Done with Gunn: Franchise fatigue and the diminishing returns of transgressive content

The Guardians of the Galaxies movies were a superhero genre revelation. They were fun, punchy romps with lots of heart. Centred on a gang of dysfunctional misfits, the characters were well realized, and the actors had great chemistry.

The Guardians trilogy are, and remain, my favourite Marvel Cinematic Universe films. 

I’ve enjoyed some of the others (Lookin' at you, Ironman in a cave!), but none blended humour, action and heart so perfectly.

Gunn has since switched over to Marvel’s archrival, DC, and is revamping that entire universe, like some kind of quirky Creator Celestial.

I greatly enjoyed the first season of Peacemaker. Idiosyncratic fun with a likeable, earnest (yet homicidal) anti-hero.

Gunn’s Suicide Squad also landed solidly with yet another collection of dysfunctional, lovable yet homicidal goofballs out to (reluctantly) save the world.

I’ve never felt that Gunn was a good fit for the boy scout in blue tights. 

Gunn is superb with quirky, flawed characters. He loves pushing boundaries with humour (Super). He likes to dip into the gross (Dawn of the Dead, Slither). But… he’s never, it seemed to me, to be the go-to-guy for mainstream DC heroes.

My take on DC heroes is admittedly dated. In my era, they were squeaky clean paragons of virtue, earnest fighters for justice, true heroes to their core. 

They weren't people so much as ideals to live up to and emulate.

Having watched the first few episodes of Peacemaker Season 2, I’m not keen on what Gunn’s doing with them. The ‘Justice Gang’ makes an appearance, and… they’re awful. Repellant, obnoxious, arrogant, and misogynistic frankly. Green Lantern is an ass, Hawkgirl isn’t much better, and that third guy, the less said the better. 

I gather this iteration of GL is well known as such, but it was still deeply off putting.

Not, mind you, because they weren’t funny. 

Or that there aren’t people like that.

Or that it didn’t make sense. 

It was, there are, and it did. 

If it was a different universe, a satirical universe that subverts superhero expectations, like, say, where heroes are hollow shills for corporate powers, I’d love it, just as I love The Boys. 

And that is the problem: Gunn’s DC Universe is almost indistinguishable from Amazon Prime’s The Boys: ribald, corrupt, cruel, hyper-violent, gross and self-absorbed. 

If I want to see how power corrupts, and watch people trying to survive in an awful, horrible, corrupt world, well, that’s what I watch The Boys for. 

It’s not what I’d like for Justice League characters.

It's not, in my view, the brand. 

It takes the brand promise, rips out the heart, takes a dump on it, and then drops it on top of a sundae and calls it delicious.   

True, the DC heroes of yore were totally unrealistic in their moral purity, but that doesn’t mean I want them deconstructed in their own brand. 

Satire's great, I love satire, but I don't want LOTR to be a self-satirical parody. I don't want my Star Wars self-satirizing, I don't want Indiana Jones meta, and I don't want Star Trek to be a post-modern satirical critique scripted by Foucault. 

That's what parodies and satires and Galaxy Quest are for. Different, if subordinate, brands where the meta can live without tarnishing the original.

I can name another real-world institution that’s lost a lot of its former majesty of late, and absolutely all of its moral authority; that damages the office, smears the brand, annihilates the ideals and leaves us ashamed. 

Sometimes, it’s nice to have an aspirational moral paragon to look up to, who really is what they appear to be, rather than actually being a malignant narcissist presenting a hollow, idealized façade.

I may get back into Peacemaker, he’s a fringe anti-hero, after all. Superman? Maybe when it's on TV for 'free' (with cable or a base subscription).

Funny enough, I've tried watching the latest season of Gen V, and... it hasn't really caught me. I couldn't remember the characters or what happened in season one. It's funny, topical, and well crafted, but the gross out elements now feel less transgressive and shocking than tired and obligatory. 

Shock value is inversely proportional to the amount you use it. 

There are two kinds of realism in art. One grows from love — the kind that looks at ideals and says, “Let’s see what they cost, let’s see how they survive.” That kind of realism deepens myth; it doesn’t sneer at it. It accepts that goodness is hard but worth striving for. 

The other kind grows from exhaustion, or pride, and rolls its eyes and says, “Only fools believe in heroes.” That doesn’t reveal truth; it corrodes it, mistaking cruelty for depth and mockery for insight. 

The first kind makes us ache for the light; the second leaves us dimly proud of thinking there is none.

And that, perhaps, is where I find myself weary. I don’t mind seeing my heroes struggle, bleed, or even fail. I mind when the storyteller enjoys humiliating them, when sincerity becomes the only writer sin.

The longer a franchise goes on, and even more frequently after the original creative voice has long departed, the more extreme it becomes. People love novelty, and over time, the initial story engine starts to squeak and churn out stale material. So characters become more bad ass (actors are always pushing for memorable moments for their character, and these have to become more and more extreme), they become more inter-related, prequels expand on popular story arcs, undermining the original show and changing its meaning, making everything smaller and smaller and more and more interrelated until it becomes a black hole and sucks in all meaning. All that is left is the churn.

Steven Spielberg once said that the stunts in Indiana Jones movies had to get more and more extreme, with each movie out doing the last, until it practically became a bugs bunny cartoon. 

George Lucas started out with a big galaxy: Luke wasn't related to Vader, Leia wasn't his sister,  Anakin didn't build C3P0, and so on. 

James Bond ultimately became the brother of Blofeld. 

Over time, writers want to imbue everything with meaning. Han's last name is Solo? We can explain that! Yet this is a universe with names like Screed, Skywalker, Sidious, Grievous, etc. Did everyone have a silly, narratively appropriate moniker applied to them as a grown up? Do they know what the word Screed means? Because apparently Solo means solo. Do people titter and snicker at all these on-the-nose names? 

Talk about sucking the fun and the mystery out of it. 

Ambitious writers want to make their mark, to change the original franchise to suit their own sensibilities. Making changes to Franchise DNA is the ultimate victory, for them! And this makes sense, to a degree: a franchise must evolve with the times or lose viewership. 

But it also erodes the dramatic integrity of the show(s). 

The Rules for programs set in the real world are stable: physics don't change over time for police procedurals or daytime soaps (are any of those left?). But they do in sci-fi and fantasy, where magic and technology are toffee, warping and changing to fit the desires of the latest writer's room. 

Why nix a great story just because the show's Rules Bible says it can't happen? 

And that makes sense, to a degree, but if you do it often enough, you wind up with no rules to speak of at all, anything goes, and then it's just blatant fan service. 

Which... is also fine, if that's what you want. Fan service can be fun, it's designed to be. 

It's also the dramatic equivalent of a sugar rush junk food. 

When Ned Stark got decapitated (oh, sorry, spoiler), it was truly shocking, even expectation subverting. The Red Wedding massacre (oh, whoops, another spoiler) was well executed, but not shocking. The destruction of the sept (oh, who cares) was staged in an epic fashion, well directed, well acted and scored, but... I found it hard to care. It was more 'here we go again' than 'holy crap'.

Is slaughtering characters all you've got? 

Who's left to care about?

Perhaps, if you've seen forty superhero movies and TV shows (and many a reboot), you've seen them all.

Franchise fatigue is an inevitable sign of aging... Soone or later, you stop caring.

11.22.63 review

The TV miniseries adaptation of 11.22.63 starring James Franco is surprisingly good. Best of all, despite being a cable show, it’s not drawn out (I’m looking at you, House of Cards); it’s 10 episodes and done. That’s it, the entire book. King has also said he has zero intention of ever revisiting the characters. 

The show takes an outlandish premise (a closet that is a gateway to 1960 USA… maybe it’s the closet they shot Doctor Who in during the 1960’s… and a mission to prevent the assassination of JFK) and treats it in an extremely grounded fashion. Apparently this book involved the most research Stephen King has ever done. All the details feel right, right down to the price of a piece of pie. The show dives deep into all kinds of JFK assassination conspiracy theories, and has a blast doing it.

King adheres to the time travel rules (The past does not take kindly to people trying to mess with it) he sets up all the way to the end, when he doesn’t just drop the ball, he spikes it, doing the rules, the characters and the audience dirty. He wants to make a particular point, and he’s not about to let his own rules stand in his way. 

That said, the ending has emotional impact, it lingers, and the whole trip was enthralling. I can object to the ending while still highly recommended the miniseries.

The characters, for me, really shone, particularly because they were so obviously flawed, including the hero, who sets up some of his own problems because he’s oblivious, insensitive, and an entitled member of the culture class. We do see some of the same, almost stock, Stephen King character types, but they’re all well realized, and there are some excellent character beats. 

It would probably be more accurate to say King often includes people with certain personality disorders, like psychopathy; psychopaths, in a sense, are all the same, and share a lot of the same exploitative, cold-blooded behaviour patterns.

The hero is an earnest high school teacher, and while he’s investigating the background of the assassins, gets caught up in life in the 1960s, taking a job as a teacher, and getting involved in period drama.

There is a twist, naturally, and while you can see it coming (if you’ve read your history), it works, it makes sense, and it serves the points he’s trying to make. 

Which leads to…

SPOILER WARNING!

Come back after you’ve watched it, if at all!

In the end, our hero Jake and Sadie (his love interest) foil the assassination of JFK, although poor Sadie is killed by a stray bullet. Jake then goes back to the future, only to find it a nuclear wasteland. Saving JFK has led to conflict with the Russians getting out of hand, and a nuclear war broke out. So Jake pops back in the closet to reset the future, to wipe away his changes, and seeks out Sadie again. 

Then… he lets her go.

Why? Well, you see there’s this guy with a yellow tab in his hat, who is another time traveler, and he’s gone back repeatedly to save his daughter, but every time he does, she dies anyway, just in different ways. 

Time finds a way to correct itself. 

Living in the past, trying to right the past, all of that… don’t do it. Let it go. That’s King’s message. 

So Jake goes back to the future II, and finds Sadie in old age. She’s alive. She’s lived a happy life. 

It’s all very bittersweet: They only knew each other in an erased reality, and all they have are lingering good cross dimensional feelings.

However, the logic here doesn’t make sense. 

First, Jake DID succeed in saving JFK and changing the future. This caused it to derail, and turn into a catastrophe. But he did succeed in massively altering the future. Billions of people who lived… now died. 

Why wasn’t their future ‘fixed’?

And if people are always doomed to die at a particular time, or within a window, a gamut, then how could Sadie have lived a long life?

If time tries to maintain itself, then she should always live a long life. And if Jake didn’t try to save JFK, why would Sadie always die? She certainly seemed to die as a consequence of Jake saving JFK, along with billions of others eventually. 

But if Jake doesn’t save JFK, those billions would live. Why would only Sadie then be doomed to die if Jake went back? 

And it turns out she’s not doomed, or isn’t doomed so long as Jake doesn’t go back, but wouldn’t the past always be trying to keep her alive, as it doesn’t like changes? 

Either Sadie always dies in 1963, or she always lives to old age. The timeline only allows one option. So why does only she get two? 

She shouldn’t. 

King was used inconsistent rules so he could get deliver on his melancholy don’t-mess-with-the-past theme. 

But he didn’t need to break the rules: he could have just had Jake pull old yearbooks and look wistfully at her photo, or her 1963 obituary. 

King’s point is correct, we should let the past go, but emotionally I’d rather see Jake and Sadie live out a happy and quiet life somewhere. Mind you, King is a hugely successful author, so what do I know? 

What would have happened if Jake had taken Sadie forward into the future? That was his original plan, after all. 

And what if he brought Sadie into the future, found it got all messed up, and then went back into 1960 again, with Sadie, there would be two Sadies, original Sadie and Magic Closet Sadie.

The mind boggles.

Like JFK conspiracy theories, it pays not to think about it too much.

Andor season 2: 3 BBY (episodes 4-6)

The second wave of Andor season 2, possibly the most political sci-fi show since Battlestar Galatica, continues to focus on Ghorman, a planet out of the old WEG Star Wars Role Playing Game. It suffers a very ugly fate.

Simpering Syril is on now planet as head of the Imperial Standards branch, while Cassian gets dispatched there by Luthen to evaluate a local rebel group.

Dedra is watching over the Ghorman operations from afar, and Mothma argues with Krenick over Ghorman at an art show. 

It’s all slice of life material, focusing on the day to day of anti-fascist movements (and their antagonists) in a galaxy far, far away. 

This is part of the problem I have with this season: the previous season saw Cassian become a rebel, Luthen plotting a great robbery to fund the rebellion, and the Imperials plotting to catch them. This season? Not a peep about all the money Luthen stole, or the plans that might have been hatched out of it. Luthen is reactive, attending weddings, dispatching Cassian places, and worrying about listening devices being revealed. He doesn’t feel very proactive, unlike last season. He doesn’t seem to have any plan now, and while his assistant mentions having many balls in the air, we don’t see it. 

Gilroy is taking a different tack here, and it looks like everything is built around the horrors that the Empire has planned for Ghorman. As such, Luthen’s other plans fall outside of the main narrative focus, whatever my irrelevant wants and wishes might be.

The theme of sacrifice, on the part of the rebels, is hammered home over and over again. You can’t miss it, from Luthen’s fantastic speech last season to the horrific wringer Bix has been put through in this one. No one in the main cast has been through worse. Well. Other than the characters who are gunned down by the Empire. 

The Rebel characters must hide their true selves in a society that is literally out to get them, hiding in dive safe houses, or in plain site like Mon Mothma, who’s situation is arguably worse, because she has to hide within herself. Same goes for Lonni. Their lives are filled with stress and the constant fear of being discovered. They become ruthless and paranoid in response, their humanity getting worn away by circumstance. 

On the other hand, Syril is flying high as a kite, living out his life-long fantasy of being an Imperial agent of law & order, playing spy on Ghorman, tricking the locals and helping to suss out disloyal agents of chaos. 

There’s some sly writing here: when Syril’s in ISB headquarters making his report, he notes that the Ghormans are inexperienced but eager, to which ISB head Pendergast (X, who played a Machiavellian priest in Game of Thrones) remarks, “How often those characteristics align” and gives Dedra a knowing look.

They’re treating Syril like some kind of pet puppy, an over-eager novice, a mall cop who dreams of being an FBI agent. 

The two trajectories here are polar opposites: rebels going down into the depths of despair while Syril soars higher and higher into the clouds of ambitious fantasy.

Of course, Syril is being set up for a fall, and when it happens, it’s going to hurt. Pendergast even lays track for this when he tells Dedra that Syril must not know what’s really going on on Ghorman. 

Oddly enough, it’s Syril (Kyle Soller) who has the clearest arc happening in the show. Cassian is a bit of a cipher; he doesn’t show a lot of his inner emotions, other than concern over Bix. He doesn’t have any real character quirks. He’s no nonsense, like Luthen, except Luthen has much, much more going on his head. 

Luthen (Stellan Skarsgard) is agency writ large, or at least he was last season: a master galactic scale chess player. It’s sad to see him relegated to being reactive, but I’ll take what I can get. Beyond his calculation, though, there’s not a lot there. He’s been ground down by necessity to be what he has to be for the sake of the Rebellion, there’s nothing else left.

Syril, on the other hand, is a collection of quirks. He’s a weirdo, emotionally stunted by his overbearing mom and absent father, addicted to cereal, sullen and whiny yet wildly ambitious, he dreams of being a saviour, of being relevant, of righting wrongs and seeing justice done throughout the galaxy… between bouts of pouting on his bed. The gap between his ambition and reality is galaxy spanning. 

Yet this makes him arguably one of the most interesting characters in the show, and so far, he’s the one who has travelled the farthest, character wise. 

Mon Mothma started out hiding inside herself, as did Luthen, and now Cassian. 

Bix (Adria Arjona) is, to me, the only other character who’s had a comparable arc, but her’s hasn’t gotten as much focus as Syril (and it doesn’t have the same range, either). She’s had nightmares and moped in the safe house for much of the season. No dinner with the relatives for her. Fortunately, at the end of 2 BBY, she leaps into action against her inner demons. That was great, and it sets her up to be more active in the concluding half of the season. 

That being said, we all know which side she is on, and that’s not going to change.

With Syril, there’s a kernel of doubt: he may, in fact, eventually turn on the Empire. Personally, I thought that door closed last season when he went all stalker on Dedra; now that they’re a duo, it seemed even more unlikely. 

Yet he’s being used, and more importantly, Syril is an earnest true believer: he does believe in justice, even if it’s a rather twisted, naive version. 

In a fascist society, however, law is a chimera. It’s of convenience, imposed upon the populace, and changed and violated on the whim of the powerful, whenever it suits them, sans accountability or criticism: mistakes by underlings are covered up, the dictator does what they will, and the masses suffer what they must. Abuse is endemic. Even in (ostensibly) law and order governed Western democracies we see abuse by those in powerful institutions. In a dictatorship, corruption is a feature, not a bug. 

Rather like this: 

Oh wait, that's America. My bad.

As such, the only real character question I have concerns… well, Syril: will he eventually see the true nature of the Empire, and turn on it? It’s possibly the big statement brewing under the narrative’s surface.

Everyone else’s course is set. Having Syril eventually realize the monstrous nature of the regime he’s embraced so thoroughly would be an effective conclusion for his character.

On the other hand, he could veer into total fascist fanboy. 

Either way, it makes a statement.

Another standout: Forest Whitaker’s tour de force performance as Saw Gerrera, a mix of savvy ruthlessness and batshit insanity. When he comes on screen, he’s as liable to hug you as shoot you. It’s a mesmerizing performance, although I suspect it’s best in small doses. 

As they say, it’s the villains and crazy characters who are the most fun to play, and I think that pans out here, except for Luthen. Everyone is on point, I have no criticisms to level at the cast, they’re all doing fabulous work with what they’ve been given. 

I expect Syril’s upward trajectory, in such total contrast to the hell the rebel characters are going through, to take a very sharp and nasty turn.

A couple of bits of grit in the Andor eye: I found the Coruscant TV shows jarring (they look like bad local cable TV, the kind government regulations force them to make), and the very overt connection of Ghorman to the French WWII resistance is so on le nez you’d expect it to serve baguettes. The cafes, waiters, bellhops, and vaguely French accents shout, or at least hum, La Marseillaise. I half-expected someone to exclaim, “Mon Dieu, c’est l’Empire!”

It’s fun, yet heavy handed. 

On the plus side, the story is gaining steam and taking shape. I look forward to BBY 2. 

(Incidentally, dating things from the Battle of Yavin seems really bonkers. What the heck was the year before Yavin happened? It’s a silly system that only makes sense from a meta perspective…)