Chris Fritz's Blog - Posts Tagged "don-t-look-up"
The best and worst of 2021
Looking back at all the movies I saw in 2021 I made an extraordinary discovery that my notion of storytelling to its very core. To demonstrate this notion I’m going to have to write about my favorite movie that came out in 2021 and my least favorite movie that came out in 2021. So let’s follow along and see if we can learn something.
The worst movie I saw in 2021 was Marvel’s the Eternals. Going into the movie I knew it had a bad rotten tomatoes score but I still wanted to see it. Right now I’m going to have to agree with the critics and say this movie was a swing and a miss. It feels strange because I am deep into the marvel cult and I know very little about the Eternals. I hoped for the best but I was disappointed. Maybe studying this movie for a little bit can teach us an important lesson. Here’s what I really believe. The Eternals is the complete antithesis of everything that makes marvel movies good. It takes everything that gives marvel success and runs in the complete opposite direction. Let’s start at the beginning with the characters. One staple of the MCU is making movies with big casts of unique characters. Some of the best examples would be the first Avengers movie and Infinity War. One of the reasons those movies are so good is that they don’t introduce us to new characters. They take almost all the characters from previously established movies and focus on the characters just interacting with each other. In Eternals they introduce us to ten new main characters, and this is the first time the audience is seeing any of them. So, this movie has to spend a good chunk of its run time introducing all these characters. It just fails to keep all these characters unique and interesting. Now right now you might be saying to yourself that there’s an exception to this rule. Guardians of the galaxy introduces us to an ensemble of new characters and it’s one of marvels greatest movies. That’s because that movie has a very strong plot which is the next thing I want to talk about, the plot. Now the plot of guardians of the galaxy is pretty straight forward. Here’s a powerful McGuffin all these characters have to play keep away with it for two hours. The plot of Eternals has so much deep lore, mysteries, magic, and plot twists that it’s enough to make anybodies head spin. There’s so many layers to this plot that it all just gets lost in the sauce. My final point is the probably the most important criticism I can levy against the movie and that is this movie doesn’t have good themes. To understand the themes of this movie you just need to understand the bad guys plan. A celestial god wants to destroy the earth and give birth to a new celestial who will in tern create new worlds across the galaxy giving life to trillions of sentient beings. (Spoiler alert) They want to trade the lives of everyone on earth for the lives of all these potential beings. If that sounds familiar to you it’s because that’s the theme of Avengers infinity war. Thanos wanted to trade the lives of half the universe so the other half could flourish. The Eternals just recycled that theme and the characters spend a good chunk of the film debating weather or not they should even save humanity. I moral dilemma that has already been solved by the previous avengers movies. So Eternals is really a bitter tasting mess that does not belong in the MCU and would probably feel more at home in the DCEU.
Now to review a film that I thought was one of the best from 2021 and that is a movie called Don’t Look Up. For those of you who haven’t seen it it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as a pair of scientists who discover a meteor that will collide with earth and destroy all life on the planet and they have to convince people to do something about it. Now for several years I’ve debated with myself about whether or not satire is a dead art form. Is it possible to satirize society and make jokes about our culture? Ever since the election of Donald Trump I think it’s become harder to do that. Mostly because with him we’ve ushered in the post truth era I think a side effect of this is a fracturing of culture into several different sub cultures that hold different beliefs and recognize different truths. So with all these fractured sub cultures how can someone truly satirize culture? The answer is Don’t Look Up. Let me explain. In the film the giant meteor that is headed to earth is an obvious comparison to climate change. So the audience can spend the entire movie comparing the disaster in the real world to the disaster of the fake world. The only thing that is consistent between the two is how humanity responds to the disaster. One major lynch pin of this movie is the fact that it does criticize the responses towards the meteor. But it doesn’t criticize the actions of everyday individuals. Instead it criticizes systems of production and consumption that envelop those individuals. Systems that envelop entire cultures and sometimes entire communities. So how does all of this relate to satire? Earlier this year Dave Chappelle released a stand up special called the closer and was immediately criticized for transphobic jokes. Now some people might argue that the jokes he told weren’t transphobic but here’s why I think a lot of people thought they were. In Dave’s jokes about the LGBTQ community he probably thought he was commenting on society in some way. And in a way he was but in a much bigger way he’s criticizing one subculture from the perspective of a different subculture. Subconsciously putting the African American culture up against the LGBTQ subculture. He also acts like these are two completely different factions that don’t have any way to cross over to each other. So I guess that’s why I think Dave Chappelle was thrown into the grinder this year. The guy is the greatest comic but maybe that means we should hold him to high standards. So my question still stands. Is it possible to satirize society? After all of this time I have to say the answer is yes but satire is going to look a lot different from now on. Now I guess the biggest thesis of Don’t Look Up is stated in the beginning minutes of the movie. When it just displays the text of a joke that reads like this. When I die I want to die like my grandpa peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like his passengers. This movie criticizes a lot of real world events and people. From politicians like Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton to billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. So I guess in this framing this satire is trying to tell us that these billionaires are the grandpa that died in his sleep and the entire earth are the passengers. In the end I think this movie is a good example of a great story. It’s a fantasy that can tell us more about ourselves than real stories ever could. Now my one criticism of the movie is that comparing climate change to a giant earth shattering comet doesn’t line up completely. Climate change is of course slow and manmade while a comet is a sudden cosmic anomaly. But it’s still a decent movie if you want to watch excellent acting get a few chuckles and also have a slow anxiety attack.
Now there’s something very amazing that happens when you compare Eternals and Don’t Look Up and that is this. They are the exact same movie but they go in completely opposite directions. Both movies are about a small group of people trying to save the world from total destruction. They both contemplate humanity, society, and nature and they both encounter god like beings that want to wipe out humanity. Both of these narratives question if humanity is worth saving and they come up with different answers. In Eternals they save the world in Don’t Look Up they don’t save the world. So let’s go over the process by which each movie comes to their own conclusion. In Eternals it runs the gamut of all human history and focuses on all the deadly weapons mankind has created. All the death and destruction of entire cultures and civilizations. But it does ground itself in a romantic humanism that always wins out in superhero movies. While Don’t Look Up does a deep dive into contemporary culture and forces us to look at our everyday contradictions. Just little things that we think or believe that are ultimately harmful to us. Things we’ve normalized that might harm us down the road. It could be the way we communicate, the way we produce, the way we consume, or even the way we reproduce. We can find harmful contradictions in all of them. Just maybe all of those contradictions add up to a point where we can’t help ourselves anymore. That leads me to something that I have believed for most of my life and that is this. Inside of every bad movie there is a good movie just trying to get out. So think of this when you’re reading, writing or creating. Sometime the difference between something good and something bad is just a few decisions.
I did find it interesting that two movies can be released in the same year and be about the same thing even though they’re different genres and styles. I’m very interested about stories that are apocalyptic or even post-apocalyptic so I might write more about those in the future. But what do you guys think? Am I on to something here or am I completely out in left field. Let me know in the comments.
The worst movie I saw in 2021 was Marvel’s the Eternals. Going into the movie I knew it had a bad rotten tomatoes score but I still wanted to see it. Right now I’m going to have to agree with the critics and say this movie was a swing and a miss. It feels strange because I am deep into the marvel cult and I know very little about the Eternals. I hoped for the best but I was disappointed. Maybe studying this movie for a little bit can teach us an important lesson. Here’s what I really believe. The Eternals is the complete antithesis of everything that makes marvel movies good. It takes everything that gives marvel success and runs in the complete opposite direction. Let’s start at the beginning with the characters. One staple of the MCU is making movies with big casts of unique characters. Some of the best examples would be the first Avengers movie and Infinity War. One of the reasons those movies are so good is that they don’t introduce us to new characters. They take almost all the characters from previously established movies and focus on the characters just interacting with each other. In Eternals they introduce us to ten new main characters, and this is the first time the audience is seeing any of them. So, this movie has to spend a good chunk of its run time introducing all these characters. It just fails to keep all these characters unique and interesting. Now right now you might be saying to yourself that there’s an exception to this rule. Guardians of the galaxy introduces us to an ensemble of new characters and it’s one of marvels greatest movies. That’s because that movie has a very strong plot which is the next thing I want to talk about, the plot. Now the plot of guardians of the galaxy is pretty straight forward. Here’s a powerful McGuffin all these characters have to play keep away with it for two hours. The plot of Eternals has so much deep lore, mysteries, magic, and plot twists that it’s enough to make anybodies head spin. There’s so many layers to this plot that it all just gets lost in the sauce. My final point is the probably the most important criticism I can levy against the movie and that is this movie doesn’t have good themes. To understand the themes of this movie you just need to understand the bad guys plan. A celestial god wants to destroy the earth and give birth to a new celestial who will in tern create new worlds across the galaxy giving life to trillions of sentient beings. (Spoiler alert) They want to trade the lives of everyone on earth for the lives of all these potential beings. If that sounds familiar to you it’s because that’s the theme of Avengers infinity war. Thanos wanted to trade the lives of half the universe so the other half could flourish. The Eternals just recycled that theme and the characters spend a good chunk of the film debating weather or not they should even save humanity. I moral dilemma that has already been solved by the previous avengers movies. So Eternals is really a bitter tasting mess that does not belong in the MCU and would probably feel more at home in the DCEU.
Now to review a film that I thought was one of the best from 2021 and that is a movie called Don’t Look Up. For those of you who haven’t seen it it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as a pair of scientists who discover a meteor that will collide with earth and destroy all life on the planet and they have to convince people to do something about it. Now for several years I’ve debated with myself about whether or not satire is a dead art form. Is it possible to satirize society and make jokes about our culture? Ever since the election of Donald Trump I think it’s become harder to do that. Mostly because with him we’ve ushered in the post truth era I think a side effect of this is a fracturing of culture into several different sub cultures that hold different beliefs and recognize different truths. So with all these fractured sub cultures how can someone truly satirize culture? The answer is Don’t Look Up. Let me explain. In the film the giant meteor that is headed to earth is an obvious comparison to climate change. So the audience can spend the entire movie comparing the disaster in the real world to the disaster of the fake world. The only thing that is consistent between the two is how humanity responds to the disaster. One major lynch pin of this movie is the fact that it does criticize the responses towards the meteor. But it doesn’t criticize the actions of everyday individuals. Instead it criticizes systems of production and consumption that envelop those individuals. Systems that envelop entire cultures and sometimes entire communities. So how does all of this relate to satire? Earlier this year Dave Chappelle released a stand up special called the closer and was immediately criticized for transphobic jokes. Now some people might argue that the jokes he told weren’t transphobic but here’s why I think a lot of people thought they were. In Dave’s jokes about the LGBTQ community he probably thought he was commenting on society in some way. And in a way he was but in a much bigger way he’s criticizing one subculture from the perspective of a different subculture. Subconsciously putting the African American culture up against the LGBTQ subculture. He also acts like these are two completely different factions that don’t have any way to cross over to each other. So I guess that’s why I think Dave Chappelle was thrown into the grinder this year. The guy is the greatest comic but maybe that means we should hold him to high standards. So my question still stands. Is it possible to satirize society? After all of this time I have to say the answer is yes but satire is going to look a lot different from now on. Now I guess the biggest thesis of Don’t Look Up is stated in the beginning minutes of the movie. When it just displays the text of a joke that reads like this. When I die I want to die like my grandpa peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like his passengers. This movie criticizes a lot of real world events and people. From politicians like Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton to billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. So I guess in this framing this satire is trying to tell us that these billionaires are the grandpa that died in his sleep and the entire earth are the passengers. In the end I think this movie is a good example of a great story. It’s a fantasy that can tell us more about ourselves than real stories ever could. Now my one criticism of the movie is that comparing climate change to a giant earth shattering comet doesn’t line up completely. Climate change is of course slow and manmade while a comet is a sudden cosmic anomaly. But it’s still a decent movie if you want to watch excellent acting get a few chuckles and also have a slow anxiety attack.
Now there’s something very amazing that happens when you compare Eternals and Don’t Look Up and that is this. They are the exact same movie but they go in completely opposite directions. Both movies are about a small group of people trying to save the world from total destruction. They both contemplate humanity, society, and nature and they both encounter god like beings that want to wipe out humanity. Both of these narratives question if humanity is worth saving and they come up with different answers. In Eternals they save the world in Don’t Look Up they don’t save the world. So let’s go over the process by which each movie comes to their own conclusion. In Eternals it runs the gamut of all human history and focuses on all the deadly weapons mankind has created. All the death and destruction of entire cultures and civilizations. But it does ground itself in a romantic humanism that always wins out in superhero movies. While Don’t Look Up does a deep dive into contemporary culture and forces us to look at our everyday contradictions. Just little things that we think or believe that are ultimately harmful to us. Things we’ve normalized that might harm us down the road. It could be the way we communicate, the way we produce, the way we consume, or even the way we reproduce. We can find harmful contradictions in all of them. Just maybe all of those contradictions add up to a point where we can’t help ourselves anymore. That leads me to something that I have believed for most of my life and that is this. Inside of every bad movie there is a good movie just trying to get out. So think of this when you’re reading, writing or creating. Sometime the difference between something good and something bad is just a few decisions.
I did find it interesting that two movies can be released in the same year and be about the same thing even though they’re different genres and styles. I’m very interested about stories that are apocalyptic or even post-apocalyptic so I might write more about those in the future. But what do you guys think? Am I on to something here or am I completely out in left field. Let me know in the comments.
