Schlock Mercenary

In 1935, at the rehearsals for his Symphony no. 4, composer Ralph Vaughn Williams said “I don’t know whether I like it, but it is what I meant.” Artists of all stripes will find these to be words to live by. They’re also good words for those who critique all the stripey types of art, and they kind of describe how I feel about Logan. Paraphrasing with a twist: “I didn’t have fun, but I wasn’t supposed to.” Logan is a powerful drama with elements of action and suspense. It earns its R-rating on all fronts, and with maybe one or two exceptions it only does so in strong service of the story. Everybody turns in brilliant performances, and they ground the fictional world of Wolverine and Professor X in a near-future that very much seems like ours. If your only exposure to Marvel Comics has been through the Avengers cinematic franchise, Logan may leave you wondering when comic books started telling such deep stories. The answer is “since about the beginning of comic books.” Sequential art goes way back. Dialog bubbles and newsprint are new, relatively speaking, but we’ve been putting actual drama in those for a long time. The salient point here is that if you’re hoping for something to whet your appetite for Spider-Man: Homecoming, or Thor: Ragnarok, Logan is not the hors d’oeuvres you’re looking for.

On the just-eat-your-popcorn side of the cinematic fence The Great Wall is a pretty good fantasy movie. It’s beautiful, the monsters are despairingly powerful, and the action sequences left me wondering if Cirque du Soleil performers were on the stunt team. It doesn’t clear my Threshold of Awesome, but if you want to eat popcorn in a theater seat this weekend it’s not a bad choice. Many of you may be happy to leave it at that, but I do have further thoughts. Nobody is going to make you read them, much less agree with them. On the critically- and culturally-aware side of that fence the film is problematic. I feel just a little bit guilty for not feeling too bad about it. The Great Wall seems very much like a Chinese film expertly shoehorned into Western theaters, which I believe to be safely on the non-appropriative side of the fence¹. This may seem like a double standard, but I think the Chinese studios should be able to use whatever Chinese cultural elements they want to without reproach. Western studios, on the other hand, earn all kinds of reproach. Hollywood continues to earn scorn from lots of people on this front. I really am going to to talk more about the film itself, but before I do I need to drop a caveat: the arguments regarding cultural appropriation are far too involved for this post, and no matter which side you take in those matters I’m not going to be able to change your position here. So I’ll give that a wide miss, and tell you why I’m okay with Chinese monster-fighting heroes atop the Great Wall of China having their story told from the point of view of a white dude with a Skyrim accent.² First, this film is dominated by Chinese actors who are speaking Chinese. It’s heavily subtitled, with only five English-speaking characters³. There are at least a dozen big roles, and only three of them belong to European-flavored hominids. As a white guy, I felt like a foreigner in this film, and Matt Damon was a pretty good proxy for my POV. I’ve never been left wanting for films that represent my particular phenotype, but if you’re after my movie dollar, this casting decision makes sense.⁴ Our female lead, Tian Jing, is the one with all the power in this relationship, and kicks all kinds of monstrous hindquarters. She takes plenty of heroic action without impetus or assistance from the white dude (or ANY dude.) I think that if I were an Asian female, I’d also feel pretty well represented. I think. I don’t actually speak for that group, obviously. This demographic contrast is most clearly evidenced in the marketing for the film. The image above was created for Asian markets. Matt Damon’s picture dominates the marketing here in the West. Here’s a side-by-side, with a monster in the middle. See how the monster stares into your soul? I think it’s asking you how you feel about the images to either side, and daring you to express a preference. And no matter what you pick, it will eat you. If you want to do a cultural barometer check on yourself, page through the IMDB images for The Great Wall and ask yourself which ones speak to you. Like actual barometric readings there’s no wrong answer here. Just interesting data. Okay, I said “problematic” way up above in the 3rd paragraph. The problem is that Matt Damon’s character fits quite cleanly into the Great White Savior trope, which has been pretty threadbare since Fern Gully. It’s somewhat mitigated by the “we can only do this together” shtick, and some solid protagging⁵ from other characters, but only somewhat. If this particular trope is a show-stopper for you, I think that The Great Wall is a show that you’ll stop watching. I’ve run on for long enough, and need to go make comics now. I’ll leave you with this: The Great Wall is a pretty cool movie that I think got a bit more shade cast on it than it should have. I had a lot of fun, and many of you will too. ¹ Or “wall,” if you will. I’m too good a person to make that joke in the body text above, but too flawed a human to leave it lying around completely un-joked.

While it did not quite make it across my Threshold of Awesome, The Lego Batman Movie was plenty of fun, and had lots of awesome moments. It’s something I’ll probably want to pick up on Blu-Ray, because there are plenty of amusing, fannish, and/or Easter-eggy things going on in the background, and those are usually good for a couple of re-watches. At least for me. The opening romp¹, in which our hero is awesome and makes it look easy, is possibly the most over-the-top action movie romp ever. Possibly. I hadn’t realized this was something for which I would want to be keeping score. Unlike The Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie does not have live-action stuff happening outside the fourth wall. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Those scenes made The Lego Movie work for me², but I know they threw a lot of other people out of the film. I share this not as a spoiler, but as a meta-unspoiler. Don’t sit there waiting for live action moments to explain in-Lego plot points. You might be able to headcanon³ a few such moments (I know I did) but that’s always a perilous path to walk, since you’re putting things into the movie that the director did not put in. ¹ By my definition, the Romp is the Act I scene in an action/adventure film in which we see our hero(es) being competent and successful. It is used to make promises about the kinds of action we’ll see later, and it sets the bar for what our hero is capable of. Some films do it really well (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation) and some do not (I won’t name names here.) ² The Lego Movie placed #4 on my 2014 list, and totally crossed my Threshold of Awesome. ³ “Headcanon” is usually a noun, but verbing it makes total sense to me.

If you enjoyed John Wick, which starred Keanu Reeves as a hitman whose retirement is interrupted, you’ll enjoy John Wick: Chapter 2, which stars Keanu Reeves as a hitman whose sabbatical from retirement is extended by more non-retirement. Dog lovers might appreciate knowing that the death of a dog is not Wick’s impetus in this film¹. Car lovers² will appreciate John Leguizamo’s estimate about how soon Wick’s car can be fixed. People who love witty dialog in the style of superhero banter should probably just re-watch one of the Avengers films, or at least not show up for this film with high hopes for any of that. I enjoyed John Wick 2, but it does not clear my Threshold of Awesome. The fight scenes are every bit as amazing as they were in the first movie, but the story is on rails. There are no plot twists, unless you count employer treachery as a twist, which is about as unexpected as a meet-cute³ in a romantic comedy. So, you know… enjoy the fight scenes, and pretend that the world will be a better place without any of these nameless thugs, who probably eat babies with a garnish of puppy. ¹ I was asked very specifically about dogs by someone on Twitter.

I don’t watch much TV. We don’t have cable. If a program gets good reviews from my friends, I’ll pick it up on Amazon Prime, or I’ll wait until it hits Netflix. Sometimes I’ll buy DVDs and Blu-Rays. My friend Myke Cole, whose books I’ve plugged in blog posts of yore¹, is featured in a reality TV program from CBS called “Hunted.” (Episode 1 is currently free to stream from CBS.²) Reality TV is pretty much my least favorite form of TV, but Myke is awesome so a gave it a shot. No regrets. None. A team of investigators, of which Myke is a part, break out all the tools of their trades to track down nine two-person teams of runners, who are playing the part of fugitives, with a $250k prize awaiting them if they can stay hidden for 28 days. We follow some of these teams each week, and each episode thus far has had at least one capture in it. I have no idea what the actual mechanics are behind this game, but the tools and skills on display are the real deal. It’s a lot of fun to watch, and it’s entertaining to wonder how long you’d make it before Myke tracks your “untraceable” burner phone from a convenience store receipt and a traffic camera. (Answer: I can remain hidden for at least three meals if you give me a 1-hour head start. That’s probably it.) Here’s the thing: The camera loves Myke. Several times during the first two episodes I noticed that shots were framed to include Myke in the background for no other reason than to make the shot look better. The costuming department is dressing him in t-shirts made of little more than paint and hard living, and I am forced to concede that not only is my friend Myke a fine human person and an outstanding writer, he looks really, really good on TV³. ¹ Here, here, and here. No yore was harmed in the reposting of these links. ² We’ve subscribed to the show via Amazon Prime, which is my least favorite part of this whole thing. Their digital delivery of HD is full of MPG artifacts that I never see from NetFlix. I’ll take MPG artifacts over commercials, but it stings to do that after spending actual real money on HD. ³That paragraph won’t embarrass Myke. His already-thick skin has been hardened under regular abrasion provided by his friend and mine, Sam Sykes, on Twitter. The Sam and Myke show (as I like to call it) is worth following: @MykeCole and @SamSykesSwears.

Schlock Mercenary is, in its heart of hearts, satire. It has always been political, but those messages are delivered in the abstract. It is sociopolitical satire framed in military sci-fi comedy. It invites the reader to laugh as they ask questions, but it does not commit to giving them hard and fast answers. On rare occasion the blog posts beneath the comic have been a bit more explicitly political. Over the years I’ve determined that political punditry isn’t something I enjoy, and that the people who find it profitable seem to also encourage a widening of the spaces between us, driving both the left and the right to more entertaining¹ extremes. Mostly, then, my blog is about movies and merchandise. Of late, however, my Twitter feed has been extremely political. This isn’t because I enjoy politics, nor because I’m seeking attention. It’s because important things are happening², and I believe they’re important enough for me to expend a bit of my social capital to boost critical messages. I still tweet the slice-of-life silliness I used to, but the mirth is diluted a bit. The pattern described above is likely to continue: