The Review of The Batman

 "Alfred [...] you were right about Batman. you've always been right. You were right when you said he had to mean something. And then you were right when you said he had to mean something good. [...] but what I want you to see...what I understand now, at the end, is that maybe there's something in that. Maybe that's what Batman is about. Not winning. But failing, and getting back up. Knowing he'll fail, fail a thousand times, but still won't give up. And I know what you'd say to this. Fighting a battle you know you can't win, a battle you know you'll lose. It's madness. But all I can hope is that, like you said yourself, maybe...maybe it's the kind of madness this city rewards"- Batman, Zero Year by Scott Snyder.

"A vigilante is just a man lost in the scramble for his own gratification. He can be destroyed or locked up. But if you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can't stop you, then you become something else entirely....Legend."- R'as Al Ghul, Batman Begins

The Batman is not the first Batman movie to concern itself with the psychology of Bruce Wayne. All of them to some extent or another have asked why a man would do this, what illness does he has that Batman is the cure? The Batman, however, is the first to truly devote itself to this question and come to a pretty good answer in my opinion. The Bruce we meet in this movie is still early in his career, he's hit on the concept of Batman and its usefulness as a tool for waging war on the criminal element. What he hasn't grasped yet is if he's making a difference, and if that's even what Batman is for. 

I must admit for as much hooting and hollering as there was when the "I am vengeance" scene was first released to hype people up for this movie, I had a great deal of trepidation. If Matt Reeves had decided that Batman's goal was vengeance alone he'd hardly be alone. Frank Miller's Batman is an obsessed psychotic, barely even on the side of the angels, waging a never-ending war on criminals out of an intense need for vengeance. "I am vengeance, I am the night, I am Batman" is Kevin Conroy's most famous line delivery and understandably so. The Batman, however, gives us a Bruce who sees himself as vengeance and comes to realize in a city as angry and broken as Gotham that's not good enough. 

Now, mind you, Christopher Nolan's Batman also went through this journey, he just went through it before putting on the costume. This is the Bruce who nearly kills Joe Chill in Begins. Only this Bruce does not know his parent's killer, he's never been apprehended, and so there is no one convenient target for his vengeance. He's out there every night imagining every face he sees is that face, meting out punishment one by one. What he comes to realize, however, is that a city like Gotham and the cruel systems that sustain it create a lot of victims, and a lot of people with an understandable need for vengeance, and that desire will ultimately consume them all.  

I find it interesting some have criticized this final act and say it feels out of place, I found it to be the lynchpin of the entire movie, the whole point of Bruce's arc. The preceding acts show Gotham needs more than vengeance. It needs a champion. Someone to fight for those no one else will fight for, someone who is capable of bringing justice to an unjust system. It needs a hero, and the movie shows Bruce's transformation from dark avenger of the night to caped crusader quite well. 

There's more to love about this movie than just getting this particular iteration of Batman and his motivation right, though. Every shot is beautiful, Gotham is wonderfully rendered as a city of steam and rivets and rain and shadow, a nice balance between the pure Gothic dreamscape of the Burton mvoies and the stark realism of Nolan's alt-Chicago. The performances from everyone are fantastic, although I am most partial to Zoe Kravitz as Selina and Collin Farrell's acerbic Penguin. The fight scenes are exciting and appropriately physical, and the Batmobile scene is perhaps my favorite one yet. 

Ultimately this movie really worked for me because despite the grim n gritty aesthetic and the "I am vengeance" set up it's truly a film about rejecting the selfish desire for revenge in favor of the desire to save others and work for something better. There've been a lot of takes lately that Batman's not actually a hero, mostly by applying what to me is a far too serious and literal application of real world politics to a fictional setting. The Batman understands this, and it was nice to have a movie understand and explore that there is a selfish reason to become the Batman, but also show that he can grow beyond that and become something more. 

The Fall of the House of Skywalker

I have been wrestling with what to say about The Rise of Skywalker since I saw it and in some ways I'm still not sure. I think, for one, that it is not necessarily a very good movie. It's maybe an OK Star War. There have been good Star Wars that are good movies as well, and there have been good Star Wars that are bad movies. The prequels, for all of their many faults in terms of dialogue, plot, and characterization, are still good Star Wars in my opinion, as the Star Wars universe is largely better for all they have wrought and all they have inspired, such as Clone Wars. Solo was an OK movie and an OK Star War. Force Awakens was a pretty good movie and an OK Star War. Rise of Skywalker is, to reiterate, a kinda bad movie, one that somehow has both too much plot and not enough of a relevant one and has a frenetic pacing in the first act that blows well past exciting and into infuriating. It is, in my apparently controversial opinion, an OK Star War.

The Rise of Skywalker had one task above all others, and it was going to be the main criteria on which I personally judged it, and I am not alone in this regard. This was to end the "Skywalker Saga" as we have come to call it, giving us the resolution to the characters and factions that have waged the titular Star War for 42 years. Now, mind you, I do not think this necessarily had to be the main goal of Rise of Skywalker. It could merely have been the end of the sequel trilogy, and it arguably should have limited itself to that goal, as the first two installments of the sequel trilogy seemed to focus more on the new story they were trying to tell rather than rote continuation of the six movies that came before. Alas, JJ Abrams made it clear this ninth movie "had" to tie all of the films together and provide a finality to some battles we had already thought were over, and so I choose to judge it based on that stated goal. For me at least, Rise of Skywalker very awkwardly stumbles to a more or less acceptable landing with that in mind. The Sith are defeated, peace is once more restored to the galaxy. Leia and Han's sacrifices are not in vain as they bring Ben back from the brink. Luke and Rey ensure the continuation of the Jedi Order. These were the main things I was hoping to get as an ending for the saga as a whole.

I gather this is not the popular opinion, and there are two main sticking points for people who have told me the ending is actually depressing and not at all in keeping with the optimism that should define Star Wars:

1) Rey ends the saga alone on a desert planet, as she began the Force Awakens
2) The Skywalker family line ends, and worse, they are outlived by a Palpatine.

Dooku: Jedi Lost is a Character Found

The Star Wars prequels are, of course, one of the great missed opportunities in cinematic history. They are riddled with shallow characterizations, missing plot threads and back story, and numerous half-baked ideas that just failed to come together on screen. The good thing about half-baked ideas, however, is someone can come along and finish the job later. The old Legends canon did a fabulous job of providing depth and context and continuity to the prequel era that the movies themselves failed to provide, culminating in the Clone Wars cartoon which ran for 6 (and soon to be 7) seasons and mostly succeeded in telling the story the prequels were always meant to tell: a story of a slowly declining republic tricked into hastening its own demise, of a Jedi Order losing its way and leaving itself open to division and destruction by the Sith, and most importantly a fully-realized Anakin Skywalker who is truly the best star pilot in the galaxy, a cunning warrior, and a good friend.

One character who was not adequately served by either the books and comics of the expanded universe or either Clone Wars cartoon, however, was Count Dooku. While the various forms of Clone Wars media certainly gave Dooku more of a role, they mostly failed at giving him an actual character. The Dooku we see in the expanded universe is merely the same cipher we see in the movies repeated many times over: a mustache twirling villain who does little besides following Palpatine's every command with a "yes, my master" and snarling evil-ly at the Jedi who cross his path. Outside of the excellent Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, one of the only books that explored Dooku's relationship to his old master in detail, almost all of the books/comics/shows that featured Dooku simply used him as a device for furthering Palpatine's will rather than a character with his own motivations and aims.

This was a tremendous waste, of course, because based solely on his description Dooku is one of the most potentially interesting characters in Star Wars lore. The apprentice of Master Yoda, the master of the unorthodox and rebellious Qui-Gon Jinn (another character mostly wasted by the movies but unlike Dooku one who has been properly salvaged by the expanded universe), a principled leader of the Separatist Movement, and one of the Lost Twenty Jedi Masters, played by none other than f--kin Saruman Himself, Christopher Lee? It's almost unbelievable such a character could end up so unremarkable. Dooku could have been a truly complex character, a man of seemingly noble principles, trying to convince his fellow Jedi that they were backing the wrong side in supporting a Republic that has already fallen (which, in fact, they were). Sadly, he leaves no doubt from his first appearance on screen that he is objectively evil and the Jedi are clearly objectively correct in opposing him. Much of the promise of his character's potential goes out the door right there.

If the new audiobook Dooku: Jedi Lost, by Cavan Scott, is the first of hopefully several Dooku stories we will get in this new canon, then maybe we will begin to see some of that potential reclaimed, however. I was very excited to hear about this book when it was announced, having spent much of the last 17 years demanding a book willing to do a deep dive into Dooku's origins, and while I am still not sold on the need for it to be an audio-only book (and also am disappointed in Del Rey for not even publishing so much as a transcript for hearing-impaired fans), this book mostly delivers, giving us a fully-developed Dooku who for once stands apart from his peers.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Supreme Leader Snoke

"History often repeats itself, the first as tragedy, then as farce" - famed Corellian agitator K'rl Marxx

Since his introduction in The Force Awakens, but especially since his shockingly abrupt demise in The Last Jedi, the character of Snoke has been a point of controversy within the Star Wars fanbase (much like, well, everything else, but I digress). From the time he was introduced in the run up to TFA's release, Snoke was shrouded in mystery, his origin a well-kept secret. He is introduced as a literally larger than life figure, a giant Wizard of Oz like projection that towers over his apprentice Kylo Ren, deliberately invoking a comparison to Palpatine and his own wayward Skywalker, Darth Vader. Surely this mighty being, this man so great and important as to have seduced the heir of the Skywalker legacy to the dark side while leading the revanchist First Order, must have some impressive origin story or secret behind his immense power, and surely it was key to the entire narrative of this new trilogy.

Well, about that...

With a mere flick of his fingers Kylo Ren bisected Snoke and the fanbase. All of the mystery and supposedly untapped potential of this powerful character vanished with a stroke of the lightsaber. In a movie that has proven extremely polarizing, the quick execution of the enigmatic Supreme Leader has drawn a substantial amount of criticism.

Is this warranted, though? Was Snoke a character we needed to know more about? Is the story improved by either keeping him around or at least explaining his rise to power before killing him off?

No. I could simply point out how when Emperor Palpatine first made his appearance in Empire Strikes Back we knew nothing about him other than that he was the Emperor, or that by the time he was killed off (perhaps not forever, apparently) in Return of the Jedi we didn't even know his name and that worked out alright. Those arguments have been made by many people, and they are accurate, and speak to the problem that so many critics of the sequel trilogy have in that they criticize a still-in-progress narrative vs two trilogies that are complete and have had every possible detail filled in by expanded universe materials. Suffice it to say that the audience doesn't need any more of Snoke's story than they got for the plot of these films to work.

I am willing to bypass those arguments, however, and meet the critics where they are: knowing what we know after the fact regarding Emperor Palpatine, his power as a Sith, and the machinations that led him to rule over the galaxy, does the character of Snoke work without getting a similar explanation of how he ended up on the throne of the First Order?

I say yes. Snoke being little more than a bully, a mere imitation of Palpatine that badly overplayed his hand, overestimated his talent for corrupting and manipulating Ben Solo, and getting summarily dispatched for it is the best possible outcome for the character because of what it says about the First Order and what the Sequel Trilogy is saying about that organization and the nature of fascism.

Rose Tico is Awesome and Here’s Why

I'm going to begin this first of all by telling all of the sick, toxic bastards who drove Kelly Marie Tran off social media to go fuck themselves.  Lord am I sick and tired of the darker elements of the Star Wars fanbase. No person is ever defined by the fictional character they play and no one should ever be harassed for a movie you didn’t like. Grow up. 

This article, however, is about that fictional character, who I believe is funny and charming and delightful, personality-wise, but more importantly is absolutely vital to the story of Star Wars and specifically the direction the sequel trilogies need to go with the state of the universe. 

The first time I watched The Last Jedi I honestly agreed with a lot of people who found the Canto Bight scene a distraction, mostly because I was gnawing my own arm off demanding the movie get back to my precious Luke. Upon every single rewatch, however, I have come to appreciate the scene and Rose more. That scene, and Rose, represent something very important about the Star Wars saga and its cyclical nature: the importance of breaking the cycle. 

One of the criticisms long-time SW fans have had of the sequel trilogy is how depressing it is that thirty years later there’s another Empire and another rebellion is necessary and how fleeting success was for the heroes of the first trilogy. This is actually not unrealistic, nor does it mean our heroes from the OT were “failures,” as I’ve detailed previously. Evil will continue to come back and will always require another generation of heroes to beat it back. The important question to ask is why does the First Order rise up from the ashes of the Empire, why didn’t the New Republic last as long as the old? 

The answer lies in how the Empire came to be in the first place. One of things the Prequels and the various forms of Clone Wars media have masterfully portrayed is how Palpatine manipulated the existing systems of the deteriorating Republic to form the Empire. He did not use Sith sorcery to rise to the top, nor did he rely on an army of cultists to establish his regime. Palpatine saw that the Republic had failed its most desperate citizens and favored the wealthy elite over the majority of the galaxy. To the desperate his Empire promised a way of cutting through the bureaucracy and corruption of the Senate in order to get things done. In the meantime the work of instigating the war necessary to erode the Republic completely and make the Empire the only solution was aided by a cabal of war profiteers, bankers, and corporations who happily sold the galaxy’s sovereignty to Darth Sidious in exchange for credits. All of the political power Palpatine acquired was given to him voluntarily by a hoodwinked population and a complicit elite class. 

Solo and the Weird Failure of the Star Wars Movie For Star Wars Fans

seriously, moar Enfys Nest plz

I've spent a good chunk of my life reading Star Wars Expanded Universe materials. Until around the time that I got sick of doing more reading for the New Jedi Order books than I'd eventually do for my thesis I read every single book that detailed the adventures of Luke, Han, Leia and the next generation. I poured over the New Essential Characters reference books. Ever since Disney bought the franchise and moved the old EU to the Legends canon and started writing new comics, books, etc all tied together by a central story group I've read nearly every scrap of new info they put out there. I love Star Wars. Can't get enough of it.

In a lot of ways, Solo: a Star Wars Story seemed the safest bet in the universe. Take a young Han Solo, fill in all of the backstory, give us some landspeeder chases, throw in some unsavory characters, and show him behind the controls of the Falcon for the first time. You don't need to take the franchise in a new and risky direction like The Last Jedi, you don't need to give us any new ideas. Just give us more of what you already know we love. It's absolutely targeted at super-fans like me.

Does it work? Sure. For me. I'll always go out of my way to learn more about Star Wars and just about everyone in it. I'm grousing already about the fact that they chose f--kin Boba Fett for the next movie over better characters like, y'know, anyone else, but I'll be there to watch the movie and I won't pretend otherwise. Unfortunately, as I've learned many times in my life when trying to turn random conversations to the topic of the Seven Forms of Lightsaber Combat, people who love Star Wars as ardently as I do aren't that common. Sure, we're a pretty big fandom, maybe the biggest, but as Warner Brothers recently learned, you can throw Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman into a movie together and it's actually not a license to print money unless you find a way to persuade some people who aren't wedded to the brand to come and see it, too.

As a movie, Solo is well-made. Alden Ehrenreich is absolutely successful at convincing you this is a younger version of the guy we know. Emilia Clarke's Qi'Ra is definitely the most interesting character in the movie, one I hope we see again. As expected, Donald Glover absolutely steals the show as the young Lando Calrissian. The formation of the lifelong bond between Chewbacca and Han is everything you'd want it to be. Woody Harrelson was exactly what you'd expect him to be in the role of the hardened old crime mentor. Enfys Nest is everything a cool ass Star Wars space pirate should be, and I hope that story continues somewhere.

In the end, the story beats are what you expect, if enjoyable, and while I have a few quibbles with, for example, how innately altruistic young Han appears to be despite the circumstances of his upbringing and the cynic we know he'll be ten years later in A New Hope, I would recommend the movie to any Star Wars fan. Unfortunately I don't think those are the people I needed to recommend this to, and Lucasfilm might be better off in the future considering how to make these anthology films providing backstory on existing characters (unlike Rogue One, which introduced new characters and a new story that simply tied into an existing story and was thus successful) more appealing to the people who wouldn't go see any movie that had Star Wars slapped on it.

(Also next time release the movie in December. We had a good thing going every year and you guys ruined that and shot yourself in the foot needlessly putting this film up against Deadpool and Infinity War. Nobody needed two Star Wars movies in the span of six months.)

No, The Rebel Alliance Wasn't A Failure

WARNING: LAST JEDI SPOILERS BELOW

Ever since The Force Awakens came out, but especially now that TLJ has definitely slammed the door shut on the original trilogy’s storyline, fans have complained that the mere existence of the sequel trilogy means that Luke, Leia, Han, etc were all failures because the First Order came to power, Luke lost his new Jedi Order, and evil once more runs rampant through the galaxy. Even some positive reviews of these two movies have agreed that the Rebel Alliance failed, or that Luke and Leia’s actions in the OT have been invalidated by the sequels. Frankly, this is crap.

Luke Skywalker isn’t a failure. He certainly feels like one in TLJ, and he certainly failed in his task of guiding Ben Solo, but he did not fail in his role as the chosen one who brought balance to the force, nor did he fail in the task handed down to him by Yoda to pass on what he has learned. Emperor Palpatine remains the greatest threat that the galaxy ever faced up until this point. The fact that Supreme Leader Snoke is dispatched so swiftly and easily in the Last Jedi, annoying all of the many fan theorists, is proof that he was never actually Palpatine’s inheritor. He was a bully strong in the force who managed to step into a power vacuum at the top of the First Order hierarchy, but he was not the cunning master strategist that Palpatine was. The Aftermath books and other new canon supplemental info has made clear that the First Order rose directly from Palpatine’s own contingency plan for the Empire in the event of his demise. Even from the grave he was more of a threat than Snoke, a man that was just capable of intimidating his way to the throne and who then overplayed his hand by taunting his own apprentice into killing him. Luke, by helping to defeat Palpatine, ensured that the a man who had nearly completed his plan for total domination of the galaxy was defeated, and that the imperial remnant that became the First Order had to start over from a position of weakness. The bulk of the galaxy enjoyed several decades of freedom because of this. Force sensitive children like Rey were no longer hunted and killed by Inquisitors in order to prevent them from becoming a threat. The total eradication of the Jedi and their teachings was prevented.