Weekly Geekly Rundown for February 14, 2024
Chain Letters, The Internet, and Misinformation
I know, I know, you think this is going to be about misinformation and politics. It’s not. Sure, I study political polarization and social media is filled with political misinformation wherever you look. We are all trapped by the political daily me that affirms our priors and leads us to believe things that aren’t true via a process of motivated cognitive reflection. I can talk about it all day, but my readers (and my former editor
) tend to prefer it when I write more personal stories and this is going to be a more personal and pop culture meander through geeky misinformation.I remember back when Tigers Used to Smoke (yes
thanks to you I’m using this all the time now). I had a number of Baby Boom Generation relatives who would send me various chain letter/emails that “revealed” some terrible thing that every rightminded person was supposed to panic about. In almost every case, I’d check on a fact-checking website like Snopes and it would turn out to be a hoax or an exaggeration and I’d send an email back to the relative describing the misunderstanding. When I did so, I’d always try to root the discussion in how the chain letter had included some kernel of truth and that it was this kernel that made the catastrophic elements seem plausible. The end of the email I sent would always include a link to the fact check site, an academic article, or Snopes.Speaking of Snopes, they created one of the more memorable experiences in my life in the kernel of truth but wrong genre. Back when I was the program director of a non-profit dedicated to youth civic engagement, my assistant and I got into a discussion about the city of Tarzana and how it got its name. I, a HUGE fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, said, “Yeah, the city is named after Tarzana Ranch which Burroughs named after the character who made him rich.”
My assistant informed me that, “Erm, well actually…the character is named after the city.” This lead to me pulling out a copy of Richard Lupoff’s biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Master of Adventure, and opening to the pages discussion the creation of Tarzan to which my assistant said, “Who is this Richard Lupoff person.” I didn’t want to go down that road, so I grabbed my copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan by Irwin Porges and showed him the pages about Tarzana Ranch only to receive a similar response. I went to the freaking Tarzana Neighborhood Council Website and showed him that even they said Tarzana was named after the character and not the other way around.
He would not be deterred. He dug in and said, “I read it on Snopes. It’s an urban myth.” I check the website and low and behold Snopes was saying that Tarzan was named after Tarzana. They were wrong. I knew they were wrong, but Snopes was a trusted source. How could I, who had just shown a pile of evidence, convince my assistant of the reality? Or was I so invested in my own knowledge that I had blinded myself to persuasion?
Confused and seeking the truth, I went back to the Snopes page. Then I noticed something. This information didn’t have the typical “True” or “False” logo. It had a “Lost Legend” logo that included an “about this rating” link.
I clicked the link and realized what had happened.
You see, the Lost Legends of Snopes are the place where Snopes puts intentional misinformation. Things that are there to help people realize that even Snopes can be inaccurate sometimes. Even they are susceptible to being wrong. These stories are Snopes TRoLLing us, just as the abbreviation for the repository reveals.
This process was very annoying for me, but it was also got me thinking about a host of pieces of common knowledge in Geek Culture. Such as the “fact” that the United States spent vast amounts of money developing pens for use in outer space while the Soviet Union merely used pencils. That Lorraine Williams was not only a bad manager who underestimated the value of the fiction department at TSR, but that she also was a cruel person who hated her employees and sought to destroy TSR. That TSR violated copyright and trademark law when it published the first edition of Deities and Demigods with the Cthulhu and Melnibonean Mythos.
None of these things are true at they are presented at their most extreme, but all contain some element of truth within them that allows for our preconceptions to take over. Someone did spend $1 million to develop a pen that could write in space and they sold those pens to NASA. Those pens cost NASA less than they were spending on pencils and they also sold them to the Soviet Union. They probably also made a tidy profit selling them to the public because…their pens could write in zero gravity.
Lorraine Williams was a bad manager. She made some monumentally bad decisions that led to the destruction of TSR. These included the manufacture of both the Dragon Dice and Dragon*Strike games. Both of these were extremely expensive to manufacture and sold poorly. I find both games to be very fun and I consider myself the world’s biggest fan of Dragon*Strike, but even I know that making a game that is supposed to get people excited about D&D that has an entirely different rules set is a bad idea. The fact that it included a video directed by Transformers legend Flint Dille, who is also Lorraine Williams’ brother, is a part of the reason I love it.
Lorraine Williams presided over the period in TSR’s history that produced the most creative output it ever would. Between the massive fiction and game output for the Forgotten Realms, the gaming materials for Mystara, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Birthright, and so much more, we are talking about a period were a good percentage of the D&D nostalgia is based. Dragonlance is still the Gygax era, but it continued to grow in the Williams era. That Williams treated the fiction staff, and the art staff, like the red headed stepchildren of the company is true. She had no idea where the real money was coming from and her obsession with getting Buck Rogers (which her family owns) made into games hurt the company, even as it produced a great game by game design legend Mike Pondsmith (of Cyberpunk fame).
But gamer’s anger at her pushing Gygax out (which was more the Blumes than her) and the launch of 2nd Edition AD&D (which caved to the religious right and got rid of demons and devils initially) created a lot of anger directed at her from fans old and young. The thing is though, she wasn’t a mean boss. As William Connors, one of the best designers in TSR’s history, made clear, she did value some of her creative gaming staff. In particular, him. The truth is complex and nuanced and Lorraine deserves better than the bitter personal attacks she gets from fandom.
Similarly, the TSR violated copyright law when they published the Melnibonean and Cthulhu Mythos in their first printing of Deities & Demigods story is not exactly true. James M. Ward (1951 - 2024) used to share a post on Twitter and Facebook every year that explained his understanding of the story. Ward asserts, and I believe him for reasons you’ll see below, that Arkham House and Moorcock both gave their express permission to TSR to use their IP, even as Chaosium too had permission.
Sandy Petersen, the talented designer of the Call of Cthulhu role playing game who worked for Chaosium at the time strongly believes that TSR violated their copyright.
Seth Skorkowsky has a good interview with Sandy where he moderates his conversation on the event and discusses an additional event involving Fritz Leiber where the Blumes supposedly cheated Chaosium out of a Leiber license. The way he describes this event is as if the Leiber event happened at some point after the Deities & Demigods event. Given that the Deities & Demigods book included Nehwon myths, that couldn’t be the case.
It’s possible that Sandy is referring to the inclusion of Leiber material in Deities & Demigods. It’s also possible he’s referring to the eventual publication of the Dungeons & Dragons Lankhmar supplement in 1985 at the end of the Blume regime. In either case, it seems odd to leave out that TSR published a Lankhmar board game in 1976, a game designed by Fritz Leiber and his friend Harry Fischer. I highlight the year 1976 here because Chaosium was created as a company in 1975 and were a newer company. Then again he could be talking about the board game as that was Chaosium’s primary product line in their first couple of years, but given that he says “Later On” at 7:40 in the Skorkowsky interview to describe when this Leiber fiasco happened.
What’s interesting to me in Sandy’s description though is that he mentions that he was an employee of Chaosium at the time. Given that Sandy’s game, Call of Cthulhu, wasn’t published until 1981 and he didn’t become a full-time employee of Chaosium until 1982, it seems more likely that he is talking about the 1985 Lankhmar Dungeons & Dragons supplement and not the earlier board game. I haven’t asked Sandy about this specifically, and we are only social media acquaintances so it might take some time and effort to get a clearer timeline out of him on the Lankhmar piece. That said, I think this is mostly Sandy standing up for Greg Stafford, the founder of Chaosium, whom he greatly respects and who provided him with a great career.
I too have a deep fondness for Greg Stafford. I cut my gaming teeth when I was in middle and high school in the Bay Area. Every year, I would go to DunDraCon at the Dunfey Hotel in San Mateo, play some games, and hang out in the dealer’s room where I would lament my insufficient funds and try to decide the one product I would be able to buy. Walking from table to table as a poor high school student interested in games is a great way to learn about what people think about the average person and whether they just think of them as a customer.
Most of the gaming industry was nice to me and tolerated the 14 year old walking up and asking questions, only to excitedly begin describing my last role playing session. In hindsight there are some who were obviously trying to get me to finish so that they could move on to someone who was actually going to buy something, but those people were rare. So too were those that enthusiastically engaged with me and chatted sympathetically. These were people like Michael Pondsmith, who loved talking about his Castle Falkenstein game, Ray Greer of Hero Games, Jeff Grubb from TSR, and the most enthusiastic of all was Greg Stafford. All of those mentioned were happy to listen to me ramble and to join in with their own experiences, but Greg Stafford was on another level and he sold me on Pendragon with tales of wonder and a rich and deep appreciation of MYTH. Stafford really was shaman like in his ability to translate myths to young people and he was kind and a great guide through the hobby.
I had come to his table shortly after being dismissed off hand as “someone without money to spend” at another table and I was feeling dejected. The interaction with Stafford lifted my mood and it wasn’t a one time deal either. Every time I met Stafford at an event, he was kind and thoughtful. I can understand a desire to defend him, especially from someone who worked for him.
That said, the picture that Sandy paints of Chaosium as all roses and T$R as villains extraordinaire, doesn’t match the story that Michael Moorcock tells regarding his agreement with the company. He paints them as a pretty immoral group who never paid him a penny. He describes his thoughts on everything in Issue 5 of Kobold Quarterly. Let’s just say that Moorcock using the words, “Chaosium turned out to be crooks, paying no royalties, ripping me off, behaving in a dodgy way” is a pretty strong indictment. It’s also likely an actionable indictment if it isn’t true.
What makes this, and the Greg Stafford connection, even more interesting is that when Greg Stafford returned to repurchase Chaosium with a good leadership team in 2015, one of the things they did was to negotiate back payment to Michael Moorcock and other licensors. The source for this information is James Lowder, a stellar creator advocate in the industry, who worked as Chaosium’s Consulter on Creator Relations and Executive Director from 2015 to 2023.
A more complex examination of the full situation regarding the Deities & Demigods book would be that gaming companies were small fish in the publishing pond often surviving by the skin of their teeth, including TSR. That Michael Moorcock, H.P. Lovecraft, and Fritz Leiber were giants in the Fantasy/Weird Fiction field, but that was a field that was nowhere near as profitable as it is today. The creators and estates made agreements that they assumed would bring modest returns with both parties. That this, and shady Blume business practices, led to bad blood. That Chaosium always had narrow profit margins and was managed by creators not businessmen and so didn’t track royalties well. Both TSR and Chaosium collapsed as companies in the late 1990s/early 2000s and that when Sandy Petersen, Greg Stafford, and Steve Perrin purchased the failed (for a second time) Chaosium in 2015 they did everything they could to repair past damage and build good report.
Stafford was both a good guy (made sure Moorcock eventually got paid when he returned to company) and a bad manager (Moorcock wasn’t paid under his initial stewardship. He also negotiated in good faith with Leiber and Arkham House. James M. Ward was a good guy working for people who engaged in shady business practices (the Blumes) that ranged from the Leiber contract to the eventual Ambush at Sheridan Springs. That Lorraine Williams had money and was a friend of Gygax who allowed for massive creativity in her company, but who had no business sense and bad management sense. She did not know that James Lowder’s (there’s that name again) publishing division was the only thing really holding the company together and she treated the authors and artists as expendable, even as she was kind to Skip Williams. Some of the hatred against her stems from the Ambush, but she’s not as villainous as her biggest critics make out.
I write all of that not knowing what the real truth is and knowing that I can probably never know. Why? Because those involved have a connection between their perception of the facts and their identities. As Dan Kahan’s piece, below, shows, this makes for an interesting combination where people believe things to be a certain way because it is tied to their identities. There are a variety of reasons that people share the misinformation in all these cases, but every bit of this misinformation contains actual truth. I just can’t know what that truth is and even what I wrote is polluted by my own identity, the lack of real information available, and numerous other factors.
How do we separate the rumor from the real? That can be difficult. For the Tarzan conflict, it was easier because there was no hard connection to identity. In the case of the conflict between Chaosium and TSR? It’s much harder. Fandom is a kind of identity. Being a fan of Sandy Petersen and Call of Cthulhu makes one more likely to believe him and he is presenting the information as he sees it. He is never dissembling. His interpretation of the events is sincere and I am sympathetic to it because I like him and his games. I say this even as he currently finds himself in a challenging situation as his current game company struggles with production in ways similar to Lorraine Williams’ struggles. He is behind on several Kickstarters, including one I backed at the $159 level back in 2020. The delays are in large part due to the high production costs of the high end products he intends to produce. Unlike many backers, I’m not worried about this. I view Kickstarter as a way of supporting artists I like. I am helping them “Kickstart” a project and not pre-ordering. That opinion isn’t shared by everyone though and Sandy’s been getting some flak lately. I think it’s unfair, but I also think he should keep that in mind when criticizing others in similar, if not completely analogous, situations.
All of this is to say that we should refrain from spreading stories about how “so and so” is a terrible person because of “x,y,z” thing they did, especially when it confirms our identity based priors. Instead, we should assume that people are people and that they are flawed but trying their best. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue more information, just that we should try to be more open minded in our search.
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
In addition to the Captain America: Brave New World he wrote for us last week,
has a couple of other very interesting offerings over at .
The first offering I’d like to focus on is his review of Season 3 of the Invincible show on Amazon. I’ve been a big fan of Invincible since I first read the comic book back in the day. I loved the way it interlaced the Spider-Man personal/teen conflicts with a Superman figure. Robert Kirkman’s writing in the book was strong and engaging and I loved the minimalist line art. The animated show has kept everything I enjoyed, including the nuanced discussions of some pretty serious mature themes.
When I think of what R-Rated superhero stories should be, it’s more this and less Deadpool. The more I watch Invincible, the more I am prompted to think. The more I watch Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern in Alternate Costuming with better villains, the more annoyed I get that he was cast as Green Lantern. His Deadpool and his Hal Jordan are the same personality, just with added R-Rated edgelord stuff. The movies are still fun, but I get annoyed because Green Lantern deserved better and it is actually better than his scorn. I mean one of the major complaints about Green Lantern was Reynolds’ personality, one that is adored with Deadpool even as it doesn’t capture classic Deadpool either, but that’s an entirely different conversation.
I am really tired of the “superhero movies need to be R” conversation. No. They don’t. Even The Punisher could be great at PG-13. You can get away with a lot (like ripping out beating hearts ala Temple of Doom) at that rating. Having said that, there are times when R is done right and Invincible is that time.
As is usual, Luke incorporates a little politics into his piece and he pushed one of my buttons, even as he hung a lantern on how he might be overly zealously using the term. He writes that the season “takes on neoliberalism” and I’m not quite sure that’s true. Neoliberalism was a primarily economic system advocated by Third Way politicians like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton who sought a return to Kennedy era foreign policy that advocated for economic reforms. The use of military to “create” Western style Democracies all over the world is, arguably, a product of Neoconservatism. Which is another term that progressive used to describe politics they don’t like with little connection to any understanding of Neoconservatism qua Neoconservatism.
In the strictest sense, it has little to with that movement either, but the descendants of the Neoconservative movement (Bill Kristol is Neoconservative Irving Kristol’s son) did take inspiration from Francis Fukiyama (a Neoliberal) to advocate for regime change. Irving would probably have been surprised that his son was using the name of his critique of the administrative state and how bureaucratic management damaged society and democracy as the name of his interventionist political policies. Then again, he probably would have been surprised that Kamala Harris used the design of his book Neoconservatism the Autobiography of an Idea as the basis for her campaign posters. The font is a little different, she uses “type network type,” but the imagery and color are the same.
I very much enjoyed Luke’s review of Love Hurts. It’s a review that made me want to watch the movie even as it affirmed how much of a drought we are experiencing when it comes to good Romantic Comedies. The best Romantic Comedies I’ve seen of late were Happy Death Day and Heart Eyes. Films like Anyone But You violated the first rule of adaptation, trust the source material. Anyone But You is maybe the worst adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing I’ve ever seen and I watched a lot of Speech competitions where people chose it as their Humorous Interpretation. The underlying conflict of the background was completely ignored. The actors are all charming, but the actual writing falls flat. That seems to be the problem with most modern Romantic Comedies. The actors are great and have chemistry. They commit to the humor. Sydney Sweeney has a couple of really hilarious physical comedy moments that are Jerry Lewis level good in Anyone But You, but the film falls flat.
There are some good Romantic Comedies being made, on Netflix, the Hallmark Channel, and Great American Family, but the days of a Cary Grant/Irene Dunne, Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan, or Hugh Grant vehicle are behind us. Since those examples span a good deal of cinematic history, I’m sure the Romantic Comedy will rise again, but as much as the horror films are succeeding it looks like other High Concept attempts like Love Hurts are struggling. I will watch to see for myself. Like Luke, I’m a fan of Ke Huy Quan, so he gets a ton of leeway.
Mendelson’s Melodic Meanderings
has given us a non-paywalled review of Paddington in Peru that includes a bonus Aguirre the Wrath of God reference. That reference alone makes the review worth reading and since it’s a good one, it makes me eager to see the film.
Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat
You know what I said about the Romantic Comedy being dead and that they needed to break free from the prison of High Concept mashups just thirty seconds ago? Yeah, I’d like to revise that.
Courtney Howard’s recent review of The Gorge on Apple+ is a very positive review and it convinced me to watch the movie as a Valentine’s Day movie with my wife. As Courtney highlighted, there is genuine chemistry between the actors and it’s very entertaining (more on that later).
As you might have noticed by how much I waffled in my very long Oddity above, I like to give creators and people in general the benefit of the doubt. I still feel a bit like re-editing to lessen any accusatory tone in it. I also try to only advocate for things I love, even as there are some things that I’m very critical of as works of art. If you ever meet Luke Y. Thompson, you might want to ask him about my screed against the film Ulysses’ Gaze. It’s my second least favorite film and I can complain about it for hours, but I’ve never reviewed it here and that’s because I try to maintain a highly positive tone here or at minimum be constructive. That’s why
’s recent about his critique of Man of Steel struck home with me. Creating things is hard. Putting yourself out there as an artist of any kind is to invite vulnerability. That includes these mostly weekly posts and I respect that. Cole’s discussion here, and self evaluation of his prior criticisms, is a very interesting read.
Remember what I said about art being a challenging thing to do?
has a good discussion of Banishing the Inner Critic and how that’s a necessary thing in many human endeavors. His focus is on Tennis and how the mental game of that sport can make a big difference between success and failure, but it applies to other sports and to art as well. The reason that Thomas Müller is one of the greatest Attacking Midfielders in the history of international soccer is largely due to his mentality. And before you start saying “he isn’t elite,” let me remind you that he is 6th all-time in Champions League goal scoring, had a Golden Boot at the World Cup and is 10th all-time in goal scoring in that competition with 10 goals, and is 5th all-time in assists. He doesn’t look elite. He looks like Raggedy Andy flopping around the field. He just never stops never stopping. He is my absolutely favorite player and his mentality is why. For the record, he’s also 3rd all-time in Bayern Munich goals. Just in case you are wondering if I’m fan who only follows the “best teams,” I’m a Wolverhampton Wanderers (Wolves) supporter in the Premier League for reasons I explained in 2023.
As always, Dr.
has a couple of interesting articles up on her Substack. I’ll be chatting about her “which Witch are you” post on Friday, but her review of the recent performance of The Tempest starring Sigourney Weaver is an absolute must read. Not only is she correct in her assertion that Sigourney Weaver is a great actress, that’s just a foundational truth, but she provides a rigorous analysis of why this particular adaptation of the play doesn’t work. It comes down to the same phenomenon I commented on above regarding Anyone But You, the adaptation didn’t trust the source material. Yes, I acknowledge that this is not actually an “adaptation” so much as an interpretation, but the point remains the same. For The Tempest to work, you must believe in the dark and terrifying potential of Prospero’s power.Dr. King focuses rightly on how the removal of the trappings of power undermine the Weaver’s performance. How can you show your power if you have not the tools with which to display them? After all, would Walter Pidgeon’s performance as Dr. Morbius (aka Prospero) work on any level if you don’t get the tour of the “artifacts of the Krell” and his mastery of them? If we don’t see the footprint of the invisible force of his Id, and later a really cool animation of it, do we feel the weight of his power? Pidgeon’s performance has weight and gravitas, but without the force of his magic it would fall flat. Prospero and Morbius have played with the things that mankind should not know and those are fearful things that inspire awe, unless we are never shown the stakes. Show, don’t tell and trust the source material.
Are you looking for a game that is easy to understand, has tactical complexity, has room for significant free form storytelling, and has a robust Medieval European (England really) setting with heavy doses of influence from Michael Moorcock’s Elric Saga? Then Dragon Warriors is your game.
Dragon Warriors can be played in a manner that emulates light hearted or grim and gritty Fantasy fiction, but given the lethality of its combat system it does lean more towards the grim and gritty. The game has a number of innovations, the weapon damage system in particular is something I’d like to see a modern game adapt. In Dragon Warriors, weapon damage is fixed and not random. Instead of rolling to hit and then rolling see how much damage you do, you roll to hit and then roll your weapon’s penetration dice versus an armor’s protection value to see if you damage them at all. Only then do you apply weapon damage. It’s an interesting alteration on the armor as damage reduction paradigm and while it does make combat more tactical and sometimes slower, given the relatively low hit points that characters have in the game that never becomes an issue.
The game’s mechanics are deeply rooted in the world design, so this is not a generic Fantasy rpg. The rules and setting have a particular feel to them and it is an interesting feel. Oh, and one interesting tidbit, the game was originally published as a series of pocket book sized paperback volumes. I don’t know if it was the first game to be issued that way, but it is a pretty cool way to buy your books.
My family has been watching Brooklyn 99 on Peacock lately as our evening SitCom. We’ve watched Scrubs, The Office, and The Middle in their entirety and Brooklyn 99 is the latest on the list. That probably explains why Jack Sparrow by The Lonely Island popped up in my YouTube feed. The ever listening bots were looking for something that might appeal and as is often the case, they were right. What makes this song work isn’t the edgy rap of The Lonely Island crew. Instead, it’s Michael Bolton’s absolute commitment to the bit. He’s all in and I cannot get this song out of my head.
“Now back to the good part!”
The Lenten season is quickly approaching and that means it’s a time when I give up eating meat on Fridays, chocolates every day of the week, and start to watch films depicting the life of Jesus. There are many excellent films in the genre, but only one with spectacular musical numbers. Jesus Christ Superstar tells the story of Jesus’ last days from the perspective of Judas. While a shallow reading might say that the play sides with Judas, it doesn’t. It merely makes him understandable and reminds us, as Pope Benedict stated that we should “Never despair of God’s mercy.” Judas repented, but then sinned again when he gave into despair.
I often talk about my mother’s death due to heroin addiction, but I don’t often talk about how that death strengthened my faith. After she died, I felt tremendous despair. I felt lost and trapped and I asked for help and I received it. Not in any miraculous way where there was a vision or random windfall. Instead, I just felt a wave of love come over me that let me hope again. A cynic might say that this was just me processing the grief, but I felt love beyond anything I had known before and it affected me deeply and in a way that has made me more compassionate of others ever since.
Heaven on their Minds is one of my favorite songs from Jesus Christ Superstar. It grapples deeply with the tension between the City of God and the City of Man that St. Augustine writes about so passionately. It also helps to explain Judas’ frustrations. He desired to make the world more like Heaven. That’s not a bad goal, but it is one that can lead to the destruction of the things we love.
Carl Anderson’s performance as Judas is phenomenal and he was a talented R&B singer who died far too young in 2004. Leonard Cohen and Anjani Thomas’ song Nightingale is a tribute to him and his talent. There are a number of versions of the song, including the original duet, but this version is probably my favorite. It’s haunting and personal and well worth listening to.
Just as there are those who misunderstand Jesus Christ Superstar, and The Last Temptation, as being movies that attack religion, so too did people claim for decades that Black Sabbath were advancing the devil’s work. These critics would be better served by listening to the entire Master of Reality album, and in particular After Forever, which is literally a song about having courage to affirm your faith even when it is unpopular. That’s a far cry from trying to attack religion. Just because it’s in a minor key and doesn’t quote scripture, instead coming from a personal place, doesn’t mean it’s an attack on faith.
I’m going to finish off with two versions of a song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The song has been on the charts a few times performed by different artists and it’s interesting to note the differences. The Lou Johnson version of Always Something There to Remind me is fantastic…until the chorus comes in. When they jump in they wash out Lou’s subtle rendition of song and diminish it in my opinion.
That use of chorus was trendy at the time though, but I would love to hear a version featuring Lou Johnson that follows the adaptation Naked Eyes had for the song twenty years later.
If you read my comments regarding Courtney Howard’s review of The Gorge earlier in this Rundown, you could probably guess what my movie selection this week would be. It’s The Gorge on AppleTV+. The film is an interesting mash up of action horror film and romantic comedy. The film was written by Zach Dean who was the screenwriter on The Tomorrow War, a film that shares similar themes of love during moments of crisis response action, and directed by Scott Derrickson who blew me away with his direction on Black Phone.
The basic premise of the film is that two snipers, one from the former Eastern Bloc (Drasa played by Anya Taylor-Joy) and one from the former Western Bloc (Levi Kane played by Miles Teller), are ordered to keep watch over a deep gorge that is the home to something sinister. Even though the Cold War is long over, the two watchers are given orders to not communicate with the other side. They are not told what is within the Gorge, the British Royal Marine who debriefs Levi says that he thinks it’s a portal to Hell. The first encounter that Drasa and Levi have with the residents of the Gorge does little to undermine this assumption, nor does the fact that these residents are referred to as The Hollow Men.
As the reference to T.S. Eliot’s poetry might suggest, this is a film that borrows liberally from a variety of inspirations. You’ll see echoes of Aliens, Resident Evil (the games and films), Silent Hill, and one moment that brought to mind the Netflix Romantic Comedy Find Me Falling and the end of the French New Wave classic Purple Moon. Some of those are likely intentional, while others are probably unconscious and are due to the filmic education of the director. The film also features a drumming sequence that reminds us of Miles Teller’s performance in Whiplash and a dance number that reminds us of Anya Taylor-Joy’s education as a dancer as well as the fact that Teller was in the remake of Footloose. My favorite “callback” is one that references the 1980s Flash Gordon movie when Flash visits Arboria.
Sigourney Weaver is excellent as the antagonistic Bartholomew and in my headcanon this movie is a sequel to Working Girl and Bartholomew is a renamed version of her character in the older classic. If you watch them both, you’ll see some similarities in how Weaver portrays the corporate elite characters.
It’s an extraordinarily high concept film, but as formulaic as the plot is and as many nods as it makes to films that came before it, there are three things that make the movie work even as it has a number of flaws.
The first is that the actors have great chemistry and some genuinely touching moments. The scene between Drasa and her father, and the later scene where she remembers that conversation, are a wonderful set up and payoff that Taylor-Joy gives depth. Teller has a number of very good subtle moments and takes ownership of the little hints the screenplay gave him about the character to create a three dimensional portrayal in a two dimensional film. The second is that the film is very well shot and the locations chosen for various scenes allowed for some wonderful and beautiful cinematography. The Gorge is “gorgeous” and an early scene filmed at Long Beach captures the beautiful and industrial loneliness that that beach can evoke. Lastly, the rendition of the creatures within the Gorge balances the bizarre and terrible with the plausible perfectly. When the mystery of the Gorge is revealed, the look of the residents fits well.
As I think upon my mood as I watched this with my wife at the moment when Drasa asks Levi if he has written a terrible poem about her, I realized that the Romantic Comedy isn’t quite as dead as I fear. I’m still waiting for the return of the straightforward RomCom, but the high concept RomCom is filling the gap nicely.
Thanks for the shoutout. Glad that MAN OF STEEL article resonated with you in any way!
Did you try John Taliaferro's "Tarzan Forever"? That's a good more recent Burroughs bio.