Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

In hindsight, it’s fair to say that Disney’s Star Wars sequel trilogy has had an identity crisis. The Force Awakens was basically an original trilogy greatest hits package to win over fans still skeptical after the prequels while introducing the new players. It didn’t turn out to have much staying power for me, but was a blast on opening night four years ago. Next came The Last Jedi, which seemed to play like a work of fan fiction: some terrific individual scenes and thrilling moments…but with narrative connective tissue that’s admittedly a little weak. I liked it overall (and I contend that Rian Johnson’s film and the places he took his story were the work of a fan who holds Star Wars near and dear, despite the whining that he “ruined the saga” from a segment of viewers).

The Rise of Skywalker, the final (for now) chapter of the saga, is mired somewhere between its two predecessors. It’s certainly dialed up the fan service and callbacks once again. And while I wouldn’t quite say it taps the dark side of fanfic (remarkably, almost none of the fan toxicity of late seems to have bled onto the screen), it certainly does veer into the nutty and unrestrained side of it. It’s as if an overcaffeinated fan was given free reign to throw in every wild idea they could think of—A whole fleet of Star Destroyers! Force lightning taking out starships! The Millennium Falcon jumping in and out of hyperspace!—to make the massive blowout spectacle of their childhood dreams.

The picture picks up some time after The Last Jedi. The heroic Resistance is dwindling. The evil onetime Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) has returned and is on the cusp of leading the evil First Order to galactic domination. Jedi Rey (Daisy Ridley), ex-Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega), Resistance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), and BB-8 travel the galaxy to find a lost artifact that could lead them to Palpatine’s lair on the Sith home planet, with the First Order’s new Supreme Leader Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) on their tails in hopes of forming an alliance with Rey.

There really is not much more to it than that. The film plays similarly to the third Hobbit movie, in that the plot is simple and everything is all about that final battle. Every scene is just barreling toward the final battle. Every moment that is not an action sequence is merely putting things in motion and setting the pieces for the battle. Anyone who’s seen even a single movie can tell how the battle’s going to go down (even though this film is not based on a beloved old book a lot of people have read like The Hobbit). And when the battle finally arrives, the bombast shoots past exciting to ridiculousness a few times.

Is it entertaining? Sure, for the most part. The aforementioned spectacles are still pretty cool, and the movie offers some fun chases, space dogfights, shootouts, and lightsaber fights that are the saga’s forte. And most of the action take place in eye-catching environments we haven’t seen before, while the callbacks to series past are mostly kept small, not near re-creations like The Force Awakens. But since nearly every moment of plot or character is purely focused on setting things in place for the big finale instead of deepening the characters or mythology, the stakes never feel that high. Even some unexpected and ostensibly emotional plot turns and surprise cameos amount to little actual pathos (with maybe one or two exceptions). Also, Palpatine’s return ultimately amounts to a cheap trailer pop, as the nominal big bad is revealed immediately and gets little to do as a character besides playing final boss.

By itself, the film works okay as a big sci-fi action blockbuster. Tasked with bringing this trilogy to completion, however, it’s not so successful. Only one main character truly gets to bring their arc to a final and satisfying conclusion, while the rest feel unfinished or like they’ve barely started at all. This trilogy was mostly a fun time, but with The Rise of Skywalker as its final chapter, it ultimately feels like an insubstantial facsimile of the classic original trilogy instead of something with its own character and emotional identity.

Watchmen season 1 (and hopefully, not only)

 **SPOILERS HEREIN!**

The best praise I can bestow upon Watchmen the TV show, I think, is that I had about the same reaction watching it as I had reading the comic for the first time.

I bought it as a teenager having been told it was the greatest comic ever written, but had little idea about what to expect from it. I was all but lost for the first couple chapters, with so many different characters, subplots, and details big and tiny coming at me at once. I soldiered on. By the middle, I started to grasp what was happening, and could tell I was reading something special. By the end, I was riveted, and after I finished, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a while (I think just about every budding comics fan who discovers Watchmen has this reaction, or something close to it).

Even though I wasn’t coming to the show as unknowing, I still had little idea what to expect, between the creators setting it in the (albeit alternate) present, my ambivalence and skepticism after previous adaptations and follow-ups, and the love-it-or-hate-it reaction to the work of creator-showrunner Damon Lindelof (I haven’t seen his last acclaimed HBO show The Leftovers, was no big fan of Prometheus, but liked Lost). And for the first few episodes, I was at a near-total loss about what was happening. However, each episode was well-done enough—impeccably shot, paced, and acted, while offering a heaping helping of in-jokes and Easter eggs and tipping just enough of its mysteries—to keep me coming back each week.

And then we found out that Louis Gossett Jr. was Hooded Justice, a genuinely shocking twist and brilliant jolt to the universe’s canon (without technically altering or contradicting it), as well as one of the best superhero stories ever filmed (and easily the best episode of the season). Whether it was the jolt of such an “Oh my god!” moment, or if it just so happened to coincide with the other arcs finally becoming clearer, that was the point things started to come together and make sense. I went from intrigued enough to keep watching to once again riveted.

And now, the season’s over, and even after sleeping on last night’s finale, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s probably going to take some time and at least one rewatch for me to catch everything and fully form my feelings and interpretation of what I watched, just like the comic book took multiple readings to do the same (and to this day, every reread adds a little something more). But my initial gut reaction, which has not changed after stewing on it for a day: the show was a masterpiece, and the first continuation of the comic worthy of the Watchmen name.

It’s the first supplemental media that feels like the comic. The look of the show is just right, a perfect mix of the comic’s not-quite-the-world-you-know color scheme and new millennium sleekness (having artist Dave Gibbons aboard as a consultant probably helped). Alan Moore may have stayed away from the project, but its weirder touches and moments felt very much like the drifts into surrealism and existentialism characteristic of his work. The narrative structure and events often felt like reflections of the comic (a side-by-side look at the show and the comic could imaginably reveal some mind-blowing symmetry).

And yet, these callbacks were subtle enough that the show always yielded surprise each week. Not just mind-blowing plot twists, of which there were plenty, but also totally unexpected changes in tone and storytelling. Like the Hooded Justice revelation that was almost an interlude to the main plot (like some of the chapters of the comic focusing on one hero’s story), or making the reveal about the godlike Dr. Manhattan’s (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) whereabouts a beautiful and heartfelt romance right when the show was approaching its climax and things were getting tense. Last night’s finale may have been a bit exposition-heavy, but hey, I’ll admit I didn’t guess Lady Trieu’s (Hong Chau) master plan until the dialogue spelled it out. And that last scene was just perfect.

I’ll even go this far: the show may have actually improved on the comic in some ways.

Firstly, the political stuff added so much weight to the narrative. Yes, Watchmen the comic was heavily political. But while those critiques of American imperialism were mainly glancing blows in the background (save for the pervading Cold War nuclear fears and frequent shots at the Nixon Administration), the show’s exploration of race was front and center. The white power villains brought a stinging immediacy (side note: James Wolk’s closet racist Senator was an effectively off-putting slimeball, all the more so because he reminded me of some real-world Republicans who I’ll decline to name). Connecting the Watchmen continuity’s alternate history to America’s real racial past was ingenious, bringing a greater layer of both myth and realism to the characters and exploring the wounds of history (the opening sequence of the 1921 Greenwood massacre was harrowing, and brought some media attention to a real historical event the public seemed to know little about).

Regina King was absolutely fantastic in the lead. She was convincing and effortless roughing up bad guys as Sister Night, and had a rich, emotional character history as Angela. But she was disconnected enough from the main mystery that she was a perfect vessel for the viewer, an everywoman that the comic never really had (frequent comic narrator Rorschach was most definitely not a likeable everyman, despite some readers pegging an obvious psychopath as a cool badass). She was also the first hero in this universe that’s actually likeable. Some (possibly Moore among them) might argue that making a hero meant to be liked is antithetical to the point of Watchmen, but the show was no less rich or compelling for it, and King was refreshingly real and full of deep pathos without being oppressively dark and gritty.

Other new characters were similarly strong. Tim Blake Nelson was terrific as Looking Glass, showing that the tough, laconic hardass cop/hero archetype is just a shell for life-altering trauma. Chau’s Lady Trieu was a bit of a cypher (though after her lineage was revealed, I think that was kind of the point), but walked a fine line, never revealing whether she was on the side of good or evil until the very end (if we got a definitive answer at all). I already spoke for Wolk, Don Johnson was interesting enough to make us lament his small amount of screen time, and cameos and bit roles from HBO regulars were strong as ever. The show also enriched returning characters from the comic. Gossett was good at playing coy trickster and wise mentor, and Jovan Adepo was palpably seething and empathetic as the younger Hooded Justice. Abdul-Mateen was a wonderfully understated Dr. Manhattan, pulling off the achievement of the comic in imbuing the least human character’s arc with the most emotion. And Jean Smart finally gave the former second Silk Spectre Laurie Blake her due (her story in the comic serves less as a moment about her than an epiphany for Dr. Manhattan), implicitly giving her character her own identity and subtly hinting at substantial offscreen evolution. Also, frankly, she was sexy as hell in the role.

And then there was Jeremy Irons as the aging, stir crazy ex-Ozymandias Adrian Veidt. Veidt was a bit of the cypher in the comic, his story only revealed quickly before his master plan is revealed. Here, we finally saw a bit inside the character’s head. If the fact that his ruse which killed millions in the comic worked made for any ambiguity about his soul, these scenes made it clear he was not a good guy, but a cold, restless, self-righteous megalomaniac. And yet, his scenes were never dark or (too) disturbing, but strange and goofy. The Europa subplot with Veidt imprisoned in Dr. Manhattan’s new utopia, ruling over the blue man’s creations (Tom Mison and Sarah Vickers, both excellently deadpan), was probably the most out there and imaginative element of the show. And it totally worked, giving the show canvas to explore what makes Veidt tick while also instilling some surrealism and humor (of which there was little to break the dead serious realism and brutality in the comic book).

For a show so acclaimed, it’s astounding that there seems to be doubts about further seasons. This single season offered so many starting points for further stories: a police procedural starring Tulsa’s costumed finest (maybe get fellow HBO maestro David Simon involved and do Watchmen The Wire?); the fate of the clones on Europa (perhaps with Veidt turning out to be the serpent to corrupt this Garden of Eden?); potential spinoff opportunities for Agent Laurie Blake or younger Hooded Justice; just a regular sequel to the events of these nine episodes, or a prequel depicting the events between the comic and the show; or something completely different, making the series an anthology set in the Watchmen universe with a different tale every season. Hell, after the glimpse of Ozymandias’ 1985 squid plot we got this season, I’d be on board with the same crew and cast (with digital de-aging like The Irishman) doing a proper adaptation of the comic as a miniseries (sorry, but Zack Snyder’s 2009 film adaptation is awful). It would be a pity if, like the comic until decades later, Watchmen the series gets no follow-up when it offers so many potential stories to be told.

Whether or not we ever see those stories, though, this story was a great one, a worthy successor to the most acclaimed of superhero comics, and the best show of the year.

The Irishman

There are always limits and a generous bit of speculation involved when attaching a real-world narrative to an artist’s work or career. Having said that, one can see parallels between Martin Scorsese’s career and his forays into the gangster genre. Mean Streets, his 1973 breakthrough, came when he was a hungry young filmmaker. The world it showed was full of danger and violence, but it looked so cool and exciting and sexy. Goodfellas and Casino came as Scorsese reached middle age. There’s a no-longer-young man’s longing relish to the hedonism in those movies and a feeling of “Remember when?” (in between the scenes of horrific bloodshed and brutality). The Departed…finally won him an overdue Oscar (like I said, limits; I love The Departed, though).

Now in his upper-70s, Scorsese has no plans to retire as far as I know (though he is admittedly showing his age some with this tiresome war of words between him and Marvel). But his long-gestating The Irishman definitely has the perspective of a filmmaker in his autumn years. This isn’t a ride through the “glory days” like his previous gangster pics; what glimpses we see of the old days here are fleeting, somber, and absolutely not glorious. This one’s about what comes after those days, where men in power desperately cling to it as their time passes (a metaphor for mortality if ever there was one).

The Irishman of the title refers to Frank Sheeran, an Eastern Pennsylvania Teamsters Union official and the subject of the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. Before his death in 2003, Sheeran claimed to have been a hit man for the mafia who hobnobbed with famous underworld figures and tangentially or directly participated in major mob hits and historical moments. The film casts Robert De Niro as Sheeran (digitally de-aging him as the era calls for it) and follows his (alleged) decades-long relationship with the mob and the Teamsters, specifically Buffalino family head Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci) and Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino).

Let’s get this out of the way: the picture does not need to be this long (a whopping three-and-a-half hours, with no intermission). A few sequences could have simply been cut, and the movie better for it. Short scenes of Sheeran’s path crossing with history are mostly just superfluous, but one in particular comes out of nowhere and offers little explanation or context. It’s as if they felt they needed to insert someone getting whacked to remind viewers who might tail off that this is still a gangster picture, but the anecdote’s significance will be lost upon those unfamiliar with mob history. Also, the last half-hour or so is obvious and, frankly, a little sloppy, and comes after the main arc of the story reaches its perfect conclusion.

Those bits aside, the heart of the picture—the conflict between Hoffa and the mob and mobbed-up Teamster rivals, with Sheeran floating in the middle—is mesmerizing. Even without the crackerjack style and bravura sequences Scorsese usually brings (the cocaine-fueled errand run in Goodfellas, or any one of half-a-dozen inappropriate parts in The Wolf of Wall Street), the film never bores. Steven Zaillian’s script sizzles, capturing the viewer and building more dread in simple conversation than any scene of bloodshed. Despite the grimness, it’s also often funny, the wordplay shifting unexpectedly from tension to laugh-out-loud levity, and just as starkly going back again (and a running motif of providing supporting and tertiary players with captions showing their names and date and method of death becomes humorous as it goes on). The period production looks sharp, too, and the much-hyped de-aging effects blend in seamlessly (at least they did on my HDTV).

The cast is a mile-long murderers’ row, with great supporting roles from Stephen Graham, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano (terrific at playing things serious while also bringing some of his comedy chops when appropriate), Bobby Cannavale, Dominic Lombardozzi, and too many bit parts to list. Pacino gives one of his career-best performances. His more flamboyant late-career style gets so much parody and criticism (unfairly, if you ask me), but it fits this role perfectly, as he plays Hoffa as a megalomaniacal blowhard at war with everyone around him, and yet undoubtedly and unceasingly charismatic. And Pesci gives probably his very best performance, contrasting his normal motormouthed brutality with a turn more restrained and soft-spoken on the surface, but undoubtedly fearsome and Machiavellian closer in. In a few scenes, his laconic, almost grandfatherly demeanor is nearly more intimidating than when he was violently psychotic in Casino or Goodfellas.

De Niro is, predictably, strong in the title role (as if you’d expect anything less). The only knock against him is that he gets upstaged by Pesci, Pacino, and others, to the point where he practically becomes a supporting or even bit player for large chunks of the proceedings. Because of this, his Sheeran seems a bit of a cypher, merely the hook into the more interesting story of Hoffa and the mob, and one of the less interesting players in it. That, and the recurring subplot of his estranged daughter (Lucy Gallina as a child, Anna Paquin as an adult, both offering little more than icy stares) is underdeveloped. One could argue the lack of connection with the character is the point, to underline Sheeran’s distance from his daughter, but it’s never given time to develop into anything compelling or affecting to the audience, either (though I’m reluctant to suggest this movie should be longer).

The Irishman isn’t quite the Götterdämmerung of the gangster genre (no one’s done that better than The Godfather Part II 45 years ago), but it is a great one. It’s also arguably where the career parallels break away from Scorsese’s mob movies. The film posits that the “good old days” were pretty horrible, actually, and those who make it out alive only look back in despair and have nothing to be proud of in their old age. The exact opposite is true for Scorsese.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

**SPOILERS HEREIN**

Breaking Bad was one of the of the most beloved and acclaimed continuing television dramas ever made, and a rare one that pulled off an ending almost everyone liked. In fact, it sort of gave us two endings: the blaze of glory in the series finale, and the utter tragedy of “Ozymandias” two episodes prior (which I and others contend would have also worked as an ending). Both were satisfying in different ways.

But while the show brought the story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston) to a thorough conclusion, it didn’t quite find time to do the same for Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). Walt’s former student and partner in crime—if never quite an onscreen equal to his old teacher, then at least the second most important and compelling character—became scarcer in the final season, and then drove off with little closure to his arc. Thus, we have El Camino, a coda that I’m sure will colloquially be called a bonus episode by many a viewer, but more accurately feels like a direct sequel. In any case, it’s a worthy successor and denouement to one of the most masterful shows to ever air.

The movie picks up immediately after Jesse’s final scream cut off in the finale (before the cops arrive after Walt’s massacre of the neo-Nazi gang, even), and extends it into a cry of anguish, not one of victory like the last episode made it seem. The fairly triumphant tone of the series’ final scene is absent and stays absent throughout, or at least muzzled. I’m not sure how long creator and director Vince Gilligan had these ideas in mind, but it seems appropriate that this final chapter comes a length of time after Braking Bad finished. Big, explosive sequences that leave an impression on viewers are more appropriate for final episodes. El Camino is about the aftermath of those big moments, and where the survivors go from there. It’s a similar vibe to the scenes of Walt’s exile in the show’s penultimate episode “Granite State.”

The story follows Jesse, his partner definitively dead and himself a fugitive, as he seeks out some money stashed away by one of his now-deceased captors so he can buy himself a new identity from Saul Goodman’s vacuum guy (Robert Forster). It’s a story that could have been told in a normal-length episode, with enough time left over for a subplot or two about the White family (none of whom appear, save for a cameo from Walt). But it’s a masterfully slow burn, building the type of seething tension one instantly recognizes from the show’s best moments. It plays like a sleek, somewhat self-contained little noir film, and Scott MacArthur is an appropriately mean foil. Not a Gus Fring or a Salamanca, not quite a forgettable one-and-done bad guy-of-the-week, just a real simple and nasty low-level criminal.

It also pads the length out to two hours with some overdue moments of mood and character. Jesse as a character never took to the coldblooded parts of the drug trade like Walt did, and the depictions of his damaged psyche (especially the season 4 scenes of him haunted by his first murder) were forceful and unsubtle, and so effective for it. El Camino tackles the trauma from his captivity at the hands of the Nazis (which Breaking Bad had little time to grapple with) much the same way, through pained silences that say so much, and flashbacks and apparitions that are haunting and intense.

It’s here where we get much of the character cameos, and surprisingly, it’s not all a load of fan service. Well, Walt’s kind of is (despite some dialogue that’s relevant to the proceedings, it feels like the most tacked-on of the bunch), but otherwise, they’re all worked in organically and fit the narrative. None more effectively than Todd’s (Jesse Plemons), whose horrific sequence plays like a black comedy with all the comedy drained out. Even for this series and this era of mature content, that might’ve been too much to show on basic cable.

It’s Aaron Paul’s show, however, and he’s so arresting he could have carried the movie even without any flashbacks bolstering or underlining his character’s mindset. Cranston was often so phenomenal as Walt that one could forget that Paul was also pretty excellent on the show as Jesse. With Heisenberg’s shadow absent in all but one scene, that doesn’t happen here (and that one scene comes late, after Paul’s been shining bright like a journeyman actor who knows this is a star-making role). Paul expertly conveys a man broken by one injury or devastation after another, but also sort of built up and made stronger by them.

But, not necessarily on the same path to ruin as Walter White. The climax of El Camino lets Jesse play action hero (or in this case, gunslinger) like his partner in “Felina,” but much more understatedly. Subsequently, he gets an ending somewhere between the two Walter got, melancholy but open-ended and contemplative. Jesse certainly broke bad and did some terrible things, but he was never fully consumed by the abyss like Walt. Maybe he has still a hope that his ex-teacher lost somewhere along the way (or perhaps never had in the first place). And that ending is, in its own way, very satisfying.