Goose Shit Lake

A review of THE WILD GOOSE LAKE (2019)
Written and Directed by Diao Yinan
Cinematography by Dong Jingsong
Score by B6
Staring Hu Ge, Liao Fan, Gwei Lun-Mei, and Wan Qian

Some months back I ran into the trailer for The Wild Goose Lake and I was instantly taken in. I wanted to see this movie bad. It had everything I wanted in a movie: Crime, dirtbags on motorcycles, a beheading, a tiger, brutalism, and maybe violence-centered disco? Lots of ideas on offer, all of them intriguing to me. Unfortunately is not what I had hoped for. Having braved the rain and a pandemic, I can say that I have a candidate for my worst movie of the year. I can also comfortably say that this is the second worst thing to be involved with Wuhan province to come out this year.

The Wild Goose Lake is a threadbare neo-noir centered around a man who made a mistake in a fit of desperation and the people in his orbit and then. . . I don't know stuff happens and the plot concludes. It's a film that takes a long time to get nowhere. It's also a film where the motives of its characters don't seem to be murky as they are underdeveloped. You can't tell if its characters are concealing something or if there just isn't anything there. Of course if you have to ask yourself what the director is getting at, you probably have the answer. . .

Also, there's a sexual assault towards the end of the film. And it's bad. Not just because it's supposed to be bad, but because it doesn't add anything. It's just there. It's this shocking bit of sexual violence that doesn't add anything and doesn't seem to say anything other than look what I can film.

And fuck that.

Having just watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a film completely without the male gaze, it was shocking and deeply unpleasant to watch The Wild Goose Lake needlessly assert itself remind me that misogyny is live and well in the entertainment industry. (Of course the cast of Portrait of a Lady on Fire knows all about that. . . )

It was at this point in the film that one of my five fellow film goers walked out of the theater. Good for him.


That said there are moments of actual sublimity in the movie. They are as follows:

• After taking down a suspect, a troupe of plainclothes cops assemble around the perp. Each one of the cops is wearing shoes with lights on the bottom, like they're a bunch of overgrown mall rats. I can't tell if it's supposed to be funny, but like all of the good moments in this movie, it feels out of place.
• A man gets murdered with an umbrella. It's a really strange moment, because it feels like something out of a Takashi Miike movie. Up until this point, as many moments of stylization (and violence) as there are,  The Wild Goose Lake seems to take place on planet Earth, not in the world of Asian Extreme. Still, as jarring as the moment is, it was fun and ridiculous and made me wonder where this movie had been for the entire time.
•  The noodles at the end of the movie look really, really good.

The Wild Goose Lake is a humorless film without characters, and it lacks the panache to make up for its shortcomings. It's a frustrating movie to watch, because there clearly seems to be some sort of talent and perspective behind it-- just none of it ends up on the screen-- at least not in one piece.

Overall, these rare few moments have all of the joy of picking the good stuff out of a salad. Except that the salad is wilted and the dressing is terrible and you just wished that you had ordered something else.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and will see you next time, space cowboy. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

Good Astra

A review of AD ASTRA (2019)

Directed by James Gray
Written by James Gray and Ethan Gross
Cineamatography by Hoyte van Hoytema
Score by Max Richter and Lorne Balfe

Staring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, Ruth Negga, and Liv Tyler

I wish that I had seen Ad Astra in the theaters, because it might be my favorite film of 2019 (just barely knocking out another Brad Pitt picture). I also wish that more people had seen it, because not only it is exactly my sort of film, it's the sort of daring genre picture that cinema needs more of. It's a beautiful, well-made, well-acted, and, well, rad as hell. Ad Astra is a classic adventure story masquerading as an arthouse film. It’s Treasure Island as much as it is 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

It ultimately is a transfixing meditation on the failures of masculinity, the limits of obsession, and what you do with your life when you realize how much of your life has been working towards a lie. It also has some of the raddest splashes of action that I’ve seen since the last Brad Pitt movie I saw.

This is all to say: As Astra is a film that is extremely my shit. It's a genre movie that's pulled off with the weight and seriousness that it deserves. It is as much a technical achievement as it is one of good, old-fashioned storytelling. As far as projects that are directly aimed at me, it’s nice when that happens and it actually turns out to be a good movie.

It's also nice to be able to recommend this sort of film. It's nice when I don't have to have caveats or say it with some level of embarrassment. It's just a good film and it's a good film that adheres to my weird set of interests.

Then again, considering size of certain other space-based adventure films, maybe I’m just hungry for something else.

Maybe.

One of the big reasons that I love Ad Astra is that I’m a sucker for the NASA aesthetic. The helmets, the rovers, the jetpacks, the rockets, the color scheme—even zero G toilets! Ad Astra uses all of the wonderful iconography of NASA, but then pushes it further into the future, filling the movie full of the raddest speculative articles from Popular Mechanics. But, beyond having an incredibly good-looking and well-realized art direction, Ad Astra weaves all of those visuals and all of those ideas into a broader picture. It introduces ideas and visuals that expand the story, rather than show it off. It’s a neat little trick and, again, it’s nice to see that big, thrilling science fiction films don’t have to sacrifice story for spectacle.

Beyond the solid supporting cast (hello to Ruth Negga), we have the man: Brad fucking Pitt.

Pitt, at his best, has always played slightly unhinged characters. Men with affectations who maybe aren’t 100% trustworthy and who have very specific physical traits (teeth or hair or no shirt, etc). In Ad Astra he plays very much against type. Roy McBride is a calm, collected, and man who had purposely isolated himself from the world and compartmentalized his emotions. He’s a great astronaut who, like his father, fails at being a good man. It’s a quiet role and it’s one that requires more than just charisma to get through it. It’s a

Pitt is fantastic in this movie. He takes what could have very well been a boring role or one that could have been saved with some histrionics and instead crafts a real human being worthy of empathy.

So, yeah, Brad Pitt is great.

It’s also a lot of fun to see one of America’s most important male icons take on a movie about failure and emotional development. It’s an interesting flip on what most adventure movies are about and it’s made more interesting by the fact that Brad Pitt isn’t just an actor, he’s Brad freaking Pitt. The same goes for Tommy Lee Jones, one of America’s foremost (space) cowboy grandpas, play his wayward father. Again, maybe it’s just me, but in 2020, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a more relevant message than “Watch this old man fail and ruin everything.”

Probably just me. . .

Ad Astra is a hell of a ride. While it does very specifically cater to my weird needs, it's still a spectacular-looking adventure story that manages to also be a powerful meditation on family, failure, and the future. Go check it out. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but this time I know it's true: Cinema needs more films like Ad Astra.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and will see you next time, space cowboy. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

Forever Star Wars

FOREVER STAR WARS
Or Space, Magic, Memory, and the Quest for More Money

Movies are a magic trick.

Orson Welles knew this. Even if his movies-- even if his best ones-- are imperfect, he knew that much. Cinema shares more in common with a magic trick than it does with plays or books (and maybe even TV). It's an agreed upon dream. It's a lie that you know is a lie, but you believe anyways.

In a lot of ways, nostalgia is also a brain poison. It's an idea that pits your idea of the past with reality. With the present. It tells you that the past was this special thing and that it is gone. Nostalgia is not a creative energy. It doesn't spur you on to create new things, because those new things require the destruction or the supplantation of those old things.

Naturally, this brings me to Star Wars.

The Star Wars series, especially the Sequel Trilogy is where these two tenets of art and cinema meet. The magic of buying into a fiction and the fiction that nostalgia sells you.

When The Force Awakens was announced I, like all thinking human beings, was skeptical. At that point Star Wars had been bad for longer than it had been good. The story of the prequels was the story of a man with too much time and money with nobody to tell him no. In hindsight, I think those movies were less about hubris and more about George Lucas being interested in things that no other sane human being would be into. They were bad, as well.

But then the names started coming in. The cast. The director. The producer. These were talented people and they were people who cared about the movies and they talked about it in a way that seemed to want to build on these stories, not bitch and moan about what the prequels should have been (like me and every other asshole on the internet).

And I so I waited. I did so with caution and I did so with the understanding that if it was bad, I wasn't going to get mad or sad. I was just doing to be done. I was going to like those first three movies and always hold those with affection and then just move on. Like an adult. Like a thinking human being.

That was the plan.

That John Williams score kicks in and, man, I'm there again. I believe that it works. I know it doesn't. I know that it's not true. It's an intellectual property managed by studio middle-men and wholly owned by a heartless multinational. It's there to make as much money as it can, while it can. With that, said, when the John William score kicks in, man. . .

The magic was back. The Falcon. The music. The lightsabers. All of that shit. It hit a part of my brain that told me that the magic was back. For all intents and purposes, it was back.

Richard Evans from Red Letter Media said it best when he talked about The Force Awakens, which isn't that it's bad or good to matter. All it had to be was a competent Star Wars movie to matter. That's what it was and that's all it had to be. What he didn't add was that the weight of what Star Wars means carries the product the rest of the way, because that's the magic trick.

Star Wars was good again! Just like you remembered it! And those bad Prequels, they can't hurt you any more!

Hey, remember this? Now imagine it's an entire movie.

But that's nostalgia at work. Star Wars isn't so much a series of movies or stories as it is a feeling. When it's right, you get that Star Wars feeling. And maybe that's why fans are the way they are. Besides people just being jerks, Star Wars is a personal thing. It means different things to different people.

It's the double-edged sword that these movies always have to deal with-- especially with this latest batch.

People have really taken to not liking the Sequel Trilogy, which I guess is their god-given right, but Jesus is it loud out there.

"It's not my Star Wars," well, it's not anybody's Star Wars. Cynical corporate programming aside, Star Wars is an idea. It's a parlor trick. We watch a fun space movie with a great cast and an amazing score and it sticks in your brain. You saw it when you were five-- You saw it when you were the film's target audience. Now you're in your thirties and you've got back pain and your personal relationships didn't shake out the way they intended to and Star Wars is bad now for some reason! Or maybe it's good again, but it's the same exact energy at work.

They were always silly and of varying quality because they were children's films.

THAT'S STAR WARS BABY!

And so when you watch a new Star Wars or an old Star Wars, you aren't watching it as an objective observer. You can't. I know I can't. You are watching it as somebody who is bringing an entire life time of emotional baggage with them and that's what they expect.

That's the magic trick. You know you're being sold a bill of goods and you buy it anyways-- or you get mad because you expected something else-- something that it has never been. You're not being sold a movie, you're being sold a memory. A feeling of a time when everything is nice and nothing hurt. And there's a lot of money in selling that fantasy.

You can't put words to magic, because then it's no longer a magic trick.

(SIDE NOTE: If you don't want to deal with another couple-thousand words of me cranking off about the Star War, read this review from Walter Chaw. It gets to the heart of a lot of what I've been feeling and what I've been trying to say. It also takes the film(s) to task much more severely than do I. It's a really good review and, as I say later, it's stuff like this that makes me excited about movies.)

SOMETHING LIKE AN ACTUAL REVIEW--

The internet is a pressure cooker packed full of dog shit and it's only getting worse. Despite my best efforts to mute everything and anything related to the latest picture, word still filtered out. It's terrible. It's a pile of wet lettuce. It's an abomination. Blah blah blah.

It's fine. The Rise of Skywalker is a fun, loud, space laser-based movie that caps off a long series of loud, silly, space-laser-based movies. It's a Star Wars pictures. Unlike the best of the series, it forgoes continuity and character in favor of people running through sets real fast. And unlike the worst of the series, it isn't an eye-watering bore. In short: It's a JJ Abrams film.

(I am also self-aware enough to realize that watching Dune and Legend this year, certain parts of my brain have been liquefied. So, that probably does help the film's case.)

While there's certainly space to make the argument that I suffer from diminished expectations and from the same sort of nostalgic brain poisoning that I described above, it's still a well-crafted action-adventure films. There's a lightsaber fight. There's a John Williams score. There's space British people (as well as space racists) It's Star Wars. I'm hard-pressed to figure out what's got everybody so worked up, but then again, it's the internet. Fuck it. I got mine.

It's also one of the rare few times that I would be willing to indulge an extended cut of a film. Of all of the moves it makes and the places it goes and the things it leaves behind, it's kind of incredible that length isn't one of the sins that it commits.

There is a lot more of Rian Johnson in that movie than a lot of people-- friend or foe-- would like to admit. Abrams, by the very nature of making a follow-up to The Last Jedi is working in the shadow of somebody else's work (who was working in the shadow of somebody else's work who was working in the shadow of somebody else's work who was working in the shadow of Frank Herbert). This is exacerbated by the fact that this entire trilogy seems to be operating under a series of dictates laid out by the shareholders. It's with that in mind that I think these movies being as good as they are is amazing.

Consider how deeply bad some of these board of director driven films get pumped out into the market and at least The Rise of Skywalker is watchable. What's more is can you imagine what this film would have looked like if they let The Book of Henry guy stay on?

The Rise of Skywalker does exactly what it's supposed to do and while it doesn't have the highs of The Last Jedi, nor does it take the risks, it sticks the landing. In any film that's hard to do and that's especially with an installment that concludes a story arc (Mass Effect 3 comes most readily to mind and, after reflection, so does Battlestar Galactica).

I don't know what everyone else was expecting when it came to The Rise of Skywalker. A smartass would say "I was expecting a good movie," but I think they were expecting something that it couldn't be. Due to economics, due to fan demand, due to the competence and interests of the creators, due to whatever, that movie did not get made. People want Star Wars to be something that it's not and never was-- except in their memories.

Lastly, if nothing else, I enjoyed it because I could now be done with Star Wars. That all of this sturm and drang and bitching and moaning about space wizards could finally, once and for all, conclude. I might finally be done with Star Wars and that is exhilarating.

It's a fantasy, but it's my fantasy and, right now, it's one I'm going to indulge in.

THE YELL CHAMBER: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE OPINIONSPHERE

A quick aside: The Discourse. As I alluded to earlier: I hate it.

This is a pretty good artist's concept of the Internet right now

Not just about Star Wars or science fiction, but about movies in general. While the hyperconnected world has brought on plenty of good things, it's also completely exhausting. It's everyone yelling about everything at all times. I mean, I'm sure it was always like this, but the Internet has metastasized a certain impulse among humans.

And I get it, but Christ, is it a bummer. Not because if Star Wars doesn't deserves better, but our culture deserves better.

Star Wars is nonsense, but it's the nonsense that our culture builds itself around. And not just Star Wars, but these other blockbusters. These other films. Small ones too, but especially the big ones. Hundreds of people spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars to make this. That's worth having a conversation about. It's also worth spending the time and effort to watch smaller and more meaningful movies. I like a good space laser movie, but, man, have you ever checked out a real movie? They're fucking great!

And if you don't want to deal with any of this, you can always just shut the fuck up. It's a liberating feeling not to have to have an opinion on everything. It's even more liberating not to have to force it out there so everyone knows where you stand. I'm not a "Let people enjoy things" guy-- because that's idiotic-- but it's a very human impulse to regulate how other people feel about things and if they're feeling it in the right way. But, it's a fucking space wizard movie. You're allowed to save your energy on this one.

BUT-- If we are going to keep watching these goof space-laser movies, I'm going to keep writing about them. Which brings me to another crux of my criticism: That we should engage these things with enthusiasm. We should like movies, even the bad ones. Sometimes especially the bad ones. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't ever speak ill of a movie or that we should never critically disect the good ones, but us film dorks-- the serious ones with problems, you know, jerks like me-- should be fans of movies. We should be fans of the medium itself.

Movies are amazing. That any of them exist is wonderful. I watched King of the Monsters this year and it was, on every level, a deeply unlikable movie, but I left it with a kind of spark in my hear, because this meant that I got to go watch some good movies now. I knew that disappointments like that help cast a light on the ones that are truly unique.

Movies are a common language that we all speak. Beyond Star Wars, we all have feelings on The Godfather and Westerns and Musicals and all the rest of it. Even when the movie sucks or we have disagreements, it is something that we can share. That's why it's worth having better language around them and why it's worth giving more thoughts to these things than whether it sucked or was awesome (which they sometimes do and are!).

But, the messiness is a part of the experience. That's what art is and that's where a lot of the fun is. By engaging with sterile or compromised or just plain crappy films, we learn things. We learn about ourselves, about the world around is, and about other movies. And we can do that without actually taking any real risks or suffering any real trauma, because that's art. That's what it's supposed to be (as well as by Kathleen Kennedy a new vacation house).

Or maybe this is all just me hiding my unearned love of the space laser movie behind the language of film criticism.

Who can say?

OTHER THOUGHTS GOOD, BAD, AND OTHERWISE

(And here come the SPOILERS. . .)

* I think the inclusion of the unused Leia footage is needlessly grotesque. When asked about having his appearance projected as a hologram Prince called the idea "demonic." That there's something deeply inhumane and inhuman about playing around with the dead. He says that if it was meant to be, it would have happened that way. I don't completely share Prince's point of view, but there's something deeply unsettling about having a dead woman appear on screen, especially in scenes that you know she didn't film. It's just really, deeply weird and there's nothing in this movie that seems to justify bringing back the dead (also, might be one of the reasons Rose Tico's scenes got cut out: Because Digital Carrie Fisher was creepy and looked bad. You know, supposedly.).

* I love that Kijimi was droid-accessible. It was a town of staircase and, yet, it had a bunch of ramps for our sweet, sweet rolly boys. Even when in a despotic, space-facist past, city centers are handicapped accessible.

* Now that we are through this long, national nightmare, we can all acknowledge that Rogue One was not only the best of the new movie, but is just about the best Star Wars movie ever made. Also, I wrote a bunch about it's themes and design not once, but twice.

* Everything around Kylo Ren/Ben Solo's face turn was well done. Not just for the movie, but any movie. Adam Driver is a hell of an actor and so is Daisy Ridley. They're good together and they're good when they're alone. It's the one part of the movie that I doesn't need a qualification.

* The movie needed more Rose Tico. The current fan theories/glib jokes are that she got cut out because Reddit wouldn't shut it's mouth. I'm skeptical that a multi-billion dollar monopoly like Disney would be influenced by a tightly-knit pact of mega-virgins, but who knows? Disney likes money and it's entirely possible that was the route they saw to making more of it. But, still: The best new character of the second movie was given short shrift. She was a great character that humanized the conflict and connected it to the ground level. What is more is they should have given her more to do just to piss off the internet crowd. Apparently there are scenes that were shot, but Lord knows if we'll ever see them, even as a DVD extra. It is Disney, after all. Hiding shit in vaults is their number one, main thing.

* I like the inclusion of the Emperor. I like it a lot! People complain that it comes out of nowhere, but that's always kind of been the tenor of Star Wars storytelling. These things can pop up out of nowhere. Especially this motherfucker. It gives the final film the weight of a true villain-- something that the last two movies didn't have. The Emperor is gross and evil and seems to have been refugeed from a failed live-action production of a Warhammer 40,000 movie. It's rad. And Ian McDermond is having the time of his fucking life. ALSO: I dig that they answer "Who was Snoke?" by saying "Oh, him? We have a tube for that. Don't worry about it."

* There also should have been more porgs. Which brings me back to Rose Tico and Kelly Marie Tran. My theory about all of this isn't that Abrams (or Disney) gave a shit about the Internet's tantrums about The Last Jedi, I just don't think he was interested in characters that he didn't have a hand in (which might explain why Rian Johnson dropped the Knights of Ren outright). It doesn't get him off the hook for dropping certain plot lines, but it does soften the movie somewhat. But, yeah, give me more porgs. Tell me that Chewie has a crate for the little guy he kept. Give me some connection to that movie. Anything.

* The Final Order's aesthetic should have been gold and black-- And that's what Kylo Ren's repaired Sith-infused helmet should have been. Like a Kintsugi bowl. Plus, it could have been a call back to Snoke's luxurious smoking jacket in The Last Jedi. It also would have, like, moved things forward out of the same basic aesthetic that the first movie set up. So much of the Sequel Trilogy feels like they've been robbing George Lucas' grave for new material and not in a good way.

* The Final Order is a better name than the First Order, a group of villains that everyone would rather associate with the follow-up to Joy Division. I mean, Jesus, what a terrible name for the bad guys. Just some first-draft-ass names landing inside of a two-hundred million dollar movie.


* Mark Kermode quoted somebody, saying that The Rise of Skywalker felt like the third part of a story without a second part. That's a little unfair, but beyond more of Rose, little touches here and there, The Last Jedi only appears as an echo, an unfinished rhyme. It's a real shame-- and not just because certain actors got the shaft.

Just look at him! So cool!

* Rey should have been in black at some point. Again, if they can't write a story that connect directly to the previous film, some more callbacks would have been nice. Rey wearing black would have visually connected her to Luke's black outfit in Return of the Jedi. Star Wars' language has always been visual. While there are lines here and there that are evocative of a wider world (mentions of "the Clone Wars" etc.), Star Wars has always communicated its ideas through its designs. This would have been an opportunity for that. Rey's journey was about turning away from the dark side. This would tell the audience, hey, maybe she already fell. Also, black outfits are rad. And also--

* She should have had that lightsaber in the beginning of the movie. Again: This would be a callback to Return of the Jedi when Luke appears with his green lightsaber (which was in this movie, I think?). And it would have moved her forward as a character.

* Also, why do the Sequels only have blue and red lightsabers? I mean, I know the reason why: They're the iconic colors of A New Hope and they don't want your mind wandering to the Prequels, because that might cause Unregulated Emotions and Disney can't have that (more on that in a moment). . .

* I like how Oscar Isaac has clearly had movie military training, where as John Boyega has not. Dude can handle a blaster well, what can I say?

* I like how this is an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink type of movie and it actually works. King of the Monsters tried to do this and didn't succeed (at least for me). Then again, I also don't think that Mass Effect 3 was as bad as people said it was. I'm of the opinion that if you're going to fuck up one of these movies, fuck it up by overdoing it. It seems that Abrams subscribes to the same theory.

* Poe and Finn are not gay. They are bi. To say otherwise is erasure.

* There should have been Gungans. As with drug-dealing, there should be no half-measures when it comes to fan service. I want a double-barreled blast of that bullshit. Don't hide from the past, from the Prequels, embrace them. Overall it just seems like the Sequel Trilogies were so embarassed by the Prequels that they didn't even want to mention them, even in passing. The impulse to do so with The Force Awakens makes sense, but at this point, it seems indicative of the fact that they were trapped on this rail and couldn't step outside of it. To acknowledge the Prequels is to acknowledge that Star was is messy and imperfect and to do that you have to acknowledge that this is also true of the past and we can't have that. . .


* Last, but not least: Rey being a Palpatine is stupid. I mean, it's great, because it's an incredibly ham-handed device to wedge more operative bullshit into an already overloaded filmic cavity, but, in terms of actual plot and story, it's dumb as all hell. It doesn't add anything to her arc-- she's already conflicted and she already has a preternatural sensitivity to the Force. And on the downside, it undercuts the point of The Last Jedi (and Abrams' own The Force Awakens) which was that a "nobody" could be a hero. It doesn't make her choice to turn away from the Dark Side any more significant. All it does is give her Hero's Journey brand recognition. At best it confuses the plot and at worst it undercuts the idea that this film exists in a series.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and will probably still pay to see another one of these fucking movies. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

I have three questions

1. What is this?

2. Where can I get this?

3. Why can't I have it right now?

A New Testament of the New Gospel

Or You Should (NOT) Watch EVANGELION

In which I go over the show that everyone has already (re)gone over and over and over

ALL ABOUT EVA

If you hadn't heard, Neon Genesis Evangelion is back. Netflix just licensed it and even commissioned a new dub and translation to boot. While it is an important, it isn't just the show that is returning. It's everything that comes with it.

You can't talk about Evangelion without talking about the baggage-- all twenty-five years of it*-- that comes with. It's a show that can't escape its own gravity. Neither can pop culture.

Evangelion is a show that has been speculated about, denigrated, lamented, and imitated, and for years almost all of this has been afrom a distance. A conversation that is as much informed by nostalgia as anything else. Now it's back, fully accessible to anyone with a Netflix password and, at long last, we can re-litigate on of the greatest Japanese animes of all time.

Now that I’ve rewatched Evangelion for the first time in nineteen years, I’ve realized a lot of things. The first is that all of the critics of this show are right. It's a show that's aged remarkably well, if only because the things it fucks up-- the roughshod ending, the lack of focus, the abject sexism-- were all known to suck in 1996. The second thing that struck me is just how enjoyable it still is.

Austin Walker** often speaks of the Gundam series in a similar tone. Even the good Gundam it's still a series rife with bullshit. Fan service, stories that drag on, monsters of the week ad nauseam, and so forth. Despite that, he is a fan and that is because he knows that the worth of a work is more than one or two things. It isn't arithmatic. It's still art and it is still something that has to be reckoned with-- even the dumb robot shows.

To love Evangelion is to accept that it's a mess. It's an rough canvas, unfinished. And despite that, it's also one of the coolest giant robot shows ever made and that it has a great soundtrack and also has a giant penguin that just hangs out in the background of scenes for no real reason other than it's a giant penguin.

That’s what the show is. It’s beautiful. It’s terrible. It’s motherfucking Eva, baby.

I feel like I saved this picture because I was going to make a joke,
and now it's gone, so instead, here's a depressed teenager.

POR QUE, EVA?

Evangelion is worth seeing because there isn’t anything quite like it. For better or worse, Evangelion still feels like a singular work of art. While its origins are well documented, it still manages to stand apart from its predecessors by what it emphasizes. Its design, its use of body-horror, its emphasis on the inner-lives of its main characters, its increasingly preposterous and glorious battle scenes-- all of this add up to a show that is greater than the sum of its parts. As much as it is a show that draws on external works, it stands a singular work of art, one worth experiencing for its own sake.

What I'm saying is that Evangelion has styyyyyyyyyyle.

There's another version of this essay where I discussed how
Nausicaa relates to Evangelion, but I'm annoyed and tired,
so let's just pretend I did, okay?

Secondly, do it for the culture. Neon Genesis Evangelion it’s one of the most influential TV shows of all time***. As a cultural artifact you should take it in. An entire generation of would-be weebs who watched this show in the early 2000s, on VHS tapes or on fan-translated DVDs are all making their own cartoons or their own movies. Like, watch Evangelion and tell me that the Kong: Skull Island guy didn’t watch this show from front to back. Or Guillermo del Toro for that matter. Or Rebecca Sugar or a whole lot of other creators.

I recently watched Pulp Fiction with my teenage niece and nephew and they left the viewing being less than entirely impressed. While a good bit of that can be chalked up to them being dumb teenagers and poor sound quality of the stream, I think a good part of it is just the fact that Pulp Fiction, to them, is not a unique artifact. So many movies and TV shows have played off of what Pulp Fiction did (which was to copy a lot of other movies) that to see it in its original form isn’t very impressive. It’s like listening to the Sex Pistols. If you don’t have disco and Barry Manilow and prog rock to compare it to, it’s just four dickheads playing instruments poorly. 

Neon Genesis Evangelion, like Pulp Fiction, has the same kind of legacy. It’s the genre work that escaped its enclosure. It’s a work that came into being as a sort of fan letter to other works in the genre (Ultraman, Gundam, Toho monster movies, etc etc etc), but it ended up having an influence larger than the works it was derived from. In short, it’s fairly similar to what happens when people with talent and discipline listen to punk and decide to start their own bands.

Hey, kids, let me tell you about the first
guy to rip off Old Testament imagery,
that's right, Hyper-Jesus.

Third, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a master class in messy storytelling. Not that you need a second ironic reason to watch the show, but the ending(s) aside, Evangelion is broken on a fundamental level. Budget problems (allegedly), production delays (definitely), and the auteur at the center of it calling audibles half of the way through the run of the show are but three reasons as to why it's such a patchy show.

Is it a good mystery? Is it deliberate storytelling? Or did they just forget and get bored? Is it ambiguous or did they fail to follow up on a plot point? Both? Neither? Does it matter?

Frankly, if somebody sane and with a healthy respect for production made Evangelion it might be better, but it wouldn’t be Eva. From a critical point of view, the cracks in the foundation are the foundation.

Lastly, Neon Genesis Evangelion is actually a kind of good robot show?****

Despite its odious lows, Evangelion still hits some incredible high points. When it fires on all cylinders, it's one of the best giant robot shows ever made. I mean, there's an episode where they have to use a giant sniper rifle to shoot one of the Angels and in order to get it running, they have to use the power of the entire island of Japan. It's awesome.

Sure, the last two episodes suck ass drudges and the movie is, uh, of similarly cut cloth, but in between its moments of shoe-gazing and its male gaze, it manages to be a neat and unique TV.

There are my four reasons. It’s unique. It’s influential. It’s important as an artifact of storytelling. And Shinji punches those monsters good.

But also fuck this dumb show.

Brilliant, stupid, or just plain awesome? The answer is: Yes.

THE EVA-PHANT IN THE ROOM

There is no rationalizing, there's no getting around it: Neon Genesis Evangelion has a problem with women.

God almighty, does it have a problem with women. It both doesn't know how to write female characters nor does it seem to have any sort of affection for them. When it does have affection for them, it's for their bodies. It is a show that, at best, has some deeply unpleasant opinions about women.

And before I get into it into it, I want to point out that this is an abridged sally against this show's deeply weird brand of misogyny.

It's a show that doesn't quite know how to handle its female characters, except when it does and it's a pile of vitriolic, Stone Age-sexism. This is made all the more depressing by the fact that Anno-- and presumably his team of collaborators-- are aiming for profundity when it explores the inner lives of its characters. This makes its fumbling portrayals all the more striking. Instead of original and interesting statements about its female characters, what we get instead are Psych 101 level course notes. It's shallow, sad, and lame. It's a show about teenagers with the understanding of a teenager.

While there are stand-out moments (like when Asuka kicks ass or any time Misato is forced to jerry-rig a plan together), these moments are undercut by reducing these women to their most basic constituent parts (if you're a dullard): Mother and/or Lover. They can't be pilots or scientists or, uh, giant robots (which is literally just a giant mom in this case, but anyways), they are Mothers and/or Lovers first (and ultimately). Any attempt to stray from this path results in failure, torture, and death. Or all three. Or you turn into a giant space god. I don't know, anime.

Beyond that, you have the arcs of Rei (who Anno admitted stopped developing after episode six, when her arc is literally "You should smile more," which is probably less of a gross trope in Japan, but boy howdy, does this show not deserve a generous reading when it comes to women) and the arc of Ritsuko (who is a scorned women, like her mom) and Misato ("Slut, slut, sluuuuuut!") and Asuka (who tries hard and kicks ass, but can only try so hard and kick so much ass, because at the end of the day, she is there to be gawked at). Sure, Shinji gets his ass kicked quite a lot, but his entire purpose in the show is to be told that he matters. His arc is the one that matters. His story is the one that needs to be told. In the end (of Evangelion), all women are ultimately accessories to this dumb, shitty boy's journey (and, indeed to the audience's journey).

Women. Lover. That's it. Those are your options.

Then there's the T and A. Ugh. Alright-- I wanted this to be a quick segment, because I hate talking about this shit and I'm sure you don't want to read it, but it would be dishonest to blow past it-- but this show loves to sexualize its underage girl cast.

How it treats its adult female characters isn't much better (but at least it isn't a crime). It reduces them to basic traditional roles-- mother and wife (or, well, giant robot, but is that not just a type of a mother? A giant, berserk mother built of bone and steel? Think about it). And then, as a kicker, after it reduces them to these roles, it then judges them for being in these roles. Misato is a slut. Ritsuko is a jilted lover (ditto her mom, who has literally been reduced to these roles via the Magi computer system).

So, not only is it juvenile and reductive, it's also hypocritical.

And that isn't to say that featuring teenage sexuality is a total non-starter. It is possible to have your cake and to eat it too-- or at the very least there is a way to titillate and to talk about teenage sexuality without undercutting your characters. Without being a pervert. Without being a generally unpleasant weirdo.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a movie that manages to do both. It's a movie that features nudity, that celebrates (responsible) sexual activity and desire, and it also makes fun of and judges when people use sex irresponsibly or to hurt other people. In short, it uses a visual medium to portray an aspect of humanity in a complex light.

(There's also Karate Kid, which is a really chaste portrayal of high school romance and, I don't now, Lolita which manages to make a comedy out of pederasty. There's also TV shows like Riverdale, which are dumber than dogshit twice run over, and it still doesn't ever become creepy. What I'm saying is get it together Anno. Jesus.)

On my rewatch of Eva, I was struck by how obvious this problem is from the very beginning. And then I remembered that even at the age of thirteen I was always slightly embarassed and creeped out.

As I said earlier, some things age well because we knew it sucked them.

LET'S GET OUT OF HERE ALREADY

If you hate it, I get it. There’s enough wrong with it to fuel a thousand hours to forward facing You Tube rants. It’s not like Tom Petty. It’s not like if you don’t like Evangelion it makes you a bad person. I mean, Shinji Ikari would hate this show and he’s on this show.

It’s also fun to go back and realize just how much this show has shaped my taste in things. The music. The terror of the aliens. The body horror. The gore. The fetishistic attention to mechanical details. The computer screen insert shots—name one show that has better insert shots of computer screens. You can’t because Eva has the best shots of screens and displays, and you know it. All of those things have stuck with me.

Evangelion is a show that I love and hate. To engage with it is to understand engage with both of these concepts and to understand that these are not mutually exclusive ideas. Evangelion is (not) a good show and that's what I love it.

In general this has been a season of realizations for me. I’m glad that Eva is at least one thing that I can put to bed.

FOOTNOTES:

* That many? Really? When the fuck did that happen? Also, how is this show still coming out? Why is it still coming out for that matter. I guess I agree with this take on Evangelion, elucidated by one of the writers of the film Mandy: That Anno himself cannot help but go back to the well. Because he is compelled enough by the material that he can't escape it. There's something about this show, how messy it is, how appealing it is, that keeps him from going back-- or at least escaped.On a more cynical level, I'm sure the money helps.

** If I were a better essay writer, I would have found the time and the space to talk about this tweet specifically. I like how Walker frames Evangelion as both a seminal work of art that he loves, but also a show that he knows is fundamentally fucked-up and problematic. I like even erudite and politically aware cultural critics still have room in their heart for screwy robot shows. I also like that guys like Walker and his crew at Waypoint/Vice Gaming are out there doing the heavy-lifting so I can keep these essays short.

*** Maybe“infamous” would do better. I touched on it briefly above, but Evangelion, like a lot of Japanese animation, has attracted the worst sorts of people. Perverts. Weirdos. Would-be pederasts. Generally unpleasant dickheads. Which wouldn't be a problem if the show didn't encourage a lot of these people. Over and over again Evangelion (and thereby Anno and the production company, Gainax), sexualize the children. Ugh. I don't even want to get into it, but it's bad. It's bad that the show did it and it's bad that it attracts people that, you know, have very specific feelings about how cartoon child pornography are peachy keen (I can't find the specific article, but apparently the current translator of Evangelion apparently holds such opinions). Plus, also maybe Anno himself gave one of the cast members some real creeptastic directions once. Blech.

**** On that note, if you want to see a straight-up monster movie, Hideaki Anno's Shin Godzilla is a hell of a movie. Very different from the 2014 Godzilla. It is also a movie worth your time even if you hate Evangelion.

***** In that way GoT can also join an even more odious group of series finales that I keep: Shows I wasn't disappointed with because I already knew they were going to suck. It's one of the hollow victories where I never get let down because I never had any expectations. Way to go me.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and will not get in the EVA. Must be losing his touch. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.