Film Review: Tron - Ares

 

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

I am big fan of the original Tron.  As I grew older I was surprised to learn how few people truly loved this movie.  For me, it belongs up at towards the top of 1980's sci-fi.  I love the world, the design, and the mythology of it all.  I was very disappointed by Tron: Legacy, which felt like poor copy of the original with better special effects.  So I went into Tron: Ares with very low expectations.

But, darn it, Tron: Ares was kind of fun!

The story takes place many years after the last Tron movie.  Dillinger Company has created their own grid and their perfect warrior program: Ares (Jared Leto).  Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) can bring Ares and other programs like Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) into the real world.  They would be great military assets, but they de-res after 29 minutes and return to the grid.  The McGuffin for this movie is something called the "permanence code," which could let things from the grid remain permanently in the real world.  Eve Kim (Greta Lee), the CEO of ENCOM travels to the ends of the earth where she thinks Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has hidden the code in some old 1980's software.  Dillinger, desperate for the code, sends Ares after her, not realizing that Ares is become more aware and is questioning his programing.

First of all, the movie looks amazing.  I know this may sound like I'm focusing on dumb shows and spectacles, but I do want to say how good the visuals are.  The grid looks as good as it did in Legacy, but I loved seeing Light Cycles and Recognizers in the real world.  The confluence of those two things was very exciting.  There is even a sequence where the capture the original low-resolution version of the grid that made it feel like you were stepping back in time.  The art design makes the digital assets look like tangible realities that I always wished I could see as a kid.  This may be simply a case of nostalgia-baiting, but it was done with such high quality.

Director Joachim Ronning is able to keep the movie going at an exciting pace.  The action sequences are fast-paced, inventive, and fun.  I shouldn't be surprised.  This is the same person who pulled off one of my favorite stunt sequences in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (the spinning guillotine).  I've always maintained that the action genre is one of the most cinematic uses of the the medium and Ronning has an excellent handle on that.

I also enjoyed the thematic questions of personhood and mortality.  Ares wants the permanence code because he wants to live a mortal life away from the grid.  His immortality has taken away some of his life's meaning.  As he discovers that life has value, he has trouble putting it into words because value and meaning are more than biproducts of logical reasoning.  His character has a very satisfying arc where he learns that for life to have value, you have to be willing to lay it down for something more important than yourself.  This is the great paradox of Christianity: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains but a grain of wheat." (John 12:24)

There are two big drawbacks to the movie.  The first is that there is no Tron in this Tron movie.  Call me crazy, but to make a movie without the title character is a little strange.  I know that Flynn was the real main character of the original Tron, but there doesn't seem to be a reason that Bruce Boxleitner could not have been a part of this story.

The second is that the performances aren't fantastic.  Leto actually does a good job of a going from being a killing machine to fully-realized person.  But Lee as Eve is just not that good.  She doesn't do a terrible job, but she doesn't have any real screen presence or charisma.  Ares becomes enamored of her and I could not make the immediate connection as to why since they have no real chemistry.  Turner-Smith, and Peters turn in workable performances, but nothing to write home about.  Gillian Anderson is wasted here as Julian's mother.  To be fair, while the plot and action flow well, the dialogue doesn't really flow as well and the actors have the heavy lifting of having to deliver clunky dialogue.

Despite these flaws, I enjoyed this movie a lot.  Is it a great movie?  No.

But for a fun return to the Tron universe?  I got my money's worth

Film Flash: Regretting You

    

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

Expertly hits every romantic trope with great charm (loses a point for some avoidable immorality).

Film Flash: Springsteen - Deliver Me From Nowhere

   

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

Meandering and tedious with no real insight or drama.  Good performances,  Only for Springsteen fans.

Wednesday Comics: Save Now #1

 

Matt Kindt helped launch the comic phenomenon BZRKR, whose 1st issue was the highest grossing single issue comic book of this century.  BZRKR is chaotic, dark, violent, and deeply compelling.  Kindt has now launched a new comic that is also chaotic, dark, violent, and deeply compelling story.

Save Now centers around hero named Saver.  He has a special superpower that lets him make "save points" in his own timeline.  Whenever he wants, he can go back to those save points.  However, he cannot travel forward in time except at the normal pace.  So he could go back 10 years, but to get back to the present, he would have to live all 10 years again, aging even more as he goes.  He mostly uses his power to go back just a few minutes after his fellow superheroes get killed in battle so that he can direct them how to defeat the bad guys.  For the others, they feel like they've one the first time around, undefeated.  For him, he has to live through every loss.

The main plot of the story revolves around the fact that in the future the world falls into an apocalypse.  The other heroes want Saver to go back into the past and fix it.  He refuses because he says he's tried over and over again and it hasn't worked.  And each time he goes, he ages more.  Finally, through some blackmail, they convince him to go again ten years in the past.  To prevent the apocalypse, he has them do some very morally compromising things.

Does it work?

I don't want to spoil it.  But I will say the last page hooked me.  I need to find out what happened.

One of the fascinating things about this book is that it taps into the common experience of video games and save points without referencing video games directly.  But you get the same feeling of frustration of having to return defeat after defeat and maybe having to go back further in the game to grind your way up to defeat the villain.  

Like BZRKR, Saver isn't a good person.  He lives in the moral gray or even the moral evil.  But despite that, there is something moral that compels him.  Both books are not nihilistic or relativistic.  Instead, you see someone who is morally cynical crash up against moral absolutes and you see if they break against the stone tablets of the moral law.  This book may be a bit too violent and dark for some people, but I found the stakes so dire that it pulled me into the moral quandaries of the characters.

Kindt knows how to craft the story built around the character of Saver.  He layers the story wonderfully.  Just when you think you know what the book is about, he adds another twist.  This could have easily been a one-trick gimmick, but Kindt is using it to explore themes like guilt, consequence, and hope.

Tomas Girello's is good.  It isn't always to my taste, but some of the shocking and dramatic parts are capture with real jolts of emotion.  

As much as I love the classic comic characters, I've been waiting for original stories like this to take hold of me.  I don't know if this book will ultimately be about hope or despair, about meaning or nihilism.

But I'm definitely going to stay with it and find out.

New Evangelizers Post: I Heard My Father’s Voice

                              

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

Recently, I was teaching the story of Abraham to my students. The climactic story is the one where God calls him to sacrifice his son Isaac.

It is the most famous story about Abraham. Even people who have never picked up the Bible tend to be familiar with it. For many, it is a difficult story to reconcile in their heads and hearts. Often I hear many stumbling blocks to the story. The one I would like to address here is this: “If God knows everything, why does He need to test Abraham’s faith?”

We must begin with the question, “Is God all-knowing?” The answer for every Christian is “Yes.” So if God is all-knowing that would mean that He would already know how much faith Abraham has. So what would be the point in the testing.

To understand this, we must understand something about the lived-nature of faith. Very often we think of faith as a quality inside of our minds, our hearts. It is something that I feel inside. In some ways that is true, but in other ways it is not. It is true that faith lives inside of you. But if that is the only place it resides, then it is not real faith. The point is that faith is not real until it is exercised.

God already knew how much faith Abraham had. But that is not the point. The point is Abraham didn’t know. The reason he didn’t know is that his faith was never tested to such an extreme point. Once it had been, his faith becomes real.

In class, I ask my students by show of hands, “Does anyone here trust me?” If a student raises his or her hand, I invite them to the front of the classroom. I then instruct them to face away from me, put their feet together and their arms across their chest. I think instruct them to fall straight backwards, stiff as a board, and trust that I will catch them before they fall. At this point some choose to sit down. This helps illustrate my point: they may have thought they had faith in me. But when the time came to exercise that faith, they found out that they did not have it. Other students volunteer. But I tell the class that this person will not know if they actually believe me until they fall backwards. When the moment comes and they don’t fall, they will know that they have no faith in me. If they do fall, that faith will become real.

In the same way, Abraham put all of his faith in God. He could say until was blue in the face, “I believe in you, God.” And many of us offer up our devotions of faith to God in the same way. But what happens when that faith must be exercised? In Abraham’s case, he went all the way. He held nothing back. He picked up the knife to deliver his son as a sacrifice. Even Abraham would not know how much faith he had until he went to go all the way. After that point, Abraham’s faith was manifest in the testing.

Sometimes a student will say to me, “But that’s crazy. If a voice told me to kill my family, I wouldn’t do it.” The perspective being shared here is a common one, but it is also one that lacks the context of Abraham’s story. Abraham is not listening to a random voice. He is listening to God because he knows God. He has a relationship with Him.

The best illustration I can think of for this is a story I heard many years ago. I am sure there are many versions of the story out there, but this is the one that is familiar to me. There was an apartment that was on fire. Everyone got out except little Timmy, who was trapped on the balcony on the fourth floor. Because there were too many cars and people in the way, the firefighters could not get their ladders and nets near the building. As the crowd gathered near, the fire chief called up to Timmy with the bullhorn:

“Timmy, this is the fire chief. Climb over the ledge, hang on by your fingers, let go and I’ll catch you,” the fire chief said.

Timmy didn’t move.

Again, the fire chief called out:

“Timmy, this is the fire chief. Climb over the ledge, hang on by your fingers, let go and I’ll catch you,” the fire chief said.

Timmy didn’t move.

The fire chief did not know that Timmy was blind. He could not see how far he had to fall. All he knew is that the heat was getting closer and he was choking on the smoke. The crowd underneath looked up in horror as the flames grew closer to the motionless boy.

Suddenly, a man broke through the crowd and pushed the fire chief aside and cried out:

“Timmy, climb over the ledge, hang on by your fingers, let go and I’ll catch you!”

And to everyone’s amazement, without a word, Timmy climbed over the edge of the balcony, dangled by his fingers, then he let go and this man caught.

The crowd burst into applause. The first responders grabbed Timmy and took him to an ambulance to check his vitals and he was fine. Pushing through a reporter ran up to Timmy and asked, “Timmy, the fire chief kept tell you to jump and you didn’t. But then this man shouts up to you and you did it without a word. Why?” Timmy looked puzzled at the reporters question and he simply responded:

“That’s easy: I heard my father’s voice. I knew he would catch me.”

You can read the whole article here.

Film Review: The Smashing Machine

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Mature

Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

Sometimes a movie has some fantastic elements, but they never coalesce into something great.  But the elements are so good, it is memorable.

That is the case with The Smashing Machine.

The movie is about Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson), one of the early pioneers of what would be come the UFC.  He is a mountain of muscle who gleefully beats his opponents to a pulp.  He lives with his girlfriend Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt).  Their relationship is rocky at best.  But as time goes on, the life takes its toll on Mark in so many ways. He struggles for work, develops an addiction to opioids, and he begins to decline from his dominance in the ring.  Slowly everything around him breaks down, but he is constantly supported by his friend Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), a fellow down and out fighter.  But as Kerr hits bottom, he tries to rise above and make a comeback.

The thing that sticks out the most about this movie are the performances.  This is hands-down Dwayne Johnson's best performance.  The makeup job on him is so good that he is sometimes unrecognizable.  In his career, Johnson has leaned heavily on his natural charisma and it has gotten him far.  But here, he has to let go of most of those tricks and build a subtle, complex character.  His Mark Kerr is absolutely fascinating.  He is a savage in the ring.  But when he is in public he is so measured and gentle.  You can feel the realism of the performance, where Mark's size would scare people so he has to go out of his way to put people at ease.  But when his temper flares, its terrifying.  He is not an oversimplified gentle giant.  Instead, he is a shaken soda can with the cap ready to explode.

Blunt also gives a great performance.  It would be very easy for her Dawn to fall into melodrama as the put-upon, supportive girlfriend.  But the script doesn't devolve into sentiment and Blunt plays down surprisingly unsympathetically.   The antagonism between them is difficult to watch, but it also sparks strong performances.

Bader is also very good as Mark Coleman.  It is a very unvarnished performance that speaks about his character's simple decency.

Benny Safdie does a great job of directing the film to make it feel almost like a documentary.  The lighting and camera work give a the world a solid, realistic feel.  Sometimes it feels like you are watching real life fights and struggles.  Safdie also wrote the script and that is where the movie struggles.  The story is exhausting to watch.  While it draws you in, the longer it goes it becomes more punishing.  The plot structure doesn't give the payoff that the story sets up.  The conflict between Mark and Dawn is hurtful and it becomes less engaging as time goes on.  The further you go in the movie, the more you keep thinking "Why didn't they make the movie about Mark Coleman?"  His story fits the archetype of this story much better.

As a character study, it is still very interesting.  Mark is a weak man.  He is weak at the beginning of the movie even as he smashes his opponents into a pulp.  He just doesn't know he's weak until he begins to lose and then the cracks begin to show.  The slow breakdown he has after he loses his first fight is a wonderful marriage of raw cinematography and powerful acting.  But the film isn't able to sustain this level of artistry.  It just becomes too much.

One of the thing that I found edifying about the movie is that it modeled toxic relationships.  Mark and Dawn constantly snipe at each other.  They try to cover it with polite tones, but they go from passive aggressive to downright aggressive.  Their love may be all romance, but there is no charity.  They never look primarily for the good of the other.  In the end, they were two selfish people who try to take as much as they can from the other.  Mark may be addicted and violent, but that does not make Dawn into a hero. This movie made me appreciate the fact that my wife is filled with God's love and charity.  And it made me sad for all the people who don't know that kind of love.

After the move was over, I felt exhausted, almost like I was in the fight.  There are some truly great elements in it.  But The Smashing Machine never rises above so that it becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Trailer Time: The Running Man (2025)

 Sorry, but this one is going to be a little odd.

I am not linking or embedding the trailer here for one reason:  the trailer really bothered me.

Up until now, I was very excited to see this film.  I love Edgar Wright as a director and I think that Glen Powell is a very charismatic actor whose star is potentially on the rise.  I loved the first Running Man film and this one seems to be a bit closer to the book (though hopefully not as dark).  

But then, something small happened in this trailer that really bothered me.

As Powell's character is being hunted in Michael Cera's house, Cera's character sets off a series of boobytraps.  However, for one of the traps, he takes a cross that is on the wall and he turns it upside down.

Now, if you read that and you think that I am making mountain out of a molehill, perhaps you are correct.  But please allow me to explain why this bothered me so deeply.

First, the iconography is striking.  It is true that the upside-down cross could represent the St. Peter cross.  But in more popular culture, it is associated with worship of the Evil One.  It is a sign that you are profaning that which is most sacred.

Do I think that Edgar Wright is promoting Satanism?  No, probably not.  But it is clear that he thinks nothing of this casual blasphemy of the cross, the sign under which I have my salvation.  In charity, I think that Wright simply thought it was a rebellious, funny gag to highlight the violence of the scene.

But upon further reflection what really bothered me about it was that it was in the trailer.  The purpose of the trailer is to get people to come and see your movie.  You can only put about 1/60th of all the visuals in your entire film into that trailer.  So in their careful assembly of images, they made sure to add the desecration of the cross.

This tells me that they thought that this was going to be a selling point, something that they thought others would think is funny and attractive.  

But all this has done is that it has given me great hesitation about spending money on a movie that treats my faith so cruelly.  Now, I am open to the possibility that there is some context I am missing, but to put it so front and center in your trailer tells me that the ones who cut this together really wanted to attack the cross.  Are the film-makers so cocooned in their bubble that they do not realize that this image deeply and unnecessarily offends millions of Christians?  

Or do they know and do not care?

But perhaps I am over-reacting.

Thoughts?

Film Flash: Tron - Ares

  

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

Surprisingly better than Tron: Legacy.  Tron-less: Ares looks amazing and is good (not great) fun.

Wednesday Comics: Deadpool and Batman

 

I always find crossover comics like this fascinating.  As a kid, you would always mix universes in your head and try to figure out who could beat whom.  

In regular, in-universe comics, the winner largely depends on who is writing the story.  If Garth Ennis is writing, then Punisher beats Daredevil.  If Mark Waid is writing, then Daredevil beats Punisher.  

But with a story like this, I'm sure there are many discussions and negotiations involved.  Neither Marvel nor DC want to have a popular character one-upped by the other.  A great deal of credit needs to be given to writer Zeb Wells.  His story is a wonderful balancing act between the dark, dramatic Batman and the silly insanity of Deadpool.

The story is that Deadpool has been summoned to the DCU to perform a hit on Batman.  Of course the Caped Crusader understands that there is more going on that meets the eye so he engages with the Merc with a Mouth.  The contrasting personalities spark off of each other in the same way as we saw Wade and Logan fight in the movie Deadpool and Wolverine.  The story was incredibly fun and hearkened back to the big, bold adventures from the 1990's, when there was a strong escapist feeling in this world.

Credit also needs to be given to artist Greg Capullo, who makes this book feel like something out of the classic "Court of Owls" storyline while infusing it with the zany energy of one of Deadpool's adventures.  The art is wonderfully dynamic and incredibly enjoyable to look at.  Capullo is a star because his work is consistently of the highest quality and he knows how to capture action, drama, comedy, and just the right tonal balance between them.

There are also backup crossover stories in this book.  But the only one that is really any good is the Captain America/Wonder Woman story by Chip Zdarsky and Terry Dodson.  Kelly Thompsons' and Gurihiru's story with Jeff the Land Shark and Krypto is fun, but could have been more.

Overall, I think one was well worth the cover price.

New Evangelizers Post: For a Wedding is a Funeral

                             

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

“Come to the church on Saturday,” I said to my students, “Come and see Mr. Grayson die.”

That is what I said when I invited my students to my wedding.

This past week I was privileged to attend both a wedding and a funeral. It is a privilege because you are invited to be a part of two incredibly important family moments. The former is the beginning of a new family. The other is a parting of a loved one from this earthly life. Both are pivotal, life-changing events. And both have some striking similarities.

When I was about to me married, I understood that marriage was a kind of death. Now most people would read that sentence and think it was some kind of joke or a dig at married life. But it is neither. It is a sober statement about the reality of marriage. When you get married, you are dying to yourself.

I understood that the moment I took my vows that my old life would be gone forever. I was no longer and independent man. I would be a husband, and my whole being would be defined by the relationship I would have with my wife. Many people think of marriage as an accessory to life. What I mean is that they imagine their own life with its desires and dreams and then they see if marriage fits into those plans. They imagine themselves to be a monolith, improved upon but not essentially changed by the union. As someone who married in my early twenties and has been married for a few decades, I can tell you that this is in no way true.

Marriage changes you. I am not the same person I was before I was married. And the time I spent married, my wife and I have grown together, not as parallel entities, but as one life woven together.

This is the meaning of the unity candle that we use at weddings. There is the one unlit candle between two lit candles. The bride and groom take the lit candles, which represent their own lives and together they light the single candle in the center, representing their lives burning as one flame. But the last important part of the tradition is that the bride and groom blow out the first two candles. This means that they die to their old selves.

I don’t live for myself. When I wake up in the morning, before I think of my, my thought should be how I can make my wife’s life better. This is easier my situation because that is always what my wife does: she thinks of my needs before her own. When I took my vows I also died to any other potential romantic relationship. Saying “yes,” to your spouse is also saying “no” to the billions of other potential mates. Again, in my case this was easier because I’m not sure anyone else but my wife would have me.

But together, God takes these two dead people and resurrects them into one flesh, one life.

And something similar happens at a funeral.

Here the dying is literal. The parting that comes with death is one of the hardest things for any of us to endure. Even if we are people of faith, the earthly loss of the person we love is devastating. I lost my own mother several years ago, but I still miss her every day. One of my best friends died a few months ago and there is a conspicuous absence in my life. When we truly love someone, when they leave, they take a little piece of our hearts with them.

The funeral reminds us that the life that we knew before is gone.

But it also reminds us that a new life is beginning.

You can read the whole article here.

Film Flash: The Smashing Machine

 

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

Dwayne Johnson's greatest performance.  A raw movie that is as brutal as it is exhausting.

Film Review: Spinal Tap II - The End Continues

 

I enjoy the original This is Spinal Tap, though I am not a huge devotee as many Gen X people are.  I find it amusing with some solid jokes and a great cast.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues feels the same, but without the spark of the original.  

The story follows the band made up of Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKeon), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer).  Like most bands, they've broken up and gone their separate ways.  But a reunion concert in New Orleans is on the horizon, so they try to put aside their differences to rock out one more time.

And that's it, that's the plot.  It is threadbare, but it doesn't have to re-invent the wheel.  Along the way, the band members encounter complications and humiliations, but nothing too outrageous.

I suppose that's part of the problem with this sequel: it really doesn't have much more to say.  There are a lot of jokes about aging, which are serviceable enough, but the film never digs deep to something insightful nor does it give enough hysterical jokes to make you not care about the theme.  

To be fair, the cast is fantastic.  These are still comedic professionals who use every look and gesture to milk every laugh they can.  But they just look so tired.  I know that is part of the point of the movie and where the majority of the humor comes from, but their faces look like deflated balloons and I constantly wanted them to sit down for fear that they might collapse.  The first film had all the energy that an improvised film like this needs.  But that energy was lacking.

It was nostalgic to hear some of the songs from the first movie.  And there are plenty of fun cameos from people like Paul McCartney and Elton John.  The movie tries to artificially create tension between Nigel and David, but it feels so tacked-on that it doesn't really work.  

The characters reminded me of the Scripture "Vanity of Vanities, all is vanity."  (Ecclesiastes 1:2)  These characters are clinging to a lifestyle whose glory has long faded.  There is a sadness to it, especially in how thinking about what legacy they will leave behind.  I don't think that this was part of the intention of the movie, but I couldn't help but think of the waste in a life found in the characters (not the actors, to be clear).

If you are big fan of the original, it may be for you to see them in action again.  But I am reminded of the wise words of the Kurgan, "I have something to say: it's better to burn out then to fade away!"