Right Reason

In Review: Episode VIII Teaser Trailer

 

 

 

Am I the only person to think that the line "it's time for the Jedi to end" is extremely insulting to the original trilogy? The original trilogy ended with The Return of the Jedi, and the destruction of the Sith order for good. Why is this trilogy so willing to simply not care about the the fact that, in the last trilogy, the Jedi were promised to return?

Plots progress through the statement of the problem and the resolution to that problem. One of the best parts about the prequel trilogy is the fact that it respected the mythos that came before it and at least tried to further explore the origin of the original trilogy's problem. Rather than exploring the consequences of the solution to that problem, this new trilogy acts as if nothing came before it. We don't get to explore the consequences of the return of the Jedi, we're simply told that (once again) the Jedi are all but extinct, and, this time, need to remain so. This kind of storytelling doesn't expand the mythos, it destroys it. 

 

As much as I love and respect the free markets and the pursuit of honest profits, I also love and respect the artistic genius. I think Star Wars emerged from George Lucas' artistic genius, as well as the efforts of an entire army of artists surrounding him, and I do respect how uncompromising Mr. Lucas was with how his vision had to be revealed. Under Disney, I fear that Star Wars is being Marvel'ed to death. However, unlike Marvel's comic books, Star Wars is a continuous mythos. Unlike comic books, that restart consistently with entirely new universes and premises, there is no reset button after Disney has destroyed the Star Wars mythos in a pursuit of spoon-feeding audiences the nostalgia-laced entertainment they crave and are willing to pay and pay and pay to receive. Yes, The Last Jedi will make Disney ever richer, but will it enrich the Star-Wars mythos? Myself, I very much doubt the latter. 

In Review: Eye in the Sky

 

War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

-Carl von Clausewitz, On War

 

This weekend, I finally watched Eye in the Sky. I was quite impressed with it and so would like to tell the world, that is my humble audience of readers, about it. To provide a sentence-long synopsis for those who know nothing about the movie, Eye in the Sky deals with the questions about rules of engagement posed up by a British drone operation when a high-value civilian becomes possible collateral damage.

All media, whether a textbook or a movie, have two fundamental purposes: To educate and to entertain. Eye in the Sky successfully does both by posing a question about drone-warfare and then exploring how the characters react to that question and to the reactions of other characters. The plot unfolds in the cascade of events that follow and how the characters react to those cascading. There are no stunts, little quipping and very few explosions. Instead, Eye in the Sky’s plot is driven forwards by dialogue and, thanks to a very tight script, conversation is enough to ratchet the tension up scene by scene. The leads, Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman, were both great in their roles, with both actors providing a sympathetic light to a program that many, such as myself, are very willing to condemn as immoral. Aaron Paul is also quite good and he also provides quite a sympathetic look at the role he plays within the drone program.

Then again, I am also intrigued by dialogues that bring dense issues to light. The dense issues that this movie brings to light are those involving rules of engagement. Indeed, Eye in the Sky can be seen more as a dialogue about the rules of engagement in an undeclared war than as a movie about drone-warfare per se. For those who like this kind of movie, I also recommend Conspiracy, a movie about the Wannsee Conference.

This concern brings me to my complaint about the movie: It has surprisingly little to do with the drone-warfare that is going on in the world around us. Perhaps the reason is that the movie is from a British point of view, but at least from an American point of view, many of the questions brought up in the movie have been become daily occurrences. One needn’t go farther than Jeremy Scahill’s Assassination Complex to know that American drone-warfare tactics have gone far beyond the questions about the rules of engagement Eye in the Sky inquires into.

Moreover, the movie does not deal with one of the most salient aspects of drone-warfare: That drones are used to prosecute undeclared wars. They can strike anywhere without warning, and therein lie their novelty to the rules of engagement. That novelty certainly offers advantages to the nations who use drones, but the ability to readily attain violent ends without having to go through proper diplomatic protocol is a powerful drug that can, and has, become addictive to those who use it.

There is a reason that just-war theory insists on a declaration of war. Even when that declaration is merely ceremonial, it still provides civilians with the knowledge that war is upon them. Even when they cannot vacate the place of hostilities, that declaration still allows them to inform their decisions with the knowledge that they can be killed straying into dangerous areas. Sometimes mere rituals can serve a valuable role in communicating intentions across society. This aspect of war is central to Eye in the Sky and yet never it is addressed.

Despite those qualms, I do hope that everyone decides to watch Eye in the Sky, even if it provides too romantic a view of drone-warfare, because it still brings up one of the most salient issues that governments must cope with, and one does hope resolve to constrain. Because it is undeclared and because it produces very few casualties for the nation using the drones, the costs of this secretive warfare can easily be buried in the headlines. Last October, an American destroyer launched a missile that killed over a hundred people—and yet all people could talk about that week was whether Donald Trump grabbed a secretary’s genitals. With the war distant and out of voters’ minds, the American military wields an uncomfortably vast amount of power in that region. It can kill both innocent civilians and American citizens alike without having to ever be accountable for those decisions.

It has been said that the first casualty in war is the truth. Certainly the second must be due process.

In Review: The Force Awakens

 

All sheen. No mythos.

 

 

This review will be a series of spoilers. That being said, I think all who care about The Force Awakens have pretty much already gone to see the film. Star Wars' loyal fans are legion. Whatever may be the quality of the movie, The Force Awakens is still under the Star-Wars brand and is therefore a must-watch for a sizable portion of the population. Reviewing this movie from the point of view of providing spoiler-free advice about whether a movie-goer at the margins should spend her time and money to go see it is therefore largely an exercise in futility. Those margins scarcely exist. Much like how the Force is divided into the light side and the dark, we live in a world in which the population is divided between those who will go see any Star-Wars film—even if it were led by Jar Jar Binks—and those who care nothing for the franchise.

By and large, people made their decisions before reading any review. What people are wondering now is not whether they should go see The Force Awakens. They are now wondering whether the movie was a good movie. Moreover, they are wondering whether the movie was a good Star-Wars movie—and, yes, that distinction is valuable. What follows below is my attempt to answer that question and, with the internet as obsessed about any potential spoilers, let me take the opportunity to provide a spoiler warning: The Force Awakens shall be fully spoiled below. Then again, if you care, I really doubt you haven’t seen the movie yet.

Suiting the overly long nature of this review, I split up the review into two portions. The first is a ~1000-word review for those who just want my impressions of the movie as a whole without much supporting evidence. The second part is where I go into depth as to why I had those impressions. For those who don’t care for the exact arguments supporting my impressions, Part I will suffice. Nevertheless, The Force Awakens is, by the very nature of its franchise, a landmark film and it’s worth taking time analyzing its many moving pieces, even if that analysis may push an excessive length. For those who care about my opinion about those many moving pieces: Strap in, it’s going to be a pretty long read!

 

 

I)

I went into the theater not expecting much and I was still disappointed. More specifically, I walked into the theater less excited so much as curious how JJ Abrams and the writers would present their vision of Star Wars.* What I saw was a remake of A New Hope that pandered to its audience without adding much to Star Wars' mythology.

Having provided the mandatory spoiler warning at the top, I must admit that there is very little to actually spoil for know who are a bit plot savvy. Han dying was a foregone conclusion after Harrison Ford agreed to another Star-Wars movie; Kylo Ren being the son of Han and Leia was actually my educated guess knowing that the two appeared estranged in the trailers and knowing about Jacen Solo in the extended universe; and the rest of the movie follows A New Hope beat-by-beat, with a dash of The Return of the Jedi, along with hip Whedon-esque humor, added in for good measure. One could say that it was surprising that Rey, not Finn, turned out to be the force-sensitive protagonist, but her appearance at the center of the movie poster was the signal that revealed the truth behind Disney's well-intentioned misinformation. After all, the main protagonist to any one of Star Wars' main films will be Force-sensitive.  There is really only one genuine surprise in the movie. That surprise was that Luke Skywalker only appeared for the last thirty seconds, without uttering a word. I shall return to that plot-point later. For now, broad strokes will do.

 

If there is one compliment I can pay to all those who created The Force Awakens, it is that they completely understand the chemistry behind successful blockbusters. The movie is skillfully, as well as passionately, mediocre. JJ Abrams and the writers understand, as a matter of science, how to organize scenes, cast characters and construct story arcs. They know exactly what audiences want and they know how to craft a movie that will satisfy those appetites. Nothing is more clear and distinct in The Force Awakens than the sheen it is polished to. As a matter of pure cinematic chemistry, The Force Awakens has taken the place of Joss Whedon's The Avengers as the pinnacle case study and that is certain an achievement to be proud of. But herein lies my greatest reservation with the movie: It is simply blockbuster chemistry, sans artistic vision.

The creators were so busy making a perfect blockbuster that they forgot to put any unforeseen creativity into the movie. Much like Han Solos' death, the movie is very much a matter of protocol. Enter left, give an homage to the originals, leave right, or into a bottomless chasm, if your name is Harrison Ford. We know when we are supposed to cheer and feel nostalgic because the movie blatantly signals to us when that is supposed to be the case. Such thematic chemistry removes the possibility of any spontaneous moments that would not find an entry in JJ Abrams' textbook for almost plagiarizing other films.
Whatever one may think about the prequel trilogy, George Lucas always provided a creative vision. Indeed, those movies were unbridled creative vision, come what may. The creators of The Force Awakens played safe and simply gave fans of the original trilogy their childhood dreams back, ignoring the fact that Star Wars is not a mere children's movie, but an imaginative mythology. Even worst, the writers thought that they needed a movie to pander to the fans to apologize for the creative vision of the prequel trilogy.

Furthermore, the constant stream of ham-fisted references were annoying enough for me by the time that the climax came along, I was actually quite vexed with the amount of pandering in the movie. The reveal of the Millennium Falcon at the junk pit on Tatooine 2.0, complete with obvious orchestration signaling the moment that the midnight audience should cheer, was plenty evidence for me that the movie was not going to be subtle in its homages to the original trilogy. In line with that expectation, The Force Awakens never wasted a moment when it could explicitly inform the audience to feel nostalgic or to cheer at some prop calling back to the original trilogy. After all, there are theaters full of fan-boys that need to appeased, subtlety be damned.

In providing the audience with the Star-Wars movie their wanted and without much attention provided to world-building, the creators of The Force Awaken have failed the possibility of adding new and creative to the Star-Wars mythos. Instead, they merely pressed a re-set button so that fans can relive their love of the original trilogy. Being the third trilogy of the franchise, we should have seen the characters face new problems. The Battle of Endor was won, the Empire has fallen, a New Republic has risen and the Jedi have returned!

However, despite the fact that  these events have happened, the Star-Wars mythos has progressed beyond A New Hope, the writers still found every possible way to press the reset button on all the events that happened across the original trilogy. Is the Rebellion so utterly incapable of serving as an arm of conventional power that they remain a guerrilla force hiding out on another jungle planet despite having won the decisive Battle of Endor? Is Han Solo still an untrustworthy rogue? Are the Jedi still extinct? Everything is the same as it was in the beginning of A New Hope, except where it was the rubble of the Clone Wars, it is now the rubble of the Galactic Civil War; where it was Obi-Wan Kenobi serving as the last of the Jedi in exile sought after by Leia, it is now Luke Skywalker.

The consequences of The Return of the Jedi’s conclusion should have introduced problems that are completely distinct from those of the previous two trilogies and those problems, as evidenced by a legion of expanded-universe stories, provide plenty of imaginative plot points. The Force Awaken simply defaults to being a re-make of many of the plot points of the original trilogy. Compared to Timothy Zahn's marvelous Heir to the Empire, which was its own first installment of a trilogy, The Force Awakens is merely a boring and unimaginative fourth installment of a beloved series.

Disney may have birthed a new Marvel cinematic universe to churn out a steady, albeit mediocre, supply of films to satisfy its legion of fans. But in doing so, Disney may have placed the desire to appease a mob above the desire to see a creative vision realized. If the future movies serve to corroborate that impression, it will be a tragic, tragic thing indeed.

 

* If I had two things on my Star-Wars wish list it was for one of the three leads to succumb to the temptations of the Dark Side and for Han Solo not to die in this movie. The former would demonstrate that our new heroes were never safe from their adversaries, or their own weaknesses, and would create an interesting sub-arc for the trilogy. The latter was so that the obvious would not happen.

 

 

 

Alas, The Force Awakens doesn't stand on its own as a coherent plot. Why? Let me explain...

 

II)

Halfway through the movie, I would have said that the movie was a mediocre blockbuster, of the style of JJ Abrams' two previous mediocre blockbusters. By that point it was clear that, much like an adolescent without a sense of his own identity, The Force Awakens was copying every good idea that George Lucas had in A New Hope and The Return of the Jedi in the hope of being loved. But I was still waiting to see what ideas the writers would have for the conclusion of the film. Up until the climax, the movie cohered as a plot and did a fine enough job entertaining me. I was getting annoyed at the blatant use of homages to the originals to conjure a sense of nostalgia, but that itself would not make The Force Awakens fail at the scale I think it did. I would have still not liked the movie, but I could have at least admitted that it stood its own as a mere remake.

The climax was what placed this movie into the territory of being a terrible. It served to fully emphasize all of the movie's problems, mostly that it lacked any suspense or vision at all, as the movie suddenly switch gears into an unnecessary set of action sequences without delving into the problems it had set up for itself. What originality it had, the search for Luke in particular, was cast to the side until the climax was over. We left with mere a third Death-Star assault, complete with Leia looking upon a screen in a hidden rebel base on a jungle planet, Princess, sorry, General Leia staring at some display in that base along with C3-PO, Portkins 2.0, trench assault and having to fly into the Death Star, serve as the climax lacked any imagination. In a movie that was already Star Wars' Greatest Hits, the climax was completely lifted from two previous movies and it did not serve to actually push forwards the story established in the beginning of The Force Awakens. Moreover, both A New Hope and The Return of the Jedi did their climaxes better, because those events were created to suit the problems of those particular movies with their own arcs and characters. 

 

In A New Hope, the movie's climax is centered around the assault on the Death Star alone. Badly crafted, this scene could have been just ships flying around to blow up a massive station. However, the film is able to craft an action scene that creates a sense of stakes as the scene go on that enables the action to transcend mere light and motion. Rather than bouncing around between concurrent plotlines, A New Hope keeps the Battle of Yavin going for just around fifteen minutes and it greatly benefits from that decision. The tension ratchets up after each scene and every scene within the sequence as the Death Star moves ever closer the Rebel base. There is a palpable sense of dread as the Death Star approaches firing range and as the Rebel assault meets hurdles. As each Rebel attempt to attack the thermal exhaust pipe fails, that tension is ratcheted up by a further escalation of the stakes, whether it is by Darth Vader personally leading a squadron to engage the Rebels in ship-to-ship combat or Moff Tarkin refusing to prepare a shuttle for evacuation or by. That is only made possible by the movie focusing on this single sequence of events because the audience would otherwise not feel the tension. Indeed, the pivot role that George Lucas' wife played in essentially creating the trench sequence we know and love in the editing room.

Unlike in A New Hope,, the climax's action jumps around between plotlines in The Return of the Jedi: Lando in space, Luke on the second Death Star and Han and Leia on the surface. This inter-cutting of plotlines works because of the fact that it is the third part of a trilogy. The conflicts have been established and so have our sympathy for the heroes.
Since we were already invested in the conflict between all of the characters when the movie began, the filmmakers did not need to ratchet up the tension by sequential edits, as was necessary in A New Hope. The previous two movies in set up the stakes and why it is so important that our heroes succeed. The Return of the Jedi’s climax brings those stakes to the bank in a massive action scene. The audience understands the stakes each and every time Luke and Vader swing at each other. Because it had served as Lord Vader's flagship in the previous movie, we knew the great victory that was won by the destruction of the Imperial Super Star Destroyer.

Inter-cutting plotlines didn’t work in The Force Awakens because we don’t have a sense of what is at stake nor have we spent long enough with our heroes to want to see them succeed for anything more than the most shallow of motivations. Poe Dameron's plot suffers the most as a result of the stitching of concurrent plotlines together. Most of the dramatic action that the audience actually has an attachment to is happening within the Starkiller Base. There, Han, Chewie and Finn are trying to shut down the base's shields from within to prepare the way for Poe's assault on the bases weak point. (Yet another one of the plot points in A Force Awakens that I've never seen before.) Rey is also aboard Starkiller Base and her own effort to escape further cement's all the dramatic stakes within the base, not over it.  The attack on the Starkiller Base is lost within this sequence of events. As a result, Poe's assault was very much just motion and lights. Veewwww, pew, pew, pew. It was a Death-Star trench assault redux, a scintillating climax for the sake of redoing another movie’s scintillating climax, without any of the dramatic tension that made the 

Even as a matter of style over substance, The Force Awaken’s fails to have similarly an epic scale as A New Hope, or, for that matter, The Return of the Jedi. The climax of A New Hope may have had a grand scope in 1977, but special effects have gone a long way since then, no small thanks to Star Wars. In an era of so impressive computer-generated imagery as our own, why the writers settled with a mere thirty or so ships assaulting the third Death Star is beyond me. Was that all the Resistance could muster? They could have easily had a pretty impressive fleet-to-fleet battle at the climax and I do not know why they did not make that choice. After all, the Battle of the Starkiller Base was a perfect opportunity for a spectacle involving a massive battle between a Resistance fleet trying to quickly get in past the First Order's garrison to deploy fighters to destroy the base's weak point. It would have even been an opportunity to put Ackbar back at the helm of the flagship! If the Resistance’s very existence were truly threatened, as it was in the movie, would it not send in every asset to assist its fighters on the ground? One may say that the creators are saving massive fleet battles for a future installment, and that may very well be the case.

As it stands, the opening minutes of The Revenge of the Sith has a much more impressive action scene in the Battle over Coruscant than anything in The Force Awakens, despite the jump in technology since then and the opportunity for fleet battles within the former film. Unlike the Battle of Starkiller Base, the Battle over Coruscant is an action scene that actually inspires awe at the scale of the visual.

 

Further neutralizing the sense of spectacle, at least for someone obsessed with the mythos, was that, unlike in either of the two previous trilogies, there is really only one new ship in the entire film and there are no new ship designs for the different factions fighters. One can easily distinguish the dogfights of, say, the Battle over Coruscant from that of the Battle of Endor by the ships involved in both conflicts alone. Those differences are not merely a matter of eye-candy alone. They also serve to emphasize that the trilogies both happen during different era’s of the Star-Wars mythos.

As anyone designing a real-time strategy game knows, differences between factions need to emphasized in the design of their units. Those differences serve as a visual cue of the differences between the factions. The dogfights of The Force Awakens, were merely more X-Wings versus TIE-fighter. That is a problem beyond the fact that it is something that audiences have already seen plenty of in the original trilogy. Instead, they serve to merely make the Resistance the Rebellion 2.0 and the First Order the Galactic Empire 2.0. The visuals do not signal that we are in a different era of Star Wars and that the Resistance and the First Order are themselves characters to the plot just as their predecessors were. Of all the ships in The Force Awakens, the only one that seemed to signal a different era was Kylo Ren's transport shuttle. However, even his flagship, The Finalizer, while certainly having an identity of its own as well as a rather snazzy name, does not appear to be a generation jump as the Venator-class and Imperial-class Star Destroyers were.

 

The climatic light-saber duel, which we all expect from a Star-Wars movie, was similarly disappointing. It really did look like children whacking sticks together, albeit with better special effects. Some call it ‘realistic’ and ‘gritty’. Myself, I don’t understand why one wants to watch a choreographed action scene that looks as unimpressive as that light-saber duel. With at least some training in how to use his weapon, Kylo Ren could have at least pulled off some pretty fancy moves, befitting his status as the movie’s big baddie. Alas, like his opponent, he only had child’s acumen in smashing his sword into his opponent with sloppy broad strokes. When one is in a movie theater to watch space wizards duel with swords of light, I don’t think it absurd that one should expect some stylized violence. To forgo choreography in favor of watching children in any backyard playing, albeit with better special effects, is a silly cinematic choice, at least with my own tastes.

Both The Phantom Menace and The Revenge of the Sith marked themselves out with a style of violence that raised light-saber duels above any other movie fight and ensured that, by the style alone, one would know that one was looking at a fight from Star Wars. With The Force Awakens, that style is gone and, replacing the light-sabers wielding for plain steel swords, one could be watching a fight scene from a dozen other films. As far as what constitutes a 'realistic' light-saber duel, I must confess ignorance of what is the proper measure of realism in a fight between space wizards. Still, knowing that JJ Abrams was going to make the violence more ‘realistic’, I was looking forwards to witnessing the light-saber duel to at least test my biases.  

Alas, I just didn’t enjoy Abrams' grounded realism as much as I did the choreographed style of the prequels. Obi-Wan Kenobi versus Anakin Skywalker is still my favorite duel in the Star-Wars mythos, though I may be cheating in choosing a fight between a master of Soresu and Djem So respectively. When I think of space wizards dueling, that is the fight that I think of. Some may say that it is too acrobatic and too choreographed, I say it’s a movie and I want to witness stylized fighting between space wizards! Mixed-martial arts, not Star Wars, is what I watch when I want to watch realistic violence.

 

The next problem with the plot that comes to a head during the climax, or at least immediately after the climax, is its deus ex D2. Suiting a plot only driven forwards by chance and coincidence, plus a heavy dose of winks to the camera, Luke is only found because the writers allowed for Luke to be found. The characters' actions had scarcely any involvement whatsoever.

Before the climax, we learn that data is necessary from R2-D2, yet the droid has been in a state of hibernation ever since Luke absconded. The Luke plotline is then forgotten in order to fit the movie into the rails of A New Hope. No longer is it the information contained within the droids that’s driving the plot forwards, now it’s the threat of yet another world-destroying weapon. Yet in the opening Star-Wars crawl, The Force Awakens sets up a movie about the search for Luke, not about the threat of some superweapon. We are told that:

With the support of the REPUBLIC,
General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE.
She is desperate to find her
brother Luke and gain his
help in restoring peace and
justice to the galaxy.

Leia has sent her most daring
pilot on a secret mission
to Jakku, where an old ally
has discovered a clue to
Luke’s whereabouts . . . .

 

The first third of the movie follows this mission of bringing the map detailing Luke's location to the Resistance. We are led to believe, at least I was, that finding Luke is what matters to the story we are about to witness.

The galaxy is hurt, the reason why the galaxy is hurt being left unexplained but it clearly has something to do with the First Order. For some reason, again unexplained, finding Luke will heal the galaxy. At least in A New Hope, the reason why the plans to the Death Star were important was rather self-evident, and . With the plans to the Death Star in hand, it was not inconceivable that the Rebellion could find a weakness and exploit it to destroy the Empire's powerful, and certainly very expensive, battlestation. This threat was even emphasized in a conference scene between high-ranking Imperial officials so that the audience would know the stakes if the protagonists were to fail in their mission.
There is no such intuition or information given in The Force Awakens as to why finding Luke matters for the Resistance. (I'm guessing it's a story for a different time.) Instead, we are finding Luke because Luke is important because the movie says so. That being said, Luke's importance could have clearly be explained in the climax in which Luke is found. Right? Wrong.

With the plot of The Force Awakens being largely limited to a remake of A New Hope, once the map to Luke's location reaches the Resistance, the movie immediately changes gears, away from the find-Luke plot into something entirely different. The map to is incomplete and the information needed to complete it is beyond the characters grasp. Now they must deal with a more important threat: The New Order has tracked down the Resistance's secret base and are now, of course, their superweapon is now pointed at that secret base. The plotline suddenly diverts to suit the ebb and flow of A New Hope. The Rebellion, sorry Resistance now has to launch an assault on the bad guy's superweapon in order to save the day. Although the Death-Star assault suits the plotline of A New Hope, being a climax promised in the opening crawl, it does not suit the plotline of The Force Awakens.

To suddenly be bait-and-switched into the climax being yet another Death-Star assault was therefore disappointing. It is disappointing not because we were all expecting to see plenty of Luke in the movie, at least I was not. It was disappointing because the movie set up the pay-off of seeing more of Luke and of figuring out more about why he absconded in the opening crawl and the first act of the film, only to abandon that plotline when it suited the movie as a remake. Instead of getting the promised pay-off, we are left with an announcement to come back in two years. Had the third Death-Star assault been forgone in favor of a climax that focused on finding Luke, the movie would have worked much better. Much like Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope, Luke could have been a device for informing the audience about the hurt state of the galaxy and, doing so, would have greatly expanded the possibilities for world-building within the movie.
Furthermore, from an editing point of view, the Luke’s reveal was also unnecessarily anti-climatic. There was no in-plot reason to show Luke Skywalker, since there was no surprise within the scene. We all know, and all the characters know, what awaits us at the end. After getting the map, quite literally ex machina, the heroes know what await them and their journey is so uneventful that it is done in mere seconds—yet another instance of the lack of any sense of time or space in an Abrams flick. Luke only exists there to tease the audience. He doesn't serve to advance the story at all and so his existence in The Force Awakens, despite the big mystery set up in the opening crawl, exists beyond the fourth wall. He is but only a wink and a nod from the writers and the director to the audience. They knew that the audience wanted to see Master Skywalker and so he is inserted into the movie. He really could have been removed and the entire problem of the anti-climax would have been solved, thus further illustrating the problematic nature of The Force Awakens' very construction: It does not exist in its own world, but a world colored by the lustful desire to elicit responses from the fans.

 

 

Moving onto characters, I must admit that I am hitherto unimpressed the new characters added to the mythos. Han Solo and Chewbacca were great, and they had a much larger role that I was expecting, but neither of the two served to push the plot forwards much, nor do they similarly serve to expand the mythos. I would have much preferred to see them in a much more marginal role so that the new characters could have more time along with the plot.

 

Of those characters, Poe Dameron was the one I liked the most, but he is also a simple character archetype: Sly soldier who moonlights as a secret agent. He was plenty charismatic and left me wanting to see more of him. But there simply wasn’t a lot of him in the movie.

 

Finn was serviceable. Going into the movie, I thought that the entire idea of a black stormtrooper to play against the established character of who the Imperials are. They are Nazis in space. Their characterization really was that simple. To me, thinking of a black stormtrooper is as weird as thinking that a black man served in the SS. To think of a black man amongst their ranks is to actually make them less evil. The Imperials are supposed to be a bunch of monolithic pasty white men, content in the superiority of their Aryan skull-shape. That being said, the movie actually explains, for the most part at least, the reasoning behind why Finn was a stormtrooper and that reasoning was good enough for me. For just a moment, The Force Awakens added a detail to the Star Wars mythos. Even better, the detail was played straight without a wink at the camera.
Getting back to Finn’s character, I never really bought into his change of heart nor was I impressed at the fact he was never allowed to actually be an agent of evil. On the former topic, I just never believe that Finn would go from a soldier conditioned to serve as a stormtrooper into a traitor to that cause in the series of events that happened. For one thing, what seeded doubt in his heart was not watching an atrocity, but witnessing another stormtrooper die and paint his blood upon his own helmet. On top of that, from a history-of-warfare point of view, the atrocity that happened in the movie’s first scene wasn't really all that atrocious. Liquidating unruly villages was standard operating procedure in the Eastern Front during the Second World War. Christoper R Browning’s history of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Ordinary Men demonstrates how easy it was for the Germans during that period to condition even middle-aged men taken from civilian life into committing atrocities orders of magnitude worse than sacking a village.
Yet it was not Finn’s change of heart that I found most flawed. Although I did not buy into that course of events, I was still able to go forwards with the plot. The genuine problem with a the stormtrooper-turned-good plot was that Finn was never allowed to be an active agent of evil. The opening was his first combat operation and he had served before as a janitor, distant from any of the New Order’s evil. Yes, the only black man that have yet to know serving the Empire, new or old (at least in this canon), was a janitor. As fellow stormtroopers were sent out to murder innocent civilians and to fight against the New Republic, much like how black GI's during WW2 primarily served as in support roles such as driving trucks, FN-2003 was safely behind the lines committing himself to the bland and unoffensive job of keeping the Starkiller Base clean for the Übermenschen.
Much like how Lucas tampered with A New Hope to explicitly depict Han not shooting first under the fear that a man who shot first would be beyond the moral event horizon, the writers of The Force Awakens ensures that we know that Finn never actually did anything bad. Rather than being a stormtrooper would could have very well murdered innocent civilians, we are told quite definitely that Finn is just some ordinary guy, which serves to undercut the virtue of Finn’s change of heart. Finn's involvement in the First Order was so harmless as to be negligible. Even worse, his identity as a stormtrooper takes a full couple of minutes to shake off and his lack of sympathy with his former faction is never in doubt, which further serves to completely downplay any dramatic tension with his turn-of-heart arc. All that being said, I do look forwards in seeing if more can be done with his backstory in the upcoming movies.

 

Before discussing the lead, I do wish to say a bit about Captain Phasma. For all the marketing setting her up as a female antagonist to be feared, Phasma turned out to be little more than a coward. I don’t mind that she wasn’t used much in the movie. This is the first part of a trilogy, after all, and some characters do need to be seeded into the plot for future use. The problem is that she was a coward. The moment that Chewie, Finn and Han pointed a gun at her head, she betrayed the New Order that we had been led to believe she was a zealous soldier for. I would expect such behavior from a mere conscript, but not from someone who is a true-believer. That act of treasonous cowardice completely undercut her characterization as a fearsome soldier. We would expect a generic masculine military antagonist played by, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Clint Eastwood to be willing to die before lowering the shields of the Starkiller Base, not so with Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma. Much like the movie she was in, the character was all polish, no substance. If she had done such an action in the search for Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back, she would have been summarily executed by Lord Vader.

 

Finally getting to the topic of the lead, Rey, outside of the varnish of being a likable power girl, she is really just a Mary Sue. Certainly, she is not dissimilar to the parade of Gary Stus and Mary Sues across JJ Abram's treatment of Star Trek. The director’s treatment of the male leads Kirk and Khan, in particular, absolutely deserve the same criticisms that I shall level on Rey. However, this is neither a review of Star Trek nor Into Darkness, neither or which I would heap much praise on. Instead this is a review of The Force Awakens and so Rey, rather than Kirk, Khan or a gaggle of JJ Abrams’ other characters from that franchise, is the target in my sights.
Within the taxonomy of characters in literature, there are at least three conditions to be met for a character to be a Gary Stu/ Mary Sue. The first is that they must be great at everything they do. Give Gary Stu a task, and he will carry it out brilliantly, even if he has had no prior straining. The entire cast of JJ Abrams’ Star Trek pretty much checks this condition off by their swift, and efficacious, promotion from students to the crew of the Federation’s flagship. Secondly, that character must lack any culpable flaw. The Gary Stu is a perfect student at Hogwarts, or at least a wonderful Quidditch player. Thirdly, that character must be a new character in an established universe that receives the praise of the established characters within that universe. Gary Stu is not only a perfect student, or a wonderful Quidditch player, he is also a member of House Gryffindor beloved by Harry, Ron and Hermoine.
Yes, we all like to imagine ourselves as such characters, but we also know that doing so is self-serving. The world doesn’t actually revolve around ourselves as it does Gary Stu. Despite that self-awareness, we still frequently find ourselves wishing that the entire world would just stop to adore us in our own excellence. We are only human, after all. Gary Stus are a troubling literary category because they fuel that egotistical escapism. It is far better for ourselves to be our own impartial spectators, to recognize that the characters we sympathize with should reflect our own flaws and that they should have to overcome those flaws to improve themselves.

Rey checks off all of those conditions for being a Mary Sue. She is unbelievable excellent at all the tasks that she is met with, she has no culpable character flaws, and she is a newly added character in an existing universe admired by the characters within that universe. As a vehicle of wish-fulfillment, Rey is designed perfectly. New at the helm of the Millennium Falcon, she is nevertheless able to pilot it in a dogfight to evade maneuverable First-Order TIE-fighters. She is then able to repair the Millennium Falcon and gains Han Solo's gushing approval upon doing so. Within hours of hearing about the existence of the Force, she is able to successfully Jedi mind trick stormtroopers to plot her own escape from Starkiller base. Despite being a valuable prisoner anybody would have had multiple layers of security assigned to, she is able to break out of possibly the most heavily fortified base in the entire universe. With no training in how to use a light-saber, she is able to best a dark lord who had trained under Master Skywalker himself. Some of those accomplishments can be explained away; for instance, I can fully believe that a scavenger can be a great climber and great at jury-rigging space ships. However, taken as a whole, all of his incredible accomplishments drive Rey into Mary-Sue territory.

 

One of the aspects of story that Lucas perfectly understood in both of his trilogies was internal conflict. It really is the internal conflicts, rather than simply the face-off with external threats, that define a protagonist and allow that protagonist to grow over the course of her story. Luke Skywalker was a hero because he was able to overcome his own internal conflicts. Anakin Skywalker was a tragic hero because he was not able to overcome his own internal conflicts. Rey has no internal conflicts to speak of. Her only conflict is to transcend victimhood and that is achieved within minutes within the movie.

Furthermore as of the end of The Force Awakens, Rey has already seemed to have reached enlightenment, by virtue of letting the Force in. Whereas Luke had to overcome his doubts and whininess to gain a clearness of mind in his training in Dagobah, Rey has already found clearness of mind, as evidenced by her letting the Force in during her fight with Kylo Ren. As someone who surely believed in the spiritual themes rife in Star Wars, Lucas understood that the Jedi were an order of monks who needed lengthy training to master their powers, Abrams and the writers default to a secular notion of simply 'letting it in'. 
A hero can only be as great as the challenges that she overcomes. Before he could become a true Jedi, Luke had to emerge from his hero's journey, which included many, many missteps, before he could overcome Vader and his Emperor. Rey overcame whatever obstacles the plot put before her with ease, and that ease erodes away her heroism. The self-determination and virtue that an impartial spectator applauds can only be displayed under difficult circumstances. As of the conclusion of the first part to the new trilogy, Rey had yet to face a genuine trial in her path to becoming a Jedi and the ease of her path is at odds with the hero's journey that she is supposed to be on.
Maybe the next two parts will see Rey genuinely broken, as all true heroes must be in their journeys, but The Force Awakens should be able to stand on its own two legs, just as A New Hope was able to. By the end of that movie, we all knew Luke had to overcome obstacles, including his own doubts and personality. Those obstacles may not have been as dramatic as those in the sky-city of Bespin or in the Emperor's throne room, but they were challenges nevertheless. There are simply no parallels for Rey in her story and that should be irksome for those who want a genuinely legendary female protagonist.

 

No one should settle for bad characters. Settling for bad female characters because they are female only serves to feed the internet trolls who believe that the introduction of female characters into their beloved mythologies will ruin the stories contained therein. Being content with a lead female being a Mary Sue serves to corroborate that point and, in the long run, to feed the trolls! We should all want great stories with great characters, no matter their race and gender. That being said, we do live in a time in which bland white male protagonists dominate. In a better world, we could say that it does not matter whether a protagonist has a certain race or gender. However, we are not in that world now.
A Star Wars with a cast of minority characters is a step to that better world. The decision to cast a female lead and a black main beside her is therefore laudable. It helps us get beyond that world of bland male protagonists, which really are actually quite boring in their own right.
Nevertheless, we still live in a world good enough that we should not be willing to settle for any minority characters. Instead, we should want to same level of characterization for our minority characters as are given to while males. With Rey, we should expect to see a woman who struggles and overcomes both external and internal conflicts, just as we got with Luke Skywalker. Whereas Luke was a fallible human being who had to overcome his own internal conflicts to become a Jedi, Rey was a Mary Sue, who came ready to instantly soak up the lessons of the Force, and no one should be applauding the writers for that. Instead, we should be upset, just as we would have upset been if Rey had been yet another princess to rescue. In media virtus stat.

Questions do abound about Rey. Those questions may be answered satisfactorily in the next two movies. However, they are questions that have direct relevance on The Force Awakens. They should have been answered in this movie so that it could stand on its own as a good movie. Without good answers, we are left with a Mary Sue who could have been a much better character, a character whose hero’s journey an impartial spectator could have actually sympathized with. Within The Force Awakes alone, considered as its own movie, Rey is a cardboard-cutout power girl that we all, be we feminists or lovers of good plots in general, should be disappointed with. Whether that changes in future movies does not matter for this review, for it did not matter for my enjoyment of the movie and my ability to sympathize with Rey. 

 

 

As of now, The Force Awakens is being showered with acclaim and positive reviews. As a blockbuster that understands how to manipulate the pent-up nostalgia for the original movies and knows the chemistry underlying box-office success, that is not surprising. Indeed, it would be more surprising if this movie were not a well-crafted film. That being said, The Force Awakens is ultimately just a stale fourth installment in a beloved series. It's very difficult to create an imaginative blockbuster these days. Imaginative movies must buck conventions and go out on their own paths. Very often, as in the case of Jupiter Ascending this year, an imaginative movie fails, both as a movie and as a money-maker.
Being a Star-Wars movie, and therefore guaranteed to make dump-trucks of money, The Force Awakens was a perfect platform to bring a creative and ambitious story, one that could have launched an entire new mythology of new stories, As the first installment of a new trilogy, the writers and directors had an opportunity for creating something new that had a separate identity from the two previous trilogies, just as the prequels had a separate identity from the original trilogy. Instead, they took the opportunity to play it safe and to pander to fans who would have watched the next two movies come what may.
In doing so, they failed the promise of Star Wars and, as a true-believing Star-Wars fan, I can scarcely be more disappointed. Say what you will about the prequel trilogy, at least George Lucas brought us something imaginative, something that would have been impossible to make if it did not have the Star-Wars brand buttressing its sales. JJ Abrams and the writers of The Force Awakens simply gave us a purposefully completely derivative and completely mediocre blockbuster, a movie that is already difficult to differentiate from Abram's Star Trek and will simply fade into dust once newer, shiner, and more hip space films find their way to a theater near you.

In Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron

 

 

No matter what any review says, Avengers: Age of Ultron will do well at the box-office, as it has already done and, in doing so, help make those involved rich. Marvel’s plan to create a cinematic universe has succeeded and Age of Ultron is a testament to the work put into creating a cast of characters everybody wants to watch. The movie is everything one could hope for from a blockbuster weighed down by a lack of a credible villain. Ultron just isn’t frightening nor is he a match for the Avengers. Rather than being Age of Ultron, the movie feels like Week of Ultron or Couple of Days of Ultron, with the main villain defeated without any sense of lasting importance to the effort. The problems with Ultron are then a thread that, when pulled, proceeds to pull apart the entire movie and, however much I enjoyed watching the movie twice, I cannot help but be disappointed in it. 

 

To start with, I mind as well address the ubiquitous question: Is Avengers: Age of Ultron better than The Avengers? I would say yes. I can’t say I was bored at any moment, even during my second viewing, at any time during Age of Ultron. Plus, being dead tired of origin stories, Age of Ultron has the distinct advantages of not making the audience go through the rather artificial will-they-won’t-they dynamic of the first movie. 

I’m actually surprised by the tepid reaction to Age of Ultron compared to The Avengers. All of the problems afflicting Age of Ultron, say the movie being a series of one-liners, character interactions and violence, were quite present in The Avengers. I don’t ever plan on watching The Avengers again. For me, it was very much a one and done experience. However, I could definitely see myself watching Age of Ultron again, especially if the extended director’s cut gets good reviews. So, in the original versus sequel debate, I have to go with the sequel. 

There is much to be applauded in the movie. As a movie directed by Joss Whedon, the character interactions are exactly what one could hope for. There’s a very enjoyable party scene in the beginning of the film that highlights the strength of Age of Ultron as a movie that follows around characters and records their interactions. Moreover, the dialogue is witty with one-liners aplenty. Age of Ultron is a surprisingly comedic movie and, for the most part, that works. Most of the entertainment doesn’t come from the action that millions of dollars worth of special effects were spent on, but on the dialogue on interactions.

In addition, the movie moves forwards at a pace that ensures boredom is never possible. There’s always something happening. Now, one could say that the movie never has a time to slow down and reflect on the plot, but I don’t think that’s the strength of a summer blockbuster. The genre’s strength is entertainment, not contemplation, and Age of Ultron is certainly strong on that quality. The movie is definitely beginning to buckle under its own immensity; Mr. Whedon’s original cut was supposedly three and half hours long and it shows. Nevertheless, it only buckles and, in the end, the immensity is definitely worth it for spectacle.

 

Which brings me to what held the movie back: Not the immensity of the endeavor, but its villain: Ultron. If Age of Ultron was going to be a compelling narrative, then Ultron had to be a villain who could seriously threaten the world and, in doing so, give the Avengers their toughest challenge yet. Such is the basic stuff sequels are made of.  

The idea of Ultron—that a malicious program could conquer our technologically interconnected world —is frightening. But that idea wasn’t realized in the movie. What we were left is was a snarky, emotional robot. Rather than being a menacing villain who could impose the Age of Ultron upon the world, Ultron is ultimately an object of pity. As a character, he isn’t much more than James Spader giving one liners. 

When Ultron’s main plot was revealed, I couldn’t help but feel a bit let down. Ultron is a genius AI with access to the entire internet, who could be everywhere in the world at once for his evil plot, and he decides to do that. Besides create the opportunity for a much-too-familiar cityscape battle with all the Avengers facing off against a non-human army, I wonder why the writers decided to go the route they did. And when Ultron was ultimately destroyed (spoiler!), it was unfulfilling because it had already been established that Ultron was all over the internet and Ultron’s end doesn’t really address that fact. 

 

 

Not the movie you'll see. 

 

One of the reasons why I was willing to forgive many of the flaws of Guardians of the Galaxy (the villain being pathetic, not another origin story, etc.) was that the movie was everything I wanted from the advertisements. In the case of Age of Ultron, after having watched the movie twice, I’d still like to see a movie with the tone of the trailers—a movie in which the creation of Ultron has consequences for the Avengers and whose defeat would require sacrifice <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmeOjFno6Do>. After all, there can’t be a hero without a dragon. Moreover, plots are constituted by consequences and repercussions. There were really no repercussions to the creation of Ultron. 

Without repercussions, nothing cuts to the heart because the film is unwilling to cut. Even when the Avengers have the low moment that plots call for, there are no consequences for the world outside of the five Avengers. Their failures ultimately mean nothing and whatever short-term meaning they have is swiftly swept under a rug. There’s a remarkable lack of civilian casualties in the movie. I say that not out of a lust for destruction à la Man of Steel, but out of a desire to see the Age of Ultron! What’s the worst that a malicious AI that can be anywhere the internet is do? Certainly more than this movie shows. 

I came to the theatre wanting to see Ultron give the Avengers a no-holds-barred contest over the fate of civilization. Instead, Ultron was a mostly harmless robot that can be beaten back with brute force without much consequence. That problem proceeds to infect the entire movie. 

As much as I enjoyed the movie both times I saw it, when I think back about the movie in years to come, I’m probably going to the movie as a disappointment. Instead of raising the stakes and forcing the Avengers out of their comfort zones, the movie is quite happy to retread the problems facing the Avengers from the first movie. As a series of one-liners and character interactions, Age of Ultron is a wonderful time, but as a plot, the movie lacks a threat to cohere the action together and to bring a sense of meaning—dare I say, to sanctify—the Avengers’ efforts. 

 

The more time that comes between me and my watching of the film, the more I’m mentally picking at the weakness of Ultron as a villain and the movie falls apart. Heroes can really only rise as far as their villain pushes them. The less a villain requires sacrifice to vanquish, the less heroic will be the efforts of our main characters. Despite all the spectacle and wit, Avengers: Age of Ultron just isn’t all that heroic of a movie and Ultron is the reason. 

In Review: UFC 182

 

 

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Jon Jones Victus.

 

Hector Lombard versus Josh Burkman: I don’t get the hype behind Hector Lombard. His performance at UFC 182 did nothing to make me any less tepid than I already am. The bout was one-sided on paper. At this point, Lombard is a fighter who needs to be given a fight against a top-level welterweight. He’s simply too much for someone outside of the top-ten, or even the top-five, to handle. The bout turned out to be similarly one-sided in actuality as it was on paper. Although clearly overmatched, Burkman was fighting to survive from the first second. Burkman, though, did manage to expose holes in Lombard’s game that would make him vulnerable to elite competition. 

 

For one thing, Lombard was incapable of cutting Burkman off within the cage and keeping him where he wanted. He simply followed Burkman around the cage. Yes, suck stalking makes Lombard look ‘alpha’, for those who care about a such meaningless concept, but he in no way did he display good ringcraft in his movement. Compare Lombard simply following Burkman around with Rory MacDonald consistently keeping Tyron Woodley in a vulnerable position throughout their three-round fight at UFC 174. One is a magnificent performance, the other registers as a ‘meh’.

Another weakness Burkman exposed—I write as if these weren’t already common-knowledge flaws—is that even though Lombard swung with power, but he merely swung. There’s a mighty difference between a good striker and someone who simply can punch with power. Lombard is in the latter category. Burkman, despite being put into a squash match, was still able to have some success in counterpunching against Lombard’s wild strikes. 

 

All in all, anyone calling Lombard ‘the most fearsome welterweight’ doesn’t understand the art of mixed martial arts beyond looking ‘alpha’ <http://fightland.vice.com/blog/why-hector-lombard-is-the-ufcs-most-fearsome-welterweight>.  

 

 

Kyoji Horiguchi verus Louis Gaudinot: I love a good karateka. The flyweight Kyoji Horiguchi is a great one. Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t remember who Horiguchi was until moments before he walked out. Much like Lyoto Machida, Horiguchi was able to control the distance and come in with flurries when he wanted to. Gaudinot was never really able to deal with the distance Horiguchi maintained and gave the karateka plenty of opportunities for some good strikes. I look forward to seeing what Horiguchi can do in a division starving for talent with any fight with a win streak being fed to the champion in a manner that prevents rising fighters from gaining the experience they may need before entering into a championship bout. Gaudinot displayed some good submissions skills when he tried to take out Horiguchi with a standing arm triangle. 

 

 

Brad Tavarers versus Nate Marquardt: Forgive me, I wasn’t paying much attention during this bout. I remember Tavares having a really good jab, but even that might just be me making things up.

 

 

Donald Cerrone versus Myles Jury: Is there anything more to be said other than the fact that Cerrone is one of the few fighters to genuinely make a technical turnaround in his career? Whereas Cerrone was once a text-book case of how lankiness can be a detriment, now he’s a text-book case for making it a strength. On paper, the fight was certainly a good one to make. It kept Cerrone busy while giving Jury a chance to rise in the ranks. At the end of the fight, though, Jury looked like he didn’t belong in the cage. Donald Cerrone dominated the fight from the first to last second.

 

 

Jon Jones versus Daniel Cormier: To start with, let me air out my biases. I believe that Jon Jones is the best fighter active today. I think that discussions of who is the greatest of all time are absurd. Each fighter is a product of their particular situations and environment. So comparing between those different situations is of little use. What is of use is to learn from everyone, and some are always better than others to learn from. Jon Jones is one such fighter. To see someone with his creativity and martial acumen compete today is a blessing.

Moving over beyond that frank declaration of my outlook, l found the main event to be something great. Bones Jones has always delivered in the past and now he shows no sign of slowing down. Moreover, his creativity was at display, as it always is. Jon Jones will always display a command of a large range of the skills defining mixed martial arts. He’s simply someone who truly can’t be flattened out to a specific martial art. Once Jones was able to establish wrist control over Cormier’s right hand in the clinch, Cormier’s offensive capabilities in the clinch, where much of the fight was fought, withered. The same could not be said of any single one of Jon Jones’ limbs. He even tried to pull guard at the end of the third round. Although, it’s a move one would normally be disappointed with, with someone as skilled as Jones, it’s simply interesting!

 

One of the defining attributes of the fight, in my eyes, is how much Jon Jones worked Cormier’s body. Mixed martial arts all too often degenerates into wild head-hunting. Fighters forget that the body presents a large target that can be worked to secure later opportunities. One needn’t look further than Stipe Miocic’s failure to work Junior dos Santos’ body in their earlier engagement at UFC on FOX 13 to notice the opportunities that are neglected by only head-hunting. Cormier was able to successfully put into play his stated plan to keep the pressure on Jones and in keep the fight in an inside range. But in doing, so though, he provided plenty of opportunities for Jones to slip in strikes to the body as Cormier closed the range in a straight line (more on that at the bottom). 

The fight was competitive when Cormier was able to keep the pace and to keep working in the clinch. But in rounds four and five, Jones came out as the king of the grind. To simply attribute that to Cormier gassing would be to neglect the importance of shots to the body and good body work to sapping an opponent’s ability to continue. The simple fact is that during the first three rounds, Cormier took a worrying amount of strikes to the body. A single great knee can change the tone of a fight within the clinch. Cormier, someone who in his previous career hasn’t reacted well to shots to the body, took a couple of those. Leaves much to be desired. Nor is it about wrestling per se. It’s also about an under appreciated part of boxing: movement. Jon Jones doesn’t have the holes in his game. His performance against Glover Teixera illustrated that he has a stellar in-fighting game and that he knows how to fight up against the game. 

According to “Fight Metrics”, thirty-six perfect of Jones’ strikes were to Cormier’s body <http://www.fightmetric.com/fight-details/57385188587c83b9>. Only eighteen percent of Cormier’s strikes were to Jones’ body. The idea that Cormier could simply reproduce Cain Velasquez’s mauling of Junior dos Santos (an all too widely held opinion on the internet) was based on a mistaken understanding of what made that mauling possible. Dos Santos’ style is certainly crowd-pleasing, but his movement, especially when his back is against the cage,

 

The lesson I take from Jones versus Cormier? It’s hard to stay busy when you’re taking hard strikes to the body. Like leg kicks, those strikes all too often won’t pay off in the first three rounds, but they’re indispensable in longer bouts that become questions of endurance.  

 

 

Onto a more discursive topic, Jack Slack, always a writer to pay attention to, shortly reviewed in bout in “UFC 182: Jon Retains the Crown, But the Future Creeps Closer”.The article is one of the few articles from Mr. Slack I’ve been genuinely disappointed in. 

 

It’s certainly true, as Mr. Slack suggests, that Cormier could have done much better in the bout had he used more lateral movement to prevent Jones from being able to strike him with knees and kicks as he moved in. I just don’t see how Mr. Slack can both argue that “Daniel Cormier's skills and technical ability are second to none” while at the same time arguing that “simple act of moving laterally… could have changed the entire fight”. 

In his “Killing the King: Jon Jones”, the author describes how Alexander Gustafsson was able to have, even now, an unprecedented level of success against the champion through his frequent use of lateral movement. That is, or at least should be, common knowledge by this point. That Cormier couldn’t pull off such movement is a sign that, contra Mr. Slack’s suggestion, his skill, at least in this specific department, is second to that of Alex the Mauler. Therefore, the claim that “Daniel Cormier's skills and technical ability are second to none” is pure overstated hype unsuited for someone as usually as level-headed as Jack Slack. 

 

The fact is that the “simple act of moving laterally” is a very difficult skill to acquire and has to be cultivated across years of training. While training for UFC 165, Alexander Gustafsson and his camp didn’t suddenly decide that he should integrated lateral movement into his strategy; rather, lateral movement, along with a slick jab, were already apart of who he was as a fighter. 

Daniel Cormier simply doesn’t have the same skills as Alexander Gustafsson, especially in the departments most applicable for defeating Jon Jones. While that doesn’t mean that Gustafsson could defeat Cormier, a speculation for another day, it does mean that, in some departments, Cormier’s skills are second to Gustafsson’s and that department is in boxing. Maybe not the up-against-the-cage dirty boxing that Cormier’s camp, American Kickboxing Academy, is famous for these days, but certainly the traditional form of boxing that Gustafsson has an amateur career in. Skills aren’t just a matter of decision, they’re a matter of cultivation over time. 

To suddenly expect that Cormier integrate the lateral movement that Gustafsson troubled Jones with without the years of training and experience that Gustafsson has in boxing is, in my humble opinion, to underestimate just how difficult it is to pull off proper lateral movement with all of the strikes that come with it. Gustafsson’s footwork is one of the reasons why I’m such a fan of his. Plus, in mixed martial arts, fighters will always be facing the dilemma of choosing where to put their training time. It’s not an easy decision and one that comes to define careers. As the rule of thumb goes, styles (and backgrounds) make fights. Cormier’s style and background are in the skills he displayed at UFC 182 come from where he has cultivated his kills. They are not the skills displayed by Gustafsson at UFC 165, which have been cultivated differently. 

 

While it’s certainly true that, as Mr. Slack points out in his article, that the better man does not always come out on top, I would argue that the better man came up on top at UFC 182. (Really, Mr. Slack’s argument should be that we should be uncertain about the better man winning at UFC 165—an opinion I do not hold—but I digress.) I  If we were to judge the better man by quantitative data points alone, we would need a sample large enough for a statistical predictor, like the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem, but that’s never happening in any combat sport. Such an effort would well exhaust a fighter’s career (and probably go far beyond it). Recourse to qualitative means is needed. Mr. Slack’s recipe for killing the king still holds true. 

But the man to do that isn’t Cormier. It’s Gustafsson. Indeed, the entire article can be condensed in a simple sentence: “Do what Gustafsson did, but do it a bit better.”

 

Let’s just face it, as I wrote in my review of UFC 172, Jones v Gustafsson II is the fight to make in the light heavyweight division. It’s now up to Anthony Johnson to prove me wrong at UFC on FOX 14. 

10/19: Week In Review

 

1) Arnold Kling provides his initial thoughts about Francis Fukuyama’s latest volume, Political Order and Decay. Of note is Kling’s taxonomy of governments based on whether or not a government is good at providing public goods in an egalitarian manner. 

 

2) A femur found in 2008 in western Siberia has led to the creation of the oldest human genome that has yet to be sequenced at 45,000 years-old. Svante Pääbo, a director over at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, has concluded “It’s almost twice as old as the next oldest genome that has been sequenced.”

  

3) Brian Aitken has written an article about how he came to write The Blue Tent Sky, “10 Months, 2 Bottles of Scotch, and $42,000 Later”. My review for The Blue Tent Sky is here. 

 

4) The Economist writes about how Nigeria has controlled the spread of Ebola within its borders, and the lessons that can be learned in “Ebola in west Africa: Not necessarily a death sentence”. It’s all really about institutions and civic trust. Liberia in particular lacks those two, being a poor nation that is recovering from a brutal decades-long civil war.  In Arnold Kling's taxonomy, Liberia would be a predatory government. 

  

5) Bill Vallicella turns to the golden age of American philosophy in “Josiah Royce and the Paradox of Revelation” over at Maverick Philosophy. Oh how the state of American philosophy has fallen since the days of Royce, and the Jameses. 

In Review: Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter

 

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.

-Heraclitus

 

Kitsch. The problem with kitsch is that it’s predatory. By its very nature, kitsch panders to an onlooker’s sentimental yearnings. It expects nothing of its beholders, and is content to elicit an emotional response. Yes, there may not be anything wrong per se about sentimentality, but kitsch is deviously cynical about its sentimentality. Rather than trying to discover a meaningful source of sentiment, kitsch simply vomits the cultural focal points that its creators know would elicit an emotional response, which is certainly a cynical take on art. Art is supposed to stand for something, not just prey on our emotions. 

 

I had watched Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter, titled Generation War on Netflix (I suppose English-speaking viewers would not get the emotional oomph of the title), and my growing realization that the mini-series was first-rate kitsch inspired me to write about kitsch. Just after watching it, I had an overwhelmingly positive opinion of the mini-series. It was good to have a German perspective of the Second World War, and all of the emotional moments in the series certainly hit home. Thinking back upon the series, though, I cannot escape the conclusion that it was kitsch.  

Looking back at the title, Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter, it’s very easy for the German viewers to look at the five sympathetic protagonists, and to actually think that they were their ancestors. The genuine Nazis are kept at a sanitized distance as secondary characters with whom we never entirely get to sympathize with. Yet, if the mini-series is truly going to be about Our Mothers, Our Fathers then where are the Germans who were members of NSDAP? Rather than actually grappling with war guilt, the series simply depicts the people with whom we are meant to sympathize with as victims, which is disappointing.  

Scene after scene, the message that human beings are just cattle for the slaughter when nations clash is hammered into the viewer’s head to the point one can be for forgiven for forgetting the popularity of the war among Germans. Yes, there are Nazis in the series, but they are always other people. The protagonists are much too clear thinking to fall for such propaganda, which fails to grapple with the material the title promises: the war-time experiences of that generation of Germans. Instead, the writers simply exploit the audiences sentiments from scene to scene as we watch sympathetic protagonists, who don’t really even participate in the more unnerving parts of the Third Reich’s war, be ground into the dirt underneath the machine of war. It’s effective, it’s emotional, and it’s complete kitsch. There are two scenes (no spoilers), each with one of the two brothers, that kind of break the grand arc of protagonist-as-victim, yet I think it’s much too little, and still carrying a protagonist-as-victim vibe. 

Needless to say, I’m not the target audience of Unsere Mütter, unsere väter. Nor do I believe it was terrible. It’s certainly worth the time to watch, yet it’s sadly just isn’t as good as it could be.  Where Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter fails is recognizing that all good plots are matters of choices and then those choices’ consequences. Instead, things simply happen to the protagonist in this series, and then we, as an audience, are supposed to then sympathize with them as little more than victims. Not human beings with moral agency, but as passive victims. 

In Review: The Blue Tent Sky

 

 

The Blue Tend Sky: How The Left's War on Guns Cost Me My Son and My Freedom by Brian Aitken. I have just finished reading Brian Aitken's tale about what can happen when the justice system makes an example of a man who has been shanghaied every step along the way, whether that's by a police officer who (to avoid perhaps a less than charitable view) doesn't understand the law he is supposed to enforce from a judge who seems hell-bent on getting the jury to come down to the acceptable verdict. After having done that in a single sitting, there's not much that I can write about Mr. Aitken's book other than everybody should buy it and read it. I've included an Amazon link in this post; so, really, go buy it now. 

 

I had contributed to the Indiego campaign to get his tale published, so I knew the broad outlines of Mr. Aitken's story already having first learned about him after his appearance on Judge Napolitano's FreedomWatch made him a cause célèbre. Nevertheless, The Blue Tent Sky didn't disappoint nor did it settle with rehearsing the story many of us had already become emotionally attached to before Governor Christie commuted his sentence. Yet, I was never bored, and I was kept in suspense, wanting to know what happened next.  

 

Moreover, perhaps the most damning part of the book is the part of Mr. Aitken's experience that wasn't really unique to him, and that was his time in prison. He gives a first-hand account of a barbarous institution that is in desperate need of reform. Whether its in the dilapidated buildings, the overcrowded cells, or the cruelty guards regularly showed towards prisoners, any impartial reader would have a difficult time wanting to call the prison system that Mr. Aitken spent only around half a year in their own. Yet, there are human beings, many of whom guilty for nothing less than possession of a drug less deadly than alcohol, who spend years there, and who are then expected to become functional citizens when the, dare I say, criminal War on Drugs has done everything it can to destroy the communities that any normal human being would rely upon to rejoin society.

So, even though it's "The Left's War on Guns" that gets specifically called out, Mr. Aitken's book really is a much wider indictment on the entire American justice system, and it's a visceral indictment at that. It's one of those memoirs that makes one realize just how monstrous the society one lives in can be towards those who are often the most vulnerable. 

 

The book brings to mind the question of how many young black teenagers who didn't have the communities and recourses many white bourgeois people like myself enjoy whose lives were ruined, much like Brian Aitken's, by a hard-on-crime justice system that sought to make examples of them. Unlike Mr. Aitken, though, they won't have the blessing of becoming a white bourgeois cause célèbre. 

 

In Review: UFC 175

 

Photo: John Locher, AP/AP

 

UFC 175 was a decent night of fights. Nothing amazing, but the main event made it worthwhile. The all too familiar hobgoblin of mixed-martial arts judging reared its ugly head when two of the judges gave Russell Doane the nod over Marcus Brimage. Uriah Hall showed exceptional fortitude in being able to fight two-and-a-half rounds with a gruesomely broken toe. The bout between Stefan Struve and Matt Mitrione was sadly cancelled during the pay-per-view broadcast. The two noteworthy events were the two championship bouts, and I shall focus on them here.  

 

Ronda Rousey versus Alexis Davis: Moving onto the short-lived co-main event, it only took Ronda Rousey sixteen seconds to batter Alexis Davis into submission. Rousey’s performance showed that often what separates an alright attack into a sublime one is how the fighter is able to concatenate together a combination of different techniques. Besides the judo throw, at no point was I amazed by each of her techniques understood by themselves, what amazed me was the fluidity with which Rousey combined them all together. A right counter to a knee to the midsection to a judo throw bringing the fight to the ground, where she captured Davis’ head and left arm, where Rousey finished the fight.

 

It’s a shame that Rousey is such a dominant fighter in such a weak division because I can’t say that I’m looking forward to her next bout. Plus, fighters like McMann, who fought and loss to Rousey at UFC 170 probably need more time to face competition and to get better at the game before being a title shot. That McMann was given a title fight after only one appearance in the UFC’s women’s bantamweight division is horrible evidence for the soundness of the contenders there. And then feeding a fighter like McMann, still relatively new to the big show, to the utterly dominant champion doesn’t serve to make that division any stronger. In fact, it only makes it weaker. Big upsets like Renan Barão versus TJ Dillashaw do happen, but match making shouldn’t happen with the hope of a big upset; instead, match making should be made with reasonable expectations for the contender’s possible performance. 

Right now, in the women’s bantamweight division, there simply aren’t any contenders who have a reasonable expectation for defeating Ronda Rousey. We can talk all we want about how Cat Zingano is next in line and how she therefore deserves the next shot, but does she actually have a reasonable chance of even giving Rousey some stirring competition? I doubt it, and that’s why I won’t be looking forwards to that bout. 

I don’t tune in to watch crushing defeats and lasting domination, I tune in to watch competitive fights, and hopefully learn a thing or two in the process. When there is a crushing defeat, it’s really only fulfilling if one of the fighters is able to find a chink in his opponent’s game and use that leverage to get the win. Besides that, crushing defeats tend to be predictable and boring, and I must say the same about Rousey’s bouts. Alas, she just doesn’t have the division to complement her talent and hard work. 

 

 

Chris Weidman versus Lyoto Machida: After his two curious victories over Anderson Silva, the question was: “Could Weidman slay a dragon?” As a diehard Machida fan, I was very much looking forward to this bout. In my mind, Weidman had unquestionably beaten Silva in their previous two bouts, but the second match had a definite asterisk to the victory. It certainly wasn’t a fluke. Weidman had spoken before the bout about how he had trained to counter the kicks which Silva had some success with on their first encounter, and a fighter can fracture an opponent’s leg by properly checking a hard kick, which is one reason why checking kicks isn’t simply a means of defending a kick, but of disabling that weapon. Though not a fluke, it certainly was a bit disappointing, and with Weidman having only eleven professional bouts up to that point, I wanted to see Silva give Weidman some adversity. 

 

That never happened, and so I was looking forward to see Machida give Weidman another test. Was I hoping that Machida would win? Of course. Did I think he would? Nope. Weidman had prove himself to be an amazing fighter up to this point, capable of taking on any challenge before him, and he had what Gegard Mousasi didn’t have against Machida: Top-level wrestling. Top-level wrestling can change the parameters of any fight, and, given that Machida is such a good karateka, keeping the fight standing can be a recipe for disaster. So while I would have liked to see Machida defeat Weidman, the reality was that Weidman had the best likelihood of leaving the cage as the champion. 

The two didn’t disappoint me whatsoever. Though Weidman was able to use pressure and grappling in order to disable Machida’s style, Machida was still dangerous throughout the fight, and Machida was able to test Weidman like no one else previously. Though a 4-1 bout, it was competitive throughout, and left me fully satisfied with both fighters. For all those pointing to an enlightening analysis of the bout, I’ll point you to Jack Slack’s “How Weidman Solved the Machida Riddle.” 

At the end of the night, we can all rest assured knowing that the championship belt belongs to a man who can bring honor to it. Though Weidman won’t be able to please all of his critics, there will always be those who would prefer Anderson Silva in his place. Plus, after that performance, Machida is on the short-list for injury replacement fighters for another chance against Weidman. Moreover, if Machida wins his next couple of fights and if Weidman dominates his next couple of fighters, Weidman versus Machida II could very be in the future.   

In Review: UFC 172

 

From my view of the event.

 

I had the opportunity to attend UFC 172 in person this weekend in the boringly named Baltimore Arena. It was a small venue, but from the point of view of an onlooker that smallness is an advantage in that it makes everything just that much more intimate. My own proximity to the cage was amazing. Though there were three large screens close to my left and a smaller one (or at least one that looked smaller) farther away to the right, I thankfully could tell most of what was happening in the cage by my own eyes. It was only a few times when the fight went to the ground that I had to rely on the screen. 

Anyways, the entire night was quite the spectacle with each fight bringing something interesting to watch and think about. 

  

The night started off with Chris Beal facing off against Patrick Williams. Though an early preliminary bout, anyone who thinks that the preliminaries are just fluff to the main event and don’t come until the pay-per-view event starts missed out on one of the most intense knockouts of the night. Not even halfway through the second round, Chris Beal, who had been having the best of the standup exchanges, unleashed a flying knee that, with a loud thwack, sent Williams to the canvas:

Something so beautiful it deserves to be immortalized in marble. Just imagine that in the Louvre (where it belongs).

If anything, the sound was the most vicious part about it. No one in the arena didn't know the moment Williams lost consciousness and anyone momentarily distracted were immediately cursing their lack of attention as they watched him collapse.

Beal's flying knee was a thing of beauty and a good auspices for the night in both the decisive manner of the victory and the technical skill it displayed. Chris Beal started a definite trend among winning fighters: Thanking God. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam. 

  

The next fight displayed a lesson every single fighter needs to have drilled into their skulls every moment of training: Keep your hands up! Even though Charlie Brenneman definitely had the best performance in the first round, all of that work was nullified in an instance when Danny Castillo’s got a shot at the Spaniard’s undefended chin. All it took was that one shot for Brenneman to collapse unconscious. A video of Castillo’s magnificent straight right can be found here. I’ll let Bill Easlick, a coach for striking and mixed-martial arts over at Fairfax Jiu-Jitsu, deliver the lecture: “Stop reaching to parry! When your hand is away, it is not protecting your chin.”

So, if there’s anything to learn from UFC 172, it’s keeping those hands up! Just in case you need more evidence, here’s Big Nog, one of the best heavyweights to have fought in mixed-martial arts but one who is worse for wear, crumpling to a similar shot. Again, keep those hands up!

  

The next fight was between Jessaymne Duke and Bethe Correia which lead to Correia dominating for three rounds. For me, the most impressive parts of Duke’s game came from her judo throws. Not that surprising considering that Ronda Rousey was in her corner, but it was disappointing considering that Duke, sporting a new tattoo, had a ten inch reach advantage over her opponent. Correia was also able to deliver an unanswered barrage of kicks against Duke’s lead leg which left quite the bruise by the end of the bout. At the end, my final impression was that Duke needed to learn how to really turn her great reach advantage into a winning asset just as Jon Jones has. Luckily for her, Jon Jones was fighting that night. 

 

Next were the lightweights Takanori Gomi and Issac Vallie-Flagg. And there was blood. Not a copious amount, the mat was never stained, but there was still a noticable amount. By the end of the bout, Gomi’s hair, dyed orange, looked as if it were dyed pink:

 

Tommy Gilligan - USA Today

Unsurprisingly, considering the general lack of blood in the other bouts, Gomi v. Vallie-Flagg took fight of the night. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure to watch, and certainly helped prove why the preliminaries are as worth watching as the main card. This is mixed-martial arts we’re talking abut, and one of MMA’s great features is the uncertainty of where greatness will lie. 

 

Next up was Joseph Benavidez versus Tim Elliot. Though Elliot came out strong in his grappling against Benavidez, he came out recklessly and paid the cost of recklessness to a guillotine choke which won Benavidez a performance of the night. Elliot was really good until he was being chocked unconscious, but he was still forced to tap and tap by slamming his feet against the canvas for his arms were trapped with Benavidez in a full mount.. 

 

With that, the preliminaries had ended, but it was already quite the night of performances. The couple that came in just in time to my left for the pay-per-view event had missed so much, and I bet would be eventually regretting. From amazing knockouts to skillful submissions, the preliminaries were simply amazing.

 

And so the main card started. Next up was Max Holloway versus Andre Fili and then Jim Miller versus Mederiros, both of them ending by guillotines with Holloway and Miller respectively victorious. 

 

By the time it came for the middleweights Luke Ruckhold versus Tim Boetsch, UFC 172 had already been going three submissions straight, but this bout would be something I found particularly special. But before that detail, a random observation: When Boetsch walked out, I spent a minute or so figuring out what Metallica song the guitar riff from the song he walked out to had been copied from. It was a good song, but only because of “Sad but True.” 

 The first round contained one of those moves one could easily see in a movie and claim could never really happen. Though Boetsch shoots to take Ruckhold to the mat, the resulting sprawl ends with Ruckhold getting a reserve triangle on Boetsch. With Boetsch’s head becoming an ever more visible shade or purple, Rockhold is able to get in the right position for a Kimura, and to get the tap. It was simply amazing to watch, and the submission I was most excited to watch the entire night. I’m a bit shocked that Rockhold didn’t get a performance of the night for his very quick submission of the Barbarian. 

 

USA Today sports

Though the Boetsch had promised violence and that both he and his opponent would leave hurt, Rockhold had a different plan and was able to end the match before taking any damage. That’s one thing I love about jiu-jitsu: the ability to win a fight without doing damage by simply forcing an opponent to either tap or to go to sleep.  

  

The next fight was Phil Davis versus Anthony Johnson and this was actually the bout I found the least exciting, Though “Rumble” Johnson was able to effectively destroy any chance Mr. Wonderful had of winning the bout after Rumble had him on the mat after an early exchange, the fight was simply a one-sided beat down. Though it was one sided, I never felt that Johnson really had a plan for breaking Davis and would merely ride the three rounds to a decisive decision. Though decisive, I found it anti-climatic and, after Rumble established his dominance, the bout was timing down to a decision.

 

Onto the main event, the event that at least brought me to the Baltimore Arena: Jon “Bones” Jones versus Glover Teixeira. A piece of advice to anyone watching Bones Jones fight: Don’t yell advice like you’re actually in the champion’s corner. You’re not. Nor are you as good as either Jones or anyone in his corner at deciding the tactical course to take. Instead, stop yelling advice, sit down, and watch a mixed-martial arts virtuoso do his work. From elbows, spinning back kicks, axe kicks, oblique kicks, to dirty boxing in the clinch, Jones showed just how versatile he is as a striker. For anyone wondering why Jones is so dominant, it’s not just his natural athleticism, it’s the versatility and tactical intuition he shows in each fight that has made him what he is. Yes, there were problems with eye poking (problems I think can only be solved by either strict point deductions or changing the rules), but those cannot blind us to the work of art which was Jones’ fighting that night. It was a clear 50-45 bout. 

I shall end my discussion of Jones v. Teixeira by noting that I enjoy watching Bones Jones fight for reasons I love reading an amazing book It simply opens my eyes to the things that are actually possible in mixed-martial arts. With a large amount of credit going to the great coaches at Jackson-Wink MMA, Jones’ fighting is as cerebral as it gets in the cage.

 

Although Jon Jones “doesn’t want to talk about that kid,” we all know what’s coming up next for the light-heavyweight division: Jones v Gustafsson II.