New Evangelizers Post: St. Paul the Revolutionary

                      

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

Yesterday was the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. These two men were the pillars of the ancient Church who were martyred by the Roman Emperor Nero.

And yet even though they were killed by Rome, they conquered Rome in the name of Christ.

Particularly, the influence of St. Paul cannot be overlooked. When I teach about him, I tell my students that it is impossible to oversell how important Paul is to the Christian faith. But his ideas are not merely ideas that shaped the internal workings of Christian theology.

Paul’s ideas changed the ancient world.

Other writers are written volumes of books explaining this principle in writing more in-depth and eloquent than I can provide in this brief article. But I would like to share three brief insights as to why Paul was so important:

1. THE BRUTALITY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

The agnostic historian Tom Holland spent the early part of his career studying the classical period of antiquity. Like many young men, he became fascinated by ancient Greco-Roman culture. But as he continued in his studies, something began to distress him. He talked about the “quality of callousness” found in the ancient world.

We live in a world where we start from a principle of every human life having value, thus each of us as essential rights. This was not part of the ancient Greco-Roman mindset. Other people were seen as a means to an end. Julius Caesar killed and enslaved thousands of people for personal glory and this was seen by the Romans as heroic. As Holland continued researching the Greeks and Romans, he began to discover how alien their thought was from his own, especially in the way they were so casually cruel about human life. We are all familiar with their bloodlust as displayed in the gladiator fights and executions in the Colosseum. But this fell down to the micro-level as well. Fathers had the right to kill their babies at birth if they did not like the look of them. In fact, the father was a such a tyrant in the house that he could beat, kill, or sell into slavery his own children.

This is the world into which Paul preaches. This is the world he changed.

2. LONG-LASTING EFFECTS

Some have sayd that Paul led to ripples of revolution in society. The ideas found in his letters about the dignity of all people, whether they were male, female, Jewish, Gentile, slave, or free, would lead to further cultural revolutions once his ideas took hold.

Again, it is important to grasp what a change this was from what had come before. I wrote in a previous article that Rome enslaved 75% of the people int he Mediterranean, bleeding them dry of people, wealth, and resources. The only type of leadership was one of domination, where this exploitation was justified because might makes right.

But when Paul preaches to the Romans, he gives them the vision of Christ’s better way: one where the only authority is the authority of service. It was actually very dangerous for Paul to imply that wives have equal dignity with husbands or that masters had moral obligations to slaves. But he laid the groundwork for any revolutionary framework that puts the dignity of the human person at the center.

In fact, it was said that his ideas were so far-reaching that the ripples of revolutions would occur without people realizing that the ripples came from him.

3. HE NEVER ARGUES CHRIST’S DIVINITY

One of the popular trends in recent Biblical studies is to take the idea that Jesus’ divinity is a later development of Christian theology. The thinking goes that early Christians did not believe Jesus was God, but that it was later traditions that dressed Him up in Godliness.

But this is clearly not the case as proven by St. Paul. No Bible scholar disputes that his writings were some of the earliest in Christianity, at least pre-dating the Gospels. If this was the case, then Paul should be writing about Jesus more human terms than divine terms.

Instead, what we find is that Paul never argues that Jesus is the Son of God. In all of his letters, he never lays out an argument or a proof that Jesus is Divine.

He just assumes it outright.

You can read the whole article here.

Film Review: The Life of Chuck

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

I heard a reviewer say that depending on where you are in life, this movie will hit you differently.

I wanted to put that here at the beginning in order to be fair to this movie and raise the possibility that with recent losses in my life that perhaps I was not in the right place to see it.

Because I thought that The Life of Chuck was a bad movie.

The story begins by focusing on Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is a high school English teacher trying to maintain normalcy while the world seems to be coming to an end.  Eight months earlier the internet went down and now only works sporadically.  Wars, famines, and all other kinds of natural disasters are plaguing the world as it slowly falls apart.  In these trying times, Marty tries reconnecting to his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillen), each looking to each other for some kind of comfort.  At the same time, everyone keeps seeing this messages saying "Thanks, Chuck.  39 Great Years" along with a picture of Chuck (Tom Hiddleston).  As things begin to fall apart even more, Marty tries to make it to Felicia.  Once this story resolves, we shift to a day in the life of Chuck when he decided to dance along to the music of a street musician.  After this, the story shifts once again to Chuck's childhood.  The young Chuck (Benjamin Pajak) suffers loss when his parents are killed in a car accident and he is sent to live with his grandfather (Mark Hamill) and grandmother (Mia Sara).  He is pulled between a life of dance and a life of accounting.  And there is a locked door in the house with a terrible secret.

If all of that feels like it doesn't fit together, that's because it doesn't.  Don't get me wrong, it could have.  One more scene at the end to tie everything together would have been enough.  But the movie thinks it is saying something profound and life-affirming, but it is most clearly doing the opposite.

The best thing I can say about the movie is that the performances are outstanding.  I honestly think that Hamill should get an Oscar nomination.  He gives a monologue about the beauty of math that may have convinced me to become an accountant.  Ejiofor and Gillen are wonderful as you can feel their existential terror slowly flooding over them.  Mia Sara does a great job of being the balancing and creative force of Chuck's life.  Hiddleston actually has very little to work with, but when he is on the screen, he is very effective.  Even Matthew Lillard has a small part where he gives a very nice performance along with Carl Lumbly.

I only wish the performances were in a movie that was worthy of them.

In order to fully explain the problem with the film, it will require SPOILERS.  I generally don't like to do that in a movie review, but it is the only way I can adequately explain what went wrong. So be warned:

SPOILERS FOR THE REST OF THE REVIEW

The movie deals with two high concept ideas: 

1. "I contain multitudes"

2. The Mystery Room of Death

Maybe if the movie had focused on one or the other, it would have worked.  But these two things to do not go together and they really have nothing to do with each other.  They never converge in anything close to catharsis.

Regarding the first idea, this comes from a time when young Chuck listens to his teacher read a Walt Whitman poem where he says "I contain multitudes."  This means that every person that Chuck has ever encountered or imagined exists in some way inside of him.  That's what the entire first act takes place in Chuck's mind.  Marty, Felicia, and everyone else are living in a universe of Chuck's mind.  Throughout the next two acts, the people of of the first act can be seen as background characters.  The movie is saying that when you encounter anyone, you make a little version of them inside of you that lives out an entire life.  But Chuck is dying of brain cancer.  The words, "Thanks, Chuck.  39 great years," are words that his wife (Q'Orianka Kilcher) says to him in his last moments.  The universe is ending because of Chuck.  

The Mystery Room of Death is about the locked room in his grandparents' house.  This movie is based on a Stephen King story and this is the most Stephen King-esque element.  The grandfather has a locked room where he sees people's deaths.  You learn this slowly over the course of the movie, but Chuck's curiosity gets the better of him in the end.  After both of his grandparents are dead, he goes into the room and sees himself dying from brain cancer.  He resolves to live life to the fullest and ends by saying, "I am wonderful.  I deserve to be wonderful.  And I contain multitudes."  

And that is where the movie ends.

This is supposed to be an uplifting message about seizing the day.  Instead, it reminds us that the multitudes in Chuck's mind end their existence in meaningless abject horror and then blink out of existence for no purpose.   There is a subtle implication that this is happening in all of us or that we ourselves might be part of that multitude inside someone's mind.  Rather than being life-affirming, it points us to the meaninglessness of life.  It implies that we are not beings of purpose and substance but random, purposeless chance.  

The characters in the first act are given no resolution.  Their existence is given no greater meaning by learning about Chuck's life.  In fact, Chuck's cancer itself plays out like a cruel, nihilistic joke.  The fact that Chuck knows he is going to die has no bearing on anything that happens in the entire story.  Does he live life to the fullest?  I mean... maybe?  We know he has a wife and child so that is something important.  But we never really get to see his life outside of his childhood and the one day he danced.  He doesn't seem all that happy as an adult, so I don't know what the ending is supposed to be saying.  

Notice too how the Mystery Room of Death adds nothing to the first act and the characters that you care about.  If Chuck knows his death or doesn't, it makes absolutely no difference.  The two ideas are so wildly unconnected that it feels like the movie would have been better served if they had taken one out and focused on the other.

And it's not that the movie had to find a super-fun-happy ending for the Act One characters.  But the movie never pays off its narrative debt.  What I mean is that it gives us characters to empathize with who are going through a crisis.  The story owes it to us to give us a proper resolution (even if it is an ambiguous resolution).  Instead, it leaves them in total darkness and expects you to forget about their fate by the time the movie ends.  It expects you to say, "Well, they weren't really real, so it doesn't matter."  But the movie made them real in Act One and you cannot remove their personhood from the audience.

The movie wants to say something about how life is about the moments of wonder.  And while that is absolutely a part of the magic of life, it ignores the need for purpose and meaning in order to make life worth living.

In the end, I honestly don't know if this was an intentional bait-and-switch, where we are promised It's a Wonderful Life and are instead given Melancholia or if the film makers honestly don't understand the nihilism that is poisoning their supposed optimism.  

Either way, I'd recommended avoiding The Life of Chuck.

Film Review: How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

 

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

For anyone who has seen the original How to Train Your Dragon, this movie will hold no suprises.

But sometimes, that's a good thing.

The story is exactly the same as the animated film: on the Viking island of Berk, the people are constantly attacked by dragons.  Hiccup (Mason Thames) is the son of the hulking Chieftain Stoick (Gerard Butler, reprising his role from the original).  Unlike his father, he is sheepish, meek, and pensive rather than assertive and physically imposing.  Hiccup happens to down the scariest dragon of all: a Night Fury.  But when Hiccup finds it in the woods, he finds he cannot kill it and slowly the two become friends.  Meanwhile, Hiccup is forced into training as a Dragon Fighter along with the other young people of his village:

Astrid (Nico Parker): the girlboss warrior that Hiccup is in love with.

Snotlout (Gabriel Howell): machismo-fueled boy who wants his father's attention and Astrid's affection.

Fishlegs (Julian Dennison): overweight and timid Dragon nerd

Ruffnut (Bronwyn James) and Tuffnut (Harry Trevaldwyn): idiot twins.

All the while, Hiccup learns more about dragons he inadvertently advances in his Dragon Fighter training.  This puts him on a collision course between his love of dragons and the villages hatred of dragons.

Just like the original film, this is a movie that gets better as it goes.  Everything in the beginning is very cartoonish and standard children's story fare.  But as the story continues, we get to see Hiccup grow up into a man.  This movie also does one of the things that I love, which is that the finale draws together all of the plot, character, and story elements into a convergence.  This is such an important and basic part of storytelling that so few movies doe well anymore.  

What recommends seeing this movie if it is so similar to the animated?  I would have to say that the visuals are gorgeous.  The flying scenes alone are worth the price of admission.  Director Dean DeBlois wisely filmed as much as possible on location.  The island of Berk is so beautiful that you can understand why people who stay and fight for it even with the dragon problem.  Perhaps the backgrounds were all CGI for the flying scenes.  But instead a great deal of it felt like they photographed drone footage and used that.  Whether or not this is the case, the scenes with Hiccup and his dragon Toothless flying across the island feel tangible and thrilling.  

I also love the fact that this movie has something to say about masculinity and the relationship between fathers and sons.

Part of the conceit of the film is that many of the characters, especially the younger ones, behave not like historical Vikings but by 21st Century teenagers, which is fine.  At first it feels like Hiccup is a beta-male weak boy who slavishly follows Astrid.  In what they do with this relationship is interesting and feels a bit more developed than the animated.  She is a girlboss, but the film wisely shows this as a strength and a weakness.  She is excellent at fighting and strategy.  But she has a gigantic chip on her shoulder and has the need to dominate everything.  At one point she tells Hiccup that she will be chieftain one day instead of him.  She smirks at him waiting to come back with some sniveling response.  Instead he tells her that she would be a great chieftain and you can see the disappointment on her face.  This relationship is complicated.

But the most complicated relationship is between Hiccup and Stoick.  The world they live in is violent and dangerous.  Stoick's wife (Hiccup's mother) has already been lost.  Stoick is burdened with the weight of responsibility and needs his son to learn to carry the burden.  But he tries to mold him in the only way he knows how: the way Stoick was raised.  But Hiccup is not like his father.  He admires him and wants to be like him, but he is not.  Hiccup thinks things can be different and better.  Because of this, they aren't able to communicate.  There is something very powerful and primal about this.  I think most men feel like their fathers are giants and they will never live up to them.  But I think that growing up most of us also feel like our fathers don't see the type of men we want to be and are misunderstood.  This fantastic tension is constantly at play in the movie as Stoick tries to make Hiccup a man.

Later in the movie after discovering Hiccup's secret she confronts him about sharing it with the village.  But Hiccup refuses.  She asks him if he is really willing to go against his father and everyone else in the village.  Hiccup does not raise his voice, but he very resolutely makes his stand.  What I love about this moment is that Hiccup finds his manhood.  And his masculinity is like and unlike Stoick's.  He isn't physically imposing.  But he finds something worth fighting for and he makes his stand regardless of the consequences.  One of the things that makes this scene work so well is that you can see that Astrid really sees Hiccup for the first time and the chip on her shoulder falls off.  She is willing to follow his lead while not losing any of her own strength.

The performances tend to be a bit broad, but this works for the movie.  Thames has to carry the movie and he does that very well.  The production design capture much of the animated.  The wisely kept Toothless' design almost untouched, with his gigantic, innocent eyes.  The John Powell score is as powerful as ever and gave me chills.

I know that a lot of parents worry about the bait and switch that studios like Disney have done lately, where they offer a movie as family-friendly, but then they introduce adult themes.  Disney could learn from How to Train your Dragon.  Here you have something that is safe for the family and will end with everyone felling good.

And that is my best recommendation for the film.

Film Flash: How To Train Your Dragon (2025)

 

 

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Now this is how you do a live-action remake.  Silly, fun, exciting, gorgeous, feel-good film.

 

Film Flash: The Life of Chuck

 

 

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Bait and switch!  Promises life-affirming, uplifting experience.  Delivers nihilistic depression.  Wastes a great cast.

New Evangelizers Post: Why Only the Four Gospels?

                     

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

There are literally dozens of Gospels that were floating around the ancient world. We are all familiar with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, But there are also many other Gospels like the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and so on.

Why do we only accept Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the Canonical Gospels?

The Canonical Gospels are the officially accepted Gospels. They are called Canonical because the word “canon” means “an official list or approved collection of written works.” This is because these are the ones that are accepted as officially inspired, as concluded in the 4th Century.

These Gospels met the criteria of St. Athanasius who said that they had to be Apostolic, Catholic, and liturgical.

Apostolic means that it had to be attributed to an Apostle (or to an apostolic tradition). In ancient days, many believed that Matthew and John were written by members of the 12. Mark was thought to be the secretary to St. Peter. And Luke was known to be a companion of St. Paul. And while the non-Canonical Gospels bear the names of Apostles, their connection was always taken as dubious.

Catholic means that it had to be something in the universal Church, and not just in a small geographical region. A number of the other Gospels were found only in a very small community and not accepted by the entire Church. In fact, within only a few decades of them being written, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all accepted as authentic. The other non-Canonical Gospels were not.

Liturgical means that it had to have been incorporated in the worship of the Christian communities. Just as we do now, we read from the Gospels at our Eucharistic celebrations. And the only ones that were always accepted to be a part of this were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The Non-Canonical Gospels are the ones that are not in the officially accepted list of inspired books. These are divided into the categories of the Gnostic Gospels, which express different versions of the Gnostic heresy, and the rest are called the apocryphal Gospels. The Gnostic Gospels were written by the Gnostic heretics in order to give legitimacy to their heresy by putting their theology into the mouth of Christ. But these were written much later than the original Gospels. The apocryphal Gospels may not be part of this heretical group, but they lack to criteria set out by Athanasius.

So what makes us think that the Four Gospels are authentic historically?

You can read the whole article here.

Wednesday Comics: Rest in Peace, Peter David

 

Photo by Gauge Skidmore

I've been writing for most of my life.  I don't know that I am very good, but sometimes I look back on my early work and at least I am better than I was.

But one of my other observations is that in my early writing I am clearly trying to imitate the writers I admired.  I can clearly see my Frank Miller phase and then my Alan Moore phase.   But in my own writing, I can see the biggest influence on my early writing was clear:

Peter David.

Something to remember about comic books in the 1990's was that the artist was king.  Todd MacFarlane, Jim Lee, Erik Larson, Alan Silvestri, Jim Valentino, Whilce Portacio, and others were making tons of money for Marvel.  Eventually they took their talents to form their own creator-owned company: Image Comics.  The title of the company was not an accident as it emphasized the art.

But Peter David was the writer that made me realize that art means nothing without a good story.  On top of this, bad art was tolerable if the story was great.

This was clear to me when David took over X-Factor.  The original X-Factor team was one of my favorite comics at the time.  It was a team made up of the original X-Man: Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Beast, and Iceman.  But when they rejoined the X-Men, instead of cancelling X-Factor, they decided to make a new team made up of characters that seemed to be underused by the main franchise: Havok, Polaris, Wolfsbane, the Multiple Man, Guido Carosella, and Quicksliver.  Honestly, I thought that this was a terrible idea.  On top of that, the artist they hired for the book was Larry Stroman.  Now taste is subjective, but I did not care for his overly-stylized, cartoonish art.  I'm like Homer Simpson: I like my pictures to like like the things they look like.  Everything about this book had the earmarks of something terrible.

But I maintain that Peter David's X-Factor may be one of the best Marvel series ever.

By taking underused characters, David was able to really explore them as characters without a lot of oversight.  He could take chances with them and let them grow and evolve.  

Part of David's power as a writer was his versatility.  He could write action, drama, romance, and comedy seamlessly.  Before the MCU had their cinematic Marvel style of writing, David perfected it.  He could grip you with tension, break that tension with a giant laugh, and then break your heart all within the space of a few panels.

I still quote some of his jokes when people applaud me for something, I use the words of Madrox the Multiple Man: "Please, no applause.  Just throw cash."

He was able to do this because he understood character.

One of the greatest single issues of a comic book I've ever read is X-Factor #87.  After the events if Executioner's Song, each of the team members has to sit down and talk with a therapist.  There is almost no action in this issue.  It involves each individual member of the team staring right at the reader and baring their soul.  In just a few short pieces of dialogue he was able to completely break down the essence of everyone on the team.  Most people remember how he was able to explain why Quicksilver was a such a jerk in the comics.  But for me, I remember Guido "Strong Guy" Carosella.  I have never forgotten how he said with a giant smile on his face, "But to this day I'm in constant agony.  Constant."  

Just this year, I finally go a Wolfsbane action figure so now I have a complete set of this X-Factor team on my shelf.  I'm looking at them right now as I type these words, reminding me of all of the great stories that David wrote.

But David is probably most famous for his work on The Incredible Hulk.  His run on that book as never been topped.  He brought in such strength to the character that David helped keep him relevant in the decades that followed.  He not only gave us the classic "Joe Fixit" character but the "Professor Hulk" that was eventually adopted by the MCU.  Of course David's "Professor Hulk" was a much more interesting character.  Rather than just being Banner's brain in a Hulk body, David's creation was a true amalgamation of Banner, the Grey Hulk, and the Green Hulk.  He was brilliant and rageful and crafty.  It was a difficult character to get exactly right, but he did it.

His Incredible Hulk had some truly shocking moments of murder and mayhem.  I think he created the ultimate Hulk villain in the Maestro during his miniseries Future Imperfect.  

David dabbled a little DC by creating Young Justice, a book that was ahead of its time in how silly and fun it was.  He also explored the supernatural and religion in his underrated Supergirl series.  He is also the one who gave a radical new take on Aquaman, giving him the hook hand and beard.  This was one of my favorite eras for Aquaman and is reflected in his time in Grant Morrison's JLA.

He is also famous for creating Miguel O'Hara: Spider-Man 2099.  This book, like all of his books, was filled with thrills, drama, and humor.  

David also wrote the only Star Trek novel I ever read: Q-Squared.  This was a fantastic story that I still remember and would have made an amazing 2-part episode to the series, tying together Trelane from the original series and Q from the Next Generation.

As the years went on, his writing got darker.  In the second volume of X-Factor, Jamie Madrox has a son with Siryn.  What happens in that issue is so heartbreaking that I can barely write about it without getting emotional.  As he wrapped up the stories of these characters, not everyone ended up with a happy ending.  A few years ago, his Ben Reilly: The Scarlett Spider was one of the most nihilistic things I had ever read from him.

Perhaps he was in a dark place because his health was failing.  This man who had brought so much joy to readers and who had made Marvel so much money with his treasury of stories was going bankrupt due to medical bills.  In 2012, he suffered a stroke and his condition slowly deteriorated.  In the subsequent years he had strokes, heart attacks, and kidney failure.  He passed away on May 24th, 2025 at the age of 68.  He had 4 daughters: one with his ex-wife and one with his widow.

I don't know how much comfort this would be to him or his family. but Peter David's life touched mine.  He helped shape my own voice.  So in a way, he lives on when I write anything.  And I will continue to share his stories so that they can know the joy I know:

The joy of knowing Peter David.

Film Flash: From the World of John Wick - Ballerina

 

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Lacks the full magic of John Wick, but there's a flamethrower duel, so I'm satisfied.

Film Flash: Karate Kid Legends

 

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Enjoyable, superficial martial arts flick.  Chan and Macchio aren't leads, but have glorified cameos

Film Review - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

 

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

(It feels odd to be returning to something like film reviews after the death of my friend.  But I do know that these are the things that we would talk about, so I try to keep that in mind as I write.)

I've been to events where someone who had worked there for a long time is given a fond farewell.  Towards the end, the person leaving gets up to give a speech.  And at first all of the good will and good feelings fill the room.  But if this person goes on for too long and gets too far into the weeds of obscure stories, all of that good will begins to fade and the audience develops a desire for the person to leave sooner rather than later.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning appears to be Tom Cruise's swan song farewell to this franchise that has served him well for these 30 years.  He has a lot to say and a lot to do.  But like that speech that goes on a bit too long, Cruise indulges just a little too much.  It does not ruin the movie and there are enough excitement and thrills to make it worth your money.  But a little more discipline and editing could have cemented this one as maybe the best of the series.

The story takes place a few months after Dead Reckoning.  The AI known as the Entity is wreaking havoc on the world, filling it with so much disinformation that people can no longer tell the truth from a lie.  As a result, most countries have put their citizens under martial law.  To make matters worse, the Entity is hacking into the nuclear arsenals of all the world's governments to trigger the annihilation of the human race.  But Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has the literal key to stopping all of it.  He has to once again work with Luther (Ving Rhames), Benjy (Simon Pegg), Grace (Haley Atwell), and a few others to race against the clock.  In addition to this, the President (Angela Bassett) wants Ethan to come in so that they can gain control of the Entity rather than destroy it.  Other nations, like the Russians, are also hot on their trail.  With the odds stacked against them, the question is whether or not they can accomplish this impossible mission.

The flaws in this movie come from a deep desire to give the fans a satisfying conclusion to this saga.  For that reason, the movie retrains much of its good will.  For those who have been loyal devotees, there are call backs that are incredibly satisfying.  There is a character that returns from the first film that could have been a glorified cameo.  Instead this character is give depth and an arc.  The movie likes to show how the series is interconnected.  For example, it takes the Rabbit's Foot from Mission: Impossible III and connects it to the events in The Final Reckoning.

However, not all of these threads tie neatly into a bow.  For example, Briggs (Shea Whigham) seemed to have a vendetta against Ethan in the previous film.  The reason is revealed here and it is related to an earlier film.  But, it doesn't have the emotional payoff that Cruise thinks that it should.  Also, even though to movie goes on for very long, there are many characters that don't have much of an arc.  Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) joins Ethan's team, but he really doesn't add much of anything to the question. One of the president's general's, Sidney (Nick Offerman), seems to go on an interesting and unexpected journey, but it feels truncated and doesn't have the punch it should.

However, there are some actors who take what little screen time they have to shine.  Tramell Tillman as Captain Bledsoe only has a handful of lines as the Captain of a critical submarine.  But he delviers each line with the energy and charisma of someone in a Tarantino film.  Pom Klementieff has almost no lines, but she adds a violently comic presence throughout.  Rhames seems exhausted by the entire series, but he gives a good, emotional monologue.  Atwell is charming and vulnerable, which is refreshing from the infallible girl boss types that are usually dominating these types of films.  Pegg infuses Benjy with both drama and humor and we really care about what happens to him.  And Cruise is as good as ever.

Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie push the stunt sequences to their limit.  There is a sequence when he has to enter a sunken submarine that begins to roll off an underwater cliff.  The scene is so well constructed that you feel like you are caught in there with him and the claustrophobia is palpable.  But the real topper is the airplane chase at the end.  I need to share an embarrassing story to illustrate how good this was.  After the movie my wife noted that I was "helping" Ethan during the sequence.  When I asked her what she meant, she said that while I was holding her hand, I was moving my hand around as if I was steering the plane too.  I didn't realize I was doing this, but it shows how viscerally thrilling this stunt sequence was and it was one of the best of the entire franchise.

The movie wants to say something about humanity verses AI and faith over fear.  Those are very interesting themes, but it doesn't really have time to be explored.  It is summed up in a line that where it says that we can bring about a future "reflecting the measure of good within ourselves.  And all that is good inside us is measured. by the good we do for others."  The team does what they do not for themselves but for the good of others.  This selfless heroism is something that I have always loved about these films.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning lingers slightly too long on the stage.  But after it has taken its final bow, you are left with the warm feeling of thirty years of memories.

 

He Has Gone Into the West

Yesterday my friend died.

Matt became one of my best friends at a time when I did not think I would gain any more best friends.

Please pray for the repose of his soul and pray for his wife and family that he leaves behind.

When I think of what words I can use to express how I am feeling, I am at a bit of a loss.  I've always felt that there are things we experience that are incapable of being put into words.  I also find that when I do try to formulate something, it is a quote or a paraphrase from a story I read or a movie I saw.  I suppose that is to be expected.  Fictional grief is a way for us to come to understand actual grief.  But it seems trivial to take these words to describe an actual loss of this magnitude.

Then again, for Matt this might be utterly proper.  Our friendship grew in the pop culture.  We had mutual friends back in college and we ended up running in the same social circles.  It was only later that I came to realize what a comic book geek he was.  A number of my friends had taken up the hobby at some point, but most of them had outgrown it.  

But not Matt.

And so we found ourselves spending more and more time together talking about comics and movies and TV.  In science, a culture is substratum where things can grow.  In this weird popular culture Matt and I lived in, our friendship grew.

Everything I could say about Matt seems too simple.  An adjective is too flat to encapsulate the depths of a life.  And I lack the skill to add all the layers and dimensions of his person so that you could know him.

But above all, Matt was kind.  That isn't to say that he was weak or passive.  I once saw him almost get into a fist fight at a movie theater over saving seats for his friends.  But he was always very others-centered.  Every single memory I have of him is one where he is smiling.  He was the kind of person who would drop everything if a friend asked for help.  He kindness was such that I would sometimes see others take advantage of his generosity of spirit.  Matt was no dummy.  He knew when people did not appreciate the things he did for them.

But Matt did them anyway.  Because Matt was kind.

Over the decades that I've known him, we must have had hundreds of conversations.  And yet I struggle to remember what was said.  I suppose the content of the conversation is not as important as the person to whom you are conversing.  Like me, Matt was a teacher.  When it was summer, he would drive up to my house each Wednesday afternoon and we would go up to my local comic book show and then out to lunch.  All the while we would fill the time talk of JRR Tolkien vs. George RR Martin or if could Darkseid defeat Thanos.  Even after Matt got sick, we tried to keep the tradition when we could.

There are five conversations that I can remember with clarity.

Once we were asked which superhero we would like to be.  Normally, people immediately think of what super powers they would like to have.  But Matt and I knew these characters like old friends.  Some of the obvious ones like Batman or Spider-Man we said no to because of the tragic loss at the heart of their stories.  Others like Superman we also said no to because of the weight of the responsibility.  But we each individually concluded that we would want to be Wally West.  Of all the heroes to take the mantle of the Flash, he did so not out of a tragedy but out of a desire to do what was right.  And Wally lived as normal a life as a hero can get with a wife and children.  Both Matt and I saw that there is something so precious in an ordinary life.  He always wanted someone he could share a life with and take care of.

Because Matt was kind.

The second was one he had with my wife and I.  We had people over the house one evening.  As people began to head home, he lingered afterwards.  He then sat down with us because he need to talk about some things going on in his life.  I won't divulge here what private struggles he was having, but I remember this because it was at this point I think I began to understand just how important we had become to each other and how much we had started to rely on on another.  And just like my wife and I were there for him, he was always there for us.

Because Matt was kind.

The third conversation is one that I had right before the premiere of a film I had spent the past few months producing.  The night of the premiere also coincided with the premiere of a new Godzilla movie in theaters.  And Matt being the loyal person that he was decided to go and see Godzilla instead of my movie.  When I asked him why, he said, "You have to understand: I've known Godzilla a lot longer than you."  Years later I got my revenge when I gave my best man toast and shared this story with all his friends and family at his wedding.  But Matt smiled as I roasted him.  In fact, even though I was poking fun at him a little, he seemed to enjoy the fact that I remembered his words from all those years ago.

Because Matt was kind.

The fourth conversation was when I was sitting my car in the parking lot of my school.  It was a dark January evening and the snow was falling and bitter.  I got to my car and Matt called me.  I thought he wanted to talk about something from his wedding and honeymoon just a few short weeks before.  Instead he told me that he was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer.  In that moment I was filled with an uncomfortable rage at the unfairness of what was happening.  No one deserves cancer, but especially someone like Matt.

Because Matt was kind.

The final conversation was the last one I had with him alone.  Less than a week ago, I stopped by his house.  I didn't think he would be awake.  He had been getting weaker and weaker.  But when his wife let me in, he was there lying on the couch.  Gone was the smile that until now had never left his face.  Both of us understood that this would probably be the last time the two of us would have together like this.  I sat down next to him and held his hand.  I will keep our words private and not share them with you here.  But we said what we needed to say.  I don't know that I ever cried in front of him, but no matter how hard I tried, the tears would run down my face.  One of the sad burdens of dying is that when people come and visit, the sick person often has to comfort the visitor.  I don't know how long we sat there together, but Matt saw my tears and heard the heartbreak in my voice.  He saw that I had a small gift for him in my hand.  So to cheer me up, Matt snapped his head up.  And that smile that was so central to who he was came back and he lit up the room and he said, "So, what'd you get me?!?"  Even though he was the one dying, he took our last moments to make sure that I would feel better.

Because Matt was kind.

Sitting here now, I can feel the wrenching in my chest and the warm tears down my cheek.  I remind myself that the pain I feel now is a remembrance of the love I have.  Looking back on what I have written, I can see what a poor job I have done of sharing Matt with you.  Mostly all I've done is describe how Matt affected me and how he made me feel.  But this time is not about me, it's about him.  And yet all I can think about is how much I am going to miss my friend.

The most important people in your life make your heart grow because they become a part of it.  And when they leave, they take that piece of your heart with them.  

But part of me rejoices for Matt.  His last few years were so difficult. He carried his cross without complaint and fought on more bravely than I ever could.  But the wound never fully healed.  As I said at the beginning, all of my images to express my grief are tied up in the stories Matt and I loved.  And here it is no different.  I image us at the Gray Havens and he is about to board his ship into the West for the Undying Lands.  We don't want to say our goodbyes but white shores are calling.  And before he steps on board, he turns to us and smiles.  He lets us know that he is going to a far green country under a swift sunrise.  He is laying down the pain of this life and He is going into the arms of the Father.  

If, by God's mercy, I am to one day enter the Kingdom of Heaven, I know that my friend will be waiting for me.  And despite all the ways I ever let him down or failed at being a good friend to him, he will welcome me with open arms.

Because Matt is kind.