SEVEN BLESSINGS: THE BEST MOMENTS FROM GAME OF THRONES, SEASON ONE

In honor of the faith of the Seven, and to pass the interminable wait for the conclusive episodes of Game Of Thrones, and not at all to scratch a compulsive itch that wouldn't go away once the idea occurred to me, I have decided to list my seven favorite moments from each of the first seven seasons.  Videos will be embedded in the headings.  Anyway, without further ado...

1. WEAR IT LIKE ARMOR  (1.01  - "WINTER IS COMING")

The show introduces what will be two of its primary heroes in the pilot episode, and it uses the opportunity to deliver some rather bald exposition about their background and the insecurities that drive them.  But while the rest of the premiere can be a bit clunky in how it sets the board for the series (a result of the enormously intricate board as well as, no doubt, being shot, partially recast and reshot and edited together independently of the rest of the production), it is already so dialed in on Tyrion’s character that he is able to look Jon in the eye and say “look, here’s the thing that makes you tick, and here’s how it relates to the thing that makes me tick.”  And it somehow doesn’t feel like it is being done for the audience’s benefit. 

It’s not a lengthy exchange, but it imparts an important lesson to Jon: know your own deficiencies, because if you deny the obvious it will only make it that much clearer to your enemies. But if you own them, they will not be such soft targets.  Not a complicated concept, but Dinklage sells the basics of self-deprecation as the hard-bitten wisdom of a survivor. 

This is also the show playing a very, very long game.  It is about to set these characters on extremely divergent paths for a full 6 years, but the rapport between them will be vital when they do finally reconnect.  And the show does not tip its hand in that regard; while they develop a cordial respect over the next few episodes, you do not get the sense that it is setting them up as best buds.  Especially in this first interaction, they make no real attempt to be nice to each other, and when their families go to war, there’s nothing like an assumption that their bond will transcend that conflict. 

2.  WHEN SERVING WAS SAFE (1.03 – “LORD SNOW”)

Sean Bean was the heart of the first season and granted the series its initial credibility.  Nicolaj Coster-Waldau was an unknown at the time (at least to American audiences), but Jaime Lannister would gradually be revealed to be the much darker, more damaged heart of the show it would become.  He started out as a “pure” villain, and this confrontation promised a more simplistic clash between good guys and bad guys. Which was still plenty compelling in its own right; show me great actors facing off in grand, intricate settings and costumes, gravely intoning about bloody conflicts, and I'm a happy camper.  And the show would deliver that, but also so much more, and it's the layering that becomes evident upon a rewatch.  The dialogue is great, not showy but effective in delivering both backstory and character, and the disparity between Jaime’s pragmatism and Ned’s unflinching principles is evident even the first time through. 

We have of course been primed to hate Jaime by his attempt on Bran’s life, but what is striking on a return visit, when we have become privy to his secrets and regrets, is that he does genuinely admire Ned.  He both envies and scorns the ideals of simple, unyielding honesty and honor that Ned embodies, precisely because he makes them look so natural while Jaime's experience has proven them to be anything but easy or simple to hold to.  If he could somehow win the respect (if not friendship) of this rival who has exactly the reputation he craves, it would mean the world to him.  And so antagonistic as it may be, this exchange is actually Jaime reaching out in his own guarded way.  But Ned has nothing to give him in response except for a burn that is even more solid because it is also, even when we know more about the Kingslayer's complicated history, still fundamentally true.

3.   WHOSE AFRAID OF CERSEI LANNISTER?   (1.05 – “THE WOLF AND THE LION”)

Robert Baratheon’s role in the first season was basically to die suddenly, setting off the wars of succession that would fuel the story of the next several years/books/seasons.  We could have learned everything we needed to about him for the plot to function (that he is Ned’s BFF and an inattentive husband/king) in the span of a single dialogue scene. So this scene serves no lode-bearing plot function.  That is a real rarity* for a show whose primary draw is its plot, which is as dynamic and byzantine and truly epic, but also as truly overstuffed, as any series I can think of.  And since HBO is not, for example, FX, where you are apt to find midseason episodes of Sons Of Anarchy running 96 minutes long for no discernible reason the non-finale episodes tend to stick pretty close to 55 tightly-packed minutes.  There just isn’t a ton of space for scenes of characters sitting around and shooting the shit if it isn't setting up something specific down the line.  

But this is one of the best scenes of the series.  It starts with some discussion of the need for a king’s steward, and shifts to how even medieval warfare was as much a battle for hearts and minds as for castles and crowns.  Already this demonstrates the attention to realpoltitik concerns that separates Game Of Thrones from conventional fantasy narratives, and I’m always rapt with geeky attention whenever people with beards and/or vaguely British accents are gravely discussing military strategy.  The more elaborately rendered the maps they are hunched over, and intricately carved the little troop markers, the further I’m leaning in.  But again, none of this is strictly necessary for the plot.  We already know that he loves and trust Ned and despises Jaime, and vice versa for her.  And the invasion they are anticipating won’t actually come to pass.  Which is also part of the series’ knack for misdirection.  It’s willingness to devote time to living with the characters’ concerns in the moment, even when it “knows” that those characters won’t be seeing those plans or fears realized, means that it doesn’t tip its hand about the outcome of a particular conflict or storyline. 

But all that is preamble to when the king and queen discuss their stillborn marriage with weary candor.  The writers and actors bring such resigned and authentic emotion to the scene that these characters feel real in a way that transcends their positions as pieces to move the plot forward.  The stakes of the titular game are elevated by the feeling that there are actual people caught up in it, and this scene (one of the few in the first season that was wholly invented for TV) makes sure we know that even the Wicked Queen and King Inciting Incident The First are actual people.  It’s the best work Mark Addy did on the show, but the real revelation is Lena Headey showing a bit – just a bit – of the brittle, wounded heart beneath the cold exterior that the other characters see.  Cersei is the wicked queen in most respects, but this scene allows us to glimpse the foundations of what led her to embrace that role. She long ago gave up on being loved or accepted for who she is, and decided that to be hated was preferable to being ignored.  Cersei is not just the show’s longest-serving antagonist, she is its richest, and this scene (and Headey) is a big reason why.

*or at least it would be until the writers introduced Ramsay Bolton and decided they needed to devote 12 minutes every week to reiterating that he was a wily sadist and also a wily sadist

4.   A CROWN OF GOLD (1.06 – “A GOLDEN CROWN”)

This may seem like an odd choice as the only major death from the season, while leaving bigger fish like Ned and Khal Drogo on the board.  But I will always recall this as the moment when Game Of Thrones really, truly grabbed me.  It was the first big surprise of series for me, not because it was hard to see what in general was coming for Dany’s shitheel brother, but because it happened so much faster than I thought it would.  I watch a lot of TV, and like to think I’ve cultivated a knack for identifying the contours of a plot as it develops.  After getting my bearings in Westeros, I had started assuming that I had a pretty good sketch of where the storylines were heading.  I didn’t have all the particulars sussed out, but I had a good idea that the season would end with the Starks and Lannisters going to war in the west, and Dany stepping out of her useless, jealous brother’s shadow in the east, probably with him dying horribly.  I had been mildly surprised to see Ned and Jaime already fighting in the streets at the end of episode 5, but the “convenient” way that duel ended non-fatally felt familiar from any number of shows that want to have their protagonist and antagonist clash frequently, but not commit to the consequences of a real fight to the death. When episode 6 opened with King Robert restoring Ned to his position as Hand and all but telling him “damn it, keep it in your pants until the season finale” it lulled me back into a sense of complacency.  This was, at its base, a TV show.  And the most natural thing in the world is for a TV show to have a safe, familiar status quo that it wants to revert to after teasing major, lasting changes.

So when we returned to Essos, I knew that Dany’s story was destined to be much larger than her brother’s frustrated ambitions. But I was fairly content to settle in and watch the plotline tread water for a few more weeks until their rift came to a head in the finale.  In the broad strokes, my instincts about where the Targaryen arcs were heading were correct; indeed, Dany won’t be showing up much on these lists because her story has had by far the heaviest sense of inevitability hanging over it and it’s only the relatively minor details that can surprise you.  But when this plotline jumped forward to what I’d marked out as the climax of the season just as it passed the halfway point, I stood up and took notice.  It was made all the more satisfying because Viserys was a sniveling jerkass, and the show had yet to provide us with a proper murdering for any of its plentiful jerkasses.  The details were inventively brutal, with Drogo showing a surprisingly droll streak in how he concedes to Viserys’s titular request.  And it made the entire Essos storyline feel, at least briefly, as exciting and unpredictable as what was going on in Westeros. 

The best part is actually what came after, though, as over the next few weeks I continued to recalibrate where I thought the season would end, and the show continued to blow right past that point in each new episode.  The first handful of episodes were intriguing, but this was the point where it first proved itself to be several steps ahead of my expectations, and that’s what made it properly addicting. 

5.    FATHER OF THE PRIDE  (1.07 – “YOU WIN OR YOU DIE”)

So much of this series hinges on the character of Tywin Lannister.  His children need to be simultaneously formidable antagonists for the Starks in their own right, but it’s also crucial that we understand how they are collectively cowed by their father, in order to sympathize with them in the quasi-protagonist capacities they will take on in later seasons.  Luckily, Charles Dance is on hand to immediately establish Tywin as exactly the sort of immovable object that he needs to be. 

There is a dumbed down version of this scene that would be simpler but still effective in getting the point across.  One where Jaime immediately reverts to being a frightened little boy in his father’s presence. What we get is richer and more truthful, as Jaime is a grown man and accomplished warrior, who has enough self-respect to go in with a gameplan for not giving his father the satisfaction.  But Tywin doesn’t simply bark down his son.  He heads off Jaime’s practiced indifference at every turn, grinding it away as methodically and efficiently as he dresses the dead stag (which just so happens to be the sigil of the dead ruler whose kingdom he is plotting to carve up).

We have heard about what a fearsome force Tywin Lannister is for 6 hours before this scene.  In the span of a few short minutes, Dance cuts a figure that lives up to the hype, but is also instantly believable as an actual man, and a father to the characters we have already come to know.   

6.    NOT TODAY (1.08 – “THE POINTY END”)

The twist that closed out “You Win Or You Die” upped the stakes as it kicked off the season’s third act, but the real punch didn’t land until the opening of “The Pointy End”.   Syrio Forell did not have much screentime, but in the course of 3 scenes he secured a spot as one of the most memorable bit parts in a series packed to the gills with colorful supporting roles.  Most of that is down to his dramatic exit scene, as a group of armored soldiers interrupt Arya’s lesson with her “dancing master”.  But the two of them smell a rat, and the First Blade Of Braavos does not run, even when outnumbered 5 to 1.  But while his balls may be brass, his sword is a wooden practice stick. Thanks to his l33t skillz, Arya escapes with a mantra for the god of Death and the first name on her list of people to kill.  It would be several seasons before she could belatedly, gruesomely cross it off, but this scene was memorable enough that we didn’t need much of a reminder of just who and what she was avenging four years later, on the other side of the world.

7.   SOME PRECIOUS THING (1.09 – “BAELOR”)

Ned Stark’s execution is the most well-remembered part of the first book/season, if not the entire series. It would probably make more sense for me to pick that scene, but especially upon revisiting, it’s the talkier, character-driven stuff that remains more compelling.  In particular, this scene gives us get Sean Bean at his most Sean Bean – beat down, resigned but retaining an edge of steely nobility even in defeat.  There is no actor on earth better suited to tell us “I learned how to die a long time ago.”

I don’t even cite that meme to be facetious. Ned Stark could be a frustrating character in his refusal to accept what kind of show he was on, and I did feel some of the impatience with his decisions the first time around.  This was because I felt that some of those decisions were being made to justify an otherwise-unlikely plot twist rather than flowing from an authentic character trait.  But an actor of Bean’s pedigree only needs a single line to sell even stretches like that, and when he asks “You think my life is some precious thing to me? That I would trade my honor for it?” with just the right amount of genuine scorn, I bought in retroactively. 

This also gives us our first real glimpse of the depths of Varys, the Spider.  Conleth Hill is also great in the role, but until now we have seen him as only one of the many schemers in King’s Landing.  The most shifty of them all, since his motives and background had been kept opaque as we got to know a little more about the Littlefingers and Renlys and Cerseis.  When he proclaims that he seeks to serve the Realm, it creates a layer of intrigue on top of the pathos and despair of lovable Ned’s predicament.   And later on, when you know that he actually means it, it adds poignancy to the exchange even when the shock of Ned’s death has long since worn off.

INFINITY WAR MIXES THE BEST OF SUPERHERO MOVIES WITH THE WORST OF SUPERHERO COMICS

I’ve been in the tank for the Marvel movies since they started, and especially since the first Avengers movie blew away all my expectations and skepticism that you could ever translate the overstuffed, overwrought comics of my youth to the big screen. But if The Avengers was a supersized annual issue of the comic brought to rollicking life, Infinity War is something else – the sprawling, dozen-issue CROSSOVER EVENT that wove through several titles and roped not just a team, but multiple teams of superheroes from the far-flung corners of the Marvel Universe together to battle some cosmically overwrought threat. The Infinity Gauntlet, the source material for Infinity War, is probably both the most famous of these, and the dumbest.  The film is an improbably faithful adaptation in some ways, despite half of the characters from the comic not existing in the movie universe. It copies the most unique thing about the limited series, which is that the villain is essentially the protagonist and POV character, and somehow makes that work within a summer blockbuster framework, which is a remarkable feat of filmmaking in its own right.  But it also maintains the elements that made me largely indifferent to Marvel’s most epic event, even as a credulous, 10 year-old dork eagerly pawing his way through his cousin’s box of “classic” comics. 

In the comic, as in the film, Thanos starts out immensely powerful and then, by gathering the various Infinity Stones together in his big gold gauntlet, becomes all-powerful.  Not “essentially” or “practically” all-powerful, but literally, explicitly omnipotent. The writing goes out of its way to directly, repeatedly (“classic” superhero comics are nothing if not endlessly, repetitively expository) tell us that he has limitless power and control over time, space, and reality itself.  The series is best remembered for the big battle sequence where Thanos “kills” a dozen of the most famous Marvel heroes one by one.  In the comic, this comes after Thanos has snapped his fingers and killed half the intelligent life in the universe, while in the film, he lays mostly non-fatal waste to the heroes before the Snap itself does the work of wiping out half the cast.  But the problem is the same regardless of medium or order: it’s just too much.  So much that the mind, even the credulous, 10 year-old mind, rejects the premise entirely.

"Thanos killed Spiderman and Thanos killed Iron Man and
 Thanos killed Wolverine and then Thanos looked at me!"

The biggest problem with comic-book storytelling in general has always been the lack of commitment to consequence, most glaringly in regards to death.  Killing characters is not the only way to give a story weight or stakes, but when an entire genre is built on the basis of constant, life-and-death danger and no one ever dies, that danger never becomes real.  But the problem is not so much that comics don’t ever kill people.  It’s that they do, but always find a way to take it back.  Which is worse than not doing it at all.  The better stories, like the X-Men’s Dark Phoenix Saga or say Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s more comic book-y story arcs, retain some semblance of lasting significance by maintaining the pretense of permanence for a longer stretch, and/or going through some contortions to make the resurrection an event unto itself.  This way, reviving the slain does not erase all the emotional fallout of the death entirely.  The worse ones, like Infinity Gauntlet, simply undo everything of supposed import that transpired.  These stories self-sterilize to the point where things can proceed as if they had never even happened.

And sure, none of these made up stories about people in tights punching each other really matter in the end.  But the art of telling them lies in creating the illusion that they do, that at least within the confines of this fictional world, the events being related have weight and consequence.  If we take half a step back, we know there is no way the Avengers, or James Bond or Tom Cruise, are not going to win out in the end.  But you obscure that fact by making the villain seem so powerful that it is not apparent how the good guys can beat them. And the way they triumph should always come down to more than just punching better than the other guy (see: the Dance Off To Save The Universe and subsequent Care Bear Stare from the first Guardians Of The Galaxy, or the bargaining loop from Dr. Strange).  But the Infinity storylines over-egg this pudding, by making the enemy so overpowered that the fisticuffs seem entirely pointless before they even begin.

Again, the source is not subtle on this point

The movie starts by having Thanos thump the Hulk in hand-to-hand combat, which establishes him as the biggest, baddest threat the Avengers have faced in terms of raw physical strength. But as the comic ceaselessly reiterates, and the film makes clear from at least the point where Thanos demonstrates the Reality Stone’s power against the Guardians, he can instantly kill all the heroes with a thought. So the only way he can lose is if he wants himself to lose, which is an idea the comic plays with in a way that is interesting but not terribly satisfying, because it means the heroes’ efforts never really matter, and their “sacrifices” are both moot and phony.  It’s super obvious, super early on, that they are not going to be able to punch their way past him, but we still spend most of the story going through those motions again and again. 

The Snap similarly overshoots the mark of raising the external stakes for the rest of the fictional world.  If one of the biggest criticisms of the Marvel Universe is that it is too static, then wiping out half the life in the universe would seem, at first blush, to be a major corrective to that.  But it’s so major that even a soft child’s brain could intuit that there is simply no way that it wouldn’t be subject to immediate, wholesale take-backsies.  The touchstone for genre geeks when it comes to the type of downer cliffhanger Infinity War is shooting for is The Empire Strikes Back. But the difference in scale between the two is striking.  Sure, it was never likely that Han Solo would stay sealed in a rock forever.  But if somehow he had, the Star Wars universe could have gone on without him. It was, if not exactly plausible, then at least possible within that fictional milieu. There is just never any way that the Marvel Universe, on page or screen, is going to permanently shift to a post-apocalyptic landscape ruled by an untouchable, murderous God.  

Because of this, it’s clear that Thanos’s triumph does not just have to be “fixed”, the way defeating Loki or Ultron’s armies reverses the course of their earlier, successful campaigns.  It has to be literally, completely undone.  The question of “how” is barely even a question; what can done with a snap of a finger can and will be be undone with another snap.  The powers of the gauntlet are such enormous nonsense, that it is immediately evident that the only way the heroes will be able to triumph is via nonsense of equal enormity.  But returning to the Dark Phoenix example, even after comic book nonsense eventually brought Jean Grey back to life her death remained something that everyone remembered and was affected by. By contrast, the inflated extremity of the Gauntlet’s power all but guarantee that few if any of the characters will even be aware of the apocalypse they lived/died through when all is said and done.

"Please...I'm not..ready....for naptime..."

And that sucks. But what is remarkable is that the movie generally works, in spite of the central dramatic thrust being so transparently phony.  It’s an odd, overstuffed beast for sure, and it did take me a bit to adjust to the tone.  I’ve long thought of the Marvel movies - with the exception of Black Panther - as comedies with action sequences more than action movies with jokes.  And IW can feel awkward in how it marries the goofiest, comic-book nonsense plot of any MCU film with the most portentous, heavy tone of them all. Even Black Panther's direct engagement with real world issues didn't require the eschatological sturm-and-drang with which IW requires everyone to treat Space Smurf's quest to complete his rock collection.  And the shift between Thor: Ragnarok, which was practically a Naked Gun-esque spoof of this genre-unto-itself, and the oppressive grimness of the opening scene of this film is especially jarring, as it grinds all the hope of its direct predecessor into dust.

But IW still finds plenty of space for humor, and since it is almost entirely character-based, it complements the heightened stakes more than it undermining them.  The cast is enormous, but exceptionally well-balanced and it’s impossible to give the Russos enough credit for making this feel like as much a Guardians sequel as an Avengers movie, while also not letting Dr. Strange take over the entire proceedings or Spiderman feel like he is being needlessly tacked on (though technically, he probably is). We take for granted how easy the MCU has made juggling movies full of characters who are headliners in their own right look, but it definitely is not.  Pretty much no matter who your favorite Marvel hero is, Infinity War gives them their due.  Okay, Ant-Man and Hawkeye are completely MIA, but c’mon, Hawkeye isn’t anyone’s favorite. I know because Hawkeye actually was my favorite growing up, and he ain’t even cracking my top 10 in his MCU capacity.

Sorry, bud, but you got the giant megablockbuster franchise you
 wanted, instead of the smaller Netflix Series you deserved

Captain America and Black Panther don’t get a lot to do outside the big fight, but their supporting casts/settings get enough love that they still feel fairly central.  And even if they hadn’t, just the shot of the two of them sprinting out ahead of the line as the army charges into battle is enough to cement their stature within this pantheon.  So on balance, it doesn’t matter much if you are a particular partisan for the Iron Man or Guardians or Thor or Dr. Strange or Captain America or Spiderman or Black Panther subfranchise, or even if you just really love the Hulk or Vision or Scarlet Witch, you have no reason to feel slighted by IW. That alone is simply phenomenal, even after ten years of these movies adding plate after spinning plate without a hitch.

What sells that, and this entire endeavor, is the miraculous impeccability of the casting across dozens and dozens of roles.  When you have a megamovie with 45 important characters and the biggest casting missteps could credibly be considered to include Don Cheadle (who is great being his affable self, but imo never quite sells Rhodes as a military man) and Carrie Coon (who is the best actress working in my books, but wasted in a henching capacity), that's simply incredible.  Okay, the actual weak link is probably the perfectly serviceable Sebastian Stan, but the point stands.  The cast of the MCU is a legitimate wonder of the modern world, and the Russos have proven so masterful at shifting the Rubik's Cube of characters into new, wildly entertaining configurations that they are able to constantly, unobtrusively scratch the itch that lies at the heart of our infatuation with franchise filmmaking – to provide the comfort of the familiar, but also surprise us with it.  Stark and Spiderman are a proven combo at this point, and we could have guessed that he and Strange would be fun together. But who would have thought Rocket and Thor would yield such great results?  That we would get a great moment between Captain America and Groot?  Stark and Wong?  Starlord and Thor, or Rocket and Bucky(‘s arm)?  

Of the many things that crack me up about this character, none compare to imagining the DC
Studios folks periodically being overcome with jealousy that Marvel has the  kleptomaniac
space raccoon to lean on while they struggle to make their sexy Aquaman movie work.

At this point, none of the work the actors are doing with these characters is exactly revelatory, with the possible exception of Josh Brolin as Thanos.  He still looks exceedingly goofy, but the performance is remarkable for its subtlety.  Somehow the translation from the page removed all the cruelty from the characterization without lessening the megalomania or evil, which if you can figure out how that even works, please explain it to me.  But it does, and turns what had been probably the biggest flaw in the entire MCU fabric into one of the best villains in the genre. I'll still take Killmonger and Loki ahead of him, but that he's even in the race is incredible after the wet fart of his initial teases.  Brolin and Zoe Saldana deserve the most credit for stapling the absolute absurdity of the plot to something approaching an emotional core.

But the movie is packed to the gills with others doing fantastic, if quick, work. Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany do a hell of a job selling a ridiculous relationship that raises all sorts of odd anatomical questions, and was also mostly developed off screen.  Bettany in particular continues to ground the most outlandish piece of this universe in understated strength and grace, while Dave Bautista remains the improbable comedic MVP of the entire franchise, and sneakily strong on the dramatic end to boot. Chris Hemsworth has been playing Thor impeccably for years, but I never expected anything as affecting as when he is recounting all he has lost, in very short order, to the foul-mouthed cartoon raccoon. The way he goes through the paces of his trademark bravado, but with all the joy hollowed out of it, brings to mind the old actor adage about the way to convincingly play drunk is to be trying to act sober and failing.  It’s funny (“Well, he’s never fought me twice”), and a handy catch-up for the audience that hasn’t boned up on his subfranchise recently, and quietly heartbreaking, which are two adjectives that I never would have thought to apply to the character.  Thor was always my least favorite Avenger on the page by a wide margin, but Hemsworth has edged him up to close to my tops on screen, which without slighting some very deft writing by the Russos and Taika Waititi, is mostly down to old fashioned movie star magic.

On a similar tip, it’s gotten very easy to take Downey Jr. for granted, but somehow he is far from phoning it after a decade of these big, corporate green-screen-aploozas.  My best guess is that the ever-expanding cast of superstars to play with is enough to counteract the boredom from playing the same character for literally the tenth time.  But who knows really, maybe he’s just an uber-professional, so long as the barges full of money are being dumped on the beaches of his private archipelago. In any case, watching his performance in IW, I was struck by how his signature characters are so slick and motor-mouthed that all he has to do is shut up momentarily and we intuit just how hard they are working not to lose it entirely.  You can see it at Strange’s house as he realizes his greatest nightmares are coming true, or with his wordless gulping after getting impaled by Thanos.  

For another variation, check out the scene where he comes 

out from under the bed in Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang

Then on the other end of the subtlety spectrum, there is Tom Holland’s (apparently improvised) death scene.  For all the reasons I pontificated about up top, I started out yawning my way through the final sequence, but when he started pleading and apologizing as this teenage kid felt his life slip away, it hit like a ton of bricks.  Which is my reaction to the entire film in miniature. I can identify every single reason that none of this should mean anything at all, but after a decade and 20 movies with this incredible cast, it’s impossible not to get swept up as they perform the living hell out of the nonsense.