Author: James

James grew up in a house where Friday night was Movie night, which meant that he’d watched more movies than anybody else his age before he was even old enough to watch the rated R ones. He’ll watch just about anything, though he tends to avoid the horror movies without a sense of humor. Among his favorite movies are: Alien, Fargo, True Romance, Ed Wood, and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. He’s a die-hard LOST fan and a Brown Coat. As a writer, story usually comes first for James. Memorable characters and sharp dialogue are the things that separate the classics from the chaff. That said, he does his best to keep having fun at the movies. He’s seen plenty of critics who would once have accepted summer blockbusters as entertainment become jaded and nit-picky. Sure James loves the art of film and storytelling, but fun comes first, the fun that he had watching Raiders when he was little. Also, E.T. scares the pants off him.

Best Films of 2012 Not Releasing till 2013

imageThis was a really bizarre trend this year. There were a number of films originally scheduled to release in 2012, some of which we even had trailers for, that were then postponed to next year. They each had their own reasons, some more understandable than others, but it honestly became more than a little frustrating. One of them still has trailers showing before Les Miserables advertising that it will be out at Christmas.

The list goes like this:

5: Star Trek Into Darkness

You have to reach father back for this one because while Trek 2 was originally scheduled to release this past summer, it was postponed when JJ Abrams finally agreed to direct because he wanted to be able to take his time and maybe even rework the script. Since the teaser trailer was one of the most anticipation inducing trailers of the year, I think we all feel like we need that movie in our eyes as soon as possible. But I put it on the bottom of the list for two reasons. First, it has the best reason for being postponed, which is that the movie probably wouldn’t be as good if it had been rushed by nearly an entire year, and second the delay was caused so early that we knew by the time 2012 started that it wouldn’t be in theaters this year. Still… I need it.

4: The Great Gatsby

In front of Les Miserables I saw a version of the first trailer for The Great Gatsby which still advertised that it would be out by Christmas. The film was postponed because they were afraid that Christmas would be too crowded, which is probably still true, even if another of the films on this list was also pushed back from Christmas. Django Unchained and Les Miserables would probably have eaten most of the box office away from Gatsby, and it is a strong enough contender in its new summer slot that it should do well, but that doesn’t mean I like waiting. Even if it doesn’t end up being as good as the Clayton/Coppola version, I’m still interested to see if Baz Luhrman can pull it off without getting in his own way.

3: G.I. Joe: Retaliation

This is probably the most egregious delay on the list. I was really looking forward to Retaliation but within months of its release producers decided to pull the film for a 3D conversion and a little re-editing. I’m not convinced that a 3D conversion will really do this film a service and shoe-horning in some alternative version where Duke doesn’t die so that Channing Tatum can return for a sequel just seems silly and risks making the movie feel ravaged. While I’m not sure that the March release will earn less then there prime summer date this year would’ve—in fact they might be that really successful March release that we’ve had the last few years—I’m sure that many people are going to see the trailers start to show up again and think, “Didn’t I already see that movie, or is it just a mirage.”

2: Gangster Squad

Warning: The trailer below is the original Gangster Squad trailer that features clips from a sequence in the film where there is a shooting in a movie theater.

This one is frustratingly tragic. I was really looking forward to Gangster Squad. I loved that first trailer and Ruben Fleischer’s first foray into serious action seemed like it was going to be fresh and exciting. Unfortunately this film’s climax involves a shooting in a movie theater, which was prominent in the trailer, and so after the Dark Knight Rises shooting at the Century 16 here in Denver the trailer was pulled and within the week it was announced that it would be delayed to January. While insignificant alongside the losses of that tragedy, this delay bugged me some. This man’s actions sought to ruin going to the movies, and considering the lives he took, among them one of our fans, I didn’t want to give him a single victory. Postponing Gangster Squad to the worst movie-going month of the year is going to severely hurt the film, especially considering that it now releases the same day as number one on this list. That said, I fully understand how traumatic the film would be for those affected (perhaps even for me) and I respect everyone involved in that decision for being willing to postpone and surely lose money out of reverence for this tragedy.

1: Zero Dark Thirty

Katheryn Bigelow’s Osama Bin Laden hunt has been in production since Osama Bin Laden was alive. The reason that this movie is number one of the list is because of how frustrating it is for me that the film is on other people’s best of 2012 lists because it released in LA and New York earlier this month but not on mine because we won’t get to see it till 2013. It’ll win Oscars, it’ll come and go, and come next winter it’ll be a part of our Filmsplosion 2013 and we’ll seem like we’re a year behind. The idea was that they would release in LA and New York, get a buzz going, and then when it released wide they’d find a large audience, especially around once it gets Oscar nominations. But that still means that it’s releasing in January, when people are either not going to the movies or still catching up on Django and Less Miss. It’s also at number one because it’s probably going to be the best of these films, except maybe Star Trek.

– James Hart

Which of these movies are you looking forward to the most? Leave a comment below, email us, or call and leave a message and we’ll talk about it on the show.

5 Best Car Chases of 2012

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Car Chases have been an American staple since Bullitt. In fact, if you watch movies like Bullitt or The French Connection, you realize that those movies are really only remembered because of their car chase, otherwise they’d drift into obscurity like that one movie. You know the one. Great car chases can make a film unforgettable and because they are so common, if someone can find a fresh way of presenting one, like last year’s Drive, that film can become required viewing for film fans everywhere. This is a collection of 2012’s best attempts at eternal greatness.

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Haywire

The tone and style of the action scenes in Haywire were really the only thing that made the movie worth watching, which doesn’t actually mean that I remember much about Haywire. I did however carry with me all year the car chase in the woods where Gina Carano’s character drives backwards down a dirt road while getting shot at and mostly avoiding trees. It’s not exactly something we haven’t seen before, but it was actually a part of the film that was fun to watch… plus it rounds out the list to an even five.

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The Bourne Legacy

The Bourne films have always had exceptional car chases as they’ve always tried to live up to the Mini chase from the first film. Legacy’s motorcycle chase does what car chases never could, which is apply the always-be-hitting-them kind of fighting that we expect from the Bourne films to a car chase. Not only are they trying to shoot each other and trying to to lead each other through dangerous paths and crowded areas to knock each other off their bikes, when Rachel Weisz swings her helmet at the bad guy it’s one of the more satisfying action moments in the movie. Both the desperation and resourcefulness of the act is so much fun, making this chase a little extra brutal and personal.

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Jack Reacher

This chase feels very inspired by the understated chases of Drive. Reacher isn’t just trying to get away from the police here because he is also trying to chase down the guys who have framed him. A big part of why I love this one so much is that the chase actually slows down, Reacher gets far enough away from the cops and knows that the bad guys aren’t far ahead so it begins to prowl. Sneaking down alleyways and trying to guess which way they went, eventually getting surprised. Plus, Reacher isn’t exactly an impressive driver (he doesn’t even have a license, technically) and so he fishtails often, misses turns, and even slides into a wall and kills the car for a moment. It’s a regular guy in a desperate and frustrating situation, though Reacher remains cool and calm through it all.

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Wreck-It Ralph

Animated movies have it a little easier because they can just make anything crazy that they can dream up happen, but that doesn’t make it less exciting. The entire climax of the film relies on Vanellope’s driving through volcanoes and dodging giant candies while competing against all the mean girls that hate her cause she’s completely adorable (that’s not why they hate her but she totally is).

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21 Jump Street

There was never any question that this would win. 21 Jump Street has two good chases, but the most memorable one is the highway chases where, despite their best effort they are unable to blow up cars on command. One of them is wearing a peter pan out fin and neither of them really knows what they’re doing. It balances surprisingly great action for a comedy with lines that are so funny that they hardly give you time to breathe. They steal a car, they wreck motorcycles, they shoot at people, and things blow up. You can’t ask for more.

– James Hart

Did we miss one? Leave a comment before about what your favorite car chase this year was. And don’t forget to listen to our end of the year Filmsplosion!

Best Film of 2012 You Didn’t See: The Battery

This is honestly my favorite award each year because I like drawing attention to movies that most people will love but haven’t been told about. The Battery was always the perfect choice for this award because not only if the movie great, it is much more obscure at this point than last year’s winner, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil.

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It is a common trend for first time directors—especially writer/directors—to make movies that impress more with their style than their characters because they have so many things that they want to do that their fear of never getting to make a second movie causes them to cram everything into that first try. It has made for some spectacular films (Primer, Brick, THX 1138, Bad Taste) but it is refreshing when you see a filmmaker who focuses more on character and tone than style and action. The Battery is exactly that film. And while some of that minimalism may be driven by its impressively low six-thousand dollar budget, that in no way diminishes the masterful way in which Jeremy Gardner and his team execute their story, in the same way that a broken mechanical shark does not diminish the greatness of Jaws.

The Battery plays in a genre so over-wrought with submissions that it has become little more than monotonous noise, and so as I sat in the theater watching the first ten minutes I realized that I had never seen an apocalypse like this. This wasn’t about fighting the dead, relishing in brain bashing. This was a character study with zombies at the edges. The tone of the film is set more by the emptiness of the world and the tension between these characters than by the zombies who could show up and tear them apart at any time.

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Ben and Mickey are baseball players who are traveling the northeast, sticking to rural areas and spending their nights camping out or staying in abandoned homes. As Ben tries to prepare Mickey to face a world of the undead their friendship is strained by the temptation of a mysterious place called The Orchard that Mickey hopes is a place where his life can settle. Writer/Director Jeremy Gardner’s performance as Ben is relentlessly veracious, grounding the fantasy of the plot in a pedestrian tone of day to day struggles while possessing the ability to bring levity to Mickey’s austere nature with little more than a well placed line, a audacious dance, or a playful look. While it’s easy to feel that Jeremy steals many of the scenes (men with beards like his usually do) without the dramatic faculties that Adam Cronheim brings to Mickey, Gardner’s performance would be little more than a flash in a pan. In our interview with The Battery crew we discussed how frustrating it must be to have to play the straight man while Gardner has all the fun, but Cronheim takes on the task bravely. Often characters like Mickey can be frustrating in zombie movies because we enjoy characters that are equipped to survive by slaughtering the dead, but Cronheim allows us to sympathize with Mickey because of his weaknesses, not in spite of them. Much of the script comes across as improvised, though Gardner told us that is a result of not being so in love with his own writing that he demanded lines be delivered verbatim from the script.

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It’s the nature of this award that I can’t talk much about the events of the movie, but we did spoil some of them in our interview so I can say that there is a very large portion of this movie that takes place in a very confined space that directly contrasts with the long, beautiful whimsy of the open fields and uninfected cows that proceed it. Knowing that won’t ruin the movie for you, nor will it take away from how daring the sequence is. It asks so much of the audience to endure the passage of time along with its characters, and asks even more of the structure of the film and the characters in order to support it. Were anything about this story lackluster the audience would surely walk out relieved that its over. But that is not the effect. I like these guys and I want to survive right along with them. When it’s over, it feels more like I’ve been through an experience with them, one that both took something out of me, while leaving something behind for me to think about.

I’m sure that this will come across like I’m being indulgent of some filmmakers we interviewed, but I’m not. We interviewed them because I walked out of that theater in love with the story they had told me. Sure there are things about this movie that aren’t perfect. A few lines of exposition get delivered in a way that feels forced, I had to look at a man’s penis, the last shot before the credits first roll invites misinterpretation that the mid-credit sequence then corrects, and while I enjoy the torturous third act not everyone will. But these complaints are either miniscule in their importance and common amongst big budget films, or artistic choices and therefore subjective. This is a great picture unlike any that you’ve seen and it is well worth your time and any effort that it takes to see it.

While deftly coordinating the pendulums of comedy and suspense, The Battery is never short of intensely personal. It’s personal for the characters lost within its borders, for the audience trapped alongside them, and for the filmmakers whose passion for the story they are telling is infectious.

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Nothing concrete has been announced yet but you will get a chance to see The Battery eventually. They have signed a distribution deal and continue to tour film festivals around the country. Go to The Battery website for news and follow their Facebook page for announcements so that you know when they show up in your town. And, of course, check out our interview with Jeremy Gardner, Adam Cronheim, and Christian Stella at the Telluride Horror Show following their World Premiere.

-James Hart

Are you one of the lucky few who have seen The Battery? Leave a comment below and tell us what you thought.

The 10 Best Original Scores of 2012

I’m kicking off our end of the year coverage with a little music. Over the next few days we’ll be awarding the best film you didn’t see, the best car chases of the year, the movies we most want unexpected sequels to, best actress, plus we’ll record our filmsplosion and post our lists of favorite movies of the year. If you haven’t already, send your votes for favorite movies of 2012 to the show by emailing us, calling us, or on facebook and twitter by tomorrow, December 28, 2012 and we’ll award the Fan’s Pick of the Year as well.

I’ve always loved film scores. When I was a kid I would buy scores and soundtracks and listen to them on road trips, or while I played with legos, because they inspired my imagination. Score has always been an element of film that I’ve paid particular attention to, and while I don’t pretend to be an expert on music and what makes good, I do pretend to be an expert film score.

10: Amazing Spider-Man by James Horner

We got some criticism on the show when I said that I really liked James Horner’s Amazing Spider-Man score, and after re-watching the film the truth is that I still really like it. It’s not his best score (The Rocketeer) but it does its job well, both swelling with heroism during the heroic parts and romance during the romantic part. It’s not a bad score, and taking on a franchise that already has a memorable score isn’t an easy task. It’s at number ten, not one. So calm down.

9: Cloud Atlas by Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek, and Tom Tykwer

I didn’t love Cloud Atlas and I usually have a problem with film scores that draw as much attention to themselves as this one does. But it is a truly beautiful piece of music to listen to and the way that it’s incorporated into the film is certainly effective, helping to tie the stories together even during the parts of the movie that bounce back and fourth more frequently. I’m sure that you’ll hear this one playing behind trailers for the next few years and while you’ll recognize it, you wont know where it’s from, just that it’s beautiful.

8: John Carter by Michael Giacchino

John Carter faced pretty heavy criticism when it was released, perhaps more than it even deserved, but it would be a real shame if the failure of this movie caused Michael Giacchino’s score to go unnoticed. While this score may not have shown us an entirely new side of Giacchino, whose become one of the most consistently great composers working today, it is still a beautiful score whose adventurous themes help draw us into the fantasy world of Barsoom.

7: The Grey by Marc Streitenfeld

The Grey is a Nihilistic film about our struggles in life. It pits humans alone against their world and revels in the deaths of men who die fighting. Its melancholy score reflects both the intense danger in and the quiet apathy of the wild. Composer Marc Streitenfeld, who before this year went relatively unnoticed by me, will show up on this list again.

6: The Dark Knight Rises by Hans Zimmer

My first instinct was not to put The Dark Knight Rises on this list. I hesitate to put sequels on here, especially when the score is as similar to its predecessors as The Dark Knight Rises is. This is the unfortunate reason why The Hobbit is not on this list, because Howard Shore so blatantly repeats the beautiful themes he created for Lord of the Rings that it becomes more distracting than engrossing. However, Brad encouraged me to listen through the DKR score again. It’s a more intricate version of the main theme and the control with which the new Bane and Catwoman themes are integrated reflect the single-mindedness with which it was created. The Dark Knight score is great, but it is a bit frantic, a result of too many composers having fingerprints all over it (so many that it was nearly disqualified from the Oscars). The Dark Knight Rises score is Hans Zimmer’s own and it reflects his recent shift back to a hard working and inventive composer. This isn’t a rehash of the Batman score, this is the best version of it. Hopefully we won’t soon see Zimmer slide backwards into the laziness that saw him reusing themes from one movie to the next ten years ago.

5: The Avengers by Alan Silvestri

The Avengers had plenty of challenges to overcome but the score was never really one of them. While the Marvel scores have been fine they have hardly been memorable—Iron Man features more AC/DC and Audioslave than it does score—which meant that the score could simply work on its own as service to the action without having to incorporate different themes for each character. Composer Alan Silvestri marries a militaristic style with his bombastic, superhero theme in order to invoke the feeling that an army of sorts is being… well… assembled. This style most likely works its way in because Silvestri also did the score for Captain America and because The Avengers was originally scripted to be more Cap centric than it turns out to be, once so many of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor. This is one where hearing the music behind the Bluray menu makes me even more excited to watch the movie again.

4: Wreck-It Ralph by Henry Jackman

I just want to loop this score all day long. It’s use of 8-bit music alongside a more classical score is so much fun to listen to. It blends back and forth between the two to reflect the world they are in and it gives the movie an extra boost of momentum. Plus the Asian influences for the Sugar Rush theme and the melodic, nostalgic tunes that remind of us the underwater parts of Mario are remarkably effective during the more dramatic parts of the film. This film also wins the award for “Best Use of Skrillex” which despite the name of the award is actually not something you want to win.

3: Lincoln by John Williams

It’s hard not to put a John Williams score on this list, which is honestly the most impressive thing about John Williams. The man has produced so many amazing scores in his life that he should be running out by now… right? The score to Lincoln is subtle but methodical and his deft application of his themes both allows the performances to take the spotlight while suggesting Lincoln’s underlying hunger and genius. This score is constructed of faint rumblings, like far off tectonic shifts, that remind us of the magnitude of the history being made.

2: Prometheus by Marc Streitenfeld

Prometheus was certainly a divisive film this year and we spent plenty of time talking about it on the show, but no matter where you fall on that film I don’t think anyone could convince me that the opening sequence and the score that accompanies it is not among the best, most artistic, gorgeous, and moving sequences of the year. Scoring a movie like Prometheus requires special attention paid to when the score should fall away and when it should ramp up to increase the tension of the scene. But much like John Williams’ score for Jurassic Park, Prometheus demands a score that brings to the surface the sense of wonder required by the subject at hand, and Marc Streitenfeld’s score rises to that challenge without drawing undue attention to itself. Streitenfeld has been scoring Ridley Scott’s films since A Good Year and while none of them have been bad—Kingdom of Heaven stands out as perhaps his best—this score brings him into view as a composer who demands more attention than he has drawn before.

1: Looper by Nathan Johnson

Non-traditional scores have become pretty popular lately, the most mainstream example of which being Trent Reznor’s entry into the field. I’ll be honest that this one might be at the top of my list simply because I think that once you know how it was made it becomes much more beautiful and damn impressive, too.

The score to Looper goes fairly unnoticed during the film—which is not a bad thing—but it is a strange choice for what is largely an action-adventure movie. Any other composer would have produced something more like Silvestri’s Avengers score or Steinenfeld’s Prometheus score, but Nathan Johnson, whose scores are usually more whimsical, chose a score that reminds us at times of a lullaby. What is most amazing and cool about this score is how Johnson cataloged and incorporated found audio. Strange or rhythmic sounds, scraping metal or vibrations, all things that he uses to create a futuristic atmosphere and bizarre tone that keeps us on edge while the melodies laid over them remind us of the humanity that is floating on top of this twisted situation.

I am tempted to make special consideration for This is 40 just because it features a surprising amount of Michael Giacchino’s score to LOST.

Did I miss one that you really loved? Yeah, probably. But don’t just let that go, leave a comment below or send us an email and we’ll talk about it on the show.

– James Hart

Is the Internet Convincing you to Hate Movies you Like?

I’m really not sure how we got here. I grew up watching a movie with my parents every Friday night and no one ever wanted the movie to be bad because that would make for one disappointing Friday night with the family. But over the past few years the internet has turned a corner on movies and become the enemy of cinema by turning audiences against their films. I’m not talking about torrents—I’ve made my stance on that very clear on the podcast—I’m talking about the internet’s love for tearing apart a movie on a minuscule level to try and make good, enjoyable movies seem stupid, thereby creating an antagonistic atmosphere among movie-goers.

I can’t go more than three days without sites like /Film posting some “Everything that’s wrong with The Dark Knight Rises” or “The Honest Trailer for The Avengers” video. It seems that the fastest way to get your site noticed is to post a video of you completely tearing apart a popular movie in a humorous way. While I would also argue that this isn’t actually very entertaining, the reason that it awakens passionate anger in me is that it’s perpetuating the wrong attitude towards film. What these videos are doing is saying, ‘oh, did you like this film? Well, look, I made a list of all the things that I thought were slightly wrong with it, so clearly you’re stupid and hopefully every time you watch the movie now you’ll be thinking of my video and having less fun than you were before.’ What is the point of that?! If people had fun in a movie like Avengers or Dark Knight Rises, let them keep that. None of the things that these videos are pointing out are actually that crucial to the story or the enjoyment of the action scenes, it’s just nitpicking for the sake of pretending you’re smarter than everyone else because you caught some minuscule detail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYVZjKgoKdg

“Helicopters don’t need to follow roads” is not something wrong with the movie, that’s simply stating that a helicopter is flying over a road in a way that makes it sound stupid. The helicopter is flying over the road because it looks cooler than if it were flying over tiny bushes and diminutive lizards in the dessert. “Nick Fury motivates the team by lying about the location of Baseball cards” is a plot point of the movie taken completely out of context and stated plainly as if there is something wrong with that. Maybe these fools don’t know it, but good writing takes small things like that and makes them important. That’s what it does. It’s an effective, original, and multi-layered plot point that develops character by revealing how manipulative Fury is while also moving forward the story. But you took it out of context; good job, you’re very smart.

This kind of criticism engenders a negative approach towards movies. It encourages people to believe that they are entitled to be entertained, that little mistakes are the product of absent-minded artists and a sign of bigger problems, and causes people to go into movies demanding to be won over. You are not entitled to be entertained. If you go into the theater and try to keep the film at arm’s length you will always see what is wrong with the movie. It is not the filmmakers job to win you over despite your refusal to participate, it is in fact their expectation that you are willing to open yourself up to the film, meet it halfway. This is the only thing that allows them to connect with you in any way. It’s a classic question of suspension of disbelief. That’s not to say movies always earn it, that there’s never anything wrong with movies, or that you can’t end up enjoying a movie that is actually not very good because you gave it a little too much leeway. What it means is that when a movie like The Avengers that never should have even been coherent, much less entertaining, relies on a few minor cliches here and there, you can forgive it, overlook it, or even be totally convinced by it because everything else in the movie is so good, and they’ve earned your respect and participation. Only then can you allow yourself to have fun and go on an adventure with the movie because you’re not just looking for the next snarky comment you can make about it.

While this kind of garbage has been around for quite some time, I think I would trace it back to the Red Letter Media reviews of the Star Wars Prequels. In those reviews—which are almost as long as the movies themselves—the disturbingly unmedicated critic does quite a bit of the same kind of jokes by making fun of the looks of some of the weird aliens or replaying funny little goofs from the movie. But while he uses that stuff to entertain you—as well as inter-cuts of his rape dungeon—that’s how he keeps you watching through an hour and a half of critical analysis of how structurally sloppy and inconsistent the story of those movies are. He delves into issues of film theory and looks at shot sequences and why they show that Lucas wasn’t really paying attention during filmmaking. He goes on rants about how mistreated the characters are by the script around them, and when he does, you can feel the passion and frustration behind his argument as he imagines how good those movies could have been and how poorly they were handled. These reviews show incite that none of these two minute clips could muster even if it was their goal. [I believe this last paragraph was fairly generous on my part, seeing as Red Letter Media now produces the “Honest Trailer” series]

I’m not saying that videos that detail problems with movies are always bad, it’s simply a question of the motivations and knowledge of the creator. I always had an issue with the Truck chase in The Dark Knight—I enjoyed it but something bothered me about it—and while I caught some of the things that In the Cut’s Jim Emerson points out in his breakdown of the sequence, this video not only taught me why I was bothered by the sequence but educated me on the visual language of such a chase scene. These are moment to moment nitpicks, he is looking at an entire scene and analyzing the way it was constructed.

In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight) from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

These other, pointless kinds of video criticism don’t actually analyze the elements of the filmmaking or storytelling, instead they revel in trying to tear down popular movies so that they can feel superior to all those plebeians who “had fun at the movies.” Look I love a good drama, but lets not forget that fun is often the goal of this art form.

It has been our mantra here at the Reel Nerds Podcast that we should go into every movie, from Battleship to Twilight to Father’s Day to The Avengers, wanting the movie to be good. We reviewed Breaking Dawn Part II and Sand Sharks this year, so I know how much fun it is to hate on a movie, but we as film-goers have to make sure that we don’t have so much fun hating movies that we start being overly critical of good films.

This Made Me Geek Out So Hard

This made me geek out so hard.

David Mamet: A Survey of Screenwriting Genius

I’ve spent the last few months trying to educate myself on David Mamet and he’s quickly become one of my favorite writers, which isn’t much of a surprise if you’ve seen any of his films. While I haven’t seen every Mamet movie, mostly because the one’s that I have left are so difficult to get ahold of because they aren’t being printed anymore, I though I’d go ahead and list off the one’s I’ve seen in order from greatest to least, which if you were to graph it would look mostly like a real tall plateau and then a quick drop there at the end.

The Untouchables

It’s hard to put this at number one because it’s so dang obvious. I’d love to put something most people haven’t seen here because then it would emphasize even more that you should check out Mamet’s lesser known films because he has so many of them and most are so great. But the truth is that The Untouchables has got to be his finest work. It’s hard not to say that this is in part due to Brian De Palma, whose final sequence of the film is a classic from inception to finale, but Mamet’s character’s are so well defined that within the opening minutes of the movie you know exactly what’s going on and how characters feel about the criminal atmosphere in Chicago. As amazing as Robert De Niro’s performance is, its the punchy, repetitive dialog Mamet gives him that makes his scenes so memorable. And though you wouldn’t notice it unless you’d just watched as many Mamet films as I have, Eliot Nes is the prototype for the rest of Mamet’s boyscouts. His stance that it doesn’t matter how he feels about prohibition because it is ‘the law of the land’ is the purest form of moralism which, much like when Anthony Hopkin’s compass leads him in circles in The Edge, Nes must learn that his moralism will not win him the day as he expects it to as he barges into a warehouse full of umbrellas shouting, “Lets do some good!” Mamet knows just how to inspire us to greatness with Jim Malone’s speeches about the ‘Chicago way’ and just when to break our hearts. This movie approaches perfection and to put it anywhere else but on top of this list would be to insult a great writer’s greatest masterpiece.

The Spanish Prisoner

“If I told you this story… would you believe it?”

I’d love to know where Mamet himself ranks this film among his works. It’s easy to list this movie among the best con films ever made. The Spanish Prisoner draws on the traditional twisty plot structure of a hitchcock movie, and though some twists are more predictable and some are better executed, in this case the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is likely a direct result of Mamet’s exercised attention to detail. Mamet floats so many details around the viewer that he’s able to use them as distraction away from what he’s actually doing without drawing attention to himself because we’ve already grown accustomed to this environment.

But as well formed a con movie as this is, that isn’t what makes it stand out for me. The Spanish Prisoner is a treasure trove of great lines. Phrases that, when taken out of the context of the movie, ring with such truth that they’ll be remembered long after this movie is forgotten and David Mamet is dead. Lines like, “Worry is the interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due,” are not just snappy dialogue, but transcend to become words to live by.

American Buffalo

Unlike so many of David Mamet’s movies, American Buffalo doesn’t juggle complex plot details, instead it focuses on the relationships between its three characters. It’s a simple story of a shop owner who, feeling he’s been taken advantage of by a recent customer, plays a robbery with his friend and a neighborhood boy he’s taken under his wing. So much struggle and greed grows from a single American buffalo nickel.

The Edge

Man fights bear should be an easy enough sell, but it is everything else about this movie that’s the real gem. Of all David Mamet’s boy scout characters, Anthony Hopkin’s role is easily my favorite, particularly because of the way his skills and knowledge seem to fail him when he puts them into action. But it’s really the scene in the helicopter that makes me love this movie. Rather than draw out the major conflict of the film, Mamet gives Hopkin’s character the awareness and the confidence to speak into being his suspicions about Alec Baldwin early on.

Anthony Hopkins fights a bear but that’s not the climax of the movie, and that makes it great.

Spartan

This movie is a hidden gem. It takes all the tropes of Mamet’s films, the twists, the boyscouts, the government conspiracies, and the snappy dialog and mixes them together in moderation. The idea of the president’s daughter being kidnapped isn’t a new one but Mamet puts it in a fresh context, and rather than relying on Val Kilmer’s character being the only one who can save her because of the skills or strength that he has, he’s the only one who can save her because he’s the only one who believes she’s still alive. This is the thinking man’s version of Taken, so put it high on the list of movies you need to see soon.

Glengarry Glen Ross

I’ll admit that I don’t love this movie as much as most people do. The dialog is all fantastic and the performances—especially those from Alec Baldwin and Jack Lemmon—are career defining moments. The movie turns a real estate office into a battleground and stretches regular men to desperate lengths. It’s so well written that it earned Mamet a Pulitzer. But there’s something about watching these men struggle that keeps Glengarry from earning a place in my heart. While I feel for and even relate to some of the men in that office, I don’t know that I really like any of them. They are put in such grave circumstances that it’s hard to let myself root for any of them because I know that chances are they’ll lose. I like a good depressing movie from time to time but these men aren’t giving everything for a cause I can believe in. It’s a fine film, just not for me.

The Verdict

A drunk lawyer who’s resigned himself to ambulance chasing takes on a case that he’s determined to win. It’s not entirely a story you haven’t heard before but it’s one told especially well. Paul Newman is at the top of his game and while this is an early script from Mamet, it still has the clever twists and the meticulous plotting we expect.

State and Main

David Mamet’s films are always pretty rich with comedy, but State and Main is a rare opportunity to let his dialog stand on its own, uninterrupted by dense plot structures or heavy satire.

Heist

This is likely the tightest of Mamet’s twisty scripts and one of those with the most mainstream appeal. Gene Hackman is as good as ever and as silly as this will sound, the heists in this movie are pretty dang cool.

Hannibal

With the incredible talent behind this movie it’s a shame how much it suffers from the simple fact that Hannibal Lector is more terrifying behind bars than he ever is loose. Silence of the Lambs let us like Lector, but in Hannibal there’s very little emotional story to hold on to when we can no longer root for Lector himself. If it’s on TV I’ll watch Hannibal, but I rarely love it.

Redbelt

I was really surprised by this movie. I didn’t know what to make of it from the trailers and it’s in danger of treading common Rocky/Karate Kid ground, but instead Redbelt is about a combat trainer who struggles to remain one of Mamet’s boyscouts among temptations and treacherous friends. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Wag the Dog

Rewatching Wag the Dog felt more like a piece of history than I expected. It’s so rooted in mid-nineties politics and and a very True Romance version of hollywood that as funny as it remains it seems to suffer in age. The satire is heavy handed at times but it’s still entertaining enough that I’d suggest people check it out, but it doesn’t hold up as well as Dr. Strangelove does, and they’re attempting many of the same things.

Ronin

This movie is a mess. The car chase is spectacular, certainly one of the inspirations for the gritty and claustraphobic chases sequences in the Bourne films, but that’s not what I expect to be the best part of a Mamet film. There are a few of Mamet’s lines that stand out but clearly too many writers and poor direction drowned out whatever vision what intended for this movie. Instead it just meanders until it can get boiled down to good guys shooting at bad guys.

Edmond

This movie starts off interestingly enough with Edmond having something of a breakdown, walking out on his wife and then getting in a series of situations where he tries to have sex with strippers and prostitutes but keeps getting hung up on the cost or the methods through which the money is laundered, but about the time that Julia Stiles’ character is introduced it begins to fall apart. Whatever Mamet is trying to say gets lost in the jumbled thought processes of a man going crazy. By the end, when Edmund’s life is torn completely asunder by his seemingly random actions I’m left unsure of what I’m supposed to get out of the film with no character left to like and no clear statement about what any of it means.

Also, because I can’t help not sharing this and because I’m ashamed that I’ve gone through an entire article about David Mamet movies without saying anything about how awesome Ricky Jay is, here’s Mamet’s short for Funny or Die featuring Kristen Bell, Ed O’Neill and Ricky Jay, The Lost Masterpieces of Pornography.

– James

A Quick Word on The Aurora Memorial

As the news came in throughout Friday afternoon I never expected that by Sunday night we’d be attending the Memorial for the Aurora victims dressed in Nightwing gear. We only met Alex Sullivan a little over a month ago because of Denver Comic Con. I keep telling people that he was our biggest fan because that’s exactly how it felt. He wrote in to the show nearly every week and we talked about him often, wondering how we could get him more involved or when we could have him on the show. He was such an encouragement to us because we knew that DCC was our chance to promote our show and get regular listeners and audience participation and Sully was the first real sign of success, somebody we didn’t know who liked us just cause. We gave him a shirt.

After we found out for sure that Sully was one of those killed, Ryan wrote an article about how we knew Sully, so I’ll not retread that ground, but I do have some things to say and clear up.

The Memorial Sunday night was really nice. It’s a strange experience to grieve for a relationship with someone that you never really got to have. And it’s somehow comforting to see a crowd like that one gathered in honor of that person.

I’d like to thank Denver Comic Con for their involvement in organizing the Memorial, the officials of the City of Aurora, Governor Hickenlooper, all the people who volunteered to form a wall around the event to block the Westboro Baptist Church (who thankfully never showed), and the church leaders for their prayers and encouragement.

After the memorial we went to get food and while talking with the waiter he said what bugged him most about the whole thing was that when the shooter was taken into custody he gave up the fact that he’d booby trapped his apartment. We decided that it seems like the move of a man who didn’t really care about hurting people but was more interested in having the police find what he’d set up for them. Like he thought we’d all be impressed by it. Sure enough, a few days later I passed by the tv at work where they were detailing exactly what traps he’d set and postulating about what he hoped would happen when they were triggered.

It’s hard not to be angry after something like this happens and it’s easy to be angry at the wrong people. But this is Denver, and we’re seen shootings like this before. Months after Columbine the news was still trying to make sense of those boys actions. They spoke with every neighbor and family member, stirred discussion about every possible cause or who should be blamed as a way to search for understanding in the midst of chaos.

This shooter didn’t choose The Dark Knight Rises because he hates Batman, he chose it because he knew it would get him attention, because he knew that he’d add a bitter taste to a great movie forever. If that’s what he wanted than that’s exactly what I don’t want him to have. This is an evil that cannot be explained and should not be understood. The biggest cheer and applaud at the Memorial was when Hickenlooper said he refused to say the shooter’s name, “In my house he’s known as suspect A.”

I’m going to work my hardest to forget the shooter’s name—I only know it because I came across it looking for news about Sully when we believed he was missing. I’ll not hesitate to go back to the theater because I wont allow this person to have any legacy of terror.

If anyone is going to have a legacy coming out of this tragedy it’s Sully. It’s clear how many friends he had who loved him, and I think we feel lucky to have been able to count ourselves among them for a short time. He’s given us new motivation for the podcast and I guarantee that we’ll remember him often. We’ll be dedicating an episode to Sully this week as well as give out information about the small fundraiser we’re going to do to help out Sully’s family. We may not have much influence but we’re going to do everything we can to help.

I would also like to make it clear that everything we’re done for the past few days we’ve done cautiously. None of us want any promotion for the podcast because of this tragedy. We dressed up for the memorial as a way of honoring Sully not drawing attention to ourselves. While we were timid about having our pictures taken or doing interviews with the various news sites that have contacted us, we chose to do so because we thought it would be disrespectful towards Sully not to share our story and pretend we didn’t know him, but we were careful to avoid ever talking about the podcast because we didn’t want any of that to lead back here. It is all our wish that we never be perceived as trying to take advantage of this tragedy because we would quickly give up the followers we’ve accumulated over the past few days to have Sully back. I don’t want to begrudge new listeners, only ask that you not follow us because you think we’ve got some insight into why this all happened, but instead like us because Sully liked us, and he was a great guy with great taste.

Thank you all for your time, support, and encouragement through all this and please stay tuned to find out how you can join us in supporting the victims. We’ll let you know as soon as we can get it all figured out.

-James

YouTube Bungles the Newsroom

They didn’t just cut a scene out of The Newsroom, they cut the wrong scene out of The Newsroom and titled it the “The most honest 3 minutes of television, EVER…”

It’s come to my attention that a video has started passing around the internet which consists of a truncated version of the first five minutes of the pilot episode of The Newroom. In the scene Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) is egged on by a moderator into having something of a breakdown on stage at a college. He gives a speech where he reveals how worn out and discouraged he is by the current state
of America. He bashes against the idea that America is the greatest country in the world, spews out statistics about where America stands in terms of math, literacy, and child mortality, and then reminisces about a time when America was a paragon of exploration, medical advances, and moral values. The purpose of the scene is to show us Will’s frustration with the way news is handled. The entire scene takes
place between two anchors—we assume they are anchors or “intellectuals” or something—who are each firmly planted on the right or the left and are fighting the way we’ve seen people on tv fight for years. Where those two people are clouded in bullshit, arguments like that America is great because of “diversity and opportunity” or “freedom and freedom”, Will becomes motivated to cut through that bullshit and simply deliver what’s important to people on his program.

Instead of viewing the show as a critique of how real life news programs have allowed political polarization to degrade and distort the facts for their own agendas, however, this video removes all of that context and views it as some kind of rallying cry for people who don’t think America’s no good no more. This is like charging into battle with the disembodied head of your leader on a stick and forgetting what it was he encouraged you to go to war for in the first place.

The title, “the most honest 3 minutes of television, EVER…” implies one of two things: either that all of what Will says is true, or that this is a moment where a fictitious television character is more honest about his internal feeling than any other character has ever been before on television. Now, I shouldn’t have to explain why I don’t think any viewer is EVER going to think it’s that second one. I’m not looking to get into a political debate, and I really love this show and I really love the Apollo program, but the disillusionment Will expresses about current political affiliations and his nostalgia for exploring space makes it seem like he’s forgotten what the War in Vietnam was doing to America at the time of that mighty achievement. The nostalgia of this speech grows from the same place as that beautiful lie we tell ourselves about the perfection of the 1950’s, of doo-wop groups, pleasant housewives in white aprons, and for Will, stand-up news anchors like Edward R Murrow. This isn’t 3 minutes of honesty because it’s not even 3 minutes of Will being honest with himself. This is a well written and well acted scene, not a definitive analysis of modern America.

This is a character moment, not a political argument, on a television show about news shows, not an actual news show, and even at that, the original poster of the video doesn’t even have integrity enough not to chop it up so he can get to the yelling as fast as possible. The motivations and the hesitance of Will McAvoy is removed along with Will’s second answer—which revolves around the Declaration of Independence and the qualities of our Constitution and mirrors the rousing second half of his speech. And without his motivations for the speech being in the video we don’t have that underlying moment of hope that’s tied with the sign he saw which read, “It’s not. But it can be.” Removing America’s potential for greatness as implied by that moment in the scene completely undermines what he’s even saying in that monologue. They’ve neutered it because they didn’t even understand it in the first place.

The lie that this video is going to tell viewers is that honesty and facts are the same thing. That all the statistics Will McAvoy says are fact. Viewers may assume that none of Aaron Sorkin’s real life politics are going to shine through—which is, of course, impossible. Just as Hemmingway couldn’t right many great female characters because he was a man, despite how much he tries Sorkin can’t write very convincing conservative arguments because he doesn’t understand a conservative’s arguments.

Local radio host and economist, Mike Rosen, spent some time recently deconstructing this monologue on his show. And while I don’t agree with some of what he says and while I’m frustrated by the fact that he didn’t watch the entire episode I think he makes some strong arguments against this being the most factual 3 minutes of television EVER…

Note that for my purposes there’s little reason to listen beyond 19 minutes because then he takes calls about it.

The Mike Rosen Show, June 25

Rosen’s interpretation of The Newroom’s leftist slant is exaggerated and uninformed but this clip is good because of how he tears down the statistics that McAvoy quotes. It may be that Sorkin believes all of what he wrote in the scene, or that he misquoted some statistics, or that his sources were not solid enough, or that Rosen’s sources are wrong—I’d like to point out that he doesn’t argue against the math or literacy statistics because seventh isn’t that shocking and number twenty-second in literacy seems understandable when we already know that’s one of the things we should work on. Shit, look how many times I’m misused commas and semi-colons in this article, and I was an English major; it’s almost like they taught that garbage doesn’t matter and I should make it up as I go along. But the derailed point is that it doesn’t matter if these facts are right or wrong because that’s not the function of this scene nor is it what this show is fixated on criticizing. If you’re pulling all your facts out of a piece of fiction you’ve already missed the boat on being well-informed. I do a podcast where I talk about movies and I joke that everything I learned I learned from movies but I don’t vote democrat because I really like Bill Pullman’s speech at the end of Independence Day and I don’t fear stem cell research because I saw the movie Splice.

If you believe everything in this show is real than Olivia Munn has four years of pretending she’s into nerds to sell you.

Still I think that it’s important that people hear things like Rosen’s argument about how manipulative a statistic like infant mortality is when used in this context.

Let me also say that Rosen’s argument that The West Wing is overly biased because the best lines go to the liberals and the republicans all get stupid lines is simply false. I really like that show, too.

Youtubers taken a piece of fiction out of a show about public ignorance and biased news and in doing so they cut out all the meaning until all they were left with was the flame war. They’re literally doing the thing that Will McAvoy is frustrated by in the show. Aaron Sorkin’s political affiliations aside, watching this video and thinking that now you know something is perhaps the most insane and ignorant thing I’ve seen the internet do since it trolled Boxxy.

If you like the idea of someone saying that America isn’t the greatest country in the world than be honest with yourself and ask why. I know that the reason I like that argument is because I like when Will says that we didn’t used to “beat our chests so much.” I like the idea that even if we are the greatest country in the world we don’t need to tell ourselves that, instead we need to look for the ways we aren’t and strive to be better. Maybe that’s what can make us the greatest country in the world; a little humility. But that’s just why I like it.

And not to beleaguer the point, but then entire first episode of The Newsroom is free online here, so instead of watching it butchered on Youtube, you could just watch it and actually know what it’s about.

Maybe I’m just in my mid-twenties slump, feeling like there’s too many numbskulls for politics to ever work right in this country again—and maybe that’s why I love The Newsroom so much—but at a moment like this I think maybe Will is right. We’re the “Worst. Period. Generation. Period” EVER…

-James

Prometheus: A Still Nascent Interpretation

I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that some of the questions left by Prometheus have nagged at me over the weeks since I first saw the film, but they nag at me in a good way. I find myself playing out scenarios and imagining myself in a world like that one, filled with malicious aliens crafting devices and diseases that we here on earth cannot comprehend. Trying to piece it all together is a puzzle I enjoy playing with, but if that’s not you I can’t change your mind. If you’ve already seen the movie and the amassing questions—mixed with the knowledge that a real human being invented them for your entertainment and either knows or doesn’t know the answers—frustrates you instead of entertaining you, than your first viewing of Prometheus is a wash. I can’t change your mind or explain it in a way that is satisfying. As Brian K Vaughan pointed out in the final issues of Y: The Last Man, few answers ever are.

What I find remarkable about the questions that Prometheus leaves us with is that they all function within the universe set up by the original Alien mythos and follow the rules of that universe so that we aren’t left frustrated by too many obvious oversights. Having seen the movie twice now, and being the great lover of Ridley Scott’s Alien that I am, I’d like to work through my thoughts on the film.

What is the Black Ooze?

This is perhaps the element that I love most about Prometheus’ interpretation of the Xenomorph. The only line that we get in Alien to describe what the Xenomorph really is comes from Ash’s disembodied head, “You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.” I guarantee that this is the line that writers Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof took and ran with.

The black substance, which David tells us is organic, is a genetically engineered bioweapon for uses of mass destruction that attacks organisms on a genetic level, causing mutation. In more complex and evolved creatures it simply kills them, high doses causing practical disintegration—as with the Engineer—and small doses eating away at the insides of a being like a more common virus—as it does when Holloway is infected. This was likely the intended purpose of the weapon because the Engineers would have little reason to make war on less evolved forms of life. It also has some lasting influence on how we interpret the Alien franchise because it deepens our understanding of why Weyland industries would want to capture the xenomorph and bring it home, in hopes that they could reverse-engineer it back to this deadly weapon.

The unexpected side-effect is that the mutations it causes when it comes into contact with less complex forms of life, like the meal worms or an unborn fetus—or unfertilized egg in a damaged uterus—are a more stable mutation, something akin to the rapid evolution of the parasite itself. This mutant origin ties in perfectly with the rules already set up by the Alien films which make it clear that the xenomorph takes on some aspects of the host it was birthed from. That means that the xenomoprh is a highly evolved, biological weapon of mass destruction. It’s a seven foot tall embodiment of VX nerve gas. This is a really badass way of looking at the xenomorph that I think undoes most of the damage done to it by its sequels. If this is the origin of the xenomorph than they shouldn’t be cannon fodder in Aliens or lab rats in Alien: Ressurection. They aren’t just a rabid dog meant to be hunted by Predators. They’re a Frankenstein’s monster. A creature so deadly that its primordial soup would have caused you to disintegrate!

All of this is of course silly sci-fi science and wouldn’t stand up in a scientific laboratory as we know it today, but I was an English major and the movie is meant to be fun, not perfectly plausible science.

Why are these people so dumb?

This is an easy one. They aren’t. End of argument.

I’ve seen complains about how often people take off their helmets in the movie and the truth is that they do it for two reasons: firstly it is a tactic on the part of the filmmakers so that we don’t have to watch our actors act inside a helmet for half the movie; and secondly, because Holloway takes off his helmet and he’s fine. It’s not that they don’t know they shouldn’t take off their helmets, that they don’t consider the possibility that they can get sick. People are screaming at Holloway not to take his Helmet off just before he does it. Holloway takes off his helmet from a place of faith, believing that he’s found the answers to his questions and that he’s safe where he is because his creators are not dissimilar from himself. He is overconfident, not stupid.

Space truckers, like the crew of the Nostromo, have a healthy fear of space; but a group of overzealous scientists do not. They believe themselves pioneers of a new frontier and as such allow their curiosity to be their guide. Predicable as it may be, the scene when the worm-snake first appears and kills the biologist is one of my favorites. Again people have accused that character of being stupid, but he’s not. He shows some fear towards the new life form but encourages both himself and Fifield not to be afraid, that everything is okay. He pushes himself to approach the new creature the way we’ve seen so many hosts on so many nature programs approach snakes so they can grab them by the tail and hold them up for the camera. He’s afraid, but he’s making a new discovery. Scientists here on earth have become so knowledgeable that they believe in a peaceful balance of nature. How many times has someone told you that an animal you think is scary is more afraid of you than you are of it. Heck, I’m afraid of garter snakes so I hear it all the time. Millburn relies on his faith in a nature that he understands. That’s not stupidity, it’s overconfidence and misguided faith.

The reason that you choose space truckers to first run into the xenomorph in Alien is because much like the audience the space-truckers wont know how to deal with a creature like that. What’s cool about Prometheus is that it argues that even scientists would have their faults in first exploring new worlds and new forms of life. But for more complex reasons that just because they’re stupid characters.

Though those two ladies do run the wrong direction from a rolling object. That was dumb.

Why were the cave drawing of the stars left there?

I can invent a scenario for why the cave drawings are there involving a misinterpretation of the drawings, or Elizabeth’s continuing belief that the Engineers were once caring and interested in humans before they went evil, but there is really no need. This is a question that only bugs people because it’s in a movie full of questions. The cave paintings are a macguffin. Without it there simply is no story. If this were a movie where they went to the planet, had long-winded scenes of exposition, had bad things happen to them, and then it ended without any lingering questions, most viewers would forgive it. Perhaps in a sequel we’ll get to explore this question more.

What are the holograms all about?

This relies on David’s understanding of the Engineer language enough to access holographic recordings akin to security footage of what happened on the ship just as things were all going down hill. I would have liked if the scientists had spent a little more time searching the ship initially, giving David more time to really investigate and learn how the ship works rather than him just stumbling onto them, but this comes down to a question of pacing and time management.

Science vs. Faith, order vs. chaos

These are the really interesting questions in Prometheus. This isn’t a theme completely unexplored by LOST scribe Damon Lindelof, but it’s one that drives the very heart of this movie. The motivations of these characters search towards the stars is reminiscent of 2001 and Sunshine. Ostensibly Elizabeth Shaw and her crew are seeking answers about these clues left behind in ancient drawing and what that means for humans if the Engineers were involved in our creation, but the real struggle in the movie for these characters is whether or not they’ll ever get their answers. Whether or not there are any answers. When Holloway first sees the inside of the temple room he calls it ‘just another tomb’ and circles into a depression as he realizes that he’s not going to get to talk to his creator and have his questions answered. And yet through that discovery, through Holloway’s death, through the creation of monsters and the revelation that the Engineers are hostile, Shaw still has faith that there is a reason for her existence and a reason for everything that’s happening around her. Prometheus, and by extension its writers, would be remiss if they didn’t pass on this conflict to their audience. This is a movie about unanswerable questions. The writers cannot give you an answer to the question of why we are here, what our lives really mean, where we come from or where we go when we die. And if they tried, their answer would be unsatisfactory. As Shaw herself points out, if we were given an answer, that answer would simply lead to a new question. Instead we are left with David’s resigned comments that ‘There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing’ and our hope laid upon Elizabeth as she takes off from the moon in a continuing effort to find answers to unanswerable questions.

This is neither a perfect film nor an easy one. But I love thinking about it.

These are of course just my interpretations. If you’ve got something different or if there is a question I didn’t discuss that you’d like my thoughts on, leave a comment below.

– James

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