Meanwhile With Trevor
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Humor, Romance, and Magical Cats
June 04, 2024
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“The writer’s job is to tell the truth.” - Ernest Hemingway

It’s not just writers, of course, but all storytellers who must work in truth (unless you write for CNN). We can shape it, mold it, stretch it to its very limits. But ultimately, if what we’re saying is in total opposition to reality our audience will largely reject it. Why aren’t people going to the movies anymore? Because the industry has stooped to peddling lies. And because of that, their stories lack all sincerity.

Irony is out. They just haven’t noticed it yet.

I recently watched The Mummy (1999) and Van Helsing (2004), two movies from Stephen Sommers that came out before today’s current trends. Sure, they’re throwbacks to the 30s, with wipe transitions and direct homages to classic monster movies. But unlike the old Universal movies, they can still draw large audiences in rerelease today. I don’t think it’s just millennial nostalgia at play. Fantastic as the movies are, even with dated special effects, they’re still grounded in something familiar.

More familiar than our memories of the early 00s.

Sane, healthy, people (so the majority of us) grew up with some semblance of how the world works. It all goes back to good characters, and good characters express themselves through verbal and nonverbal reactions. We can imagine ourselves in completely unrealistic situations and think, “Yes, this is how I would react,” or, “I wish I had the courage to react like that.” So when the hero saves the girl and plants a big kiss on her we cheer. And when a woman saves a dude and they just touch foreheads we groan.

Society might tell us PDA is wrong and that girls can protect men. But that’s boooor-ring.

And what’s with all the snark?

Thrilling moments are regularly undercut with “humor” to suck all the joy out of the moment. We’ve all had that moment in a group conversation when everyone is laughing and someone makes a joke (witty, though it may be) that kills the mood. It’s too pointed or recontextualizes the moment in an unsavory light. Then everyone says, “Shut up!” and tries to recapture the moment.

Real humor isn’t contrived and we want it to stay.

It’s hilarious when Brendan Fraser uses a hissing cat to drive off Imhotep. Within the rules of the world it makes sense. Even if it hadn’t worked, well, he would’ve said it made sense at the time. The joke was set up and we get the payoff we didn’t know we wanted. And there’s a thrill in seeing our hero get a win over an unstoppable villain. If The Mummy were made today, I’m afraid the cat would hiss, nothing would happen (because it was just a random cat with no reason for him to grab it), and Fraser would toss the cat offscreen. Haha, don’t you know cats aren’t magic?

(Cats are totally magical creatures)

Or how about the scene in Van Helsing when Hugh Jackman’s hero has to risk turning completely into a werewolf to defeat Dracula? If Anna doesn’t get the cure to him in time he might kill the vampire and damn himself. They don’t have a moment to spare and say what may be their last goodbyes. As she’s about to leave he stops her and says, “Don’t be late.” It’s not a laugh-out-loud moment, but it is funny and something a guy in that situation might say. I’d want to say it.

Then he grabs her and they passionately kiss.

I’d want to do that too.

Then they and we go back to the adventure, still tasting that kiss. Anna doesn’t have a witty comeback to steal back the moment. Van Helsing doesn’t show any regret for having done it (because he did nothing wrong, “consent” be damned). Their romantic interest had been building all along and we longed for them to have that moment. And we got it.

Once you realize how romance and sincerity have been edited out of our movies, you can’t unsee it.

Now that you’ve read this far, watch the trailer for Venom: The Last Dance, which dropped yesterday. Once you get past the pre-trailer, it starts pretty good with a tense scene of Eddie cornered by a bunch of thugs. But we know something the bad guys don’t know. Eddie has an alien symbiote that gives him superpowers. We know they’re about to get thrashed. Tension builds.

And then there’s that stupid, stupid “We are Venom” joke.

Oh, yeah, that’s right. We’re watching a movie. It’s a joke with no setup. All it does (and the reason why it’s mildly amusing) is that it momentarily subverts our expectations. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of humor in a moment like this. But unlike the cat in The Mummy, it takes us out of the moment. It’s inorganic. It’s insincere. 

The trailer for The Mummy made me feel like I was going to go on an adventure, which is a big promise to make. And the movie lives up to it. The trailer for Venom: The Last Dance? It didn’t make me feel anything. I'll bet it delivers nothing, too. One is a story. One is content. I know which movie I’ll watch again, and which one I’ll likely never watch. I know which movie will still be watched 25 years from now, and know which one will be forgotten.

Consume and create rewatchable stories. Sincere stories. 

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F1 is Modern Western

As a nation, the United States is unique. We don’t share a genetic heritage, but a creed. Americans and our ideas come from all over the world. But we’re at our best when take those outside ideas and make them our own. Everything we have came from another culture, but there was a time when we could take things and collectively make them better.

Democracy? Check. Rock’n’roll? Check. Heck! Chinese food? Yes, we did.

Don’t hate. You know I’m right.

One of the greatest art forms we’ve given the world is the western genre. While rooted in courtly romances of King Arthur, we took the idea of the man on horseback who makes things right on his quest for something spiritual and made it distinctly American. Most of the time, these stories aren’t historically accurate, but that’s not the point. They’re soaked in the American ethos. For better or for worse, the western has become the American myth, even more so than 1776.

And the cool thing about myths is that you can take them and tell other stories. 

Star Trek (and later Firefly) took the western to space. 

A few weeks ago I was able to see F1: The Movie on IMAX, and I had high hopes. Director Joseph Krasinski had proved himself with Top Gun: Maverick, which is about as American as a modern movie can get. But mostly, I just wanted to see if he could do with racecars what he’d done with fighter jets. In that regard, I was everything I’d hoped it would be. The idea of Americanism didn’t even cross my mind, since F1 is primarily a European sport.

Boy, was I surprised.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes with all the careless cool of Paul Newman in his prime and a Steve McQueen swagger. While Pitt has never played a cowboy and isn’t a racecar driver in real life, Newman and McQueen played both, and did both. Hayes has been keeping himself busy with no-name races since an F1 crash nearly killed him some 30 years before. But when Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), an old friend and rival, needs some wins to save the team, he tracks down Sonny.

And the old dog knows a few tricks.

Naturally, his tactics put him at odds with his teammate, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), and his cocky attitude is a big red flag to the team’s engineer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Conden). So the movie all the tropes of a sports film, and I don’t think I need to summarize further. But it’s not a sports film. Or rather, it’s not just a sports a film. Surprise, surprise, it’s the western myth transposed into a racing a story.

It’s spelled out in the trailer, but it didn’t strike me until the very end.

Kate calls Sonny Hayes an “old school rough and tumble cowboy” in a line used in the marketing. When he arrives in the garage, only Ruben knows him. Sonny is the stranger in town. Like James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff, his method of restoring order and winning is unorthodox and effective. Like Shane, in that Alan Ladd classic, he’s guarded about his past. And like John Wayne in The Searchers and so many other westerns, Sonny Hayes is the outsider who must leave civilization once he’s made it civilized for those who belong there.

But he doesn’t.


Perhaps the hardboiled crime story, another uniquely American genre, is also an outgrowth of the western. Philip Marlow is the man who must walk down mean streets, who is not himself mean. As Raymond Chandler said, “He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” Basically, the man he’s describing is dangerous, but not cruel. Dispassionate in taking revenge, and restrained by a code of honor.

But destined to be lonely, nonetheless.

Why we’ve made that an essential part of the American is a topic for another time. But there it is. And it’s the story of Sonny Hayes. At the end of the movie [SPOILER], he rides off into the sunset as the credits roll. The western isn’t dead. It’s still there, in essence, speaking to our hearts in different ways.

Nothing more American than that. 

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Girl-Power Isn't the Problem: Stop Treating Movies Like TV Pilots

Last weekend I was able to sneak off the theater for a screening of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Did I feel silly, telling the high school girl at the ticket counter, “One for Ballerina, and a small drink”? Well, not in the moment. 

I probably drank a liter of cherry vanilla Coke Zero, and that didn’t feel so great.

Plenty of box office analysts and Hollywood types are wracking their brains, trying to figure out why movies like Furiosa and Ballerina aren’t drawing huge crowds. Mad Max and John Wick are popular franchises, but apparently telling the stories of the women in those worlds isn’t working. Even if the movies are pretty good.

I’ve seen both, and they’re pretty good.

Some are arguing that no one will go near a movie that looks like it’s feminist girl-bossing. Others counter that movies like Alien and Kill Bill are female-led action films that were successful. Now, I’m not going to say that Ballerina is on par with those modern day classics. But I will say that, as a man watching the movie, it didn’t offend me. The movie never challenged me to confront any internalized misogyny. The small girl doesn’t take down John Wick in hand-to-hand combat.

Honestly, if you like franchise, whether you’re male or female, you should watch Ballerina.

In short, from a purely cinematic experience perspective, neither Furiosa nor Ballerina would be any better or worse with a male lead. Maybe that’s a hot take. But that’s mine, for whatever it’s worth. Well, okay, I wouldn’t watch a movie called Ballerina if it stared a dude. Nevertheless, I think you get my point. Petite women warriors aside, the plots and action are exactly as expected.

So what’s the deal?

Well, what no one seems to have noticed is that Ripley and The Bride weren’t replacing anyone. As we were watching their movies for the first time, we weren’t thinking about other characters for whom we already had a preference. Movies are more like TV than TV right now, and replacement characters have always been a hard sell, regardless of gender. We all remember Sam and Diane. Who still talks about Sam and Rebecca (even though Kirstie Alley won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the part)? I had to look up her name. 

No, they aren’t technically replacing them. It’s a spin-off, set in the same world.

Spin-offs tend to succeed when the characters are already well established (eg: Frasier). Furiosa and Ballerina are more like backdoor pilots, where new characters are dropped in for a single episode to sell us on the idea of a new show. This technique is very hit and miss on TV, and I can’t think of a single example of this working in a movie franchise. Film and television are very different mediums, and should be treated as such.

Still, if it doesn’t work on TV, it’s probably not gonna work at the movies. Not where new characters and spin-offs are concerned. 

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Going Back to 1995

Maybe I’m just getting old, but it doesn’t feel like we had the thriving and distinct pop culture of past generations. Has there been a look or stye, or feeling, that defines this moment? Everything seems to have stagnated for the last twenty years. And it’s not as if I don’t pay attention. 

It’s making me nostalgic. 

Consequently, for the rest of the year, I’m prioritizing movies from 1995, the year I was twelve. At that time, my family didn’t really go to the theater, and when we did rent VHS tapes, more often than it is was older Disney movies or entirely forgettable Christian titles. Now that I’ve grown tired of trying to keep up with new releases, not there’s much worth watching anyway, it feels like a good time to catch up on those 30 year old movies that have become ingrained in what’s left of our pop culture.

So over on Criticless, I made a list.

Some of these are movies I’ve seen before, but not in a long time. Others will be first time watches for me. There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I put on my list. It’s just movies that either interest me, or are currently in my collection, sadly unwatched. As things become available on streaming, I may add to the list. And if I don’t get to everything before the end of the year, no big deal.

Hopefully, they aren’t going anywhere. 

I’ll be posting some reviews and analysis as I go, so be sure to follow me here. 

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