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neven-ebrez · 5 years

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15x01, a look at the future through the past

Back home! I watched the episode last night and rewatched it just now. I’m sorry to say that I was baseline bored on most levels but the second time through things felt better (yay!) even if the bland factor was still there for me personally (I’m bored with most ghost stuff from SPN these days). Imo the characters basically served the plot of 15x01 instead of the other way around which is very Game of Thrones-y and 1000% not what I’m here for but I won’t talk about the details of that because I’m sure no one wants to hear that and I’m also sure things won’t stay that way long so I’ll talk about some other things instead. There are some things I can tell are a thing but I don’t know exactly what the shows means in depicting them, and others where I’m more confident in my interpretation so here we go.

I’m like 99% sure the demon in Jack is actually Chuck and that he’s basically trying to maintain his torture (I mean... the guy admitted to being a torturer ffs) of the Winchesters with the best viewing seat possible as it were (he even tells Dean point blank he’s a “fan”). For some reason only Dean and Cas got the focus for this (torture) tho and not Sam. With Dean it was the demon reminding him of how dark and brutal Dean can be himself (via his time with Alastair). Dean blows that off pretty quick and isn’t too visibly effected, commenting that it was a long time ago. With Cas the torture came in the demon’s possession of Jack himself, Cas saying bluntly that he can’t even look at Jack and that demonic possession is basically defilement. Cas is clearly more effected and Dean’s harsh “Jack is DEAD!” tonally recalled S13 in many ways. Also oddly the demon admits Dean is gorgeous but not the same is said of Cas, with the demon insulting him instead. Two interactions. Two wildly different responses. It’s the demon putting Dean and Cas at odds without any interaction needed from them themselves, though the latter comes in spades and is the only focused on “true” conflict of the episode, set against soft Sam/Dean exchanges.

The blend of Cas’ angelic nature along with his human nature was also heavily, heavily highlighted in the episode. It was probably the most highlighted thing in fact. Cas smiting and healing. Cas shooting a gun and throwing rocks. Cas tells Dean he wouldn’t starve to death in the crypt (which, on a side note, has huge Buffy vibes for me, along with Belphogor (sp?) calling the Hell rip or whatever the “Hellmouth”). Cas can see the demon’s demonic face easily despite episodes like 14x01 (also written by Dabb) where he can’t see a room full of them (I think I argued back then that Cas was willingfully trying to ignore and was annoyed with his angelic nature). Cas’ angelic side gets another highlight when Sam accidentally shoots Cas and he doesn’t get truly injured. This particular scene seemingly serves no other purpose other than to highlight Cas’ difference (as non-human) in general. Emotionally tho, Cas’ human side is on full display. He’s worried about the town’s people. He’s annoyed with both Sam and Dean for different reasons at different points. Cas bodily removes the demon from sharing the same space as him because the demon upsets him. Cas can not even LOOK at “Jack” but Dean (and Sam) can. As I said, it’s similar structurally to how S13 handled Dean dealing with Cas’ death in comparison to Sam moving on from it. It functions to show that for Cas his relationship with Jack is different from Sam and Dean’s, however otherwise similar in the fact that TFW all see Jack as their child, their family. It’s exactly like how Cas is different to Dean as compared to Sam.

Back onto demon “B” whatever tho. Interestingly, we never see the demon smoke into Jack. Then he just “”happens”” to know every spell needed to help the Winchesters but for Dean and Cas two things are required for sacrifice/gathering. In each, one component is dead-like and protecting (salt, goofer dust) and the other channels life/creation (a heart and angel blood). Each time there’s a duality in play. Curiously Sam is not involved in any of this with the demon for whatever reason, making the demon (within the season’s structure as presented so far) a primary component of Dean and Cas’ differences. They are tests of free will for them specifically in a way. What will each person “freely” give/obtain for the demon? To me, it just all screams this thing/demon is really just God fucking with them in every way he can but while maintaining some ally aligned position physically. It’s Chuck’s literal MO.

Also. The show is back to Dean blanketly treating Cas like shit. Which we know happens in waves constantly but as a Cas fan it’s still annoying to watch for the umpteenth fucking time. And they haven’t even pinpointed the *exact* reason here for all the snapping (yeah, pacing, I know). The audience has to do some connecting the dots here I feel. They have to have a certain understanding of how Dean needs Cas. I *think* the takeaway is that Dean uses Cas as an emotional punching bag when he’s actually mad at himself and that instead of getting so angry with himself these days that Dean’s decided yelling at Cas is a better/healthier way for him to deal with himself. Which is absolutely unfair and devastating to Cas, but it’s what Cas (unfortunately) has become to Dean. It’s like when he told Cas he was dead to him at the end of S14 because of Jack killing Mary. Dean’s really mad at he, himself, for ignoring the warning that was always there. Not really Cas. But Dean has yet to apologize and/or rectify this. This is the (ongoing) problem for Dean and Cas. Point blank.

At this point if I was Cas I’d just leave and not come back. He doesn’t deserve the way Dean constantly treats him. Dean doesn’t “need” Cas like this but he’s become comfortable using him like this. This is so jarring from the understanding Dean shows Cas in late S12. And from the grief arc he has in S13, followed by the relief he shows when Cas returns. Dean never learns how to properly “claim” Cas, however. Looks like this time instead of killing Cas the show (like in S8) is gonna have Cas choose to stay away (after 15x03?) I guess, prompting Dean to do some reflecting or whatever following this (What is Cas to me? Why do I actually need him? How should I treat him?). But honestly I’m not thinking of the reflecting right now. Or the “after” or whatever. I’m just thinking about how shitty Cas is being treated RIGHT NOW and it 1000% makes me wanna just drop the show and not watch anymore until it’s over. I’m just not interested in torturing myself for months watching this slowly drag out but apparently I’m so masochistic and love Cas so fucking much that I will. GODDAMMIT

Onto “pipes” I guess. This is where I point out that I don’t know what the show is going for here but I’ll throw around some ideas. Pipes had a lot to do with the episode. Sam thinks he hears water flowing in a pipe in the crypt and they think they can escape through the sewers. Wrong. Later, Sam tells the sheriff that a pipeline burst near the town. Lies. And lastly there’s a plumbing truck outside the home where the clown ghost slaughtered the birthday party (uh... where’s the bodies btw?). So everywhere we have the imagery of pipes bursting and needing to be fixed. Which, water has nothing to do with Hell, not really. I guess the Hell “rip” is kinda acting like a burst pipe?? Water is usually associated with angels/Cas/change tho. My best guess is that it’s repurposed Michael imagery since good ol’ Bel-whatever let us know Michael’s cage door is busted open and he’s just sitting there for now apparently. I’m not confident in my interpretation here at all though. All I can tell is that busted pipes as imagery (something likely associated with lying/wrong) for something is a thing.

In general I’m going to say 15x01 didn’t even feel like a Dabb episode to me. I honestly wouldn’t have guessed he wrote it. Since I didn’t care about the random people under attack (women running and scared and not tougher is always a hard sell for me personally) I found myself frequently saying “why aren’t they doing _______?” a lot during the episode. Ghosts needing to run? Why? I mean, I get the show wanted to show how the magical border worked but this could have been done in many other more effective ways utilizing tension more. It almost felt like the show didn’t know what to do with its S1 self and so visually everything ended up looking so very incredibly cheesy and not just in the way the colors are no longer desaturated. It literally looks like the show can’t go back into what it was. We saw this visually with a sign that cropped up in several shots as Sam and Cas tried to get the girl and her mom to safety. It was a cul de sac sign.

Here’s a video on why cul de sacs as a design became popular. In short, following the rise in popularity of the automobile neighborhoods are designed for safe car use, above all else. They don’t want outsiders passing through and they want things to be slower. When cars got popular streets were redesigned away from the traditional city “grid” (where accidents happened at intersections most commonly) with features that instead had safety in mind. I choose to interpret this as a visual comment on the show’s design. The Sam n Dean show is like a city grid, dangerous, while the Sam, Dean, Cas, Rowena, and Jack show offers more “safety”. That’s why we get it framed like this imo, between Sam and Cas. Things looked one way before Cas, and another after. Things have changed from the grid and they aren’t going back, for a variety of reasons.

Since the episode title recalls the movie Back to the Future I thought we’d have more of a visual/dialogue tie in tbh. I’ll try to talk about what we thematically did tho. BTTF is a movie about a boy overcoming his impulsiveness to be an alpha male who isn’t scared. This wasn’t a goal of the boy himself necessarily but it was an effect had upon him just the same by the story and his experiences. The movie bookends on this character development. In between the movie is about the disconnect of generations, how kids don’t see their parents in the way they see themselves and vice versa. It’s also about trying to set right familial relationships into proper categories. Marty’s mom, Lorene, accidentally falls in love with her own son instead of Marty’s father, George. Marty’s existence is then threatened and he must spend the movie trying to understand his parents and help them fall properly in love, thus saving and changing himself and them. We only get shades of these themes in the episode, like when the demon (in Jack’s body) calls Dean gorgeous and it makes him uncomfortable. Divorce (unhappy marriage) is also touched upon with the sleepover/makeover girls. In BTTF Lorene and George do not have a great marriage as George lacks confidence but Marty’s interactions with George in the past help change this in the future and their family is much better for it.

We are told in PR that Dean’s “conditioning” and him changing from that is a big part of what SPN is and has always been about. This is similar to how Marty must learn to properly deal with bullies (as he sees his father as weak and overcompensates to distinguish himself from him) and not letting them have power over you. Chuck is like Biff in this structural comparison. Biff is someone we watch become depowered over the course of the movie and I feel this is similar to what the show will likely do regarding Chuck. I could go further in depth here but these are the general thematic points this episode alone addresses. Only with Marty’s character development does he stand to have a happy life with his girlfriend, Jennifer. Back to the Future ends with another call to adventure and its script is widely regarded as “perfect” by many. Quite the structural comparison for SPN to be making. We’ll see. We’re currently stuck in the past for now. Onward, to the future...

#spn speculation #15x01 #zerbe discusses things #final themes #duality #alchemy #narrative structure #back to the future #pop culture references #destiel for ts #if you squint #cul de sac storytelling #the spiraling narrative of supernatural #spn criticism

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movieswithkevin27 · 6 years

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Bright

Deciding which film - Bright, The Mummy, Amityville: The Awakening, or The Circle - is worse is a tough task. The Mummy is so bad it is good, so it gets ahead of the competition. The Circle feels incomplete, so it is probably the worst, whereas Amityville feels like multiple movies slapped together. Bright, however, as the third worst (or second best, but I do not want to sound too complimentary), is old school bad. It is boring, it is horribly written, it is incompetently directed, and yet it is coherent. Nobody can mistake Bright for being multiple films or an incomplete film. Instead, it is a straight-forward film with a plot that easily mistaken for actual depth or world-building, characters who are intended to be engaging, thematic content working throughout, and a clear narrative arc that will engage less discerning viewers quite adequately and deliver “a fun movie”. However, in having seen Bright, it is hard to imagine how one could find this slop fun. A pig would think this is just too shitty of a pen to play in if given the option between its own shit and Bright. Compared to the other ⅕ star films I have seen thus far in 2017, Bright is the only film that is just not horribly made, but it is a completely horrible film. It is exactly what the filmmakers wanted to put together, which earns it some points for being less horrible, but is hardly an endorsement of its quality as director David Ayer and writer Max Landis have found a way to waste a seemingly. compelling and original idea. To accomplish this, they put it into a buddy cop film, inserted lame pop culture comedy (“swipe left” right as he swipes to detonate a bomb...hello my fellow kids), had dull action scenes, stilted dialogue, and forced racial commentary that would make Paul Haggis and the filmmakers behind Crash think Bright is too heavy-handed.

The opening act of this film pours on the racial commentary hot-and-heavy. Establishing this as a world in which orcs are hated due to their allegiance to the “dark lord” in a literal race war 2,000 years ago, Bright shows humans to be normal middle class folks, elves to be the 1%, and orcs to be the minorities in the hoods who become gangsters. Meanwhile, the LAPD has hired an orc cop as part of a forced diversity initiative, but every other cop wants to kill orc cop Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton). Paired with Darrell Ward (Will Smith), the two traverse Los Angeles, encounter racism towards orcs, discuss the tribalism of orcs and how they are indebted to their clans, they discuss orc culture and being “blooded”, cops want to frame and kill Jakoby, and fellow orcs call Jakoby a traitor. The racial commentary, tragically, is established even further through imagery that aligns orcs with inner city black Americans with graffiti showing images of cops killing orcs without reason. All of this racial commentary could have been fine and even a unique take in a fantasy world, but Ayer and Landis are so blunt and on-the-nose in their treatment, it often feels as though Bright reaches out and slaps the audience in the face while shouting, “Do you get it?! THEY’RE RACIST!” While the film may have its heart in the right place in regards to racism in society and the need to see equality between races, Bright is simply not film that executes on this theme well enough for it truly resonate or have its desired impact. Instead, it just plays out as a hamfisted theme that is never developed in an interesting fashion.

A lot of the films issues in following its racial commentary in a more subdued and compelling fashion is the same reason why its general plotting and originality falls apart. It all felt very surface-level. Ayer was unable to actually make things work beneath the surface, instead opting for a cliche buddy cop movie - which is in his wheelhouse, as End of Watch shows - with cliche action “the hero never gets hits” shootout scenes, one-liners, a generic group of bad guys that want to summon the “dark lord”, and useless federal agents who, despite possessing a threat, disappear for the final half hour after pin-pointing where Ward and Jakoby were within a few blocks. This rather uninteresting foundation for the film, leads all of the cliche fantasy elements such as prophecies, orcs, elves, references to past wars, wands, a dark lord, fairies, etc to just feel like a magic trick. It is a way for Ayer and Landis to distract audiences from the rather shallow and skin deep treatment of its fantasy setting it is giving in favor of exploring a rather straight-forward buddy cop action-comedy set-up. For many audiences, they will praise this distraction and even point to a shot of a dragon flying over Los Angeles as a hint to the depth and possibilities this world holds. Unfortunately, it is merely akin to putting lipstick on a pig. It is still a pig with nothing special or unique about on the inside compared to the other pigs, all it has is some lipstick. Bright is that pig (I do like my pig comparisons for this one, maybe all of the forced racism via calling orcs “pig-faced” is influencing me here), with some nice glossy fantasy elements but without the heart and soul of a fantasy film underneath.

This leads perfectly into the film’s horrific script. With forced comedy, exposition, and awkwardly stilted dialogue, it is easy to see that David Ayer was looking for his next, “So that’s it? We some kinda Suicide Squad?” through the entirety of the dialogue. Between a prolonged bromance scene, a cliche villain waiting just long enough to kill someone for them to be stopped, any discussion about prophecies (Will Smith literally says, “So we’re in a prophecy, huh?” after previously saying, “We are not in a prophecy. We are in a stolen Toyota Corolla.”), and really any joke attempt all mark true lows in Bright. Further lines such as “You need to unfuck this. Magic us to Palm Springs or some shit,” and the “it’s time to go home / “It’s too late to go home” / “Fucking kill me,” back-and-forth between chief antagonist Leilah (Noomi Rapace) and her sister Tikka (Lucy Fry) who is helping Darrell and Nick, are examples of just how horribly written Bright is, with awkward dialogue that continuously misses the boat. References to Tinder (previously quoted in introduction) and the elves having killed the illuminati additionally demonstrate that not only is Bright poorly written with awkward jokes, terrible “intense” dialogue, and continuous exposition explaining where they are in Los Angeles, who they are meeting, what they are doing (“We need to protect the wand”), regurgitating of a prophecy far too many times, and through racist interactions, but it is also a film that is trying far too hard to be “hip”. It drops in pop culture items it knows millennials will love, while trying to serenade them with the latest pop hits from their favorite “hip” rappers and singers as a means to elicit a positive association between Bright and the apps or songs the young folks of America love to use. As such, Bright comes off as not just a long music video like Suicide Squad did, but also a pandering work that consistently tries to reassert just how badass and in-touch with pop culture it and its makers are. To top it all of, the parade of cliche interactions - such as the final moment where Nick nervously tells the feds what happened without being prompted to do so - only serves to help Bright’s script become worse, solidifying it as certainly the worst element of an already horrible film.

The film’s direction and action further harms the film, both through inane and cliches action set-pieces with car chases, shootouts, and crashes, that never really capture the imagination of the audience. As opposed to his work in Fury, Ayer seems content to stick with rather incoherent, dull, and cliche action scenes - there is a scene where Leilah jumps through a glass window in an incredibly similar way to Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell - which only serves to help Bright become even more uninteresting. An already dull slog of a film becomes worse every time an action scene starts up with nothing but explosions, endless gunfire, “cool crashes”, and forced moments of intensity as the bad guy pauses just long enough to be shot or as the good guy runs out of bullets at exactly the wrong time. These cliches and rather dull exploration of a fantastical world - could we really not get some cool fantastical gun or weapon? - are what really pull down the facade of fantasy put up by Ayer and Landis. It is in these derivative shootouts that Bright screams out to the audience that this is not some adventurous or daring original film. Instead, it just another action movie that is happy to become mere white noise in the background as viewers opt to pay their taxes or bills instead of paying attention. Adding to these issues with direction, the film’s final act seems to occur at least three times with multiple almost endings that hint at putting the audience out of their misery before, somehow, finding more (and worse) content to tack onto the end of the film. This one winds up feeling entirely unending with Ayer and Landis managing to concoct new ways to keep this one dragging on for an eternity.

A dull, unredeemable, and decidedly unfun film, David Ayer’s Bright makes one wonder if he actually wrote Training Day and directed both End of Watch and Fury or if he just killed or blackmailed whoever did before taking all of the credit for himself. Will Smith finds yet another bad movie to star in and Joel Edgerton is saved by the fact that we cannot see his face through the make-up. Honestly, it is entirely possible that this was just a cliche buddy cop film until Edgerton signed on because he needed the money and demanded his dignity was saved by wearing makeup that hid his face, giving birth to this fantastical world. It would certainly explain why the fantasy world is so shallow and uninteresting. The fact that this film is earning such acclaim from audiences and is doing well enough to earn a sequel demonstrates just how starved audiences are for “original” films, willing to accept anything that slightly fits the bill.

#2017 movies #2010s movies #bright #david ayer #will smith #joel edgerton #film reviews #film analysis #movie reviews #edgar ramirez #noomi rapace #lucy fry

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