for supremacy in Joe Dante’s  Explorers  (1985). 

One movie is a quasi-Spielberg film that lionizes childhood and pays tribute to the 1950s science fiction (and even no-science fiction) productions familiar to and beloved by baby boomers

The second film feels much more indicative of Dante’s creative approach and is an irreverent, subversive, film that depicts alien first contact by way of a Looney Tunes-like universe.

The problem with  Explorers  is that these two films and tones don’t fit together in the slightest.  

And since the film starts firmly in Spielberg mode, it is that mode which -- whatever its sentimental pitfalls -- should have carried the day.

However, the wonder, innocence and majesty of  Explorers ’ first half finds no purchase, no outlet and no resolution in the film’s disappointing third act. 

Even the film’s star, young Ethan Hawke, looks befuddled and dispirited by the alien stand-up comedy and rock-and-roll performance he must endure during the film’s movie-killing climax. 

The unspoken question roiling beneath Hawke’s expressive young face is one that all viewers of the 1985 film will share.  

We traveled all this way and fell in love with these characters…just for this?

For cut-rate, cartoon aliens doing bad imitations of Humphrey Bogart, Groucho Marx, Bob Hope and Desi Arnaz?

I first saw  Explorers  at the Royal Theater in Bloomfield, New Jersey, in 1985, when I was fifteen years old.  Even then, I understood a simple fact about the film’s drama and structure. The film’s trio of young protagonists -- so open, enterprising, imaginative, and full of hope -- deserved a journey that honored their good character.  They deserved an odyssey like the one Exeter teased in  This Island Earth  (1951) and which is excerpted explicitly in  Explorers . 
They deserved an opportunity to interface with a “vast universe…filled with wonders.” 

Instead, this triumvirate reached the stars only to find that even in space, it is impossible to escape TV reruns and baby-boomer nostalgia.

“I’m afraid my wounds can never be healed.”

Bullied at school, young Ben Crandall (Hawke) dreams of flying at night.  

One night, he dreams of flying over a landscape that transforms into a high-tech circuit board.  When Ben shares his notes about this dream with his friend, Wolfgang (River Phoenix) and they are put into a computer, Ben realizes that another intelligence is communicating with him.

Along with another boy, Darren (Jason Presson), who comes from “the wrong side of the tracks Ben and Wolfgang experiment with the alien technology, creating a force bubble that can mitigate forces of acceleration, gravity and inertia.

In other words, the bubble is a force-field of sorts, protecting any object or person that happens to be inside it.  Ben and the other boys resolve to build a spaceship, and visit the local junkyard to create a small craft, which they christen The Thunder Road. It is built from a Tilt-a-whirl.

After a second dream, which provides information about life-support inside their ship, Ben and the others take to the stars to visit their benefactors.  

They leave Earth, and a nosy police man (Dick Miller) behind, and travel to space to reckon with some very strange alien beings…

“It could be something we can’t even imagine.”

One brand of Spielberg’s aesthetic, as represented by  E.T.  (1982), and to a lesser extent,  Jaws  (1975),  Close Encounters  (1978),  Poltergeist  (1982),  Gremlins  (1984),  Invaders from Mars  (1986) and  Super 8  (2011), is clearly on view in  Explorers’  first two acts.  

Like some of those films, this one involves precocious but disillusioned youngsters who, through a surprising connection with the supernatural/paranormal, re-discover magic and wonder in their often-disappointing lives.  

As we have seen in some Spielberg films (and the films of his contemporaries), “this boy’s life” in  Explorers  is one in which the traditional middle-class family has failed the enterprising child. Darren’s mother is dead, and his father’s attentions are elsewhere, even though he lives in suburbia (also the setting of  E.T.  and others).  Ben, meanwhile, seems to live in a world where parents are absent.  At school, he is the victim of a bully named Jackson. These views of childhood can be compared with instances of parental death or divorce in  Super 8  and  E.T.,  respectively.

A key location in all these films is the central boy’s bedroom, a sanctuary which he decorates with products/items that reflect his imaginative nature. In this case, we see that Ben has a poster of  It Came from Outer Space  (1953) on his bedroom wall, and that his disk is littered with Marvel Comics.  And playing on the TV while he sleeps is George Pal’s  War of the Worlds . 

Thus we can extrapolate that Ben has escaped an unhappy (or at least unsatisfying) family life by escaping into his bedroom…and the fantasy worlds offered in popular entertainment.

Because Spielberg, Tobe Hooper, and Joe Dante are all boomers, they tend to imbue their adolescent characters with a love for older science fiction films, even though it is not, necessarily, a realistic quality. I was a kid at the same time as Elliott or Ben, or Billy (the 1970s-1980s), and I was into  Star Wars, Space:1999, Planet of the Apes  and  Star Trek,  not of the productions which get call-backs here:  The Thing  (1951),  The Day the Earth Stood Still  (1951),  War of the Worlds  (1953), and  Forbidden Planet  (1956).  I made it my mission to see all those films, of course, and I admire them all tremendously, but they were not bedroom poster-worthy to my generation, if that makes sense.

Therefore, it is not too difficult to understand that these tributes to older films -- in  E.T., Explorers  and the like -- represent the filmmakers’ reckoning with their own childhoods. They are re-imagining their own youth in these 1980s films, and that sometimes adds a self-indulgent quality to the art. It would be like me making a film about kids today, and decorating their bedrooms with  Space:1999  (1975 – 1977) or  Battlestar Galactica  (1978 – 1979) posters. Fun as an allusion? Sure.  Realistic? Not particularly.

Ironically, in terms of science fiction movies, the 1980s works of Spielberg and his contemporaries -- all of whom I admire very much -- actually represent a paradigm shift away from 1950s and 1960s genre works. 

In older films, like  Forbidden Planet  or even Kubrick’s  2001 , explorers in space and time voyage to the edge of reality, to the frontier, and are challenged to recognize new ideas there. By contrast, in some 1980s films brandishing the Spielberg aesthetic, explorers in space and time encounter the paranormal and find worlds and beings not that challenge their concept of the universe or their belief system, but that bring them emotional comfort; that reinforce their imaginative/fantastic belief systems. 

Elliott needs a friend, and E.T. teaches him how to connect to others. The kids in  Explorers  visit the stars, and meet there alien children who steal their father’s car/spaceship, and quake in fear from menacing parental figures. 

The message?  Kids and parents are alike all over.

The aliens’ reason for not visiting Earth in  Explorers  is even dramatized in terms of baby boomer cinema. The aliens show the human children a montage of humans treating aliens badly, including imagery from  20,000 Million Miles to Earth  (1967),  The Day The Earth Stood Still  (1951), and so on. The sub-textual message is that aliens can’t visit Earth because our parents ruined everything, just as they ruined our lives.

Accordingly,  Explorers  lionizes innocence…so much so that alien beings are not different creatures to reckon with, but mirrors that validate a childhood perspective on life.  It’s the Peter Pan syndrome. Also in the film, an older policeman, played by Dick Miller recalls that he once dreamed of going to the stars, but that those dreams receded as he grew up. Again, a message is wrought: adults need not apply for the magical  Explorers  space program. Only the very young, and the very innocent, may board this flight.

Apparently, in space we can only expect to meet beings who will fill our empty spots, not beings who will challenge us to grow, and evolve, and become better than we are.

Clearly, this idea can work beautifully, and even feel magical on occasion, as  E.T . and  Close Encounters  aptly demonstrate. They are great films. 

But  Explorers  seems to tread a step too far in the same direction, suggesting that imagination, tenacity, and optimism will be rewarded only with a world of perpetual boomer references or allusions, one where Ed Sullivan, Mr. Ed, Bugs Bunny and Tarzan are always on the tube, always repeating their greatest hits.   Explorers  reduces all the wonders of the universe to a closed-loop of 1950s nostalgia, and therefore undercuts the very message of great films like  Forbidden Planet,  or even  This Island Earth.    

The scenes here with the goofy, TV-quoting aliens, truly betray the film’s beautiful first half, which strikes a deep chord with me on a personal level in some regard. Specifically, much of the early portions of  Explorers  involve the building of a spaceship out of junk and spare parts. A tilt-a-whirl ride is the basis for the spaceship that Ben, Wolfgang, and Darren build, but other pieces are added on, and that little ramshackle spaceship is a wondrous thing: a manifestation of childhood imagination.

I remember very clearly when I was a young man, watching as two friends built -- out of whatever they could find -- a raft that they hoped to sail down a nearby river.  I remember seeing them in the neighborhood one day, spare parts on their backs, bags of snacks in their hands, as they prepared for the launch of their “ship.”  I don’t know if the raft ever proved sea worthy, but I have always remembered their joy at the possibility of building a vessel that could carry them…away, to the unknown.  

In ways profound and wondrous, the first half of  Explorers  captures that youthful feeling of assembling a dream; of building with your own hands a vehicle that could alter your destiny and carry you to new horizons. The early scenes in the film that find the youths experimenting with the alien force bubble and constructing their own ride to the stars remain magical, and meaningful. Indeed, they are so compelling, well-wrought and charmingly performed that the film’s final act plays as all the more disappointing.  If you watch the film closely, you can’t help but love Ben, Wolfgang and Darren.

The Thunder Road (the name of the ship, provided by Darren) and her crew ultimately deserved a journey of discovery and wonder, not one that found the final frontier was just…old TV.  

The promise -- as Ben clearly enunciates it -- is to “go where no man has gone before” (not just a TV reference, but a promise of new territory explored), and see something that humans “can’t even imagine,” something that could qualify as “the greatest thing ever.”

Ask yourself? Do the Looney Tunes alien fit the bill? As the greatest thing ever? As something unimaginable? 

If not, what could the aliens have looked like instead?  Perhaps they could have been being who understood that a dream is best when shared and when built, piece-by-piece with your own hands.  

In the film, Ben and Wolfgang (and eventually Lori and Darren) dream of the technology they need to touch the stars. They share a kind of “hive dream” universe, and yet the childish, bug-eyed aliens we meet in the finale don’t seem capable of having sent these dreams to them. That’s an important disconnect in the film.

Explorers  needed aliens who were more like teachers, or benevolent parents, perhaps, than like Bob Hope-quoting bug-eyed juveniles.  Why?  So Ben and the others would see that life wasn’t just disappointment after disappointment, but the possibility of them building a brave new world together.

Explorers  also hasn’t aged well in terms of its treatment of Lori (Amanda Peterson). I realize that the film is forty years old, but Lori is a virtual non-character in the film. She is a prize for Ben to “win” at the end of his adventure, and a character who never gets to ride in the Thunder Road, or visit the stars. 

Even when I was fifteen -- forty years ago -- I knew that was wrong. Girls dream big too and possess great imagination, so Lori should have been a major character in the film, not just Ben’s reward for reaching the stars. I trust the anticipated remake of the film will rectify this problem.

Before  Explorers,  Joe Dante was on something of a roll, having directed  Piranha  (1978),  The Howling  (1981), and  Gremlins  (1984), all terrific films in my estimation. I have read that  Explorers  went into production, however, without the team settling on an ending. I’m afraid that the absence of a carefully-plotted, coherent third-act shows. It handicaps the film. The film’s first half -- while soaked in Boomer self-indulgence -- nonetheless captures the wonders of childhood, and the amazing feeling of building your destiny, one spare part at a time.  The last half of the film, which wallows in pop culture kitsch, is a misstep for the ages.
To misquote Exeter from  This Island Earth , I’m afraid  Explorers’  inconsistent approach to its narrative is a grievous wound, one that “will never be healed.”

From the Archive: Superman: The Movie (1978)

Although blockbuster superhero films have come and gone by the dozen since the release of  Superman: The Movie  in 1978, the Richard Donner film remains, in my opinion, the best film of its type yet produced. 

I make this grand assertion in part because of the film’s layered visual symbolism, which intentionally and methodically equates the life-time journey of Kal-El/Superman with that of a messiah, or Christ figure. 

I make this assertion in part because the 1978  Superman  speaks meaningfully about its historical context: the Post-Watergate Age of the mid-1970s.  Specifically Superman is offered up to audiences as a positive role model, a kind of wish-fulfillment alternative for a country that appeared mired in partisanship, bickering, and corruption.  Superman’s promise that he would “never lie” to Lois (and to us) reflects this deep, burning national desire during the mid-1970s for a restoration of belief and trust in our elected leaders.

I make this assertion of greatness for  Superman: The Movie , as well, because of the film’s remarkable and epic three act, biographical structure, which actually permits for intense focus on the hero rather than the villain, an absolute rarity in a genre which has distinguished itself largely, by spotlighting ever-kinkier, ever-more perverse antagonists. 

By focusing on Clark Kent’s origin, upbringing, and adult life -- instead of the Lex Luthor’s genesis, for example –  Superman: The Movie  provides a perfect allegory for the American immigrant experience.  That experience, in short, is about coming to a land of opportunity, assimilating its cherished values, and then living those values at highest level possible.

Buttressed by a sincere, pitch-perfect lead performance by the late Christopher Reeve,  Superman: The Movie  is also that rarest of breeds: a superhero film that doesn’t wallow in troughs of human ugliness. 

Certainly, the Donner film doesn’t short-change or deny the tragic aspects of its hero’s life, such as the death of his parents and destruction of his world, Krypton.  Yet nor does  Superman: The Movie  make the grievous, depressing determination that after such a personal tragedy occurs, angst, depression, revenge, and darkness are the only emotions a hero can possibly face, feel, and act upon. 

A real hero can still choose to take to the skies instead of lurking in the shadows, or seething in the dark of night. 

Superman: The Movie  concerns a hero who faces tremendous adversity, to be sure.  Superman is a man without a nation (or planet) and a man without a biological family of origin.  And yet his response to such troubles is not to burrow inward and become twisted by hate.  His response is -- simply -- to be kind, to be “a friend” to those who need him; to those who also face adversity.  Because he is strong (physically) Superman can protect those who are like him…but who cannot protect themselves.  This kind of selflessness is, in my opinion, the very quality that should epitomize a superhero, but rarely does in the cinema.

I don’t believe that heroes -- let alone super heroes -- can truly be born through rage, victim hood, or revenge.  Rather, those are the unfortunate qualities of human life to overcome and surpass, not the qualities to dictate the shape of a meaningful and purposeful life.    

Superman: The Movie  perfectly embodies this aesthetic. 

Through the dedicated application of visual symbolism and a literate screenplay that focuses on its hero,  Superman: The Movie  continues to speak to the better angels of human nature, even today.  Although the film’s special effects have certainly aged in the intervening three-and-a-half decades since its theatrical release, the Donner film’s soulful humanity yet resonates and inspires.

An act of revenge may satisfy blood lust temporarily.  But when a superhero soars above us and represents the best of human qualities, the sky is really the limit.    Superman: The Movie  embodies that principle, and makes us all believe a man can fly.

“ I'm here to fight for truth, and justice, and the American way.”

On the distant, highly advanced world of Krypton, a great scientist, Jor-El (Marlon Brando) warns of imminent planetary disaster, but is ignored.   As disaster and death loom, Jor-El sends away his young son, Kal-El, on a multi-year space voyage to Earth.  There, the boy will grow up with incredible powers, courtesy of Earth’s yellow sun. But he will also grow up isolated and alone…the last of his breed.

On Earth, young Kal-El crashes in rural Kansas.  There, he is adopted by farmers, Jonathan (Glenn Ford) and Martha Kent (Phyllis Thaxter), and raised as their son, Clark Kent (Jeff East). As Clark matures, he resents the fact that he must always hide his powers away from humans.  But after his Earth father dies from a heart attack, Clark decides to pursue a grand destiny.  He heads north and creates, from Kryptonian crystal, a Fortress of Solitude where he can learn about himself and his world.

After twelve years of study, Clark (Reeve) emerges from the Fortress as “Superman,” a caped hero who can fight crime. He heads to Metropolis, where -- as Clark Kent -- he works as a reporter at the Daily Planet.  He soon falls in love with another reporter, Lois Lane (Margot Kidder), but soon learns that she has eyes only for Superman.

When the villainous Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), launches a deadly real estate scheme to destroy the west coast of America, Superman confronts the twisted genius.  Unfortunately, Luthor has discovered the only substance on Earth that can harm the Man of Steel: a rock from his destroyed world, or Kryptonite…

“The single most important interview since God talked to Moses…”

Unusually,  Superman: The Movie  embodies three distinctive settings and movements in its final cut.  The first segment or section takes place on distant Krypton, the second in 1950s Kansas, and the third in Metropolis of the 1970s. 

By my critical reckoning, the first “act” or segment of the film concerns Heaven, the second concerns the discovery of a home and humanity, and the third involves achievement of destiny.

Superman: The Movie’s  religious imagery remains most powerful in the Kryptonian segment, but continues throughout the picture (and indeed, in  Superman II  [1981] and even  Superman Returns  [2006].) 

But let’s discuss Krypton first.  It is a world of radiant, glowing white, a world that, literally, symbolizes Heaven.  When we first see Krypton, we pass through a layer of white mist, which suggests, visually, clouds in Earth’s sky.  In other words, we are moving beyond the Earth and firmament into the realm of the Angels.

Here the Kryptonians gather, led by the God-like Jor-El, whose surname, El means “deity” in Hebrew.

In his first order of business, Jor-El casts out the insurrectionist Zod, who is clearly a stand-in for a similar insurrectionist against God, Lucifer.  Zod and his minions are sent into a kind of living Hell, the “Phantom Zone,” for their crimes.

Following this removal of “evil” from Paradise or Heaven, Jor-El and his world face another, equally unexpected threat: a natural disaster that could destroy it totally. Jor-El’s entreaties to evacuate Krypton are ignored and silenced, and the radiant, formerly-white, heavenly realm turns scarlet red under the increasing light of the Red Sun. In Scripture, scarlet or crimson colors signify suffering, worry, fear and blood, the very opposite of the “purity” and “sanctification” that once represented Krypton’s ideal society.

Jor-El, the “God” figure, then sends his “only son” to Earth, to aid mankind, in a deliberate reflection of John 3:16:  "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Kal-El then travels to Earth in a spaceship that some suggest resembles the Star of Bethlehem itself.  He lands in Kansas and becomes the adopted child of Jonathan and Martha Kent. Certainly, there is a trenchant comparison to be made here between Jonathan and Joseph, and Martha and Mary.  They are not, strictly speaking, biological parents of a messiah, but rather instructors in humanity.  

Then, as if to cement the comparison of Kal-El to Jesus Christ, the character is seen -- as a young boy -- standing in a crucifixion-type pose, his arms outstretched.  This signifies, of course, that he is to become the messiah, and perhaps face scorn, even, for his sacrifices (as we see in later movies).
As Superman, Kal-El performs acts that -- in keeping with the Jesus Christ comparison -- are quite miraculous.  He can travel faster than a locomotive, leap higher than a skyscraper, and deflect bullets.  He also explicitly states that he “never lies,” a comment which conforms to the post-Watergate reading of the film, but also the religious allegory.  Where Superman will never “lie” to Lois, Jesus noted that there was “no deceit” in his mouth (Isaiah 53:9) and that “I tell you the truth” (John 8:45).

What’s the point of the religious allegory?  I suppose it is largely, that when a God or a messiah walks among men, he inspires men to be better.  That’s Superman’s gift too.  While he must also face “diseased maniacs” like Lex Luthor, Superman’s very existence proves that a man can live up to ideals like justice for all, or even, on a basic level, honesty towards his peers.  The closing shot of the film see Superman break the fourth wall and cast his eyes upon us, in the audience.   When this man-above-men gazes upon us, he reminds us, too, that we can do the things he does.  We can be friends and heroes to the weak, even if we lack Superman’s otherworldly powers.

Krypton is Heaven.  Casting out the Insurrectionists to the Hell of "The Phantom Zone."
Heaven becomes Hell.
And Jor-El gives to mankind his only begotten son...
Kal-El, on Earth, stretches out his arms, in crucifix position.
The most visually beautiful segment in  Superman: The Movie , I find, is the second or middle one.  This section is set in Kansas, under Big American Sky, and it captures beautifully a Norman Rockwell (1894 – 1978) quality. 

As you may recall, Rockwell often painted imagery of small town life, and his work frequently asked the critical question: what does it mean to be an American?  Such works as Freedom of Speech (1943), The Problem We all Live with (1964), Runaway (1958) and Homecoming Soldier (1945) all focused, laser-like on the idea of the American dream, the American community, and, in some instances, the effort to achieve true social justice for all.  Law and order, heroism, prejudice, and other America-centric topics all found expression in Rockwell’s catalog.

As an immigrant living in America, Kal-El thus gets a lesson in Rockwell-ian Americana in the film’s second movement, and I feel that this view – while undeniably sentimentalized – represents what is best about our nation.  The powerful imagery of windswept wheat fields, of white church steeples, and of productive family farms suggests a simple, honest, corn-fed life of upstanding moral values.  Those values of “truth, justice and the American way” are crucial in forming Superman’s bedrock psyche.  He is not a biological child of America, but through his adoption of our land he understands the value of hard (physical) work, and the value of honesty and truth.  Best of all, he understands something else critical about the American dream: the idea that in America it is not the color of your skin or your land of origin that should matter most. 

Rather, it’s what you do here -- right now -- to contribute to the common good that weighs the heaviest. 

Superman’s story is thus the story of immigrants in America since time immemorial, and it’s no coincidence, I submit, that Superman soon takes Lois on a flight around the Statue of Liberty, an icon welcoming immigrants to our shores.  If Lois is his real life love, then Lady Liberty -- and by extension, America, --represent Superman’s other significant romance.

The scenes set in Kansas purposefully contrast with those set on Krypton, which represented, in a sense, cold intellect as opposed to warm, human heart.. This is significant because the Kryptonians ultimately lost their world because of intellectual arrogance. Clark cannot let the same fate befall his adopted home world.

Big Sky, Rockwell America.
More Big Sky, Rockwell America.
And more.
An immigrant visits Lady Liberty.
The third and final portion or segment of  Superman: The Movie  concerns America of the movie’s present (meaning 1978).  The Watergate Scandal had recently toppled a President, and America’s heroes of the day were two committed reporters, Woodward and Bernstein.  

Given the public’s dislike of the corporate press today, it is indeed difficult indeed to imagine a time when reporters were widely viewed as ideal protectors of American freedom, but that was indeed the case in the mid-1970s, the same era that gave us investigative reporter Carl Kolchak on  The Night Stalker . 

The idea featured here, in both  Superman  and  Kolchak , is that the truth matters more than power.  A reporter could -- armed with the freedom of the press -- fight City Hall, and expose City Hall as corrupt. Even a President was not above the law. 

In  Superman: the Movie , Clark thus takes on two noble professions: that of a dedicated journalist, and that of a superhero.  It likely says something about how cynical we’ve become today that we can’t imagine a journalist being an advocate for unbiased, non-partisan truth.

That quote from Superman that I mentioned earlier, “I’ll never lie to you,” not only represents religious allegory then, but political allegory as well. Those words represent a direct quote from then-President Jimmy Carter, who spoke identical words to a scandal-weary American populace in 1976.

As a nation, we were disappointed with our elected leadership, and were searching for a "new hope." As a people, we no longer believed that a man could fly, metaphorically-speaking. Hell, we didn't even believe that our leaders were "good" or "honest." The public faith was broken. But Superman was the real deal...the genuine article. Not only was he good, he actually brought out the best in the people around him.  When he informs Lois that he wants to fight for truth, justice, and the American way, she scoffs at the cliche, warning that he’ll have to fight every elected official in the country.  But Superman boasts a quality that can change everything: the power to inspire.

Lois Lane, as portrayed by Margot Kidder, thus proves a perfect sparring partner for Superman and Clark in  Superman: The Movie  because she is so deliberately "of" this fast-moving, cynical culture in a way he definitively is not. And yet despite her cynicism, Lois is still absolutely taken with Superman.  This is so, I believe, because all of us - no matter how jaded -- still want very much to believe in "truth, justice and the American way."

In the age of  Superman: The Movie  (1978), reporters were national heroes.
Clark as latter-day Woodward or Bernstein.
He'll never lie to you...Christopher Reeves' Superman is the ultimate fish-out-of-water: a principled man living in an unprincipled time. Yet despite this fact, he commits himself to being the savior of this tough, cynical world. It’s a world that some might say doesn't even deserve Superman.  But this Man of Steel reveals that it is not a weakness to be gentle, and not a character flaw to be kind, or honest. A real hero doesn't need to swagger, or be a misanthropic "loner.”

Instead, this is a visitor who is amused and puzzled by mankind. He can be strong and idealistic and baffled all at the same time. He can be sincere without being a wimp.

Accordingly the crises featured in  Superman: The Movie  are authentically human rather than special effects spectaculars. Over the course of the film, Clark loses two fathers (Jor-El and Jonathan Kent), bids farewell to his Mother, searches for the purpose of his life in the Fortress of Solitude, falls in love with a flawed "modern" human being (Lois) and embraces the stated traditional principles of his adopted country.

And when he angrily violates Jor-El's "non-interference" directive during the film's climax to turn back time to rescue Lois, Superman proves he is no longer a child of cold, emotionless Krypton ...but a real child of America. It's a great character-arc. 

I always find it ironic that superhero movies of recent vintage slather on one villain after the other. Some movies even boast three super-villains for a superhero to combat.  The implication, of course, is that evil is more interesting, dramatically, than good is; that excavating someone who is evil is intrinsically more interesting than examining someone who struggles to do good.   Superman: The Movie  reverses that equation. 
This is the very reason why the film is still held up as a paragon of the form by many, or at least counted among the ten best superhero films ever made.  The Donner film’s focus is squarely on the man wearing the cape, not the freak in the grease paint, or the bald maniac. The film may compare Superman to a messiah, but in the Man of Steel, we can all see, too, the potential to achieve our very best self. 

40 Years Ago: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Before he was simply Hollywood's modern-day "Mad Mel," Australian actor Mel Gibson was genre cinema's Mad Max, a futuristic hero and "man with no name" dwelling in an apocalyptic, and then, finally, post-apocalyptic world.  

In terms of narrative structure, the three  Mad Max  films of the 1970s-1980s ( Mad Max  [1979],  The Road Warrior  [1981] and  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome  [1985]) chart an interesting and highly artistic parallel trajectory. 

Both human civilization itself and Max's original persona as a decent family man collapse at approximately the same time, in the violent, emotionally-searing  Mad Max . 

Then, in the absence of law and morality arises much chaos and violence ( Road Warrior ). Oil is scarce.  The law fails. Nobody trusts anybody on the desolate highways of the future, and survival -- not morality -- proves paramount. Max loses much of his humanity in this world, but manages to hold onto a kernel of it.    

Finally -- at last -- the process of re-building and achieving redemption begin in earnest in  Beyond Thunderdome,  both for the individual man, Max, and for all of mankind too There is hope. Civilization starts again, and it lights the way home for the road warriors...

It's a terrific  story/character arc, played ably and movingly across three very strong and memorable genre films.

Yet  Mad Max  fans still debate with passion which film in the action-packed trilogy from George Miller (and the late Byron Kennedy) remains the finest. Like many, I prefer the middle part of the trilogy, the absolutely unsentimental, unrelenting  The Road Warrior,  by a wide margin. 

When I reviewed that film, I called it "one of the ten great action films of the last thirty years," and highly commended "the aura of danger, anxiety and uncertainty" in the landmark, "startling" effort. 

I still feel the same way.  The Road Warrior  was one of those rare theatrical experiences (not unlike  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre  or  Last House on the Left)  in which  actively-engaged audience members felt there was a real danger they might be see something truly unpleasant, or decorum-shattering, on screen. The movie felt downright dangerous.

Interestingly, critics and audiences tend to be sharply divided on the (for now...) final entry in the pantheon,  Beyond Thunderdome . Critics, including the late Roger Ebert, praise the third film extravagantly, whereas audiences seem markedly less enthusiastic about this 1985 effort.  

I understand the reasons for both reactions, and in some ways,  Beyond Thunderdome  is a sharply schizophrenic film.

On the one hand,  Beyond Thunderdome  is a movie that vividly creates a unique and highly-cinematic world -- Bartertown -- and then memorably populates that environment with an entourage of fascinating, flamboyant characters . 

These include the sexy villain, Aunty Entity (Tina Turner), and her strange, colorful entourage. These retainers possess memorable names such as Scrooloose, Dr. Dealgood, The Collector, and Ironbar, and this element adds to the film's sense of  fun, and wickedness.


Commendably,  Thunderdome  also treats this one-of-a-kind world with a witty -- but not cheesy--  sense of humor, at least starting out. Even the film's dialogue in the first act is unexpectedly, unremittingly sharp.  

"You can shovel shit, can't you?"

That's all really good stuff for the film reviewers to chew on and ponder, no doubt.  And as  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome  kicks in with a jolt, the pop tune by Tina Turner promises a good, dark, pacey excursion into a world we've been to before, only on a grander, more epic, more edgy scale.

But audiences -- especially those who are fans of the earlier films -- may still end up upset or disappointed with this third film because it very obviously assimilates Mad Max into the Hollywood mainstream action mold. 

Suddenly, the lone warrior of the wasteland is encountering cute, resourceful kids, fighting cartoony villains (like the aforementioned, apparently unkillable Ironbar) and even playing the white knight. That last bit (the white knight act) is a critical part of the overall story arc: Max's step-by-step return to the world of "humanity," and, yes, it must exist. By the end of the Mad Max cycle, we understand, Mad Max must no longer be "mad."

Yet it's still hard to escape the impression that -- in the Darwinian world depicted in  The Road   Warrior --  the Mad Max (and attached kids) we encounter in  Thunderdome  would simply not survive. 

And Aunty Entity would not retain control of Bartertown for long were she to -- in full view of her battle-hardened troops -- let Max survive after their final clash.  It's not just that Aunty's decision to let Max live feels like an anti-climax when we desperately desire a stirring action scene; it's that it doesn't ring entirely true with what's been established before.

And so this movie just feels...softer than the previous pictures.

So, you can sense the problem with  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.   The first act is stellar, imaginative, even caustic post-apocalyptic nirvana.  The last act is pro forma Hollywood nonsense.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times termed Beyond Thunderdome "the most visually spectacular installment by far, with a few innovations - notably the one of the title - that are far more elaborate than anything George Miller, the director, has attempted before...So if it eventually steers Max into the midst of a tribe of primitive children who regard him as their savior, it can easily be forgiven. This film has showier stunts than its predecessors, and a better sense of humor. It also has Tina Turner, in chain-mail stockings."
That paragraph really gets at the central conflict of  Beyond Thunderdome . 

Redemption comes in the end for Max, "the raggedy man" who chooses sacrifice over belonging (as possible payment for his spell as an amoral wanderer in the wasteland). But what about redemption for the movie?  It clearly forsakes its predecessors sense of driving pace, and unromantic view of the human species for a happy ending. 

Is this simply the result of narrative closure, and function of the story arc?  Or is it a flaw that keeps the movie from fully satisfying those who began the journey with  Mad Max?



Welcome, to another edition of Thunderdome!

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome  finds former policeman and family man Max (Gibson) wandering in a seemingly endless desert, driving a team of camels on his converted automobile...now no more than an old-fashioned wagon. 

A plane dives from the sky and unseats Max from his vehicle.  The plane's pilot, Jedidiah (Bruce Spence), jumps into the driver's seat and rides away, leaving Max behind.

Max survives and heads to Bartertown, a nearby outcropping of "civilization" in the desert.  He hopes to find Jedidiah and re-claim his property, but instead becomes the pawn of Auntie Entity (Tina Turner), Bartertown's benefactor. 

In particular, Entity wants the "King Arab" of the town's energy-producing facility, "Underworld" dead for his repeated attempts to assert authority over her and "embargo" the town's energy. But killing Master (Angelo Rossitto) is harder than it sounds because he is protected by a body guard, the hulking "Blaster."

Auntie strikes a deal with Max to kill Blaster inside the town's arena, a "hall of justice" called "Thunderdome." Max wins the battle, but finds that Blaster suffers from Down Syndrome and possesses "the mind of a child."  Holding on to his code of ethics, Max refuses to kill Blaster, and is -- for "busting a deal"  -- sent into the wilderness on a horse, gulag-style.

In the desert, a tribe of orphan children find Max and worship him as their lost leader, Captain Walker. These "Waiting Ones" believe that Max can lead them home to civilization, to the city, but are in for a disappointment when Max tells them the truth;  that nothing of mankind's previous civilization remains intact. 

When a group of children led by Savannah Nix (Helen Buday) make the trek into the wilderness anyway, Max must rescue them, and, once again, survive the dangers of Bartertown. 

In the months and years following Max's rescue of the children, Savannah and the survivors of "The Waiting Ones" remember men like Max...hoping that they too will return to civilization at last.


"I know you won't break the rules, because there aren't any."

One arena where you can't fault George Miller and George Ogilvie's  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome  is in the creation of an intriguing, visually-distinguished, post-apocalyptic world. 

From the film's first aerial shot (looked to be lensed from low planetary orbit, so you can actually see the curve of the Earth...) to the first reveal of Bartertown (a swooping Louma crane shot...) and beyond, this sequel is vetted in extraordinary and dazzling visual fashion.  

The imagination and ingenuity of the production designer, Graham Walker, is on full-display throughout.  And cinematographer Dean Semler captures all the details -- both droll and dirty -- with aplomb.

What remains special about this  Mad Max  world is how it effortlessly seems both funny and realistic.  The entrance way to Bartertown, for instance is a crowded tunnel where "The Collector" greets newcomers and assesses their skills, followed by a weapons drop-off point. 

After that pit stop, it's daylight...into pandemonium.  There's the humorously named "Atomic Cafe," a peddler hawking fresh water ("what's a little fall-out?"), the "House of Good Deals," and towering over everything, the imposing, palatial residence of Aunty Entity.

Oh, and there's a little place called Thunderdome, a stadium that has entered the American pop culture vernacular in a permanent way (referenced on  Mystery Science Theater 3000  and in other productions.) 

You already know the rules....there aren't any.  Two men enter...one man leaves.  

But Thunderdome is fascinating for two reasons. First, the "why" behind its very existence in Bartertown is compelling: the survivors of this world's nuclear apocalypse realized that killing leads to warring and that warring was "damn near the end of us all."  

So here -- perhaps wisely -- violence is limited to this one, awful place. Beyond it, blood lust has no place in Bartertown.  Allegedly, anyway.

The second scintillating aspect of Thunderdome is the orchestration of Max's fight inside it.  The combatants are strung-up on elastic bands and fight in mid-air, reaching for weapons (such as chainsaws and mallets) at the upper apex of the dome. So Max and his opponent, Blaster, whirl, fly, bounce, dip and spin in battle, and it's pretty exciting stuff.  Not to mention staggeringly original.

This is how Time Magazine critic Richard Schickel described the locale: "Thunderdome is both hall of justice and cultural center for Bartertown, presided over by Aunty Entity (Tina Turner), purring like a tiger and claiming she has created civilization's highest flowering since nuclear devastation. Indeed she has, if an imitation of late 20th century city life--all junk, improvisations and random brutality--is your idea of civilization. Thunderdome brilliantly clarifies that irony. Its high-bounding excesses of action simultaneously satisfy and satirize the passion for heedless viciousness that so profoundly moves the action film's prime audience, urban adolescent males."

In other words, the Thunderdome setting provides both the setting for a fantastic, inventive action sequence and a context for some social commentary on our world in the 1980s; the world in which  American Gladiators  was later born; a world in which action stars such as Stallone and Schwarzenneger were tops at the box office. 

Late in the Thunderdome sequence, Max is introduced to another compelling element of Bartertown's law: The Wheel. As in, "Bust a Deal, Face the Wheel."    

Here, Max faces random justice in front of a giant spinning wheel that satirizes in shape and form the titular  Wheel of Fortune  (1983 - present) from the popular TV game show with Pat Sajak and Vanna White. Only here the selections on the wheel are matters of life and death: Gulag, hard labor, acquittal, death, Aunty's Choice, forfeit goods, etc. 

"Justice is only a roll of the dice...a turn of the wheel," stresses Dr. Dealgood, importantly. Once more, I should stress that this legal system makes perfect if perverse sense, given the circumstances.  

The "survivors" in this world didn't make it because they were smart...they survived the apocalypse because of luck. Even Aunty Entity acknowledges this fact...she was nobody until the apocalypse made her somebody. The people of Bartertown believe that fickle fate accounts for their survival and continuance, and the Wheel is a kind of legal expression of that fickle sense of fate or destiny.

In toto, the early scenes in  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome  -- at Bartertown -- reveal much of value about human nature. Aunty Entity wants complete and total control of the town, and is unwilling to share it with Master in the Underworld. One can certainly understand why: he's capricious and enjoys her public humiliation. 

Still, it's difficult to claim the mantel of civilization in one breath while ordering a hit on "family" the next, as Max points out to Aunty.   

But thematically, there's something important going on here.  As one character states in the film, "no matter where you go; there you are."  Mankind -- no matter his aspirations; no matter his new forms of government -- remains the same breed; the same ambitious animal. Even after a world-war and wholesale destruction of the planet surface, Bartertown is still a savage place.

Everything about  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome's  first act is filled with invention: the location, the camera-work, the nature of Aunty's entourage, the social commentary, and even the significance of Max's role as the outsider (the film literally compares him to Eastwood's "man with no name" at the inception of the Thunderdome fight).  

These are the reasons why critics adore the film. And in addition to all these accomplishments, the movie also achieves a difficult balance in terms of the sequel format:  Thunderdome  spins new and interesting territory out of the franchise world rather than simply recycling and revisiting familiar elements from it.

It's the Story of Us All...

But something goes dramatically wrong in  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome's  final act.  The movie's intellectual, harsh-minded tone gives way to a sort of Hollywood-ish blockbuster mind-set which stresses easy humor and pat solutions over invention and social commentary. 
Cute kids dressed as native warriors take center stage, and the movie attempts to derive humor from their misunderstanding of pre-apocalypse technology (like phonograph records).   his is the "Ewok Paradigm" that also, to some extent, scuttled  Return of the Jedi  (1983), though admittedly on a lesser scale.
What's the problem? Well, again, it's all about tone. Suddenly Mad Max is a figure of fun and humor, running into a hallway of armed goons, and then running back in the opposite direction towards camera  (like Han Solo on the Death Star in  Star Wars ). Or worse, punching a bad guy through a vent grate in a moment timed for broad comedy instead of thrills and intensity.
Suddenly, bad guys are getting decked with pots and pans by crockery-wielding tykes. And a dark, monstrous bully-figure like Ironbar morphs before our eyes into a live-action Wily Coyote, surviving deadly incident after deadly incident unscathed until all sense of reality around the character bleeds away, sacrificed for callow, crowd-pleasing visual jokes (like an upturned middle finger as his last gesture of defiance). 
There are some folks who dislike the latter half of  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome  simply because of the presence of cute children in the action, and I understand that objection.  Again, looking back to  The Road Warrior,  there was an absolutely unsentimental and brilliant child character: the Feral Kid.  The movie did not play favorites with him, sentimentalize or romanticize him in any way.  He was simply a wild child who grew up in a terrible world and who befriended Max.
Beyond Thunderdome  works hard to earn the presence of these children in this particular chapter.  One child even dies in the film, devoured by a sandstorm in the desert. And I understand why the moviemakers wanted children here in the first place: to represent our future; our tomorrows.
But the children have a whimsical way of speaking that feels tonally out-of-place ("Tomorrow-orrow Land,"), and the movie resorts to squeezing gags out of these children (like learning French, or learning how to drive a car) and it's all just too damn cute.
"Cute" is the last thing that fans of  The Road Warrior  were seeking in a sequel.
Again, I get it.  It's about redemption. It's about Max -- who lost a child himself -- coming to the defense of other children. In that act (and in his final sacrificial move in battle...), Max finally returns to the human race. I appreciate that arc very much; but wish that the obvious humor and terminal cutesies had been more studiously avoided. The same story could have been vetted in less schmaltzy terms. It's the tone of the thing; not necessarily the story itself that I object to.
And alas, it isn't just the presence of cute children that feels like a bow to Hollywood mainstream entertainment in  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome's  final act, it is also the very resolution of the drama.  A railway line conveniently runs out of Bartertown so Max and the children can escape by train, and then the film provides a thoroughly conventional car chase-styled action scene, with the train at the center of the action. This feels like a very, very pale retread of the blazing, sustained tanker truck pursuit at the end of  The Road Warrior. 
Once more, a point of contrast:  The Road Warrior's  tanker battle absolutely refused to play favorites. The film's female lead character, played by  Farscape's  gorgeous   Virginia Hey, died ingloriously in that hair-raising, exciting sequence.  There was just no sentimentality. 
But in  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,  kids survive a similar assault by heroically wielding iron cooking pans against ruthless, amoral soldiers. It just feels...wrong. Would this technique have worked against Humongous?
On one hand, you don't want a sequel (or a sequel to a sequel, in this case) to repeat everything from the previous film, but the final battle of  Beyond Thunderdome  feels like  Road Warrior -lite.  Or more appropriately,  The Road Warrior  re-fashioned for mass, Hollywood-consumption.
In its last twist -- a return to the destroyed 20th century city --  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome  recovers some from the battle's misstep.  This moment has a valedictory, tragic feel.  
Re-building our civilization must begin, and here we detect the first steps; as well as the romantic, hopeful act of lighting candles to bring the desert warriors back. 
It's a nice, emotional closing touch that suggests an optimistic future,  but yet -- again -- it's hard to deny that the Feral Kid's closing narration (as an old man) in  The Road Warrior  achieves the same goal, only with words instead of images.
Also -- and I realize some people with quibble with me on this -- is it right that Max brings down Bartertown at all?  I think this is a debatable point.  
As bad as it surely is, Bartertown is still the best thing going in this post-apocalyptic world. Violence is limited to the Thunderdome, and there is law there...as well as commerce.  Order has been carved out of chaos; even if it isn't perfect.
Would it not have been better for Max to somehow bring some checks and balances to the place, so it wasn't simply a tyranny?  (And really, isn't that what Master Blaster offered in Underworld in the first place?)  
Going back to our own antiquity, would we cheer a hero in early human culture who brought down the first civilization, even if it did boast a "draconian" code or sense of justice?  I don't think so.  Even imperfect steps towards civilization can be vital ones.
The destruction of Bartertown in the film has never rung true to me. Who is to say that Savannah Nix and her brood -- living in a burnt-out shell of a building -- aren't going to be forced to navigate issues of law and order, justice and punishment too? Will their answers be better than Auntie Entity's?  More humane? Less pragmatic? The movie never really answers that question in satisfactory fashion; it just uses the symbol of children to suggest innocence and a better tomorrow.
So how do you assess a film with an absolutely brilliant first act and a relatively derivative, by the numbers, Hollywood last act?  Well, "this is the truth of it:"  the movie works more often than not; and succeeds more so if you consider it as the final, closing act of a grand trilogy.  There has to be a wrap-up, and it has to be satisfactory (meaning - happy).  We get that in  Beyond Thunderdome , even if we don't necessarily want the closure. 
So in  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome  audiences get one of the greatest, most imaginative fight scenes in recent decades, and a fitting conclusion to a terrific post-apocalyptic saga.  The downside is that audiences also get cute kids, and Hollywood-styled, crowd-pleasing humor.
Do you want the deal or not?

Guest Post: The Drop (2025)

Getting The Drop on Meghan Fahy

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen 

The Drop, a new thriller directed by Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day), lifts storylines from a slew of films, classics like Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and Wes Craven’s Red Eye, to entertaining schlock like the Doris Day shocker Midnight Lace. Landon has a strong sense of tension and keeps this film entertaining despite well worn material. But it’s Meghan Fahy, who stole scenes in White Lotus’ season two, who keeps audiences riveted. 

Violet (Fahy) ventures onto a blind date for the first time since her husband’s death with Henry, a handsome photographer (Brandon Sklenar). She starts the evening apprehensive and hopeful, mingling with the bartender (Gabrielle Ryan), the unctuous restaurant pianist (Ed Weeks), and other desperate diners, until her date arrives. The evening would have been wonderful, except for the messages bombarding her phone challenging her to play a game. Violet ignores these annoyances until the anonymous stranger demands she kill her date. Her terrorizer appears to have eyes and ears everywhere, and as wily as Violet can get, the harasser appears several steps ahead, and with an armed accomplice inside HER house, with her sister and son. 

Landon, who has taken the tropes of other films like Groundhog Day and Freaky Friday and reinvented them as horror comedies like Happy Death Day and Freaky, doesn’t pervert the genre as much this time. The plot points are rather standard, which is a bit disappointing. To be fair, he didn’t write Drop, unlike the others. Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach of Fantasy Island and Truth or Dare, two horror duds, had.  Maybe had Landon rewritten the film it would have that sense of something radical. As a director, Landon successfully builds  Hitchcockian tension: a character isolated in a crowded room, long camera moves up to heaven as if god is omniscient but impotent to help. He also achieves a manipulation of sound and of silence to tweak the pressure. 

Fahy is always so likable and here she has the audience completely in her corner, praying for her safety. The cast is charming, with comedian Jeffery Self riotous as the waiter with no sense of personal space. Once they are revealed, the glib villain makes you want to reach through the screen and throttle them, making their eventual downfall all the more delicious. 

In the last year, Christopher Landon has taken single duties in films.  He only wrote Heart Eyes, and only directed this.  Since those films where he has complete control are his most entertaining and successful, perhaps he needs to return to double dipping

40 Years Ago: Back to the Future (1985)

Do you want go back in time? Well, just consider,  Back to the Future  is 40 years old! Now that fact will take you back!
Yet it’s an appropriate thought with which to commence this review, because  Back to the Future  and its sequels concern the subject of family, and the inexorable passage of our generations, the passage of time.

Specifically, the trilogy involves the cycle of falling in love, marrying, and raising children. 

Whether we are riding horses or hover boards, the things that matter remain identical, no matter the calendar year. 

To quote Huey Lewis and the News, that’s the “power of love,” right?  

It’s the universal condition that exists regardless of our historical epoch or specific technological know-how.

Intriguingly, Back to the Future’s leitmotif is not a common one, either, for a Hollywood-made time travel film. 

Historically, movies about time travel concern bigger, more “event”-oriented issues. 

What if a man went to the future and discovered the end of the human race? That was the subject of  The Time Machine  (1960), for example.  

Or what if the U.S. aircraft carrier Nimitz went back in time to the hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor, in 1941 and its crew had the chance to turn the tide of the war on the day it began? That was the subject of  The Final Countdown  (1980).

Back to the Future  differs from the vast majority of time travel movies because of the stakes. The danger suggested by mission failure, simply, is not Earth shattering. 

What’s at stake instead is a personal apocalypse, the “negation” of one’s self because the right prospective family members didn’t connect in the past, and therefore didn’t forge the present that makes you…you.

The danger in all three  Back to the Future  films is of time being rewritten in a fashion, that, broadly-speaking, does not influence a lot of people, but dramatically influences a few individuals…a family. 

Indeed, the film playfully charts this idea by revealing how Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) does change the course of time on a micro-basis, and how largely, those changes are inconsequential. 
Unnoticed even.

Twin Pines Mall in Hill Valley becomes Lone Pine Mall because a pine tree is accidentally destroyed in 1955. But the location and existence of the mall remains the same.
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to notice, does the time line care?

The overall lesson, perhaps, of  Back to the Future  is that time both connects us and separates us from those we love most. 

Though we may all be at different points on our individual journey or chronology, we have all been -- or one day will be -- the person attending his or her first school dance, or the one who grows up fearing rejection.  

Thus,  Back to the Future  is about seeing and understanding that parents, children, and even grandparents are all the same, even if the trappings that we believe define them are so very different. 
Back to the Future  is, therefore, a generation gap movie that decides, in the end, that there is no generation gap at all, just the passage of time that blocks us, somehow, from recognizing how similar to one another we all are.

“That was the day I invented time travel…”

In 1985, eccentric scientist Doc Brown (Lloyd) unveils to his teenage friend, Marty McFly (Fox) a time machine that he has invented. Equipped with a “flux capacitor,” Doc’s time machine is actually a car, a DeLorean that will break the time barrier when it accelerates to 88 miles an hour.

Marty, who has an unhappy home life because his father, George (Crispin Glover) is constantly being bullied by a thug named Biff Tannen (Thomas Wilson), ends up in the time machine when Libyan terrorists attack and presumably kill Doc Brown.

Marty inadvertently travels back in time to 1955, the year his parents fell in love and shared a first kiss at the Enchantment under the Sea dance. 
But Marty accidentally interferes in their relationship, preventing Lorraine (Lea Thompson) and George from falling in love.  
Marty consults with the Doc Brown of 1955, who determines that a bolt of electricity can get the DeLorean back to the future, and suggests that Marty must play Cyrano for George, so as to restore Marty’s personal time-line.

But even in this era, Biff is a danger to the McFly family, and the family’s fear of rejection could destroy everything.  
Meanwhile, Marty must also determine if he should share with Doc a foreknowledge of his apparent death in 1985…

“Whatever you need to tell me, I’ll learn through the natural progression of time.”

It is apt, perhaps, that the central symbol of  Back to the Future  is a broken clock; the clock that decorates Hill Valley’s Courthouse.  
As the film opens, the clock has been stuck in place for thirty years, inoperative. It thus no longer performs its intended function: to tell time (though it is still right twice a day.)  
Instead, the clock commemorates an event that everybody remembers. a storm that hit Hill Valley.

In a sense, this is how Marty exists too. 
He is “stuck” in a present that is not entirely happy or satisfying. His father, George, is bullied by his boss, Biff, and his mother, Lorraine, seems to have given up on herself and life. Even Marty’s siblings don’t seem able to realize their potential. Not a one of the McFlys seems to possess any self-confidence at all. 
The stories that George and Lorraine tell about their high school years, and the way that they fell in love, similarly share a “stuck” feeling. Those moments in 1955 are frozen, as if in amber, heard again and again, unchanging, and don’t seem to inform or impact the present. The stories sound more like the beginning of a prison sentence than of an epic love story
If George and Lorraine love each other so much, why don’t they try harder to be happy, to help their children, or to make something of their past? Why they didn't imbue their children with the notion that the future is unwritten, and they can make it whatever they want it to be (to paraphrase Doc in  Back to the Future Part III )?
Marty then goes back to 1955, and sees all these (personally) historic and significant moments not as frozen in amber, forever unalterable...but as infinitely malleable; as ones that point a future in one direction, or in another. 
In the end, Marty finds he can tweak the future so that his parents aren’t stuck in the same rut. Through practical experience, in fact, George realizes he doesn't have to be afraid.  He stands up for himself to Biff, in order to save the girl he loves, Lorraine.
The only unfortunate side-effect in the movie, artistically-speaking, of this character trajectory is that it comes down -- in very 1980s fashion -- to money. 
Marty returns to his present and finds that he owns an expensive new pick-up truck, and that his parents are newly fit, youthful, and confident.  His Dad is a best-selling author.
The signs of their success in this time line are, alas, largely monetary. Even Marty’s brother (Marc McClure) has been assimilated into mainstream “success,” dressing in a business suit and tie instead of a fast food restaurant’s uniform.  
The overall point here is a good one: if you can overcome your fears of rejection, or learn to stand up for yourself, you can succeed in life.  It's great that Marty teaches his Dad that lesson, and learns it for himself.
But in a sense, the message plays out in  Back to the Future  like a yuppie fantasy. Change the past in your favor and you’ll be welcomed back to the present with an upwardly mobile life-style.

The later films, perhaps conscious of such a (presumably unintended) message, travel in a different, and wholly more worthwhile direction. Marty overcomes his fear of being called “chicken” but is not rewarded with money or rock-and roll-stardom, only the knowledge that he will avoid a crippling car accident.  
Thus the two sequels to  Back to the Future  seem more in line with the lyrics of “The Power of Love,” which state “don’t take money; don’t take fame, don’t need a credit card to ride this train” because love is not about those things that money brings you. It is about the things, instead, that “might even save your life.”

Despite the unnecessarily materialistic outcome of the film's valid and worthwhile message, Back to the Future is exceptionally clever (though its first sequel is even cleverer, frankly…), in the way it diagrams Marty’s journey as one of personal discovery and knowledge.

The things that he might not have really taken the time to care about, like the history of Hill Valley’s Clock Tower, or the Enchantment under the Sea Dance where his parents first kiss, are actually crucial elements that give rise to his very existence. They are as important, in a sense, to his psychic gestalt as his DNA is. 

One thread gets pulled out, and everything falls apart for Marty. He suddenly must also reckon with his Mom and Dad not as parents, but as real, honest-to-goodness people; as vulnerable, flawed human beings.  He sees that Lorraine was not "born a nun," but a young woman looking to buck authority and find love.  He sees that his Dad, like him, is fearful of rejection, and that he assiduously hides his real passion: writing science fiction stories.

The later  Back to the Future  films deepen significantly the friendship between Marty and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), and so further enhance the idea of personal connection as the motivator which makes new and better futures possible, but the same idea is also here, with Marty forced to reckon with his parents as impulsive teenagers.  He has to care for them, as friends.
This viewpoint gives him a new perspective on them, and also on himself. When the moment comes, Marty is able to perform in public, on stage, and not suffer from his familial fear of failure, because he has seen how his dad cowers in the face of a challenge.
Yet -- and here's the rub -- to see and recognize this particular foible in his father, Marty must see George (Crispin Glover) as a young man; as, roughly, a contemporary. 
It’s all too easy to gaze at a middle-aged parent, perhaps and draw the conclusion that age -- thus time itself -- separates you from him, when the contrary is true. Our parents (or our children contrarily), are not alien beings separated from us by strange ways. They are…us, only at a different point in their lives.

The movie actually literalizes this clever idea n-- of generational differences making people seem like aliens -- through visual imagery.
Marty can only get through to his stubborn father by becoming, actually, an E.T., an alien. He dresses up in a bio-hazard suit as "Darth Vader from the Planet Vulcan," and in that guise, is able to make progress with his dad.

Commendably,  Back to the Future  is one of those films that gets better once you factor in the sequels. Although the critics hated  Part II  in 1990, I find it to be the strongest of the three films; the  Empire Strikes Back  of this particular saga.  
But taken as a whole, the three films, by depicting the McFly/Tannen generations of 1885, 1955 and 2015, reveal how the the same story -- the power of love -- gets repeated, one generation to the next.
Every era has its chase in the municipal square, involving either horses, skate-boards or hover-crafts, 
Every era has a karmic (and manure-laden...) comeuppance for a bully.  
Every era involves a love story (Clara and Doc in 1885; Lorraine and George in 1955; Marty and Jennifer in 1985 and 2015), and every generation reveals how places and things change despite the fact that the story of life -- the power of love -- remains the same.

We see the life of the Clock Tower, from construction to damage, to intended re-construction. 
We see the birth of Lyon Estates as a great place to live, and then, years later, dinged by grafitti. 
We see the same in terms of Hilldale, the new development being built in Hill Valley where, in 2015, Marty and Jennifer will live.
The overall idea is, again, simply, that though objects, instruments and trends change radically, the essence of human life, and family, remains the same.
The great thing, of course, is that these ruminations about generations are set against rollicking action scenes (like the rousing skateboard chase), romantic interludes (like the first kiss at the dance), and, of course, a great sense of humor.  
On that final front, Back to the Future is extremely funny, whether pondering the journey of Ronald Reagan -- from  Cattle Queen of Montana  (1954) to winning the White House again in 1984 -- or imagining that the perfect vehicle for time travel is a DeLorean
As I noted above, these days I actually prefer  Back to the Future Part II , but it was this 1985 film that started off the franchise, and proved a gigantic box office hit in 1985. I believe  Back to the Future  resonated with audiences then (as with now), because Marty's story is not so much about time travel, as the way that time travel can help us bridge a generation gap,

Guest Post: The Monkey (2025)

The Monkey

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen

The Monkey, based on a Stephen King short story, is more an exercise than a movie. Death becomes so trivial that the cornucopia of mutilations portrayed rolls off one’s back as innocuously as clouds in the sky drift on the screen. Without a point of view or commentary, the film is empty, even if it is a lot of fun. 

Twins from an erratic broken home fear that their new toy, a drumming monkey, is causing the violent deaths in their neighborhood. They bury the menace, but it returns with a vengeance years later. As an adult, Hal (played by Theo James, who also plays his twin Bill) can’t stop his life from unraveling. His wife has left him for a marriage guru (Elijah Wood in an amusing cameo), and he has lost custody of his child (Colin O'Brien). When he discovers the cursed creature has returned, he tracks down Bill to stop the toy once and for all. 

Written by Osgood Perkins, whose Longlegs made a splash last year, adapted the film with a mission of working out his own childhood traumas. He had told Empire Magazine, “The thing with this toy monkey is that the people around it all die in insane ways. So, I thought: Well, I'm an expert on that.' Both my parents died in insane, headline-making ways” – father, Anthony, Norman Bates of Psycho, publicly suffered with AIDS before dying, and mother, Berry Berenson, died as a passenger of the plane that crashed into the North Tower on 9/11. 

A spirit of futility oozes through the script and mise-en-scene. Perkins does capture an otherworldliness which works with the humorous tone despite the nihilistic nature of the story. For instance, this is the kind of movie you want to shout at the screen, “DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT MOVIE YOU’RE IN??? DON”T go to a hibachi restaurant!!!!!” to no avail.

Perkins exploits the design of the creature for maximum effect.  Its presence is pure menace: with huge eyes and a vicious grin, a pulled back face like it had a bad face lift, every tooth visible and ready to rip someone apart, uncomfortably stiff like it’s ready to explode. The big joke is that the creature barely moves in the film and physically commits no murders, making it creepier. A Rube Goldberg series of events leads to decapitations, skewerings and bursting blood vessels.

The performances set the tone, including Tatiana Maslany as the twin’s loopy mother, Wood as the self-impressed interloper (he should have been given more screentime), Perkins as an uncomfortably pervy uncle, and Adam Scott as the kid’s frenetic dad. James handles the weight of being the protagonist, the straight man in an insane world, and his parental chemistry with O’Brien makes you care about their storyline. 

The Monkey satirizes life and nightmarish adolescence in a clever, but ultimately unrewarding way. Nothing is to be taken seriously (even a funeral has no gravity). That can sting, especially in this current world order, but in a film where people are just meat with no control over circumstances and no weight in this universe, it is difficult to do anything but point and laugh. 

50 Years Ago: Rollerball (1975)

"Corporate society takes care of everything. And all it asks of anyone, all it's ever asked of anyone ever, is not to interfere with management decisions."
- Corporate Executive, Bartholomew (John Houseman) explains how it is in Norman Jewison's Rollerball (1975) 

Released the same year as the low-budget  Death Race 2000  (1975),  director Norman Jewison's  Rollerball  is a dystopian film with many similar elements.  Both films are set in the future.  Both films involve "athletes" in incredibly dangerous contests, and both efforts suggest the notion of such violent contests as "bread and circuses" for the unhappy masses of America.  
When the chips are down, give us our gladiatorial games, and we'll forget that we don't have our liberty...
Of course,  Death Race 2000  is more over-the-top, funny,and nasty in execution, and so  Rollerball  feels a bit reserved and staid by comparison.  And yet  Rollerball  is grave, impressive, and serious in its depiction of a corporate dystopia.   The film thrives on speed, acceleration and movement, and James Caan is a sturdy anchor in this tale of a world in which corporations use blood lust to control the people. 
Not all critics agreed.  Writing in  The Film Encyclopedia, Science Fiction  (page 327), a reviewer complained the film was "overly complicated" and mixed "political intrigue and romance for no purpose."  
Others felt the film was just a cover for violence itself.  Writing in  Sci-Fi Now  (Octopus Books, 1977), author Alan Frank noted that the film merely created a "special environment in which the film's use of excessive use of violence can be made justified."  
By pointed contrast, recent assessments of  Rollerball  have been more positive.  Film Threat  noted that Rollerball was "prescient about violence, corporations, and TV," and that's certainly a fair assessment.  The film is a valuable one because it questions what passes for entertainment, but more than that, what passes for "freedom" in an increasingly technological, media-saturated age.
"Ladies and gentlemen, will you stand please for the playing of our Corporate Hymn?"
  Rollerball's  action takes place after the world's nations have gone "bankrupt," and after the destructive "Corporate Wars" have come and gone  

Now, corporations "take care of everyone," and the violent, team sport of Rollerball has been created by big business to remind people of "the futility of individual effort."  The goal of the corporations is to be essential to every individual's life, and for "the few" to make important decisions on "a global basis."
Unfortunately, there are serious downsides to corporate rule as depicted in  Rollerball.   For one thing, all citizens are treated as powerless employees of the "Executive Class."  This means that your beloved wife can be transferred to another man's possession with the ease an on-the-job departmental transfer.  Indeed, this is the indignity that the world's greatest Rollerball player, Jonathan E. (James Caan) has suffered...and never forgiven.   He still loves his wife, but an executive in Italy had more power and stature...and took her.  And she was paid handsomely to leave Jonathan, rewarded with a villa in Rome, and extreme wealth.  
Early in Rollerball, the company -- represented by John Houseman's stern executive, Bartholomew -- also delivers another despotic edict: Jonathan must retire from the game for "the common good."   This demand doesn't sit well with Jonathan E., and he encourages his ever-increasing fame on the court, even in the face of attempts by the company to kill him.   
Before long, Jonathan finds the corporation changing the game's rules on him.  First, the Executive class eliminates penalties for rough play.  Then it eliminate replacements/substitutions, so that no injured players can leave the game in progress.  Then, finally, the corporate men push a game with no established time limit.  The final Rollerball game ends only when the last man is standing...
As you might expect, the Rollerball tournaments serve, in many ways, as the highlights of this classic sci-fi film.  Staged with meticulous attention-to-detail and with an eye towards speed and acceleration, these games grow increasingly violent throughout the film.  The set-piece against the Tokyo team, in particular, descends into a blood bath.  One player even catches fire before the game is done.
If possible, the film's climactic contest -- New York vs. Jonathan E.'s Houston team -- is even more vicious.  Scarlet blood is seen spilled all over the game arena, and in one horrible moment, the first aid responders are actually run down by a speeding motorcycle.  Then our protagonist, Jonathan, kills a player right in front of Houseman's character, and before a live TV audience.   

All the while, a packed house cheers and applauds wildly over the violent action...  
"Jonathan, there's one thing you ought to know, and nobody's said it, but I'm sure of it. They're afraid of you, Jonathan. All the way to the top, they are."

On one level, of course,  Rollerball  satirizes the hyper-kinetic, overtly-commercialized world of modern  organized sports, where the strongest, hunkiest lunkhead receives the most admiration based on the size of his... muscle mass.   
This notion of making athletes "heroes" is made clear in a  Rollerball  scene set inside a locker room, as Bartholomew speaks to the players' egos.  "They dream they're great rollerballers," he tells them, speaking of Executives.   "They dream they're Jonathan; they have muscles, they bash in faces."   On the other hand, and on a much deeper thematic level,  Rollerball  muses directly on the topic of freedom in a technological, mass-media Adams) makes a points relative to life in the 1970s and today.  Ella asks Jonathan why he simply doesn't do what the Executives want him to do especially since he would be paid handsomely for his compliance.  

Jonathan notes that it is a choice "between having nice things...or freedom."  Ella responds -- terrifyingly -- "But comfort is freedom."   
By contrast, Jonathan suggests the truth: "That's never been it. I mean, them privileges just buy us off."
In other words: Don't sweat things like individual freedom or liberty.  There are items to purchase, things to own.  Don't you want an Italian villa?
Incidentally, this very- Rollerball  sentiment was mirrored rather dramatically in President Jimmy Carter's famous and much-derided "Crisis of Confidence" speech five years later, in 1979.  He said: 

"In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose."


Rollerball  depicts a society in which the people have indeed accepted control by a ruling elite...in return for being "provided for," in return for "privilege."  

But, in accordance with the President Carter quote, these same people have no sense of meaning or purpose.  

Part of the reason the people live with such an unjust arrangement is because of a deliberate black-out of educational materials and information.  Rollerball tournaments play endlessly on the television, and local libraries are impersonal computer centers that feature only "summaries" of important literary works and ideas.  
Instead, the corporations own history itself: "What do you want books for?," Jonathan's team-mate, Moon Pie asks innocently.  "Look Johnny, if you wanna learn somethin', just get a Corporate Teacher to come and teach it to ya'. Use yer Privilege Card..."
It's clearly an Internet-less world, and in one scene in the film, Jonathan E. goes to Geneva to visit a computerized archive where all the answers about "corporate rule" are purported to exist.  Not surprisingly, the computer librarian, named Zero, proves absolutely unhelpful. in providing such data.  In fact, the machine has lost the totality of the "13th Century" in terms of knowledge.  Thus, there is no place to turn to in this world to learn about history, science, or nature.  Everything is the game.  Everything is blood lust.  

Because as long as you think about the game, and which team is winning or losing, you aren't thinking about who is gaming the system and for what agenda.
Based on William Harrison's short story, " The Roller Ball Murder " (1973;  Esquire ),  Rollerball  runs for over two hours, and it features essentially two modes. The first mode reveals the kind of listless, purposeless, meaningless existence of "comfortable" citizens like Jonathan E.  The second mode involves the game matches themselves, set on a circular track.  The game play is urgent, pointed and murderous, a deliberate contrast to the film's lackadaisacal first mode.  I imagine that some audiences today would probably find these aspects of the film boring, but as the first mode concerns the existential angst of a futuristic gladiator, the insight into his daily life and routine is entirely appropriate.  
Uniquely,  Rollerball  also makes widespread use of classical music, including Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Adagio in G minor from Tomaso Albinoni.  These musical selections comment on the action  (and understand the action) in a way that the film's knowledge-challenged dramatis personae cannot.  The music -- so distinctly of the human past -- connects Jonathan E's futuristic struggle for freedom to such struggles in man's long history, and arises specifically from the Baroque tradition, dealing intentionally with the "affect of man."  The musical selection that opens the film, Toccata and Fugue, renders the accompanying imagery (of game preparations in the vast Rollerball stadium) almost religious in stature and transmits the idea that we are witnessing an important ritual being played out.
Rollerball's  production design is, accordingly, relatively impersonal and dehumanizing in nature.  Citizens visit vast "luxury centers," mall-like locations -- places to shop -- in keeping with such kindred fare as  Logan's Run  (1976).  The Executive Suites as seen in the film are palatial and extravagant.  The opulent life-style of the executive class is revealed in one dinner party scene, and the sequence ends with the drunken, entitled elite mindlessly blowing up trees with futuristic guns.

The Rollerball arena is itself an important metaphor in the film.  The track is a loop, a track that never ends, with no end and no beginning.   Teams battle one another for supremacy, going around and around on this track endlessly (kind of like a NASCAR race, I suppose).  But one individual -- a Spartacus of the future age -- breaks out of this circular trajectory and takes the fight right to the stands.  

One spectacularly effective  composition in the Jewison film finds Jonathan E. braced against a transparent wall on the Rollerball rink. Behind him is Bartholomew, the executive, scowling.  And reflected on the transparent glass are out-of-control flames  

Here we have all three critical elements: the gladiator, the villain who is "untouchable" and the fire of revolt -- of individual achievement -- threatening to burn out of control.
The enduring genius of  Rollerball,  I would submit, is that it artfully exposes how powerful people become addicted to controlling the lives of others  The corporate stooges of the Executive Class wage full-bore, murderous war against a citizen because they want one player -- one damned player -- to retire from "their" game.  They apparently don't consider tolerating Jonathan E's presence for a few more years, followed, presumably, by a peaceful retirement.  Instead they seek to dominate and defeat Jonathan E. -- a champion and competitor -- and in doing so, incite his sense of competition.  

For Jonathan, "Four or five little things make one big thing," and the retirement demand, on top of the loss of his wife to an executive, constitutes a tipping point.  By pushing the stubborn and tough Jonathan E. to his line in the sand, the Corporate Culture only assures that Jonathan E. proves the very point they don't want established:
The will of the individual matters.