Black Panther: Wakanda Forever | Rise of the Guardians | Slumberland | Avatar | Avatar: The Way of Water | Ratatouille | Christmas with a Prince
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, 11 November 2022, Century Olympia
I went to a 9 AM showing of the film, forgetting it would inevitably start with a funeral. Guys, I wept watching the friggin' Marvel Studios logo.
Four specific things I really, really love about #WakandaForever:
- Shuri named her AI "Griot"
- They change the colors of the subtitles to distinguish between Spanish and Yucatec
- They call MIT "the equivalent of a Wakandan village school," LOL
- I'm kind of thrilled how many folks are now going to be Googling up the Haitian revolution, ngl.
Generally, though, this film had SUCH a high bar to clear--not only with the death of Chadwick Boseman, but just generally following up the massive success of Black Panther AND introducing an entirely new aspect of the world that hey, has its own complicated relationship with colonialism.
Because there's the temptation--definitely in the media, but also in ALL OUR HEARTS--to be like, hey, here's the MCU concession to Latinx culture, in the same way Ms Marvel is for Islamic culture and Shang-Chi was the one for Asians or whatever. Because one, yes, OF COURSE that is what is happening, but two, that's not actually how it works. So how do they do the tokenism nod without being, like, super obvious they're doing a tokenism nod?
I don't know if they cleared the bar because, hey, the MCU has not yet done my culture, y'know? (Ms Marvel has immigrant culture and Shang-Chi had immigrant Asian culture, but the closest the Mouse Empire has gotten to the Philippines is in Raya and the Last Dragon and not even there, technically.) So I can't say they did it right, because there's no such thing as right, but I did really enjoy what they did with Namor.
I mean, "the child without love," sin amor, like, fuuuuuuuck that is good.
And of COURSE Namor would be more militant about defending his people than the rulers of Wakanda had been. The whole deal with Wakanda was that it was an African nation that was never colonized. The deal with Talokan was it was a refuge from colonization already happening--the Yucatec Maya people we see in the beginning effectively committed suicide in order to get away. Those are not folks who would be inclined to suffer those atrocities again.
So there's a ton of stuff going on in this film--I haven't talked about Riri at all, or even whatever is going on with the CIA or whatever--but I don't know, man. I loved this movie.
Rise of the Guardians, 24 November 2022, streamed via Prime Video
My sister and niece watch this every holiday season and somehow I never sat down with them to watch the whole thing for, like, a decade? Silly of me. This movie is charming.
The mythos itself is a pretty familiar frame, if you're into myths: In order for gods/fairies/mythic beings/etc to continue to exist, people need to believe in them. For this film, it's beings like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman. And, as we all know, technology is destroying EVERYTHING and nothing is magical anymore, yadda yadda.
Then there's some stuffy with the Bogeyman where he starts undermining the other mythic beings--the Guardians of childhood or what-have-you--and Jack Frost has to step up and save childhood. It's actually pretty sweet.
Also, these Guardians are TERRIFYING, will watch again, would recommend.
Slumberland, 24 November 2022, streamed via Netflix
Slumberland both wants us to believe Doorknob Designer is a stultifying career AND ALSO secretly the coolest thing imaginable and I am down for it. Because while Nemo has just lost her Manic Pixie Dream Dad (don't even @ me, that's what he was) and her Uncle Philip is supposed to be a total drag, dude has built what looks like an extremely lucrative career on doorknobs and I dig it. And while he's a total nerd, Uncle Philip is, he also clearly wants to do right by his weirdo niece and just doesn't understand how that works. I like him.
The selling point of the film, of course, is that it is an unending loop on the shifting weirdness of dreamscapes, and also Jason Momoa was allowed to be as goofy and weird as he wanted as Flip, proving that he can be charming and totally hot without, y'know, having to go on that awful bland-protein-and-broccoli diet all the superhero actors have to do.
I think the film actually does quite well, pacing-wise, because there are a ton of bits that I would love to dig deeper into, but they stayed laser-focused on the core story. (There's a twist, even though it's sort of an obvious narrative twist, but you wouldn't know to look for it, honestly.) The kid with the Elvis hair that drives a garbage truck in one of their dream paths?
The whole dang Bureau of Subconscious Activities and Agent Green's whole relationship with Flip the Outlaw? Duuuuuuude, gimme some fic on that. (It doesn't exist yet on AO3; I checked.)
This movie was so much fun.
Avatar, 25 December 2022, streamed via Disney+
I saw this once, back in the theatre when it originally came out, and it became clear that although the story itself was, uh, colonialist and racist, it was pretty awesome in terms of special effects? So we went to see it and yeah, it looked good. And now the second one is here, and it is, yet again, colonialist and racist, and also looks really, really gorgeous.
It's hard to be an ethical consumer of pop culture, but here I am, embracing my self-proclaimed vocation as cultural critic. So first up, rewatching the movie. LET'S GO.
I will say it is kind of hilarious and endearing that Jake goes around thumping all the plant life like he's an overgrown toddler. If not for all the larger meta-concerns, he's a fairly endearing protagonist. (There's the crunchier discussion about how they have a parapalegic main character who, uh, file transfers his brain into another body? There's...a lot to unpack there.)
It's pretty weird how they try to sell that Jake would be all in on reporting back to Obvious Villain Quaritch--and to supporting Selfridge, the corporate asshole who literally calls the indigenous people blue monkeys, WTF--just because...what? Because he's a Marine and thus just, like, falls back into rank and file? Because Grace was rude to him when they met? He otherwise seems like an empathetic and decent human, so I can sort of see how the plot is trying to position him, but the characterization just ain't there.
Also, when Tsu'tey rolls up all, "These demons are forbidden here," I was like, yeah, dude. How would we humans feel if, like, some human-dolphin hybrid clones--which, let's keep in mind, are actually only inhabited with sentience half the time--popped up and started thumping all the plants in our botanical gardens or something? (This is such a bad analogy, but once I pictured it in my mind, I had to share it.)
Anyway, this movie makes it VERY CLEAR that colonization is BAD, which YEAH I KNOW, but then Jake becomes, I don't know, more Na'vi than the Na'vi or something. I mean, at a major crisis point in the story, he flies in as Toruk Macto, co-opting a story about how ONLY FIVE TIMES EVER has one of the big bad ptero-dragons been tamed by GREAT LEADERS. Because Jake Sully knows when being a White Savior is essential to the plot.
Anyway, take it as read that I wholly agree with the core message that yeah, we are all connected, the ecosystem is Gaia within and surrounding us, but MAN OH MAN did we have to get through some Noble Savage bullshit to make this all possible.
And, uh, for a film that started out with a man whose twin brother had just been murdered, we don't talk about Tom Sully ever again? Like, after the first ten minutes? Which is weird, given how much of the film's philosophical core is about how ancestral voies are never lost. But let's instead, finally dwell on the fact that Grace went to the trouble of having a Stanford tank top made for her giant-sized xeno-biology hybrid avatar.
Avatar: The Way of Water, 26 December 2022, Starlight Dos Lagos 15
It was less than five minutes into the movie when Jake mentioned he had his first son, and I almost said aloud, "You didn't name your first son after YOUR DEAD TWIN BROTHER, you ASSHOLE?" So there's that.
The smallest kid, Tuk, who takes after her father in that she bops plants around all the time.
But yeah, Jake and Neytiri have four children--three of them Jake and Neytiri have themselves, and the fourth is a child of Grace's empty avatar body. Nobody, like, bothers to wonder aloud how Jake's and Grace's CLONE HYBRID BODIES are fertile? But I'm guessing this is supposed to get picked up in a future sequel, because the absolute yadda yadda treatment they give to this issue is astounding.
They will also need to pick up on the fact that Kiri has MAGIC CONTROL over the entire planet, I guess.
It is pretty clear that James Cameron had taken to heart SOME criticism about the racism in the original film. It's just little things--more specific details included about Na'vi culture, and even the pronunciation of Na'vi was less Anglicized. That said, it's not like you can un-colonize a narrative that's essentially based on colonialism? This Buzzfeed review does an excellent job of noting places where the film fails.
Are flying fish mounts cooler than ptero-dragons? JAKE WILL RIDE THEM ALL.
So I want to highlight that particularly: The essential narrative is not a good one because it's built on tropes that are foundationally racist. AND YET, it's also tough to grapple with because 1) it's also interwoven the stranger-in-a-strange-land stuff with, LOL, a "high school sucks" storyline, and 2) I think we're all down with the idea that we need to have a better and more holistic relationship with the world around us. But it's hard to disentangle those storylines from, y'know, the White Savior and Noble Savage nonsense, which is where all this began.
But look at this! LOOK AT THIS.
And yeah, many people have noted this is just the story of Avatar the original pasted onto a pseudo-Pacific Islander (and specifically in places, Maori) culture. It does better than the original in that regard, however, because it focuses more on the kids--their alienation as hybrid clone kids means they aren't, like, swooping in and Doing Better, but rather that they're approaching things from different viewpoints with a genuine desire to figure out their own identities. It's sweet.
Also, there's this abandoned colonist kid who Grew Up Native. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I kind of like Spider. In, like, two movies, the colonizers are going to offer him an avatar body as temptation--kind of how like, in the first movie, Jake was tempted with a new set of legs if he would spy on the Na'vi. Who knows where this will go! I say! As if love will not win out in the end!
I'm interested to see where they go with this series. Do they need THREE MORE movies? No. But I'm down for one more, I think?
Ratatouille, 28 December 2022, streamed via Disney+
There's a moment early on when Remy says he wants to put both saffron and rosemary in a dish and I lost my shit, sitting there on a beanbag in my sister's living room. It was, like, ten minutes into the movie and I was like, NO, this rat is a bougie poseur who has only heard of those flavors by hearsay.
That said, am I going to try making this interpretation of that soup he fixes? Yes.
Anyway, while the ethos of "anyone can cook" is a beautiful one and OBVIOUSLY I am a fan, it's very strongly countered by Remy's self-hating rejection of his own culture and community. As someone who's in a profession that's vastly different from almost everyone in my family, I get the sort of alienation they're pitching, and Remy's interactions with his family are awkward and poignant and WOW his dad is a jerk about it, but still. There's a lot of stuff packed into it. Is there an implicit and complex critique of immigrant communities and how they both demand norming and wholeheartedly support each other? It's a lot.
Christmas with a Prince, 29 December 2022, streamed via Netflix
I was scrolling through Netflix for something innocuous to watch while packing and there was this Hallmark-ish holiday movie starring an Asian woman so of course I clicked on it. #RepresentationMatters. Does the plot matter? This woman is a pediatrician. The prince--who just so happened to make friends with her brother during their college years--breaks his leg and needs a place to recuperate without attracting the paparazzi. THEY FALL IN LOVE.
Is this a good movie? Not exactly. Is it the first part of a trilogy? Yes. Am I watching all three of them eventually? YOU BETCHA.
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