#even if he's Alive it does retain some shock value motivation

[eriexplosion]

Still thinking about the finale of course and how little sense it makes for the sacrifice to be final because like... all the things people compare it to were people sacrificing for a good reason.

Kanan died on a mission to get Hera out, they succeeded and they rescued her and he died to protect them. He died to protect the woman he loved, the child she hadn't told him about but he might have sensed, and the squad that had become his family. Narratively his death pushes Ezra to the place he needs to be to accept the loss of his parents and resist Palpatine's attempt to make him give it all up to get his parents back. It sets the stage for Ezra to sacrifice himself less fatally in the endgame of the season.

The Rogue One crew died to get the plans to the Death Star out - their sacrifice is the reason A New Hope can even happen and we have the context to see why it's worth it.

Vader sacrifices himself and kills the Emperor and the reason people hate Somehow Palpatine Has Returned is partially because it negates that. We know the impact of the sacrifice.

But look at Tech's decision to drop. If he dies here then he dies to save his family... on a mission he insisted they go on in the first place, where they did not accomplish their goal to track Hemlock and they did not figure out where Crosshair was being held. And immediately after they literally crash anyway and Omega almost dies. This instantly puts them to Ord Mantell where they get betrayed and Omega is captured.

But what about character arcs? Surely it had some kind of payoff for the character decisions? Well, Hunter wants to go back to Pabu. Understandable. He also wanted to do that anyway because he thought this was too risky a way to try to get Crosshair back (turns out he was right) so Tech's sacrifice didn't change his direction. Wrecker and Echo are still pretty much on the same trajectory. Omega is sad but her actions to get her brothers back are exactly the same as what she would have done prior.

And unlike the other examples, that's the end of the season, if they have a narrative planned to redeem this we aren't going to see it for a while and the fact is still that if he dies here then he dies as a result of his own decision to push to take this risk and find Crosshair, creating a situation where if he hadn't been so eager to save someone he would still be alive, Omega wouldn't be captured, and they would still have the opportunity to save Crosshair another way.

His death moves nothing forward, changes nothing except to make life harder for the heroes, and doesn't motivate any of them in a direction they weren't already heading in. It's also given no narrative time to breathe before we're thrown into the Omega captured and has a sister subplot. It would be pure shock value in a way that these writers are better then. But a fakeout that moves him into place for a third season narrative payoff? Then we're getting somewhere and the lack of time devoted to the Aftermath makes sense.

Like I've written a lot of things about why I think Tech is alive but when it comes down to it, I think it's the better narrative decision and I don't actually think the writers are bad enough at their jobs not to be able to convincingly make a main characters death feel important.

#the bad batch #the bad batch spoilers #even if he's Alive it does retain some shock value motivation #in that in the age of social media advertising leaving it off on an ambiguous cliffhanger like that WILL get lots of word of mouth going #TBB broke into the top ten of all tv shows social media engagement because Tech's ambiguous death shot it up 77 places #but when it's left that ambiguous there is nothing less satisfying than a reveal that it was exactly what it looked like all along #meanwhile if he's not dead his comeback will make the kids this show is actually for lose their little minds in a good way #and like my own feelings aside that's a much more important motivation than whether or not reddit dudebros are impressed by the stakes #sorry to people who expect me to get over this anytime soon this will happen again #dare i make a similar post on reddit explaining why the 'narrative stakes' obsession is stupid and Tech's death makes no sense to keep? #time will tell

[braintasting]

Tractatus Train to Busan

[Note: Spoilers throughout, for all kinds of films. If it's about zombies, trains, or children, there's a chance I've mentioned the ending here.]

Train to Busan represents a new sub-genre of zombie film, one that may well grow to prominence.

It is both new and not-new, both familiar and unfamiliar, telling the same kind of story using the same elements, but with a slight difference in emphasis that results in a radically different... something. Perhaps "emotional value." It is a zombie film in every important way. But it feels like something else as well.

It is as different from Night of the Living Dead as is the underwater Nazi zombies of Shock Waves, but maintains as close a thematic and narrative connection as does 28 Days Later. (There is more to consider on the sequel 28 Weeks Later.)

The site of difference for Train to Busan is located in the thematic zone of family.

The zombie genre is defined by its concern with social relationships: it has always been about

consumerism

social status

authority vs. the masses

tension in traditional social units, especially families

Because of horror conventions, the family in the zombie genre is usually presented as tainted or in some way inauthentic, unreal.

One of the archetypal locations is the family home or cabin, a place where one retreats to have "family time," and where family secrets are stored in attics or basements (as in Evil Dead or, arguably, Dead Snow; most of the storyline of Night of the Living Dead involves the conflict over whether the retreat with the nuclear family to the cellar is wise).

The most impactful scene in Night of the Living Dead is the little girl turning on her misguided parents. This is the image that is quoted numerous times in the genre, from [REC] to Warm Bodies to The Walking Dead.

The narrative engine for the first few seasons of The Walking Dead was fueled by marital infidelity, spousal abuse, and where the hell did Karl wander off to this time; in Shaun of the Dead, the choice is always made against domestic life in favor of heading down to the pub and spending time with "real" friends. You get the idea.

Yet, against the "badness" or insufficiency of "real" families, these characters very often form ad hoc families - taking in lost children, forging sibling-like or spouse-like alliances as society breaks down, sharing food around a table or a campfire. Zombieland, Day of the Dead, Ash vs. Evil Dead, 28 Days Later... all overtly rely on intentional families, families that are made or chosen rather than being produced through biology or traditional society.

Train to Busan reverses nearly all of this. But not the full 180 degrees.

It has both the traditional family and the broken family (the husband is separated from his wife, alienated from his daughter; the husband lives with his mother; the mother urges him to reconcile with both wife and daughter).

It has both "natural" family and "intentional" family (the father-daughter team are thrown together with the blunt Sang-hwa and his pregnant wife, and in various scenes swap roles of father/protector, mother/wife, daughter)

It has social breakdown based on familial love (the elderly woman who, upon seeing her sister zombified, allows the horde into her car - overrunning those who coldheartedly excluded her sibling from safety)

Most of all, it has the little girl. Soo-an. Who is beautiful.

There have been other exceptions, in which family plays a different part in the zombie story:

Revenant featured an extreme version of the theme: "They're our loved ones, we must care for them in undeath as we did in life." But in Revenant, they also weren't trying to feed on the living - uncanny, but not actively dangerous, or even infectious. In Train to Busan, the zombies are infectious, hostile, and fast.

28 Weeks Later featured a half-zombified (sure, "rabid," whatever) father crossing the country to be reunited with his beloved children. But, like the undead Romeo in Warm Bodies, he retained some portion of his memories, of his self-control, of his self full stop. The zombies in Train to Busan are (sure, "rabid," whatever) genuine zombies - they are mindless and attack loved ones and strangers indiscriminately.

In Fido, there's a happy family at the heart of the film. But this film is a high-concept exercise, played mostly for laughs: "What if we mashed up Lassie with Night of the Living Dead?" The family elements are part of the 1960s-kid's-adventure genre. Fido is an aesthetic success, if you like the joke, but is not creating a new thing.

These, then, represent ancestors of this new sub-genre. Forerunners. Not yet exemplars.

Another key to the new genre Train to Busan defines (or should define) is transit.

It takes place on a train, so shares something of the venerable action-on-a-train genre (Murder on the Orient Express, Silver Streak, Horror Express, From Russia With Love).

It also shares a frantic sense of pacing and claustrophobia with transit-thrillers like Speed or Con Air.

These are films that critique the way in which our daily lives - the mere action of going from one place to another, the simple act of movement - become mechanized, constrained, unnatural. Our industrialized, technologized society is highlighted, in a way, but not with anything as flashy as killer robots or possessed diesel engines. Instead, it's as banal as a daily commute. The deadly, miraculous machines that surround us are part of the scenery.

Perhaps the ultimate examplar of the transit-horror (or transit-dystopia) would be Snowpiercer, which is not a zombie film in the remotest sense - but has an oddly similar set of concerns: the end of society, exaggeration and breaking of government power and social class differences, the mass of humanity reduced to (or overtly expressing) mathematical principles in the way we reproduce and we eat. Snowpiercer is an allegory; our world or our society is the train. Train to Busan is not so simple.

(It should also be mentioned that while being on the train is not an element of 28 Weeks Later, train stations are, aren't they? Unless I'm misremembering. That franchise does love a subway tunnel. The trains haunt those films, like ghosts. Why?)

(And again, in The Walking Dead, one season was consumed with the quest to reach "Terminus," as if this train station was the last outpost of civilization rather than a place where humanity eats itself.)

The train has become a potent symbol - a sign that's heavy with meanings, sometimes contradictory ones:

Ultra-modernity, but with nostalgia (as in the mighty engines of the Hogwarts Express).

Colossal machines - faster, stronger, heavier than anything on a human scale - that are also in some ways fragile or on the brink of collapse. One of the hallmarks of the cinematic train is its spectacular wreck, sometimes as the film's climax: Silver Streak and Snowpiercer might have entirely different themes and wholly different aesthetics, but they end with tangled steel and steaming debris.

Travel (so, new places), but also routine (so, the same old thing) - timetables are always important, and commuting is often important too.

Business, especially corporate business (or, in the case of Harry Potter, boarding school - still a uniformed space with paperwork and expectations set by supervisors), but also vacations.

Community, but also alienation. The iconic joke (or urban legend) about the two passengers eating each other's biscuits from the tin, neither one daring to ask the other how he (or she) presumes to take his own sweets... this is also a joke about trains. The faces that become familiar (or even family-like) by sharing that closed space over time - they are also divided from one another. There is always an expectation of silence, or at least of not intruding on the other's space. Perhaps (and this is the sense that Snowpiercer takes as its central theme) the train is best thought of as a closed environment filled with strangers. Claustrophobic (and boring) and agoraphobic (and overwhelming) all at the same time.

This contradictory nature means that in many ways the train, suitably enough, defines an axis of meanings. It's on a symbolic track, running both ways.

The zombie also functions as a contradictory figure on axes of meanings as well - dead/alive, familiar/alien, operating in huge masses/breaking down society, revealing hidden truths/eternally unknowable.

The beauty of Train to Busan is that it takes on not one but two sets of axes of meanings - two bundles of anxiety-producing contradictions - and resolves them by using the third theme, of family relations.

Note here that I'm seeing "anxiety" as a close relative of "humor" and of "wonder" - states of mind relying on contradictions.

Note also that I'm perfectly aware that this may be an absolutely subjective response on my part - as a father, I know the kind of guilt the main character feels. The final, central contradiction: Sometimes, the only way to demonstrate your love for your child is by your absence, or so it seems. You go away to do the thing they cannot see. You alienate yourself from them (bastard!) for the noblest of motivations (hero?).

This is the ground that Train to Busan occupies. It is one of the warmest zombie films ever made. It manages to be genuine and sweet while still having train wrecks, martial law, and cloudy-eyed cheerleaders chomping on sports heroes. It'll be interesting to see if - or when - another filmmaker tries to do something new with the same three elements: zombies, trains, families.

#know your zombies #capitalism #zombie evolution #mass transit #zombie family train sub-genre