Category: Reviews

Fantastic? For first steps

Reviewing the new Fantastic Four film I do with trepidation. It has been rocking the media and news. By all accounts, it is a brilliant film. It also makes philosophical and human points pretty well. If so, it might show Hollywood at a turning point.

I have not seen the film, nor do I intending to, so this review is like ones first steps – wobbly but worth it.

There is a long history behind the Fantastic Four characters. I never read the comics, but a huge fanbase of comic-book obsessives will be watching this. I did see an animated television series in my wee years, so it is all familiar. We loved that show, in all its silliness. I remember nothing of the stories, but the four characters, they were what we wanted to be. They were just what every little boy dreams of being able to do – stretch, smash, burn, vanish.

Mr Fantastic – odd name, but it does what it says on the tin. The patriarch, with the ability to stretch his body like rubber. A small boy unable to reach things behind the sofa dreams of that. All the getting into danger and saving the world stuff is all very good and heroic but what you want to be is taller, while still being able to get toys you dropped through a small hole.

Being flexible and rubberlike has drawbacks in a battle – you might rebound from blows, but you also cannot inflect them, and each time he stretches his extensible arm to seize an alien weapon (or whatever he does) his rubberlike fingers would be unable to grip it firmly.

In the real world, such a superpower would be a great thing to have, but you know what it would be like to have; Mr Fantastic would be worn out with people asking him to get things down off high shelves.

Susan Storm – She becomes invisible. Well, that happens to lots of women as they enter middle-age. She puts up an impenetrable invisible barrier: again….

Invisibility is the classic though, isn’t it? From Aeneas in his goddess-given cloak, through to the Fantastic Four, and Star Trek‘s Klingons. Who hasn’t wanted ot disappear? The spy creeping into the palace, or the assassin. Or just wanting to disappear and walk freely – it is the freedom of invisibility which makes it so attractive. It comes with a price: HG Wells’s Invisible Man was driven mad by the power it gave him. I hope Susan Storm is more restrained, and bound to her duties – which is the opposite of what invisibility gives.

The Human Torch – the most spectacular of those superpowers: able to transform himself into a mass of flame, and fly. That is one for spectacle. Now I have grown up, I can’t help but wonder how much actual use it is. Doesn’t he leave scorch marks everywhere?  The insurance premium for his house must be enormous.

The flying does not follow naturally:  the flames may be very hot indeed, but Empedocles proved that even the fires of Etna cannot lift the weight of a man. Now, if his mass were converted into energy, that is another matter. To convert half the mass of a 12-stone man, say 76 kg, using mc², that is over 1.5 Terajoules – somewhat excessive even for a superhero.

I do not recall from the cartoons what he did with all that fire – how long would he need to hold his chest to an enemy vessel to set it alight?  Or did he go for fuel tanks? Am I missing the point?

All this must be possible with guns and missiles, but perhaps it is considered cheaper to have a reusable superhero with a brain rather than AI and blowing up expensive equipment?

I do know that the man would be popular at barbecues (“Torchy, the fire’s going out – could you…?)

Ben; The Thing – He is a small boy’s dream of when we grow big. We all loved Ben, just as we loved Mr T as B.A. Baracus in later life:  the unstoppable one with muscles who did not have time to waste on fools: take no nonsense and punch through it. This was for small boys who did not worry about whether looking like a rubble-heap would be off-putting to girls. It is about raw power.

And yet – we have machines  for this sort of thing. What can Ben do that a machine cannot?  He cannot have unlimited strength, and it would be a poor story if he did: Jordan Peterson has analysed storytelling to show that the hero must have vulnerability or the story does not work.

In fact, what is there that the Fantastic Four can achieve that cannot be done better by machines? True, a machine will not stretch and bend like Mr Fantastic, or vanish like Susan, or burn without being consumed, but it will achieve what they do, and it is endlessly reproduceable. That makes it bizarre that in the Marvel Universe the world relies on four vulnerable people in one place instead of the machines we can build over and over again and export across the globe.

That is missing the point though. The story is not for our time. It is an ancient hero myth. Our machine age is a brief time in the long ages of mankind. The hero with special powers is from the Stone Age, that has been 95% of all human existence. Ben is Thor, the God of Thunder with a crushing hammer. Susan Storm is Diana the Huntress. Mister Fantastic is every trickster-god, and Johnny Storm the Human Torch is the ancient fear and reverence for fire. The comic-books tickle the threads of an ancient mythology.

However, the mythology is dealt with in a few minutes. The story using it in the film is what keeps us watching. In this the film, by all accounts, diverges dramatically from recent Hollywood. There is a baby, whom the family protect at all costs even at the risk of the world. That must have caused gasps in the studio:  Disney has been offering money to its female staff to help them kill their own children before birth.

This film though openly rejects treating a child as a disposable object, and celebrates the family’s protection of their child as uttermost duty, despite all the call of the universe. Every parent knows this is right. To risk the world to save your child? Of course you do. The child is the future, and your eternity. That has been understood since man first emerged upon the Earth, and remains so.

Now, I could praise the retro-futurist setting, the special effects and the visual feast served to the viewer, had I seen the film. Others can do that, and have. It is said to be the best superhero film of the year (albeit that is a low bar).  I am more struck by what it has achieved in terms of myth and truth reaching back to the prehistoric and to our own day. For that it deserves praise.

See also

Books

Megalopolis – a mighty vision

Megalopolis:  a sumptuous view of the mind of possibly the greatest film director of all time, Francis Ford Coppola. It must be seen on the big screen, from which it wraps itself around the senses.

This is Coppola’s passion project; a concluding masterwork. Critics have missed the point, in my view, but that is just me – everyone who came out of the cinema had a different experience, because there is too much in the film for one mind.

The story is a disjointed narrative, like real life. It follows clashing visions and clashing rivalry for power – political, financial and personal – each with its own priorities which misunderstand each other, like real life. It is though a fantasy. The explicit premise is that the Roman Republic is mirrored in America, and its fall may be too, and this defines the aesthetic and characterisations.

The scene is set in New Rome, a city of wealth and careless decadence (which is New York in a transformed guise). The style of dress and manners of the ‘patrician’ class echo Rome’s in the modern day. (We have had films in the ‘steampunk’ and ‘dieselpunk’ aesthetics – is this ‘Romepunk’, or ‘togapunk’ perhaps? Last month, to take a diversion, I saw Coriolanus  at the National, an excellent production, set in ancient Rome but in modern dress:  here on screen we have the opposite, as a film set in near-future New York is at least inspired by Roman dress.)

The main character in Megalopolis is Caesar Catalina, who in his name and in the role he plays stands for two men who set out to overthrow the Roman Republic – one failed and was disgraced and executed, and one succeeded and gave his name to every following emperor. His enemy here is Mayor Cicero. Other famous and infamous names of that period appear too – Crassus and Clodius Pulcher – but we would be misled to take them as precise analogues. The names hint at the roles they play, but the film tells a story of its own.

The character of Caesar Catalina is intriguing. He is a genius architect, who has invented a miracle material which will transform building, and his dream is a utopian city of shining, organic forms. He is a visionary artist and an achiever; a Randian hero, whose mind is a torrent of thoughts, but also a flawed man as he tussles with his restless mind – a combination perhaps of Elon Musk and Howard Hughes, and of the director. Caesar can stop time, like a director shouting ‘cut!’ What a comfort that would be on occasion.

His story is observed and narrated by his driver, who we might assume to be the director’s avatar in the film, but that is an assumption too far.

Opposing  Catalina is the Mayor, Franklin Cicero, as Cicero of old was the opponent of Cataline. At a climactic moment in the Colosseum, Catalina’s shame is exposed and Mayor Cicero delivers a speech of condemnation – the very same which Cicero of old delivered to the Senate: it has a force and immediacy even after twenty-one centuries.

Cicero is a mayor firmly in  charge, awake to threats, and with natural command. He is the second main character, but somehow pushed to the background; in charge but not the focus. he is an artist in his own way, but a conservative who will act to stop a foolish rush to a utopia which experience tells him would become a dystopia. Catalina’s vision though is that no improvement comes from clinging to safety – ‘Don’t let the now destroy the forever’.

Quotations are heavy in the dialogues, and much of it is flagged as such, as Julia quoting Sappho and Marcus Aurelius, and others slipped in, as Clodius quoting Catullus. Why not?  It fits the mood and the theme, and why waste good words?

I will have to turn back to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, one of the inspirations for this film, with the hero as a visionary architect creating tomorrow in spite of overwhelming opposition. Coppola turned the unfilmable Heart of Darkness into Apocalypse Now; this is of his style.

It was Augustus Caesar who declared ‘I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble’. Ultimately this is the goal of the Caesar of Megalopolis, but it requires destruction. This comes from above in the film. Perhaps too it requires the destruction of the state, as it was for Augustus.

Then later in the film is a revelation outside the plot:  as Cicero and Catalina meet overlooking the city, the Mayor admits that his name is not ‘Franklin’ but ‘Francis’. It might pass over some heads, but this surely is the Director saying whose eyes he is looking out of. The aged mayor has done what he does, and resisted corrupting change. In the final frame though he is led into the first development of Megalopolis and, at first with reluctance, steps upon the new world.

A director who has been making films for half the whole history of cinematography, can now see the possibilities of the future.

Marcus Tullius Cicero as Consul, orator and senator, defeated the Spartacus revolt (no – that one was Kubrick) and the Cataline Conspiracy, saw the sedition of Clodius Pulcher and his murder, the victory, rule and assassination of Caesar, and was put to death by Mark Antony during Octavian’s civil war. His death marked the end of the decayed, tottering Republic. If Francis Ford Coppola is looking through the eyes of Francis Cicero, what can he see?

To encompass every idea that Coppola would have expressed would take many more hours and new dimensions – the reference to eleven-dimensional string theory may hint at this – so it is a spectacle of ideas, each able to birth new fictional worlds, wrapped in glorious cinematography embodied by a stellar cast. Make what criticism you want of the storytelling, but that is not the point. It is a world of ideas and sensation, which, on the giant screen, is a true masterpiece from the master himself.

Books

Peace to be pursued

Durham’s magnificent cathedral this past week has hosted an art installation dedicated to peace:  thousands of white, paper doves hang from the ceiling in a cloud. No more is explained but ‘Peace’.

I am not sure how to take art installations. Was it to be admired, explored at leisure? Was it for a set period or did one leave just as one feels?  Would the lighting or the mood music change as in a set performance? It did not, but then neither does the theme.

Rebellious reason argues against a demand for unspecified peace without practicality:  to uphold peace without question, the Ukrainian state would have allowed the tanks of neighbouring Muscovy to roll unresisted across the wheat fields, and if the peace movement of the 1930s had prevailed, then the whole world including all that we have known and cared for would have sunk into the abyss of a new Dark Age, as Churchill knew.

However it is a deeper theme.  Peace as a concept is not a single goal to be reached. It would be unreasoned folly to think it so.

But those qualities of man-kind, that concern their living together in Peace, and Unity. To which end we are to consider, that the Felicity of this life, consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis Ultimus, (utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest good,) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers. Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the later. The cause whereof is, That the object of mans desire, is not to enjoy once onely, and for one instant of time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desire.

The concept of peace  between nations is a silly, limited idea of peace, just meaning an absence of war, which is a hard thing to achieve:

the nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

There is then no peace but only tension of balanced powers or yielding goodwill with the mailed fist reserved in case goodwill becomes unilateral. The idea of anarchist pacifism is as must a contradiction as a vegetarian pork pie: removing the force of the sovereign just invites gangs to impose themselves in its place – ask a Somali or a Syrian.

Peace is nevertheless a Christian goal, and so the doves of Durham are right.  The vision we have is that give to Micah: “But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid”.

The removal of force does not allow a man to sit beneath his fig tree unafraid, for in the natural state, as we know:

In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

Therefore to seek peace, we must do it with strength to defend the peace of each man, woman and child, with the goal that each should indeed sit in the shad of the vine and the fig tree: Micah was not envisaging an anarchy, but that “the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Zion:”.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers’. ‘The LORD lift up his countenance on you, and give you peace’: the Biblical blessing of peace is all through the Bible. There should be no question that Christians should seek peace. It is not a passive thing:  what does the Lord promise? – ‘And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.’; that is not sitting back but active peacemaking.

Indeed, activity appears to be the opposite of personal peace, namely a rest from labour, but the reality is that toil is necessary to achieve that end.  The vine needs dressing, and as to the fig tree, the vine-dresser shall dig about it, and dung it to make it bear fruit, that the farmer may eat.  The rest from labour comes through work, and innovating to make that work efficient, as a process that allows us to find peace of heart.

The peace is the ability to sit in the shade of the vine without fear, but if we stay there too long, the restless mind becomes bored, so we are up again – the theme for Micah is not slumber, it seems, but having no fear of violence from enemies, and that takes a robust, ruled society – as long as the ruler does not become violent himself.

To see Biblical peace as a cessation of war and no more is to miss the idea entirely.  If those thousands of doves were saying ‘Lay down all weapons ‘ then they would be against peace, as it opens the gate to evil-doers (who will not permit any to sit beneath their own vine). However that is not an argument against the pursuit of peace.

The church should loudly proclaim the need to promote peace, and so the installation in Durham is a worthy expression of true Christian values.

Even so, we must not forget that ‘there is no such Finis Ultimus… Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desire, from one object to another’.

See also

Books

 

Who’s gone woke?

It is just a children’s television programme, or ‘family entertainment’ to use the euphemism, but such is the outrage expressed over the latest Doctor Who that I put myself through the three Advent episodes and the Christmas Special to see what the fuss is about.

One can expect unfortunate social politics in the entertainment industry from the nature of those who work there.  It creates what The Doctor might call a ‘hive mind’. Previous writers of the programme declared that they wanted to twist it into a revolutionary perspective (‘Rise up from behind the sofa and seize control, after you have finished your homework!’) It was a hopeless idea.

The current showrunner, Russell T Davies, has certain personal habits he likes to splash all over his writing, and social-political opinions which have erupted into his work in the past.  He has mocked those who differ in their opinions or priorities.  He likes to portray big businesses as conspiring to destroy their own customers – apparently that makes sense to composers of fantasy fiction.

It is said that the show is disappearing; drowning itself in a lake of wokery so as to be unwatchable; hating its own audience and watched only by those who tune in because they always did, like an abused wife continually returning to the husband who beats her. They say that the latest character (the joyfully named Ruby Sunday) is being written out for being too white or something, although she was the best thing in the Christmas Special.

In the episodes I sat through however, I found more currents than the writer might admit to.  We can tick off the wokery points that loud commentators have found:  an alien creature when asked if it is male or female declares its pronoun as “The” – but as this creature then turns and tries to kill everyone, it is not a role model.  Then there is a “non-binary” daughter (or son, probably).  Is that not consistent though with libertarian ideas, that no individual should be constrained by another’s stereotypes?  It is wokery which insists on categorising and restraining.  In the Christmas Special there was a boy-in-a-dress (and not in a Shakespearean manner), but nothing was made of it.

So much for the tick-box vice-signalling:  what of the stories told?

The first of the advent episodes involved a small, cuddly creature being pursued by large aliens with guns.  Reversing the socialist narrative of violence inherent in the system being a badge of oppression, the small, cute creature (not meant to represent Rishi Sunak, as far as I could tell) turns out to be evil, while the soldiers coming to seize it are the goodies, enforcing the law to protect the people of the universe (or somewhere).

The second was a pedestrian outwit-the-monster piece.

The third, climax episode returns to a London riven with violence, in which everyone believes that his or her every opinion or impulse is absolute and an unchallengeable right regardless of others, and acts accordingly.

This is a spot-on satire of behaviour on social media.  It is also what conservatives have been lamenting for many years.  Violent intolerance of others’ opinions is the essence of the woke mob and of the cancel culture.  The result, namely, Hobbes’s ‘warre of all against all’, is what conservatives assert would take place.  If a retired colonel from Tunbridge Wells wrote a Doctor Who episode, it is what he would write.

If Doctor Who has become woke, it is also anti-woke in episodes like this. In this latter episode the Doctor gives a speech, telling his audience that the violence and stubbornness are human, not the work of the Toymaker, who has only brought them out.  All the he had to do was quote Thomas Hobbes on the subject, and his conservatism would be complete.

The theme of the Christmas Special that followed was the preciousness of babies, and how a child creates joy in a household.  Is there is anything more conservative than this?

At its heart, Doctor Who is inherently conservative:  a lone hero reliant on his own resources, unflinching courage and morality learned from the cradle, battles the forces of chaos.  His effort allows the world to thrive, as a world built on the flaws and foibles of humanity. In conception, the Doctor is a combination of the fictional heroes of the empire: he is Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger, combined with Biggles and Alan Quartermain. His consistent enemies are the Daleks, explicitly modelled on the Nazis, and cybermen, from whom individuality and humanity are stripped away in the manner of the ‘New Communist Man’.  Its main departure from reality is that reality shows we do not need to travel to far times or galaxies to find monsters.

In the Anthony Burgess characterisation, socialism depends on the ‘Pelagian’ view (that man is inherently good), but the conservative ‘Augustinian’ view (man is inherently venal, requiring structure to restrain the animal instinct) is necessary to the conceit of Doctor Who.

Perhaps the best illustration of the current writer’s unspoken thoughts was how the third Advent episode concluded.  The Doctor was split in two, and while the new Doctor went off on adventures, the old Doctor (played by the incomparable David Tennant) settled down to retirement, enjoying tea on the lawn with a new family.  It just needed the vicar to pop round (‘More tea, vicar?’), or a neighbour to look over and ask ‘Anyone for tennis?’.

For an empty shell with no natural audience, Doctor Who pulls remarkable ratings.  A perception that its writers hate those who have been watching will not help sustain it. I need not watch it again.

In terms of storylines though, it looks as if it is in support of law and order, and it celebrates the joys of children and the quiet family life.  It may be that Mr Davies is, after all, a shy Tory.

See also

We don’t need another hero

I have no especial feeling about the passing of a pop legendess, but for the role Tina Turner played in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome; one of the most Hobbesian films ever screened.

The genius of George Miller has been to portray a world which is in its surface a fantasy dystopia but which is reality in the raw:  this post-apocalyptic Australian outback wilderness is the universal ancient age portrayed in terms the modern mind can appreciate.

As Tina Turner sang in the concluding theme song:

Living under the fear, ’til nothing else remains

That is the world of the natural man: ‘continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.‘ That is the world of Mad Max encapsulated.

In the midst of the Stone-Age brutishness of the film stands Bartertown: a single point of civilisation, rough, primitive and vicious though it may be. It is ruled over by Aunty Entity, brilliantly portrayed by Tina Turner. Aunty Entity? Titles must from somewhere:

Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar’?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

In a new foundation over people, there will be new titles because a common power to keep them all in awe requires it.

This is as civilisation should be: it is a town living by trade, not subsistance farming; it has manufactures and division of labour and it has commerce, as the first towns must have. George Miller, the director, knew how such a town should be:  it has laws, and a lawmaker, and a crude system of criminal justice, at the peak of which is Thunderdome: this is combat and murder run as a public entertainment, just as was the Colosseum in Rome, as were the Tyburn gallows, and in many other cultures.  Crucially, there is more than criminal justice – as this is a trading town, it need dispute resolution, and there is punishment for breaking contracts (‘Break a deal and face the Wheel’).

Commentaries have said that Aunty Entity is a brutal ruler. She is exactly as she must be: to keep a lid on such a town, and prevent ambitious men from overthrowing the state which supports them.

Aunty Entity is the true hero of the tale, were we but to recognise it. She has created a state in the wilderness and ensured its prosperity – a state providing relative peace for its inhabitants, security  and certainty of consequences, and a militia army to defend it.

Maybe there is something to want beyond Thunderdome – “love and compassion; Their day is coming ” as the song puts it – but Thunderdome is a necessity for the first civilisation to start to grow into something which will allow such castles in the air.