Dark Disciple

Dark Disciple by Christie Golden and Katie Lucas (4/5)

Without appearing in any of the feature films, Asajj Ventress has become one of the more fascinating and nuanced characters in the prequel era. Originally developed by the Lucas brain trust for Attack of the Clones, Ventress would go on to appear in the original 2D Clone Wars series and a number of comics during Star Wars’s days at Dark Horse. Throughout The Clone Wars she became a more rounded character, especially after a story arc finding her abandoning her apprenticeship with Count Dooku to strike out on her own. Star Wars is a world of light and dark, but it has always managed to find the complexity these two poles. And it’s that in-between space that Ventress best represents.

For fans of Ventress, it was a pleasant surprise to see the novel, Dark Disciple, take the focus off of Obi-Wan and Anakin to explore the character of Ventress. Taken from unfinished Clone Wars storylines, Dark Disciple showcases what that series did best: explore the moral Catch 22 of war. Believing the toll of the Clone War has become too great, the Jedi Council decides, with some desperation, that it would be better to assassinate Count Dooku rather than let the war linger. Mace Windu is the chief proponent of this plan, but he manages to get the rest of the counsel to go along. Obi-Wan recommends that Quinlan Vos, a rebellious and unorthodox Jedi, carry out the assassination plot.

Vos knows he won’t be able to take out a Sith Lord by himself, so he’s told to recruit Asajj Ventress as an aid. The fact that she had previously attempted to kill her former master makes her an ideal ally. Knowing that Ventress would never trust the Jedi, Vos goes undercover as a fellow bounty hunter. He arranges a “chance” encounter with Ventress by going after the same bounty as her, and in the tradition of Marvel comics, after they squabble with one another, they soon become partners, Vos’s exuberant personality complementing Ventress’s guarded, no nonsense approach to everything.

For a time, Dark Disciple follows the time-honored narrative of the undercover cop ingratiating himself with criminals, but [spoilers] that thankfully doesn’t last too long. There are plenty of twists and turns throughout the novel, and you can tell it had been expertly plotted before being transformed from a series of 22 minute episodes into a book. I also won’t spoil anything else for you. The person who developed the original story was none other than Katie Lucas, daughter of the Maker himself, George. Here she’s helped by author Christie Golden. In a postscript, Katie Lucas writes about how she was drawn to Ventress because she’s a strong female character. I also feel as if the inclusion of Ventress and Ahsoka in the series speaks to the necessity of including female creators and artists in the world of Star Wars. Would these character be as rounded and complex if someone like Katie Lucas wasn’t there to influence the creative process?

What drew me to The Clone Wars cartoon was how it handled some of the moral entanglements hinted at in the prequel films. For all their flaws, the prequels had some legitimately interesting ideas that were, unfortunately, poorly executed. The idea that you could win a war and still lose seems particularly relevant today considering America has been waging a seemingly endless war on terror for fifteen years, and yet somehow global acts of terrorism have actually increased. But there are other ways to lose a war. Dark Disciple, and much of The Clone Wars, suggests that we lose by blurring the line between the “good” and “bad” guys. By engaging in assassination, the Jedi Council have lost their purity. But this isn’t an easy decision. You could see how the Jedi might come to the conclusion that engaging in what’s considered an immoral act, even during wartime, would be their best option, even if it is ultimately an abandonment of their principles. And in the process they have sacrificed the welfare of Quinlan Vos, who must struggle with the Dark Side during his mission.

Not everything about Dark Disciple is completely successful. Maybe it’s because I’m a bit older and more cynical, but at times it seems as if the romance between Vos and Ventress seems driven more by the plot than by the characters. But because the novel focuses on secondary and tertiary characters, there can be real consequences. Dark Disciples feels like more than just another adventure in the life of these characters. And the novel reminds us that even in a world with a light side and a dark side, it’s not always easy to know which side you’re on. Like Star Wars itself, this is a lesson that is both of our time and timeless.

Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom (5/5)

Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom opens with the sound of the composer Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” which breaks down, piece by piece, each section of the orchestra and then later builds it back up.  The work is reminiscent of opening up a pocket watch in order to see all of the gears working in conjunction.  It is not lost on the audience that as Britten’s music is deconstructed, Anderson presents the inside of a household, using perfectly choreographed camera movements, that is itself immaculately designed by the eye of an idiosyncratic artist.  This got me thinking: is Wes Anderson one of our greatest creators of fantasy worlds? 

It might seem strange to suggest that Anderson should be mentioned alongside people like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and George R.R. Martin.  You won’t find dragons or magic spells in his work, but what you will find is a hermetically sealed universe that seems to jump wholesale out of the mind of a singular artist.  Is Anderson’s fetish for vintage audio equipment that far removed from Tolkien’s love of medieval verse?  While every one of Anderson’s films is created in a world that is slightly out of step from our own, of all his live action work Moonrise Kingdom seems to rest out on its own plane of existence. 

And much of Moonrise Kingdom’s potency comes from the understanding that children and adults inhabit distinct and separate realms.  The film takes place in the 1960s on a sleepy New England island, New Penzance, which is not only largely separated from the mainland but also bares a name that would look comfortable written on a map of a fantasy world.  This close knit community is frayed when two young children, Sam and Suzy, go on the lam, making their way deep into the woods of the island thanks to skills Sam has picked up attending the Khaki Scouts.  As the children retreat into the wilderness, the adults scramble to catch up with them.  As we move back and forth between the adult world and the world of children, we understand the distinct sort of dysfunction that infects both.  In the 1960s both Sam and Suzy might have been called “trouble children.”  Sam is an orphan who doesn’t fit in well with his foster family (in fact, his foster father decides that he won’t invite him back to the house after hearing about his flight) and Suzy is prone to outbursts of violence and rage.  But where the children have trouble suppressing their emotions, the adults, in typical Andersonian fashion, hide their dysfunction under a laconic haze.  Suzy’s mother and father (played by Francis MacDormond and Bill Murray) are mired in a loveless marriage, which has led her mother to take up with the local police chief, Sharp (Bruce Willis). 

 

Wes Anderson clues us into his interest in world making through a series of books that Suzy brings along on her retreat with Sam.  These books carry fantastical names like The Francine Odyssey, The Disappearance of the 6^th Grade, and The Girl from Jupiter.  This need for escapism obviously parallels the children’s flight into the woods.  To disappear into the world of fantasy isn’t far off from dropping off the map and slipping out from under the expectations of adults.  Anderson constructs this universe with the help of a map as well as the narrating power of Bob Ballaban, who doubles as a wizard-like character who figures out how to catch up with Sam and Suzy.  As the film progresses, it becomes further and further detached from our world.  In fact, at times it seems as if Anderson is applying techniques he learned in his animated film, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, onto a live action palate.  This allows him to ratchet up the scope of his film towards the end by introducing a flood that seems to be borrowed from one of the world’s most famous fantasy epics, The Old Testament. 

But of all the great fantasy writers out there, perhaps none pervade Anderson’s universe more than the great artist, Charles M. Schulz.  Anderson, never one to be shy about his influences, even names a dog Snoopy.  In Peanuts, Schulz may have created one of the longest lasting fantasy worlds, stretching out over a half of a century.  And while he may have made the adults invisible (they only appeared in the TV specials as indecipherable and disembodied voices), he never ran away from adult concerns.  Where Anderson creates a world where two misfits can largely escape the dysfunctions of the adult world, Schultz had his prepubescent characters shoulder the crushing burdens of existential malaise.  And yet, there’s something refreshing about the optimism found in Moonrise Kingdom, along with much of Anderson’s work (an optimism that Schultz often struggled to find).  He manages to be both critical and highly empathetic towards his characters.  For Anderson, a fantasy world isn’t so much a retreat as it is an invitation, and one that I am never hesitant to take up. 

John Carter of Mars

John Carter of Mars (4/5)

Buried within Edgar Rice Burroughs’s original series of Barsoom novels hides the DNA of some of the most successful blockbusters of the past forty years.  Films like Star Wars and Avatar wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the fact that Burroughs had already laid the groundwork in the early decades of the twentieth century.  So despite the fact that John Carter’s Martian adventures are a precursor to modern sci-fi and fantasy films, the first major movie adaptation of Burroughs’s work can’t help but feel like somewhat of a rehash.  But it is also difficult to hold this against a film that largely delivers on its promise of uncomplicated thrills. 

John Carter opens using a framing technique similar to the novel on which it is based, A Princess of Mars.  In the tradition of the “found text” narrative, Burroughs represented his novel as an extended story written down by his uncle, John Carter.  In the film, Burroughs is informed that his uncle has died, and he is summoned to his wealthy uncle’s sizable estate.  Upon arriving, Burroughs is told that he has become the executor of his uncle’s trust and is given a manuscript to pore over.  This manuscript, as you might surmise, is a recounting of Carter’s adventures on the red planet, or Barsoom, as the Martians call it.  Carter, it turns out, was once a prospector looking to strike it rich near Apache country.  Because of his former role in the Confederate cavalry, a local Indian fighter, Captain Powell, attempts to re-enlist him in his efforts to put down Apache resistance. 

The sit down between Powell and Carter turns into one of the film’s best visual gags, and the first indication that the director, Andrew Stanton, also helmed the Pixar classics Finding Nemo and Wall-E.  Carter eventually escapes from the cavalry fort and becomes embroiled in a firefight with a band of Apaches.  In his escape, Carter finds shelter in a cave where he encounters a Martian, and, after snatching a metallic piece of Martian technology, is whisked away out of the Arizona desert into the deserts of Barsoom.  The framing technique is somewhat convoluted, since we are first introduced to John Carter through Burroughs and then introduced to Carter proper on the frontier before he finally finds his way to Mars.  But it was smart for the filmmakers to keep the 19^th century time frame.  In most science fiction films, the audience must suspend disbelief, but in a film based on early works of fantastical fiction like John Carter, there is a second layer of suspension of disbelief where the audience not only must believe in the fantastical, but they must also believe that the kind of absurdity we see in these stories is the sort of material for which a contemporary audience would have been willing to suspend disbelief. 

And once we get to Mars, there is, like in the novel, some enjoyably goofy conceits.  Because of Mars’s weak gravity, Carter finds himself capable of leaping across the landscape, and his denser bone and muscle mass make him an even more formidable fighter than the vicious Barsoomian natives.  John Carter first encounters the Tharks, a ruthless four armed warrior race.  The leader of the Tharks, Tars Tarkas, played energetically by Willem Defoe in CGI garb, sees in Carter a weapon he can turn against the other denizens of Barsoom, and instead of shooting him on sight decides to tie him up for later use. 

In addition to the Tharks, Barsoom houses the Red Martians who look pretty much like Earthlings who forgot to put on enough SPF during their Florida vacation.  The Red Martians control several city-states that are at war with one another.  The city of Helium has been under siege by the city of Zodanga and cannot hold out for much longer. The leader of Zodanga, Sab Than, has been able to keep his rivals on the ropes thanks to technology he received from a mysterious group of secretive people known as the Therns.  In a desperate last bid for peace, the ruler of Helium has agreed to marry off his daughter, the Princess Dejah Thoris, to Sab Than, but when she learns of her fathers plan, Dejah jets off.  The Zodanga airships catch up with her near the encampment of Tars Tarkas and his tribe where Carter rescues her from plunging to her death.  Dejah, of course, wishes to recruit Carter to her cause in defending Helium against the onslaught of Zodanga.

The plot itself is somewhat tortuous, thanks in part to the insertion of the mysterious Therns, who did not appear in the first book and whose inclusion adds just one more twisted convolution.  And while the politics could have easily been more of a chore, Stanton, like all Pixar directors, has such a fantastic sense of pacing that we never have to suffer through much political posturing.  The audience is given as much information as they need, and then we move on.  But not surprisingly the most engaging parts of the film take place among the Tharks.  The movie is smart enough not to blunt the violent aspect of Thark society—Thark children are hatched in communal incubators and those who do not break from their egg in time and summarily killed—while at the same time the filmmakers shave off some of the racism of Burroughs’s original story.  (In the novel, the Tharks stand in for the American-Indians Carter is fighting before being transported across space and time).  For a Disney movie John Carter is surprisingly violent, and Carter finds himself covered in Martian blood on more than one occasion. 

 

The joys of John Carter are ultimately slight, but this is also the movie’s strength.  While other blockbusters have become increasingly bloated, John Carter feels invigoratingly light-footed.  True, the movie’s running time exceeds two hours, but it never feels long.  Just as Carter himself is a man out of time and place, John Carter the movie also feels out of step with its fellow big budgeted adventure films.  At its heart, and when it is at its very best, John Carter feels like an Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks flick—Captain Blood with more special effects.  Many people have questioned whether or not sci-fi fantasy film set on Mars at the end of the 19^th century can recoup its substantial cost in 2012.  I’m the last person who should try and predict public tastes, but I can say that John Carter is that rare breed of sci-fi spectacle that, when it hits its stride, actually thrills.