GAME OF THRONES 6.04 - "THE BOOK OF THE STRANGER"

“The Book Of The Stranger” features a trio of brother/sister reunions, and in each case the sister finds the brother broken and diminished.  In the Iron Islands, Yara is still sore that Theon spurned her rescue attempt way back in the mists of Season 4.  He offers to help her take control of the Islands at the upcoming Kingsmoot, though its unclear what sway this a shell of a man could hold over the Ironborn, who don’t appear particularly bound to heredity when it comes to choosing leaders.  But at least he is trying to prop his sister up, unlike Loras, who has gone a big blubbery mess in the dungeons.  It appears that Margaery is moved enough to help him the only way she can, by confessing and subjecting herself to the same Walk Of Atonement that Cersei endured last year.

Both her own family and her in-laws (led by another recently reunited brother-sister pair) are in agreement that measures must be taken to prevent this, and so the Tyrell army is mobilizing to put down the Faith Militant for good. This is going to prove to be a big mistake and get very, very messy.  As there is no way that the High Sparrow just told Tommen about his plan to publicly humiliate the queen and expected the kid to keep it under his hat. But it should involve a lot of blood and an unleashed Frankenmountain, and carries the potential to end the High Sparrow’s sanctimonious speechifying for good, so I say bring it on.

“Hello Darkness, my old friend…”

The most joyous reunion is of course at Castle Black, where Jon and Sansa share their first scene since…well, ever, I think.  Back in the opening episodes, Jon had farewells with Ned, Robb, Bran, and Arya, plus a less amicable one from Cat, but I don’t think Kit Harrington and Sophie Turner have ever exchanged dialogue until this episode.  You don’t really think about that in the moment, though, as seeing these two characters who have had arguably the roughest go’s of anyone on this exceedingly rough show embrace feels so good.  And then to see them actually enjoying each other’s company, and get almost meta in discussing how much they sucked as characters in the pilot. When Jon was running down his mopey old self, I half-expected him to add “with my mouth always half-open” to it.

You close nothing, Jon Snow

Unfortunately, this self-awareness is purely backward facing, as he’s in a particularly mopey mood after hanging the mutineers.  Even at Sansa’s urging, he can’t even get it up to take back his family’s home and restore some of their honor.  Ramsay has to call him out specifically, like a WWF heel, and threaten Sansa in the process, and Rickon, and the Wildlings….look, it’s a very thorough letter, and as thoroughly odious as one would expect from Ramsay. But credit where it’s due, it does have a certain musicality via the repetition of the “come and see” taunt.  Anyway, Bastard Bowl ’16 is on, and the tale of the tape is not looking good, with Jon starting at a 5-2 disadvantage, with his troops less disciplined, and not even knowing that he’s got the Karstarks and Umbers to worry about as well.  Luckily for him, the knights of the Vale are also on the move, thanks to Littlefinger’s machinations. That, plus a Wun Wun, should help to even the odds some.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Sansa’s arrival at the Wall is good for more than just the Stark reunion.  It also introduces Brienne to the mix, and she is only too happy to tell Stannis’s followers that she killed him, and does not abide witches.  Having the Starks’ allies at each others’ throats is bad for business but great for drama, and I haven’t even touched on Tormund’s instant crush on Brienne the Beauty.  This may be Kristopher Hivju’s best episode ever, and he doesn’t say a single word.

Over in Essos, Dany has retaken command of the Dothraki, as we all knew she would.  But she does it in fairly stylish fashion, and without using her dragon cheat code, so I can’t complain. I also like that she should be bringing the horde down to Slaver’s Bay with promises of cities to plunder, only to find that Tyrion has made peace with those cities in her name.  How she navigates that snafu should be interesting, as it’s not something she can get out of just by shouting her titles.  Tyrion’s peace is not entirely honorable, as it allows slavery to continue to exist for years, but he makes the case that it is preferable to war.  A notion that might go down better if he didn’t offer the slavers women he bought himself to seal the deal.

More than anything, this episode seems to take us out of the table-setting portion of the season. Jon Snow is back and finally ready to leave the Wall.  Dany is free from the Dothraki that never stood a chance anyway.  Sansa and Brienne have found their way to their destination.  The royals are finally done biding their time against the High Sparrow.  And armies are moving everywhere.  The Tyrells are marching on the Faith.  The Dornish are marching on the Lannisters.  The Boltons are marching on the Wall.  The Vale is marching on the Boltons.  The Dothraki are back in the mix.  I think there’s also a bunch of zombies somewhere or something. And then there’s Tormund. Just chewing.  And looking.

Subplot Report Card:

The North: B+ (As sad as it was to see Osha go, at least it was relatively quick. And while Ramsay did toy with her as is his wont, she was working her own angle rather than just passively enduring his torments the way Theon, Sansa, or Lady Walda so frequently did.)

Castle Black: A- (So much of this was perfect, but I’m taking off half a point because Jon’s reluctance to fight was rather pointless – we know he doesn’t have a choice, but even after Sansa points that out, he’s still playing hard to get?)

The Vale: B (Lord Royce hasn’t been enough of a presence to make Littlefinger outfoxing him have much impact)

Iron Islands: B+

Dany: A-

King’s Landin': B+ (Love everything with the Lannisters and Tyrells, but the Sparrow is at his least interesting when lecturing a captive audience)

Mereen: B+

Season Morgulis: Doran Martell, Trystane Martell, Areo Hotah, Roose Bolton, Walda Bolton, Balon Greyjoy, (-Jon Snow), Shaggydog, Bowen Marsh, Othell Yarwyck, Alister Thorne, Olly, Osha, Khal Moro

MIA: The Sand Snakes, the Greyjoys, Bronn, Bran, Frankenmountain/Qyburn, Arya, Gendry, the Blackfish, Walder Frey, Edmure Tully

Death Watch: It’s pretty much a cert that we lose a Tyrell next week, but I’m switching my bet from Olenna to Loras. It could be both, I suppose.

GAME OF THRONES 6.03 - "OATHBREAKER"

“Oathbreaker” begins and ends at Castle Black, where Jon Snow has returned as much himself, but with a heavier heart and a hitch in his step. The latter is a nice little touch, as bearing painful physical wounds from his betrayal underlines the psychological scars being murdered has left on him. The latter manifests in his disavowing the Night’s Watch, after taking a particularly cold bit of comfort by executing his assassins.  Many had predicted that Jon’s resurrection would serve to provide a loophole to release him from a Watch that “shall not end until my death”, but I get the sense that he’s not particularly bothered with the legal sufficiency of this interpretation of the oath in any case.  He came out and swung the executioner’s sword wearing the heavy cloak of the Lord Commander, before pointedly taking it off to deliver his kiss off line (to no one in particular, which I found amusing).

He leaves Castle Black in Edd’s hands, but he will presumably be taking Tormund, Wun Wun, Davos and Melisandre with him when he heads southward.  The dynamic between the latter two should be interesting, as the Red Woman appears oddly deferential to Davos since Stannis’s death.  While he remains doggedly pragmatic in the face of overt miracles, she wastes little time transferring her messianic expectations from the Mannis to the gentleman bastard.  But the revenant also gives her the same non-answer as Berric Dondarrion when she asked him what he saw on the other side.  It’s hard to know what to make of her at this point.  Is she even more fanatical now that she has the power to raise the dead?  Or will she become warier of the capriciousness with which the Lord Of Light seems to dole out his miraculous favor?  Does her unwillingness to accept the dead’s reports on the lack of an afterlife indicate that she has been promised something more?

“What did you see? Were there apps? Were the drinks free? WHAT WAS THE TUNEAGE SITCH??”

Jon 2.Snow’s coalition is going to have immediate difficulties, as apparently Greatjon Umber died offscreen in the years since he was following Robb around, and was succeeded by the latest in a line of total dickholes to take over the great Northern Houses. Badjon Umber is no peach (he killed Shaggydog!), but there is still something almost admirable in the way he refuses to swear oaths he has no intention of keeping.  He’s almost like Thorne in how straight up he is about being an asshole.  Or maybe I’m just inclined to go easy on him because he doesn’t let Ramsay walk right over him. Even if he does provide the bastard with a fresh set of sympathetic characters to interminably victimize.

This bodes exceptionally ill for Rickon, who has always been the spare Stark. He’s never felt particularly vital to the endgame, and his death could provide the necessary component to make Jon and Sansa retaking Winterfell feel soul-crushing enough for a “victory” in the Game Of Thrones world.  I don’t trust this series to allow the dashing hero and exiled princess to just ride in and defeat the evil tyrant without having their hearts carved up in the process.  And if we needed a reminder that this is not the type of fantasy story where the noble heroes defeat the wicked baddies in honorable combat, Bran takes a flashback tour to the end of Robert’s Rebellion, to see that his father’s most famous feat of combat was a less glorious victory than the stories made out.  This is more earth-shattering for Bran than us, who are more accustomed to the harsh realities of Westeros.  On the one hand, I like that the show isn’t dicking around with these flashbacks the entire season before getting to the point, but that also makes it feel a bit unnecessary for them to play coy with the “that’s enough for one day” stuff.  Sure, Arthur Dayne looked cool twirling those two broadswords around, but it’s not like we knew enough about him to really care about this fight between dead men.  And for those of us that know about the big fan theory that I’ve tried to only address in passing (which is admittedly a smaller portion of the audience than the internet can make it seem), you just dilute the impact by essentially providing confirmation while withholding the actual reveal.

Arya’s storyline is another area where I’m pleased with the degree of Movement on general principle, but there is a difference between the right pace for the season and the right pace for the individual episode. What is the point of training her to duel blind, only to return her sight after 2 scenes and a montage?  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but they may have needed to stretch this out longer.  I don’t necessarily want her to stay in the House of Black and White any longer, but the thing that got me hooked on Game Of Thrones, the thing that separates it from so much of longform and particularly genre storytelling, was not the tits or the skull smushings (though I do find tits delightful and head smushings get me hard as granite).  It was the commitment to real consequences to the story decisions, the sense that despite all the magical trappings, everyone was only one false move from getting themselves killed and staying that way.  I was willing to grant a one-off Jon Snow fakeout, but backing off of the consequence of Arya’s transgression against the Many-Faced God so quickly is a worrying sign.  If that shit with Ned being able to hear Bran in the past leads to some sort of time-travel shenanigans where he starts reversing Red Weddings or whatever Ramsay is about to do to Rickon, I’m going to turn on this show the way Lannisters turn on their own when the chips are down.

Speaking of that (segues!), I’m really digging having both Lannister twins in Kings Landing again.  They still can’t get cranky uncle Kevan to give them the time of day, but they are enjoying playing with their Frankenmountain about as much as I am seeing people react to it in terror and disgust.  Coster-Waldau’s face when the thing reacts to his crack about Gregor’s prior intelligence was my biggest laugh of the episode. I found it funnier than Tyrion banging his head against the boring wall that is Grey Worm and Missandei, anyway.  The Imp and the Spider bring some personality to Mereen, but when they are separated, the best the actors can do is make their scenes generally watchable by sheer Dink of charisma.

Not a typo. Not an apology.  It’s just how I roll.

What they really need is a creepy Qyburn, or a salty Queen Of Thorns, or an antagonistic figurehead like the High Sparrow to bounce off, like the Lannisters still in Westeros have.  Right now, they can only contemplate what to do about off-screen slavers’ plots to run a proxy uprising in a city that, I’m sorry, we still just don’t care about that much.  Maybe there would be more urgency to this plot if it wasn’t such a foregone conclusion that the war Tyrion is getting unwillingly pulled toward is going to be resolved by Dany returning with a new khalasar at her back.  But it is, so there isn’t.

This is starting to sound like I disliked the episode, which I didn’t.  It flew by as Game Of Thrones always does, and the stuff at Castle Black and Kings Landing was aces, but Essos and the other subplots can’t keep up, which is also not unusual at this stage.  But we’ll have a whole new batches of subplots struggling to match the center of the storylines next week, and gods willing, the triumphant return of Who Smushed It Better?

Subplot Report Card:

The North: B+ (having Greatjon die offscreen and replaced with a huge cunt of a young lord is serendipitous for Ramsay, like so much else tend to be, but the guy is such a salty piece of work that it is fairly entertaining)

Castle Black: A-

Oldtown: B (not much to say here, except that I’m wondering if Ian McShane was cast as Sam’s father Randall – I heard about the casting but never bothered to look for the same reason I try to avoid the “Next Time On” teasers)

Wargin‘: B- (great sword choreography but I was not a fan of the casting of young Ned – he looked more a child than Bran at this point, and also they did the annoying prequel thing of putting him in the exact wardrobe that we are familiar with, giving off the impression that he didn’t change clothes or hairstyles for 20 years. That’s almost believable for a stick-in-the-mud like Ned, actually, but it still feels really basic)

Dany: C (there is just not a scrap of new information here – Dany arrives at where they told her she was going last week, and is told in slightly more detail that she can’t leave)

King’s Landin': A (I love Qyburnstein and his monster’s mad scientist dynamic, and Small Council meetings are my jam)

Mereen: B

Braavos: B- (like the flashback, this had some pretty cool action stuff with Arya going all Zatoichi, but the cop out could turn out to be a major ill omen)

Season Morgulis: Doran Martell, Trystane Martell, Areo Hotah, Roose Bolton, Walda Bolton, Balon Greyjoy, (-Jon Snow), Shaggydog, Alister Thorne, Olly

MIA: The Sand Snakes, Littlefinger, the Greyjoys, Bronn, Margaery, Loras, Sansa, Brienne, Daario, Jorah, Gendry, the Blackfish, Walder Frey, Edmure Tully

Death Watch: Things are looking mighty grim for Rickon, but Ramsay likes to play with his food too much to off him immediately, so I’m sticking with the Queen Of Thorns.

GAME OF THRONES 6.02 - "HOME"

Well, that was eventful.

“Home” opens with some unfamiliar sights.  Revisiting Bran and Meera after so long was never going to be completely smooth, but both actors looking like post-grads instead of the adolescents they were 2 years ago is fairly jarring. Along with the redesign/recasting of the Child of the Forest and the Three-Eyed Raven, it leaves Hodor as the only part of this corner of the world that actually looks the same as when we left it.  I’m not holding this against the show, of course, as its just a niggling reality of mounting such a sprawling production over a timeframe that is more extended in our world than storytime.  At the end of the day, the GOT creators can always go commiserate with the showrunners of LOST and Breaking Bad about the illegality of feeding child actors drugs to retard growth spurts. Nor am I against recasting a role that appeared as briefly as the 3-eyed raven, particularly if it gives us a Von Sydow in the exchange. It’s more jarring that they ditched the decrepit overgrown hair and nails look, and he now appears to be just a clean shaven old man sitting in a tree. They seem to have normal-ed him out while making the Child of the Forest look more fantastical, which is an oddly split decision.  It could just be that Von Sydow wouldn’t deign to undergo elaborate make up or prosthetics, but I also noted that he and Bran appear to be wearing the cloak and black leather jerkin that Lord Commander Mormont and Jon, respectively, wore in seasons past. Which makes me wonder if in his pre-immortal-warg-treehouse days, he began as a man of the Night’s Watch – perhaps even the first Lord Commander?

Anyway, the Bran sequence presents us with unfamiliarity that goes beyond faces. It also features a flashback, which we’ve only ever seen in the S5 cold open, and that flashback contains…happy people? This is a very strange look for GOT, but it must be said that the casting on young Hodor (and muttonchopping on young Rodrick) is on fricking point. To the fanatics, this is significant less because it gives us Hodor backstory than because it provides a method for learning the truth about Jon’s parentage, should fan theories on that score prove true (they totally are, by the way).

CHOPS/chops

“Home” was on more familiar ground as a Lannister acting showcase across two continents. In Essos, Dinklage reaffirms his star status, with his charm selling the deference of Dany’s senior cabinet members (never hugely formidable as a braintrust, but still) to a dwarf who had only shown up on the scene one episode prior to the khaleesi disappearing.  He also holds his own ably opposite dragons that are bigger and better looking than ever, his voice and face doing as much as the CGI to renew a sense of awe and respect for these creatures that we have been watching for 5 years now. The only thing he can’t sell is pantomiming the removal of giant steel pins that should weigh about 40 pounds, which fall away at the lightest brush, as though he was entering a command on a touchscreen. That’s a nitpickers’ nitpick, but they rendered the dragons in such exquisite detail, would it have been so hard to have him yank twice and drop in a rusty sound effect?

Anyhow, back in King’s Landing, Cersei bides time while sending her attack dog out on field trips to grotesquely/hilariously silence the loudest mouths keeping her humiliation trending among the hoi polloil.  It shouldn’t be technically possible to simmer icily, but Headey has somehow invented and mastered it in her portrayal of the queen/regent/whatever.  Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, meanwhile, is immediately handed better material than he received in Dorne all last year, as Jaime takes his turn threatening the High Sparrow, only to be brushed back by his populist support.  Coster-Waldau and Jonathan Pryce’s back and forth is prime Game Of Thrones threatneuvering, somewhat reminiscent of the (initially) reserved antagonism between Jaime and Ned way back when. But Jaime also does a surprisingly credible impersonation of his father while advising Tommen at the bierside of his other sibling that was poisoned by the matriarch of a powerful Southern house they were to marry into.

“Once is a fluke. Two is mere slapdickery.”

Things are somehow even more fraught at Jon Snow’s wake, where Davos, Ghost and Associates are braced for Thorne’s assault, which is underway when Wun, Wun, and Wildlings come to bail them out.  We knew this was coming, but no amount of predictability can make the giant smushing the archer against the wall less awesome.  And the fact that this is only the second most awesome skull/wall smooshing is even more awesome.

God, please let “who smushed it better?” become a recurring feature of these recaps

Nor does it make Tormund’s “until you” a less sick burn on Thorne.  It’s sick because Tormund is a badass of few words, but it’s also on total point as to the failure of the coup. Because when it you get to brass tacks, Jon “soft on the Wildlings” Snow held the Wall against the largest assault they ever launched, whereas it was Thorne’s hardline that prompted them to breach the fortress for good.  That has to sting Ser Allister at least as much as being locked in a cell or watching Wun Wun paint the wall with his bravest soldier.

Predictability is a larger issue when it comes to Jon’s resurrection. Many if not most of us have been predicting this since last year, in the exact manner in which it occurred. But if I’m being honest, I did start to get nervous when Davos just started point blank asking Melisandre to bring Jon back (wait a minute, Game Of Thrones is never this straightforward…what is going to go wrong???). I  was most relieved to see our favorite bastard start breathing again, and while I want to be annoyed that they drew out such a non-mystery for two out of a scant ten episodes, I enjoyed all the Castle Black material while he lay in state so much that I never really got around to getting upset. But I also never really understood the people that took it personally that the showrunners played coy about this development, or Harrington’s continued participation over the hiatus. No, it wasn’t particularly convincing misdirection, but what were they supposed to do? Come out the night of last year’s finale and say “don’t worry, he’s definitely coming back?” Move the murder and resurrection to both be in the opening of a season, where the impact would be even duller?

Just smush 20 more heads?

I’ll have more to say about Jon when he starts saying more, I’m sure. But a few moments of paranoid doubt aside, I’ve spent so long assuming this was coming that it actually feels less momentous than the coups that upend some of the less prominent houses in this episode. Ramsay’s patricide has been set up for a long time, but still feels a bit abrupt when it comes. And a bit disappointing, really as I perversely enjoyed Michael McElhatton’s chilly, calculated evil as Roose Bolton and thought he had earned more than a mid-episode stabbing while the season is still setting the table.  Plus, removing the cooler head actually serves to make Ramsay feel less dangerous in a way. I’m sure he will continue to enjoy a certain degree of the narrative privilege that makes him a ninja mastermind with preternaturally good luck, but Roose’s warning about mad dogs was no doubt correct. This is not a world that allows even the most powerful to indulge their whims without repercussions, and Ramsay acts so cavalierly that it’s only a matter of time before the worm turns.

But did you think that we were going to move on to other storylines now? That it was enough that we saw him kill his father and send for his mother-in-law and newborn brother, with his character and murderous intentions beyond established? Then you underestimated Benioff and Weiss’s looooooove of Iwan Rheon, because of course we get another several minutes to luxuriate in another drawn out sequence of elaborate sadism. I’m trying not to be repetitive and one note in my complaints about Ramsay’s scenes, but repetitive and one note is exactly how those scenes are, so it’s kind of hard to come up with new ways to take note of it. Even if all of this is laying the groundwork for him to lose horrendously to Jon in the brewing Bastard Bowl, there is no way I needed to spend quite so many minutes (a precious resource in this sprawling show, as the list of characters at the bottom of the page can attest) watching him slowly open kennel doors, or eat, or bathe, or shave.

“Even I keep expecting them to say ‘cut’, but they. just. never. do.”

General Ramsay fatigue aside, this episode does represent a significant leap forward in his story. Which is mirrored very directly in the Iron Islands, where essentially the same narrative development is even more whiplash-inducing. Balon is similar to Roose in that he is a total asshole, but I was not in a big hurry to see him get his comeuppance due to a strong, distinctive performance. It also struck me that these assassination scenes were presented in the wrong order. Maybe the rationale is that the Boltons’ rule of the North never included the pretense of being an independent kingdom, and so offing the last of the “Five Kings” is the more significant development to the overall story. But the North and Roose have been much more of a presence on the show than Pyke and Balon, and Ramsay has for damn sure been more of one than Euron Crow-Eye, so it still feels slightly anticlimactic to go from the one to the other.

Having essentially no screentime since early season 2, and the extremely sudden introduction of his brother/killer, makes it hard to feel any particular way when Balon gets literally overthrown. I guess this is good because he was a hateful old shithead? But it’s kind of bad because it interferes with Yara’s ability to take control of the Iron Islands and put the brakes to a pointless, hopeless war? I’m certainly interested to see the Ironborn version of succession-based intrigue, which I imagine involves more sanctioned hatchet fights than in the other kingdoms.  Yara seems like the most reasonable leader the Ironborn could hope to choose at their upcoming kingsmoot, but she’s got her work cut out for her. With her relation to a prior ruler counterbalancing the difficulty of breaking the glass ceiling to the nation’s highest executive office, not to mention trouble courting the evangelical vote, she is basically the Hilary Clinton of the Iron Islands. And she’s going up against a crazy, orange-haired political outsider with delusions of grandeur who is most famous for captaining commercial enterprises to disastrous results, and who unceremoniously offed the establishment figurehead standing between him and the Big Seat.

“I AM THE STORM.”

With these two murders, we’re pretty much down to Walder Frey as the last Old Treacherous Goon standing. After that, it’s just Littlefinger and Ramsay on the Fuck That Guy front. Everyone else has some sympathetic shading, however light, worked into their characterization. But I’d also note that as of now, the Tyrells are the only faction whose patriarch has not been murdered since the start of the show. The Starks and the Baratheons have both had their families decapitated multiple times over, but at this point the Lannisters, Martells, Targaryeans, Boltons, Ironborn, Wildling army, Night’s Watch, and Dothraki have all had their leaders violently dispatched as well (meanwhile the Tully’s had one lord die of natural causes and another deposed and imprisoned). I’ve mentioned this in passing before, but “Home” really cements that the surest way to get offed in the world of Ice and Fire is to find yourself as the strong, steady hand at the head of a significant armed force.

That Martin, who is still calling these major narrative shots even if the show has mostly surpassed the books in terms of plot, is still so devoted to this sense of narrative entropy this late in the game is impressive but also a bit worrisome. We’re all pretty much assuming that some relatively sane people (a combination of Jon, Dany, Bran, Sansa, and Tyrion, presumably) will eventually come through all this tumult and tragedy to start putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, but then again nothing about the manner in which the story has been told thus far dictates that has to happen.  That we still presume, after 6 years of stabbings in so many hearts, that things have to correct themselves for the end, is a testament to how deeply these narrative preconceptions are ingrained. Game Of Thrones keeps zigging and zigging and fucking us over, and we keep telling ourselves that it’s all just bumps in the road before the final zag rights the ship.  The resurrection of Jon Snow is about the first time the series has gone for a broadly predictable crowd-pleasing moment.  I wonder, though, if we should be quick to let that convince us that Sansa and Bran are going to promptly join up with him to beat back the White Walkers, feed Ramsay to Ghost and live happily ever after.  At some point, should we start taking the lessons that Game Of Thrones has taught us about how Game Of Thrones operates more seriously than a few centuries of narrative tradition have taught us that it must operate?  I’m starting to wonder if that’s even possible.

Because really, that has to be where things end up with Ramsay, right? All this crap with his dogs has to be setting it up, right? RIGHT???

“Nah, I’m going to live forever!!!

Subplot Report Card:

Wargin’ – B+

The North: B (Sansa and Theon’s farewell counteracts my disappointment at Roose going out so perfunctorily, but not another needlessly long sequence of Ramsay being Ramsay)

Castle Black: A+ (Wun Wun, mother*****s)

King’s Landin': A (this grade was guaranteed just between the head smush and Coster-Waldau’s face after Tommen insists that, yes, his mother would totally have the prince of Dorne killed if she felt like it)

Mereen: B+

Braavos – B (I haven’t talked about Arya’s scenes in the body of either recap this year, because there’s not much to sift through yet. It’s promising that her assassin training is starting to include a practical element after a season spent on a survey of Faceless theory, but it’s still moving at the characteristically languid pace of an Essos storyline, compared to all the tumult across the Narrow Sea)

Iron Islands – B (the wonderfully gothic atmosphere of Pyke deserved better, but misplacement within the episode hurts, and I’m not sure about the casting for Euron)

Season Morghulis: Doran Martell, Trystane Martell, Areo Hotah, Roose Bolton, Walda Bolton, Balon Greyjoy, (-Jon Snow)

MIA: Dany, The Sand Snakes, Osha, Rickon, Littlefinger, Olenna, Bronn, Grey Worm, Margaery, Loras, Sam, Gilly, Pycelle, Kevan Lannister, Gendry, the Blackfish, Walder Frey, Edmure Tully

Death Watch: By the steady-hands-must-die logic outlined above, Olenna Tyrell would seem to be next on the block.  But also, now that she has demonstrated an ability to destroy the fundamental stakes of the show, Melisandre needs to be either taken off the board pronto or some serious limits need to be placed on her ability to do this again and again and again.  Since she still needs to walk the walls of Winterfell to fulfill her vision, I’m guessing the Queen Of Thorns goes first.

GAME OF THRONES 6.01 - "THE RED WOMAN"

The Big Question going into “The Red Woman” is technically still unanswered at its end: will Jon Snow return to life?  But if there was any doubt before, it has to be a given now.  Subverting heroic narratives is great at all, but the series has proven enough times over its willingness to kill off likeable heroes, such that it doesn’t really need to reestablish that cred.  And all the hullabaloo about protecting Jon’s body (which why would that be a thing important enough to die for at this point? The damage is done, and everyone at the Wall, regardless of allegiance, agrees bodies need to be burnt) naming the premiere after the Red Woman with ties to a god that can bring the dead back to life, reminding us that she saw him fighting at Winterfell…this amounts to a rather elaborate troll if the entire point is just to get our hopes up only to dash them, again.  We already had all year to work ourselves into a tizzy over this, it would’ve been nearly as devastating and far more narratively efficient to just open with Jon’s body being burned or whatever.

“I loved Jon as a friend. But I will die for him as a plot point.”

So, we’re getting Jon back, which is not a prospect that would have particularly excited me in the first 3 seasons.  But now, Castle Black is my pushing out King’s Landing as the setting I most want to visit each episode.  The capital was for most of the series the place with the most different people and agendas running up against each other, but now it seems to have been whittled down to the Lannisters vs the High Sparrow, with the Tyrells as collateral damage.  But in the North, even if Jon were to stay dead (which he won’t), we have the army of the dead moving from north of the Wall, the somehow even more villainous Boltons to the south, the Wildlings, what’s left of the Watch, and now Davos and the Red Woman running around.

That woman, it turns out, is apparently extremely old and only uses illusions to look like all the sex in the world.  Which was somehow unexpected but not really surprising, if that makes sense.  I mean, it’s a little creepy, but so what?  We already knew she was magic, and it’s not like a woman lying about her age is some novel fantasy game-changer.  So she doesn’t look as good without her make-up and hair did?  None of us do.  Melisandre’s character is starting to feel like the experiment where Ali Reed tried (and failed) to pair a photo of a model with a dating profile repugnant enough that men would not message it.  Like Game Of Thrones just wants to see how far they can push my predilection for pretty redheads.  She’s a literal witch you say?  Even hotter.  Dabbles in child murder?  Well, we don’t need to share all our hobbies.  Likes to put leeches on guys’ junk?  A little kink can be a good thing.  Moderate chance of Room 237-ing?  I feel like you’re just not getting it, show.

What is seen cannot be unseen.

 In the meantime, it’s up to Edd and Davos to carry the torch.  Luckily, Thorne does not seem to be in a big hurry to root out Jon’s loyalists from their chamber. I’m sure if he had seen what Davos has, he’d prioritize getting rid of them and the witch, but instead he focuses on giving speeches to justify his treason. I had a grudging respect for Thorne going, even after he killed our hero, but then he claims to have never disobeyed an order, and….look, I’m a lawyer by trade, so I appreciate a good loophole, if it’s legit. But I have to think that there’s at least an implicit instruction in most militarized institutions not to murder your brothers-in-arms. The Watch should maybe write that one down, just to be safe.

“Don’t stab the boss” probably appears in most employee handbooks, if you really look

 Moving southward, Ramsay’s mourning of his girlfriend is almost sweet, but stops a bit short of actual sentiment when he has her body fed to the hounds.  I’ve complained before about Ramsay getting more screentime than the character warrants, so I’ll skip right on to the fun developments, with Brienne riding to the rescue, adding to the length and breadth of her body count (and Bolton corpses to the Starks, Arryns, Cleganes and Baratheons she has put in the ground).  Even Theon and Pod get their kill on, and if it does not exactly rid the North of evil, it’s a good start for the year.  I don’t want to get my hopes up, but with Brienne and Sansa are probably going to head to Castle Black for shelter, and with Bran hopefully heading back South, we could actually get a Stark reunion 6 years in the making, before they march on Winterfell to oust the Boltons.

Shh…just let me have this one…

Further south, in King’s Landing, Cersei takes the news of Myrcella’s death about as well as she could.  Which is almost a shame, because as good as Lena Headey is playing her grief, what I really want to see is her unleash the beast on some religious nuts.  Hopefully next week will be a big episode for undead vengeance in the north and south.  The Lannisters don’t have a ton of time to dither with the Sparrows, either.  The Dorne storyline took a lot of flack last year, though if you ask me it had nothing more objectionable than one subpar fight scene to drag it down, but I have to admit being puzzled by this structuring.  The Snakes’ plan was launched last year with the killing of Myrcella, and while the argument could be made that the emotional blow for Jaime made it more significant than the princes being offed, I still feel like the full coup d’etat is stronger as a season-ending cliffhanger than part of a premier.  And of course, the timing conspired to make the sudden and tragic death of princes feel especially tasteless.

Rest In Purple, you glorious freakazoid

To the east, Tyrion and Varys just sort of muse idly about the politics of the city that we and they know doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things, which would be interminable if the actors weren’t so engaging.  Then there’s a “dramatic” reveal that Dany’s ships have been burned, and it’s impossible not to sigh a little when Tyrion notes they won’t be sailing for Westeros anytime soon.  Welcome to Mereen, half man, where the primary exports are gold masks and slaves spinning wheels.  May as well get used to it.

Putting Dany back with the Dothraki had more promise, as it not only returns one of the more interesting cultures to the fore after years of absence, but strips her of all the dragons and armies and moony-eyed bodyguards that have insulated her from the sense that her troubles are at all significant for the last several years.  Well, most of it, as she is still able solve her immediate problem by defiantly listing her name and titles.  And look, I’m not going to be the guy saying that a major character should be raped for the story to work, but I would like it if she were to develop a new move for dealing with trouble. “Dragons!” can still be fun, but the “I am Danaerys Stormborn…” speech has lost some luster over the years.

“I’d be gettin’ all kinds of exploitative here, but problematics are

 forbidden in the shadow of the Great Comment Section.”

In any case, she escapes the worst of enslavement by invoking Khal Drogo’s ghost, but that only makes her off limits because she is supposed to be locked away in the Dothraki version of a monastery.  She’s not enthused by that prospect, but it bides her time, and that’s really all she needs for her dragons and soldiers to catch up and free her. Her narrative Teflon remains mostly intact, and I don’t doubt that she will come out of this relatively unscathed and with a fresh khalasar to boot, but for now I’m relatively content just to see her in new environs, dealing with people with less interest in flattering her.

All in all, a solid start to the year.  My excitement for this premiere had been tinged with worry about the show going into uncharted territory, having surpassed the books in some storylines (but not others, I understand, so let’s keep the comments free of book-talk for the time being).  Not because I am a book purist or anything; I only read the first volume within the last month and I was mostly struck by how closely the first season followed it.  I know GRR Martin has given the showrunners the broad strokes of the rest of the story, and given how thoroughly the world of the show has been established, that is probably enough.  Still, not having actual books does remove a safety net of sorts, as until now, they have provided a full, existing blueprint. TV is traditionally a seat-of-the-pants sort of storytelling, with the myriad of network and productions issues, actor availability, and serialized nature of the storytelling requiring adjustments small and huge to be made the fly.  TV production tends to be at a more breakneck pace compared to novels or film, and the ratings model encourages it to be more reactive to audience responses, which can be a good thing but encourages unevenness. In a traditional show every episode is a first draft, but adapting books can make for something of a smoother ride just for having that roadmap in place from the start.  But so far without that map, things feel much the same.  The Essos material seems, as ever, on the verge of becoming great.  The delays in resolving Jon’s fate and the Lannister’s counterstrike feel less than completely necessary but are packed with enough great performances for me not to mind.  The Dorne subplot is finally out of the gate, and the developments around Sansa are aces.  A fairly typical mixed bag of a premiere, which is in a way more reassuring than if it had roared out of the gate with dragons roasting zombies and Ramsay being drowned in a pit of horse manure.  That would be awesome, but would also suggest a lack of confidence or patience.

Now bring back Jon Snow already.  I’m tired of being patient.

I’ve decided this year to try to keep books on some of the multitudinous developments in Westeros:

Subplot Report Card:

The North: A

Castle Black: A- (dinged for stringing along a foregone conclusion, but raised by Davos being a delightful sassypants)

King’s Landing: B+ (table setting, but Headey and Coster-Waldeau together don’t need all that much to work from)

Dorne: B (giant Areo going down to a single jab from a toothpick costs them the +)

Mereen: B

Braavos: B-

Dany: C+ (I was also taken briefly out of the show by the structure of the jokey exchange with the
Khal mimicking Monty Python’s “Spanish Inquisition”)

Season Morgulis: Doran Martell, Trystane Martell, Areo Hotah

MIA: Bran, Hodor, Osha, Rickon, Littlefinger, Olenna, Bronn, Grey Worm, Missandei, FrankenMountain, Tommen, Loras, Sam, Gilly, Tormund, Yara/Balon Greyjoy, High Sparrow, Gendry, Blackfish

Death Watch: Varys – I think he’s served his purpose putting the Imp and Mother of Dragons together, and his general likeability and the strain it would add to Tyrion’s lot paints a narrative target on his back

DC's SUBPAR HEROES: BEGINNING AT THE END

A few days ago, I blathered on about how Zach Snyder’s Objectivist leanings make him singularly unsuited to tell the story of the Justice League (TL;DR version: the idea of uber-powerful individuals working together to pursue altruistic ends is not a good match with a philosophy that disdains altruism and collectivism as a matter of principle). But the DC cinematic universe has started out on very wobbly ground for another reason: desperation to catch up to the uber-successful Marvel machine, which had a 10-film head start when Man Of Steel premiered.  This has led them to put the cart before the narrative horse in several respects, with the result that their Justice League is unlikely to become the phenomenon that The Avengers was.  It will still turn a profit, I’m sure, but it will need to be shattering records to make a comparable return on its sure-to-be-astronomical budget, and the reaction to BvS all but suggests that their Cyborg spin-off is not going to get the kind of boost by association that something like Ant-Man enjoyed.

Warner Brothers wants their own Avengers, but they don’t have time to futz around laying the groundwork for their big team-up.  One can almost feel bad (as one can for a multibillion dollar entertainment conglomerate) for WB in the way that they found themselves victims of both their own and the competition’s success.  Iron Man was a surprise hit in 2008, and as Marvel spent the next 4 years churning out solo films for Thor, the Incredible Hulk, and Captain America, they probably looked on with curiosity but no great urgency.  The films all turned respectable profits on modest budgets, and they were clearly building up to something bigger, but WB had its own superhero juggernaut in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series.  Those films were not only cash cows, but brought both critical acclaim and actual respectability (meaning award buzz and raves that didn’t qualify their praise with backhanded comments about “popcorn entertainment” or “summer blockbuster” what-have-you’s) to the superhero genre.  They were also, with their dark and relentlessly grounded vision, singularly unsuited to crossovers with the more colorful characters of the DC universe – Nolan’s world could barely make room for a Robin that wasn’t even Robin, much less Mr. Freeze, much less Green Lantern.  So even if they did look with a slightly jealous eye on what Marvel was accomplishing with its B-list heroes, it wasn’t about to muddy the waters for its golden goose to try to chase that, not while there was still juice to be milked from the cash cow.

This sentence brought to you by my B.A. in Mixed Metaphors. Thanks, Jesuits!

Marvel, for its part, didn’t have the quite the same option when it came to sticking to big bets on its biggest properties, in part because they didn’t have the rights to their biggest names – Spiderman was with Sony, the X-men and Fantastic Four with Fox.  DC also had the bigger guns generally.  Superman is and always will be the most recognizable superhero, but if he has any competition for that spot it’s from Batman.  I’d say you round out the top 5 with Spiderman/Wonder Woman/the Incredible Hulk, who are on roughly equal levels of notoriety, or were in 2008. This would seem to favor DC’s bullpen in a box office battle royal – not only do they have the biggest stars, and more of them, but all 3 of their heavy hitters are core members of the Justice League.  Conversely, the Avengers similarly operate as the premiere superteam within the Marvel Universe and closest JL equivalent, but they aren’t led by the faces with the most real-world notoriety.

Marvel has now released 12 films in a row that at the least turned a profit and were rated fresh on Rottentomatoes. Some were bonafide megahits, and along the way have not just validated Marvel’s 2nd tier of heroes (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor), but raised the boats of the entire brand such that C-listers like Black Widow, Ant-Man, and even freaking Groot have become something close to household names.  That is a mind-boggling run of success.  So naturally DC looks at its comparable stable of heroes, stocked with some even heavier hitters, and says there is no reason we can’t do the same thing, but better.  And so the Justice League gets fast-tracked.

But Justice League is going to have problems living up to the standards set by The Avengers. Because the DCCU has started out in a rush to get to it, it is going to struggle to feel as momentous. I don’t want to make it out like Marvel made its creative decisions because they are noble geniuses, whereas DC is staffed by money-grubbing ignoramuses…Ignorameses? Ignorami?

Stupid heads.

Rather, I review that background to show that both companies were to a degree just playing the hand they were dealt.  But the results were that Marvel was compelled to play small ball, to build their lesser-known figures from the ground up, on meager budgets that forced them to rely on relatively basic storytelling fundamentals, faith in their characters, and across-the-board impeccable casting, to win audiences over.  And it worked.  Iron Man blew up and became an instant icon.  Then the Incredible Hulk stumbled without failing outright, but the character’s preexisting pop culture status meant that wasn’t a dealbreaker.  Then audiences accepted Thor.  Then Captain America.  Then Iron Man 2 was a commercial success but not quite as beloved, which may have been a blessing in disguise – the take was enough to keep Avengers plans on track, but the cooler response discouraged making it into the Iron Man Cinematic Universe, with everyone playing second fiddle to the one clear star (something that is always going to be a threat with DC and Batman, no matter who is in charge).

DC, on the other hand, having just woken up to find the tortoise already in the winner’s circle, is forced to play the hare.  And while they began with a couple aces in the hole, they haven’t been able to build on those stronger blocks in the same way.  I partly blame Zach Snyder’s inability to differentiate between "strong" and "heroic" for that, but it’s also in large part because they had to start at a sprint.  The Avengers was the 6th MCU film, and the first time the major heroes crossed paths in a significant way.  DC gathered its major trio together in its 2nd film, which was also the first appearance of  this Batman and Wonder Woman, whose intervention in final battle belies that she was essentially a cameo role*.

“I’ll stick with no motivation rather than risk getting stuck with 

any of that nonsense they gave Eisenberg, thanks.”

Batman v Superman’s script could’ve used about a dozen polishes, but I’m sure part of the reason it didn’t get them was because it was being rushed into theaters before the release of Captain America: Civil War.  With the two big superhero franchises releasing simultaneous movies premised on their most prominent heroes beating each other up, the different approaches yield very different results.  It really shouldn’t be a question that Captain America vs Iron Man would be the undercard to Batman vs Superman, even after 8 years of Marvel dominance.  They’re still Batman and Superman, after all.  And yet, for all their pop cultural clout and Snyder’s portentous, “adult” stylings, that movie’s confrontation carries less weight than that promised by the Civil War trailers (which I’m assuming from the early reviews and steady creative team is, if not revolutionary, at least not a total dumpster fire).  Civil War is the 13th MCU entry, and the 7th to feature RDJ’s Iron Man, the 6th for Chris Evans’ Captain America, and 3rd to feature both heavily interacting with each other.  They have a relationship, built over time, that the movie is focused on tearing apart.  By contrast, BvS is only the 2nd film in the DCCU, and the first for Batman (and Wonder Woman). These characters are still relative strangers to us, and actual strangers to each other.

And so their conflict rings entirely false, based completely on misconceptions and outright extortion.  It could be avoided entirely if they just spoke to each other for more than 10 seconds instead of punching first.  Of course, there is an extensive tradition of comic book writers using such misunderstandings to contrive ways to show heroes fight each other, before teaming up to take on some greater threat.  Even The Avengers actually contains just as much superhero-on-superhero violence as BvS in terms of blows or screentime, but it doesn’t position that as its entire reason for being**.  Despite all the sturm and drang around the “greatest gladiator match in the history of the world”, their big punch up has about as much riding on it in story terms as when Iron Man and Thor tussle in the forest toward the beginning of Avengers.  But as we go into Civil War, the heroes have actual relationships that are being frayed by a conflict that by all accounts is not a misunderstanding, but a fundamental disagreement of philosophies.  The Marvel movies have always been sort of proudly frivolous relative to the dour self-seriousness of Nolan/Snyder versions of DC heroes, but the slow build of the world over so many years and sequels lends this conflict motivation, drama, and weight that BvS has to insist upon.

This review is for a different movie, but applies just as well

The hero vs hero conflict is the most obvious example of the DCCU getting ahead of itself, but it is by no means limited to only that.  Snyder (or whatever committee at WB makes the big picture decisions shaping the greater universe) seems to be primarily interested in latter day versions of these heroes, versions that traded heavily on a shared history and deconstructing earlier incarnations.  The problem is that in terms of the movie universe, Snyder has never constructed anything to deconstruct.  So we have a pair of Superman movies that are so eager to question and undermine Superman’s role as an idealistic paragon and quasi-deity that it never actually establishes him as being anything of the sort.  We have a Justice League movie and this quasi-JL prequel that are supposed to prop up solo spin-offs, instead of establishing the heroes as individuals and making their coming together an actual event in itself.  We have the Death Of Superman storyline shoved in at a time when he has no relationship to any of the other key players in the universe.  We have an adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns that is somehow a Superman sequel, and our introduction to a new Batman.

Now, I think TDKR is fairly overrated to begin with, but it’s strengths are largely in the Batman/Superman conflict, which would fine fodder for an adaptation.  However, that conflict derives its potency from the characters having a shared history.  It only really makes sense or matters coming after there has been a Justice League; as an origin for the Justice League it lacks internal logic and carries no weight.  And of course its iteration of Batman as an irascibly violent old coot is a popular one, but is just strange to have the retired, over-the-hill version be our first encounter with him.  That grizzled take only really works in the aftermath of a more classical, colorful version of the character. It’s an endpoint, not a jumping off point for the character to start palling around with Aquaman and the Flash.  I don’t think even Frank Miller would ever suggest that TDKR would be best experienced as your very first Batman comic.

Pictured: just some guy hitting a guy, apparently

Another matter is that it appears that Justice League is jumping straight to DC’s uber-villain, Darkseid, for its antagonist.  We’ll see how that pans out, but if they do go there it is just another example of a lack of patience putting the universe in a place that is difficult to build out from.  Comparatively, Marvel has been teasing their version(/rip-off), Thanos, for multiple “phases”, with no plan to deploy him directly until 2018.  This approach shows patience, if not always a deft touch with the character***.  If you blow your biggest villain wad on the first JL outing, where do you go from there? When you’ve essentially already done the Death of Superman and The Dark Knight Returns?

I understand DC’s desperation to catch up the MCU’s sprawling success and profitability, I really do.  But in trying to jump straight to Marvel’s current level of success, they are ignoring that they got there by building from the ground up.  Trying to build from the top down, but with no foundations laid, is a dicey proposition at best.  And it’s how messes like Batman v Superman get made.

Sorry, I just find this picture really funny

*Imagine for a second that you weren’t familiar with Wonder Woman and saw this film – how freaking weird would it be that this person with so little screentime and no vested interest in the fight plays such a major role in the final battle?  Demonstrating powers and weapons the movie provides no context for?  I’m generally against the proposition that every movie has to stand completely on its own, and assuming some familiarity with the universe is one thing, but you do have to establish that universe.  Like, if you decide to sit down with the third Hunger Games or fifth X-Men movie and complain that you don’t understand what’s going on, that’s kind of your fault for jumping in midstream.  But this is different, because it’s not as though watching Man Of Steel would shed any light on the matter.  BVS needs you to be familiar with other iterations of the character in order to understand its brand new take, like, at all.  Which is emblematic of the way that the DCCU wants to use general pop culture awareness as its excuse to skip set up, rather than establishing its characters/conflicts in coherent internal context.

** Just look at the titles – one names itself after the team that the heroes form after clashing, while the other highlights that clash, and merely teases the formation of a team.  Except there isn’t even a “dawn” in the movie.  It ends with the death of Superman, and no Justice League.  Batman tells a noncommittal Wonder Woman that they should probably gather more superheroes together, but there are no affirmative steps taken toward that.  Iron Man’s post-credits teaser actually made more progress, because at least he seemed like Nick Fury had a plan with a name for it and shit.  Alternately, look at the featured lines from the trailers of BvS and Civil War  – Batman asking Superman “do you bleed?”, which is a legitimate question for him as he knows so little about the guy, vs “he’s my friend/so was I”, which is actual interpersonal conflict.

***Thanos has, as a veiny purple lump with a reluctance to rise from his presumably-padded throne, sometimes appeared less an omnipotent galactic overlord than a hemorrhoid that somehow has hemorrhoids.

DC'S SUBPAR HEROES: ZACHMAN V SUPERMAN

Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice is a profoundly bad movie.  Wrongheaded on just, so many levels.  The entire decision to go super grim n’ gritty with the Justice League is a bad one to start, but it’s also done badly.  Being dark does not mean that things have to be as humorless as this film*.  The script is an embarrassing mess of pointless subplots, paper-thin motivations, needlessly convoluted structural devices, air-dropped set up for future movies, deeply unlikable characters and jars of human urine (I cannot believe I am not making that last part up).  Scenes are jumbled together without any sense of flow or pace.  Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor is a completely nonthreatening weirdo whose machinations stand up to no degree of scrutiny whatsoever but are complex and counterintuitive enough to require quite a bit.  Its attempts to respond to complaints about the stunning callousness of Man Of Steel’s setpieces feel sullen and half-hearted, and transform the heroes’ supposedly vibrant megalopoli into a series of abandoned warehouses.  It has, had, and will always have an egregiously stupid title.

But all those problems are with this movie specifically, and potentially fixable going forward.  Spend a modicum of time working on a script with a basic story structure, punch up the dialogue and include the occasional joke.  Introduce a new villain.  Make the heroes aware of and concerned for the danger their battles pose to civilians, rather than just having a TV assure us this fight is occurring on a deserted backlot.  Set the climactic throwdown somewhere other than a crater that looks like a smoldering cigar butt (between the ashy setting and the utterly uninspired design of Doomsday, it seems like BvS has simply exhausted all its visual imagination by the finale).  A little fuss, but not much muss.  But the DCU is still pretty screwed up, even if Justice League: Dusk Of Equity is a more fundamentally competent movie than Dawn Of Justice.  There are two big reasons for that, the two entities that DC/Warner Brothers have allowed to dictate the shape and direction of their cinematic universe: Zack Snyder and Marvel Studios.

 

Starting with Snyder, he is on one hand the perfect person to bring superhero action to the big screen.  He has a distinct and impressive visual style, and is extremely adept at directing sleek, muscular action sequences – something that superhero films have frequently struggled to deliver, even as they dominated the action genre for the last decade.  Superman’s first flight in Man Of Steel, the warehouse fight in Batman v Superman, these are some of the best realizations of the characters in action ever put to film.  The problems arise when it comes to stringing these fight scenes and bits of iconography into a complete story.  That’s when the considerable strengths of Snyder the stylist are overwhelmed by the deficiencies of Snyder the storyteller.

Perhaps deficiency is too unkind, because I think more than anything the issue is that Snyder is just the worst possible fit for the Justice League.  This snapped into place recently when the director revealed that his passion project is a feature adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist manifesto The Fountainhead.  Suddenly, many of the stranger aspects of Man Of Steel and Batman v Superman made sense.  Not the jar of pee, that’s still bizarre and gross, but the tonal elements that give so many fans of the print and animated versions of these characters fits make more sense coming from a Rand devotee.  I’m not interested in debating the merits of her secular cult (though my phrasing is probably a giveaway of my feeling on that score), but you can see the militant atheism of that belief system expressing itself through the movie’s antipathetic depiction of Superman as an obtuse deity that needs to be drug down to earth.  And its fetishization of selfishness and scorn for principles of charity and community mean that even the attempts to humanize the indestructible hero take the form of having him act surly and resentful that the useless plebs would have the gall to question their obvious superior.  Objectivist Superman doesn’t even lift a finger to clean up the giant spaceships and superweapons that his battle with other aliens left lying around populated areas for two years**.

“Ew, there is commoner on my cape.”

But I’m not saying that BvS is a bad movie because I disagree with the its politics, in part because I think it has far less to say politically than all the real and fictional politicians clogging up the screen would suggest. Objectivism could have the real world pegged exactly right from top to bottom, and it would still make a bad fit for the Justice League.  What I am saying is that when you take someone whose personal philosophy disdains the very ideas of heroism or teamwork, and ask them to make a superhero team-up movie, it should maybe not be surprising when the result is a discordant, joyless slog.  One with multiple scenes of Superman’s parents sagely advising him not to bother helping people.  One where Batman and Superman fight without any real difference in objectives, but because they both seem to take for granted that it would be inappropriate to engage your enemy in discussion before they've been pummeled into submission.  One where Wonder Woman literally drops out of the sky to engage in the climactic melee without ever exchanging a single word with Superman***.  Batman v Superman’s climax is a grim funereal march to a sacrifice that could have been avoided with even the smallest bit of communication.  Contrast this with The Avengers – whatever that movie lacks in dramatic lighting, there is a palpable joy its action climax, which is bursting with communication and interplay between the heroes as they unite to kick alien ass.

I’ll contrast two very particular moments from these climactic battles that I think aptly demonstrate the divide between the Marvel and DC cinematic universes.  First is that sacrifice by Superman, which is great in theory.  It riffs on Arthur’s death in Excalibur, one of my favorite dramatic/action beats in all of film, and allows for Superman to demonstrate that heroism isn’t about superpowers, but commitment and sacrifice.  Which is all great, except that the only reason Superman would have to deliver the killing blow is that he is not even acknowledging his ostensible allies.  The Kryptonite spear is harmless to Wonder Woman and Batman, who has nothing to contribute to this fight after firing a single gas pellet.  So naturally, it’s Superman who grabs literally the only thing in the world that can hurt him and makes a suicide run at the radioactive murderbeast.  It’s the emotional crux of the film, and it’s only made possible by the utter dearth of cooperation and communication between the heroes.

On the other hand, there is a moment in The Avengers’ finale where we follow Iron Man flitting around various parts of the battle.  In the middle of it, he stops next to where Captain America is battling some aliens for a second, and fires his hand blasters directly into Cap’s shield, which he uses to reflect the beam into the oncoming enemies.  Then Iron Man flies off to check on Hawkeye or whatever.  It is a brief, entirely uncommented upon moment, and it doesn’t even make any sense when you think about it.  It accomplishes nothing that just blasting the aliens directly wouldn’t, so why risk shooting his friend (and at best, making him pause in the middle of a frantic melee) in process?  The answer is no reason, except it’s a cool moment of the heroes bouncing off each other, a beat that wouldn’t be possible in either of their solo adventures.

Both movies have these moments of abject stupidity in their action finales, but the ends to which they are used speaks volumes.  The death of Superman hinges on the DC heroes failing to make any effort to communicate or “team up” in their big team-up moment, and thus the giant, operatic emotional climax of movie and the basis for the entire DCU going forward is laid on a foundation of dumbness.  Whereas the Avengers moment is fleeting, inconsequential, and is in service of highlighting the heroes operating in effortless (if nonsensical) sync. It’s playing into and off the inherent strength of the premise.

It also makes BvS seem, for all its insistence on its own profundity, dumber than they think they are.  Whereas the Marvel films play it dumb, but their construction belies a sneaky intelligence at work.  I’m not sure that this actually mean they are any smarter than the DC films on some sort of objective scale, but as with people, I’d much rather hang out with a movie that is smarter than it lets on than someone who may actually have an above-average IQ but is convinced they’re some sort of uber-genius.  The former allows for even a movie like Age Of Ultron (which is something of a mess in its own right) to sneak up on you with something as unexpectedly poignant and insightful as the Vision and Ultron’s final exchange, while the latter leads to big, sweeping moments that fall flat.

BvS’s misstep is especially frustrating because it is so unnecessary.  Let the heroes plan the attack a little, have Wonder Woman holding Doomsday in place with her lasso, Superman drawing away his energy blasts, and Batman charging in with the spear.  Then he gets swatted aside, and Superman is forced to grab it himself and do the deed.  This not only introduces something of a narrative thread to the sequence that feels like three heroes having three separate fights with the same opponent, but makes Superman seem less dumb, and also gives Batman added drive on a couple fronts going into Justice League.  At the Supneral, he says “I failed him in life, I won’t fail him in death.”  A nice sentiment, but one that rings hollow when he’s speaking of a man he spent 18 months plotting to kill and a few minutes working with (well, not even really with.  Parallel to, maybe).  But if Superman sacrificed himself to save Batman, who tried so hard to kill him not an hour before?  That is the kind of selfless heroism that could shame/inspire the jaded vigilante to venerate his memory.  It would also mean that Superman died to save a familiar face, rather than the couple blocks of abandoned warehouses the movie assures us is all these people are fighting over.  And Batman feeling like it was his own failure in the face of a superhuman threat that caused Supes’ death is a great motivator to gather up other powered individuals to fill the boots of the hero he didn’t appreciate while he was alive.

But Monday morning script doctoring aside, the foundation for the DC-CU has larger defects than Batman’s motivation being weaker than it needs to, or even Zach Snyder’s antisocial tendencies, which could be mitigated by subsequent filmmakers.  Those filmmakers will still be saddled with broad conceptual issues hobbling this entire universe from its inception, because it was designed to first and foremost play catch up with the sprawling universe Marvel had already spent 5 years building up.  But that will be the focus of a separate post.

*even the movie’s lone laugh line, where Batman and Superman ask each other if Wonder Woman is with him, is just weird in context – She’s with you, Bruce.  Do you not remember when the movie stopped dead so you could add her to your Contacts List?

**Ironically, Snyder’s lack of belief in the basic concept of superheroes would seem to make him a great fit for another seminal comics adaptation, Watchmen.  Unfortunately, that material only served to put the storyteller and stylist in Snyder at reverse odds; if any superhero story ever called for a stripped down, deglamorized visual aesthetic, it was Alan Moore’s brutal and skeptical deconstruction of cape n’ tights tropes.  Instead Snyder delivered one of the glossiest looking movies ever made, undermining every attempt by the tremendous cast to expose the hidden ugliness and frailty beneath the character archetypes.  Watchmen looks like a masterpiece, and is very faithful to source material that is a masterpiece.  But it’s ultimately the difference, rather than sum, of those parts.

***I am shocked to find that as of this writing, it appears no one on the internet has inserted a cry of “LEEEEEROY JENKINS!!!” over a clip of her big entrance.  You think you know a place…

IT'S ALWAYS SECRETLY CONSERVATIVE IN PHILADELPHIA

Right now It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is, improbably, wrapping up its 11th (11th!) season of horrifying, hilarious depravity.  The show is generally thought to belong to the strain of “asshole comedies” that Seinfeld begat, and indeed it does focus on cheerfully amoral characters wreaking havoc on the world around them with their self-centered schemes, much like The League or Veep or Workaholics.  But despite that crude veneer, Sunny should actually be Mike Huckabee’s favorite sitcom.  Social conservatives, being a by and large literal people, are not apt to get on board with a show that focuses on such completely, undeniably awful people, even though it never really asks us to sympathize with them (except Charlie, sporadically).  But when you look at the way in which those characters are awful, something interesting, and surprisingly conservative, emerges. Something that makes Sunny a greater champion of traditional Family Values than many sitcoms that focus on  actual nuclear families, and a savage attack on the moral bankruptcy of Hollywood and television, a satire all the more biting because it does not approach the subject head on.

Rather, Sunny champions the importance of family values by focusing on characters entirely bereft of them.  The comic engine that has kept the show rolling for over a decade is the very different ways each member of the gang’s horribleness and stupidity have developed over time.  But if you try to work backward from their divergent psychoses, they are all rooted in the same place: the core four* all came from broken homes, and in the absence of proper parental guidance, their outlooks, expectations, and moral compasses were entirely shaped by what they saw in television and movies.  And it is thusly that Sunny humorously, transgressively demonstrates precisely what the pearl-clutching Helen Lovejoys of the world merely cluck about: that the values television teaches our impressionable** children are simply monstrous when transposed onto the real world.

I’m talking about more than how the gang frames all of their schemes in movie or television references, but how their mindsets and what passes for morality reflect the paper-thin ethics of the entertainment industry.  Perhaps the most prominent and reliable example is their insistence on paying lip service to political correctness, even while carrying out the most depraved and deplorable acts imaginable.  As they are busy staging fake baby funerals, destroying marriages and families, gradually dismembering Rickety Cricket, or in my favorite example, taking a hot plate into a morgue for some good ol’ fashioned cannibalism, they are always quick to call each other out on sounding racist, or homophobic.  They are always emphatic on this point, which shouldn’t be taken to mean that they are the slightest bit comfortable around minorities of any stripe.  TV has simply taught them that saying racist things is bad, while also teaching them to disregard or distrust anyone that doesn’t look just like them.  These are the values of “liberal” Hollywood, where lip service to color blind principles does not just supersede, but actually substitutes for, actual inclusiveness.

But outside that, and their general shallowness and obsession with body image, they each manifest the toxic values of television in distinct ways.  Dennis models himself as the ultimate ladies man of the group, in the mold of a Joey Tribiani or Barney Stinson or, more accurate to the 80s frame of reference in which the gang remains stubbornly stuck, Tony Micelli.  But one of the series darkest and slowest burning jokes has been the gradual reveal of the increasingly sociopathic ways he engages this pursuit.  TV has taught him to view women as entirely disposable props, and to demonstrate completely unrealistic, Barbie-doll standards for what they should look like.  He registers disgust whenever they demonstrate personality of their own, and a simmering rage if they do not immediately comply with what he wants from them.  As the years have gone on, Dennis has gone from merely callous to a potential serial killer (it would be upgraded to "probable", but for his general incompetence at everything but competitive skiing), and if there is a worst among the gang, it would have to be him.

But the others are twisted in their own ways.  Mac, who was raised by an inattentive mother while his father was in prison, models himself less as a lothario than an action star (the “sheriff of Paddy’s” in his terms, though his martial prowess is based entirely on posing rather than taking like  “one karate class, if you’re so into karate. You know?”).  And so his misogyny is more blatant, but also less creepy for being more basic than Dennis’s deep-seated psychoses.  He simply has no use for women, or inkling that they could have any value whatsoever beyond set dressing, a trait that has been amplified over the years into his deeply if transparently closeted status.  Honestly, Mac’s sexuality has been very inconsistent over the seasons, to the point that whether he prefers man, woman, or tranny varies with the needs of the episode.  But the one point on which he does not waver is that regardless of gender, only “hardbodies” are worthy of his attention and adoration.  If Dennis embodies every predatory implication of the male gaze, Mac’s sexual confusion demonstrates how popular entertainment fetishizes both the male and female physique in ways that are silly and outlandish.

Dee, as the sole female of the group, has internalized the second-class citizenship that Hollywood dictates for that role.  While she’s quick to parrot feminist talking points, she also accepts torrents of abuse that even illiterate chud Charlie and (increasingly literal) troll Frank are exempt from.  She knows she’s supposed to talk about equality, but her actions belie a belief that she has to play second fiddle and justify herself to the horrible men in her life.  Her dream is to, in spite of her tremendous lack of talent and faulty gag reflex, make it in the entertainment industry, but she takes it as a given that the only way in is to become “one of the guys”, no matter how degrading and Sisyphean the process might be.

And then there’s Charlie.  As the most innocent (read: intellectually in addition to emotionally stunted) of the gang, he is just as warped by popular fiction, but of a more childish nature.  This actually makes him the romantic of the group, as he views the perpetually hard-luck and unwaveringly disdainful waitress as almost a Disney princess.  His unflagging devotion to her is rather chaste and comparatively sweet...but still criminal.  Because actually, while we may suspect Dennis of much more heinous activities, that is pretty much all implication.  Charlie, for as harmless as he can seem when the rest of the gang is worked up into a full, execrable lather, is unequivocally stalking an unwilling, frequently terrified woman.  The only reason laughs can be pulled out of it is that Charlie’s aspirations are practically asexual.  He wants them to live happily ever after and have kids, but he seems rather indifferent to the act itself.  For him, it’s just a matter of hitting on the right scheme, to tricking her into realizing she loved him all along (movie romances tend to be weird like that when you spell them out).

I could list some more examples, talk a bit about Charlie being convinced that legal dramas have made him an expert litigator, or how Mac’s understanding of spirituality is nothing but a thin veneer of smugness over a bedrock of xenophobia.  Or how Frank is just as warped by the pop culture of an earlier era, and the datedness of his frame of reference just makes it more horrifying.  But I think the point is made.  The Sarah Palins of the world like to squawk about the importance of traditional families, and the toxic values TV peddles to our impressionable children.  But while that sort would probably list It’s Always Sunny as one of the worst offenders when it came to poisoning the youth in this way, it’s actually just showing exactly what they’re telling. The gang was truly raised by TV, and they are the worst people in the world.

*Frank is more of a cause of this than a victim of it

**by far my favorite synonym for “dumb”