Against Legion (A Speculative Review)

Next January, moviegoers everywhere will be treated to the likes of Legion, 2010's first "action movie" (you'd think that we would have better things to do with our time while counting down the days to 2012). What I would like to offer here is a speculative review of the film, offering predictions and critiques based off of initial impressions from trailers and plot summaries.

My initial impression is this: Legion may see some momentary monetary success courtesy of its controversial premise (i.e., God is out to kill us, again). Nevertheless, I have a feeling that the film's seemingly inherent maltheism will be its undoing.

Now, maltheism per se is not what could undo the film, or any other work of art for that matter. For example: H.P. Lovecraft (owner of one of the most ironic names in human history) used the concept of maltheism in most of his stories. The result was that he had a primary pillar for the despair caused by his "cosmic horror". In sum, maltheism was necessary in making his horror horror.

Legion, however, is not horror. It is expressly an "action film," with its protagonists (the archangel Michael and a few lone human survivors) seeming to unconsciously assert some kind of Bertrand Russell-esque sense of "cooperation," i.e., we can save ourselves if we stick/work together.

Holding to such a "solution" is nonsensical given the context of Legion's narrative. If it is "us vs. the gods" (or in this case, God), then what does our "cooperation" matter? We will lose, pathetically no doubt, to malicious indifference, and our struggles will fade in the memory of our triumphant enemy long after our ashes have been swept away. Even the presence of Michael on our side does not help us. The odds are still insurmountable: one exiled angel and a handful of humans verses the legion and God.

Thus comes the (possible) undoing of the film: there is no heroism in maltheism; there is only despair. It does not even allow for the Nordic sense of heroism found in the Ragnarok, where even though the hero goes down, he takes evil with him. In maltheism, however, evil is all-powerful, unassailable, and unbeatable. To claim (and attempt to present) otherwise is absurdity. Therefore, the film runs the very real risk of ultimately being absurd.

As stated earlier, this review is "speculative," and as such retains the right to be wrong. The film may (or may not) contain currently hidden elements or twists that, when revealed, may rebuke (or cement) my argument. Conversely, since it is unreleased, the film equally reserves the right to potentially rise above all that its trailers and current summaries purport. I will not, however, be holding my breath.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2009

The Secret to Writing a Story

There is a scene from the movie Desperado that has stuck in my mind for years. Near the beginning of the film, Antonio Banderas character instructs a small boy on how to play a guitar. He tells the boy how (obviously) there are two hands involved in playing a guitar: the hand that strums the strings and makes the sound, and the hand that holds the strings and makes the chord. Antonio motions to the chord hand and tells the boy, "Forget about this hand," and instructs him to concentrate only on strumming. This scene reminded me of how my dad (who plays the guitar) told me to actually do the opposite: forget about the strumming hand and concentrate on the chord hand. In either case, the lesson is the same: there are two parts involved in making this art, and in order to do this art correctly, you must concentrate on one part at a time.

The same is true with the art of writing a story (and even writing in general). There are two parts to writing a story. One part is writing the story, i.e., getting the whole amalgamated menagerie of images, people, places, and events out of your head and onto paper. The other part is shaping the story, i.e., honing what you've written into a fine piece of literature. The first part is to write; the second part is to write well. The problem most people have in trying to write a story is that they try to do both of these parts at the same time. While trying to pour forth their soul through ink and paper, they keep distracting themselves with thoughts of using images, shaping themes, developing characters, and so forth. This can lead to a story being grounded before it ever truly takes off.

I speak from experience here. Many of my latest stories never seemed to go anywhere because the whole time I was writing them I was constantly saying, "What does that mean?" "How is the theme developed?" "What is the purpose of that character(s)? that place(s)? that event(s)? that image(s)?" My story writing was stagnant because of this, until I realized that those questions were to be asked when you are shaping the story, not writing it, and that shaping and writing were two totally different parts of a story's creation. Once I grasped that, I sat down and pounded out a new story, and the results were immediate and amazing. There was a freedom and flow to the whole process that had been absent before, and I found myself actually desiring to write on it more and more as the days went by. Compared to my old story writing style, the difference was like night and day.

The secret to avoiding the unfortunate calamity of grounded (and therefore lost) stories is the secret of guitar playing: forget about this hand, i.e., forget about the "shaping" part and concentrate solely on the "writing" part. However, unlike guitar playing (where you can forget and focus on either hand), in story writing, you write the story first and shape second. Without the written story, then there is nothing to shape. Try and shape while you write, and you will ground out and lose your story. Write it and then shape it, however, and it will come as natural as breathing.

Such concentration is truly a discipline. You may find (as I did) that you are constantly battling your own mind as it furiously tries to analyze and categorize your story in the midst of writing it. Such inclinations must be pushed under if your story is to survive, and that will take some effort. At all cost, while you write, you must put all "shaping" thoughts out of your mind. Just write the stupid thing; get it out of your head and on paper. Do not worry about characters, settings, events, and images while you write; just write. The "analyzing" and "worrying" part will come later; right now, what matters is that the story is merely written. Later on, you will concentrate on writing it well.

Thoughts from watching "The Last Samurai"

I believe it was Mark Twain who chastised Sir Walter Scott for romanticizing war. Although I have greatly appreciated Mr. Twain's indomitable wit, I am afraid that in this case his wit failed him. Sir Walter Scott did not romanticize war; the Romantics did not even romanticize it. The blame for romanticizing war lies solely at the feet of collective humanity. Mankind is the sole culprit for romanticizing war, for immortalizing it in ballad and poem and painting, for falling as one dead at the feet of that mysterious and god-like figure simply known as "the warrior". It can easily be argued that mankind romanticizes anything, that human history and even prehistory is marked with man seeing in things something deeper and more real than mere empiricism can allow.

The problem with war today (in actuality and in art) is not that it is brutal (for war has always been brutal), but that it lacks the romantic quality that it once had. This is not to say that war itself is to be seen as glorious. Any fool knows that war itself is not glorious. What romanticized war for mankind was not war itself but the men who fought it. Warriors were seen by mankind as more than merely men who war; they were the very embodiments of courage, honor, and valor (amongst others). It is those timeless attributes that the warrior brought to battle that made war "glorious" to many. The "glory" of war is directly contingent upon the view one holds towards those who fight it; your view of war (in actuality and in art) is directly contingent upon your view of the warrior.

Letters to the Editor: An Apology for "The Dark Knight"

The following is a letter I sent in to the editor of the American Spectator, in regards to this piece about the movie The Dark Knight. To see my published letter, go here and scroll about half-way down:

Dear Mr. Editor,

In regards to the piece by James Bowman titled "The Dark Knight":

While I am very impressed and awed by Mr. Bowman's obviously scholarly mind and well-informed thinking, I am afraid that I must frankly disagree with his conclusions. I believe that he completely misread and misinterpreted the film, and has thus robbed himself of the true message that the film is offering. Without being too convoluted, I wish to offer a small rebuttal to his well written (yet incorrect) criticism of The Dark Knight.

I find Mr. Bowman's condemnation of "evil for evil's sake" to be quite odd. I especially find odd his assertion that this type of evil is somehow "post-modern." "Evil for evil's sake" is the furthest thing from post-modern views of evil (and morality in general). The post-modern view contains a severe blurring of good and evil until they are indistinguishable and finally lost: "Well, the bad guys have good motives (or understandable motives), so are they really bad? Well, the good guys have bad motives, so are they really good? Can we really know what good and evil is?" That is post-modern morality, i.e., the loss of morality. "Evil for evil's sake" is in direct conflict with post-modern morality, because post-modernism asserts that motivations complicate the moral; but if it is "evil for evil's sake," and thus (as Mr. Bowman points out) motivation is removed, then post-modern morality dies out. There is no complication--the thing is just evil; there is no way to explain it away.

Contrary to what Mr. Bowman says, characters like the Joker and the killer from No Country for Old Men do not reinforce post-modern morality. Direct and blatant demonstrations of evil are actually breaths of fresh air in the post-modern smog. Specifically in regards to the Joker, here we have a character whose evil has no motivation other than itself, and thus there is no way to sympathize with his evil, because we see it as strictly evil. Villains like the Joker are refreshing in a world that wants to sympathize with evil to the point where we have trouble recognizing evil at all.

In addition, Mr. Bowman's statement that "evil for evil's sake" makes evil some kind of "fashion statement," and thus makes it "glamorous," is completely erroneous. First of all, "evil for evil's sake" does not make evil fashionable; it makes it satanic. John Milton expressed as much in Paradise Lost when Satan proclaimed, "Evil be thou my Good." "Evil for evil's sake" is not a lesser kind of evil; it is the "purest" evil, the truest evil, the most complete absence of anything good. Second of all, there is nothing "glamorous" about "evil for evil's sake." There is nothing glamorous about Hannibal Lector or the Joker, aside from their momentary deceptive charm. In the end, however, they are always revealed as pure moral negations, disturbing demons wrapped in human flesh.

Mr. Bowman's analysis of the Joker is (unfortunately) horribly off. For starters, his claim that the Joker is out to "seduce the best of us" is just plain incorrect. To say that the Joker "seduces" anyone is a misnomer. The Joker was not out to "seduce" people to be as evil as himself; he was out to prove that people already where as evil as himself. "I'm not a monster," he says to Batman, "I'm just ahead of the curve." The Joker is not a seducer; he is an unholy prophet, an "agent of chaos" as he himself put it. He is not out to win an argument; he is out to demonstrate that he has already won the argument.

Furthermore, Mr. Bowman perfectly captured the Joker's gospel: "both heroism and villainy grow out of reason and law and civilization, and that, therefore, these things are mere shams and subterfuges masking a Hobbesian reality devoid even of honor, in which man is a wolf to man and there is nothing to believe in but the individual Nietzschean will, either to good or evil." I thunderously applaud Mr. Bowman's analysis here; he nailed the Joker's gospel on the head. Unfortunately, he strays far off course when he claims that that is the message of The Dark Knight. I was shocked at such a conclusion. Had Mr. Bowman (that illustrious scholar) not watched the film? Did he not realize that the Joker's gospel was the very thing that Batman was embattled against? Could he not recognize that Batman was the direct antithesis to the Joker? That Batman believes "these people [of Gotham] are ready to believe in good," good that is more fundamental than law, reason, or civilization? Could he not see that Batman's gospel is the direct opposite of the Joker's, and that it is his gospel that wins in the end?

Actually, Batman's gospel is entirely absent from Mr. Bowman's analysis, the gospel that says that heroism and villainy grow out of our choices, choices that lead us towards real good or real evil. It is this gospel that triumph in the movie. In the climax with the Joker in the film, the Joker's final scheme is to get two groups of people to kill the other in order to save themselves. If they did so, the Joker would have proven that, indeed, all reality really does boil down to the individual nihilistic will that does what it wants. However, the people choose the good, choose not to kill each other, and the Joker is rebuffed. His gospel is defeated. True, abiding morality wins. The Joker fancied himself as the only sane man (notice in the film his anger at being called "crazy" or a "freak") and that all others are the fools ("Their moral codes," he tells Batman, "are a bad joke"). In the end, however, he has lost the battle for Gotham's soul, and Batman tells him, "You're alone." Mr. Bowman's assertion that the Joker is a glamorous, "villainous hero" whose gospel is the film's message is completely untrue. He went wrong when he assumed that the films core was "how the hero and the villain are really just two sides of the same coin." That issue is never once mentioned or addressed in the film. Instead, the film deals with choice: the choice to do real good or real evil, and whether or not good and evil exists and therefore whether or not such a choice exists. The Joker claims no morality, and thus no real choice; Batman claims morality, and reaffirms choice. In the end, Batman is proven right.

There are a few minor, yet still serious grievances in Mr. Bowman's piece that I must address. His assertion that The Dark Knight is "strictly a comic book movie" misses the scope of Director Christopher Nolan's vision. Mr. Nolan's intention (which I believe he succeed in) was to completely avoid the stereotype of "a comic book movie," to avoid a "childish fantasy...in which anything can happen." Perhaps I can understand why Mr. Bowman so grossly misjudged the film: he was looking at it through the wrong lenses. Mr. Nolan asked that everyone remove the lenses of the "comic book movie" and to actually take the film seriously because he was going to take it seriously. Perhaps if Mr. Bowman had done this, he could have better understood the film. For now, his claims upon the films "preposterousness" and outlandishness are the only gross exaggerations present.

Mr. Bowman's assertion that other characters besides the main ones merely serve to "contribute to the body count" is absurd. Equally absurd is his claim that their death's are "faceless, anonymous." I am afraid that the character of Rachel Dawes cries out against this claim. Her death most certainly was not faceless and anonymous, nor did it merely add to the body count, nor was her death "comic or spectacular." Mr. Bowman does a grave disservice to Mr. Nolan's ability to not waste characters. Every death (or seeming death) is a punch in the gut, a disturbing drama, a rude awakening to the question of, "What would I do if I was given the choice?"

As a literary student, I must call a personal foul over Mr. Bowman's assertion that "the measure of the seriousness of any dramatic work is whether it takes death seriously." I find this to be a gross simplification. Are there not other themes for a dramatic work to take seriously besides death? What about choice (the theme of The Dark Knight)? Or honor? Or love? Or justice? Or good and evil? Or even seriousness itself? There is much, much more to drama than merely death.

I also must (for the sake of literature) heartily disagree with Mr. Bowman that "the reality of the Homeric epic is conveyed by the fact that those who are its heroes do die." This is false. Achilles may have died in The Iliad, but Odysseus did not, nor did he die in The Odyssey. Virgil did not kill Aeneas in The Aeneads; and Nolan does not kill Batman. The hero lives on, surrounded by the consequences of his own choices, the choices of others, and the choices of the gods.

I would appreciate it greatly, Mr. Editor, if it was made clear that I mean Mr. Bowman no disrespect. I am quite sure that I will never reach his scholarly heights of intellect. However, I do sincerely believe that he was wrong on the previous counts, and that his errors have done himself a serious injustice, robbing him of the true potential of a film that asserts the reality of true evil, confirms the reality and power of choice, and digs deep into what it truly means to be "heroic."

Your humble servant,

Jonathan Vowell