The Book of Eli is another post-apocalyptic films. However, this one leaves you with some pungent reflections. The movie follows Eli, Denzel Washington, as he heads west on a divine mission. The world is now 30 years after the big war and the planet is inhabited by gun-toting, motorcycling riding, violent, illiterate desperados. Picture Road Warrior and Fahrenheit 451 meet Border town from Beyond Thunderdome. The camera work in this film is excellent and it is good to see the Hughes Brothers back directing. With a backdrop of crushed building, abandoned towns, and sun bleached road, our hero Eli walks west.
Eli happens upon a small broken down town run by Carnegie, Gary Oldman. Carnegie runs the desperados I mentioned earlier. Carnegie’s life long quest has been searching for is one rumored sacred book, the book of power. He daily sends out these road warriors to collect books and of course kill. And wouldn’t you know it Eli just happens to be carrying the very book Carnegie has been seeking all these years. It is at this moment that The Book of Eli’s brilliance and it’s faults come into play. Eli escapses Carnegie’s clutches, but he has now picked up an extra traveler, Solara, Mila Kunis, and they head west together. The movie up until this point is quite simply amazing, really. I won’t say that the addition of Solar as eye-candy was unnecessary, but Hollywood’s tradition of marketing action films with a minority lead by populating movies with youthful looking mainstream additions is so Pre-Obama. So instead I will say that Solara was miscast.
With the addition of Solora the story struggles to regain its brilliance. This movie gets 15 out of 10 for simply having the guts to deal with religion on this level. Sure we get Carnegie’s name from the Latin root, yes we get the mission that Eli is on, of course we get the zealotry and social commentary, but what we don’t get is how the characters run out of bullets but never gas. I hazzar to say that this movie is more biblical than The Ten Commandments. The ending of the movie will leave you with questions, but the themes that run through the movie will stay with you long after the movie is over. High powered explosions, computer generated creatures, over the top villains be damned this is the type of movie Hollywood should be making. Denzel Washington’s low key performance is simply one of his best. If it weren’t for pandering to mainstream America this movie would have gotten 10 out of 10, but as it is MG give it 8 of 10.
The Book of Eli is in theaters now
January 11, 2021
The Pandalorian STD
Posted by MG under African American, America, art, black life, media, TV Show | Tags: baby yoda, cbs, cobra kai, commentary, Disney, disney plus, mandalorian, netflix, Review, social media, star trek, star trek discovery, Streaming |Leave a Comment
Over the holidays, I fell behind on my Star Trek Discovery episode watching. I put on an episode and a few members of my family, none of them had watched the previous seasons, sat down to watch with me. And guess what they enjoyed it…especially the women.
And that’s when I saw it… no not the Easter eggs… it.
These shows weren’t made for fans, they were made for the unaffiliated, a new generation of consumers and streamers. The studios use the installed fan base to promote the shows but the shows aren’t for them. They throw in Easter eggs, plot points, pandering and references to feed the fans and to string them along.
This method has been successful with shows such as, the The Mandolarian and of course with Cobra Kai…the later is designed to be that way. This studio philosophy also happened to Start Trek Discovery, but not initially. Initially the studio used a well known gender movement to move the show.
You see if an unaffiliated (casual viewer) watched a few episodes of the first season of STD with subtitled Klingon, two ladies beating up a crew of black monsters and discussion of how a spore drive works…they would have been completely lost. However, Star Trek: Discovery’s third season launched with a lower access point for the causal view, the viewer who doesn’t care about cannon, the who won’t say “Hey they can’t do that” or “They did this same episode in blah…blah…” At the end of the 2nd season Michael Burnham doesn’t even need a space ship to fly through space anymore…go figure.
On top of this the studios have taken the time and spent the advertising dollars to use social media to paint legitimate complainers as man-babies, whiners, etc… instead of just creating better stories and scripts. The new watchers and original fans mingle on social media pages filling in plot holes, arguing about how many times people will cry this episode and why this character is better than a long dead one… Honestly the commenters on social media are working harder than the show writers.
Most fans become defensive and assume someone is attacking their character or intelligence whenever the only product they have is criticized. Afraid that criticizing these products in anyway will decrease the enjoyment. So fans resort to lying to ourselves to make the experience better…and how we feel doesn’t require logic or rules. And just when you think the studios will never hire directors and producers who actually like the original product, a five minute CGI cameo appearance stirs a rare moments of reconciliation of a divided and disheartening fan base and generates more goodwill than a billion dollar movie trilogy.
OG Fans of Star Wars, Star Trek and The Karate Kid should be sadden that their kind, the kind that created the flash point in the first place is being treated this way, but you also have to recognize that these studios believe that real fans won’t be the pushers of and will limit what they can do with their IP. There is no bigger waste of time than criticizing art, but these TV shows are more product than anything else.
If the studio released a product that doesn’t suit the fans, the fans say it’s a flop and cause the studio all kind of turmoil. If the product was a success, they would have to make more in the same vain and cost controls would become outrageous (see Robert Downey Jr. Ironman’s Salary). Studios have learned that causing division drives social media and that division generates social media topics, articles and hate videos.
These shows tick gender and agenda box after box, and fans and bored streamers will fight show after show, spin off after spinoff because deep down inside the fan knows the truth– THIS IS ALL THEY HAVE—and that’s better than having nothing. Yes, they are using you and you aren’t going to just stop streaming and arguing on social media…so the studios have you by the proverbial space balls.
Becoming Midnight