Category Archives: Reviews

How Star Wars Succumbed to the Dark Side

(Warning: Spoilers abound in this far away galaxy…)

And so, great empires fall and are forgotten.

No, not that Empire. Not the one with Death Stars and Stormtroopers and Darth Sinisters. That Empire didn’t fall. It exploded into a million incongruous pieces in a profitgasm called Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which opened this weekend and supposedly ended the nine-chapter saga that began four decades years ago.

No, it’s the Star Wars Hollywood universe itself that’s collapsed, black holing into a void that once held brilliant stars and (storytelling) order but now vacuums any child or merchandising opportunity into its vortex before crushing it into a Disney Singularity.

Its demise came from the very thing Star Wars — a straight-laced Western at its core — tried desperately to avoid: Irony.

  • How ironic that a franchise built by a rebel alliance (which included Coppola, Spielberg and Scorsese) would ultimately fall to an Emperic Studio.
  • How ironic that the father of the Jedi Universe, George Lucas, would sell himself to the Dark Side for $4.05 billion in Disney stocks and cash. (Apparently, hell doesn’t take Visa.)
  • How ironic that in the ashes of what remain of the Star Wars/Disney empire, the most iconic  survivor of the Resistance hearkens back decades, both in technology and sentiment: a Yoda Muppet that gives a Star Wars TV show its sole sense of heart.Image result for baby yoda boba frick

In a rare confluence of hubris, both critics and fanboys agreed the latest film suffered from a singular weakness: It apparently sucks.

I can’t say for sure. I haven’t seen it. In truth, the franchise faded for me and legions of original fans on May 25, 1983, the day Return of the Jedi was released. As we watched credits roll, the Empire finally fell and fans went home relatively satisfied with the trilogy (though purists could see the Ewoks were a cutesy harbinger of peril).Image result for furry animals in return of the jedi

Still, we still showed up for the second trilogy, for old times’ sake. And some diehards (like Mikey) even defended Lucas’ newest triplets, though they were cinematically stillborn).Image result for darth maul

Many of us, though, passed on the franchise as of Nov. 30, 2012, when Disney bought all Star Wars rights. Add to that Disney’s acquisition of Marvel and Pixar, and Emperor Palpatine couldn’t hope for more control over a universe.Image result for palpatine

But with the purchases came an odd Faustian bargain for the freshman franchises: Abide by Disney’s story arc, regardless of film genre, or lose your theme park ride.

The Disney story arc goes something like this: A tranquil world filled with tranquil denizens is threatened by the tyranny of Deadly Sin. Our denizens must then become a multi-cultural (ideally multiracial) familial tribe to defeat the evil band of Hoarders. Cue happy score.

Disney’s anti-introversion messaging is easiest to spot in Marvel comic-book movies. Remember when Superman lived in a Fortress of Solitude? Remember when Iron Man toiled alone and anxious in his ocean-view mansion? Now, even Ant-Man can’t get a flick without a Wasp sidekick. And Tony? He became starting quarterback for The Avengers.Image result for marvel movies

Star Wars could have been the counter intuitive option to that. Sure, it was a hodgepodge of misfit toys. But from the moment Luke Skywalker gazed into a double sunset in 1977 on Tatooine, the Star Wars odyssey has been about the strength of resolve that resides in a single soul. Everyone in the audience was Luke Skywalker, and he us. Even if it did look like he ran around in linen pajamas.

Still, that was okay. We were in pajamas too.

But when Luke nonchalantly chucked his lightsaber in 2017’s penultimate movie, The Last Jedi, the viewing Force awakened: Fans eviscerated director Rian Johnson for betraying both film and franchise. They boycotted the Star Wars spinoff, Solo. And their blood was still boiled by the time Skywalker was dropped like a doomed lobster. YouTube nearly broke. Fans posted vitriolic reviews that had to be divided in chapters to contain all the bile. One reviewer’s critique was more funereal than fuming, with Adagio for Strings wafting in the background.

Not that Disney needs our tears. The film still grossed a half-billion worldwide in its first week, and The Mandalorian, a live action show, will still be the touchstone for the emerging Disney+’s streaming service.

But Skywalker was to be the film that bowed gracefully from the silver screen — and our memories. Instead, it served as a mirror for how much we’ve grown. And lost. Digital effects had long ago replaced puppets and miniatures. Tunisia was replaced by green screens. By the turn of the millennium, Star Wars wasn’t even a film that you could say was beautifully shot. Rather, it had beautiful algorithms. The software certainly was certainly elegant.

Alas, that misses the story’s point. Perhaps it had to. Nostalgia is like aiming for the bullseye of an invisible dartboard. Even if you hit it, you’ll need at least 40 years to recreate that astounding shot. Maybe longer.

Maybe, a long time from now in a mindset far, far away, we’ll yearn for space adventure again. Maybe we’ll want a plucky hero that squares off against the Machine. Maybe we’ll once more send out an urgent distress call: “Help us, Yoda Muppet, you’re our only hope.”

 

 

 

 

 

Leaving the Media Unforgiven

Clint Eastwood’s latest film, Richard Jewell, opened this weekend to $5 million, a thumbs-up from more than 70% of the nation’s critics and with Oscar whispers circling the Warner Bros. flick. I gave it four out of five stars for my outlet.

I would have given it five stars, but there was a ginormous caveat in the way: Clint took an unwarranted shot at an old colleague of mine. Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs and I worked the police beat at the AJC, though I had moved to another paper by the time of the Centennial bombing during the 1996 Olympic Games. Image

Scruggs, who died in 2001, was the primary reporter in the AJC‘s bomb coverage. She also broke the story that the FBI was looking at Jewell as the primary suspect. And when Eric Rudolph, an anti-abortion extremist and member of the Army of God sect, confessed to the bombing, Scruggs took it on the chin from competing outlets for her aggressive, over-eager zeal to get a scoop. Which was true. Kathy had the bite force of a rabid pit bull when she got hold of a story.

But, to hear Eastwood tell it (on film), Scruggs took it on the chin, literally. The film accuses Scruggs of sleeping with an FBI agent to get the story. The AJC has protested its portrayal, which is irony perhaps at its purest. And Warner Bros did what the AJC did 2 1/2 decades ago: It told the protesters to go pound salt.

But the paper was right. Eastwood screwed this up.

I say that with all the hesitancy I can muster. In truth, I have spoken to Eastwood more often than I talked to Scruggs, and consider myself a fully biased fan of his work. But Eastwood must have had an acutely unpleasant run-in with the press of late, because he took a hatchet to media the way Jack Torrance opened doors. Image result for jack torrance axe door

Eastwood got virtually everything wrong about reporters in Jewell, which is odd, since we really were the antagonists in this story. We did swarm. We did leap. We did jump the gun.

But for some reason, the 89-year-old director needed a villain incarnate, and created one with Scruggs. He directed Wilde to play the reporter as if she were Cruella de Vil with a notepad. In the film, Scruggs flips off fellow reporters, weeps at press conferences and basks in the standing ovation she receives for initially breaking the Jewell story.Image result for cruella de vil

Bullshit bullshit bullshit. The woman portrayed in Jewell is not Kathy Scruggs.

I can’t speak to the specific allegation Eastwood made. But I can say with no degree of uncertainty that his notion of a newsroom is antiquated and, worse, waaaay off. Reporters don’t give standing ovations. We can barely tuck in our shirts. We don’t even applaud when colleagues win a Pulitzer Prize. And no reporter screams in delight when a story runs above the fold in banner font. We hold our breaths and pray we don’t need to run a correction.

The inaccuracy is a jarring failure on Eastwood’s part. He won a best director Oscar on the back of  historical research by screenwriter David Peeples for the Western Unforgiven. Peeples was also nominated for an Academy Award, though he didn’t win.Image result for unforgiven

Maybe it was studio pressure. Maybe it was Eastwood’s well-publicized conservative political leanings that prompted him to take a shot at the media. Maybe he clashed with one of us on a red carpet (where we are at the zenith of our assholeness).

But to take a shot at a dead woman? Come on, Clint. That’s like shooting the guy in the black hat in the back.

More puzzling was that the filmmaker already had a believable villain in us. Throughout Jewell, reporters camp out in front of the suspect’s home, follow him wherever he drives and badger even Jewell’s mother in the feeding frenzy. When we amass, bad shit happens.

Alas, that wasn’t sufficient for Jewell.

I still remain a fan of the work of both Scruggs and Eastwood. One of the highlights of my career was to have an interview included in a collection of stories about the director.Image result for interviews: clint eastwood

So I will bid an RIP to Kathy and a best-wishes to Clint come Oscar season. I hope the movie does well. I will do my best to forgive it.

The Soft-Spoken Jewel of Richard

 

Richard Jewell

As he’s morphed from movie star to star movie maker, Clint Eastwood’s late career has tended to two categories, as distinct as cowboys in black and white hats. There’s the deeper philosophical glimpses into human frailty (The 15:27 to Paris, Sully,  J. Edgar);  then there’s the hands-off-bystander director who shoots simpler stories (Gran Torino, The Mule, Unforgiven).  Thankfully, Richard Jewell belongs in the latter camp of complicated  heroes seeking simplicity.Image result for The 15:27 to Paris

The 89-year-old director brings his no-fuss persona to Jewell, and it proves an apt fit for Jewell’s story, allowing the brimming tension of Billy Ray’s script and a handful of strong performances to stand out. While the muted drama is familiar and likely won’t win Eastwood any new fans as a filmmaker, it won’t mar his reputation, either. The low-key approach feels at once timely and old-fashioned — a character study from another era designed to comment on our own, particularly along the media landscape.

Jewell explores the eponymous odyssey of its real-life character, in a cautionary tale of heroism gone awry on a very public stage: In 1996, the security guard happened upon a bomb at Centennial Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. The blast ultimately killed one person and injured more than 100, but could’ve been worse if it weren’t for Jewell successfully identifying the makeshift explosive tucked in a backpack under a bench just before detonation. But without a promising suspect, the FBI made Jewell its primary suspect, and mass hysteria ensued as the FBI combed through Jewell’s life to build a believable case.Image result for centennial park richard jewell

While Captain Phillips writer Ray adapts Marie Brenner’s Vanity Fair article into a sturdy scaffolding to retell those events, Eastwood’s veteran hand provides the tension: The harrowing explosion at Centennial Park — with bodies, limbs, and blood sprayed across the park — can’t help but think of the Boston Marathon and Vegas mass shootings. It may be set in the 1990’s, but Jewell‘s release timing was no accident. While the film is set in the mid-1990s, Eastwood chose to tell this story now for a reason.

At the cross hairs of a mayhem is Paul Walter Hauser’s Richard Jewell. A newcomer to leading roles, Hauser previously starred as one of the white-trash thugs in I, Tonya. Yet he delivers was one of most potent, retrained turns of 2019. Forget his dead-ringer likeness of the real man; despite Jewell‘s  macabre material, Hauser gives his character a cringe-worthy sincerity — you want to scream at the screen for him to tell the FBI off. But neither he nor the film are interested in Hollywood little-guy convention. Image result for paul walter hauser richard jewell

Even as Hauser’s performance lends the film a darkly comic edge, Eastwood’s solemn filmmaking never mocks his protagonist (Jewell died at 44 in 2007). The director even acknowledges those who still believe in Jewell’s involvement, and the movie manages to sidestep becoming a political screed about the inevitable injustices of power.

The stark exception would the role of Olivia Wilde, who plays real-life Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs. Eastwood holds back little fury at the press, which he accuses of sleeping with investigators to sell papers (the AJC has demanded a credit-roll-correction in the film, which Warner Bros. has not recognized). The media frenzy took on such a loathsome life of its own in the scandal, it seems odd to attack an individual journalist, and the side rant slows Jewell.

But not enough to undo it. Kathy Bates turns in her best performance in years as Jewell’s mother, Bobbi. And Sam Rockwell’s performance as Jewell’s attorney Watson Bryant gives Jewell its terrific moments of comeuppance.

Like predecessors Spotlight and Nightcrawler, Jewell is a story of what happens when what is reported as fact obscures the truth. It may have taken 13 years to tell the step-back story of Richard Jewell. But Eastwood makes a strong case that hearing all sides is worth the wait.