I realised something as I sat down to write this review, something that has yet to happen once in the fast-approaching three years since I started Tenouttaten: I had no idea what to fucking write about The Hateful Eight. This realisation was swiftly followed by another creeping thought: this is the first Quentin Tarantino film I've critiqued. And from there, the moments of clarity continued to surge into my brain, as I began to think about my experience watching The Hateful Eight compared to Tarantino's seven (or eight, or nine) other films prior. When the credits for The Hateful Eight rolled, to roughly five minutes following, I was speechless. I knew that I loved it, but I also knew that it had burrowed into me, and I knew that I wouldn't stop thinking about it for a long, long time. The problem was, I had no idea how to collate those thoughts. It was strangely liberating; for once, I wasn't the self-aggrandising boffin who had all the answers but actually has very few answers. I was a tear-filled, gaping-eyed child at the foot of art. This is not dissimilar to how I've walked away from Tarantino's other films - I always leave the cinema in complete awe that his self-assured mash-ups of European expressionist cinema, American/Australian exploitation cinema, and Italian westerns are universally recognised as highbrow entertainment - but there was something else that The Hateful Eight left me with. It's kind of incredible that, after a career approaching 30 years, in which every one of his films has been hyper violent and exploitative to some degree, that I can assuredly say that this is his bleakest, meanest, cruelest, most viciously awful film to date. I think it's the closest he'll come, given that he's said himself that he only has two left in the bag, to making a horror film. And I mean horror in the true sense of the word: this film is fucking horrific. In his prior films, even the lowest of the scum-suck pool had a hint of charisma, or showed a shred of humanity that made their actions slightly more tolerable. In The Hateful Eight, characters that even show a sliver of such stupid sentimentality are punished for it, generally within seconds. If a character shows decency, it's only to disarm or befuddle so that the knife goes into the back all the more easy. Now, while watching awful people do awful things to each other can be entertaining in its own right, that doesn't exactly make it difficult to discuss. Where The Hateful Eight really digs its claws into your fucking eyeballs is that there is a socially political agenda behind all of it. The Hateful Eight continues Tarantino's series of historical revisionist films, but unlike Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, the purpose of The Hateful Eight is not to utilise a fantasy setting to offer up catharsis or triumph during a time of historical oppression. No, the purpose of The Hateful Eight is to utilise a fantasy setting to shine a great big spotlight into the heart of every person sitting in the audience; to prove to you that just because you cheered when Django blew up Candyland, doesn't mean you're not still a fucking racist.
The Hateful Eight takes place after the Civil War. Slavery has been abolished, and African Americans can now live safely and peacefully in their homes. Except that they can't. The Hateful Eight begins with a bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), negotiating to ride in a wagon currently housing fellow bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), and prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). As Marquis approaches the wagon, John Ruth's pistol comes out the window. John Ruth tells Marquis to stand where he can see him, following that by addressing him as "black fella." Already, we're being presented with the notion that just because something has been declared illegal, that does not automatically eliminate the desire or even the ability for people to continue to do it. When John Ruth realises that he knows Marquis, he sings a different tune, and introduces him to Daisy, letting her know that, to Daisy, Marquis should be known as Major Warren. Without blinking, Daisy says, "Howdy, nigger." She is not met with horror. She is not met with condemnation. Marquis stays silent, and John Ruth laughs uproariously, and says, "Don't you know darkies don't like being called nigger no more? They find it offensive." "I've been called worse," Daisy replies. Legally, slavery is over. Shouldn't it be that with it disappears the signifier of black people's oppression? No. Why the fuck would it? Criminalising something doesn't eliminate the culturally-ingrained desire in people to continue being criminals. This is explored further when the wagon happens upon the maybe-maybe-not new sheriff of the county they're travelling to, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). Chris Mannix is a Lost Causer, a sect of the Confederates that took their loss of the Civil War, and turned it into a noble defeat of a set of heroic values, to continue to uphold nobly, like a true American. And what does Mannix receive for continuing to be a filthy fucking racist? Why, a promotion of course! If we are to believe that he is indeed the new sheriff of Red Rock, then this is communicating that racism didn't die, it just got layered into bureaucracy. While they're travelling together, Marquis and Mannix begin to engage in an argument over their actions during the war. Mannix begins to layer uncertainty towards Marquis, detailing a brave escape he made burning down a Confederate camp he was interred at before adding the caveat that among the casualties of the fire were more Northerners than Southerners. Marquis had murdered his white brothers. Some hero. Marquis fires back at the actions of the Lost Causers; that in spite of, you know, black people not being property anymore, they were still doing their fair share of wanton slaughter for no reason other than not caring that Lincoln said, "Hey, hey. Stop it." That's when Goggins reveals the true intent behind his racism. "When niggers are scared, that's when white folks are safe."
It would seem then that, like Django Unchained, Major Marquis Warren is our moral center; the vessel through which we contrast all of this hateful, utterly repugnant shit, right? Well, hold onto that thought. In this carriage, Marquis has a supporter. In spite of referring to him as black fella, darkie and, occasionally, nigger, John Ruth feels like he and Marquis share a bond that transcends race. They're both bounty hunters, and they're both good at what they do. But they also share a bond that is reliant on race. You see, Major Marquis Warren has a letter from Abraham Lincoln, written to him during the war, where he and the President were pen pals. John Ruth has read this letter, and in the stage coach, asks to read it again. We don't hear the contents of the letter, but at the end, he says, "Ole Mary Todd's calling, so I guess it's time for bed." Looking up at Marquis, tears in his eyes, he smiles at his friend and says, "Ole Mary Todd...that gets me." Marquis smiles back. "That gets me, too." Now, this is before Mannix has joined their party. Later, when Marquis, John Ruth, Daisy, and Mannix have arrived at Minnie's Haberdashery, to wait out a blizzard, and are in the company of Bob (Demian Bachir), Oswaldo Mowbray (Tim Roth), Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), they sit at the table for dinner. Mannix, along with the rest of the room, is now aware that Marquis supposedly has a letter from President Lincoln. Mannix presses the notion of the idea, breaking down the clarifying reality of it into the smallest of minutiae, before exploding into laughter, at the idea that a black man, dishonorably discharged from the military, no less, could have a letter from the President of the United States. This whole time, we watch the reactions of Mannix's interrogation on two faces: Marquis's and John Ruth's. Marquis is mad, but he also knows he's in a room full of people that wouldn't think twice to react twice as violently to a black man acting grumpy. So, he lets it go. Until we focus on John Ruth, and we see the other shoe drop in his head. You see, John Ruth was under the impression that the bond he and Marquis shared absolved him to some degree of the hateful prejudice surrounding him in the world. He's not about to cry for black civil liberties, but he appreciates the novelty of having one that he's "cool with." He asks Marquis is the letter if fake, and Marquis seizes his opportunity to walk away with some dignity. He laughs and says that of course it's fake, before asking if he hurt John Ruth's feelings. John Ruth displays genuine hurt on his face, and says, "As a matter of fact, you did." It's sad, but not in a way that makes you pity John Ruth. It's sad in how pathetic it is. Marquis elaborates by saying that if it were not for that letter, he would be frozen in the blizzard. It was the creation of that letter that allowed him to get by relatively openly in a white society. Echoing Mannix's earlier sentiment, and further highlighting the ouroboros, Marquis says, "The only time black folks are safe, is when white folks is disarmed. And this letter had the desired effect of disarming white folks." This damages John Ruth, to the point that he lets his guard down, and we see that his one black friend proving he wasn't racist was nothing but a paper-thin barrier torn to shreds at the first instance of a black man treating him wrong. "So I guess it's true what they say about you people. You can't believe a fuckin' word that comes outta your mouths." Poor Major Marquis Warren can't catch a break, right? Well, good thing this is Quentin's Revisionist Hour, where Marquis will heroically thwart oppression and ride into the sunset, because, like Django, he's our moral center in a sea of injustice, right? Dead fucking wrong. Marquis is a product of this society, like every other motherfucker in this world, and Marquis is a piece of shit, like every other motherfucker in this world. Now that his security blanket, the Lincoln letter, is gone, Marquis gains the courage to reveal who he truly is. Actually, let me rephrase that: who the society around him made him. Seemingly displaying an act of human decency amongst the cavalcade of hatred, he gets a bowl of soup and offers it to the General Sandy Smithers, sitting by the fire because he refused to eat at the same table as a black man. He asks if he can sit with him, and they start to, respectfully, share war stories. It seems like Marquis is trying to ground himself after the aforementioned revelation, to show that he can stand above it all with dignity. Truly, he was just looking for the clarifying detail that Sandy Smither's son is who Marquis thought he was, at which point he puts a pistol on the table beside Smithers, gets up, walks across the room, and painfully, excruciatingly, details the story of how he murdered Chester Charles Smithers. But he didn't just murder him. No, that would be too easy for the son of General Sandy Smithers, the Bloody Nigger Killer of Baton Rouge. Marquis marched Chester Charles Smither through the snow, naked, until all he could beg for was a blanket. For warmth. Major Marquis Warren offered warmth in the form of his erect penis in Chester Charles Smither's mouth, with the promise of a blanket after. But like the letter, there was no blanket. There was only a scared, frozen white boy sucking on a black man's dick, receiving a bullet to the head for his service. Sandy Smithers grabs the pistol, rises to his feet, Marquis shoots him down, and we're left wondering what the fuck to think. How the fuck to feel.
So, The Hateful Eight is complicated. That's because it's supposed to be. Like I mentioned previously, this is not triumphant fantasy. This is high-concept reality. Though the film takes place in the late 1800s, its rhetoric hits right now. We knew about The Hateful Eight quite a while ago, and it might surprise you to learn that in the original draft of the screenplay, Abraham Lincoln's letter was real. During the timespan between it being real and it being fake, Ferguson, Missouri happened, among others. I don't think it's too insane a leap to see a connection between the two. Over the last year and change, we have slowly become more and more aware that, try as we might to believe we are a progressive society getting better every day, and that slavery and the racism that came with it is nothing but an ugly, though healed, scar on human history, long past, the reality is that things are no better. If anything, it's more insidious. Few are openly racist, and therefore honest. Racism, and crimes as a result of it, are hidden in bureaucracy and procedure, in such a way that it allows the white police chief to hop on the news and say that the poor, unarmed black kid bleeding out in the street was a criminal who was treated accordingly and with due process by the officer of the law who's back at home high-fiving his family for getting a pension package for his hard work, along with commendations for the killer headshot on a nigger. To go back to the film, are you starting to see the connection? Remember how Mannix got the sheriff's job? It's through this lens of historical revisionism that Tarantino is able to cut even more cleanly, and viciously, to the truth of the matter. Racism is not dead, it's thriving. It's legal again. But, come on, we know this is wrong, right? We know this is utterly fucking despicable. But what are we to do? How in the hell are we supposed to fix this deeply ingrained cultural perspective that's older than we are and will likely outlive us all? Well, The Hateful Eight has an answer: we just need to find ourselves a new nigger. By the end of the film, Marquis and Mannix aren't just working together, they're almost friends. In a final shot (along with the whole film) that beautifully references the literal and tonal implications of John Carpenter's The Thing, Marquis and Mannix await their deaths in each other's welcome company now that they've slayed the monster. The monster, you ask? It's Daisy Domergue, hanging from a rope in front of them. Because if there's one thing that crackers and niggers can agree on, it's that the only thing worse than a cracker or a nigger is a bitch. Daisy's crimes go mostly unmentioned, but you can be damn sure it doesn't even approach the atrocities that both of these men have committed in their time. But this isn't personal, it's cultural. We're fixing racism here. When human beings have spent their whole lives defying logic and rational thought in order to ruthlessly oppress a group known as different, the only way to end that oppression is to find another group. Hell, consider the film's opening shot: for three minutes, the camera slowly pulls out from an extreme close-up of a wood-carved Jesus on the cross, the only landmark in the vast, open landscape; a testament to this country's dedication to prejudicial persecution. Jesus was a lone snake oil salesman, who was unique in that his snake oil was really just a set of philosophical values designed to improve humanity, who was deemed different, inferior, and deserving of death. Jesus was alone. Jesus was the original nigger. This same communication of the dangers of biological isolation is on the wall as soon as everyone's holed up in Minnie's Haberdashery. John Ruth, Mannix, and every other swinging dick debate endlessly over what they should be referring to each other as, but nobody bats an eyelid at calling Daisy a bitch or a tramp, or Marquis a nigger. Consider the population of the room, as well: you've got six white men, one black man, and one woman. Daisy and Marquis are isolated in this room, and Daisy relies on the support network of her gang, identities concealed, to be there for her should her biology compromise her safety. When they're all gone, what more does she have left? She attempts to bargain with Mannix to murder Marquis and collect bounties on the gang members whose faces are still intact and let Daisy go free. The reason Mannix refuses - what turns Daisy into the new qualifier to subject to savage intolerance - seems almost trivial in the light of not only this night, but all of history. Daisy didn't warn Mannix that the coffee he almost drank was poisoned. And, with that, she was doomed.
Earlier in the film, Oswaldo Mowbray is explaining the difference between justice and frontier justice through the lens of his occupation as a hangman to Daisy, a scene that gains an extra layer on second viewing knowing that he is, in fact, a member of her gang. He puts forth one scenario, in which Daisy is brought to Red Rock, tried for her crimes, found guilty, and hanged in the town square by an executioner, and labels it justice. He then puts forth another scenario, in which civilians, potentially friends or family of the dead, hang Daisy themselves, and labels it frontier justice. He acknowledges that frontier justice, while cathartic, is in danger of not being justice, for the person hanging from the rope may not deserve to be there. The difference, he posits, is himself, the hangman. "The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. And that dispassion is the very essence of justice. For justice delivered without dispassion, is always in danger of not being justice." Fast-forward to the end of the film. Oswaldo Mowbray is dead. Daisy Domergue is hanged by Major Marquis Warren and maybe-maybe-not Sheriff Chris Mannix. No trial. No town square. She is strung up from the rafters of Minnie's Haberdashery by a rope, tied to a bed post. It's frontier justice. Is it also justice? Who the fuck cares? Was slavery justice? Who the fuck cares? Was Ferguson, Missouri justice? Who the fuck cares? In that moment, right there, pick whichever one you want, it was just a bitch or a nigger getting what was coming to them. Outside, the law can call it whatever it wants to. The Hateful Eight puts forth that justice has never been dispassionate, and by turn, has never truly been justice. It's only ever been a lie to cover the ugly, black, cancerous truth: white people like oppression because it keeps them strong. But deep down, they know that it isn't right, so they need to layer lie upon lie upon lie, to cover the reality and turn it into something greater. To turn it into an ideal. To then claim that it is, indeed, justice, and racism is, indeed, over. We see the lie grow in The Hateful Eight. Marquis and Mannix deliver frontier justice to Daisy, and as her lifeless body swings, two hateful eyes planted dead on her executioners, Mannix asks if he can read Marquis's fake letter from the President. Marquis obliges, and we finally hear its full contents. Fake Lincoln calls Marquis his friend, and a credit to his race, and hopes their paths will cross again. Reaching the line about Ole Mary Todd, Mannix gets caught, the same way John Ruth did. "That's a nice touch," Mannix says. "Yeah...thanks," Marquis replies. For a second, you genuinely think that they may believe their own bullshit. Then Mannix crumples the note and throws it away. Ah, you see, what he meant was that it's a nice touch to keep up the lie. To put a band-aid over the wound that has already festered, rotten to the core. They've just turned the bitch into the new nigger, and yet they hold Mary Todd up as some ideal figurehead. Mary Todd was a bitch in the same way Daisy Domergue was, but the idea of Mary Todd, the idea of the Lincoln Letter, well, that might just be enough to keep dipshits believing. The Hateful Eight is a tough film to swallow. It is looking for the people that enjoyed Django Unchained but thought that an unarmed black kid running from the police clearly had something to hide, and is delivering them a venom-dripped condemnation that they're probably too stupid to realise, because try as he might, Tarantino just can't not be entertaining. The Hateful Eight is that really perfect sort of film, that encourages discussion through being a shitload of fun. He doesn't want the world to end up this way, and neither should you. But this is too big of a problem to be fixed by one person, regardless of their power or platform. No Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King, or Rosa Parks, or Richard Pryor, or Bill Clinton, or Spike Lee, or Barack Obama, or Kanye West, or Quentin Tarantino is going to be able to fix this on their own. Everybody needs to take responsibility. Everybody needs to admit accountability. Laugh in The Hateful Eight when a character says 'nigger' for humourous effect, but don't walk away without thinking about why you laughed. Black lives matter, and it's time we all stopped thinking that cheering on a black man for murdering his white oppressors gets us off the hook. As Donald Glover so perfectly put it, "You're not not racist 'cos The Wire's in your Netflix queue."
I originally intended to start this review with, "Breathe out. It's okay. The Force Awakens is good." Unfortunately, real life got in the way and now that this is finally out there, I'm assuming even the people who only had the slightest inkling towards catching it has already done so, and you already know. Breathe out. It's okay. The Force Awakens is good. So, instead, I'm going to give you a brief history on my experiences with this franchise. I've never really cared about Star Wars. Actually, let me rephrase that: I've never really cared about Star Wars as much as you do. I have no active dislike of the franchise - as a child, I actually thought The Phantom Menace was really fun, which is something I still attest to this day, though to a slightly more measured capacity - but it's never really been more than...present...to me. Perhaps it's because the franchise was long out when I was born, and so I wasn't swept up in the cultural heyday when people actually liked the new films that bore the name, or perhaps it just simply wasn't entirely for me. Either way, I think this mindset prepared me perfectly to walk away from The Force Awakens on my first viewing understanding it completely. This film is nothing short of a small miracle. It holds strong reverence for what came before it (everything, mind you, including the ones you hate), while also never losing sight of the new trail it must blaze. It understands the characters so deeply that it allows them to organically take a back seat to the new blood. It subtly breaks just about every rule when it comes to inclusivity in major motion pictures. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I've never really cared about Star Wars. I still don't. But boy oh boy, do I respect the ever-loving shit out of this movie.
First up, let's return to the word I mentioned earlier: characters. These are important - we know that, right? In many ways, characters are your primary source of emotional connection in a film. Your film can live and even thrive without a plot if you've got good characters. It worked with the original trilogy. As far as plots go, they're really not up to the standard of many of their contemporaries, but they have character. It's kind of okay that Boba Fett gets accidentally knocked into a Sarlacc Pit, because every other time we've seen him, he's either looking effortlessly cool or being told by Darth Fucking Vader not to disintegrate anybody. When he falls over, it feels like an unfortunate circumstance that happened to a cool character. J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt got this. They knew how important it was, above all else, to have solid characterisation, especially because they were unable to entirely rely upon the fan's preexisting knowledge when all of these new folk were coming in to play. They also knew that they couldn't spend the duration of the film wheel-spinning through introductions. What we learned of these newbies, we had to learn fast, and every moment with them had to be a banger. So, let's go through the bangers. The film begins with a slaughter of civilians on a desert planet by what is left of The Empire, now going by the name First Order. Amongst the carnage, a ship lands, and out of it emerges our new Darth Vader, now going by the name Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). The first thing I noticed is how much Kylo Ren walked like a, well, like a human. Darth Vader's movement was regularly obfuscated by his cape, making him almost seem like a gliding, ethereal force (heh). This was magnified by the deliberateness of his steps; if he didn't have to walk, he wasn't going to. Kylo Ren's cape is thinner, and flows behind him, making his movement available to see in plain sight, serving to highlight how mystic he does not appear to be. He approaches the captured Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and we're introduced to our new Han Solo type. Kylo Ren, face covered with a mask not too dissimilar to his former, stares at Poe, saying nothing. Eventually, Poe says glibly, "Who talks first? You talk first? I talk first?" Kylo Ren begins to speak, for the first time, and his voice, like his former, is obscured through a filter. "I'm sorry," Poe cuts him off, "but it's very hard to understand you with that thing." This guy is staring down the new Darth Vader and cracking wise. This guy's got some fucking stones! But, more than that, he's resisting the new evil. Amongst the sea of slaughter around him, he's showing that he's not afraid of the group demanding that he show fear. Don't forget about Kylo Ren just yet, now; we will be coming back to him. Poe is taken back aboard the First Order's ship, where he meets Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper who faced the reality of his employer down on that planet and is having a change of heart. He sneaks Poe to a safe space, removes his helmet, and says he's getting Poe out of here. "Why are you helping me?" Poe asks. "Because it's the right thing to do," Finn replies. There's a pause. "...you need a pilot, don't you?" says Poe. "...I need a pilot," says Finn, and we're introduced to our new Han Solo type. They sneak into the hangar, steal a Tie-Fighter and get the fuck out of there with only a couple of hiccups. Amongst the shouts and whoops, Finn says, "It's good to meet you, Poe." "Good to meet you too, Finn!" Poe shouts back. Boom. Besties. They're soon attacked, the ship crashes, and Finn can't find Poe, believing him to be dead. A full hour later, they reunite by chance at the Rebel Base, and it's the potency of the lightning-fast characterisation that makes us believe that these two are genuinely happy to see each other again. They hug, and smile, and laugh, and get serious in the space of seconds, and we believe all of it.
Now, characterisation in this film is so important, I could spend this entire review on it, but there's more to cover, so I'm going to do my best to integrate, lest I swallow reality and start my book called The Force Awakens Did It Good. You may be aware of this already, but there appears to be a disconnect between the creators and the merchandisers when it comes to the reality that girls like cool shit too. Like all of the superhero films before it, a lot of the merchandise for The Force Awakens isn't including their new Jedi, and kind of their new protagonist, because she's a woman. Now, this is fucking stupid, and I'm not about to say that it isn't, but I think, in this situation, we're looking at it from the wrong angle. This is not because Hasbro has already made efforts to rectify the problem, because including a token for your shitty board game doesn't make up for one damn thing, and it's not because I think there are bigger problems to discuss. It's that when it comes to identifying inclusivity, or lack thereof, there is only so much progress that can be made by crying foul. I know that revolutions are never started by the quiet, and I'm not about to say that we shouldn't shout from the rooftops when we're pissed, but consider the fact that this is maybe the biggest fucking movie ever, and so little of the discourse is reflecting just how many rules of standard Hollywood film representation it breaks. Let's run the list: The film's main character, and seemingly only new Jedi, is Rey (Daisy Ridley), a woman. Beside her, also arguably the film's main character, is Finn, a black man. Beside them is Poe Dameron, a Guatemalan. Against them is Kylo Ren, whose heritage includes English, German, Dutch, Irish, and Scottish. Beside Kylo Ren is General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson), an Irishman playing an Englishman. Pause there; our two main antagonists are Europeans that aren't Russian or German, and they aren't black. Also, helping our heroes are an old woman (Carrie Fisher), two old men (Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill), a giant hairy monster (Peter Mayhew), and two robots. The fact that the film doesn't highlight the race or age of any of these characters, nor does it go to a single length to hide their skin tones or age, for a major motion picture, is fucking astounding, and to continue to cry foul of elements somewhat helpless to other organisations does a disservice to everything the film gets right. But, seeing as positivity doesn't negate the shittiness entirely, lets chip away at it a bit more by highlighting how fucking good Rey is. When Finn first sees her, she's about to get attacked by some thugs. In the time it takes him to race over to her, knight in shining armour, she's already taken care of her would-be oppressors, and we're introduced to our new Han Solo type. When the First Order bears down on them, Finn grabs Rey's hand to lead her to safety. "Why are you holding my hand?" she says. Later, he tries to grab it again. "I know how to run! Stop holding my hand!" Gradually, bit by bit, Rey asserts to Finn that she's plenty capable on her own, a sentiment that is capitalised when it's Finn that needs rescuing from her. Later, when she's captured by Kylo Ren, Finn, Han Solo and Chewbacca launch a stupid-as-all-shit rescue mission that also might stop the First Order. As Finn panics about the odds they're up against, and the fact that she needs them, Han taps him on the shoulder and points out that not only does Rey not need them, but they might need her, communicated visually through the window as Rey tests out her new force abilities to scale a wall. When they are eventually reunited, Rey is overjoyed that Finn came for her, not because she needed to be rescued, but because someone cared enough about her to come looking. It's an emotional rescue, not a physical one, and the strength of that cannot be overstated.
Now, on to the bad stuff, where I point out that it's actually really good stuff. There's been a lot of criticism leveled at this film. Most people can agree that the new characters are shit hot, because that's an objective observation, but beneath that, many can't get past the fact that this film is beat-by-beat kind of a remake of A New Hope. "Lazy filmmaking!" they cry, without pausing to consider that this laziness might actually be intentional; without pausing to consider that maybe it's actually really brave. Yes, this is beat-by-beat kind of a remake of A New Hope, with smatterings of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi for good measure, but that's the point. Consider the world's narrative surrounding this plot: everyone in this universe loves Star Wars as much as you do. Actually, let me rephrase that: everyone in this universe loves what Star Wars used to be as much as you do. Rey plays around in the shell of a downed AT-AT wearing a Rebel pilot's helmet, a handmade stuffed doll Luke Skywalker sitting on her shelf at home. When she meets Han Solo, she's starstruck. "You're THE Han Solo?" she asks. I know that's not what you're mad about, though. You're mad about another Death Star, aren't you? But not just another Death Star, a bigger Death Star, that can kill more than one planet, at the same time! Well, consider the idea that, if you're willing to accept and celebrate that our heroes are in love with the old days, that the villains might just be too. Let's frame this around Kylo Ren, as I firmly believe he's the key to learning to stop worrying and love the J.J. I told you we'd be back. Let's start by acknowledging that his story in this film is how Anakin Skywalker's descent into The Dark Side should have gone. Before his helmet came off, I was already thinking that he behaved like a shitty teenager. His walking was the first clue, then came some of his strange turns-of-phrase, where he almost seemed...snotty, then comes his lightsaber temper tantrum when he doesn't get his way. The writing is almost on the wall before he takes his helmet off, and you see that there's nothing wrong with his face. He's actually quite beautiful. Darth Vader wore the helmet because it was the only thing that kept him not dead. So why is Kylo Ren all dressed up? Because he doesn't want to evoke Darth Vader, he wants to be Darth Vader. More, we come to understand that his indignant behaviour stems from his knowledge that he is not, and may never be, even a shred of the figure that his grandfather was. Oh yeah, he's Han and Leia's kid as well, and a former student of Luke Skywalker. The guilt-tripping as he started to shift from the light to the dark probably contributed to his feelings of being misunderstood, and also probably acted as fuel for him to prove everybody wrong. And, here's the thing: Kylo Ren is an idiot, because he's just a kid, but he is dangerous. Throughout the entire film, Han Solo drops hint upon hint that, given the chance, he's going to confront his son. Our understanding of Han Solo, such as it is, might lead us to believe that this confrontation would involve Han fighting to his last breath to bring his son back to the light. But this is not the Han Solo that we knew. We should have known our Star Wars better; the victory of the big conflicts pale in comparison to the systematic generational losses that our heroes suffer through. A war is nothing when held against the fact that the parents keep fucking up for their children. But not this time. As The First Order begins to charge Starkiller (the new Death Star), sucking the light out of the sun, Han Solo confronts Kylo Ren on a bridge not too dissimilar to another iconic father/son bonding sesh. "BEN," Han bellows, the implications of his son's name ringing in our heads as they approach each other. Ben Solo refuses to acknowledge the man in front of him as his father, but as Han continues to press, layers begin to peel away, and Ben acknowledges that, try as he might, he still feels the pull of The Light. He knows what he has to do in order to fulfill his destiny, but he can't do it alone. "Will you help me?" Ben asks. "Yes," Han replies. "Anything." It's testament to how rock-solid this writing is that, framed differently, this scene could play as Ben pleading for his father to pull him away from The Dark Side; to be good again. But to do so would be to defy that this series has always been about generational failures, and this film is all about letting go of the past. Han's not about to let Ben down again. Seeing his son in pain, he helps the only way that he can. As Starkiller is ready to fire, having sucked out the last of the sun's light, leaving only the dark, Ben fires up his lightsaber, illuminating the room in reds and blacks, and plunges it into his father's chest. As they share a final look, Ben is horrified but sure of what he's done. Han Solo is tired, but in one final gesture, he raises his hand, strokes his son's cheek, and falls off the bridge. As he dies, the staunch refusal of these characters to let go of the past dies with him. It's not an accident that our protagonists are there to see him die, nor is it an excuse for Chewie to win the MVP award for being the only character in the film to successfully shoot Kylo Ren, though as a quick aside, holy shit do our writers get it. The only thing that transcends the force, Light and Dark, is love; Chewie's pain at seeing his best friend perish is more powerful than anything this universe could throw, and holy shit is it heartbreaking to watch. No, our new protagonists and our new antagonist are there for this moment because it's here that they learn that this actually is a brave new world, and they will not be able to look back for answers anymore. Like it or not, they have to take charge. Yes, a Death Star but bigger was a dumb idea, but I guarantee you that at the next corporate board meeting, Kylo Ren's going to have a new pitch. This filters through to the audience as well; Abrams and Co. have proven that they have it within them to make the Star Wars that you loved. Now, you have to trust them when they say they want to take you somewhere new.
I swear that one day I'll stop, but watching The Force Awakens, I couldn't help but think about Jurassic World, and how much The Force Awakens is everything that Jurassic World is not. In the Jurassic World version of The Force Awakens, Han would introduce himself only to have Rey react not in wonder and admiration, but with a, "Who? You're old!" It does worry me that Colin Trevorrow is taking the reigns of Episode IX, but given the fact that Disney/Marvel is very much a producer-based house that know what they want and seek directors that will do what they say, as opposed to Steven Spielberg's reputation as a producer, which is to throw money at it and say, "Who gives a fuck? I know I'll make it back", leaves me feeling that it may be okay. Colin Trevorrow's not a bad director, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't know that his film hates its audience. That film's issues stem from cultural problems, not auteur problems, which is why it's so heartening to see a film like The Force Awakens, a film which is certainly more design by committee than others is a film that not just respects its audience, but loves it. Abrams and Co. love you, but more than that, they love Star Wars. They love everything that it was, everything that it is, and everything that it can be. That last one is the important one; while the film does tread the line of being self-referential to the point of being derivative, it does so for a reason, which is to ease you into accepting the new things that are in store. Even better, they demonstrate that these new things will not come at the sacrifice of the emotional components that cause you to love Star Wars so much. This wonderfully diverse group has genuine affection for each other, that, while developed quickly, is not dishonest. It's earned. Is it a film without faults? Of course not. Emperor Snoke is the antagonist not yet mentioned, who is yet another boring J.J. Abrams CGI-monster with dead eyes. Having said that, we see Snoke for all of two minutes, and he's played by Andy Serkis. Who am I to judge before seeing the payoff? There's also the fact that though there are now finally two women in a Star Wars film, their only two interactions are a hug and a one-sided conversation where Leia says to Rey, "May the Force be with you." Emotionally affecting as these moments are, it is a bit disappointing that these characters, who have a shitload to talk about, one having just lost her husband, the other having just lost her father figure, both sharing in The Force, aren't given the 30 seconds it would take to have a fucking conversation. Having said that, this probably isn't the last time these two characters will be in a room, and it is a small fucking miracle that there is finally more than one woman in a Star Wars film. Who am I to judge before seeing the payoff? And that there is the last point I want to leave you with. A lot of people are hanging their hats regarding the future of Star Wars on this film alone, when Disney has been planning from the beginning for not just three new films, but an entire extended universe. There's a plan here. If you haven't received your answer, or you're unhappy with where something ended, consider the fact that you've only received the first fraction of the plan. Abrams and Co.'s job with The Force Awakens was to prove that a good Star Wars movie can still be made. Their greatest achievement was not getting greedy. Breathe out. It's okay. The Force Awakens is good, nothing more, nothing less. And that's nothing short of a miracle.
Finance is difficult to understand. That's not me offering up an opinion, and that's not intended to be a subjective statement. Finance is deliberately difficult to understand. If it weren't engineered to be difficult to understand, we'd all be crack investors living high and large. No, finance is a language developed by the greedy to make the common person feel stupid and stay poor. All the better to keep bleeding that sweet, sweet money. This is a point made very early on in The Big Short: you're an idiot, and that's okay. Nobody expects any more of you, and The Big Short, while it won't hold your hand, also won't talk down to you. But, see, here's the thing: what happens in The Big Short is actually quite simple. A group of freaks (I say that endearingly) who speak in numbers predict that the housing market is in danger of imminent collapse in spite of looking quite healthy. This is due to the humongous increase in approved subprime loans that carry high risk and are seeing fewer and fewer return payments. Taking the opportunity to fuck the banks over for once, these number freaks invest big, big money that they don't have into betting against the housing market, something the banks are more than happy to jump on board with because, remember, everything looks gravy right now. Eventually, they come to realise that the scope and scale of this fraudulent activity on American citizens stretches so far that not only will the housing market collapse, but so will the entire economy. Not only that, but they're not sticking it to the banks at all; the banks know they're about to go under, and they're ready to bail themselves out with poor people's tax dollars. The economy collapses, the number freaks successfully get rich and unsuccessfully fuck the banks over, leaving them miserable, and the banks aren't brought to answer for a single one of their crimes. Ask me if I described that correctly. Go on, ask me. I'm serious.
"Did you describe that correctly?"
I don't fucking know! I'm not good with numbers, and this shit doesn't make any fucking sense. There is an incredible scene early on in the film where Christian Bale's character, Michael Burry, has just bet somewhere in the range of a billion dollars on the housing market collapsing about two years from now. His hedge fund company has assets totaling around $550 million, and paying premiums of roughly $100 million a month, that gives him about six months of being rich and claiming to be right before being broke and claiming to be right. Understandably, his top investors are pretty sweaty about this. In a confrontation that is heated only on one side, Burry's top investors, one of them his mentor, claim that he has to be joking. Burry, wearing a tattered surf t-shirt, khaki shorts and no shoes, one glass eye drifting aimlessly, mouth half curled as if he's on the verge of understanding a joke we haven't heard yet, quietly says, and I paraphrase and call on earlier scenes, "I don't know how to joke. I don't know how to be funny. Every time I try to complement someone, it somehow comes out like an insult ("That's a nice haircut. Did you do it yourself?"). All I know, is numbers. And I know I'm right." His mentor isn't swayed by his quiet, puppy dog self-disparagement. "Give me my fucking money, you motherfucker." Burry slowly spins his office chair to turn his back to his visitors, trying to communicate to them in the only way he knows how that they can fuck right off. "No," he replies. Burry continually struggles to communicate the reality of this situation to everyone he speaks to, which interestingly is reflected on the whole of The Big Short itself. Remember, finance is difficult to understand, but as it's the central conceit of the film, writer/director Adam McKay certainly goes to lengths to help you understand. Or does he? Throughout the film's duration, I kept changing my mind on whether he was trying to break the nuts and bolts of this concept into digestible pieces of only the necessary information, or whether he was trying to prove that it doesn't matter how you dress up an impenetrable concept, because it will always be impenetrable. Every now and then, he'll pause the film to have celebrities jump in and break down some of the lingo for you. The first is Margot Robbie, sipping champagne whilst taking a bubble bath, as she explains to you what a subprime loan is. It's funny, but I didn't finish the scene understanding any more about housing loans or the housing market in general than when I went in, because Robbie continued to use the convoluted dialogue every other character had been using up until that point. In another example, however, Selena Gomez uses a game of blackjack to describe what a synthetic collateralised debt obligation is, and the far-reaching financial implications that it holds. Ah, now we have something analogous! This is something that's been reframed around my cultural background; something that I can digest. Could I deliver a lecture on the difference between a CDO and a synthetic CDO? Ask me. Come on, ask me.
"Could you deliver a lecture on the difference between a CDO and a synthetic CDO?"
Of course I fucking couldn't! Selena Gomez could be framing it through fucking UNO and it would still be too complicated for me to wrap my head around. But, what I do have now is some context, and some framing, to apply to the situation at hand. I know, based on my understanding of the word 'fraud', and my understanding that a lot of hired-out money to multiple people that cannot pay it back does not hold good prospects, that this is a situation that, as someone who has identified in my life as lower-middle class, is something I should be mad about. But if I'm to keep having this discussion, I need to be able to talk some of the language. Gomez helped me out. Robbie just shouted jargon at me and told me to fuck off. It leaves me wondering what Adam McKay's intent was with The Big Short. Take another film about money, for instance. Though its ultimate intent is to be a case study on the nature of addiction in general, The Wolf of Wall Street has a lot of complicated financial trickery to cover so that you understand how Jordan Belfort got so much fuck you money. And yet, when it comes time for him to be breaking it down for you, he cuts it off midway to acknowledge that you're probably not following, and that's okay, because the most important thing to know is that what he was doing was not legal in the slightest. I appreciate that sentiment, in spite of the fact that I felt my intelligence to be slightly insulted, because The Wolf of Wall Street was being respectfully upfront. The Big Short seems slightly more schizophrenic in its intent. When it calls me an idiot, I can't necessarily disagree, but I also often feel like it hasn't given me the shot to prove otherwise. However, in saying that, perhaps the film did give me every chance. Perhaps I didn't pay enough attention, because I, like most other people, glaze over when intentionally murky numbers and dialogue come into play. And perhaps that's the movie's greatest point. Yes, finance is difficult to understand, but that's because it was made to be that way. If you accept that, you're accepting that you will continue to be fucked over however and whenever your bank pleases. But, and I know this is hard because finance is not only difficult to understand, but boring as fuck, if you acknowledge that it's important, and you pay attention, which I know you have the power to do, you can start to learn, and you can continue to learn, and you can start having discussions, and you can be wrong, and you can learn why you were wrong, and you can learn how to not be wrong the next time, and you can continue to build and amass and develop until, suddenly, you know as much as the banks do. And though they may have the power, you may have the ability to take some of that power away. Not all of it, but just think about how much you could take if everyone had this knowledge. I mean, if we want to get really idealistic, we could bring the banks and the big corps to their knees. We could start a revolution. It has to start somewhere, right? We could stop liking Facebook posts and thinking that's somehow making a change, and start acting. We could find the banks' weaknesses and exploit them, together. We could ensure that there is no tax money to swipe from the poor to bail them out this time. We could make them answer. We could make them pay. We could do this. We really could. But, then again, finance is really difficult to understand. So, what am I saying? The Big Short is an excellent film that raises a tremendous problem only to conclude that there's really nothing we can do about it because we're just too dumb. And, offended as that may leave me, I can't exactly say that's wrong.
