growth | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “Eternals” as an Anti-Superhero Epic…

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this week. Because it’s that gap between Christmas and New Year, there’s been a bit of editorial leeway. And so, I got to write a little bit about Eternals, one of the more interesting and complicated recent Marvel Studios blockbusters.

Eternals doesn’t quite work. It’s important to acknowledge that upfront. However, the movie is interesting because of how it engages with superheroes. Eternals is not so much a superhero movie as it is a movie about superheroes. It’s about these stories that dominate the popular consciousness, this web of corporate-controlled mythology in which so much modern culture is tangled. It asks what the function of these characters and these stories should be.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: characters, chloé zhao, Eternals, evolution, growth, marvel, Marvel Studios, mcu, mythology, status quo, superheroes, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and How the MCU Grew Up With Its Audience…

Posted on November 17, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist earlier this week. With the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and the end of Phase 4, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at one of the more interesting trends within the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe: the way that it has grown up with its audience.

The audience that went to see Iron Man fourteen years ago are no longer teenagers, or even young adults. They are now adults, many of whom will have settled down and started families. It is entirely possible that a couple who went to see The Incredible Hulk on their first date ended up taking their child to Thor: Love and Thunder. One of the more interesting aspects of the modern MCU has been the way that its plotting and themes have evolved to reflect that, with many of its once roguish heroes becoming biological or surrogate parents.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: adults, adventure, age, audience, children, family, growth, maturity, mcu, parents, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the “End of Evangelion” in “Thrice Upon a Time”…

Posted on September 6, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of the last of the Rebuild of Evangelion movies, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take a look at Hideaki Anno’s third draft of an ending to Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The Rebuild of Evangelion is an interesting experiment. It is essentially a remake of the classic animated series split across four feature length movies. However, as the series unfolds, this reimagining branches further and further from the original run. It’s a fascinating piece of art, a creator essentially returning to a franchise that made them a legend within the industry, and reworking it from the ground up. Rebuild of Evangelion is a set of movies that exist entirely in conversation with what has come before, daring to ask what a happy ending might look like to this familiar story.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: buddhism, change, closure, end of evangelion, evolution, growth, hideaki anno, neon genesis evangelion, resolution, shinji, stories, storytelling | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”, and Saying Goodbye to Old Friends…

Posted on February 22, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the passing of Christopher Plummer recently, and with the film celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year, I thought it might be worth taking a look at Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

The Undiscovered Country was the last Star Trek film to focus on the entire cast of the original show. However, it is not an entirely celebratory farewell. Instead, it’s a movie that makes a valid and convincing argument for the need to move on, for characters like Kirk and Spock to get out of history’s way and to surrender the stage to Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s an introspective (and occasionally even acerbic) rejection of nostalgia that is particularly hard to imagine today, particularly in the era of films like Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought, The Original Series | Tagged: change, christopher plummer, continuity, end of history, fandom, fear, growth, history, klingons, nostalgia, star trek, star trek vi: the undiscovered country | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: Voyager – Juggernaut (Review)

Posted on September 20, 2017 by Darren

Juggernaut is not a great episode of television.

The episode has any number of key problems. Most obviously, the episode illustrates how little the character of B’Elanna Torres has actually grown since Parallax, without even pausing to acknowledge everything that has happened in between in episodes like Extreme Risk. More than that, the episode’s core themes are undermined by an incredibly cynical conclusion that might work in the context of a larger character arc, but which doesn’t work when rooted in the series’ episodic approach to storytelling.

Calm under pressure.

However, in spite of all these fundamental flaws that hobble Juggernaut as a piece of television narrative, there is quite a lot to like here. This is very pointed a big “action” story told in blockbuster mode, evoking episodes like Timeless. It is all about broad strokes, ticking clocks and epic stakes. Juggernaut is fundamentally a runaway train story crossed with The Phantom of the Opera, which is almost perfectly within the show’s comfort zone. More than that, Juggernaut actually figures out how to do something vaguely interesting with the Malon before they disappear.

Juggernaut is a highly enjoyable episode of Star Trek: Voyager.