Month: October 2019

El Camino: For Breaking Bad Fans Only

This is a no-spoiler review

After half a decade, Breaking Bad fans have finally gotten their wish in the form of El Camino, a Netflix feature-length follow-up to the legendary series that centers around Jesse Pinkman, one of very few survivors from the main cast following the bloodbath from Season 5 of Breaking Bad. Although it features higher production values and a beefy two-hour runtime, make no mistake: El Camino is essentially an epilogue that seeks to tie up as many loose ends as possible and give Jesse Pinkman the proper send-off he deserves. It assumes that you have watched Breaking Bad to conclusion, so if you haven’t, you wouldn’t be doing the movie or yourself much good.

Although Breaking Bad was primarily about Walt’s descent into utter villainy, it also portrayed, more subtly, Jesse’s gradual loss of innocence as he experienced one traumatic event after another. From an immature and obnoxious child trapped in a young man’s body to a shell-shocked man struggling with his guilt, Jesse always seemed to reach a new stage of evolution with each horrifying event he had to deal with. Yet, there was one stage in his development that was absent from the show, and that was during his imprisonment at Jack’s compound and his subsequent escape. This is, at its heart, what El Camino seeks to address, and it’s what makes the film’s heart beat.

The primary narrative of El Camino revolves around Jesse evading the police as he scavenges for money in order to escape Albuquerque forever. It’s not a particularly exciting premise for a feature-length film, and there aren’t any major set pieces or even a sense of a grand adventure that one might think a movie of such repute would have. In fact, El Camino can only be judged as an extension of Breaking Bad; a coda, if you will, to the path of destruction Walter White left in his wake.

The movie’s greatest asset is, of course, Jesse Pinkman. We see him at the final stage of his character development; a man, not a boy, who has experienced just about the worst that life can throw at him. He’s been tortured and forced into slavery, watched two of his lovers die, been rejected by his family, lost all his belongings, and had to struggle with extraordinary guilt. Yet, unlike his mentor Walt, Jesse doesn’t become bitter at the world and succumb to evil; his firm grip on his moral compass is what makes us root for him in his quest to start over.

One of the things that made Breaking Bad such an excellent show is that it kept changing genres depending on what the story needed it to be. One moment it would be a crime thriller, then a family drama, and then a comedy. This is entirely because of the multi-faceted nature of Walter White, who regularly alternated between stone-cold criminality and bumbling around hilariously in his attempts to keep things secret from his wife and son. Without him, El Camino sometimes seems one-dimensional by comparison because it lacks Breaking Bad‘s signature unpredictability. Early on, it’s obvious there won’t be any major plot twists or mysteries to hold the audience in suspense. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a must-watch for Breaking Bad fans; with the same writers and showrunner Vince Gilligan helming things, El Camino feels like a reunion with an old friend. It’s just that the reunion is more of a simple, straightforward dinner than a wild night out.

This isn’t a bad thing if you’re a Breaking Bad fan, of course. The movie is peppered with various characters from the show, including several flashbacks of unseen vignettes from the Breaking Bad timeline that show Jesse hanging out with key characters under more peaceful circumstances. They’re great to watch, not necessarily because they advance the plot in a meaningful way, but because they open up the full scope of Jesse’s character in ways that Breaking Bad could not because it was too preoccupied with Walt’s story. By the time the credits roll, Jesse is a fully-fledged character alongside Walt; 50-50 partners, as he would say.

It’s interesting to see how Breaking Bad and El Camino take on the personalities of their respective protagonists. The former is neurotic, unpredictable, and see-saws between loving and deranged. The latter is more straightforward, introspective, earnest, and firm in moral rightness. Considering the mayhem that defined the Breaking Bad storyline from start to finish, it’s a welcome and suitable touch for the greatest show of all time to conclude on a note that tastes like fine wine.

Joker: When Cinematic Universe Becomes Branding

After an endless string of nauseating Marvel movies, culminating in the oh-so-dull Avengers: Endgame, the comic book cinematic universe market has presented an opening for DC to shine. Initially, the franchise stumbled around, unable to find its footing, before deciding to copy the risk-free action-comedy formula of the MCU. This climaxed with the gigantic crap-show that was Justice League. However, thanks to 2018’s Aquaman and now Joker, DC appears to have figured out their cinematic universe formula: making great, director-driven stories and disguising them with superhero/villain branding in order to lure mass audiences.

This is the revelation that struck me about halfway through Joker, a slow-paced movie permeated with so many bursts of shocking violence and psychological terror that I initially couldn’t understand why it was receiving so much interest from general moviegoers. Unlike just about every major DC/Marvel movie of the last decade, Joker features no action set pieces, no traditional conflict between protagonist and antagonist, no ensemble cast, and, rather ironically, very little in the way of humor. In other words, it has none of the qualities that have drawn hordes of audiences to fill the coffers of Marvel. Instead, what we get is something more akin to 2004’s The Machinist; a small-scale character study of a severely disturbed man as he struggles to find his place in the world.

You’ve probably heard people praise Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as Joker’s greatest asset, but what I think makes it stand out the most is that it goes where few movies dare to go, by challenging how far we’re willing to sympathize with the main character. Arthur Fleck isn’t so much an inherently evil person as he is a byproduct of a society that’s lost its moral compass. When all hell breaks loose in Gotham, there are no identifiable good guys or bad guys; just people whose unwillingness to understand each other has set them on a collision course. Whether it’s the elitist one-percenters, the Antifa-style rioters, the uncaring social workers, or the apathetic dead-eyed citizens of Gotham, no one is innocent in the world of Joker. Not even Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s often revered father, is given an entirely sympathetic portrayal. This is a movie that portrays not just the decay of a man, but that of an entire city.

As a result of this uncommon morality play, Joker has been stirring up controversy in the media, with morons on the interwebs criticizing its violence, its portrayal of a psychopath, or claiming it will inspire mass-killers. It’s a movie that, thanks to its superhero (or in this case, supervillain) branding, draws the attention of even the most casual moviegoers. Yet, once you remove that branding, Joker is precisely the kind of movie that would only attract psychological drama fans and make, at best, $20 million at the box office these days. Most people would have no interest whatsoever in watching a lurching two-hour psychopath character study; yet those very people now find themselves watching one, and in many cases it’s well beyond the mass-marketed entertainment they’re used to. One might even think that director Todd Phillips used the comic book branding to trick superhero audiences into watching something that’s actually good.

In an age when major film studios are becoming risk-adverse and the call of the lucrative Chinese market ensures that blockbusters are thematically castrated and dramatically inert, it’s interesting to see a director use the superhero brand as a delivery device for a story that he, not so much the studio, wants to tell. Hopefully DC will stick to this formula as they make further inroads into the superhero film genre; so far it’s the only one that’s working for them. Perhaps we could next see a detective-style Batman movie in which the caped crusader spends the entire time solving a crime without so much as throwing a punch. Who knows? Miracles can happen.