It's a good thing I got most of the way through this before we started watching season 4 of The Expanse, which is likely to be my next post's subject.
My familiarity with The Witcher is primarily from playing the third game - about half of it (I really enjoyed the game but I got Bloodborne and that kind of took over my PS4 for a long time.)
Of course, while a casual observer might think Netflix poured a bunch of money into a video game adaptation, the new show is, in fact, the adaptation of the 1990s Polish fantasy novels upon which the games are based. It's not actually the first adaptation, as there were movies and I believe a TV show about 20 years ago in Poland.
But the games presumably gave the series enough name recognition for Netflix to make this show.
To cut to the chase:
I am enjoying the show quite a bit. I have only one episode left in its first season. Naturally, as a gritty, dark, and morally ambiguous fantasy show, The Witcher is going to draw comparisons to Game of Thrones, and I don't think that's even unfair. I'm sure that the success of GoT, not to mention its end leaving a big vacuum behind, were factors in the creation of this show.
But The Witcher is a different subgenre of fantasy - while GoT is Epic Fantasy, concerned with the broader politics and fate of kingdoms, that stuff mostly sits in the background for The Witcher, in which we follow the eponymous Geralt of Rivia, as well as the sorceress Yennefer of Vengeberg, through their personal journeys and trials. The show's third protagonist, Princess Cirilla, is the one whose story hints at a grander, epic narrative, but most of the season sees her simply fleeing after the horrific destruction of her home.
The plot is thus more capable of being episodic, even as the larger narrative develops over time. Geralt's story in particular is built to be episodic - based on short stories, but also built into his profession.
In this world, Witchers are monster-hunters. They travel from town to town and accept bounties to destroy otherworldly beasts. To do so, they've undergone mutations that have enhanced their strength and reflexes, as well as allowed them to drink performance-enhancing potions that would poison a normal person. On top of that, they have a bit of magic as well.
And that's one thing that's refreshing after eight seasons of Game of Thrones - this is a magic-saturated world. It's just as gritty and dark as Westeros (but minus any Stark-like family with a really strong moral code) but you do get to see sorcerers and monsters and such. I think the showrunners of GoT tried to dial down the magic of an already magic-sparse series, and it's nice to see a show that embraces the fact that, yes, this is undeniably fantasy.
Is it is clever as A Song of Ice and Fire?
That's, perhaps, a more difficult question to answer. I suspect no, but don't take that as a damning critique.
Another point of comparison: The Witcher revels in its license to show off nasty blood and gore as well as tons of naked ladies. GoT did this a ton, particularly in its early seasons, when it seemed that there was an anxiety that audiences might be bored by the fantasy exposition, and they distracted from this with tits. I don't know if a similar anxiety filled the producers of the Witcher, but to be fair, both series' gritty setting also strike back against, for example, the chaste sexlessness of Lord of the Rings.
There's a deep cynicism toward institutions throughout the show. Geralt was put through a torturous upbringing to turn him into a cold killing machine, Yennefer saw her friends sacrificed to empower the magic school that then wound up essentially pimping her out to various kings, and Ciri, who seems to have grown up thinking of her grandmother's kingdom as your classical "good fairytale kingdom," is forced to confront a far darker world that was, in part, made dark by her own beloved grandmother.
At the same time, the gifts that make Geralt and Yennefer such powerful players in this world, despite their fierce desire for independence, also leave them cold and lonely. This is a show about people who need to make a family for themselves, but the classical institutions that ought to provide that are failing utterly.
More obscure is the grander, supernatural plot at foot. We know that Ciri is more important than just being the only surviving heir to the throne of Cintra - the show portrays Cintra as pretty much no more important than any of the other northern kingdoms. But Ciri has some deep and mysterious magical power in her, suggesting the world's fate is at stake depending on what happens to her.
One thing that a viewer might not get at first is that the show is most definitely not in linear order. Geralt and Yennefer's stories may or may not be happening at the same time (I suspect Yennefer's starts at the earliest, though Geralt's well past his origins story when we first meet him) but it's only in the penultimate episode that we see Geralt's story catch up with the beginning of Ciri's - the fact that Geralt is actually there for what happens in the first episode colors those events in a rather exciting way, though given that Ciri has spent a season of the show on the run, things are unlikely to truly sync up until maybe even the end of the finale - which might be a little later than I'd have chosen to delay things. Given how important Geralt and Ciri's surrogate father-daughter bond is to the story, I wonder if maybe this could have happened earlier (though a second season makes me feel less worried about this.)
As a fix for gritty, dark fantasy, this is a really great thing to get into. The monsters are mostly pretty cool-looking (though one cursed knight with a hedgehog-like appearance feels a bit like a low-tier Buffy monster, which is unfortunate given the important part he plays in the narrative) and the characters are complex and interesting.
But fair warning: the song Geralt's bard friend Jaskier writes for him in an early episode is kind of dumb but will definitely get stuck in your head, which, to be fair, is rather appropriate for something written by Jaskier.
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Monday, December 23, 2019
The Rise of Skywalker
Right there in the title is an odd choice: I hope we're past the statute of limitations on the previous entry in the Star Wars saga, The Last Jedi, because here's the big thing: at the end of Last Jedi, Luke dies, becoming one with the Force and trusting the legacy of the Jedi with Rey, whose personal ancestry wasn't important, but who carried within her a connection to the Force that could save a new generation.
I liked the Last Jedi, and the complaints about it hardened my admiration for it. I grew up on Star Wars - there was a period in late elementary school when I was watching two movies a day - I'd star with A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, and the next day I'd be watching Return of the Jedi and A New Hope again. There's a reason these movies are such cultural touchstones, and they are certainly a part of the mythological upbringing that formed my own fantasy tastes.
But I've come a long way since I was ten in terms of the complexity I want from my art. Star Wars worked so well in the first place largely because it was a pure distillation of Campbell's Hero's Journey. But of the original trilogy, the one I liked least as a kid but now recognize as the most interesting and effective movie, is The Empire Strikes Back. This is the one in which the Rebels are forced to flee, Han is captured, and Luke loses his big lightsaber duel with Darth Vader, only to realize that Vader has just been toying with him in an effort to corrupt and recruit him.
And I think it's a popular consensus that Empire was the best of them. It expanded a rather threadbare universe into something that felt lived-in and fleshed out.
So yes, I think that in the long run, if we're still talking about these sequels, Last Jedi will be considered the best. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.
My overall take on Rise of Skywalker is that it felt like this was the movie JJ Abrams had been planning (except that he was also banking on Carrie Fischer being alive) for IX when they made the Force Awakens. So I can't exactly fault him for making this one, and relying on the big plot twists it had.
The thing I cannot understand is how they let Rian Johnson make his daring, subversive, and audacious Last Jedi if they were planning on basically ignoring the ideas it brought up.
Let's go into spoiler space:
I liked the Last Jedi, and the complaints about it hardened my admiration for it. I grew up on Star Wars - there was a period in late elementary school when I was watching two movies a day - I'd star with A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, and the next day I'd be watching Return of the Jedi and A New Hope again. There's a reason these movies are such cultural touchstones, and they are certainly a part of the mythological upbringing that formed my own fantasy tastes.
But I've come a long way since I was ten in terms of the complexity I want from my art. Star Wars worked so well in the first place largely because it was a pure distillation of Campbell's Hero's Journey. But of the original trilogy, the one I liked least as a kid but now recognize as the most interesting and effective movie, is The Empire Strikes Back. This is the one in which the Rebels are forced to flee, Han is captured, and Luke loses his big lightsaber duel with Darth Vader, only to realize that Vader has just been toying with him in an effort to corrupt and recruit him.
And I think it's a popular consensus that Empire was the best of them. It expanded a rather threadbare universe into something that felt lived-in and fleshed out.
So yes, I think that in the long run, if we're still talking about these sequels, Last Jedi will be considered the best. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.
My overall take on Rise of Skywalker is that it felt like this was the movie JJ Abrams had been planning (except that he was also banking on Carrie Fischer being alive) for IX when they made the Force Awakens. So I can't exactly fault him for making this one, and relying on the big plot twists it had.
The thing I cannot understand is how they let Rian Johnson make his daring, subversive, and audacious Last Jedi if they were planning on basically ignoring the ideas it brought up.
Let's go into spoiler space:
Monday, December 16, 2019
Knives Out
Well, I thankfully managed to go see Knives Out while it is still in theaters. Directed by Rian Johnson, it's an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery with Daniel Craig playing the Poirot/Marple role - a charming and eccentric character named Benoit Blanc.
The story is about the family of Harlan Trombley, played by the legendary Christopher Plummer, a famous and successful mystery writer whose fortune has allowed his family to live comfortably under the illusion that they are all self-made successes.
On the night of his 85th birthday, Harlan ascends to his office, and when his housekeeper comes to bring him breakfast in the morning, he's dead, having apparently slashed his own throat.
As the police work on finishing up the investigation, a mysterious detective appears - one Benoit Blanc (Craig,) who seems to have some special insights into the tangled mess of a family.
Naturally, this is a mystery story, and is thus the demesne of twists and turns. I won't go too far into it, but one of the fascinating twists of the movie is that the circumstances of Harlan's death actually become quite apparent pretty early in the film. One might imagine that it then takes the form of dramatic irony - where we see the killer attempt to cover it up from the detective, the latter becoming something of a heroic antagonist.
But this relatively precedented subversion of the mystery genre is itself subverted once it becomes evident that there are pieces missing from the story we're told.
I can't say that I found the final twist particularly surprising - more a competently done unraveling of the engima. But it is well-acted, well-directed, and also has an allegorical underpinning that I find very interesting.
Let's go into the spoilers.
The story is about the family of Harlan Trombley, played by the legendary Christopher Plummer, a famous and successful mystery writer whose fortune has allowed his family to live comfortably under the illusion that they are all self-made successes.
On the night of his 85th birthday, Harlan ascends to his office, and when his housekeeper comes to bring him breakfast in the morning, he's dead, having apparently slashed his own throat.
As the police work on finishing up the investigation, a mysterious detective appears - one Benoit Blanc (Craig,) who seems to have some special insights into the tangled mess of a family.
Naturally, this is a mystery story, and is thus the demesne of twists and turns. I won't go too far into it, but one of the fascinating twists of the movie is that the circumstances of Harlan's death actually become quite apparent pretty early in the film. One might imagine that it then takes the form of dramatic irony - where we see the killer attempt to cover it up from the detective, the latter becoming something of a heroic antagonist.
But this relatively precedented subversion of the mystery genre is itself subverted once it becomes evident that there are pieces missing from the story we're told.
I can't say that I found the final twist particularly surprising - more a competently done unraveling of the engima. But it is well-acted, well-directed, and also has an allegorical underpinning that I find very interesting.
Let's go into the spoilers.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Franchise Filmmaking and the Shrinking of the Trilogy
Sequels have been a thing for a long time. While the historical reality of Homer as a single individual is dubious, the Odyssey could be considered a sequel to the Iliad (though one that shifts the focus not only to a relatively minor character from the first story but also changes the scope and tone of the story profoundly.)
If we want to talk about modern franchise filmmaking, one obviously needs to consider Star Wars.
In general, and even well after Star Wars came out, sequels tended to be sort of unplanned. You have a movie that does well - often, but not always in an action/sci-fi/fantasy genre, or comedy - and given its success, studios decide to make a sequel to cash in on the good will that the first movie inspired in the audience.
Often, the results are underwhelming and disappointing. If the filmmakers can't come up with an interesting new conflict to build the story around, they often just rehash things that came before. The first Austin Powers movie, for instance, felt really exciting and new (even as a send-up of 1960s spy movies) but its sequels relied more and more on schtick and variations on earlier jokes.
Star Wars, to my knowledge, was the first film franchise to be built to be a series - which is perhaps not entirely accurate. I believe the original film, which retroactively was called "A New Hope" when it came to video, was meant to stand on its own. It's remarkable, watching that film in isolation, how vaguely sketched the Empire and Rebellion is.
But the insane success of the original Star Wars in 1977 led to both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to get the go-ahead, and in 1980 and 1982, the rest of the original trilogy was completed.
Indeed, you could certainly argue that Return of the Jedi committed some of those "sequel sins" by rehashing the threat of a new Death Star. Return of the Jedi was, I think, the first Star Wars film to be pretty divisive (to those who already liked the series - given how Star Wars and Jaws a few years before kind of heralded the death of New Hollywood, a lot of people were pretty upset with it already.)
The thing is, Jedi closed a trilogy that felt massive and epic in scope. We watched Luke go from naive farm boy to Jedi Master and push his corrupted father to a last-minute redemption, all while we saw the great, evil, fascistic Empire collapse in a pyrotechnic display of heroism.
Star Wars set an expectation for franchise filmmaking that would not actually really take hold until about 20 years later. The release of the massively popular Harry Potter books led to a commitment by Warner Brothers to adapt all seven novels before the series was even finished. At around the same time, Peter Jackson unveiled his epic adaptation of the quintessential fantasy series, the Lord of the Rings.
Jackson initially pitched Rings as a two-film series, wary that a studio would be hesitant to commit to doing three films. However, in what was a shock in the 90s when it happened but now seems like standard practice, New Line eagerly encouraged him to flesh it out into a trilogy.
Unlike Star Wars or the Harry Potter movies, Lord of the Rings was produced as a single massive film, with over a year of principle photography. The result, of course, was a remarkably consistent feel, tone, and sense of world that spanned the trilogy.
And the other result was that the films came out in rapid succession. For my last three years of High School, every December we would get a new Lord of the Rings movie. Between that and Harry Potter, fantasy fiction became far more popular, and led to much less successful adaptations of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Golden Compass, and imitators like Percy Jackson. Less than a decade after Return of the King came out (I only just now noticed how the last entry in both Lord of the Rings and the original Star Wars trilogy are "Return of the X") we got Game of Thrones.
But as we saw with Harry Potter, the three-movie model was no longer the biggest game in town.
Indeed, Star Wars, by that point, had expanded into a larger franchise, with the prequel trilogy starting in 1999 with Episode One: The Phantom Menace.
The prequels are a thorny subject for internet rantings. As a 13-year-old when the first of them came out, I wanted them so badly to be good that I convinced myself they were. Indeed, it seems a lot of people did. But as the hype over new Star Wars movies gave way to an examination of the oddly amateurish storytelling in these massive-budgeted effects spectaculars, a bit of the magic was diluted.
Sure, there were people who were pissed about Ewok teddy bears defeating the Galactic Empire back in the day, and indeed there are people now who defend the prequels, but it certainly complicated Star Wars' legacy.
The thing is, Star Wars grew from three to six films.
But if we're going to talk franchises, we have to talk about Marvel.
Blasting onto the scene with 2008's Iron Man, the combination of Jon Favreau's playful direction and Robert Downey Jr.'s pitch-perfect Tony Stark, Marvel Studios hit the ground running with a B-tier superhero that, thanks to these films, would emerge as definitively A-tier.
The moment, however, that things took off was the first of the now-famous post-credits scenes, in which megastar Samuel L. Jackson, who had not yet appeared in the movie, showed up to talk to Tony about the Avengers Initiative, and the potential of the MCU first started to unfold.
Marvel's take on franchise filmmaking has been transformative, and insanely successful. But it's also something no one else has managed to pull off. We've seen longrunning series - how many James Bond movies are there? But they've always followed a throughline - a single protagonist, or a single ongoing story, like that of the Skywalker bloodline.
Marvel essentially created a franchise of franchises. Iron Man had an entire trilogy to himself, dealing with corporate intrigue and technological one-upsmanship. Meanwhile, Thor could have his science-fantasy mythological conflicts and Captain America his explorations on patriotism and ethical values. But part of the joy of these movies was always that you got to see them all get together. While Thor is fighting his evil death-god sister, Iron Man is preventing some super-soldiers from taking over the country, and Captain America is uncovering a vast conspiracy, they can all get together to fight aliens together.
There are 22 freaking movies that have come out from Marvel in just eleven years. There are trilogies and quadrilogies within that greater franchise, and the characters aren't even limited to their own distinct movies and the Avengers crossovers - Tony Stark is a big part of Spiderman Homecoming, for example.
The massive success of Marvel has, I think, been well-earned. Some of the early outings were mediocre, but by this point, you're pretty much guaranteed to have fun with them if you're willing to buy into the heightened superhero world. But it has done a strange thing when it comes to franchise filmmaking (not to mention other kinds of filmmaking.)
This month, we're seeing the release of The Rise of Skywalker, the third movie in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Since The Force Awakens came out in 2015, there have been four Star Wars movies - essentially one a year. While two were one-offs - the shockingly and refreshingly bleak Rogue One and the callback-obsessed fanservice prequel Solo - we're now getting the conclusion of this sequel trilogy, with the story of Rey and Kylo Ren coming to its climax.
But it feels weirdly quick, doesn't it?
I mean, on its surface, it's not. There's just almost as much time that has passed between Force Awakens and Rise of Skywalker as there was between Star Wars and Return of the Jedi. We've had two long movies to watch this story develop.
But in this day and age, we expect to have more time with a character.
By the time Robert Downey Jr.'s last scene as Tony Stark ends, we've had nine whole movies in which he's played a major role - his trilogy, the Avengers quadrilogy, and major parts of both Captain America: Civil War and Spiderman: Homecoming.
There's a whole other post to write about the popularity of more serialized television storytelling that has grown in the last 20 years, but even in our movies, we're getting accustomed to having a ton of time to get to know a character before we see their story conclude.
But that leaves us in this strange position. The Rise of Skywalker should be a massive event - the conclusion to an epic trilogy that has been going on for five years. But it doesn't really feel like that, does it?
If we want to talk about modern franchise filmmaking, one obviously needs to consider Star Wars.
In general, and even well after Star Wars came out, sequels tended to be sort of unplanned. You have a movie that does well - often, but not always in an action/sci-fi/fantasy genre, or comedy - and given its success, studios decide to make a sequel to cash in on the good will that the first movie inspired in the audience.
Often, the results are underwhelming and disappointing. If the filmmakers can't come up with an interesting new conflict to build the story around, they often just rehash things that came before. The first Austin Powers movie, for instance, felt really exciting and new (even as a send-up of 1960s spy movies) but its sequels relied more and more on schtick and variations on earlier jokes.
Star Wars, to my knowledge, was the first film franchise to be built to be a series - which is perhaps not entirely accurate. I believe the original film, which retroactively was called "A New Hope" when it came to video, was meant to stand on its own. It's remarkable, watching that film in isolation, how vaguely sketched the Empire and Rebellion is.
But the insane success of the original Star Wars in 1977 led to both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to get the go-ahead, and in 1980 and 1982, the rest of the original trilogy was completed.
Indeed, you could certainly argue that Return of the Jedi committed some of those "sequel sins" by rehashing the threat of a new Death Star. Return of the Jedi was, I think, the first Star Wars film to be pretty divisive (to those who already liked the series - given how Star Wars and Jaws a few years before kind of heralded the death of New Hollywood, a lot of people were pretty upset with it already.)
The thing is, Jedi closed a trilogy that felt massive and epic in scope. We watched Luke go from naive farm boy to Jedi Master and push his corrupted father to a last-minute redemption, all while we saw the great, evil, fascistic Empire collapse in a pyrotechnic display of heroism.
Star Wars set an expectation for franchise filmmaking that would not actually really take hold until about 20 years later. The release of the massively popular Harry Potter books led to a commitment by Warner Brothers to adapt all seven novels before the series was even finished. At around the same time, Peter Jackson unveiled his epic adaptation of the quintessential fantasy series, the Lord of the Rings.
Jackson initially pitched Rings as a two-film series, wary that a studio would be hesitant to commit to doing three films. However, in what was a shock in the 90s when it happened but now seems like standard practice, New Line eagerly encouraged him to flesh it out into a trilogy.
Unlike Star Wars or the Harry Potter movies, Lord of the Rings was produced as a single massive film, with over a year of principle photography. The result, of course, was a remarkably consistent feel, tone, and sense of world that spanned the trilogy.
And the other result was that the films came out in rapid succession. For my last three years of High School, every December we would get a new Lord of the Rings movie. Between that and Harry Potter, fantasy fiction became far more popular, and led to much less successful adaptations of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Golden Compass, and imitators like Percy Jackson. Less than a decade after Return of the King came out (I only just now noticed how the last entry in both Lord of the Rings and the original Star Wars trilogy are "Return of the X") we got Game of Thrones.
But as we saw with Harry Potter, the three-movie model was no longer the biggest game in town.
Indeed, Star Wars, by that point, had expanded into a larger franchise, with the prequel trilogy starting in 1999 with Episode One: The Phantom Menace.
The prequels are a thorny subject for internet rantings. As a 13-year-old when the first of them came out, I wanted them so badly to be good that I convinced myself they were. Indeed, it seems a lot of people did. But as the hype over new Star Wars movies gave way to an examination of the oddly amateurish storytelling in these massive-budgeted effects spectaculars, a bit of the magic was diluted.
Sure, there were people who were pissed about Ewok teddy bears defeating the Galactic Empire back in the day, and indeed there are people now who defend the prequels, but it certainly complicated Star Wars' legacy.
The thing is, Star Wars grew from three to six films.
But if we're going to talk franchises, we have to talk about Marvel.
Blasting onto the scene with 2008's Iron Man, the combination of Jon Favreau's playful direction and Robert Downey Jr.'s pitch-perfect Tony Stark, Marvel Studios hit the ground running with a B-tier superhero that, thanks to these films, would emerge as definitively A-tier.
The moment, however, that things took off was the first of the now-famous post-credits scenes, in which megastar Samuel L. Jackson, who had not yet appeared in the movie, showed up to talk to Tony about the Avengers Initiative, and the potential of the MCU first started to unfold.
Marvel's take on franchise filmmaking has been transformative, and insanely successful. But it's also something no one else has managed to pull off. We've seen longrunning series - how many James Bond movies are there? But they've always followed a throughline - a single protagonist, or a single ongoing story, like that of the Skywalker bloodline.
Marvel essentially created a franchise of franchises. Iron Man had an entire trilogy to himself, dealing with corporate intrigue and technological one-upsmanship. Meanwhile, Thor could have his science-fantasy mythological conflicts and Captain America his explorations on patriotism and ethical values. But part of the joy of these movies was always that you got to see them all get together. While Thor is fighting his evil death-god sister, Iron Man is preventing some super-soldiers from taking over the country, and Captain America is uncovering a vast conspiracy, they can all get together to fight aliens together.
There are 22 freaking movies that have come out from Marvel in just eleven years. There are trilogies and quadrilogies within that greater franchise, and the characters aren't even limited to their own distinct movies and the Avengers crossovers - Tony Stark is a big part of Spiderman Homecoming, for example.
The massive success of Marvel has, I think, been well-earned. Some of the early outings were mediocre, but by this point, you're pretty much guaranteed to have fun with them if you're willing to buy into the heightened superhero world. But it has done a strange thing when it comes to franchise filmmaking (not to mention other kinds of filmmaking.)
This month, we're seeing the release of The Rise of Skywalker, the third movie in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Since The Force Awakens came out in 2015, there have been four Star Wars movies - essentially one a year. While two were one-offs - the shockingly and refreshingly bleak Rogue One and the callback-obsessed fanservice prequel Solo - we're now getting the conclusion of this sequel trilogy, with the story of Rey and Kylo Ren coming to its climax.
But it feels weirdly quick, doesn't it?
I mean, on its surface, it's not. There's just almost as much time that has passed between Force Awakens and Rise of Skywalker as there was between Star Wars and Return of the Jedi. We've had two long movies to watch this story develop.
But in this day and age, we expect to have more time with a character.
By the time Robert Downey Jr.'s last scene as Tony Stark ends, we've had nine whole movies in which he's played a major role - his trilogy, the Avengers quadrilogy, and major parts of both Captain America: Civil War and Spiderman: Homecoming.
There's a whole other post to write about the popularity of more serialized television storytelling that has grown in the last 20 years, but even in our movies, we're getting accustomed to having a ton of time to get to know a character before we see their story conclude.
But that leaves us in this strange position. The Rise of Skywalker should be a massive event - the conclusion to an epic trilogy that has been going on for five years. But it doesn't really feel like that, does it?
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