Meanwhile With Trevor
Culture • Lifestyle • Fitness & Health • Movies • Books • Food
Here we'll gather to discuss Story, life, and the creative process. I'll invite you into my thoughts on what I'm reading, watching, and writing, and what I'm learning along the way. Life is a story. We want to live stories that last, and that means understanding their elements.
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The Fate of the Furious (2017) - Vehicular Theatre

Here we are at the eighth instalment. How many other franchises not based on a pre-existing idea have made it this far? Even Rocky stopped at five (for a while). Yet Dom and family keep rolling along. They still have things to say about storytelling, and things to teach us about maintaining an audience.

If the early films are myth and Furious 7 is fairy tale, The Fate of the Furious is (obviously) theatre. No, seriously. And if the theme of Furious 7 is flying, then the theme of The Fate of the Furious is falling (and not just the raining cars we see in the trailer).

A little Shakespeare should help:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.

When F8 (get it?) came out, many fans were more than a little upset. Jason Statham, once you have him, is an actor you want to keep if you can, sure. But did they really have to forgive Deckard Shaw, the man responsible for killing Han? And not only that, but make the guy part of the Family too? What most people missed is that the idea of forgiveness and redemption is seeded throughout the entire movie, from the very opening to the closing scene.

Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) are honeymooning in Cuba, when they get word that Dom’s cousin Fernando (Janmarco Santiago) is in trouble. He made a deal, wasn’t able to keep it, and as a consequence is losing his car to local tough Raldo (Celestino Cornielle). At first Dom tells Fernando that he has to accept the outcome, but when Raldo rubs his face in it, Dom takes offence. The man needs to be taught a lesson in mercy.

Naturally, this leads to a street race, with cars on the line (literally and figuratively). Dom wins the race and has every right to claim Raldo’s car. Yet having made his point, he doesn’t. Later he’s asked why in an exchange with the movie’s villainess, Cipher (Charlize Theron).

Cipher: When I was in Cuba I heard about a guy who almost killed you with a motorcycle and you… let him keep his car?

Dom: Oh, that confused you? Of course I could’ve taken his car, but it’s about something bigger. This way, I changed him.

Cipher: That’s not your responsibility.

Dom: That’s who I am.

Considering this in light of Shakespear’s observations, Dom is the mightiest. From the start he’s fulfilled the role of monarch and king, and here he further solidifies his place. By showing mercy, bestowing a blessing, when Raldo comes to his aid later in the film, he receives a blessing. Twice blessed.

Thus far in the series we’ve seen great significance given to worthiness, codes, ritual, and family. Here in F8 we add forgiveness. In 2017 cancel culture was already on the horizon and we were losing the idea of mercy. Now, here’s our leader extending it to a man who had murdered a member of his Family in cold blood as an act of vengeance. But throughout the series Dom’s character has been very consistent in his desire to bring people to his table despite their flaws and shortcomings. Perhaps by forgiving Shaw, he can change him too.

What Shaw did was wrong, inarguably evil, but in Dom’s world the cardinal sin is betrayal. Shaw was many things, but he never betrayed Family.

This is also a story of Dom being forced into a position where he has to betray one part of his Family to protect another. It’s melodrama, of course, but the beauty of melodrama is that it’s clear who is good, who is bad, and celebrates the values held by average people. This more than anything may be the key to the franchise’s enduring success.

Forgiveness is good. Loyalty is good. Betrayal is bad, and manipulating someone into it is evil. I’m not saying that F8 is on the same level as Othello, but Shakespear’s plays were written for the same kind of average, ordinary people that the Fast movies are made for today. Nothing is subtle in melodrama, and nothing is subtle here. The first time Dom encounters his team after betraying them, they surround his car with harpoon guns and nearly tear him apart, symbolising the tension he feels. Later, they again surround him, this time as a protective wall to shield him from danger.

If that’s not a summary of Family, I don’t know what is.

To be honest, F8 is not one of my favorites. It’s episodic, lacks a clear vision, and the worthwhile elements are buried by the car-toony (get it?) set pieces that are never quite as imaginative or thrilling as those in the previous films. However, it does have one of my favorite moments that had me laughing out loud in the theater.

It’s the climax of the movie. Dom has yet to be reunited with his team, who is trying to stop Cipher from stealing a submarine filled with nukes, by outrunning it on a frozen lake (just go with it). Outgunned and having used up all their resources, Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) announces to everyone that they’re out of tricks. “What do we do now?” they ask.

“We start praying,” Hobbs says.

And suddenly Dom, in his trademark black car, drops from the heavens to save the day. It’s a literal deus ex machina, the god out of a machine, solving the unsolvable problem with supernatural force. Though often criticized for being too convenient or simplistic, it’s supposed to create an emotional response. To that end, it works. The plot device originated in ancient Greece so it’s almost as old as theater itself. Aeschylus invented it. Aristotle wrote about it. Shakespear used it. And Vin Diesel embodied it.

Like I said, The Fate of the Furious is theatre.

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Tuesday Update

New article is on the way, but I'm feeling too overwhelmed to crank it out.

00:01:17
Update!

I cover it in the the video, but I've got some new professional writing opportunities coming up and I'm trying to finish my next novel, all while navigating a change in schedule. So look for more pictures and videos, and new articles here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

00:02:47
He Who Rides on the Clouds - Conclusion

Leo and Britt come face to face with a prehistoric god a new cult on Saturn. Can they save the children doomed to sacrifice and escape?

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Conclusion
He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 2

Leo and Brittany have arrived on Saturn, but not in the way they'd hoped. Captured by a pagan cult, they don't have time to stop the unthinkable from happening. But they'll try anyway.

Content warning: language and sexual situations.

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 2
He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 1

Star Wars is dead and the more apathy you show the faster it will be allowed to rest in peace.

Instead of griping about what Disney has done, why don't you listen to my space adventure story? He Who Rides on the Clouds is supernatural noir that spans space and time. When children on Mars go missing, Alexis Leonard and his ex-wife Brittany go looking. Their search leads them to a pagan temple and an ancient religion.

If you'd like to buy the story and read ahead, it's available in the Fall 2020 issue of Cirsova, available here: https://amzn.to/3yRRywY

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 1
No Posts This Week

Hey everyone, with BasedCon coming up this weekend I'm busy catching up on things and getting ready to go. But I'll be back next week with lots of new thoughts!

Big Changes Ahead

Hey Friends, I've got some big life changes on the horizon and should be able to create more content. What would you like to see? More fiction? More fitness? Maybe you'd like more video or audio content. Let me know in the comments.

Also, if you aren't a paid subscriber, what would get you to pay $5 a month?

Is Ladyballers Doomed from the Start?

The most honest analysis I've seen.

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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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