Ah, the summer blockbuster. Given that I was only 2 when Jaws came out, I never knew a world without it. The concept has morphed over the years and lately, with fierce competition for those precious summer dollars, it has become almost a caricature of itself. Big budgets, special effects and heavy action are supposed to draw us into the seats for an experience that can’t be replicated on our small screens. Unfortunately, of course, this has too often also meant a persistent recycling of old ideas, a neglect of story and character, and a pandering to the lowest common denominator as the films strive to appeal to the widest moviegoing audience as possible. Reading film reviews, there is typically a noticeable change in tone from a lot of these folks, many of whom have long since grown cynical about the whole summer tone to movie-going.
And so we turn to Live Free or Die Hard, the latest attempt to resurrect an old franchise. The first in the series, Die Hard, generally makes my short list for the best action films ever made. It combined a tight premise and clean “rules,” something that is vital for this genre, with great action and solid acting, particularly from Alan Rickman, who gave us one of the most delightfully vicious villains in film history. After that, the franchise failed to live up to its predecessor. The second was OK, though a shadow of the first. The third was better, but still less than the first. The challenge for both of those films was their need to get broader. In the first film, Bruce Willis gave us John McClane, a New York City cop that gets caught up in a terrorist attack on an office building. Part of the film’s strength was the boundaries of the building, forcing all the action to take place in tight quarters that imposed real limits on where the characters could go and what they could do. In the later films, the work got bigger, with John saving an airport in the second, and the entire city of New York in the third. As it got bigger, the franchise lost the hold that made the first film so exceptional, and the films became simply ordinary.
With that history in mind, I entered Live Free with some trepidation. In it, John McClane, still a New York City cop, is ordered to go pick up a known computer hacker as a favor for the Feds. As he is doing so, the apartment is attacked by assassins, who are set on killing the hacker. John rescues him, leaving him is as the only survivor of a simultaneous effort that killed a number of hackers. This is but one part of a larger mystery, as we see these same villains begin to infiltrate computers around the country, taking control of traffic signals in D.C. only to cause simultaneous accidents around the city, then infiltrating the stock exchange only to create a panic in the marketplace.
The film does a great job of drawing us into the emerging chaos that comes as the villains reveal their intentions. What we learn is that they are about attempting a “fire sale,” a simultaneous attack on every computer system of merit in the country, causing the entire nation to come to a grinding halt. The notion of a fire sale lies in hacker myth, but now we are seeing it unfold in reality. Of course, it’s up to John McClane to figure out how to stop it.
As I said, the franchise has kept building up the premises. It’s pretty far-fetched, but does a capable job of selling it to us. McClane is served up as an old-school fossil, an aging cop that doesn’t understand the high-tech world. The hacker, ably played by the goofy Justin Long, provides the comic contrast as well as the know-how that helps navigate the technological aspects of the battle. McClane fights to keep him alive, take out whatever bad guys he encounters, and eventually, to rescue his own daughter from the clutches of the henchman.
Live Free will have to compete with a lot of high-budget action movies this summer, but if it’s a big explosive few hours you want, you’ll do a lot worse than to check this one out. As an action piece, it certainly is the best of the franchise since the first. The villain, played by Timothy Olyphant, is no Alan Rickman, but the premise is just so broad, that it is amusing to see how they can pull it together and resolve it.
As a side note, the movie presents an interesting commentary on the ratings system. In an effort to get the adolescent movie dollars, they set out to make this the first PG-13 rated film in the franchise. They thus had to play with McClane’s signature line (“Yippee-ki-yay, mother_____”) but still pulled off an incredibly intense action experience. We’re OK with our kids being unsupervised and see government buildings and power plants blow up, helicopters and planes shot down, and a body count that was at least in the dozens, but can’t expose them to a single word referring to a sex act that unfortunately is pretty ordinary language of the street. Interesting.
Leaving the movie, I mused about the possible political commentary that lies underneath the film. Bruce Willis long carried the reputation as being one of the four Republicans in the movie business. He recently tried to distance himself from that reputation. This film involves a villain who, in his overzealous attempts to protect the country from itself brings the nation to the brink of disaster. Of course, while he is overzealously protecting the country, he also made sure he could make a tidy profit for himself and his own. Intended of not, thoughts of Halliburton and Guantanamo Bay danced in my head for awhile.
McClane is a quintessential American action hero. He is fearless and daring, inventive and bold. He is able to accomplish what the bureaucracy of the federal law enforcement, always mocked in this franchise, can’t accomplish because he is the only one that combines common sense with his heroic strength. As enjoyable as he is to watch, what interests me is how ordinary his picture of heroism is for us.
Whether its McClane, Jack Bauer, or Indiana Jones (coming next May), our heroes have a particular look and represent a value system that we are immersed in within our culture. That is all well and good, until we turn from our culture to other pictures of heroism. I think particularly of the Hebrew writer and his depiction of faithfulness in Hebrews 11. Within that story, heroism is entirely absent, but instead that which is worthy of admiration is faithfulness. In the seductive challenge to build up a story of faith, and a picture of a savior, that is so often in our own image, it is worth asking how much our pictures of heroism will alter, even corrupt, our images of faith, and particularly our image of our Savior. Left unchecked, this temptation suggests a spiritual cost that may be higher than rising ticket prices and overpriced popcorn.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Bridge to Terabithia: A Review
Spending my week on the beach last week with family, I logged many hours with my 2 and 6-year old nieces. I’m thinking now of one particular afternoon with the 2-year old, an afternoon full of adventure. We ventured to Neverland, only to find ourselves then swimming with mermaids under the sea. From one adventure to the next, for her the swimming pool and the kiddie pool next to it were constantly in a state of transformation, changing from one imaginary universe to the next. What a treat to glimpse at the world through her eyes, seeing the sparks of imagination fly as we played our games, sang our songs, and enjoyed the afternoon sun.
It was with this experience in mind that I watched Bridge to Terabithia, the adaptation of the popular children’s novel. In Terabithia, we meet Jesse, a misfit kid struggling to make life work in elementary school. His family lives outside of town, so he’s labeled a “country kid” in a city school. They’re struggling to make ends meet, and so he has to make do at times with hand-me-downs from his sisters, including the childhood horror of having to wear his sister’s sneakers with pink stripes. Fighting to fit in, we join him at the beginning on a morning run, as we see him striving to make his mark by being the fastest boy in the class. When recess comes, he sets out to prove himself, and does, beating out the competition that includes one of the class bullies. His joy is short-lived, though, as the winner of the race is Leslie, the new girl that showed up in class that morning.
Already frustrated at being beaten, and by a girl no less, he is further horrified when Leslie gets off at his bus stop, revealing that she has moved into the house next door to him. We see them struggle through the awkwardness of childhood, but in a fairly short time they begin to forge a real friendship, a friendship that is bound up in Leslie’s imagination. They venture into the woods, and there begin a time of wonderful childhood discovery.
Leslie looks upon the woods as an invitation to dream. They find a rope that crosses a stream and, ignoring the dangers, Leslie swings across and enters into a world of her own creation. She slowly draws Jesse into this world, and together they create Terabithia, an imaginary place full of mystical creatures. It is a world full of good and evil, and a place where they are constantly discovering their own magical powers as they fight for good and deepen their discovery.
As they grow in their discovery of Terabithia, their friendship also deepens. Leslie encourages Jesse to explore his talent as an artist, a gift he is embarrassed to share with others, feeling the glare of disapproval that he gets from his older sisters and especially his cool and practical father. His dad doesn’t have much place in his life for any of the wonder that Jesse is discovering through his friendship with Leslie, a sense that is a necessary component of his life as an artist. Through her he even gets the strength to speak to his music teacher, his secret crush who becomes for him a vital mentor that further sparks his imagination.
The movie at times seems to meander without purpose, but I think that even that itself is intentional. Childhood itself meanders, as the movement between the real world and the world of imagination is constantly in motion. For those, like me, who haven’t experienced the novel, we are left to wonder where we are heading with the plot, knowing only that the friendship is strengthening as they share their lives together.
Even while it moves through these quiet days, the movie gives us a number of precious images of friendship as we see these two grow up. He shares in her family’s experience in painting a room, and she goes with him to church, inviting their shared reflection on faith. This interaction was awkward but genuine, as we see children try to make sense of the mysteries of faith while still deeply entwined in the stories of their families of origin and the limitations that childhood necessarily imposes. Their reflections aren’t deep, but they are inviting nonetheless.
In truth, much of my experience of the movie fits that same phrase: awkward but genuine. I think the awkwardness stems from the film’s attempt to have us view the world as much as possible through the eyes of the children. As we see the world through their eyes, we are given a wonderful world of possibilities as the imagination is ignited. But we are also then given a limited vocabulary, as so much of the “adult world” that surrounds them involves new and strange experiences for which they have no language to process. When the movie succeeds, it does so by having us experience the same limitation of vocabulary while still giving us the experience of wonder that they know.
The movie does take a dramatic turn, and when it does it forces a confrontation between this world of imagination and wonder that Jesse has discovered and the often brutal realities of our world. What can sustain us as we make our own journey? What is left of that childhood sense of wonder?
As I reflect on the movie, I turn back to my time with my nieces over the previous week. There is an adult world that surrounds them. At times, it presses in on them and so they must glimpse realities for which they have no vocabulary and no way to process. Part of their survival will be grounded in their ability to experience the world of wonder that lies alongside those harsher realities. Indeed, that is a survival skill that will be needed even as they move further away from the years where imagination can reign supreme.
Terabithia invites us back to the kinds of worlds that Tolkien and Lewis explored with great depths in the past century. Living amidst the brutalities of our world, they invite us to remember the spiritual gift of wonder, a gift that looks at dying things and sees the life that lies beneath. They connect for us the truth that the gift that lets my niece see Neverland in the middle of the swimming pool is the seed of the gift that will let her look at the pain and hardship of life and see the Hand of God at work. The first may seem the trite wonderings of a child, but the second is indispensable.
May her Neverland never disappear.
It was with this experience in mind that I watched Bridge to Terabithia, the adaptation of the popular children’s novel. In Terabithia, we meet Jesse, a misfit kid struggling to make life work in elementary school. His family lives outside of town, so he’s labeled a “country kid” in a city school. They’re struggling to make ends meet, and so he has to make do at times with hand-me-downs from his sisters, including the childhood horror of having to wear his sister’s sneakers with pink stripes. Fighting to fit in, we join him at the beginning on a morning run, as we see him striving to make his mark by being the fastest boy in the class. When recess comes, he sets out to prove himself, and does, beating out the competition that includes one of the class bullies. His joy is short-lived, though, as the winner of the race is Leslie, the new girl that showed up in class that morning.
Already frustrated at being beaten, and by a girl no less, he is further horrified when Leslie gets off at his bus stop, revealing that she has moved into the house next door to him. We see them struggle through the awkwardness of childhood, but in a fairly short time they begin to forge a real friendship, a friendship that is bound up in Leslie’s imagination. They venture into the woods, and there begin a time of wonderful childhood discovery.
Leslie looks upon the woods as an invitation to dream. They find a rope that crosses a stream and, ignoring the dangers, Leslie swings across and enters into a world of her own creation. She slowly draws Jesse into this world, and together they create Terabithia, an imaginary place full of mystical creatures. It is a world full of good and evil, and a place where they are constantly discovering their own magical powers as they fight for good and deepen their discovery.
As they grow in their discovery of Terabithia, their friendship also deepens. Leslie encourages Jesse to explore his talent as an artist, a gift he is embarrassed to share with others, feeling the glare of disapproval that he gets from his older sisters and especially his cool and practical father. His dad doesn’t have much place in his life for any of the wonder that Jesse is discovering through his friendship with Leslie, a sense that is a necessary component of his life as an artist. Through her he even gets the strength to speak to his music teacher, his secret crush who becomes for him a vital mentor that further sparks his imagination.
The movie at times seems to meander without purpose, but I think that even that itself is intentional. Childhood itself meanders, as the movement between the real world and the world of imagination is constantly in motion. For those, like me, who haven’t experienced the novel, we are left to wonder where we are heading with the plot, knowing only that the friendship is strengthening as they share their lives together.
Even while it moves through these quiet days, the movie gives us a number of precious images of friendship as we see these two grow up. He shares in her family’s experience in painting a room, and she goes with him to church, inviting their shared reflection on faith. This interaction was awkward but genuine, as we see children try to make sense of the mysteries of faith while still deeply entwined in the stories of their families of origin and the limitations that childhood necessarily imposes. Their reflections aren’t deep, but they are inviting nonetheless.
In truth, much of my experience of the movie fits that same phrase: awkward but genuine. I think the awkwardness stems from the film’s attempt to have us view the world as much as possible through the eyes of the children. As we see the world through their eyes, we are given a wonderful world of possibilities as the imagination is ignited. But we are also then given a limited vocabulary, as so much of the “adult world” that surrounds them involves new and strange experiences for which they have no language to process. When the movie succeeds, it does so by having us experience the same limitation of vocabulary while still giving us the experience of wonder that they know.
The movie does take a dramatic turn, and when it does it forces a confrontation between this world of imagination and wonder that Jesse has discovered and the often brutal realities of our world. What can sustain us as we make our own journey? What is left of that childhood sense of wonder?
As I reflect on the movie, I turn back to my time with my nieces over the previous week. There is an adult world that surrounds them. At times, it presses in on them and so they must glimpse realities for which they have no vocabulary and no way to process. Part of their survival will be grounded in their ability to experience the world of wonder that lies alongside those harsher realities. Indeed, that is a survival skill that will be needed even as they move further away from the years where imagination can reign supreme.
Terabithia invites us back to the kinds of worlds that Tolkien and Lewis explored with great depths in the past century. Living amidst the brutalities of our world, they invite us to remember the spiritual gift of wonder, a gift that looks at dying things and sees the life that lies beneath. They connect for us the truth that the gift that lets my niece see Neverland in the middle of the swimming pool is the seed of the gift that will let her look at the pain and hardship of life and see the Hand of God at work. The first may seem the trite wonderings of a child, but the second is indispensable.
May her Neverland never disappear.
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