This last weekend my mom was quite sick. As her only caregiver, there wasn’t much else I could do but sit nearby and watch movies while she slept. Maybe I could’ve read a book or written one, I admit. But frankly, I just wasn’t in the mood. As with anything that I really enjoy, if I’m away from it for too long I get hungry in my spirit for that thing.

And I was hungry for movies.

So it seemed like as good a time as any to catch up on a few of this year’s releases that interested me, and it’s a pretty short list. I still didn’t get to all of them. However, given how lackluster what I did watch was, I don’t have much hope for the others. Everything I saw had potential, and with a few, obvious, adjustments could have been far better. If there’s any value in watching weak movies, it’s the opportunity to learn from their mistakes so that I don’t miss any opportunities in my work.

Again, the movies coming out right now have some good ideas and are lacking because of missed opportunities.

There will be spoilers.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

As soon as I started Frozen Empire I realized that all I remembered about Ghostbusters: Afterlife was that I kinda liked it. As it went on, I remembered that one reason came from the fact that there’s a character named Trevor who has a know-it-all little sister. Finally, some representation! But since poor Trevor is hardly in this movie, and I felt no connection to anyone, really, the story just fell flat. The longer the movie went along, the more I wished I was just watching the original 1984 movie.

The missed opportunities

One of the biggest criticisms against Frozen Empire is that flirts with a lesbian romance and never commits. Now, I don’t need or want that in my family film anyway. But if they’d kept things traditional and had poor Trevor fall for the ghost who needs a human to provide the big twist, they could have had a real romantic subplot without worrying about offending half the country and much of the world. Another problem is that the OG Ghostbusters don’t get to do much. Actually, the people who save the day are new characters we barely get to know. A moment of self-sacrifice for our original trio was even foreshadowed! 

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

As with Frozen Empire, my recollection of the previous installment in this franchise was foggy. Apparently we aren’t doing memorable characters anymore. The only actor who seems to know what kind of movie he’s in and having any fun is Dan Stevens as a vet to the monsters. I’d watch a whole TV series if it starred his character and was designed in a Crocodile Hunter style. I will say, I laughed more at this movie than I did Frozen Empire, just because Kong uses Baby Kong as a club in a fight.

The missed opportunities

None of the characters have arcs. They go from Point A, to B, to C, without ever growing or changing. What if Stevens’ and Hall’s characters had hated each other and gradually fallen in love? Everyone in the movie (except Godzilla) emotes, but none of them actually seems to feel. Consequently, I felt nothing. The monster fights are pretty cool, though. No missed opportunities there. 

The Beekeeper

No surprise, this was the best movie I watched all weekend. Jason Statham’s quasi-political thriller with a John Wick plot is a blast. Plus, it’s not bogged down by being a sequel. Sure it’s about as thought-provoking as an 80’s action movie, even with a Hunter Biden analog accidentally taking down the military industrial complex. But that’s a feature, not a bug. We’re here for the violence, and The Beekeeper delivers in spades.

The missed opportunities

These aren’t so much complaints as observations. If this movie had been made in the 80’s there would’ve been a sex scene. If were from the 90’s there’d be a trip to a strip club. And at least in the 00’s the female FBI agent chasing our hero would’ve been a hot latina and not a thicc black woman. But apparently we’ve moved beyond such tawdry things.

The Heiress and the Handyman

Yes, I did follow up my brutal action movie with a Hallmark romance. Variety is the apple-spice of life, as it were. Can’t lie, I had hopes for this one. Like every guy my age, I’ve always had a little crush on Jodie Sweetin, and Hallmark movies tend to hit more than they miss. This one? This one’s a miss. Our heiress is nice, if comically incompetent. Actually, she’s too incompetent and, though Sweetin gives it her all, I don’t buy that she’s that dumb any more than I buy her hair isn’t a wig. She and the “handyman” get along from the get-go, which means the movie doesn’t even deliver on its premise of mistaken identities. But we do get this gem of a line, “I run the organic farm next door with my sister.”

The missed opportunities

Where to begin? First, they should have played the mistaken identity thing out longer. If the dude had let her think he really was her new estate’s handyman for more than two seconds we would’ve gotten some awkward hijinks and humor. Then they could’ve had fallen in love, fallen out of love, and gotten back together. There’s also no stakes. If the organic farm was struggling and our heiress was frustrated because she’d just lost her fortune, something more than winning a pie baking contest would’ve mattered.

Final thought

I still like movies, even when they disappoint.

As Andrew Klavan recently said about himself, "I am not a scholar but a storyteller," which informs how I see the world. Most people, I think, perceive the world and history through a storyteller’s lens. Our most enduring tales are simple ones about good and evil, with just enough information to give us a sense of what may have happened. Any writer will tell you, too much detail bogs down the narrative and is distracting.

Keep it simple, stupid. Less is more.

In the United States we are particularly dependent on stories. As a country we have no national, biological heritage. We depend on a creed, and the only way to adopt and understand something so abstract is through illustrative narratives. When we lose the plot, we don’t just lose our identity, we lose our nation. The way we use story goes beyond our own borders and shapes how we understand world and historical events as well, and much of it has been adopted by other cultures as Hollywood films used to be our greatest export. 

But a new generation of incompetent storytellers have taken over.

Two recent news items have really driven this to prominence. First in fiction, the second in fact. The discussion about Disney Star Wars’ The Acolyte has been inescapable. While I’m no fan of Star Wars, it’s undeniably the greatest science fiction franchise in history. George Lucas launched a whole universe where the good guys and bad guys were obvious. The name and title Darth Vader, Sith Lord, just oozes evil. Luke Skywalker, on the other hand, is a name that screams freedom and righteousness. When Lucas was in charge of Star Wars the Jedi were the good guys. In an interview with Bill Moyers around the release The Phantom Menace he described them as like “ultimate father figures or negotiators.” 

Now Star Wars is run by women who hate their fathers.  

The showrunner for The Acolyte, Leslye Headland, told Collider, “I think it’s difficult to do a show that is critical in any way of the Jedi.” Uh oh. She went on, “Like, I think that… people were very nervous about saying this particular institution may not be the light and perfect, stunning group of heroes that are totally nobly intentioned.” It’s worth noting that The Acolyte is set long before George Lucas’s stories, but by setting in the past Headland wants to cast a new, negative, light on everything fans thought they knew, and everything George said that the Jedi are supposed to be.

Maybe the Jedi aren’t the good guys and never were.

Star Wars was a generation defining story of clearcut good and evil, and the recent effort to demythologize it is unfortunate. When our fictional heroes cease to be heroic we have nothing to aspire to. But it is fiction. More concerning is Tucker Carlson and Darryl Cooper’s skewed take on one of Star Wars’ chief influences, that is, the historical battle of good and evil that was World War II, and on Winston Churchill, one its greatest heroes. Before Star Wars, the story of the second World War was our metric for good and evil, and in some ways it still is. 

“Hitler” has become our replacement word for “Satan.” 

Yet Cooper says the Germans were just unprepared for the conflict they started and that gas chambers were an unintended consequence. Uh, no. Genocide was their plan all along, and it’s well documented. Cooper also claims in the interview that Churchill was the “chief villain” of the war, suggesting that war financiers and the media wanted him in power, and that Zionists paid him for his work. It sounds to me like it’s Cooper who is playing to the media and looking for financial gain more than the cantankerous Churchill ever did. 

Churchill, it might be noted, was also a real historian.

Yet here we are, watching as two important stories that have shaped our concepts of good and evil are being systematically disassembled. It’s not just Confederate statues being pulled down, but the memories of great leaders. Is there more nuance in real life than the stories tell? Yes. Again, the good stories are simple and streamlined. Are the bad guys really Satan incarnate, or the good guys more perfect than angels? No. But at the same time, we lose something when try to add too much information, when we tear apart the legends that have given us inspiration for so many years. What does it benefit the average man to see inspiring figures and groups “warts and all”? 

I leave that to the scholars. But I do believe there is room for discernment and sometimes turning a blind eye.

At this point, one must consider the lesson The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

“This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” 

Most of what I read these days is for professional reasons, so I can’t always talk about it here. Sometimes it’s for another website, and sometimes it’s something that isn’t even out yet. I try to set aside time every day to read, and during the week that’s my work. But especially on the weekends I try to read things for myself. Recently, I went back and re-read the first of The Dresden Files, Storm Front, by Jim Butcher.

Even though there are many other books that I’ve never read before that I want to and intend to read.
Someday.

I’ll never forget back in 2009 when I was exploring a new-to-me library (which was literally right out my backdoor) and noticing Storm Front on a display. It promised something to the effect of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Philip Marlowe” and I was all in. I’d just moved into a garden level studio apartment (like Harry Dresden) and was living by myself (like Harry Dresden).The seasons were changing and the weather was wild (like in the book). I was experiencing a lot of change in my life, everything seemed fresh and new, with a texture that I knew would leave an impression on every memory.

And frankly, the book didn’t seem that great.

It’s a debut novel and, reportedly, the first thing Butcher ever wrote under professional guidance. Everything seemed a little stilted. I finished the novel and didn’t pick up the sequel until some time later. But then I was hooked. I burned through all twelve that were available at the time in a matter of months. By book four it’s pretty much agreed Butcher finds his voice and the series gets really good. Over the years, I’ve re-read all of the books at least once (except the most recent) and listened to many of them at random.

So I guess you’d say I’m a fan.

Storm Front introduces us to a wizard named Harry, but this one is all American made. He wears cowboy boots and a duster (but never a hat), has a temper and a libido, both of which get him in trouble. Being a private detective/wizard doesn’t really pay the bills in Chicago, so he also works as a “psychic” consultant to the local PD’s division, headed by Karen Murphy, that deals with the weird. Harry’s first case centers around some gruesome murders, a missing husband, drug dealing mobsters, and builds out his world.

The magic system is intention based, not pretty colors and metals (like some authors write).

Over the next three or four books Butcher does a better of job making the magic feel more organic and his characters less one-note (looking at you, Murph). And it’s the characters more than anything that keep me coming back to this series. Stay away too long and I start missing them like old friends. Good characters, more than spectacular action, sex, or magic (or, in the case of this book, sex magic), are what audiences want. 

Writing good characters has become a lost art in the mainstream.

Everyone in Butcher’s world has a moral framework within which they live and work. It may not be mine, I may violently disagree with their logic, but I understand it. So as I spend time with them I know what to expect, and when they justify doing something out of character it’s a cause for concern. And at no point does Butcher expect his characters convictions to become ours. There’s no preaching. We’re allowed to simply observe and weigh the consequences for ourselves.

That too has become a lost art.

So I’m sure that I’ll keep revisiting The Dresden Files for a long, long time. Reading them hasn’t just been entertaining, but also instructive. Now I write characters, even point of view characters, with whom I don’t agree. It’s good practice for interacting with people in real life, makes for better stories, and prevents me from underwriting the imaginary people I hope will become my readers’ friends.