Dazed and Confused + Everybody Wants Some!

After a long, wet spring, summer seems to have finally arrived in Michigan. Kids are out of school, the weather is warm, and the longer, slower days have begun. Even though I watch movies year round, obviously, I have always associated movies with summer. Maybe because it’s blockbuster season or because it’s easier to get to the movies when my workload is lighter and the weather is nicer. 

Certain movies just feel like summer, and no two films do it better than director Richard Linklater’s sister films, Dazed and Confused from 1993 and Everybody Wants Some! from 2016. Even though they were made 23 years apart, the two movies are unified in tone and approach, and both evince a feeling of summer better than almost any other movies I’ve seen. 

 Dazed and Confused is set on the last day at a suburban Austin, Texas high school in 1976. There’s very little in the way of plot, per se, as the rambling, shaggy narrative follows close to a dozen main characters as they navigate the end of the school year and beginning of summer. Football players wrestle with whether or not to sign a pledge to not do drugs over the summer, while freshmen desperately try to escape the brutal hazing being administered by outgoing seniors. There are pervs, jocks, stoners, bullies, and wannabees everywhere, and each character is unique, fleshed out, and engaging. The film had early performances from Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Renee Zellweger, Adam Goldberg, and Mila Jovovich. What’s great about the film is how is perfectly captures the frightening and exhilarating finality and possibility of the last day, how summer just stretches out in front of you completely unmapped. You’re slightly sad to be leaving what’s become comfortable but excited by who you may become in the next year. The film also does an excellent job of conveying how terrifying and untethered adolescence can feel. It never clubs the viewer over the head with it, but you finish Dazed and Confused simultaneously glad you were a teenager once and overjoyed that you’re not anymore. 

 Everybody Wants Some! takes place during the final days of summer leading up to the first day of school at a Texas university in 1980. Like Dazed and Confused, the film doesn’t really have a central conflict but rather follows around a large ensemble of characters – in this case, members of the university baseball team as they adjust to each other as roommates and teammates, and try to meet girls and have a good time.

The period details throughout are spot on without being overbearing. The feathered hair, unironic mustaches, cars, and music all combine to transport audiences back to the waning days of the Carter administration and “Who Shot J.R.?” For those of us who lived through those days, it’s a pleasant, sometimes amusing journey back. Like Dazed and Confused, Everybody Wants Some! features some great performances from young performers who undoubtedly will go on to bigger and better things later. Interestingly, two of the actors are children of well-known Hollywood. Zoey Deutch, who plays Beverly, the closest the film comes to a main female protagonist, is the daughter of Back to the Future’s Lea Thompson and director Howard Deutch. Wyatt Russell who plays the stoner/philosopher/pitcher Willoughby is the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. Both are standouts of charm in a film that’s filled with engaging performances.

Everybody Wants Some! does a good job at showing how life can be simultaneously profound and utterly mundane. At the film’s close, after a week of practicing all day and partying all night, school finally begins and two baseball players find themselves in the same class where the professor has written “Frontiers are where you find them.” Contemplating this deep thought, the two party-exhausted players promptly fall asleep as the lecture begins.

Both of Richard Linklater’s films are good natured, profane, funny, and nostalgic without being cloying. Both are a good reason to get out of the heat and enjoy a movie this summer. 

Wonder Woman

There are plenty of reasons to see the new Wonder Woman movie. Yes, it is a superhero film directed by and starring a woman. In the testosterone sea that Batman, Captain America, and Iron Man have floated upon for years, supporting Wonder Woman sends a message to the producers saying, “Women can also direct action. Women can also be the center of this kind of story. This genre doesn’t need to be a boys club in front of or behind the camera.” This is a good reason, for sure. Noble.

But this is not actually the first big budget, big screen female superhero movie, however, and I would no more recommend that anyone go see Catwoman, Elektra, Sheena, or Red Sonja than I would suggest sending a 20 dollar bill through a paper shredder or eating gas station sushi. Any of those experiences would waste money and likely leave you feeling queasy. So even though sending a message of equality to movie studios is a good thing, what good would it do if the female-centric films made were bad?

So this brings me to the other reason to see Wonder Woman: it’s good. Very good, actually. I can safely say it’s the best DC-based superhero movie since the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy and the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies. In its characterization, cinematography, plot, humor, and action, it is every bit superior to the muddy, pouty Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman as well as the ridiculous, Hot Topic-flavored Suicide Squad.

The key ingredients to the film’s success are the economical direction from Jenkins and the human Roman candle that is star Gal Gadot. Jenkins establishes the story quickly with enough detail to satisfy longtime fans but not so much that it bogs down the film, quite a trick for a character over 75 years old.

Gal Gadot is the perfect combination of strength, intelligence, innocence, and fierceness. Like Superman, Wonder Woman is a character with so much baggage and so many interpretations, it’s near impossible to cast someone who satisfies everyone. Gadot, a little-known actress and former Miss Isreal prior to being cast as Wonder Woman, turns out to be as close to perfect as possible. You believe her naivety, having been raised on a completely isolated island, and she is also convincing as a butt-kicking warrior driven by compassion and a desire for justice.

Set during World War I, the film is about Diana’s quest to stop Ares, the god of war, before he destroys the world with battle that will never end. It takes her to the front of the fighting, inside muddy trenches where soldiers have been stuck for over a year. When she finds out there are innocents on the other side of the so-called No-Man’s Land, she strides out into the blasted, pocked wasteland to move the battle forward. Of course, the symbolism of a strong woman moving across No-Man’s Land is lost on no one, and the sequence is electrifying.

As good as the film is, it’s not perfect. It does fall victim to Zach Snyder-itis by the end. The climax is a fiery nighttime battle between Wonder Woman and Ares. There are explosions, slow-mo action, and a sense of let-down in that neither the writers nor the director could do something more inventive than what was done in any of the other most recent DC superhero movies. A movie like this needs a bang at the end, but why does it have to be the same kind of bang every time?

The supporting cast is uniformly charming and engaging. Chris Pine continues his streak of affable, sensitive performances as Steve Trevor, the U.S. spy who is the first man Wonder Woman ever meets. And Lucy Davis as Trevor’s secretary Etta Candy provides wonderful comic relief. Knowing that Davis probably won’t be in future Wonder Woman projects is one of the other small disappointments in an otherwise excellent film. Whatever your reason for seeing Wonder Woman is, you should definitely go.

P.S. This is a comment I wrote in response to someone on Facebook. It gets at something I neglected to talk about in the review:

The thing I wish I had said more about in the review but didn't have space for is that it hits at the heart of what superheroes are actually about. Recently, Marvel has been largely about snark. DC has been about darkness and moodiness. WW is about someone strong, powerful, fast, and smart who believes in compassion, goodness, truth, fairness, and helping those who can't help themselves. Superheroes are often Christ-figures - and sometimes that symbolism is too heavy handed and on-the-nose (Superman Returns) - but here, it is a woman (and not just a male character rewritten to be female) who believes in and does Good. That is why superheroes are so resonant, I think. They echo what it is we need in our lives - someone bigger and more powerful than us to intervene when life is too overwhelming for us. Superheroes can represent the Divine or merely the Divine within each everyday joe or jane when we choose to reach out and help those who are trapped "behind the enemy lines" of life, so to speak. I loved Wonder Woman because she believes in acting fiercely and unquestioningly for the benefit of those in need. It's not about the costume, the special effects, the witty banter - ultimately, it is about being willing to delve into the fray and even sacrifice yourself entirely for the greater good.

Batman and Bill

It’s no secret that nerd culture sits at the center of much of our larger pop culture right now. Superhero movies are the biggest tentpoles in the cinematic industry, and actors who play big comic book roles are among the highest paid in the world. But even beyond that, you see everyone from suburban dads to five year olds wearing Star Wars t-shirts and discussing which version of the Joker is their favorite. While there are certainly downsides to this cultural development, one advantage is a new interest in the little-known, behind-the-scenes stories surrounding sci fi, fantasy, and superheroes. 

One of the latest additions to the growing body of nerd studies is the 2017 documentary, Batman and Bill. Of course, everyone knows Batman. He’s the dark, broody hero with dead parents who dresses like a bat to scare criminals who are a “superstitious and cowardly lot.” But who created this figure that is an internationally known icon and a billion-dollar enterprise? Even the freshest noob to the comic book world can probably tell you that it was a guy named Bob Kane. Kane supposedly invented Batman over a weekend in 1939 after he saw how much money Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were making. He was a rare early creator who had it written into his contract that he would get name credit every time Batman appeared. This is the standard story, but according to Batman and Bill, there is another, entirely different version to be told. 

 

Batman and Bill primarily follows author Marc Tyler Nobleman who wrote a children’s non-fiction book about the Caped Crusader’s other, perhaps more important creator, a guy named Bill Finger. Finger was Bob Kane’s silent partner who, according to Nobleman’s research, not only wrote most of the stories and invented most of Batman’s indelible gallery of villains but also designed the main components of the costume we all recognize today – complete with the pointy bat ears, scalloped black cape, and bat symbol on the chest. Kane, apparently a slick salesman and self-promoter, did all the talking and was the public face of Batman while Finger was the uncredited idea man who shaped much of the mythology the world knows, loves, and pays millions of dollars to read and see every year. Kane died a wealthy, prominent man with millions of fans while Finger died penniless and alone in a New York apartment that was behind on rent.

Nobleman spends the documentary detailing his efforts to track down a biological heir of Finger’s in order to get him credit on Batman products. The story is a fascinating one, complete with unexpected discoveries, entirely new versions of established creation myth, and a surprising ending. While the story is compelling and the cause is just, Nobleman definitely seems to love himself and be a self-promoter in a vein more similar to Bob Kane than Bill Finger. The documentary clearly positions him as the hero and his book about Finger as required reading, and Nobleman clearly doesn’t have a problem with that.

But his self-congratulation aside, the story of Bill Finger and his family and their efforts to get his name on Batman after nearly eighty years is touching. Knowing that they were up against Warner Brothers, one of the largest and most powerful media companies in the world makes the stakes even higher.

The most affecting moments of the film are one-on-one interviews with Finger’s granddaughter. According to her, the Finger family felt cursed to obscurity and neglect. She makes a much more satisfying and authentic protagonist to the story than Nobleman’s faux humble researcher.

There are a few spots that drag and seem a little redundant, but overall, Batman and Bill is a compelling documentary that is worth seeing. As nerd culture becomes more and more central to the things we read, watch, and listen to, it’s interesting and worthwhile to hear the stories behind the stories.