Star Wars and Toxic Fandom

So the Skywalker saga, one of the longest-lasting, most influential, and most lucrative movie franchises in the history of the world has come to an end. What George Lucas began back in 1978 with Star Wars, featuring a few actors and some special effects people who were essentially making it up as they went along, J.J. Abrams brought to a close in 2019 with Star Wars: Episode Nine: The Rise of Skywalker, leaving nine films for nerds to debate and discuss far into the future.

 The final film finds our dutiful heroine, Rey, discovering her true heritage while trying to save the galaxy from a familiar evil. Visually and thematically, it’s naturally much more in keeping with Abrams’ first effort, The Force Awakens than with Rian Johnson’s darker, weirder contribution, The Last Jedi. Unlike Last Jedi’s long, meditative sections without a lot of action, Rise of Skywalker moves at a breakneck pace, never pausing even the story and character development might benefit from a moment of stillness. It’s sleek, epic in its scope, and nostalgic in its answers to many of the series’ lingering questions.

By now, if you’re even a casual fan, you’ve seen the film and had lengthy discussions about it. Perhaps you’ve posted a ranked list of what you think are the best films and tv shows set in a galaxy far, far away. You’ve weighed in on Rey’s parents, Kylo Ren’s fate, the dramatic scaling back of Kelly Tran’s character Rose, the repurposed scenes of our unfortunately departed princess, Carrie Fisher, and the various cameo appearances.

In all of this, regardless of your opinions one way or the other on any of these subjects, in person and especially online, I hope you were polite. I hope you were nice and understanding of another person’s point of view. I hope you weren’t racist, sexist, or just generally an insensitive idiot who think his opinion on lightsaber technique or Sith protocol is more important than the feelings of another living, breathing human being.  

I understand feeling passionate about a fandom. I am a die-hard Star Wars fan since the very beginning. I’ve collected comics and action figures my whole life, and I am more keenly aware of goings-on in the Marvel and DC universes than a 46 year old man should be.

But it’s important to remember that Luke Skywalker, Emperor Palpatine, Rey, and all the rest are not real. It’s an imaginary world – a wonderful one – but utterly fictional. The person getting called names online for having the “wrong” opinion about Last Jedi, however, is real. She’s a person with feelings and thoughts. We shouldn’t sacrifice kindness and patience with actual people in the name of defending our ideas about imaginary things. Toxic fandom is a thing and it should be done away with completely. We should practice saying things like, “Huh, I guess I had a different take on that” and “Interesting. That’s a whole other perspective than mine” and “Why do you think that?” It’s okay to dislike something and simply say, “You know, I’m just not the audience that particular thing was made for.”

We should be able to disagree about fandoms without being unkind because:

#1. As I said, these things aren’t real and therefore should not cost us connection and relationships with real people.

#2. It’s what adults do. They find ways to express their opinions and be heard without resorting to name calling, insults, and cruelty. If you can’t deal with a disagreement about Rey’s heritage, how do you function at work or school or in a relationship?

#3. If you want to get super nerdy about it, it’s what the Jedi would do. They are about justice, peace, balance, and light. You wouldn’t find Obi-Wan engaging in a Twitter flame war at 3 am because that’s not what he’s about, you know? If you love Star Wars so much, remember what it actually stands for and act like it.

The Irishman

Here’s an unpopular opinion: Martin Scorcese’s latest gangster epic, The Irishman, just isn’t that good.

Feel free to stop reading now and begin burning a Mark Brown-shaped effigy if you must.

I love Martin Scorcese and his work. I have said if before and I’ll say it again here: he is one of the world’s most talented living filmmakers, hands down. I love his nervy, confident camera; his ongoing fascinations with religion, violence, music, and the rigid rules of strict subcultures whether it’s the Mob or Buddhism; and his world-class technical expertise. He is, of course, most known for his explorations of crime and violence like Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Good Fellas, Casino, The Departed, but he has also made films about profound religious devotion like Kundun, Silence, and the infamous The Last Temptation of Christ (which, by the way, is beautiful and hypnotic and hardly the evil thing it was made out to be in 1988). He’s made knock-out documentaries and concert films, biopics, at least one kids’ movie in the form of Hugo, and my all-time favorite love story, the Gilded Age tale of forbidden romance, The Age of Innocence. In other words, I am not a Scorcese hater by any means. Quite the opposite. 

However, The Irishman just isn’t that good. 

It’s an adaptation of the 2004 book, I Heard You Paint Houses, a non-fiction book about Frank Sheeran, a Mob hitman who supposedly is the one who killed famed union leader, Jimmy Hoffa. The story is told in a series of flashbacks by Robert DeNiro as Sheeran sitting in a wheelchair in his retirement home. The story is meant to be reflective and perhaps purposefully rambling. But that doesn’t mean it’s a fun story to listen to. There’s almost no development of any of the characters. DeNiro’s Frank remains flat, inarticulate, and without insight to the very end. The only character that does seem to evolve a little is Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa but that’s only to say that he gets crazier and more late-career Pacino-esque with every scene. He doesn’t get better, just louder.

Famously, the film digitally de-ages DeNiro along with Al Pacino as Hoffa, Harvey Keitel as Angelo Bruno, and Joe Pesci as Russell Buffalino. So we see these actors, all of whom are well into their 70s, play themselves in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. While the smooth digital skin on the actors does look pretty realistic, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s covering 75 year old bodies. The scene when Frank, supposedly in his 30s at the time, beats up a grocer who reprimands his daughter, is completely silly and cringe-inducing. Even with his digital de-aging, DeNiro moves like a man in his 70s – because he is. And the disconnect between what I’m supposed to be seeing and what I’m actually seeing is distracting and lame.

Narratively, the movie never builds any momentum. There’s no central conflict, no rising action that ultimately must be reconciled through a moment of crisis. A bunch of stuff happens. Sheeran and Hoffa repeat themselves endlessly. Harvey Keitel looks great in tinted glasses. The film goes nowhere and it gets there slow. The final image of Sheeran sitting alone and isolated in his retirement home is obvious, clumsy, and on-the-nose. Oh, a lifetime of murder and crime leaves you alone, trapped, and sad? Aw. Really?

I know, I know. It’s DeNiro, Pacino, Keitel, and Pesci – directed by Scorese for crying out loud. It’s like having the greatest starting line-up with the greatest coach of all time. But it just doesn’t work and it feels like no one wants to say it. Sometimes even the greatest mess up or just make a bad picture, you know? Critically-speaking, I think people are embarrassed for not giving Scorcese his due for so many years, that now everyone is falling all over themselves to reward work that, frankly, just isn’t as good as many of the films that got passed over for recognition in the past.

Gratitude

Thanksgiving approaches, and it’s time to express gratitude in a more specific, articulate way than maybe we normally do. Expressions of gratitude increase our satisfaction with our lives and improve our relationships. Grateful people generally live longer and report being happier with what they have. So in that spirit, I want to express some of the things I’m grateful for.

First of all, I’m grateful I have a family of passionate, observant film fans. Between my wife and three daughters, I live with people who can crack jokes about giant, irradiated ants from 1954’s THEM!, make meaningful comparisons between Charles Addams’ original cartoons and the filmed adaptations of his work, and give me insights into why certain teenagers find the recent Joker film so compelling. One of the prime joys of movie going for me is sharing the experience and ideas with smart, witty people, and there’s no one I like seeing movies with more than my family.

As much as I complain about it, I am grateful for streaming technology. While I do believe it makes movie going almost too easy and removes a lot of the ritual and communal nature of film, there have been times just in the last few months when streaming has just made my life easier. Obscure documentaries and independent films don’t make it to Midland, Michigan that often, but thanks to Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu, I get to see them anyway. I can appreciate ease of access even while I criticize it.

I’m grateful for my Genres in Film History class this semester. Any teacher knows that it’s every few years that through fate, luck, or just the pedagogy gods smiling down you, you end up with a group of smart, funny, enthusiastic students all in the same room and for that semester or that year, your life is pretty great because those students unconsciously work together to make a classroom environment where people want to be. My Genres students have been equally enthusiastic and curious about black and white slapstick comedy as they have about sci fi, horror, and westerns. It is good to be with students who enjoy learning.

I’m grateful for Delta’s digital filmmaking program. It is a rare thing for a community college to have the kinds of resources we have, and to be able to send students out in the world with a degree that enables them to go right to work on a film set or in a production studio is remarkable. My colleagues Jeff Vandezande and Kim Wells are award-winning professionals who give our students invaluable real-world insight into directing, editing, producing, and the thousand other skills needed to be successful. It’s nice to feel like you’re part of something important and unique which I think our filmmaking program is.

I’m grateful for the recent debate about whether or not superhero movies count as “cinema.” Martin Scorcese, certainly one of America’s best and most important living filmmakers, said that they weren’t, and people have been taking sides, offering think pieces, defending, rejecting, or clarifying his definitions. I think it’s good and healthy to think about what movies are, what cinema might be, and to discuss what our expectations really are when we sit down to watch something. Anything that causes us to question how we define, think about, and relate to the movie-going experience is valuable in my opinion. Movies are a huge part of our culture and lives, and examining our beliefs and preconceptions in intelligent, civil ways makes us better people and smarter movie-goers.

And of course, I am grateful for this show and for you out there, whoever you are, listening in. It’s a privilege to be able to work with the good folks from Q90.1 and to be able to have my idiosyncratic, weirdo say about movies once a week. I’m very grateful for those of you who tune in each Friday and give it a listen.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!