Wonder Woman? Meh.
So, I've seen Wonder Woman now. As was common in the Golden Age of comics, there's a lot of cannibalism. WW effectively is DC's Captain America, complete with a cadre of hardened war vets with distinct personalities, even a Scot with a funny hat. That, however, is NOT why I ultimately didn't like WW. It starts simply enough (don't worry, no significant spoilers).
The Black nanny.
Does anyone in Hollywood know what's going on? We're having a lot of issues with all kind of civil rights things, like trying not to marginalize Black people!? The top of the film features a young Diana Prince (she gets the last name later) running, only to find that she's run away from her Black mammy. Oh please. Diana is white. The Queen is white. Most talking parts are white, though there's one "senator" who gets, what, five words? Then there are issues with the special effects.
Amazon flies off galloping horse, shooting an arrow while flipping, and landing on her feet. That would be nothing except she magically need not obey physics and the laws of motion. A horse is traveling at around 20 MPH, you jump off and try to land on your feet, what happens? If you do it like the Amazon, you smash your face into the ground. A bit later, a high leaping Amazon throws a pair of knives down towards the camera. If you look closely you can see that they leave her hand and minutely correct direction.
The racial and social aspects are also a mostly subtle aspect of the film. First, there's the contrivance of sparks between Gadot and Pine. It's more staged then natural, though that's more a side effect of the less-than-elegantly formed dialogue. If that weren't cliche enough, there's the team. First, we get the Native American who talks earnestly about how the white man took their home and how he is better being free waging war in Europe. Seriously? Here's an idea. Don't steal homes from people, not that we can fix that now (though we can make reparations). Then there's the Middle Eastern fellow, Sameer, who chooses to fight as a mercenary since he isn't allowed to be an actor because of his color. These scenes don't have any honesty in them. They feel spliced in with a blunt butter knife. It's demoralizing.
Then there are aspects of WW that don't add up. In the first battle scene, a sniper is suppressing WW and her team in a courtyard. Mr. Scottish sniper seems incapable of actually sniping (why is he there, again?), so Chris Pine hatches a plan. Three mortals run out and grab an enormous sheet of metal. They hoist it over their heads, and Diana uses it as a springboard to smash the bell tower to bits. I mean, it really explodes. The entire top of the building, gone. So, if she can do that, why can't she jump, what, 80 feet? Besides, she jumps higher than that earlier.
Worse yet is the subtle, almost imperceptible misogyny. Simply put, you can't be a good woman, even a super powered woman, unless you have a man to coax it out of you, even if that man complacently supports the repression of women. While Chris Pine's performance is wonderful, his ultimate role is to be a guide to the real world outside of the sheltered world of Themyscira, the hidden island home of the amazons. They dance. They do it. He navigates her around. She, the nubile naif who doesn't understand the world as it truly is.
I know these feel like nitpicks, and some are. The story, overall, is good. Most people who don't read comics likely don't know it, so it feels fresh. Gal Gadot is great as WW, though there need to be fewer SLOMO scenes of determined walking. Chris Pine is also great. Others have said that he is comfortable playing any role, leading or supporting. I think it's more than that. I believe that he's comfortable in his own skin and enjoys pretending, but doesn't need it. It's like any craft, and he is skilled. I don't, however, believe we've seen what he can truly do yet. I look forward to those days.
I'm a little surprised that this is a blockbuster, to be honest. It's more like a Marvel film, if not quite so tight and lacking the easy banter. DC has set a low bar for entry, though, and Hollywood's latest entries have been, well, crap. So much money spent to achieve so little actual value. Sadly, I don't think Wonder Woman represents a turning point for the DC cinematic universe. I have a bad feeling that this is just an anomaly.
Bummer.
Apple has jumped the shark
It wasn't long ago that you couldn't walk down the street without tripping over some new Apple rumor or buzz over the latest and greatest Apple gear. Now, it's all about the white noise we hear from the tech industry as a whole. Are we living in a politics-style news bubble, is Microsoft beating Apple at their own game, or does the Cupertino megalith have something up its sleeve that would make the ghost of Steve Jobs giggle.
I remember, albeit vaguely, when Steve Jobs rolled out the brand new iMac in 1998. You really had to be there to see it live, but I did manage to see it eventually. I was, at the time, an Apple "phanboi", Ever since my first Apple ][, I had loved Apple. I've had lots of Apple products. I drank the kool-aid, as it were. After all, Apple was just dropping new products like creepy old ladies drop candy on Halloween. The iMac, the PowerMac, then the shift to Intel and the advent of the MacBook. Then, like a bolt from the blue, the iPhone and the iPad. The computer industry was having a hard time keeping up. It looked like Apple had a crystal ball and the competition tried and failed to copy Apple's formula, but Steve beat them handily, time and time again.
Then Steve Jobs died.
I'm sorry if that seems harsh (you might want to have that looked at), but it did happen. Tim Cook was installed as CEO to shepherd along what was already one of the single most valuable companies in the entire world. It didn't take long to see that Apple did not have a crystal ball, though. What they had was Steve Jobs. That's because, despite all of his ludicrous flaws and foibles that are common to genius, he had a crystal ball in his head. He could see the trend-makers and beat the competition to the punch, but the one thing he couldn't do was teach that trick to anyone else.
Even with annoying British designer Jonny Ive at his side, Tim Cook has been struggling to define a course for Apple that still pops out innovations. There was no Steve micromanaging every tiny detail every day, all day long. So, they just plodded along and started to copy what others had done while chasing them. The iPhone got bigger. The iPad got smaller. The Apple TV added voice and games. The Mac Pro got more expensive. Every exercise that used to produce real innovation melted boorishly into iterative microchange with a premium price attached for good measure. Apple, in my estimation, jumped the shark around the iPhone 6s and/or iPad Pro.
While the rest of the industry has now long been hawking the 2-in-1 lappy nee tablet in full awareness that the tablet industry is tailing off, Apple still makes nothing more than traditional laptops. Where you can get a tablet that runs full octane Windows 10, your iPad Pro still runs tablet software. Grab yourself an overpriced Samsung Galaxy S8 and you can take it swimming, where Apple still slaps you on the wrist if you get their gear damp. If you want something hot and new in Apple products, just grab yourself the new MacBook Pro with it's amazing Touchbar, a video strip that replaces the function key row. huzzah.
And, of course, everything Apple does is promoted with breathless intensity. Every event is Bob Hope's presentation of the recently risen Jesus Christ atop a gleaming, floating cloud hovering over Trump's Maralago. Yet, there were few showmen of the same caliber as Steve Jobs, and Cook has not followed in his mentors footsteps. Nobody has. The only person in tech today I can think of who has a presence as compelling as Jobs is Microsoft's Panos Panay. Panos is a natural on stage, speaks in an unscripted manner, interacts well with the crowd, and is enthusiastically hyper about Microsoft's Surface product line like an amp cranked up to 11.
Now Apple rolls out a $5000 iMac Pro?! Is this Apple's response to Microsoft's astonishing, if subtly flawed, Surface Pro? I'm not going to dig into the world of pain that is Intel's i9 X-series multicore mega parts clusterfuck, but Apple has bought in completely. The stupid thing is that the X-series gear is designed for enthusiasts (sorta, more cobbled, but then I'm quibbling) and is meant to be built, not presented. Apple "presents" gear. You are meant to take it as it comes, use it as long as you can, and replace it with another steeply overpriced gadget they've breathlessly announced. In a sense, Apple is lucky that the mobile phone blew up, since that kind of gear is right up their alley.
None of this bodes well for a company that has long been playing at the edges of marketshare. I don't mean to suggest that Apple will go away. Far from it, but it does risk sliding back into the same tasteless, colorless mire it did when they first lost Steve Jobs. It's a fascinating history and if you don't know it, go look it up. You'll be amazed.
TL;DR - Steve brought in former Pepsi head John Scully to make corporate things work better after Apple's early success with the Apple ][. Following the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984 and after a lot of grief in the executive suites later, the board votes to fire Steve and put Scully in the CEO spot to replace Mark Markkula (yeah, Steve wasn't CEO). Steve goes off to found NeXT and Pixar, while Mike "The Diesel" Spindler was screwing up Apple's next gen OS and mobile aspirations. This led to Gil Amelio signing his own pink slip by suggesting Apple bring Steve Jobs BACK to consult. Then iCEO Jobs cut loads of fat from Apple's projects roster, started work on Mac OS X, ushered in the iMac, and began the road to making Apple one of the most powerful companies in the world before he died. Crazy, eh.
Yes, Apple has a huge share of the market in the iPhone, but all of the momentum they built over the years with desktops, laptops, and mobile devices is starting to catch the edges of reality and slow down. I don't think Tim Cook has much longer as CEO, and somebody needs to hand that Ive dude a severance check. His moody crap is really starting to bother me.
Why outrage doesn't matter anymore
Here's the thing. We, as Americans, have lost the ability to lash indignant hellfire at those who violate our collective sensibilities. Cops outright murder Black people almost every day, and we get mad, but nothing changes. Our politicians lie, cheat, steal, and send dick pics to minors, and we get mad, but nothing changes. Companies like Facebook, Google, Uber, the entire oil industry, the entire pharmaceutical industry, the medical establishment sell each of us for $12 a year, tricks hundreds of thousands of people into indentured servitude, skirt the law with impunity, and price gouge with lip-licking voraciousness, and nothing changes. Banks, housing, dialysis, the battle for a living wage, the death of education, the abandonment of the separation of church and state, and much, much more is killing us all every day.
And nothing changes.
Sure, we get mad, we harangue people on the internet, we watch "news" programs that are little more than shills for an ideology, and nothing changes. That's because, those who benefit from the status quo have discovered a simple truth. As long as there are enough Americans making enough money to maintain a decent credit score and there's enough "white" noise in the media, nobody gives a fuck.
Americans have their interests predetermined. Get born, go to school, get a job, buy a house, raise two and a half kids, buy a few cars, take a vacation every year on your tax return, enjoy blockbuster movies at your local cinema, keep the riff raff out of your neighborhood, keep your head down and go to church every Sunday, or at least on the major Christian holidays. Most of all, however, is don't question anything outside of your little sphere of reality.
We've been conditioned to be selfish and think that's okay. There are many, many, MANY things wrong with American society, politics, education, social justice, healthcare, and a billion other things, but one of the biggest, simplest pieces is this grab, grab, grab ideal we have (that was an intentional reference to capitalist in chief, Trump). If we cared, stopping rape would matter. If we cared, women would have the same chances and choices as men. If we cared, we would make real reparations to native Americans and the descendants of slaves. If we really cared, we'd recognize that all of us are descended from immigrants, except the people we stole this country from in the first place, of course.
So, until we decide we aren't going to be selfish and share just a little with everyone else, things won't change.
And that really sucks.
America's Ghost in the Shell really sucks
As for the whitewashing, it's just plain stupid. Everybody is hating on it, and Hollywood isn't listening. Dumb. You idiots are already losing tons of money because people don't want to spend $50 to watch TV in a big room for a few hours. There's TV at home, and it has better stuff playing. Whitewashing is also racist and puerile. We've got enough hate going around without having it shoved in our faces by what's supposed to be entertainment.
If the racism wasn't enough, there's the shitty, moody pacing and the constant, nagging remedial reminders that "Major" isn't really human and that's what the story is supposed to be about. So, GITS 101... What makes a human human? Can a thing be human if it contains the mere consciousness of a being, or is that just a clever copy that only seems alive? Ultimately, it questions the soul and where it resides, if at all. This is a subtlety that American filmmakers just can't seem to grasp.
See, there's this thing in Japanese storytelling, and even I don't fully grok it but I believe I'm well ahead of the curve for Westerners, that focuses on the experiential aspects of a tale. For example, in Mamoru Oshii's 1995 theatrical version, there are extended scenes which feature nothing but Kenji Kawai's haunting vocal track and scenes of New Port City in Japan. Not a single aspect of this sequence adds anything to the story, considered criminal in Western film-making, but adds both a layer of familiarity and presence to the teeming locale and injects a deeply emotional tone through the score.
Japanese storytelling often features the seasons with special attention to Cherry blossoms in Spring, the beach in Summer, festivals and fireworks in Fall, and Christmas in Winter. My intuition tells me that this is derived from the strong sense of tradition in Japan as native Japanese people culturally seek out the beauty and significance of life, the world, nature, and even human works. These are the bits and bobs that get left out or wholly misunderstood when translating Japanese media into American fare.
And that's all I have to say on that.
How Pixar killed traditional animation
It's hard not to think of Pixar and, by extension Apple, as amazing American institutions built by the astonishing, guiding hand of the late Steve Jobs. Pixar, after all, has churned out a steady stream of box office smashes, with the occasional stumble. Yet, at the same time, Pixar has become a cancer that has infected the Western World's lauded history of traditional, hand-drawn animation like an invasive species. We are paying a very steep price for Pixar's success today, and for the foreseeable future.
There is no question that Steve Jobs was a visionary and reshaped our expectations of computers and technology. He and friend Wozniak almost single-handedly created the personal computer market in the mid-70's. However, by 1985 he was ousted from his own company because he didn't fit the standard corporate mold. Steve didn't rest, however. He created NeXT Computers and later, Pixar. Pixar had a megahit with Toy Story in 1995 and Jobs sold NeXT to Apple in 1997. In that same year, Steve Jobs returned to Apple as Interim CEO.
While Jobs was reshaping what we understand as personal technology, Pixar was hard at work creating a new kind of animation using 3D rendering technology it had invented. That, however, is where the two diverge. As Apple created an environment where other manufacturers would start to compete with Apple, Pixar was starting to carve out a niche that would eventually become the entire market, forcing all comers to migrate to 3D or fall behind.
It's hard to ignore a studio whose every release rakes in hundreds of millions worldwide, time after time, almost without fail. Even the films considered relative failures by critics made tons of money for Pixar and distributor, Disney. Spielberg, Katz, and Geffen's DreamWorks SKG was the first real studio practically formed to take Pixar head-on, and eventually it zeroed in on a number of critical hits, namely the popular Shrek franchise. Others would start to make their marks, as well, like Sony Animation, Blue Sky, and Universal. Even Disney started making 3D features in-house.
1995 saw the theatrical release of six traditionally animated films and Toy Story, the first feature length 3D animated film. Toy Story went head-to-head with Disney's Pocahontas and A Goofy Movie and Amblin's Balto. By 2012 Pixar pitted the Celtic-themed Brave against seven CG-based and three stop motion films.*
2011's Winnie The Pooh from Disney, was the last significant traditionally animated feature to be released in the US.
2015 saw the release of Nickelodeon's The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water which featured traditional, CG, and live-action sequences, so can't be counted as a traditional film. Feel free to poke around the lists yourself, though it's quite depressing. In fact, Japan is the only major media producer that predominantly uses traditional animation, though it is commonly blended with cost-saving CG backgrounds and other non-character elements. Most Japanese feature-film releases are also traditionally animated, and Japan's most applauded animation director, Hayao Miyazaki, only rarely applies the use of CG animation, and never to anything important.
So, the result has been the almost complete dissolution of Western traditional animation studios. Period. It's not really a matter of the efficiency of output, after all, Japan produces a literal fuckton of animation over four seasons each and every year. It seems like it's come down to mere one-upmanship, and that sucks for animators or anyone who wants to go into animation.
Traditional animation is an art form. It is based purely in art as a creative, visual outlet that springs from human hands and is viewed by human eyes. While 3D animation can, and often is, beautiful, it is far less organic in variance, creative and/or cultural diversity, and frequently devoid of emotional impact. That last bit is critical. Sure, a story can be strong, and when edited together well, with good voice acting, and a compelling soundtrack, a CG film can be emotionally engaging. They simply lack the additional tonal quality of analog.
Like vinyl records.
* NOTE: All films noted or referenced were released primarily in the US market.