#in the hands of current day marvel studios? i have to gag

[2003daredevil]

If Marvel studios goes any further on the making of an x-men movie we are going to do terrorism to them yes? We are in agreement about this?

#mcu negative #i would sooner eat sand and im serious #xmen is awesome but ultimately prone to neo liberal ideology wank at the best of times #in the hands of current day marvel studios? i have to gag #shallow representation pandering snarky dialogue attempting and failing to capture whedons style #every female character being a shallow inexplicible genius girl boss #pop culture references in the place of jokes completely emotionally insincere writing #kill me kill me kill me kill me

[theastrophilearchitect]

WandaVision series review part 1.

Because I have some things to say.

This is going to be posted on March 19th, at which point the WandaVision (WV) finale will have been out for two weeks; also the day Falcon and the Winter Soldier (FatWS) begins, which I have, for whatever reason, begun to think of as WandaVision's sequel, despite being a completely separate series. In 2019, FatWS was actually scheduled for before WV, so that makes no sense.

Anyway, I'm going to begin with a spoiler-free review of the series as a whole, then I'm going to go into an episode-by-episode breakdown as I re-watch the show, but the spoiler-free section will contain spoilers for the rest of the MCU. This part will cover episodes 1-3, part 2 will cover 4-6, and part 3 7-9. I’d love to do this in one post, but it’s just a little overwhelming.

If for whatever reason you don't know vaguely what WV is about, you've been living as a hermit for literally the last six years. But if you don't know: in 2015, Marvel Studios released Avengers: Age of Ultron (AoU), technically the second movie in the 'Avengers' franchise, but the eleventh movie set in the MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. AoU introduced three main characters to the MCU: Vision, a synthezoid-human-robot-AI-android thing, who I would call a person but it's complicated - his consciousness is derived from the mind stone, one of six infinity stones, JARVIS, Tony Stark/Iron Man's AI assistant, Tony Stark himself, Bruce Banner/the Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Ultron, the villain of the movie, who's more of a robot than Vision, but he's not the point. The movie also introduces Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, known in the comics as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, though they are never called this in the movies. The Maximoffs are twins who volunteered for experimentation from HYDRA, an evil Nazi organisation who provide the main antagonists in the Captain America trilogy. We are told they each gained superhuman powers from the mind stone - Pietro has an increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis, and Wanda can do neural electrical interfacing, telekinesis and mental manipulation, or, in the words of Maria Hill, 'He's fast and she's weird.'

Pietro Maximoff is promptly killed by somehow failing to dodge bullets, while Wanda and Vision join the Avengers, and eventually fall in love. I'm not explaining Avengers: Infinity War. Or Avengers: Endgame. If you haven't them, why are you reading this?

Anyway, so Avengers: Endgame is the third-to-last movie in Phase Three of the MCU, but is the last part of Wanda and Vision's story pre-WandaVision, and wraps up with Vision dead and Wanda grieving.

So, should you watch WandaVision? Yes. Absolutely.

We already know our two main characters and several of the other characters, including Monica Rambeau from Captain Marvel, grown up, Darcy Lewis from the Thor franchise and Jimmy Woo from Ant-Man and the Wasp, but we're also introduced to a cast of new characters, mainly new villains (but then superhero movies so rarely use old villains), who are well-developed and intriguing - you'll either love them or love to hate them.

The plot leaves you on the edge of your seat - nearly every episode ends on a cliff hanger, and leaves you with a thousand questions. It answers the bare minimum, the final episode leaving us still with some questions, but it is the perfect way to milk our investment.

On the other hand, if you aren't familiar with the MCU, Wanda and Vision, you may have quite a hard time understanding every aspect. So long as you have a vague idea of the context, you can follow the plot, but you won't enjoy it nearly as much. I really don't think it's worth watching the entirety of the MCU solely for this show, but I also think it's worth watching the MCU movies, full stop.

The series is only available on Disney+, which absolutely sucks. I've had a Disney+ subscription since it was released in the UK, so this wasn't an issue for me, but it does generally suck. Even if you are up to date with MCU movies, if you don't have a Disney+ subscription, you can't watch it. The streaming service stopped offering free trials in July 2020 due to the release of the Hamilton pro-shot, knowing they'd get an influx of new subscribers, but not wanting people to be able to watch it without paying. Capitalism at its finest.

Whether or not the cost of one month's subscription for WandaVision is worth it is subjective - though now all the episodes have been released you could easily watch it and only have to pay once.

Ultimately, I would argue WandaVision is absolutely worth watching, though someone who isn't up to date on MCU films wouldn't enjoy it as much as someone who is, and with its runtime of just under six hours, broken into nine episodes, it may not be worth the Disney+ subscription for you personally, especially if you're not up to date on the MCU. However, I would like to end this section on a positive note: I cannot get over how awe-inspiring the storytelling on this show is. Marvel has its issues with storytelling, with things often feeling disjointed in an attempt to remain unpredictable and prevent actors (*ahem* Tom Holland) spoiling events, but WandaVision doesn't feel that way at all. It's unlike any superhero show I've seen before, plays on morality and plays with sitcom formats from the last 70 years, meaning you'll love it even if, like me, you're not a fan of action-focused media - the only long action scenes occur in the last episode.

So, yes. five stars.

~SPOILER ALERT~

Beyond this mark, I'm going to go into an episode-by-episode breakdown, and it will be basically all spoilers from here. If you haven't seen the show and care about spoilers, go away. Please don't spoil yourself.

Also, in each episode's breakdown, I may point out foreshadowing and things I only notice because I've watched it already, so unless you've seen all nine episodes, you may find spoilers even if you only read about the episodes you have seen.

I watched WandaVision episode by episode as it was released, and since the first two episodes were released nearly two months ago, I'm going to re-watch the show and break it down as I go.

Episode One: 'Filmed Before A Live Studio Audience' This episode was released on January 15th along with episode two, and I didn't actually watch it until the Sunday because I wasn't invested yet, and, of all the MCU shows announced, this was kinda the one I was dreading. Before this show, I loved Wanda, but hated Vision, so I also hated their romance. I'd also seen the sitcom-style trailers and was absolutely terrified it would be terrible, so I wanted to finish the season of the show I was currently watching before watching the episodes.

So let's get into it.

The episode is only 29 minutes along, including the nearly-ten-minute credits, which is pretty standard sitcom-episode length. We open with the Marvel introduction, but as the camera zooms out, we're shown the logo in a fuzzy, monochrome, early-1900s style. The aspect ratio also decreases, which is a nice touch but very annoying because the show itself has a larger ratio, meaning there's a lovely thick black border all the way around the frame. But that's just a formatting complaint.

We move into a 50s-sitcom-style song-montage in which Wanda and Vision, looking human like that single scene in Infinity war are coming home, just married. Wanda magically buys the house and with some weird Vision-power stuff, he carries her over the threshold to their new house, and we see the logo.

Thoughts at this point? Just what? How is Vision alive? Why is it black and white? Why is there a musical song? Why are we in the 1950s? How are they married? Why aren't they being Avengers? Just sheer confusion.

Wanda uses her powers in this episode without her typical red-smoke-sparkles, and they make a lot of gags, received with a laughing track, about their powers, but generally follow a sitcom formula, with the plot of having Vision's boss for dinner and needing to impress him.

Also, it’s noteworthy that what little was left of Wanda’s Sokovian accent by Avengers: Endgame has completely vanished.

It's very odd to see Vision as Vision, as in synthezoid would-be-red-if-it-weren't-in-black-and-white face, dressed in regular clothes instead of his cape and superhero get-up. It seems like his superhero clothes aren't actually a part of him, but when he walks through things, they go with him, though he can't take other objects with him. This could be because they were made at the same time as him, but he also takes his other clothes with him. That's just a question as to the limits of his capabilities, though.

We're quickly introduced to their new neighbour, Agnes, cast in the role of Nosy Neighbour, but the cast of this episode stays incredibly small. Agnes mentions her mother-in-law being in town and talks about her husband Ralph, though neither of these characters are introduced.

Vision goes to work, raising the question of why a superhero synthezoid needs an office job, especially one he apparently doesn't know the purpose of.

Later, Vision calls Wanda from work, and she answers the phone as 'Vision residence', which is confusing on a number of levels. Wanda is a perfectly normal name, perfectly able to blend into this setting - Vision is not. Especially when he has no surname and this answering gives the impression Wanda has taken his name, and literally become 'Wanda Vision,' which is likely the point, but confusing nonetheless.

Here comes a 1950s style advert, advertising the 'ToastMate 2000'. In the ad, the two people put bread into the toaster, which toasts and beeps for an unnervingly long time before coming out. We're then told it's made by Stark Industries (Iron Man's company) with the slogan: 'Forget the past; this is your future!' Ominous, and clearly playing into the fact we seem to be on an alternate timeline.

Towards the end of the episode, Vision's boss's wife, Mrs Hart, begins asking questions about their past - where they moved from, how long they've been married, children, etc. - and Wanda and Vision freeze, trying to answer, but apparently unable to remember. Mr Hart, Vision's boss presses, but they fail to answer. Mr Hart begins to choke, and Wanda and Vision freeze, while his wife laughs, telling him over and over to stop it, until he falls out of his chair, and Wanda tells Vision to help him, which he does using his powers, though neither Mr nor Mrs Hart question this, and quickly leave, having barely eaten. Overall, the dinner is apparently a success.

Wanda and Vision realise they don't have wedding rings, and Wanda makes some, in a clearly cut-together shot reminiscent of the intended style. The camera then pans out to 50s-style credits, crediting the two cast members, producer, director, writer, photographer, music director, production manager, supervising editor and several other roles, with names I'm sure have some relevance, either to real cast members or some comic reference, but don't mean much to me.

The camera continued to pan out, showing the episode playing on an old fashioned TV in some kind of technological/industrial room. A hand presses a remote button, and we cut to the real credits, against a background of warped shots of screens, which then zooms into the pixels and we see a load of formations, such as of their house. Credits which are seven minutes long, though the length has nothing to do with the show itself.

One more thing: it's hard to notice during the episode, but during the credits we see a warped shot of Vision, in which his eyes appear human, where previously they've been fairly robotic.

This episode brings up a million questions and answers literally none, so, glad there's another episode, we move on. I enjoyed this episode, and enjoy it more the second time round, now knowing the answers to most of my questions, but it's so frustrating.

Episode Two: 'Don't Touch That Dial' This episode is 36 minutes long including credits, which is still fairly standard sitcom length. I watched this one directly after the first, and my frustration only continued.

Something I've only just noticed watching this the second time through: this episode opens with a recap of the first, and it recalls the events without including character introductions--except for Agnes. The recap includes her introduction, but nothing else of her, which, even though she's technically irrelevant in episode one, clearly means the writers are trying to make the audience remember her.

The comedy-style intro to this episode is in a cartoon-style, which opens with an image of the moon surrounded by six stars which light up in turn, a nod to the infinity stones.

Here, Wanda and Vision--Wanda especially--are wearing less traditional-50s clothes, though the first time round I didn't question this because Wanda's hair was nearly the same--just a little longer and more relaxed--and so was the way it was shot, the black-and-white, and the aspect ratio. I didn't quite make the decade-jumping connection, though looking back it is fairly obvious we've shifted to the 1960s.

Since this episode still follows a comedy formula, in which every episode has its own arc which rarely intersects others, the plot of this episode is Wanda and Vision participating in a town talent show and attempting to blend in. After the intro, we see Vision practising, and Wanda brings out a cabinet of mysteries for their act, which has an image reminiscent of the mind stone on the doors.

With Wanda acting as Vision's magical assistant, he gives her the name 'Glamour,' a nod to her powers, and 'glamour' in the more magical, less-celebrity sense. It also matches Vision's magician's name, 'Illusion,' from which it becomes a nod to the fact this whole set-up seems so abnormal, and, an illusion or glamour.

Before the intro to this episode, we see Wanda and Vision getting woken up in the night by some banging. Later in the episode, we hear whirring and another bang, which prompts Wanda to go outside to investigate, where she finds a crashed toy helicopter, in colour. The helicopter has a sword symbol on it--the first time we see this.

Agnes then brings Wanda a rabbit for the magic act, who she calls Senor Scratchy, a reference to Nick Scratch, a colloquial name for the devil. This was part of what led to initial speculations about which character was actually comic-villain Mephisto in disguise - WandaVision also draws heavily from comic series 'House of X', in which Mephisto is the villain. Obviously, people began assuming Agnes was either Mephisto in disguise, or working for him.

Agnes then advises Wanda about Dottie, the leader of some organisation Wanda is apparently trying to join. Skip to the meeting, Wanda emulates Dottie’s actions to appeal to her. Dottie is then rude to a woman giving some sort of account, but she forgot to ask about the chairs, to which Dottie says ‘Devil’s in the details, Bev.’ Agnes then says to Wanda, ‘That’s not the only place he is,’ which added to the speculation about Mephisto.

The committee Wanda is with is working on the talent show to raise money for the elementary school--’For the children.’ This phrase is repeated throughout the episode, and foreshadows Wanda’s motivations as the show progresses. Wanda meets a woman named Geraldine, who says she feels out of place, foreshadowing her true identity, and how she, personally, came to Westview.

Meanwhile, Vision attends a neighbourhood watch meeting and one of the men offers him a stick of gum, which he takes despite the fact he can’t actually eat food, as a synthezoid. One of the men slaps him on the back fondly, and Vision swallows the gum, which we see as a cartoon of it going down his mechanical oesophagus. 

Wanda stays behind at the committee meeting to help Dottie clean up, and Dottie tells her she’d heard things about Wanda and her husband, which Wanda responds she ‘doesn’t mean anyone any harm,’ and Dottie tells her she doesn’t believe her, as though she’s mentally returned to reality, continuing to foreshadow the reveal in the next few episodes. The camera zooms in, the music intensifies, and a voice comes from the radio beside them, asking if Wanda can hear him. Dottie asks, panicked, who it is, and who Wanda is. The radio short-circuits, and Dottie breaks the glass she holds, cutting her hand, and the blood is red.

The advert in this episode contains the same actors from the previous one, this time advertising the Strucker watch--a reference to Wolfgang von Strucker, a Nazi villain from the Captain America franchise; also the head scientist on the experiments which Avengers: Age of Ultron claims gave the Maximoff twins their powers. The slogan is ‘He’ll make time for you,’ which, even now, I’m not completely sure what it’s a reference to, or who the ‘he’ could be, but it seems to further suggest Mephisto’s involvement, despite that not actually being the case.

Cut to the talent show, Wanda panics because Vision is late. He shows up, walking and acting as if drunk, and we’re shown the gum is stuck around some gears in his gut. On stage, Dottie makes the audience chorus ‘for the children’ again, and Wanda and Vision come out. Because of the gum stuck in Vision, the act goes sincerely wrong, and he uses his powers out in the open, but Wanda manages to use hers to apparently hide this from the audience. They bring out the cabinet of mysteries, and Agnes asks sarcastically if they’re sure they don’t want an audience volunteer named ‘my husband Ralph?’, the second mention of Ralph in the series. 

Vision taps the box with his wand before Wanda gets inside, and the audience starts chanting ‘What’s in the box?’ Wanda panics, does something with her powers, and opens it to reveal a very confused Geraldine inside. Their act ends, and Wanda uses her powers to find and release the gum stuck in Vision, and he seems to ‘sober up’. They try to leave, but Dottie calls them up on stage, praises them and presents them with a trophy for their comedy. Wanda calls up Geraldine, who asks what happened, but they play the ‘magician never reveals his secrets’ card.

They get home, and joke about it, repeating ‘for the children’. Wanda gets up, deciding to get popcorn, and is suddenly quite pregnant, where she very much wasn’t before. There’s a thud outside, and they go to investigate. A manhole cover in the road shifts, and somebody in a beekeeper’s suit, with the sword logo on the back, emerges, face in shadow. Wanda merely says ‘no’, and we rewind to before the thud. Colour then begins to bloom onto the screen, and the episode ends, with an echo of the voice from the radio.

Looking back, I think the shift to colour on Wanda’s part may have been a decision because of the helicopter, and the blood--the beekeeper prompted it, but she’s trying to hide the fact that the things which do not belong are so obviously out of place.

This episode holds no more answers than the last, and has the same comedy tone with the ominous undertones as the last, but also contains significantly more characters and locations, as though this sitcom world has expanded.

And then we had to wait a week for episode 3.

Episode Three: ‘Now in Colour’ And we shift to the seventies. This episode’s recap recalls all the major points of the last episode, including Geraldine’s introduction. This episode is only 32 minutes including credits; longer than the first, but shorter than the last, so we’re still sticking to the comedy format, and the episodes aren’t yet lengthening.

Just a point a little irrelevant to this: WandaVision’s total runtime is about six hours, and we’re getting six FatWS episodes, which is probably about the same runtime but a little disappointing (though that’s mostly because it means there’ll be a couple weeks where we get nothing between it and Loki).

The introduction to this episode is more classic sitcom, with the long pop-style song over a montage of the characters--exactly what you’d expect from the seventies. The episode opens with a doctor at their home, who tells them she’s about four months along, which she obviously isn’t. Vision questions how this happened, but it becomes fairly clear to the audience this is Wanda’s doing. Vision asks the doctor not to tell people about the pregnancy, and sees his neighbour to the non-Agnes side, Herb, trimming his hedge, but the hedge-trimmer is going through the garden wall, and he hasn’t seemed to have noticed. Vision points this out, Herb verbally acknowledges him, but keeps going.

Vision returns inside, and Wanda’s pregnancy has progressed even further. Wanda uses her magic to prepare the baby’s room, and her magic is still missing her signature scarlet, a continuing sign something is wrong. The baby kicks, Wanda describes it as ‘fluttery’, and accidentally makes the butterflies on the baby’s mobile real. 

Vision mentions the name ‘Billy’, and Wanda says ‘Tommy’, ‘a nice, classic American name’, returning emphasis to their efforts to fit in. Wanda gets Braxton-Hicks contractions, and her powers turn on the tap, open the window, flare the lights--the pregnancy causes her to lose control of her powers, and the block’s power goes out. Wanda mentions the people of Westview ‘always seem to be on the verge of discovering [their] secret’, and Vision says something seems wrong there. The music intensifies and the camera zooms in, then we cut back to before he said that, but without the rewind sequence we saw in the last episode.

And Wanda goes into real labour, sending Vision in a panic. Then it begins to rain inside, and Wanda comments she thinks her water has broken.

Cut to commercial! Same actors again, this time for Hydra Soak--’find the goddess within’. It’s a bath product meant to take you away from your problems--a reference to Wanda’s apparent escape from what she was left with after Endgame. I’m not completely sure what all the HYDRA references are about, even after watching the whole series.

It stops raining inside, and Wanda opens the windows to dry out the house, and I cannot get over how perfect her hair is in this episode. It’s perfect in the others, too, but this time, it’s perfectly straight, not a strand out of place, and I just can’t get over it.

Vision goes after the doctor, who was about to go on vacation when he left, and the doorbell rings. Wanda puts on a coat to hide her belly, and welcomes Geraldine in, but tells her it isn’t a good time. Wanda gets a contraction, and her coat transforms. And again. So she throws it off, and uses a fruit bowl to disguise it, but Geraldine doesn’t leave. 

A stork appears behind Geraldine, apparently the one Vision painted on the nursery wall earlier, and Wanda has to do her best to keep Geraldine from seeing it. She tries to make it vanish in a cloud of red smoke, her typical magic, but fails, and Geraldine eventually hears the stork, but Wanda tells her it’s the ice maker. 

The baby, however, it very quickly coming, and Geraldine sees Wanda’s belly. She lays Wanda down, and she births the baby, while light fixtures break and paintings spin, before Vision arrives. My God, her hair is so damn perfect. The baby’s a boy, and Vision concedes to Wanda’s name choice of Tommy. Then Wanda screams again, and Billy is born. For the children.

Vision goes outside with the doctor, and asks about his trip. The doctor tells him that small towns are ‘so hard to... escape,’ yet another ominous implication. The doctor leaves, but Herb is still outside, now without the hedge-trimmer, but with Agnes. They whisper about something, then Vision goes over. Agnes says ‘Ralph looks better in the dark, so I’m not complaining,’ when he asks if they lost power, too. And Agnes asks if Geraldine is with Wanda, as though she is suspicious, though knowing how episode seven ends, her true concern is clear.

Inside, Wanda tells Geraldine she’s also a twin, and the music intensifies. Geraldine says, ‘He was killed by Ultron, wasn’t he?’ in reference to Pietro--Quicksilver.

Agnes says Geraldine is new to town, no husband, and no home.

Wanda asks what Geraldine said, but Geraldine goes back to complimenting her. Wanda presses, but Geraldine’s sudden clarity seems to have gone. Then we zoom in on Geraldine’s necklace, and it’s the Sword logo.

Herb tells Vision Geraldine ‘came here because we’re all...’,but Herb can’t get the words out.

Wanda asks about the symbol, who Geraldine is, but she says she doesn’t answer.

Agnes makes Herb stop talking, and leaves. Vision returns inside, and Wanda tells him, rather monotonously, that Geraldine had to return home. But the camera cuts to the Westview sign, suddenly with a wider, more modern aspect ratio. It’s night, the air ripples like TV static, and Geraldine comes flying out, as though pushed. She collapses on the ground; cars approach, a helicopter casts a spotlight on her. We pan out to some kind of camp, and cut, to that dreaded ‘Please stand by’ credits screen.

And episode three ends, leaving us still without answers, but at least a little confirmation of something malevolent occurring. 

So, that’s my initial overview and breakdown of episodes 1-3. Part 2 will contain episodes 4-6, and part 3 7-9 plus my final thoughts.

But that’s that for this week’s post; the next two parts should be up next week and the week after, unless I have something I want to post more.

Anyway, go drink some water, eat something if you haven’t eaten in the last few hours--you’re amazing, you’re beautiful, and you so deserve everything you have, and more.

Bye!

#wandavision #marvel #mcu #avengers #marvel cinematic universe #disney #disneyplus #disney planes #the avengers #wanda #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #vision #quicksilver #maximoff #tv review #show review #programme review #tv show review

[aileen-hollingsworth]

Polaris In The Family ~#15

previous | next 

A/N: GUESS WHO WROTE ANOTHER THING. what do you mean you already knew it was me? smh. This takes place after Haiden’s pick of the last three. Random day, then a few days later, same day this fic written by the marvelous @aliyatyson hello, cass takes place. So like...there’s a section where that rp was supposed to go if I’d had time to make it from Aileen’s pov, still referenced it later on so it makes sense without her pov tho, so do not fret, I think. Anyhow...starts with Colleen, has other kinda important things. There’s third person pov at the end in italics. Ft. Cole, Sam, Ray (thanks for the rp cass), Uncle James, Lyra, David and Robbie. Also Biscuit.... I hope this isn’t to bad and makes sense?

“That’s not fair!” Robbie yelled as he stared at the game board in disbelief.

“Let’s not raise our voices.” Uncle James scolded from the living room.

Cole smirked in victory and I rolled my eyes with a grin of my own. “I think he played it right, Rob.”

“But—but—I was winning!”

Cole leaned on the chair’s backrest triumphantly. “It’s all in the strategy, kid.”

Robbie examined the game board once more with a frown but gave no other protest. I leaned closer to Cole and whispered, “How did you do that? Robbie never loses on this.”

He suppressed a smile. “Wendy was obsessed with this game when we were younger. I had to come up with good plays to stop her from winning all the time.”

I snorted in an attempt to contain my laughter and his grin widened, “Such a Lady, Firework.”

I shoved him and he laughed right before Lyra declared an “AHA!” from the couch in the living room.

Sam glared at her, reorganizing the papers he’d dropped when he’d been startled by her yelling. David, on the other hand, wasn’t bothered; bobbing his head to whatever song blasted through his headphones—making annotations every few seconds on a notebook—most likely working on some lyrics while Biscuit slept on one of his legs. Uncle James was just too used to it all and kept reading the newspaper without even acknowledging Lyra’s sudden outburst.

“Aileen, look at what I found!” She made her way to us with a mischievous smile and sat down next to Robbie, turning the magazine she’d been reading around to slide it across the table. I read the title out loud. “Love Quiz: Do you really know your partner?”

Cole continued reading after I raised an eyebrow at the title. “Worldwide leaders in research and couples therapy found out that one of the most important characteristics of successful relationships is the quality of the friendship between partners. Do you really know your partner? Take our quiz on the next page to find out!”

“You should take it.” Lyra cooed and I laughed.

“What do you say, Cole? Do you really know me?”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s a magazine.”

“It’ll be fun, come on.” I pushed the magazine back to Lyra. “We’ll do it.”

“Perfect.” She flipped the page. “Can you name your partner’s best friend?”

Cole groaned. “That’s not fair. You have like 5.”

“Not true. Just three and you gotta pick one.”

“Fine. I’ll go with Haiden.”

I looked down at my hands, the word "maybe" echoing in my head. “I guess if we ever get over this fight.”

“You mean when you get over this fight.” He corrected and nudged me with his elbow. “Your turn.”

I glared at him. “You don’t have a best friend. You don’t like talking to people.”

“Great response,” he smirked and looked back at Lyra. “Next question.”

Lyra tilted her head. “You seem like a talkative person here.”

“I am when I want to be.”

“He’s just never done much of an effort at the palace.” I snickered and he gave me a sideways glare.

“Next question.”

Lyra smiled and put her gaze on the magazine again. “Do you know what stresses your partner is currently facing?”

Cole and I looked at each other for a moment, having a silent conversation.

I knew he was stressed about the whole rebel fiasco. He’d been sitting with different papers for hours trying to think of something he could suggest to his uncle—King Ashton—but he still hadn’t figured out what the rebels hoped to gain by killing a royal and then stealing documents. It seemed like two completely different courses of action. To me, it made even less sense.  

As for my stress, it mostly came from worrying about Haiden or not knowing how to handle being around Sam sometimes. Either it felt like the good old days or it felt like we’d missed out on everything because he left. It was harder when it was just the two of us at home. He was still working on getting his job transferred to Angeles.

We both mumbled a “yes” at the same time. Lyra continued without asking for specifications. “Can you tell me your partner’s life dreams?”

Cole answered music production for me, and I said fencing and political science for him. We were both correct.

“Who’s the family relative your partner likes the least?”

Cole looked at me. “What was your great aunt’s name again?”

Lyra replied before I could answer. “Ugh, Miss pretentious pants? None of us like her.”

Uncle James, who had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water, stopped to stand near us with a frown after Lyra’s last words. “Who are you talking about?”

I gave him an amused grin. “Great aunt Marge.”

He made a face raising the glass to his mouth. “Oh, that woman is crazy.” Biscuit barked from the living room as if he agreed with the statement.

Cole laughed. “Why do you all seem to hate her?”

“We don’t hate her. She hates us.” Robbie finally chimed in, leaving the game board alone.

I nodded, staring at Cole. “I told you she never liked that my parents got married.”

Uncle James shook his head before adjusting the military dog tags around his neck—from what he’d told us he’d only served for a year—but he always had them on for some reason. “She still thinks they shouldn’t have gotten married. No matter how good things go for Miles. She’ll never accept Tessa married a Three.”

We all nodded and Cole laughed again. “Why does she hate all of you though?”

“Cause she knows we think she’s crazy.” Robbie pointed out.

His father gave him a glance, but Robbie only shrugged. Then looking back at Cole, Uncle James added, “She knows we don’t think lower castes should be frowned upon.”

“And therefore she knows we frown upon her.” Lyra finished.

“Well, she is wrong,” Cole muttered and I patted his shoulder.

“And that’s why she gets the title of the least favorite relative.”

Lyra stared at the next question with wide eyes, trying not to laugh. “Do you think there is fire and passion in this relationship?”

I burst out laughing and Cole struggled not to do so too. David, who had finally joined us, took the magazine from Lyra’s hand to read the question himself. “What kind of magazines are you reading?”

I looked over at Cole, dramatically standing up and placing a hand over my heart. “Tell me my love; is there fire and passion in this relationship?”

He snorted. “There sure have been a lot of fire references.”

I eyed him. “Fire and passion, Cole.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat before standing up and placing a hand on my lower back, in an equally dramatic voice saying, “Yes, my love. There has never been more fire and passion in a relationship before.”

“Does it burn like the fire of a thousand suns?” I declared, staring into the distance like they did in movies.

A small chuckle escaped his lips before he composed himself, taking one of my hands and bringing it to his heart. “Yes. You can doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move his aides, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.”

“Hamlet.” Lyra acknowledged with amusement and soon enough we both laughed.

David shook his head with a smirk. “Why do you make him embarrass himself in front of everyone?”

“Oh, he doesn’t mind. Do you, Cabbages?”

“What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t let you reenact dramatic scenes for the sake of it?”

Robbie made a gagging sound, “Boyfriend?” Sam perked up at the word as well, even though he was still in the living room, and I laughed at both reactions.

There was no denying we were a couple, and we were dating, but we’d never called each other boyfriend or girlfriend out loud. “So it’s official then?” I asked and he smiled.

“If you want it to be.”

Saying I had butterflies in my stomach was an understatement. I had butterflies everywhere.

Taking my trusty hairpin out of my braid I placed it on his free hand. He raised an eyebrow at it, however, grinned at me knowingly. I had told him the story behind that pin. “It would be my honor.”

He leaned down for a short kiss, but Biscuit tackled us before he had a chance, deciding we’d been standing close to each other for long enough and it was his turn.

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The house was pretty much empty except for me, Sam and Biscuit. Lyra had a sleepover and Robbie had a camping thing of sorts. David was working on some new song at the studio and Uncle James was off with him too.

It was odd, but not entirely bad after an hour. We’d just kind of minded our own business at the beginning; which wouldn’t have been bad if it hadn’t felt like we were trying to avoid each other. After that, Sam had suggested we eat dinner, and since he was still not any good at cooking, we had to settle with Ramen.

At some point, the conversation had spiked into something comfortable and we’d ended up playing Robbie’s favorite game with me winning.

“Wait…how did you do that?”

“It’s all in the strategy, kid.” I grinned, quoting Cole from a few days ago, even if Sam was older than me for years.

“Loverboy teaching you his plays?” He mumbled with an eye roll and I laughed.

“I convinced him to teach me some, yes. They’re pretty interesting.”

He grumbled a “mhmm”, staring down at the board and I snorted. Sam hadn’t been around when I’d dated Josh, so I’d never seen how he would act around me having a boyfriend. The part of me that still mourned the years lost tried to creep its way out at that thought, but I pushed it aside and focused on massaging Biscuit’s ear. Don’t ruin the mood, Aileen.

“You really like him, don’t you?” his question took me off guard.

“Uh…yes. I do.” Clearing my throat to calm myself down I added, “He’s a good guy. Funny when he’s frustrated, patient when it’s needed, and he cares about others more than he lets on.”

“It’s pretty obvious when he’s around you.”

I blushed. “Yeah…a couple of people noticed he liked me before I did.”

Sam laughed. “Not surprised.”

I gasped. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re actually not that bad at reading people, Aileen, but whenever it involves you—in any way—it’s like you suddenly become blind.” I could hear the amusement in his voice and huffed in response, crossing my arms over my chest.

That’s when Biscuit started barking. I did my best to shush him. He just ignored me and rushed to the backyard’s door, scratching on it repeatedly. I groaned, blaming David for not teaching him any manners while I was in Dominica. “Ok, I’m coming, calm down will you?”

He wagged his tail with his tongue sticking out, patiently waiting for me to open the door. Once I did he ran out and started sniffing the border of the house, occasionally whining. I frowned, and moments later Sam was standing next to me, giving Biscuit the same confused gaze.

That’s when we heard the footsteps and whispers.

“I thought Uncle James said Mr. Westfield would be out of town for the week with his family…”

“He did,” Sam clenched his jaw and we both listened again. There. I walked back inside, ready to go inspect when he grabbed my wrist. “Wait, what are you doing?”

“Don’t you wanna know what that was?”

“Yes, but I don’t think going there is the smartest choice.”

“Someone lost his sense of adventure.”

“I’m just saying—”

Not letting him finish I wiggled my hand out of his grip. “I don’t care. Are you coming or not?”

He gave me stern look. In a way, I knew I was daring him. I was daring him to say something. Anything. I was daring him to impose himself as the older, wiser brother. I wanted him to be the guy that scolded me for playing in the rain and getting a cold afterward. The guy that warned me not to look for fights with his friends because they were bigger jerks than he was. The guy that shook his head at me when I came home with a raccoon saying I wanted to adopt him—don’t ask how I caught it, okay?

But Sam only sighed and averted his gaze before saying, “Fine, let’s go.”

THINGS ENSUE. READ @aliyatyson FIC HERE TO SEE WHAT IT WAS. Next section continues after that...but I think you can still understand what is happening without entire context tho

Sophia had gone to the bathroom a few minutes after the doctors took Aliya away. I’d let her go alone considering she probably wanted some space to think. I’d heard she was in charge of the mission and could only imagine how she felt. Brownie eating chic, that apparently was named Ginny, had left to check up on her after a while.

Sam and I stared at each other as Ray paced the hallway frantically on the verge of tears. Feet away a couple of doctors whispered to one another, eyeing him, the conversation ending when one of them walked off to a security guard and made a ‘watch that guy’ gesture. That can’t be good. When we’d arrived the doctors had been reluctant to help Aliya out because of her possible caste and Ray hadn’t been precisely polite. I didn’t blame him for it, but it could be problematic.

“I’ll go talk with them,” Sam whispered to me, patting my knee reassuringly before standing up. He cocked his head at Ray before walking away. “Maybe calm him down?”

I nodded and watched him approach the doctors. Once they seemed to be in a civil conversation I stood up from my chair and walked over to Ray. He kept muttering to himself, “I hope she'll be okay. Oh god, let her be okay.”

“Hey,” I tried to place a hand over his shoulder as comfort. “She'll be fine.”

“She has to... Thank goodness for Twos having a hospital close by.” He mumbled it with relief but considering the conversation we’d had back in Mr. Westfield’s house I could tell he wasn’t a fan of higher castes.

I cleared my throat awkwardly, “Right.” Then discreetly looking around I noticed one of the nurses nearby giving us both a disapproving glare. I knew she’d heard Ray’s outrage at the doctors when we’d come in. “Um...maybe just try to be nicer to the doctors next time?”

He snapped at me, practically giving me a disgusted glare, “Why? He didn't want to help her because she didn't look like a Two!”

The nurse gave us another look. Ugh, this kid doesn’t get it. I pulled him to a different hallway and whispered between gritted teeth. “Stop yelling, will you? You think your attitude is going to help?”

He didn’t calm down. “Does anything else?”

“Yes, literally anything is better than your yelling!” I sighed. “Right now you have us, okay? Sam is already talking with the other doctors; he’ll tell them they don't need to worry about the stupid money. If Aliya's family can't pay our uncle will.”

“She can take care of herself, they-they can pay. You just never had to deal with something like this.”

I was done with his attitude. Aliya and I were in the same freaking caste for God’s sake. “Can you stop doing that? You treat us like we have perfect lives and therefore simply ignore everything else around us. Yes, I know I haven't gone through the same struggles as you, I know I have it better than others. I know.  But you're being as bad as any condescending Two if you keep treating us like we just automatically don't care because we have it good.” I was born a Three as much as any Seven was born a Seven. At least I didn’t treat anyone like they were beneath me just because of a stupid number plastered on my birth certificate.

Ray looked at me like he wanted to say something, but nothing came out of his mouth. Good, I’m not done. “I know you're used to higher castes being like that, but if you apply that line of thinking to every Three and Two you meet then its prejudice. And fine, it's usually earned, but what have I shown you so far that makes you think I'm like that?” He had to realize he was just treating me differently because of a number as well.

“I- But-” he looked down at me with a frown. I could see him trying to come up with something to refute my claims, but he came out empty. “You're...you're right, I guess. It's just that almost every time I meet a higher caste, they look down on me, so the bad people outweigh the good...”

“Well...” I sighed “they do, so I don't blame you for usually thinking that way. But trust me, not everyone that donates to charity does it to look good. Some of us do it for real because we can. I've seen people I care about—from different castes—affected by this system.” I looked at where Sam was standing; now trying to convince a nurse to allow him a call on the hospital’s phone. “I've seen some of them do stupid things because of it...” Very stupid things. “And I know you think it's not fair for them to care about Aliya's caste here at the hospital of all places. Newsflash: they shouldn't care, but either you learn to work with what you have until change comes or you get kicked out.”

He averted his gaze from mine after my last sentence and mumbled, “My dad got kicked out too” but before I could ask about it, he pursed his lips and looked at me again. “But fine, I'll try, okay? Maybe there are more Two's and Three's like Ali, and” he cleared his throat “like you and your brother. T-Thank you for helping me get her here.”

I smiled and punched his arm lightly. “See, it didn't hurt that much to be nice. As for Aliya, it was no problem. We weren't the closest friends back in the Selection, but I care about her. I want her to be okay.”

“She cares for a lot of those Selected it seems, even loud and crazy Tracie, so I have no doubt she cares for you too.”

I laughed. “Ah yes, Tracie. I'm pretty sure they're best friends so you better watch out. She likes baseball bats and if you hurt Ali she won't be afraid to use one.”

“So I won't be safe now then...” he muttered, and it took me a second to understand what he meant.

The panic in his eyes as Aliya’s blood covered his hands flashed in my mind again and I wondered if that had been the look on my face when Cole had been gasping for air on the floor.

“Don't talk like that. She'll be fine. This wasn't your fault.”

“Sure...sure... Just don't let the person you love get shot, I can't recommend it.”

I clenched my jaw. “Um, I've been there actually.”

“Oh God...I'm sorry- is he or she, uh, okay?”

“Yeah...he's fine now, thankfully.” Thinking about the whole attack still send shivers down my spine, however. “He recovered quickly since nothing vital got hit, but I had to wait for a day to see him.” I stared at the floor. “I didn't know there were two types of rebels... I would have never forgiven Ali if she'd joined the northern ones.”

“You mean the Sothern’s” he corrected with a small smile.

I frowned at the ceiling. It was getting so confusing. “Uh, I don't know. Which one is which again?”

“We're Northern,” he said, pointing at himself. “Those people who killed the Queen were Southern. Sorry about that too while I'm at it, I don't know if you knew her or something.”

“No. I never had the pleasure of talking to her in person, but her loss hurts people I care about, and the Southern rebels were the ones that shot him, so...I don't think I'm a big fan.”

“Then we have something in common. They're idiots.”

“Agreed... How exactly did you Northern rebels come to be though?”

“Years organizing in secret. Finding people isn't that hard, a lot of lower castes are unhappy, so it grew fast. We have our symbol, so we recognize each other, stronger together as they say.”

I tilted my head, “Symbol?”

He lifted his index finger revealing a star tattoo. “Yep. So, I suppose I can trust you with this?”

“Of course, I wouldn't want to put any of you in danger,” I assured him, examining the star with a frown. It was the North Star, “Hmm.”

“What? Is it too covered in blood?” He asked, staring at his own finger and desperately trying to clean it.

“What? Uh, no,” I reached for his hand and lowered it. “It just...” reminds me of Uncle James’ squadron? No, it can’t be, I thought to myself, shaking my head. “I'm probably imagining things. For a second I thought it looked familiar.”

Ray thought about it for a moment. “It could, we're bigger than we look. You could have seen it anywhere.”

“I-I guess…” I was pretty sure it wasn’t random though. “Are you all composed by lower castes?”

He gave me a confused look. “I think so, but it’s not like I’m in charge of everything. Why?”

“Nothing…I just—”

Sam was in front of us before I could finish my sentence. “Aileen, we need to go.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “What? But Ali—”

“I know, but I just talked with David and Uncle James wants us home soon.”

“Did you tell him I have a friend in the hospital?” I scoffed and he sighed.

“Yes, but it’s getting late.”

“I think I’m old enough to handle a couple of hours after curfew in an emergency.”

“Remember the doctor said you should sleep enough.”

“Uh, Doctor?” Ray asked, clearly puzzled.

I pinched the bridge of my nose with a grunt. “Southern rebels. I got a concussion. Sleep is important.”

“Oh…you should probably go home then.”

“No, I want to stay.”

If the situation had presented itself years ago Sam would have dragged me out of that hospital without giving it much thought, I was sure of it, yet despite knowing that, I would have never guessed he’d have the bravery to do it now.

“Come on, we’ll be back first thing in the morning.” He reached for my wrist and started walking off.

“But—!”

“No buts, Aileen. We’re going home.” Staring over his shoulder at Ray he added, “I’m sorry.”

Ray nodded. “I-I get it.”

I gave him a glance before we turned a corner. “She’ll be okay. We’ll come back tomorrow. Be nice and don’t do anything stupid!”

He nodded again, that time with the hint of a smile.

We walked in silence.

I was still surprised Sam had actually dragged me out of that hospital, not because it was something he wouldn't do, but because it was something he hadn’t done since he’d been back. It was one of those things he avoided, those things he didn’t feel like he had the right to do anymore as a brother, those things I'd been desperately waiting for him to do again.

“Wild night, huh?” He ventured, and I looked at him, managing a weak smile. Suddenly sleeping seemed like a good idea. “Definitely.”

“That Aliya girl…she’s an ex-Selected?”

I bobbed my head up and down. “Sophia is so too.”

“I see.”

Silence again.

“Aileen...I want to thank you.”

“For what?” I frowned.

He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “For forgiving me.”

I examined the pavement at my feet again as we walked. “We already talked about this. I forgave you a long time ago, Sam.” I’d forgiven him during the second year of absence, the moment I realized there was no point in holding a grudge. That didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt the other four years though.

“I know you did... but tonight, when Aliya asked you... you said I was your brother.”  

“You’re her brother?” Ali had asked, and I’d seen the way Sam’s anger for Ray had diminished into uncertainty in a second—the way his eyes had glanced at me reluctantly—shame and sadness taking a hold of him.

I’d managed to mumble a yes, but Aliya kept on pressing, “I didn’t know you had one?”

I’d spent years telling myself I didn’t, and Sam visibly shifted further away from Ray after the statement like he’d been hit by it. He didn’t seem surprised though, just vulnerable and I hadn’t liked it. “Well…I do,” it had taken me a moment to admit it, but I knew I had to, “Sam is my brother.”

I pushed away the memory from barely an hour ago. “What about it?”

“She seemed surprised to even hear you mention the existence of a sibling; I know you stopped telling people about me. You haven’t called me brother since I came back, just Sam. Hearing you say it…it was good.”

I wasn’t sure if it was because I was tired or stressed, but after his words tears blurred my vision and I stopped walking.

“Well, you are my brother are you not?” It was a simple question, yet I could feel the tone I’d given it. The defiance. The reproach. “You are my brother are you not?” My voice broke at the question I’d screamed for years in my head.

How could you leave me?

You are my brother are you not?

How could you disappear like that without telling anyone?

“Are you not?”  Tears rolled down my cheeks as I looked up at him. There was pain in his eyes as well. “Tell me, Sam! You are my brother, aren’t you? Aren’t you!” My eyes stung and my head throbbed. I just wanted to sit down and hug my knees closer to my chest. “Come on Sam, tell me!”

He pulled me into a hug before I started sobbing. “Yes. Yes, I’m your brother, Aileen. I’ve always been your brother... I-I’m sorry for not acting like one but I’m not leaving you again. I promise.”

I clenched my fists around his shirt and let myself cry. He still smelled like that stupid cologne Mom used to buy for him all the time and I buried my head deeper into his shirt as he hugged me closer to him. “I’m sorry, Aileen. I’m really sorry.” His voice was barely a whisper. “I was a jerk, you didn’t deserve this.”

It felt like I was eleven again, coming into the kitchen with excitement just to receive worried looks from everyone else, Uncle James sitting me down to try and explain the few things he even knew. “You shouldn’t have left.”

“I know.”

I didn’t say anything else and he just let me cry in his arms, his hand gently stroking my head. “I think I ruined your shirt,” I mumbled, wiping away my tears, crying finally replaced by sniffling.

He gave me a tired grin. “That’s okay. Let’s go home.”

He carried me on his back the rest of the way, and it truly felt like when we were young again. No external thoughts to ruined the moment, just the sense of familiarity. I was half asleep by the time we reached our block. “Am I not too heavy now?”

“I can still handle you, Alien.”

I smiled at the nickname. Apparently, when I’d been born, six-year-old Sam hadn’t known how to read my name and thought it said Alien. Even after Mom and Dad told him what it really said the word stuck with him, and when I grew up he always brought it up as a joke.

“I missed you, Sam.” I slurred, almost asleep.

“I missed you too, Aileen.”

I woke up with Sam nudging me, “Rise and shine.”

“Five more minutes,” I mumbled back.

He took my blanket away. “Come on, you said you wanted to be there as soon as possible. Ray called and said Aliya was out of surgery, don't you want to be there when she wakes up?”

I snapped my eyes open at the word surgery and the previous night flashed in my head. Mr. Westfield’s house, the rebels, all that blood. Aliya’s blood. And then it wasn't her, it was Cole’s. It was his pained eyes. His blood on my hand... I pushed the thoughts away. No, he’s okay now, worry about Ali.

Sam placed a hand on my shoulder with concern at my daze. “Aileen?”

I rubbed my eyes and stood up, my head pulsing. “I’m okay, it’s just the headache.”

He nodded. Morning headaches had become a thing most days after the concussion. The last week they’d been residing, but after everything that had happened the night before it felt like they were compensating for lost time. “How bad?” he asked like David normally did during breakfast.

“Maybe a seven?” I wasn’t really sure; it was just killing my temples.

He stopped rummaging for clothes in my closet to glance at me. Normally my answer was a solid four. “Take the pills and don’t even consider skipping breakfast.” It was not a suggestion.  

“Ah yes. The concerned, protective brother has returned,” I mumbled with a smile.

Sam gave me a crooked grin in return. “Oh, he never left; I was just keeping him at bay. No need for that anymore though. Now I can ask Cole how serious he is about this ‘boyfriend’ thing.”

I groaned, sitting back on the bed, but I was glad to hear him say that. It meant Sam was back. Truly back. My brother was home.

“Why the sudden interest exactly?” James asked his niece as she examined his military dog tags during breakfast.

She pointed at the North Star engraved on the back of each tag before asking, “You said all your squadron had these, right?”

He tilted his head but continued to stir the sugar in his coffee without alarm. “Yeah, it was my training squadron. We named ourselves the North Star.”

Sam, who was eating on the counter with Aileen, looked at the symbol too. “Didn’t Dad have a pin with a star like that?”

Aileen nodded, eyeing her uncle warily. He watched her carefully as well. “Yes, he still does. And Mom has it on a pendant, the one made of a wax seal?”

His nephew continued chewing on his food, clearly not following the same line of conversation her niece was trying to hold. “Oh, yeah, I remember that one.”

“Well,” James took a sip from his cup calmly, trying to figure out if he was imagining his niece’s implications or not, “The North Star is a common symbol, Polaris marks the way due north and the rest of the stars wheel around it. People used it for navigation centuries ago.”

Sam listened to it all with mild interest. David was too busy not overcooking his eggs. Aileen, however, was remembering Ray’s words from the night before.

We have our symbol, so we recognize each other, stronger together as they say.

She tried a different tactic to get the information she wanted from her uncle. “You know, my friend is in the hospital because she got shot.”

Sam looked at her with wide eyes as if asking ‘what do you think you’re doing?’ but she ignored his warning glare and kept her eyes on her uncle, hoping he would understand. She needed to know. It couldn’t all be a coincidence.

Her uncle had paused, his cup halfway to his mouth. Not just anyone got shot.

David finally stopped staring at the frying pan to frown at his cousins. “Is she okay?”

Aileen dismissed his concerns; the conversation was not aimed at him after all. “Yes, she’s fine. We were in Mr. Westfield’s house.”

“What? Why were you in Mr. Westfield’s house?” David was very confused, but James’ expression had changed from interest to mild suspicion.

He’d told Angelo that house was perfect to send supplies, and like always, he’d stashed its' basement with things, expecting the young team to think it was originally from the house they were in. That was the protocol with Angelo. If her niece’s friends had been in the house that same night it could only mean one thing…

We have a symbol, Aileen kept thinking. “Oh, it’s a long story, David. Not really important. But she was with a couple of friends.” She handed her uncle his tags with a grin. “I think one of them was part of your training squadron.”

He weighed the chain in his hand, his sight never leaving her as the shadow of a smile tugged at his lips, “Really, someone from the North Star?”

“I’m pretty sure. I think I would only need confirmation from you.”

He didn’t bother hiding the knowing smirk that took over his face. “Well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he were. I’ve always supported the North Star. It wouldn’t be that strange for them to be nearby.”

Sam and David were both giving them weird looks now, not understanding the real conversation at hand.

“Have Mom and Dad ever met your squadron?” Aileen wondered, now sure of what her uncle was. James let out a small laugh and started releasing one of the tags from his chain.

“They have,” he admitted, offering his niece a tag with pride “and I guess now you have too.”

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#welllllll fromating this was interessant #but I am donw #finito #asdjhfl #i am really sorry if the grammar in this is confusing? I feel it's not my best but idk #I hope you enjoyed it or found it slightly interesting #cole #david #aliya #ray #aileen's fam #colleen blooming #fic #not a challenge

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND December 21, 2018  - Mary Poppins Returns, Aquaman, Bumblebee, Second Act, Welcome to Marwen

This was going to be my last column for the year, but there’s just too much to write about, so I’m going to split it up and publish another, hopefully shorter, column next Monday. This is the last weekend before Christmas, and while there are a ton of big movies released – as well as a couple lower-key ones – most of these movies will just be doing a very small part of their overall business in the generally slower weekend before they explode next week with everyone off from school and most off from work all week.

MARY POPPINS RETURNS (Disney)

Opening on Wednesday is Walt Disney Pictures’ last prospective blockbuster of the year as well as a sequel to one of the company’s most iconic films over its entire history, 1964’s Mary Poppins, which was nominated for 13 Oscars, winning five. Mary Poppins Returns might also be Disney’s first big play for a Best Picture nomination since The Helpin 2011, which actually was a DreamWorks movie. Then again, Disney already seemingly has its stokes in the Oscar fire this year with Marvel’s Black Panther, so this family musical in the Walt Disney tradition might be suitable back-up.

It’s the latest movie directed by Rob Marshall, who helped Disney’s Miramax division win Best Picture with his theatrical directorial debut Chicago, then delivered a musical holiday hit for Disney four years ago with Into the Woods, which grossed $128 million from a Christmas Day release. Chicago grossed $170 million after its own Christmas Day platform release in 2002, and that got Marshall the gig directing 2011’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which grossed $241 million in North America but did even better with $800 million overseas.

Marshall reunites with a couple of his Into the Woods stars, most notably Emily Blunt, who is so perfect to step into the very big shoes of the original Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews.  Blunt is already having quite a spectacular year after starring in hubby John Krasinski’s The Quiet Place, which grossed $188 million domestically, making it Blunt’s highest-grossing movie to date. A few years ago, Blunt starred in the movie based on the bestselling book The Girl on the Train, which also did decently with $75 million, and that was mostly based on her name (and the book, of course.)  That should be enough to help place Blunt even closer to the A-list and playing Mary Poppins is likely to solidify that role. Who knows? It might even get her that Oscar nomination that has been so elusive despite having six Golden Globe nominations.

Of course, Blunt is ably helped by popular actor-rapper-songwriter Lin Manuel Miranda, whose Hamilton broke many records for Broadway musical and who is working on adapting his previous musical In the Heights  for the screen. Miranda previously got involved with the Disney brand when he wrote songs and provided his voice for Dwayne Johnson’s Moana a few years back, and no surprise that he’s out there doing the most press and talk shows for Mary Poppins Returns. Then on top of those two stars, Marshall and Blunt also reunite with Into the Wood’s Oscar-nominated scene stealerMeryl Streep, clearly an A-list star who can bring people out to see almost anything she does, although she only appears for one song/musica number in this movie. The cast is rounded out by Ben Whishaw, James Bond’s Q, and Emily Mortimer, another great British actor, plus there are a couple highly-publicized cameos by original Mary Poppins stars that will be a thrill to fans of the original.

The thing is that there’s a whole generation or two that did not grow up watching the original Disney movie, so they won’t have the personal connection to the character/movie as their parents might. Also, one can expect that males of all ages will be more interested in checking out Aquaman  or Bumblebee their opening weekend,

It’s important to remember a couple things – the first one being that the weekend before Christmas can be slower than usual, and the second being that opening on Wednesday means that really diehard fans who can’t wait until the weekend might try to see it before heading out of town for the holidays. On the other hand, some might just wait until the weekend or until Christmas week to see it with their families. Either way, these things will likely keep the movie’s weekend numbers to be too crazy.

Because of that, I can see Mary Poppins Returns  making around $10 million on Wednesday and Thursday, getting a nice bump over the weekend to just over $40 million, but REALLY exploding in the week beginning with Christmas to the point where I can see it hitting $200 million by New Year’s Day, which would be quite amazing for a studio that is having their best year ever.

MY REVIEW OF MARY POPPINS RETURNS

AQUAMAN (Warner Bros.)

It’s hard to imagine the latest movie from Warner Bros’ DC Universe might be considered counter-programming to a Disney movie, but let’s face it, Warner Bros. has been struggling against the Disney-Marvel Studios titan for a bunch of years now, and they need a way back into fans’ good graces after last year’s Justice League and 2015’s Suicide Squad.

It’s hard to believe that anyone would ever make an Aquaman movie, especially after the famous Entouragegag – not to mention Saturday Night Liveand others making fun of the character. Jason Momoa’s Atlantean warrior from the Justice League movie is indeed getting his own solo movie, directed by James Wan of Furious 7  and three horror franchises: Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring.

Joining Momoa as Mera is Amber Heard, who also had a brief appearance in Justice League, but has mainly been off-the-grid with the long-delayed London Fields and in the tabloids for her issues with her ex Johnny Depp. Heard hasn’t really been in a major release since the Oscar bait The Danish Girl and Magic Mike XXL in 2015.

The cast also includes Oscar winner Nicole Kidman (as Aquaman’s mother), Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe (as Aquaman’s advisor) and Wan regular Patrick Wilson as his brother Orm aka one of the film’s main baddies, Ocean Master. It also stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Aquaman’s other bad guy, Black Manta.

Reviewsfor the movie have generally been mixed but on par with Mary Poppins Returns, maybe a little lower, but much better than Justice Leagueor Suicide Squad. (Thank, God!) Warner Bros. even gave the movie sneak previews this past Saturday for Amazon Prime users, in which it made $2.9 million. That might help get the word out on the movie, but it also might take some money away from the movie’s opening weekend, since many probably went to see it early from positive reviews.

The movie will also have to tackle the most direction competition from Paramount’s Bumblebee (see below) as well as last week’s well-received Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which is likely to have strong word-of-mouth business from last weekend going by its rare A+ CinemaScore.

Expect Aquaman to do decently over the pre-holiday weekend with $70 to 75 million, because as mentioned before, many people are travelling or doing last-minute shopping over the weekend, but expect it to continue to bring in repeat business over the holidays, so I could see it grossing $250 million or slightly more by the time it leaves theaters.

Also, make sure to check out my interview with director James Wan over at the awesome new VitalThrills.com! Very excited to have a byline on that relatively new site!

MY REVIEW OF AQUAMAN

BUMBLEBEE (Paramount)

The third big movie of the weekend -- and some will find it crazy that Paramount is releasing it this weekend against the two stronger movies above -- is the latest movie in the Transformers franchise, the prequel telling the story of Autobot Bumblebee.

Directed by Travis Knight, the CEO of Laika Studios and director of the stop-motion animated Kubo and the Two Strings, this is a prequel that shows the origin of the beloved Transformer character as he’s sent to earth during the Fall of Cybertron and ends up befriending a rebellious teenager (played by Hailee Steinfeld) in 1987.

Having a female lead in a Transformers is quite groundbreaking since women were mostly used as eye candy in Michael Bay’s movies, but Hailee Steinfeld has done a good job establishing herself with her debut role in the Coens’ True Grit, for which she received an Oscar nomination. Since then, she’s been in films like Ender’s Game, Begin Again, Pitch Perfect 2 and most recently, voicing the role of Spider-Gwen in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

On the plus side, having a female lead might help bring in younger girls that might not normally be interested in Transformers, but it could theoretically turn off the guys who have already been complaining about the female leads in the Star Wars saga. Both franchises are very male-driven, and both of the new movies above will be of equal interest to anyone who might be interested in Bumblebee.

Fortunately, Bumblebee is much better than most people are expecting, and some might be surprised that it currently has better reviews than both Aquaman AND Mary Poppins with 98% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, as of this writing.  It does have a ton of competition arriving in theaters, but it’s fairly clear that Paramount and Allspark Films (the film division of Hasbro) are hoping to get some run-off over the holidays from people who have already seen the above two movies, as well as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The fact that Paramount gave a well-attended early sneak preview of Bumblebee on Dec 8 gives you some idea how confident they are that the fans will dig so.

Even so, Bumblebee will be lucky to make more than $20 million this weekend, although there might be enough room with most people off work and out of school on Sunday to see more than one movie this weekend. I can see this one making around $25 million over the weekend but it should also be able to exceed $100 million by New Year’s, and its overseas money should help Paramount stay in the Transformers business for some time.

MY REVIEW OF BUMBLEBEE

SECOND ACT (STXfilms)

And then we get to some big-time counter-programming, and in this case, it might be a movie that might have a hard time finding an audience, especially against Mary Poppins Returns.

Second Actcould just as well have been called “Jennifer Lopez Returns,” because it is in fact her first major non-voice role in theaters since 2015’s thriller The Boy Next Door. That movie was a bit of a joke, yet it still opened with nearly $15 million and grossed $35.3 million based on her role. Her previous movie Parker two years earlier didn’t fair particularly well, much of which may be attributed to her not being as much in the public eye in terms of movies anyway.

Directed by Peter Segal (50 First Dates), Second Actis more in vein of Lopez’s 2002 hit Maid in Manhattan, which grossed $94 million over the holidays after a moderate $18.7 million December opening. Lopez went on to have a few other romantic comedy hits after that including Shall We Danceand Monster-in-Law, but others like The Back-Up Plan (2010) and What to Expect When You’re Expecting (2012) barely made it to $40 million domestic.

That brings us to 2018 where Lopez hasn’t really been in a movie in some time but still has quite a few female fans, and maybe some of them might not be so interested in the mostly white Mary Poppins Returns. (Yes, I realize Lin Manuel Miranda is Puerto Rican-American … no need to write that angry letter/tweet!)

The movie offers a great premise which has Lopez making it in big business after a friend makes up a fake Facebook account, and it’s something that helps push the female empowerment conversation from the past few years even further. Earlier this year, STX released Amy Schumer’s I Feel Pretty, which did decently with $16 million opening, grossing nearly $49 million domestically, despite terrible reviews.

The trailers for Second Act have been received similarly well and Lopez has been doing her fair share of the talk show rounds, but otherwise, STX has only opened one movie with more than $20 million, and that was 2016’s Bad Moms, which was an easy sell even for its rushed-out sequel Bad Moms Christmaslast year.

Even though Second Actseems like a strong inspirational story, it also seems like the definition of a holiday movie that’s released in the bad weekend pre-Christmas, in which it probably couldn’t make more than $8 million. If the movie is as good as it looks, I can see women going to see it with female friends over the holidays to make it a sleeper with between $40 and 50 million total.

Mini-Review: I didn’t go into Second Act expecting much, even though Peter Segal did direct one of Adam Sandler’s better films (50 First Dates).  I certainly didn’t expect that I’d relate to Jennifer Lopez’s Maya as much as I did. No, I’m not a Latina woman from Queens who works in a supermarket, but I have been having trouble getting a job since I don’t have a degree despite having 25 years of experience writing for the internet.

But enough about me, let’s get back to Second Act, a movie with such an up-front premise that you will pretty much get exactly what you might expect if you’ve seen the trailer and liked what you saw. Somehow, Maya finds herself as a consultant at a big-name corporation’s make-up department because her friend’s son doctored her resumé and Facebook page.

Lopez is definitely in her element with this sort of premise which falls somewhere between Working Girl and 13 Going on 30, and if you like those inspirational woman-empowerment comedies, then you’ll probably find elements to like about Second Act as well.

Much of that is due to Lopez’s supporting cast, a group of underrated funny women like Leah Remini (as Maya’s best friend) and Charlyne Yi (an office assistant) plus Vanessa Hudgens proving once again that she’s quite good at handling anything that’s thrown her way as Maya’s primary competition at the company. Some of the jokes work better than others, but whenever Remini is on-screen, you can expect to laugh.

Sure, the overall premise is one that’s already a little hard to swallow, but then it goes off the rails with a twist absolutely no one will see coming. And yet, it somehow finds a way to recover nicely and get its audience back.

Regardless, Second Act is a perfectly harmless and safe film that gives you more than a few laughs, might even have you in tears at times, but basically gives you exactly what’s advertised, which is something rather rare these days.

Rating: 7/10

WELCOME TO MARWEN (Universal)

Lastly, there’s the latest movie from Robert Zemeckis, which ten to fifteen years ago, may have been a huge deal, especially following the huge success he had with Tom Hanks inCast Awayand Forest Gump, both which were Oscar-nominated (and winning) mega-blockbusters.

Zemeckis’ last film, the WWII spy drama Allied, only made $40 million despite starting Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, and his real-life story The Walkstarring Joseph Gordon Lewis might as well have been thrown over the side of the World Trade Center, because it tanked so badly. Zemeckis’ last hit was Flight, starring Denzel Washington, which barely grazed $100 million domestic, but also received two Oscar nominations. The three movies before that were performance capture animated movies with had varying degrees of success.

Like Flight and The Walk, Welcome to Marwenis based on a true story, that of artist Mark Hogancamp, who was injured in a brutal attack and finds therapeutic solace in the models and dolls he builds in his backyard. Hogancamp’s story was previously told in Jeff Maimberg’s award-winning doc Marwencol in 2010, although I’m not sure that many people are aware that doc exists.

Like Nicole Kidman above, this is Steve Carell’s third movie of the year, including the Christmas Day opener Vice, and his last drama Beautiful Boy has only grossed $7.5 million… and that was with super-hot Timothée Calamet! Carell’s 2017 releases, Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying and Battle of the Sexes haven’t fared much better, and he’s generally done better voicing Gru in Illumination Studios’ Despicable Me and Minions movies. For this one, Carell is co-starring Leslie Mann (reuniting with Carell for the first time since his breakout film The 40 Year Old Virgin), Eisa Gonzalez from Baby Driver, Game of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie, Diane Kruger and Janelle Monae, a solid female supporting cast, for sure.

There have been many movies like this released right before Christmas in hopes for any sort of business over the holidays. Movies like Jim Carrey’s The Majestic opened with less than $5 million in 2001, and Will Smith’s Collateral Beautyonly did slightly better in 2016 with its $7 million opening. Also, there was the Tom Hanks movie Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, which only got a platform release over Christmas, which is generally the way to go for movies looking for Oscar nominations.

In some ways, Marwen reminds me of Ben Stiller’s 2013 remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which opened on Christmas Day (a Wednesday) with $7.8 million and made another $12.7 million on its way to $58 million domestic. I don’t think Marwen could do that well since it’s opening before the Christmas holiday bump, because Universal is only opening Zemeckis’ latest in 1,900 theaters, and the movie has barely been screened for critics or awards groups before this coming week, which tells you that the studio doesn’t see it being an Oscar player.

Frankly, I’d be shocked if Marwen made more than $5 million this weekend, but if it’s any good, it could make upwards of $30 million but not much more. There’s just too much stronger competition in theaters.

Mini-Review: If you haven’t seen Jeffrey Maimberg’s doc – and I haven’t – then you might be even more puzzled by why Robert Zemeckis might want to dramatize the story of artist Mark Hogancamp who was beaten up outside an upstate bar and left in such a bad mental state, he lost all his memories. In order to get through the repercussions of such an assault, he began building a small town called Marwencol in his backyard, populating it with dolls that he would put into various hero scenarios.

Maybe this premise wouldn’t be so weird if the movie doesn’t start off with a WWII action scene involving Carell’s Captain Hogie in doll form taking on Nazis and being saved by a group of women… and the seeming cross between live action and animation just gets weirder and weirder as the movie goes along. There’s also Mark’s proclivity for collecting and wearing women’s high heel shoes, which also plays a pivotal role in the story, as does a “Belgian witch” named Deja (after the John Carter of Mars character), who is voiced by Diane Kruger, who doesn’t have a real-life counterpart like all of Hogie’s other women.

Sometime in the past ten years or more, you may have heard one woman or another complain about the body issues created by Barbie dolls that real girls couldn’t possibly live up to… so take that and then add a poorly-chosen Robert Palmer song, and you can understand why this movie might get many young women bristled.

It’s hard to completely hate a movie that features Leslie Mann in such a key role as Mark’s across-the-street neighbor Nicol, on which he has developed such a huge crush. This 40-Year-Old Virgin offers the movie’s sweetest and most emotional moments but then it’s soon lost in more silliness with dolls or once again showing Mark being beaten up on that fateful night. Janelle Monae and some of the other actors are wasted, barely appearing fully in human form.

The saddest part about this movie is that it’s painfully aware that Zemeckis has completely lost touch with the kind of movies that audiences might want to see, and Welcome to Marwen frequently has you asking, “Who was this movie supposed to be for?” Rating: 5/10

It certainly will be interesting to see how the top 3 movies fare in a busy pre-Christmas weekend, but even moreso to see how they affect the well-received Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Clint Eastwood’s The Mule, although the former will probably be more affected than the latter. Fox Searchlight will continue to expand The Favourite nationwide, this Friday into 775, as it racks up awards and nominations, although I’m not sure that will be enough to break into the top 10. It probably will end up with around $2 million or so, as will, Focus Features’ Mary Queen of Scots, starring Saoirse Ronan, which will expand into 700 theaters with Ronan doing the talk show rounds this week. It’s a battle of the costume dramas outside the top 10, but expect both of them to find business over the holidays.

This week’s Top 10 should look something like this… (and mind you, these are all for three days, Friday through Sunday)

1. Aquaman  (Warner Bros.)  - $73.6 million N/A 2. Mary Poppins Returns  (Disney) - $41 million N/A ($10 million on Weds/Thursday) 3. Bumblebee  (Paramount) - $25.5 million N/A 4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse  (Sony) - $19.4 million -45% 5.The Mule (Warner Bros.) - $9.1 million -48% 6. Second Act (STXfilms) - $7.5 million N/A 7. The Grinch  (Universal) - $7 million -40% 8. Welcome to Marwen  (Universal) - $5 million N/A 9.Ralph Breaks the Internet  (Disney) – $4.4 million -48% 10. Mortal Engines  (Universal) - $3.4 million -55% -- The Favourite  (Fox Searchlight) - $2.1 million -- Mary Queen of Scots (Focus Features) - $1.8 million

LIMITED RELEASES

Thankfully, things are slowing down as far as limited releases with only a few left this weekend and a couple more next week.

First up is the new film from Oscar-winning Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowsky (Ida), as COLD WAR  (Amazon Studios), this one a love story between a young singer and older conductor and how that relationship evolves over the course of the years and a number of world events that try to come between them. I wrote about the film briefly when it played the New York Film Festival earlier this year and hope to rewatch it over the holidays, because it’s quite amazing. A wonderful story told in a tight 90 minutes, all in black and white with fantastic cinematography by Lukasz Zal, who received an Oscar nomination for his camerawork and lighting on Ida. It opens in select cities on Friday.

Opening in L.A. for a one-week Oscar consideration run is Kenneth Branagh’s ALL IS TRUE  (Sony Pictures Classics), which I haven’t had a chance to seen myself, but it takes place during the final years of William Shakespeare in 1613 with Branagh playing the playwright, Judi Dench playing his wife Anne and Ian McKellen as the Earl of Southampton, who according to Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous, may have authored Shakespeare’s works. It follows the burning down of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater which sends him back to his family in Stratford. No word on when it will get a normal theatrical release, but from what I heard, it doesn’t have much of a chance for Oscars either.

Written by Luc Besson and Richard Wenk  (The Equalizer) and directed by Steven Quale  (Final Destination 5), American Renegades  (Europacorp) follows a group of Navy SEALS who have hidden a vast treasure underwater in a lake in Sorbia. It stars Sullivan Stapleton (300: Rise of an Empire), JK Simmons, Sylvia Hoeks (Blade Runner 2049) and others, and I’m not 100% convinced it’s going to be in many theaters this Friday, but it will be on VOD and digital download on Christmas Day.

Maria Pulero’s psychological thriller Between Worlds  (Saban Films), playing in New York (Cinema Village) and L.A. (Arena Cinelounge) following its VOD release earlier in the week, stars Nicholas Cage as truck driver Joe, who has an encounter with a fellow trucker Julie (Franka Potente, The Bourne Identity) who is able to travel through the astral plane to communicate with the dead. When her daughter Billie (Penelope Mitchell from Hemlock Grove) ends up in a motorcycle accident, Julie uses her power to try to bring her back but instead brings back Joe’s ex-wife and puts her spirit in Billie’s body. Sexual hijinks ensue.

This holiday’s special Bollywood film is Aanand Rai’s Zero (Yash Raj Films USA Inc.), starring Shah Rukh Khan as a young man from a wealthy affluent family who meets two women (Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma) who take him on a journey to broaden his horizons. It should be in a couple hundred theaters on Friday.

Also on Wednesday night is a special screening of Christina Kallas’ ensemble drama The Rainbow Experiment (Gravitas), which was the opening night film of this past year’s 13thAnnual Harlem International Film Festival and is currently on VOD. It will screen at the Xavier High School where it was filmed Weds. at 6pm, and you can find out more information and get tickets on the Facebook page.

STREAMING

Streaming on Netflix Friday is the post-apocalyptic thriller BIRD BOX, directed by Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier (In a Better World) and adapted from Josh Malerman’s novel with Eric Heisserer (Arrival). It stars Sandra Bullock as a woman travelling with two small children down a river, all three blindfolded to prevent them from being affected by a virus that has forced millions of people to commit suicide. Since I don’t have many limited releases, I’m going to go ahead and review the movie which I got to see Monday night.

I haven’t read the book, but this is a really interesting decision for Bier, who has done smaller dramas for the most part, and Bird Box really allows her to up her game with a couple action set pieces as well as a lot more involved story.  Although much of the marketing has focused on Bullock’s boat trip with the two kids, the movie spends just as much time five years earlier as some kind of virus or event causes millions across the globe to kill themselves. It’s quickly determined that being outside with your eyes open causes you to become infected by the deadly virus.

Bullock’s character is pregnant and she ends up fleeing to a house full of a disparate group of characters played by John Malkovich, B.D. Wong, Trevante Rhodes from Moonlight, Rosa Salazar, Jacki Weaver, Lil Rel Howery (Get Out) and Machine Gun Kelly. They’re soon joined by an also-pregnant Danielle McDonald (Dumplin’), as the film cuts between this group trying to survive and get along with Bullock and the two kids rowing down the river with the blanks filled in as it goes along.

I really found this to be a fascinating high-concept premise that actually thrived from the interesting cast and Bier’s ability with pulling out great emotions from an audience through performances and the remarkable score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Of course, Bullock is as fantastic as always but I was equally impressed with Rhodes who is proving himself to be a heroic lead that audiences can root for.  The film has lots of twists that keep you guessing a out what might happen as others are introduced in to the mix, and frankly, I found myself liking this as much or more than A Quiet Place, mainly due to the cast. I also have to say that it was very enjoyable seeing the movie with an audience as well, and it will play in a couple theaters Friday.

Rating: 7.5/10

Also streaming on Netflix Friday is Irek Dobrowolski’s doc Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski about the Polish surrealist who was rediscovered in 1968 by pop culture collector Glenn Bray who brought it to the attention of underground comic publisher George DiCaprio. (George and his famous son Leo are two of the producers on the film.)

REPERTORY

In some cases, this week is a continuation of series that began last week, so if you see your favorite repertory theater missing, then just go back and check last week’s column. Also, the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn will be showing René Manzor’s 1989 French genre holiday film Dial Code Santa Claus (a new 2K restoration via AGFA)on Dec. 19 (sold out!) and Dec. 23.

METROGRAPH (NYC):

In the Year of the Grifter continues, while the weekend’s Playtime: Family Matinee is The Muppet Christmas Carol, while the Metrograph will continue to show some popular holiday favorites in its series Holidays at the Metrotraph, which includes The Umbrellas of Cherbourg  (1964), Vincente Minell’s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Joe Dante’s Gremlins (I984), John Landis’ Trading Places  (1983), Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread  (2017) and of course, Todd Haynes’  Carol.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Beginning on Friday is a new 4k restoration of Marcel Pagnol’s The Baker’s Wife  (Janus Films) from 1938, another French filmmaker who I know every little about, although this stars Raim, who also starred in Pagnol’s Marseilles Trilogy. This weekend’s Film Forum Jr.  is the late, great Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 filmThe Circus.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

The theater’s Holiday Spirit 2018  series continues with double features of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns and Joe Dante’s Gremlins, as well as the even odder double feature ofDie Hard(1988) and Trail of Robin Hood  (1950). On Saturday night, there’s a “Cyberpunk Megazone” double feature of 1995’s Virtual Assassin  and Hologram Man with introduction by Rob Schrab. And on Saturday… It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) but also another oddball holiday double feature of The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982) and The Oracle  (1985).

AERO  (LA):

American Cinemateque’s other L.A. theater is also getting into the Holiday Spirit  with The Lion in Winter (1968) on Thursday night, Will Ferrell’s Elf (2003) on Friday, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) on Saturday and It’s a Wonderful Life  TWICE (!) on Sunday, because that seems to be the go-to for repertory theaters this season.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971) continues through Thursday and the theater’s vast Rated X series will continue into the new year with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls  (1970), Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead  (1981), the Japanese erotic drama In the Realm of the Senses  (1976) playing over the weekend, as well as many more.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Yup, It’s a Wonderful Life will continue to play here as well, while this weekend’s Late Night Favorites  will be David Byrne’s Eraserhead, the Weekend Classics Coen Bros. movie is The Hudsucker Proxy  (1994) on 35mm, and this weekend’s Shaw Brothers Spectacular running Friday, Saturday and Sunday at midnight is Holy Flame of the Martial World  (1983).

THE NEW BEVERLY  (L.A.):

Tarantino’s renovated theater continues its holiday celebrations with double features of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Scrooged on Weds. and Thurs. (sold out online but with tickets at the door). It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story play as double features on Friday and Saturday, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Jingle All the Way  has matinees on Saturday and Sunday, and then Die Hard and The Silent Partner play as double features on Sunday and Monday’s Christmas Eve.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

Also showing Bruce Willis’ Die Hard at midnight on Friday night.

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER(NYC):

The amazing Jacques Tourneur, Fearmaker series continues, and between this, the Quad’s Rated X series and all the great programming at the Metrograph, New York repertory-philes should be set for the weekend before Christmas and next week, as well.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Douglas Fairbanks Jr. continues with The Exile  (1947) on Weds., Sinbad the Sailor  (1947) and The Dawn Patrol  (1930) on Friday.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

A Cher For All Seasons continues.  

I was hoping this would be the last column of the year, but there are two new movies opening in wide release on Tuesday, Christmas Day,the Will Ferrell-John C. Reilly comedy HOLMES AND WATSON  (Sony) and the Will Ferrell-produced Adam McKay semi-comedy VICE (Annapurna Pictures). Instead of bombarding you with more numbers and info, I will post another mini-column NEXT MONDAY. Something to read while you wait for Santa to bring you better presents.

#WhatToWatchThisWeekend MaryPoppins MaryPoppinsReturns Aquaman Bumblebee SecondAct JenniferLopez BirdBox Movies Reviews Streaming

[theconservativebrief]

In early July, a video game writer named Jessica Price embarked on a lengthy Twitter thread about the storytelling differences between games meant to be played as single-player experiences and games meant to be played by lots and lots of people at once, like Guild Wars 2, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Price was a writer for.

Price’s thread received a perhaps too-haughty response from gaming YouTuber Deroir, who disagreed with some of what Price had to say. Price — who is, after all, a woman on the internet and thus is subject to a stunning amount of social media pushback and condescension — put Deroir on blast, first tweeting: “Today in being a female game dev: ‘Allow me–a person who does not work with you–explain to you how you do your job,’” and later following up with: “like, the next rando asshat who attempts to explain the concept of branching dialogue to me–as if, you know, having worked in game narrative for a fucking DECADE, I have never heard of it–is getting instablocked. PSA.”

The Guild Wars 2 community erupted in outrage at Price, who had either stuck up for herself against the endless onslaught of needling criticism that comes with being a woman online or had abused a position of authority to call a popular member of the gaming community an asshat by implication. (Price’s tweet didn’t directly call Deroir an asshat, but it was hard to miss her meaning.)

A few days later, ArenaNet, the company that makes Guild Wars 2, fired Price and her co-worker Peter Fries, who had defended Price in several Twitter threads. Price told Polygon that she was not given a chance to explain herself, or to apologize. She was simply fired, as was Fries.

The broad outlines of the controversy drew comparisons to Gamergate, the controversial movement that began in 2014 and involved a bunch of gamer and alt-right trolls using the cover of concern for ethics in video gaming as an excuse to harass women in the industry and to claim that calls for better representation and diversity within gaming were destroying video games.

Was Price’s firing a result of Gamergate’s actions? Not directly, no. Deroir was not a Gamergate adherent, and he wasn’t agitating for Price to be removed. Plus, plenty of people who found Price to be in the wrong weren’t Gamergaters.

But the answer to that question also has to be yes, because of how thoroughly the matter was discussed in Gamergate’s favored corners of the internet, which mostly jumped to Deroir’s defense, and because of how completely Gamergate changed the way games are talked about online and how women in the industry have to think about what might happen to them, something Price touches on in her Polygon interview.

In the years since 2014, Gamergate has metastasized and evolved into what feels like the entire alt-right movement, to the degree that many of the names boosted by the hyped-up controversy, names like Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich, saw their stars only rise when they became central to online communities that backed the presidential candidacy of one Donald Trump. Gamergate went from a fringe movement that struck most people who heard about it as a weirdo curiosity to something that took over the country, as Vox’s Ezra Klein predicted it would with eerie accuracy in late 2014.

Gamergate didn’t manage to completely eliminate more diverse storytelling in games, as at least one silly controversy from this year would indicate, but it did slightly paralyze the video game industry. And that paralysis has begun to spread to other spheres of our culture.

Members of the movement have developed a tactic that they have deployed again and again to drive dissension in assorted online communities, using a mix of asymmetric warfare (in which they stage lots and lots of small strikes at giant corporations that don’t quite know what to do in response), the general lack of accountability applied to the movement’s various decentralized figures, and a tendency to turn progressive concerns inside out, in a weird attempt to reach parity. Gamergate didn’t really have anything to do with Price’s firing directly, but it also did, because Gamergate is now everywhere and everything.

The movement arguably elected a president. And just this past week, in a much higher-profile case than the firing of Jessica Price, it got director James Gunn fired from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.

James Gunn attends the premiere of Ant-Man and the Wasp. Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Perhaps the above mention of “Mike Cernovich” has already pinged some part of your brain that remembers keywords from the news and headlines of the past few days; it was Cernovich who helped engineer a push to have Gunn fired from the third Guardians of the Galaxy film, by dredging up and encouraging his followers to circulate several of Gunn’s old tweets. Many of the tweets contain jokes about topics like rape and pedophilia.

Gunn’s roots are in over-the-top shlock cinema (he began his career at the famed low-budget genre movie company Troma, and his first credit is for writing Tromeo and Juliet). He directed the first two Guardians movies to general acclaim, and both his overall positivity and his general disdain for Trump have earned him more than a few left-leaning fans on social media platforms.

But that same disdain for Trump — and, of all things, the widespread pushback against a tweet in which filmmaker Mark Duplass praised conservative writer Ben Shapiro, which inspired Gunn to chime in on the fray — made Gunn a target for folks like Cernovich.

To be clear, Gunn’s past jokes are awful. They have surfaced before — most notably in 2012, when Gunn was hired to helm the first Guardians film. A blog post he had written in 2011 about which comic book characters fans would most like to have sex with drew ire from numerous left-leaning critics and social media personalities. Gunn ultimately apologized for his comments, and vowed to do better.

Later, in 2017, he told BuzzFeed that in the early days of his tenure at Marvel, he’d abandoned the persona that aimed to be a provocateur and adopted the persona that evolved into his current Twitter self. As described by BuzzFeed’s Adam B. Vary:

“I protect myself by writing scenes where people shoot people in the face,” Gunn said, chuckling. “And if I have to think around shooting someone in the face, it’s harder, but I think it’s more rewarding for me.” He cleared his throat. “I felt like Guardians forced me into a much deeper way of thinking about, you know, my relationship to people, I suppose. I was a very nasty guy on Twitter. It was a lot fucking edgy, in-your-face, dirty stuff. I suddenly was working for Marvel and Disney, and that didn’t seem like something I could do anymore. I thought that that would be a hindrance on my life. But the truth was it was a big, huge opening for me. I realized, a lot of that stuff is a way that I push away people. When I was forced into being this” — he moved his hand over his chest — “I felt more fully myself.”

And what’s “this”?

”Sensitive, I guess?” he said. “Positive. I mean, I really do love people. And by not having jokes to make about whatever was that offensive topic of the week, that forced me into just being who I really was, which was a pretty positive person. It felt like a relief.”

Yet all those old tweets remained on Twitter. Considering both Gunn’s 2011 blog post and the way he talks about his old tweets, it seems hard to believe that neither Marvel Studios nor its parent company, Disney, knew of their existence.

But when Cernovich surfaced a whole bunch of them last week in a graphic designed to strip them of as much context as possible, more and more conservative and alt-right personalities started passing them around, and Disney’s Alan Horn finally announced on Friday that Gunn would no longer be working for the company. (Gunn, for his part, made one of the better, “Yeah, I fucked up!” statements in a decade that seems to provide a new one every other week.)

Then Cernovich and his friends turned their sights on other comedy figures with provocative jokes in their past, like Michael Ian Black, Patton Oswalt, and Dan Harmon. Few of these men suffered consequences as severe as Gunn did for past jokes. But all were hounded endlessly on social media. Harmon even left Twitter.

I don’t particularly want to defend Gunn here. A lot of his old Twitter material is truly awful. It often takes the shape of a joke without actually being funny, which is deadly to anybody playing with comedic land mines like gags about child molestation and rape. Meanwhile, it’s also hard to believe that a white dude who directed two of the biggest movies of all time won’t get another chance in Hollywood, even if he has to step back and spend a year or two making indie movies.

But the way Gunn was fired sticks in my craw, just a little bit. It’s the biggest example yet of Gamergate and its ilk forcing a major public figure out of the job that made them a major public figure. By stripping events like this of their context, Cernovich and company might think they’re forcing the left to confront its own hypocrisies, or winning smaller battles in a larger culture war, or simply driving critics of the president off social media.

But make no mistake, they’re also destabilizing reality.

The cancellation of Roseanne in the wake of Roseanne Barr’s offensive tweet has been compared to Gunn’s firing. It shouldn’t be. ABC

The recent event that Gunn’s dismissal has drawn the most comparison to is ABC’s firing of Roseanne Barr from the now-canceled TV show that bore her name. (The series will live on as a spinoff titled The Conners, sans Barr.)

In that case, too, an awful tweet (in this case, a racist remark about former Obama staffer Valerie Jarrett) led to somebody who seemed protected by recent success being removed from the franchise that had yielded said success. And in that case, too, the person fired had worked for the Walt Disney Company, the biggest behemoth in the entertainment industry, one that’s about to swallow another behemoth like it’s a tiny little goldfish.

But pull back some of the layers and the two events couldn’t be more dissimilar. The most obvious difference is the timing. Gunn wrote his tweets in the late 2000s and early 2010s, before he was hired by Marvel and long before he became a critic of Trump. Barr’s tweet was published the morning she was fired.

This is not to say that Gunn’s tweets are excusable but, instead, to point to all the instances in which Barr posted horrible tweets shortly before ABC picked up a new season of Roseanne, only for Disney and ABC officials to laugh them off. If Disney meant to establish a precedent with what happened with Barr, it was essentially, “If you have skeletons in your closet, whatever. Just don’t add any new ones.” Gunn, if nothing else, had seemed scrupulous about the “not adding any new ones” part (that we know of so far, at least).

An even bigger difference between Gunn’s and Barr’s tweets concerns the context of the tweets and the intention behind them. Most of us might judge Gunn’s tweets as bad jokes, sure, but they’re mostly recognizable as jokes, and jokes in the style of 2000s Gen-X comedians trying like hell to provoke a reaction by being as “edgy” and offensive as possible.

What’s been interesting, too, is watching many of the comedians in question — including Gunn and Black but also folks like Sarah Silverman, Sacha Baron Cohen, and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone — try to figure out how to navigate an era when the ironic offensiveness they trafficked in has been co-opted by a movement that insists they always meant it, deep down. Most have become vocal Trump critics. But few have managed the transition very easily.

This is the danger in making jokes rooted in ironic offensiveness, even when you’re a master of the form (like Silverman is). At a certain point, somebody is always laughing right alongside you and taking from the joke the message that racism is okay if it’s funny, or that provoking a reaction from someone by joking about rape is funnier than the joke itself.

Ironic offensiveness is far too easy to twist into the idea that nothing is worth caring about, and that getting those who do care to lash out is the funniest thing possible. That idea is now the basis of an entire internet culture that kept splintering, with one of those splinters becoming dedicated to trolling above all else. It eventually got to a point where nobody was sure who was serious and who was joking, or if there was even a difference.

Start to unpack the comedy of the figures listed above, or of their modern comedic descendants and fellow travelers like the terrifically funny hosts of the leftist podcast Chapo Trap House, and you’ll find that somewhere, deep down, they care deeply. The ironic offensiveness and shocking humor is meant to spur a reaction that hopefully guides you to a similar sense of caring and sincerity. But that requires genuine engagement and thought, and it’s easy to opt out of genuine engagement and thought when you’re laughing, in favor of taking the joke at face value.

This, I think, is what happened to Barr, who went from being an incisive comedian to being a millionaire many times over to being someone who promoted some of the same conspiracy theory nonsense that Cernovich peddles. (It’s no mistake that many of the tweets Cernovich surfaced to try to tank Michael Ian Black’s career involved him simply talking about pizza — in the worldview of Cernovich and Barr, there is a massive left-wing conspiracy to engage in pedophilia and protect fellow pedophiles, often using “pizza” as a code word for child sex.) Gunn didn’t really believe what he was saying; Barr did.

But does that context matter? Or does the statement itself matter? The fact is, both Barr and Gunn said horrible things. If we draw hard moral lines in the sand, if we insist that certain things matter to us and are important to uphold as ethical guidelines, does it ever matter that somebody might genuinely move past something bad they did in the past, might become a better person? Or are we all, always, defined by our darkest, worst moments?

Gamergate briefly devoured the internet in 2014. But it never really went away. Shutterstock

A little over a week ago, the most popular Gamergate subreddit, Kotaku in Action, briefly went offline. The user who had created the subreddit in the first place, david-me, then posted to r/Drama (a subreddit dedicated to tracing internal Reddit action and excitement) saying that he had shut down KIA. Explaining his logic, he wrote, in part:

KiA is one of the many cancerous growths that have infiltrated reddit. The internet. The world. I did this. Now I am undoing it. This abomination should have always been aborted.

So in this moment with years of contemplation, I am Stopping it. I’m closing shop and I can’t allow anyone to exploit my handicap. I’ve watched and read every day. Every single day. The mods are good at what they do, but they are moderating over a sub that should not exist. The users have created content that should not be. Topics that do not require debate. And often times molded by outside forces.

We are better than this. I should have been better than this. Just look at the comment history of any users history. The hate is spread by very few, but very often. Overwhelmingly so.

Reddit and it’s Admins are Me. They are the stewards of hate and divisiveness and they let it go. They go so far as to even claim there is nothing they can do about it. Those with upvotes could have been stopped by others with equally powerful downvotes. Fallacy. 100 evil people with 100,000 upvotes can not be defeated by 100,000 with 100 downvotes.

Reddit stepped in. It restored Kotaku in Action, and by extension restored one of Gamergate’s most prominent platforms. The subreddit hadn’t directly violated Reddit’s hate speech rules, even if it was constantly dancing on the very edge of them. If Kotaku in Action is a cancer, as its founder alleges, then it is one that remains free to spread unchecked.

When I was covering the early days of Gamergate, I believed the core of its argument was, in essence, that caring is a waste of time — that wanting video games to have more diverse characters and the industry that makes them to have better representation across the board was a pointless exercise. Gamergate adherents seemed to believe the focus of the industry should be making better games, an argument that ignored that for many, having more diverse games was necessary for having better games.

I was wrong. The core argument of Gamergate, and of the alt-right more generally, has always been that caring is hypocritical. Deep down, both movements believe that everybody is racist and sexist and homophobic, that the left, especially, is simply trying to lord a moral superiority over everybody else when, in secret cabals, they kidnap babies and run child molestation rings out of the basements of pizza restaurants. This idea is referred to as “virtue signaling,” meaning that there is no such thing as real virtue, only a pretend virtue that people deploy to try to win points with mainstream society, when everybody would be better off dropping the pretense and letting their most offensive freak flags fly.

And it’s tricky to combat the idea of virtue signaling, because of course we all virtue-signal all the time. Parents virtue-signal to teach their children, and corporations virtue-signal to make their products seem more palatable to a rapidly diversifying America, and I virtue-signal every time I tweet something that says I’m supportive of, say, the Black Lives Matter movement without joining affiliated protests.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want the broader goals of BLM to be realized immediately, or that corporations won’t take your money regardless of color or creed, or that parents shouldn’t teach their children not to resort to violence when others say or do something they don’t like.

Virtue signaling is still virtue, even if in your heart, you’re so angry or upset that you feel like punching someone. Cynicism about the motivations behind good acts doesn’t erase that the acts are good. We all do all sorts of things for a variety of complicated reasons. It doesn’t erase the fact that the net result of those actions ultimately has very little to do with our motivations.

The argument of Cernovich and his cronies is, ultimately, that none of us is actually good, that we are all venal and horrible, and that we live in a world where we should all, always, be pitted against each other, defined only by our worst selves. And because nobody is ever going to fire Cernovich for all the times he’s tweeted about rape, because he’s a self-made media personality, the war becomes ever more asymmetric. The only people who can hold Gamergate and its adherents accountable are members of the movement, who will occasionally toss someone out but almost always do so under the pretense of a game or, worse, a joke.

There are real people whose lives are ruined, each and every day, by Cernovich and his ilk, and our modern corporate media climate continues to have no idea what to do about it, because the battles are deliberately constructed to strip away context and to predetermine their outcomes from the first.

Twitter isn’t actually everywhere, but it feels like it can be everywhere. Andrew Burton/Getty

I began this article with the story of Jessica Price instead of the story of James Gunn for a reason. It’s entirely possible you haven’t heard of either, but if you’ve only heard of one, it’s almost certainly James Gunn. Yet the devastation to Price’s career will be much more substantial than whatever happens to Gunn, who will at least be collecting residuals from the Guardians movies for the rest of time.

Price’s situation is a valuable lesson in how so much of this works because the circumstances of her firing are muddier and harder to prosecute. Yes, the representative of a corporation that sells a service probably shouldn’t be calling her customers asshats. But any woman with a large enough social media profile knows just how quickly a seemingly innocuous, “Actually…” can turn into a massive dogpile of Twitter yahoos with nothing better to do. What happened to Price ostensibly has nothing to do with Gamergate. But its shadow lurks nonetheless, because it is now everywhere.

Could Price have handled things better? Probably. Should she have been fired for how she did handle them? I find that a lot harder to argue. It suggests that every employee of every organization with a vaguely public-facing persona has to be 100 percent perfect all of the time across all platforms, or else. And if you remove enough context from just about anything, you can make somebody look as bad as you want, unless they’re anodyne and milquetoast all of the time, which leads to sitting US senators suggesting that perhaps James Gunn should be investigated for pedophilia “if the tweets are true.”

The idea, I guess, is that we should all just turn off the internet and step away from social media when things get too hairy. But I would hope we all realize how impossible that is most of the time, and it’s in that imbalance that Cernovich and his pals forever create dissension and uncertainty.

I said above that what Cernovich wants to do is destabilize reality; that might seem like a big leap, but think about it. We’ve already gone from “these are bad jokes” to “if the tweets are true,” from carefully examining the thing in context to quickly glancing at the thing with as little context as possible, so that it looks as bad as it could possibly be. And when you’re fighting a culture war, and grasping for requital, I suppose that’s fair. Culture wars, too, have their victims.

But this still leaves us with a world where the terms of the game are set by a bunch of people who argue not in good faith, but in a way designed to force everybody into the same bad-faith basket. They are interested not in finding a deeper truth but in the easy cynicism of believing that everybody is as dark-hearted and frightened as them, that the world is a place that can never be made better, so why even try? Flood the zone with enough bad information and turn reality into enough of a game and you can make anything you want seem believable, until bad jokes become a dark harbinger of a horrific reality looming just over the horizon.

I’ve never believed that approach can win in the long run. I’ve always believed that in the end, some sort of truth will hold fast, and the fever will break. But sometimes, of late, I wonder if I’m wrong — and the only thing that stops me from convincing myself is the fear that accepting even guarded optimism as futile would only turn me into one of them, forever spiraling and never reaching bottom.

Original Source -> James Gunn’s firing shows we’re still living in the Gamergate era

via The Conservative Brief

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