Mulan: Soulless, Bland And Utterly Pointless

Once a benchmark for quality storytelling that managed to appeal to both adults and kids, Disney, under the leadership of Bob Iger, has rapidly descended into stunning mediocrity in the span of a few years. After keelhauling Star Wars into a disfigured mess with the utterly dreadful new trilogy, Disney has set its sights on its animated classics, most notably in the form of the live action remake of Mulan.

One doesn’t have to watch this dreck to know that it’s tarnished with a glaring stain: being made with the assistance and approval of the Communist Chinese bureau currently responsible for managing the Muslim concentration camps in Xinjiang, where millions of Uyghurs have been wrongfully imprisoned, tortured, raped, murdered, and had their organs harvested. This is the 2020 equivalent of having the Nazi SS help make your movie and give it their seal of approval. Anyone capable of recognizing this hideous fact should have the good sense to either boycott Mulan outright or watch it without giving a cent to Disney.

On its own merits, Mulan is exceptional for how utterly mediocre it is. It’s not even terrible enough to be enjoyable, like The Room or Samurai Cop. Compared to its charming 1998 counterpart, this live action remake is humorless, tame, badly acted, and worst of all, lacks a compelling female protagonist.

Mulan tries to present itself as more stoic and realistic tale, with few supernatural elements, no Elder spirits, no Mushu, and a limp-dick sense of humor that doesn’t go anywhere beyond Mulan trying to awkwardly dodge her male colleagues as they roll around in their sleep. The notion of Mulan plausibly passing for a man in an all-male army was utilized to hilarious effect in the animated version with comical moments where she strains to talk in a deep voice, learns how to spit, and trains in combat. Here, it just looks ridiculous when played out with live actors in a much more serious tone. It truly tests one’s suspension of disbelief when Mulan’s fellow soldiers, including Commander Tung, cannot see that she is obviously a woman.

Although its titular character can pass for a man in the eyes of its dim-witted characters, Mulan can’t pass for an impressive visual spectacle. It was made on a jaw-dropping $200 million budget, but you wouldn’t know that just by watching it no thanks to its woeful lack of cinematic scale. While the costume and set designs are exquisite, the film’s editing, framing and cinematography fail to convey a grand adventure. This is apparent in the battle scenes, which randomly utilize fancy camera movements that rotate alongside the action (ie, a character swings a sword downwards, and the camera rotates downwards alongside the sword). This looked great in Upgrade because it made sense to the story, but here it comes off as forced. The two biggest set-pieces promise an epic battle, but instead underwhelm with ho-hum choreography that would be impressive for a low-budget made-for-TV movie, but not a $200 million epic. Even Donnie Yen’s fighting ability is wasted, as the constraints of his armor prevent him from pulling off the kind of dazzling martial arts we saw in Ip Man. It seems as though Disney had to seriously curtail the violence in order to not alienate its younger audience, but for seasoned moviegoers, the experience comes off as something churned out of a “Make Your Own Historical Battle” kit.

This would all be forgivable if the movie had a great protagonist, and this is where Mulan fails the most. The titular character, played by Liu Yifei, is so unbelievably boring that she comes off as an even less interesting version of Rey from the Disney Star Wars trilogy. She wears the same Kristen Stewart-esque blank stare throughout much of the film, and never experiences anything resembling a character arc. Worst of all, the powers-that-be at Disney decided that, unlike the 1998 version, this Mulan would begin the story with superhuman fighting prowess from the get-go, with the explanation being that she is force sensiti- I mean she has strong “chi”. That’s right, where the 1998 version had Mulan start from zero and train her ass off alongside her comrades, persevering against all odds to become a capable warrior, this new version starts her out at the max level cap. In fact, her “struggle” is to contain her power, as decreed by her family and society at large, because she’s a woman and therefore not meant to be a fighter. In other words, while 1998 Mulan was about a woman who proved herself through sheer determination and hard work that she could stand and fight alongside her male counterparts, 2020 Mulan is about a woman who is already vastly superior to her male counterparts, and must struggle against a misogynistic society that wants her to put a lid on that superiority. There’s no journey for the audience to latch onto anymore, nor is there a character for them to relate to. Instead, we have a Mary Sue whose main struggle in life is “I’m too powerful and everyone around me is an idiot.”

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Mulan comes in its ending. In the 1998 original, Mulan goes through hell and back for her father’s sake, befriending and working with a motley crew of soldiers and creatures to defeat the Huns, and becoming a hero as a result. She is offered a high-ranking position by the Emperor as a result, but turns it down to return to her family and very likely start a relationship with Captain Shang. This is an ending that makes perfect sense for a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve and emphasizes how love for one’s family and friends can drive people to extraordinary achievements. This 2020 version has a much different message. The ending plays out identically to the animated version, up until the point when Mulan returns home to her family. There, Commander Tung show up at her home to goad her a second time into joining the emperor’s guard, this time presenting her with a new sword to sweeten the deal. The story pretty much affirms that Mulan realizes she was meant for great things and accepts the deal, altering the themes of both the 1998 film and the legend it is based on to swing more towards serving one’s country rather than one’s loved ones. This is a pointless and unwanted diversion from the beating heart that makes the 1998 version so cherished.

Everything about Mulan reeks of a movie made without vision or passion. Having passed through not just Disney’s corporate drones but the Chinese government’s media Gestapo, the film is a watered-down, pale imitation of the 1998 version. Stick with the original Mulan and leave this one to the trash heap of unnecessary remakes.

Terminator: Resistance Is The Best Terminator Since Judgment Day. I’m Not Joking.

The original Terminator movie and its sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day solidified the Terminator franchise as one of the most beloved, legendary science fiction franchises of all time. An epic tale of man versus machine, with both the present and future juxtaposed against one another in a desperate race for survival, few other science fiction stories capture Terminator’s muscular action, sheer brutality and its constant tug of war between despair and hope. Yet beyond the first two movies, literally not one good piece of notable Terminator media has been made in almost THIRTY damn years. Instead, we saw one terrible sequel after the other get churned out like Terminators being sent back in time to kill a successful story. This culminated in the awful, awful Dark Fate which, thanks to its terrible box office performance, has put off studios from making another Terminator movie for the foreseeable future. How strange, then, that after so many avoidable missteps, a small and unknown Polish game developer called Teyon has finally put out the single best Terminator story in three decades that explores a narrative fans actually want to see, while fleshing out the franchise lore so meaningfully: Terminator: Resistance.

Resistance takes place during the future war set between Skynet and the human resistance, and unlike the Mad-Max-esque, sun-soaked Terminator: Salvation, Teyon really did their homework and scrutinized every detail of the future war sequences in both the original movie and Judgment Day in order to craft their game’s aesthetic. The result is a truly immersive post-apocalyptic setting that feels distinct from other franchises like Fallout. Set in the carcass of a bombed-out Los Angeles (which, by the way, isn’t too far-off from that today), the game levels are large and filled with many structures to explore for supplies while you stay out of sight from hunter-killer drones and Terminator endoskeletons. The sense of atmosphere is filled with so many wonderful details; the color palette is dominated by a grim blue-gray tint, hunter-killer aerials patrol the skies with their searchlights piercing the night, and battles are filled with bright red and purple plasma bolts streaking across rubble while accompanied by sound effects straight out of the movies. For Terminator fans who salivated at the brief glimpses of the future in the first two movies, the visual and sound design of Resistance is a godsend.

Terminator: Resistance is a small-budget game by a small studio, and this shows in a few places. The quality of its voice acting and character animations would have been considered first rate a decade ago, but certainly not today. The game, by default, gives you way too many advantages, such as night vision goggles with unlimited batteries that let you wallhack the Terminators. This was likely done to make up for the game’s lack of sophisticated stealth mechanics and one-note AI. In my playthrough, I played on Extreme difficulty and disabled the wallhack vision, along with most of the UI, and found this to be a definitive survival experience, in which the Terminators can only be engaged with guerrilla tactics such as hacking their defensive turrets and setting traps. Even so, there are areas where the AI can be exploited by simply taking pot shots at them and falling back by a certain distance until their parameters prevent them from chasing you any further.

In spite of these shortcomings, I enjoyed Resistance immensely because it’s a game made with a lot of heart and commitment to doing its source material justice, and its weaknesses were mainly the result of the studio’s size and budget. In many ways, it also reminded me of classic single-player shooters from the early 2000s like F.E.A.R. and Far Cry. These were games that largely stayed within the parameters of a linear, story-driven first-person shooter, while at the same expanding gameplay to allow for more flexibility to approach missions. This is something that many shooters today have lost by adopting open-world gameplay; with so many sidequests and distractions to get lost in, the main narrative becomes a disjointed mess with no sense of urgency. Resistance never lets you forget about where you are at in the story, and the missions are nicely varied between large, open areas in which you can explore, sneak or fight behind enemy lines, and more linear sequences in which you are accompanied by fellow resistance forces. There’s no tacked-on multiplayer, no microtransactions, nothing to grind for; absolutely none of the irritating gameplay features that have creeped their way into most modern titles. This is a nice, old-fashioned, meaty first-person shooter that knows which modern gameplay elements to include and which to leave out.

This leads me to Resistance’s other strong point, which is its surprisingly well thought-out story that slots in perfectly with the other two movies, forming a cohesive trilogy that begins with this game and concludes with Judgment Day. The details of how the resistance came to defeat Skynet, leading it to send Terminators back in time, and how the resistance captured and reprogrammed a T-800, are only hinted at in the movies. Resistance reveals that entire side of that story, as well as finally answering the question as to how exactly Skynet sent a second terminator to go after a young John Connor despite its failure in the first movie. The beauty of the story is how it slowly unravels itself to reveal the role your character, Jacob Rivers, plays in all this. None of it feels contrived, and thanks to a pretty memorable cast of characters, Resistance’s story makes you think it’s a standalone side story until it reveals towards the end that it is, in fact, a direct prequel to both Terminator movies. The problem with the sequel films is that they pretended to be directly tied to the original movies, but were in fact studio-mandated springboards from which entirely new Terminator movies could be churned out. Resistance, on the other hand, feels like an integral and necessary third chapter to the Terminator story that stands on its own while lending so much more context to the other two chapters.

Thanks to its excellent story and capturing of the future war setting perfectly, the climactic battle at the end is one of the most fun and awe-inspiring sequences I’ve experienced in a while, far better than any of the grand setpieces in the Call of Duty games. There is nothing quite like charging across a battlefield alongside resistance troopers against an army of terminators, with a hijacked hunter-killer tank raining plasma fire on the enemy while Brad Fiedel’s signature theme booms in the background. This is literally what so many Terminator fans, myself included, have been crying out for for decades, and it is a testament to Hollywood’s creative bankruptcy that a small Polish developer of less than 100 people finally made it happen.

There’s no question in my mind: Terminator Resistance is the true follow-up to Judgment Day. The developers effectively captured the aesthetic appeal of the Terminator universe and crafted a brilliant story that fills in all the gaps with the first two movies. It’s also a damn good shooter, with good old-fashioned single player FPS design coupled with modern features like large, explorable levels, crafting, skill points, dialogue choices and multiple endings. It has the ambition and scope of a triple-A game jammed into the confines of a small studio, and while it lacks the polish and sophistication of its more big-budgeted peers, it has a much bigger heart that it wears on its sleeve. Forget Rise of the Machines, Salvation, Genisys and Dark Fate: Resistance is the true heir to the Terminator throne.

Command & Conquer: Remastered Shows Us How the Past Should Guide the Future

For many gamers over the age of 30, Command and Conquer represented many firsts for us. It was our first Real-Time Strategy game, our first experience with live-action Full Motion Video, and our first game narrative that was nuanced and very well thought out. A quarter century later, the traditional RTS genre is pretty much being held aloft by one game: Starcraft II. Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection will not change anything with the genre, but it does serve as a valuable and much-needed reminder of what so many games today have lost.

C&C Remastered is squarely aimed at those who played the original Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert in the mid 1990s; it makes no overtures whatsoever to today’s generation of gamers. This is immediately apparent in the opening introduction, which takes the original CD-ROM (remember those?) installation sequences and cleverly reworks them to make it look like your EVA (Electronic Video Agent) is upgrading itself into the modern era. I cracked a smile when the EVA cycled through various antiquated audio selections such as “Sound Blaster” before arriving at “High Definition Audio.” So many details of these sequences will be lost on anyone other than veteran C&C players, and hell, once it’s complete, the EVA even says “Welcome back, Commander.”

The two games are largely unchanged from a gameplay perspective, warts and all. You still set up your MCV and construct a base, amass an army, and annihilate the enemy like before. The AI pathfinding is still remains somewhat dodgy, with units sometimes eschewing the shortest route to their destination and casually strolling into enemy territory. C&C Remastered‘s charm stems from its massively enhanced visuals and sound, giving the gameplay a refreshing feel, like a new coat of paint on an old Gran Torino. The updated visuals are a huge standout, and you can now zoom in to scrutinize the new details they gave the units, such as the GDI Commando’s sniper rifle and the driver in the Allied Jeep. For longtime C&C fans, it’s like the revealing of the mystery of what these units would look like if they weren’t tiny pixellated blobs.

The remade soundtrack especially deserves mention. C&C Remastered features a full-fledged customizable Jukebox with remastered tracks from both games, but the real highlight is the suite of completely remade songs done by original composer Frank Klepacki and the C&C tribute band Tiberian Sons. The tracks are superbly arranged and mixed, with classics like Mechanical Man and Act on Instinct given much needed facelifts to take them out of the cheese of 90s midi into the gritty punch of live drums, guitars, digital synths and Stingray bass. It’s incredibly rare for any game, let alone an RTS, to pay so much attention to its music, and that’s why the C&C soundtrack still remains the greatest videogame soundtrack of all time. Each and every one of its tracks can stand on its own as a properly thought out piece of music, and not pedestrian drivel designed to solely accompany visuals.

Beneath these new additions and updates, the biggest takeaway from playing C&C Remastered is how so many of its storytelling details flew over my head as a kid. RTS games are rarely known for storytelling, but just like their soundtracks, the C&C games’ storylines are galaxies beyond the low bar set for them. Without ever spelling everything out for you, they use a combination of news reports, mission briefings, and cutscenes to give you insights into the current state of the world, the nature of GDI/Allies and Nod/Soviets, and the role Tiberium plays in shaping the world of C&C. The responsibility is on you to put the pieces together, and it really is fascinating to see C&C prophesying some of today’s events. In particular is how the insidious forces of Nod use the media to paint GDI as a villain in an attempt sway public opinion (not unlike Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East), and Nod’s exploitation of vulnerable countries, particularly in Africa, in order to shore up resources and supporters in their fight against GDI (not unlike similar efforts by China in Africa).

The most appealing aspect about C&C is how it puts emphasis on unconventional areas to enhance its gameplay. In today’s gaming industry, all the marketing strategies and focus groups would tell you that story and soundtrack are of least concern when developing almost any game. Yet the guys at Westwood Studios defied that conventional wisdom, and as a result, Command & Conquer remains one of the most rewarding RTS games to play because everything you do feels so badass. The immersive storyline gives meaning to your strategic machinations, giving motivation to go from one mission to the next in order to see how the story unfolds. The soundtrack goes above and beyond the elevator-music standard that plagues so many games, working together with the visuals to add heaviness to every building constructed, every army moved and every enemy annihilated. C&C Remastered is pretty much required for anyone who appreciates the original games for these qualities, and hopefully can inspire appetite in developer Petroglyph for another batch of remasters for Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2.

The Rise of Skywalker Succeeds in Disappointing

In the run-up to the release of last year’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, a steady stream of bad PR in the form of disgruntled test screen audience members began to trickle forth from the recesses of the internet. Gradually, the leaks that told of disastrous test screenings and a completely nonsensical plot grew more credible, and at a certain point I decided I would not give any money to watch what was clearly going to be yet another disrespectful piss stain on a long-respected franchise.

Six months later, I was ranking all the Star Wars movies in my head and realized I couldn’t do so properly without having watched RoS. Now that RoS is available for viewing through…non-paid means…I gave it a go to decide for myself whether or not it was as terrible as the hardcore Star Wars fans made it out to be. Spoiler alert: it is.

On the back of The Last Jedi, which was unambiguously the most awful, disrespectful piece-of-shit movie ever made in the history of everything, director and writer JJ Abrams elected to try and turn things around by making a crowd-pleasing Star Wars entry that would close out the saga and tie off all the mysteries raised in The Force Awakens. This comes at the expense of any meaningful or coherent narrative, because judged purely on its own merits, RoS is an utter trainwreck.

The plot is a very, very long sequence of “We need to go here to find the thing, then go here to find the other thing” in a hasty and incompetent attempt to hit the necessary plot points. In the first 30 minutes alone, Poe, Finn and Rey retrieve information on the Emperor’s return, flee from a squadron of TIE fighters, brief the Rebels on the entire mission of finding a Sith dagger so they can determine where he is, fly to a desert planet where they meet Lando, battle stormtroopers, explore underground tunnels, encounter a giant worm/snake creature, and escape. The movie rarely stops to take a breather so that the audience and characters can reflect on the events that have transpired, and as a result, so much of it is forgettable.

In all good movies, the events that move the plot along are vehicles through which characters and themes can be explored. RoS is nothing more than those events that move the plot along. By the end of it, the entire sequel saga has said nothing, absolutely nothing, that hasn’t already been said in the preceding six movies. If anything, RoS all but confirms that the sequel trilogy is a vastly inferior remake of the original, with so many similar plot points as Return of the Jedi that it really feels like JJ Abrams and team, with little time and lots of pressure, simply copied that movie while trying to undo the damage dealt by The Last Jedi. Here’s a very small sampling of plot points that RoS steals from RoJ:

RoS: The Emperor returns with another superweapon
RoJ: The Emperor shows up with another superweapon

RoS: Rey discovers her tie to the Emperor, ostracizes herself to protect her friends, and is convinced to face him by a Force ghost Luke
RoJ: Luke discovers his ties to Vader, ostracizes himself to protect his friends, and is convinced to face him by a Force ghost Obi-Wan

RoS: Kylo Ren, after trying to turn Rey to the dark side, has a change of heart and helps her defeat the Emperor.
RoJ: Darth Vader, after trying to turn Luke to the dark side, has a change of heart and helps him defeat the Emperor.

RoS: The Emperor forces Rey to watch his fleet decimate the Rebels, and beckons her to strike him down.
RoJ: The Emperor forces Luke to watch his fleet decimate the Rebels, and beckons him to strike him down.

Then there’s the tone of the movie, which feels borderline schizophrenic with how it abruptly shifts between the feel of a grandiose space opera and an oddball sitcom. This is a symptom of any movie by JJ Abrams, with characters suddenly breaking out into bizarre arguments or having unusually witty lines on hand. Here’s one example: After an emotional scene between Rey and Leia, in which the former struggles with her training and the weight of the events from the previous two movies, Poe and Finn return from a mission that has left the Millennium Falcon badly damaged. The mood suddenly shifts into JJ Abrams-style quirkiness with a really shitty version of a comedic David Mamet-style conversation between Poe and Rey:

Poe: Hey, we really coulda used your help out there!
Rey: How’d it go?
Poe: Really bad actually! Really bad.
Rey: Han’s ship-
Poe (noticing BB8): What’d you do to the droid?
Rey: What’d you do to the Falcon?
Poe: Falcon’s in a lot better shape than he is.
Rey: BB8’s not on fire-
Poe: What’s left of him isn’t on fire.
Rey: Tell me what happen-
Poe: You tell me first.
Rey: You know what you are?
Poe: What?
Rey: You’re difficult. Really difficult, you’re-
Poe: You-
Rey: …a difficult man
Poe: You are…
Rey (noticing Finn): Finn, you’re back! (Runs off)

This sequence is about 15 seconds long with close to 20 cuts, with the camera rapidly cutting back and forth between Rey, Poe and BB8 as each line is spoken. In moments like these, RoS momentarily stops being a Star Wars movie and becomes an exercise in Abrams’ comedic self-indulgence. If you want a genuinely funny Star Wars moment, check out Chewbacca saving Threepio from a junk pile and trying to repair him in The Empire Strikes Back. Great comedic moments like that seem like they’re inadvertently triggered as a result of the characters’ personalities, without killing the mood or grinding the story to a halt.

An astonishing aspect of RoS is how, despite how much plot it crams into its 142-minute run time, so many characters are given such little room to be explored and yet are made out to be important to the story. There’s General Hux, who for the past two movies was made out to be an important villain, then is suddenly revealed to be a spy helping the Rebels and is promptly shot dead before any rational explanation can be given. There’s Jannah, an ex-stormtrooper like Finn who is critical in the final battle and suddenly develops a close bond with him, despite having only met once. There’s General Pryde, the leader of the First Order who for some reason wasn’t in the previous movies and therefore instills no feelings whatsoever besides being a generic bad guy. There’s Zorii Bliss, an ex-compatriot of Poe’s with a very distinctive look, yet somehow doesn’t contribute anything to the plot besides giving us more insight into Poe.

And then, of course, we have Emperor Palpatine himself, who was clearly brought back because the trilogy didn’t have a good villain anymore ever since Rian Johnson decided to kill Snoke off just to be subversive. Just like Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, this iteration of Palpatine doesn’t carry any of the weight of the original, who had been scheming for six frickin’ movies, engineering the demise of the Jedi and the rise of the Galactic Empire. The Emperor in this movie is not that Emperor. Without two trilogies to build him up as a truly effective villain, he serves as nothing more than yet another plot point to be discarded once he has served his purpose. I’m not gonna lie, I actually felt kind of bad for him when he gets obliterated by Rey at the end; the poor bastard barely got the chance to set his evil plans in motion. And wasn’t it the Emperor’s idea for Rey to kill him so that his soul could transfer into her body? A much better conclusion that would have barely redeemed this movie (and trilogy actually) would have been for Rey to spear both herself and Palpatine at once with her lightsaber, preventing him for manifesting ever again, undoing Rey’s reputation as a terribly written Mary Sue, and providing a subversive ending that fans would actually like while making Rian Johnson shit himself with envy.

The only things that save RoS from being worse than The Last Jedi are the concluding space battle, which is a sight to behold, and the return of Lando, who adds some much needed grit to the cast in the absence of Han Solo. Everything else about this movie is a complete mess; a hodgepodge of plot points hastily stitched together and approved by corporate drones, with no overarching themes or meaningful character development to speak of. As time goes on, it would probably best serve Star Wars fans to treat the entire sequel trilogy as one gigantic creative misadventure that should be ignored.

So, to conclude the impetus that motivated me to watch this dreck, here’s how I rank all the Star Wars movies to date, from worst to best.

11 – The Last Jedi
10 – Rise of Skywalker
9 – The Phantom Menace
8 – The Force Awakens
7 – Attack of the Clones
6 – Solo: A Star Wars Story
5 – Revenge of the Sith
4 – A New Hope
3 – Rogue One
2 – Return of the Jedi
1 – The Empire Strikes Back

Shame On You For Not Watching These 5 Great Movies

One of the great pleasures (or tragedies, depending on whether you’re a glass-half-full or empty kind of person) in life is going back in time, sometimes as recent as a few years back, and discovering all kinds of amazing movies that somehow flew under your radar when they first came out in theaters. Whether it’s due to sheer ignorance (forgivable) or lack of interest (unforgivable) is irrelevant now, because with everyone staying home with jack shit to do and a deluge of creatively vacant crap flooding our streaming services and cinemas, this is the perfect time to look back in time and check out some of the best movies you definitely have not seen yet. Below are my favorite films that were criminally ignored by the box office, and you.

Shattered Glass (2003)

Having just been critically maligned for half a decade over his whiny man-child portrayal of Anakin Skywalker, Hayden Christensen’s first post-Attack of the Clones feature is a shockingly insightful examination in journalistic sensationalism and its ability to cloud the judgement of those who engage in it, whether it’s the author’s or the audience’s.

Shattered Glass is based on a true story in which New Republic writer Stephen Glass was discovered to have fabricated many of his smash-hit stories. The real magic of this movie is how it works on two levels to trick you, the viewer, into sympathizing with Glass. On one level, Christensen portrays Glass as a well-meaning, dopey but fun kid who doesn’t seem to be aware of his uncanny ability to discover and tell the most captivating stories. When newly promoted editor Chuck Lane, who is incredibly unlikable and writes more straight-laced stories, starts investigating the veracity of Glass’s stories, the movie uses the staff’s unified support of Glass to trick the viewer into assuming a good guy vs. bad guy dynamic between Glass and Lane, respectively. On the second level, the movie uses this dichotomy to mirror the tendency for people to be drawn towards sensationalism instead of objective reporting. Glass, who is animated and highly sympathetic, appears to be the protagonist, while Lane, who shows little emotion, appears to be the antagonist. The brilliance in Shattered Glass is how it almost imperceptibly reveals the true dynamic between these two characters, like the answer to a puzzle that was staring you in the face the entire time.

Spartan (2004)

Starring Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, and a pre-Frozen Kristen Bell, David Mamet’s Spartan stands far apart from its military thriller counterparts with its one-of-a-kind blend of plot twists, realism, and hypnotic dialogue. Val Kilmer portrays Bobby Scott, a Delta Force operator tasked with finding the POTUS’s kidnapped daughter (Bell). In the pantheon of modern cloak-and-dagger agents like Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, Scott makes all of them look like clumsy caricatures of the real thing. That’s because his persona is based on a real-life ex-Delta operator, Eric Haney, and the brutal, machine-like precision with which he speaks and moves is cinematic gold. At one point, he tells a rescued sex slave to “shut your fucking mouth” to avoid alerting the enemy, and punches her in the gut shortly after when she doesn’t comply.

The dialogue is unlike anything you’ll ever hear in a movie. Every word and line is so masterfully crafted that subsequent viewings always seem to reveal new subtleties that you missed the previous time. Take this exchange for instance, in which Scott’s protege Curtis asks him if Scott’s superiors are sending him to find the President’s daughter.

Curtis: They sending you in?

Scott: We’ll leave that to our betters.

Curtis: Why don’t you ask them?

Scott: Why would I want to know? I ain’t a planner, I ain’t a thinker. I never wanted to be. You got to set your motherfucker to receive. Listen to me. They don’t go through the door, we don’t ask why. That’s not a cost, it’s benefit. Because we get to travel light. They tell me where to go. Tell me what to do when I get there.

Amid the heavy shop-talk and countless plot twists, the movie never loses clarity on the driving force behind the plot, with various characters repeatedly asking “Where’s the girl?” as a means to anchor everything down. Spartan is an extraordinarily sophisticated spy thriller and demands the same level of sophistication from you in order to catch all of its hidden weapons.

In the Bedroom (2001)

Directed by Todd Field, this slow-burning, ultra-realistic family drama is so zen-like in its execution that it might as well have been directed by Stanley Kubrick. Although it implies a sappy romance, the title is actually a reference to how more than two lobsters trapped in a lobster cage will inevitably kill each other.

There’s not much I can say about the plot here, as much of its power stems from a shocking plot twist that happens about a third of the way in. The story takes place in a sleepy town in Maine, and involves a young man (Nick Stahl) dating an older woman (Marisa Tomei) who also has two kids, much to his parents’ (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek) disapproval. It may sound quite mundane at first, and In the Bedroom starts off seeming like it’s going to be a certain type of movie, but after said plot twist, it veers down a different path and reveals its true nature as something much darker than you expected.

In The Bedroom is ultimately about how the darkness that lurks within us will eventually have its day, one way or another. Until it does, everything we do to maintain a sense of normalcy is a lie. There are good and bad ways to let that darkness out, and the characters do so with varying consequences. The tension of anticipating which path they choose is what drives the narrative forward, culminating in a bit of a surprise ending you’re not likely to see coming.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

Despite being 140 minutes long, Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines feels like it could have been twice as long in the hands of a less capable director. The movie weaves together a crime story from three different perspectives, each chronologically happening one after the other. Most other films with this premise would use non-linear storytelling to maintain a better sense of continuity, but this one instead adopts a refreshingly unique linear sequence of events, where the narrative baton gets passed onto a new character every third of the way through and the audience gets what initially seems like a new story taking place in the same world.

TPBTP looks at how one’s actions ripple outwards across time, passing the consequences onto new generations . The two central characters, stunt biker-turned-bank robber Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) and police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) are men who both want more for themselves, whether for selfish reasons or to support a family. Every detail of how they pursue those goals echoes throughout the years, down to how their sons turn out when they become teenagers. One character, who pursues his ambition for selfish reasons, winds up becoming very successful, but ends up with a son who is spoiled and uninspired. The other character, who breaks the law to to support his family, ends up with a son who is close to his family but plays fast and loose with the law.

On top of it all, TPBTP boasts some truly gripping action, with an incredible bank robbery and chase sequence more realistic than most of what you’ll see in the genre.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Rounding out this list is probably the best western horror movie ever made, Bone Tomahawk. The premise is simple: a tribe of cannibals has kidnapped some townsfolk, and a group of volunteers including Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russel) and Arthur (Patrick Wilson) set out to rescue them.

Director and writer Steven Craig Zahler likes his films slow, long, and gory (see my review of his most recent movie, Dragged Across Concrete), and Bone Tomahawk practically screams those qualities. After establishing its premise, the movie slams into an agonizingly slow pace in which the rescue party, led by Sheriff Hunt, march across the desert plains to rescue their people. This journey, which encompasses half the movie, is filled with conversations between the characters and their understandings of each others’ motivations for joining the mission. All of this is to build them up as much as possible, because after seemingly forever, all hell breaks loose and the movie suddenly turns into an unhinged bloodbath in which limbs are chopped off, heads are severed, and a man is scalped before being torn in half vertically in one of the most stomach-turning sequences in recent memory.

Bone Tomahawk is a classic example of a movie that rewards your patience and attention with some of the most visceral action put to film. With every gunshot and gory dismemberment, you feel for the characters because you’ve journeyed with them across the desert and understand who they are inside. With an immensely satisfying conclusion, this is definitely a must-watch if you like your westerns bloody and thoughtful at once.

What Contagion Can Teach Us About the Wuhan Virus

The spread of the Wuhan Coronavirus has captivated the attention of just about every person with access to a newspaper and internet connection, with hundreds dead, tens of thousands infected and literally millions under lockdown. Like any global epidemic, the Coronavirus has had ramifications for every facet of modern society, from schools to workplaces to hospitals and, most dramatically, to air travel. It’s a massively complex problem with equally massive consequences, and luckily for us, we can get a very digestible overview of it thanks to an excellent movie that mirrors current events with frightening accuracy: 2011’s Contagion.

Here’s an introduction to the plot, and stop me if it sounds familiar: A deadly virus (later given the name MEV-1) originating from farm animals in China makes contact with humans, who unwittingly spread it to others by touching various objects, neglecting to exercise proper hygiene standards, and traveling to other countries where it spreads across the world. The promotion of snake oil cures and nefarious government schemes from conspiracy theorists contributes to a breakdown in societal order, while government figures and medical experts are faced with ethical challenges in their race to find a vaccine. If the plot to Contagion sounds rather clinical (pun intended), that’s because it’s intended to be. Director Steven Soderbergh sought to make the most accurate dramatic depiction of a viral epidemic, but thanks to a masterful script and a host of top-tier actors (Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Bryan Cranston), the movie is immensely captivating without compromising on its focus on realism.

Contagion is masterful in the subtle way it shows how the virus spreads from character to character. The camera lingers on shots showing people touching door knobs, elevator buttons and cups, all without ever coming off as over-dramatic. The minimalist soundtrack, consisting mostly of electronic sequencers and droning, strikes a perfect balance by reinforcing the virus as an existential threat that nevertheless spreads in a most banal and uninteresting manner. The opening 15 minutes are as terrifyingly real as you will ever see in a dramatization of a viral epidemic, with infected people going about their lives, touching various surfaces in public while those around them remain completely oblivious.

The central takeaway of Contagion is that humans, for all our intellectual and physical capabilities, are haplessly predictable in the face of the worst that mother nature can throw at us. Much like the Coronavirus plaguing China and scaring the shit out of the rest of the world, the virus in Contagion is invisible, unpredictable, and prone to mutate for no rhyme or reason. It can come from any animal through a chance combination of all the worst factors, and once it spreads, it infects some while sparing others, and kills some of the infected while allowing others to recover with absolutely no rationale as to why some succumb to it while others survive. The humans, on the other hand, are reduced to animal-level survivalism against this existential threat. They loot stores, mob supply stockpiles, develop deep distrust among themselves, and, perhaps least surprising of all, prey on desperation by peddling fake remedies. Even those tasked with stopping the epidemic can’t resist their own ulterior motives, with one character secretly warning his lover to get out of the city before a quarantine can be put in place and another character kidnapping a WHO official in order to get his village to the front of the line for the vaccine.

These reactions aren’t something the writers dreamed up; anyone with a rudimentary understanding of human psychology can see this coming a mile away. Conversely, not even the most brilliant scientists in the world can anticipate these viruses or come up with a vaccine without a lot of time and effort. The brilliance of Contagion is that it builds the framework of its story entirely around careful research into its subject matter, and then injects just the right amount of dramatic flair to present a compelling story that has a beating heart at the center of its cold and calculating narrative. It’s a rare instance of a movie that can educate and entertain in equal fashion. You will learn about fomites, R-Nought, and how viruses are grown so that vaccines can be created, and at the same time you will be drawn into the extraordinary anguish the characters are forced into, such as the husband who discovers his wife’s infidelity after she succumbs to the virus, and the medical expert who refuses to stop trying to help people even as the virus eats away at her.

Whether it’s through a virus like the MEV-1 and Coronavirus, or a natural disaster like the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, mother nature’s way of reminding us that she’s still in charge in spite of all our technological and economic might is cruel and unknowable. What films like Contagion can teach us is to stand strong against such threats and not allow such threats to wipe away the virtues and morals we have worked so hard to cultivate and be overcome by our most animalistic instincts. And to wash our goddamn hands.

Remembering Neil Peart: The Philosopher Drummer

This week, Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist of progressive rock band Rush, passed away from brain cancer. Of the various musical inspirations that have passed over the past few years, such as Chris Squire, Greg Lake, and John Wetton, Neil Peart’s is by far the most devastating. It was Rush’s signature progressive rock sound that inspired me to pick up the bass guitar and embark on a 12-year musical journey that has culminated in four solo albums, with a fifth on the way.

The world of music has no shortage of amazing drummers, but Neil Peart stood above them all because he approached drummer from both an artistic and technical perspective. He deftly blended memorable, hard-hitting drumming with complex time signatures that nevertheless never made the songs feel confusing, such as in the song Tom Sawyer, which seamlessly transitions between 4/4 and 7/4 without you even realizing it. His drum parts had such memorable details, such as the ride cymbal triplets during Subdivisions or the drum fills after the guitar solo in Tom Sawyer, that during concerts it wasn’t hard to spot guys in the audience air-drumming entire songs. As I matured as a musician, I became entranced with the virtuosity of guys like Dennis Chambers and Terry Bozzio, but I always came back to Neil Peart because although he wasn’t the most technically skilled, he most assuredly could write and play the most memorable drum parts of all.

Neil’s drum solos, which I had the privilege of seeing in person six times, communicated stories and feelings. Most drum solos are tiresome exercises in technical prowess, but Neil’s solos were meticulously thought out, varying greatly between blistering barrages and slowly building crescendos before culminating in a big-band style extravaganza. During Rush’s Clockwork Angels tour, his solos featured the sounds of mechanical hissing and metallic echoes to suit the steampunk-inspired story the album was based on. No other drummer on planet earth had the combined level of virtuosity, musicality, theatricality as Neil Peart.

Neil was also the band’s primary lyricist, and his writing took Rush from a simple blues-inspired band to a progressive rock powerhouse that championed the power of the individual and human liberty in their music. Some of Neil’s best writing can be found in songs like Natural Science, Free Will, Tom Sawyer, Time Stand Still, and The Garden. While many other bands write lyrics from an emotional perspective, whether it’s songs about love, depression or happiness, Neil’s lyrics came from a place of deep thoughtfulness, backed by a wealth of research. Here’s one of my favorites lyrics from Natural Science, a song about how man, with all his capabilities, must look to mother nature to learn how to achieve a state of balance:

Science, like Nature
Must also be tamed
With a view towards its preservation
Given the same
State of integrity
It will surely serve us well

Art as expression –
Not as market campaigns
Will still capture our imaginations
Given the same
State of integrity
It will surely help us along

The most endangered species –
The honest man
Will still survive annihilation
Forming a world –
State of integrity
Sensitive, open and strong.

Neil was also hugely introverted and wrote about his feelings of isolation and awkwardness in songs like Limelight and Subdivisions. The latter song became a sort of anthem for introverts worldwide, including myself, who struggled with growing up in their teenage years and couldn’t understand why we didn’t fit in. Here’s the chorus:

Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out

Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

But perhaps his best and most important piece of writing can be found in the final song of Rush’s final album, The Garden from 2012’s Clockwork Angels:

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect
So hard to earn so easily burned
The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect
So hard to earn so easily burned
In the fullness of time
A garden to nurture and protect

And, for all his artistry and technical contributions, it is in these lyrics that Neil imparts to us the most valuable lesson of all: to treat our lives and our actions as a garden that must be constantly nurtured with love and respect towards those around us; a task so difficult to accomplish because of how easily our missteps can tarnish everything we work so hard to build. After all the lessons on how to play music, how to write songs, and how to mix tracks, the best lesson an artist can impart to another is how to live a better life. It’s Neil’s lesson that I work hard to be mindful of every step of the way, whether it’s in music or the painful grind of life. Thank you, Neil.

The Best Movies of 2019 (In my opinion)

2019 may very well be the year we saw the worst that mass-marketed cinema has to offer, with a vomitous deluge of awful, awful superhero movies (Avengers: Endgame, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Captain Marvel), pointless live action remakes (Aladdin, The Lion King) and several beloved franchises butchered to death by cancer-grade directors (Terminator: Dark Fate, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker). Fortunately, despite Disney’s increasing efforts to reduce movies into the same bland flavor, a handful of amazing movies managed to bubble to the surface this year. These are movies that broke new ground within their respective genres, whether through original storytelling, cinematography, or choreography, and in doing so, kept movies relevant as meaningful experience in an ocean of meaningless Disney-fied nonsense. So without further ado, here are what I consider to be the best movies of 2019.

The Mule

It may very well be the almost-90-year-old Clint Eastwood’s last on-screen role, but The Mule will rank as one of his most thought provoking movies to date. A crime drama that portrays the power of human decency to shine strong against over-ambition and greed, The Mule, much like Eastwood’s other genre-defying classics like Unforgiven and Gran Torino, takes a hard look at what it means to have a meaningful life. Is it to enrich oneself and seek the approval of others, or is it to enrich those you love and be of service to them? Protagonist Earl Stone finds out much too late that he’s spent his life wanting to be loved by people he can only have fun with while neglecting those who genuinely want to love him, and the journey to that realization, coupled with Eastwood’s masterful directing, make this one of the most nuanced and thought provoking movies of the year. Read my full review.

Hotel Mumbai

Hotel Mumbai is an extremely rare case of a movie that kept my heart pounding for much of its running time. An Australian production that recreates the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, the movie has an uncommonly unflinching take on the monstrous brutality that was inflicted on the inhabitants of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. It also portrays the utter incompetence of the local government to deal with the threat, leaving the hotel staff to stand between the guests and the terrorists. Thanks to fantastic performances from the entire cast and no-nonsense cinematography, Hotel Mumbai boasts the rare feat of immersing you in the emotional journey of its characters. Adding to the authenticity is the fact that the phone conversations between the terrorists and their handler, The Bull, are taken from the actual transcripts of the real-life versions. Easily the best thriller of 2019. Read my full review.

Midsommar (Director’s Cut)

Director Ari Astrid’s feature-length directorial debut, Hereditary, was without question the best horror movie of 2018. His follow-up, Midsommar, is unsurprisingly the best horror movie of 2019 thanks to its highly unconventional take on the genre. Taking place almost entirely in daytime, the movie relies less on the conventional visual motifs that drive the horror genre and instead relies on its characters’ motivations and thought processes to conjure that feeling of unease that any good horror movie should aspire to. There are no supernatural elements or otherworldly creatures, yet thanks to the unusual setting, a Swedish village in a region with exceptional long days, and the villagers’ bizarre customs, it’s easy to assume that some evil magic presence is at play. Yet the true horror of Midsommar is the darkness within the characters, the same kind of darkness that resides in many of us, that drives them to betray one another. It’s the intersection of these deep character flaws with the unsettling Utopian setting that makes Midsommar an excellent companion to Hereditary, and by extension, a worthy addition to what is hopefully a new generation of horror movies. The Director’s Cut, which runs about 3 hours, is vastly superior to the theatrical version.

John Wick 3: Parabellum

The newest addition to the John Wick series has condemned all action movies that follow it to having an outrageously high bar to reach. This movie has just about everything you could ask for in an action film: gunfights, knife fights, sword fights, book fights (?) fistfights, chases with motorcycles, chases with horses, dogs taking down baddies, and guys getting thrown through glass walls. With two previous movies having established an alternate version of New York City, in which every person on the street is seemingly a part of or aware of a secret society of assassins, John Wick 3 is relentless in showing its central protagonist defending himself from, well, the whole goddamn city. Some of the scenes in which characters complain that Wick has come to them for help, followed by him showing them some valuable trinket to change their mind, grow tiresome. Once the carnage resumes, however, John Wick 3 is far and away the most well choreographed action movie since the last John Wick movie. Whether Wick is stabbing some poor sap in the eye or evading motorcycle thugs on a horse, the camera lingers back, never resorting to idiotic shakey-cam, allowing you to scrutinize the meticulous stuntwork and Keanu Reeve’s weapon mastery in all their glory. In particular, the battle scene in which he, Halle Berry and a pair dogs work in tandem to take down an army of mercenaries is so extraordinary it seems almost physically impossible to film something so complex with minimal camera cuts. The million dollar question is how the hell they plan to top all of that in the sequel.

Ad Astra

Forget Interstellar; Ad Astra is the true heir to the space movie throne previously occupied by 2001: A Space Odyssey. With some of the most visually arresting sequences of the decade and a story that subverts expectations in a way that Rian Johnson could only dream of doing, Ad Astra truly captures the extreme isolation of space, with no friends, no family, and no extraterrestrials to call on. Where other space movies focus on the notion of discovery and humanity advancing to new scientific and philosophical frontiers, Ad Astra shows how the colonization of space only leads to more of the same. Nowhere is this better illustrated than the stunning moon rover chase, in which McBride’s party comes under attack from pirate forces while traversing a lawless sector of the moon. It seems ridiculous at first; dudes in astronaut suits in a rover chase on the damn moon, but Ad Astra is constantly hammering home the point that once humans get over the novelty of interstellar travel and living on other planets, they will simply revert to their typical bad habits. McBride’s father, played by Tommy Lee Jones, recognizes this and goes through extraordinary lengths to seek alien life, hoping that such a game-changing discovery would allow humanity to break out of this cycle, but Ad Astra is ultimately a story about looking at ourselves for the answers, rather than the stars. Ironically, it’s this message that will alienate many audiences who are expecting the same kinds of answers McBride’s dad is.

Terminator: Dark Fate -A Sequel Sent to Our Time to Kill a Franchise

Today’s major blockbuster sequels have been following an undeniable formula: functional, entertaining, but completely lacking in soul. Unlike their predecessors from decades ago, these modern sequels ride on nostalgia, heavy-handed CGI and meaningless cinematic tradecraft. They’re driven not by directors with a vision, but by film studios with Chinese backers who want to rake in profits by suckering in fans of the originals and Generation Z-ers with soft-rebooted storylines. Terminator: Dark Fate is the latest example of this, and on the backs of similarly awful sequels like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I’m just about out of hope.

Much of Dark Fate‘s marketing angled itself towards old-school Terminator fans as a return to form for the franchise, with Linda Hamilton and James Cameron involved for the first time after three pointless sequels. The notion is that this would be the movie to finally take the series forward with its original creator in the mix (in reality, he just made notes on the script while filming Avatar sequels). I walked into the theater with an open mind as to how they would do that, and even with low expectations, I walked out not just disappointed, but kind of insulted.

Incredibly, the filmmakers, led by Deadpool director Tim Story, decided to make Dark Fate a Star Wars New Trilogy/Rian “Fuckface” Johnson-esque soft reboot by killing off John Connor right away, replacing him with a new soon-to-be resistance messiah Dani Ramos, replacing Skynet with some vague AI called Legion, and tacking on Sarah Connor and the T-800 Terminator in order to draw in the fanboys, even though they aren’t entirely critical to the overall plot. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a Terminator is sent back in time by an evil AI to assassinate the future leader of the human resistance, so the resistance also sends back a human guardian, who protects and mentors the future resistance leader, then sacrifices their life to that end. This is the story of the original Terminator, and, rather amazingly, Terminator: Dark Fate. It adopts the brain-dead tactic of trying to have it both ways by appealing to younger viewers who don’t know or care about Terminator while suckering in older viewers who do with generous sprinklings of meaningless fan service.

Unfortunately, even as a reboot, Dark Fate doesn’t work. Dani, the new female Mexican version of John Connor, is extremely cringe-y in the way her arc goes from timid to badass, suddenly becoming an iron-willed warrior without any meaningful justification. In one scene, she is practicing firing a gun to no avail. The T-800 tries to give her advice, but is shushed by Sarah Connor, who instead tells her, “The Terminator has killed your family. What are you gonna do about it?” In a straight-up comic-book moment, Dani instantly gains the marksmanship of a Navy SEAL and swiftly nails two targets with a shotgun. It’s a cheap way to get a laugh out of the audience, but it belongs in a stupid Marvel movie, not something with the weight and gravitas of Terminator.

It doesn’t even work as a science-fiction action horror movie, either. It’s evident in the way the film is shot and the action sequences are handled that Tim Story doesn’t have a clue on what made Terminator 1 and 2 so great. Whether it’s the legendary helicopter chase and Galleria battle between the T-1000 and T-800 in 2, or Kyle Reese dreaming of the apocalyptic future while the Terminator is running around murdering people in 1, the original films were permeated with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, and the action scenes were slower, muscular, and packed a lot of punch. By contrast, Dark Fate has no sense of horror or dread, and its action scenes are so fast, overly CG’d and filled with criminally generic orchestral action music that they rapidly become uninteresting. In Terminator 2, every punch, every body slam and shotgun blast was memorable because they were synced to carefully designed sound effects and a distinct soundtrack. Here, it just feels like Tim Story copied and pasted the action formula straight out of Deadpool.

The one thing that was terrific about Dark Fate also happens to be the one thing that the writers chose not to explore more deeply, which is the dynamic between Sarah Connor and the T-800. The brief interplay between the two is great, with Connor, the human, ironically single minded in her hatred of the T-800 for killing her son, while the cyborg T-800 has “matured” to atone for its sin. This, I thought, would have made for a genuinely interesting Terminator story; a parent who has turned into a killing machine alongside a killing machine that has turned into a parent. Arnold in particular plays the T-800 to perfection, more so than in Genisys, which is amazing considering he does so by being completely devoid of emotion. Everything about his performance, from his monotone voice, to his movements, to his poise, proves that the role belongs only to him, and when he calmly talks about his day job of selling drapery, it’s believable and doesn’t come off as forced humor. Watching Sarah Connor practically frothing with rage at the T-800, which has gained a Zen-like serenity, is one of the best moments in Terminator.

It felt like such a missed opportunity to have had a new movie based on this subplot, rather than a boring, over-CG’d rehash featuring Mexican female John Connor. But, as is the case with many of our beloved film franchises today, Terminator is no longer driven by director-auteurs who want to tell a new story, but by film studios who use market research and focus groups. The franchise now only serves to function at the whims of greedy executives, riding on its successful past in order to kill its future.

As of today, Terminator: Dark Fate is doing terribly at the box office, and surely its creators and the backers at 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Skydance and Tencent (yuck) must be wondering what went wrong. The truth is that Terminator succeeds when it doesn’t think like a mass-market action blockbuster, but a deep, richly nuanced science fiction story that wears the skin of a major action blockbuster. The vast majority of fans who would have turned out to see this movie are people in their early 30s to late 50s; guys who fell in love with the originals as kids and have matured into moviegoers who demand some creative honesty in a Terminator follow-up. This is not a franchise you can just “Marvel” up with Chinese backing and mass-marketing; this is a franchise that can only succeed when it is led by a director who just wants to make a damn good movie and story, and not give a fuck what some film executive asshole thinks or how many people turn out to watch it. Unless James Cameron gets bored of the dozen Avatar sequels he’s making, or a director like Christopher Nolan takes the reins, it’s doubtful this franchise will change the fate that’s been made for it.

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.