Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 12/13/24
You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out edition
The administrator of the bunker would like to start this update with an apology; he has not been himself for approximately 15 months now, and the toll it has taken on friends and family has been perturbing, to say nothing of his decreased productivity. However, there is a saying about when you’re going through Hell, keep going. He miraculously found himself on the other side of his bad mood this week by embracing the suck rather than fighting it. He has quickly pivoted to “mildly insufferable” with his singing of obscure Christmas pop novelty songs from a variety of bands. Delightful.
A Star Wars Mystery, Solved
I was watching Skeleton Crew recently and, in the tangle of thoughts I had about it, chief among them how Goonies-like the whole thing is, right down to pirates and skeletons on the derelict pirate ship, I had an epiphany.
Asking the question “why” is an occupational hazard for all creative types, but most especially writers, who often use the answer as the jumping off point for a novel or a story. I’m certainly no different; I like to figure out situations, trying to ascertain how we got to a certain point. Sometimes this turns into a 10,000 word essay on why Superman is a generational character or how the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one giant Latchkey Kid. Those pop cultural shifts, the kind that seem to overtake us all at once, are fascinating to me. Also, sometimes, horrifying.
I may have solved a mystery—at least for myself, if no one else. Now, I’m the first person to decry a simple solution to a complex problem, as we will see. I always try to take the other side into account, or to allow for the solution to a dilemma to be complex with many moving parts. I’m bringing this up because I don’t think this is the whole of it all, but I’ve identified a crucial piece of the Star Wars fandom puzzle; namely, why is there a schism between fans?
Gen-X has spent its whole life being forced to re-examine beloved cultural and institutional icons through the veil of what we were told as children and what we now know to be the more complete, more nuanced, and sometimes, the actual truth about things like, for instance, the sanctity of the presidency—starting with Nixon and Watergate, through the Iran-Contra scandal, the Blue Dress, 9/11 and on and on and on. Pull the other one, won’t you?
How about the church? The moral majority, the family values estate, the vigilant defender of virtue and innocence—right up until the PTL scandals that played out in real time, of embezzlement, drugs, alcohol, and prostitutes, so much bad behavior, and even lying to the people who were sending them all that money.
Even pop culture wasn’t safe. Remember Schoolhouse Rock? That one song, “Elbow Room,” about westward expansion, even dropped the phrase “manifest destiny” into the lyrics, while the cartoon pilgrims danced with the cartoon indians, arm in arm, as if the real indigenous people had a sing-song say in the matter. We got that bubble popped in American history.
This navel-gazing re-examination was a part of the Post-Modern wave that ran through culture, popular and otherwise, in the 1970s and 1980s. Consider, if you will, Alan Moore and Frank Miller. Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns were nothing more than iconoclastic reworkings of these beloved cultural institutions. We were always having the metaphorical rug pulled out from under us. The term “revisionist” wasn’t in wide usage, but that was the gestalt that underwrote a lot of our creative input. Which brings me back to Star Wars.
Even Luke was lied to, fed a series of platitudes to keep him appeased. His father wasn’t a navigator on a spice freighter, not any more than Darth Vader killed his father. “From a certain point of view,” indeed. Now, consider that the only viewpoint we’ve ever been given about the Jedi came from Ben Kenobi’s description about how the Jedi kept order in the galaxy for “over a thousand years.” That’s what Luke ran with, right? So say we all.
Only now, it’s 35 years later, and those Gen-X kids, who spent the first twenty-odd years of their life being told one thing, and then having to go back and re-work and/or change opinions about stuff in light of the new shit that had come to light, man. Here’s the current architects of the SWU, Filoni, Favreau, and all the rest of them just got handed the keys to the chocolate factory, so what are they going to do? To make a meaningful story, something we’ve not seen before? Let’s take the one part of the saga that hasn’t been re-examined and do just that. Maybe the Jedi weren’t good guys to everyone? Maybe they had their own petty jealousies, in-fights, political machinations, and the occasional bad decisions? Given how we all grew up, this instinct to redo something we’ve not seen hitherto redone actually makes sense. From a certain Gen-X point of view.
I know people don’t like The Last Jedi, but can you see how that re-working of the Jedi folklore is present there? I think it’s all over the Sequels (7, 8, and 9). I’m not asking you to like them, or not, but stepping back from it, I can sense that disturbance in the Force. Gen-Xers are gonna Gen-X. That’s how the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe got its start. Why wouldn’t Star Wars? It's our cultural touchstone, after all.
This is not a universal answer, nor does it explain the people who complain about the new trailers because there’s a girl in it. But I think it does explain why some Gen-X fans are pissed (“This was the last holdout on a world that has been revised many times over, and now they’re revising my beloved Jedi Knights to make them flawed and complex?!”) about the newer stuff.
I don’t know what’s wrong with Millennial Star Wars fans. That’s a whole ‘nuther thing.
Again, this isn’t a universal patch. Why? Because I know that things are rarely ever black/white. But I’ve noticed that when a new Star Wars series drops, there’s a line of demarcation between Jedi-centric and non-Jedi-centric shows in terms of the blind hatred surrounding them. Non-Jedi shows get cut a lot more slack. Yes, I’m talking about Skeleton Crew, but also The Mandalorian (which showed Luke in the mode of Jedi Master and didn’t tip any sacred cows). Overall, people liked Solo, and there was nary a lightsaber in sight. Even Rogue One, a movie we didn’t ever need made, got favorable attention in some corners, a far cry from the vitriol surrounding The Last Jedi, et.al.
It's not brilliant and I’m sure there’s a blog somewhere that covered this or something akin to it eight years ago. Whatever. I feel like I’ve answered, at least for myself, why some of the fans are so acidic and spiteful about something that used to mean the same thing, universally, to an entire generation.
It’s no wonder my generation’s rallying cry is an eye-roll, along with the words, “It figures.”
One more thing: I don’t need to tell you if you should watch Skeleton Crew or not. This isn’t anyone’s first rodeo. And “Goonies in Space” is enough of a descriptor to clue you in. Y’all don’t need my opinions.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Note: no sooner had we issued the statement that we would refrain from reviewing new Christmas movies but something came along that we felt we needed to warn you about. We watched this so you don’t have to.
Nutcrackers (Hulu)
Ben Stiller is a successful businessman who is pulled into caring for his four nephews, who recently lost their parents.
At first glance, and by that I mean, from the trailer, it sure looks like this movie is going to be a Christmas version of Overboard, that lovely, goofy movie with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, to wit: Ben Stiller is the uppity guy who has to deal with feral farm kids and he grows to like it as he realizes he’s needed for something more important than rezoning commercial real estate. Moreover, I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that’s one of the log lines that went into this Frankenstein project, assembled out of the pieces of earlier drafts.
This movie is trading heavily on Ben Stiller as a comedic everyman, but he’s just not funny in it. All of the humor comes from the four kids, actual siblings for real, and their shenanigans. You can actually see the joinery between at least two scripts with major set-pieces that were presented, Chekov’s gun style, on the mantle, and then not used at all. There’s a backstory that we are told, not shown. The kids’ behavior changes from scene to scene. It’s a mess, one that looks like it was cobbled together in the editing.
The least plausible part of the movie is their big Christmas production (modern dance, no less) of the “New Nutcracker,” evidently at some point earmarked for the big third act finale. Somewhere along the way, it got minimized down to near-lip service for the purpose of...I don’t know what, exactly, as that part of the story is mostly scrubbed. But that scene was clearly supposed to be something relevent, and now it’s not.
My hunch is that the first treatment was focused on Stiller, and the second treatment centered around the kids themselves, and someone in a committe meeting mashed them together. There’s better Christmas fare out there. Nutcrackers is a bunch of empty calories and a waste of Ben Stiller. I will need to rewatch Dodgeball to get the taste out of my mouth.
Creature Commandos (HBO)
From the mind of James Gunn, this animated series re-invents one of the minor character teams from the bottom tier Bronze Age DC comic book Weird War Stories.
I’m torn. This should be my jam. I love, unironically, the original Creature Commandos, as a Monster Kid in good standing. War comics (a thing DC did very well) and horror characters (another niche for DC) made into a peanut butter cup amalgamation that tastes great together.
That is not this. James Gunn has taken most of the newly-monstrous characters from recent DCEU offerings, like Suicide Squad, and for some reason, added a couple of characters that were of their original time and place, like G.I. Robot, and made them into the squad they send when they need someone to do a worse job than the actual Suicide Squad.
I was so excited for this series, and my excitement quickly waned. Another R-rated cartoon. Fun. That is, until the third episode, which was all about what happened to G.I. Robot between WWII and right now. That episode single-handedly saved the show for me, at least for now.
Okay, here’s the deal: it’s like Gunn’s Suicide Squad mashed up with Harley Quinn. Some of it is funny, and some of it feels gratuitous just because. If you liked those two projects, you’re likely going to dig this. Otherwise, I would just sit this one out and wait for Gunn’s Superman, next year. No sleep ‘til KRYPTO!
"now they’re revising my beloved Jedi Knights"
I had no problem with OTHER Jedi being problematic. Kenobi lied. Yoda lied. Qui Gon was an a-hole. Most of the Jedi were arrogant and self-righteous. There's a lot of classical hubris-leads-to-tragedy in the history of the Jedi.
No, my problem was when they went after Luke Skywalker, who WAS a good and honorable Jedi in spite of all the manipulation. He walked dangerously close to the dark side but never fell.
And then they destroyed his essence.
Even Mark Hamill agreed it was horrible but, as a professional, he did his job and made the movie he was told to make.
They destroyed two of the three main HEROES that way.
And I'm going to be THAT guy for the next three sentences. The only main human character they did NOT do that to was the woman, Princess Leia. But the two men? Both fell into despair and died.
Watchmen was a one-off. Batman gets rebooted every few years. Don't like this one? Wait a few years. There is only one Star Wars canon. What's done is set in stone.
That was what killed "Star Wars" for me, to the point where I watched Episode 9 exactly once and never watched what came after. Because *MY* hero got turned into garbage for no good reason and THAT became canon ever after.
Now THAT's an idea: a DCU horror series, hosted in alternating episodes by Cain and Abel. (The first comic I ever bought with my own money was in that weird period in 1979 when DC jammed "Tales of the Unexpected," "House of Secrets," "The Witching Hour," and "Madame Xanadu," and I still remember reading, for the first time, the first DC story illustrated by Steve Bissette. Do weekly adaptations of those stories, along with "Tales of Mystery," animated or live-action, and you'd never get me away from the TV.)