The year of endings

Given that 2019 is the last year of the 2010s, it seems only natural that we’d be thinking about endings.

What doesn’t necessarily follow, though, is that so many popular franchises would have been geared toward a natural 2019 endpoint in their own chronologies.

No popular cultural commodity can be packed away for good, so in many cases, what we’re talking about here is a pause in the action. But it’s a big pause with a big symbolic value, even if it ends up proving to be a short one.

That this should coincide with the end of a decade is, to be certain, a coincidence. It must be. No franchise starts with the idea of wrapping it up by a certain symbolic date, if only because most franchises can’t be sure they will endure long enough to get there. The point it starts is entirely a function of when its perceived viability has reached a critical threshold in order to make it into a film (or a TV show, as we shall see). The point it finishes, then, is usually a function of x number of consecutive production schedules until the entirety of the story has been told.

For whatever reason, that entirety really descended on us in 2019.

SOME SPOILERS, TREAD CAREFULLY

Let’s look at the examples:

Star Wars – This is the big one, as a story dating back 42 years, with many of the same actors, finally reached its conclusion in 2019. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is not, of course, the last Star Wars movie we will ever see. In fact, it’s almost certain that 20 years from now, we’ll already have as many more Star Wars movies as we’ve gotten in the last 42. But as the end of the Skywalker saga, or at least the end of the actual Skywalker bloodline, it’s a pretty big deal. Sure, Daisy Ridley may say now that she’s done with Star Wars, but I also read that she went and cried alone in her car after seeing the final cut. Emotionally, she’s susceptible to returning, and she adopted the name Skywalker after all. But there’s no doubt that for now, this is an ending, and it’s a big one.

Avengers – It’s hard to feel like a saga has come to an end when a new movie featuring some of the same characters comes out scarcely two months later. But there’s no arguing that Avengers: Endgame represented a real culmination of 11 years’ worth of movies that had preceded it, and that you definitively draw a line when you halve the total of six original Avengers in one fell swoop. Of course, in the perfect example of pop culture’s perennial self-rejuvenation, one of the deceased Avengers is actually getting her own movie just a couple short months from now, albeit a prequel (or so it would seem). Still, to measure just how much of an effect the MCU has had on us, many of us (myself included?) were sadder to see the end of this story than the end of Star Wars. And walking out of that theater back in April, it sure did feel like an ending.

Game of Thrones – Apologies if I switch to TV on a film blog, but GOT is one of the most cinematic TV shows we’ve ever gotten, and in the past decade, its cultural cachet came to rival the two mentioned above and the likes of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. That too came to an end in 2019, though I’m sure we’ll get The Further Adventures of Tyrion Lannister at some point in the next decade. The final season of Game of Thrones was heavily criticized in certain corners of the internet, as well as off it, as you didn’t have to be a geek to get involved in this epic of swords and dragons, breasts and beheadings. For me, the final season flashed moments of brilliance and moments of great disappointment, though more disappointment in the way our heroes can let us down than the way the writers botched the job of telling their story. And for me, it was another sentimental end to a saga I’d been living with for years.

Breaking Bad – While we're on TV ... Breaking Bad should have ended years ago, but since Vince Gilligan decided we needed a conclusion to the story of Jesse Pinkman, we got a movie that did that in 2019. Although the movie was received well in most circles (though not this circle), I suspect Gilligan won't decide he needs to wrap up any more characters, making this the final chapter in the story of these characters, in any case. Unless he gets the bad idea for Breaking Bad: Alaska, which, I hope not. 

Toy Story – So if Toy Story 3 wasn’t really the end, then Toy Story 4 surely is, isn’t it? Never say never, but for now, it does seem like Pixar is ready to move on from the story of Buzz, Woody, Bo Peep et al, delivering the final installment of their story in 2019. There’s nothing that states this has to be the end, except for the perceived catcalls of Pixar fans who thought a fourth movie was already a bridge too far. But at the very least, it’ll be hard to imagine how Woody will reunite with the legacy of Andy and his family friends, represented most distinctly by the gaggle of toys who do remain together at the end of this one.

X-Men – Not all conclusions had a sentimental quality to them. Given the general response of sheer exhaustion and disinterest by fans, they didn’t want to let the door hit X-Men on the ass on its way out. Dark Phoenix was always envisioned as the end point to this particular iteration of the X-Men franchise, but after the way the last two films were resoundingly rejected, it could be a stake to the heart of the franchise on the whole. If so, it’ll leave a bad taste.

It – Okay, so the first chapter of It was only two years ago. But this is definitely the last chapter, unless someone wants to pull some silly stunt like getting these actors together again in three decades, Before Sunrise style, to have them fight Pennywise as 70-year-olds. I include it here more for the way the poster added to the symbolic trend I’m exploring today. The tagline reads simply: “It ends.”

How to Train Your Dragon – Okay, I didn’t even see The Hidden World, which came out in early January in Australia (I was invited to a preview screening in 2018, as a matter of fact). I guess I tired of seeing these movies before they tired of making them. However, they have now tired of that, as producer Dean DeBlois confirmed they don’t intend to make any more. Right, and Sylvester Stallone didn’t intend to make any more Rocky movies after Rocky IV.

Rambo – Another one I didn’t see, but since the aforementioned Sylvester Stallone is now 73, it’s reasonable to believe the promise implicit in the title Last Blood. And since I didn’t see it, I have no idea if Last Blood puts a definitive ending to the story of John Rambo. But whether it does or not, this is actually a pretty big one, as the character has cinematic origins older than any other character on this list save Luke Skywalker.

And this is to say nothing of the franchises that may have practically ended due to poor box office, whether they intended to or not (Terminator, Charlie’s Angels), and the movies that felt like they were career summations based on the age of the director (The Irishman, Pain and Glory).

So yeah, it seems that 2019 was a year for us to look back on the past and kill it, to quote Rian Johnson’s version of Kylo Ren.

But 2020 is not only the start of a new year, it’s the start of a new decade. It seems likely that we’ll get more recycling of franchises that haven’t yet worn out their welcome. But don’t forget that when the last decade started, most of us hadn’t even heard of Game of Thrones or How to Train Your Dragon, and the MCU was in its comparative infancy at only two years old.

Ten years from now, we might be mourning the endings of things we haven’t yet imagined.

Killers who don't kill you

I saw my first trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate last night, and I was reminded what makes a terminator such a scary killing machine.

When it gets in range of its target, it absolutely, positively kills that target.

Or whiffs while trying its damnedest, anyway.

It'd be quite a different story if the terminator had its target pinned in a corner, transformed the end of one of its arms into a very long knife, and then, inches from the face of its target, withdrew, saying "Not today, John Connor."

That's the biggest problem with Pennywise in the It movies. It's almost never "today."

I'd have to go back and count, but between the two movies, there can be no fewer than two dozen moments when Pennywise is within inches of one of the members of the Losers Club, but that loser escapes with his (or her) life. And it's not because the ceiling collapsed, or because one of them closed a door just before one of his appendages could slither through it.

No, it's because at the last minute, Pennywise said "Not today, Bill Denbrough."

Yes, Pennywise does kill Georgie Denbrough, or that poor girl under the bleachers, at his first opportunity to do so -- after toying with their fragile psychologies for a few minutes first, of course. He's certainly capable of converting a kill. But I don't buy the argument that his interactions with our main characters are just sadistic amuse bouches for himself before he plans to go in for the kill. Really, he just doesn't plan to go in for the kill -- not today, not tomorrow, and not next Thursday either.

It's really difficult to fear something that fritters away all its best opportunities, because you don't know when you should actually be scared. It's easy to draw the contrasts, as my colleague John Roebuck of ReelGood did in his It Chapter 2 review. The terminator is one, but so is this:

"Pennywise is successful in his murderous enthusiasm in some instances, when in others he is not, with few discernible differences between each scenario. When the capacity of a primary antagonist is uncertain, there's isn't a substantial foundation for fear of it. Think about the alien in Ridley Scott's Alien. The only reason a crew member aboard the Nostromo survived an encounter with it was through luck or ingenuity, not because the alien simply didn't kill them or because they ran to the next room."

That's actually John quoting his own review of the original It in his It 2 review, if we're trying to be as accurate as possible.

So this observation doesn't originate with me, nor does it probably originate with John. But it is a significant detriment to the effectiveness of not only this film, but other modern horror films as well, so I thought it was worth giving it my own particular spin.

The same issue exists in The Curse of La Llorona, which is just one recent case that exemplifies an entire trend in modern ghost story movies. La Llorona presents herself to our main characters a number of times, because you can't have an entire movie about a boogeyman (or boogeywoman) and only show her once or twice. (Not in the post-Jaws era, anyway.) But she of course doesn't kill those characters -- not on the first time, and not on any subsequent times either (spoiler alert). She does kill some other characters earlier on -- you have to establish her capabilities, of course -- but because The Curse of La Llorona opts for a low body count, it necessitates a number of set pieces that peter out inexplicably into non-fatal episodes.

Having said all this, I actually like the two It movies. I gave the first one four stars out of five, and was heading that way on the second after the first hour, ending up at the slightly lower 3.5. That might say more about my own generously skewed star rating system than the actual qualities of these movies, but that's a discussion for another time.

The thing I appreciate about these movies is the way Andy Muschietti stages Pennywise as a concept, not as an actual killer. Although I don't think this is what they were going for, I appreciate It and It Chapter 2 on the level of abstract art, on different ways to visualize an insane clown who might be capable of anything ... setting aside my concern that he's actual capable of nothing.

Some spoilers ahead for the set pieces in It 2.

When I think back to the very long experience of the second It movie, I think of isolated inspired ways to visualize Bill Sarsgaard's expertly conceived embodiment of evil. They're more like snapshots of possible terror than a memory of that terror converted into something tangible. I think of his glowing eyes on the banks of that river as he takes a bite out of the gay bashing victim. I think about the wall-eyed glee of the image above, which presages a further unfocusing of the eyes accompanied by a demented drool. I think of the way his expression goes blank as he starts to bash his head against the wall of glass that separates him from a potential victim. I think of that scene where he's talking to [I don't remember who] and says "Don't you want to play with the clown?" As he turns to look after the fleeing child or adult, his face starts to stretch and skew, as M.C. Escher might have painted him.

These things work for me, though I understand they don't work for everybody. The Filmspotting guys specifically mentioned how they were not taken with two of the more obviously digital scares in It 2, the scene where the fortune cookies turn into creepy crawlies and the scene where the nine-foot-tall naked old woman harasses Bev. I was, in fact, taken with these. I give credit to the vision of a visual stylist who can give me something just a little different from the things I've seen before, and do it with a certain panache, and I consider both of these to be examples of that. Some people don't, and that's fine.

But if you don't, I can see how It Chapter 2 really doesn't leave you much to savor at all.

In a way, watching Pennywise not kill people is a problem lessened if you've read the book. It's been 30 years since I've done that so I'd have to ask a more recent reader to be sure, but I believe Stephen King actually created the template Muschietti followed for the clown's sprees of not killing. King's book is also a book of set pieces, and since it's told largely from the perspective of our main characters, those episodes almost invariably have to be non-fatal in nature.

Knowing who's going to die and who isn't going to die is a contributing factor to a certain lack of fear as well. I remembered that one of the Losers Club was going to die, and approximately when it was going to happen in the story, so any close call before then was going to result in survival, unless Muschietti decided to deviate from the book (which I figured he wouldn't). This is not a problem unique to It, of course. Anyone who's read any book knows which characters are going to die when, and does not fear their deaths prior to that moment while watching the film adaptation. And as anyone who's read the book or seen It 2 knows (and again, spoilers), one of the Losers Club dies by his own hand in a non-Pennywise-related incident, further limiting the number of potential Pennywise-caused deaths.

This character kills himself due to the fear of Pennywise, which is a pretty powerful idea in the book. It just makes it a little harder for us, the viewers, when that fear is based on a number of interactions in which a clown went "Boogedy-boo!" and then left the room without further incident.

Leaving Lieberher

I’ve now seen two movies featuring Jaeden Lieberher in the past six weeks. You know him, of course, as he’s only 16 but has already appeared in 11 feature films, most of which had wide releases. He’s of course best known as the young Bill Denbrough in the It movies, the second of which I saw last night. James McAvoy plays the character now, but there are also new scenes of him as a kid, when he was played by Lieberher. Lieberher was also in The Lodge, the Riley Keough horror I saw at MIFF, which hasn’t had its wide release yet -- and won't until February, I'm now learning. 

Except in neither of these films did I actually see Jaeden Lieberher. I saw Jaeden Martell.

The actor once known as Lieberher has changed his name to Martell. You might think this is just a cool-sounding stage name that reminds a person vaguely of Game of Thrones, but it’s actually his mother’s last name. He’d gone by his father’s last name previously, and though there could be something to the name change that relates to his dad and the kind of guy he is, I’m going with the simpler explanation that it’s shorter, snappier, easier to remember and easier to spell. You know, all the reasons people normally choose a stage name, just with a basis in his actual reality.

Even if he had just made it up, it would be legitimate to change the name for any number of reasons. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the exception, rather than the rule. (You may remember he was temporarily known as “Arnold Strong,” which was maybe too on the nose.)

The thing that struck me as noteworthy about this one is that it came after he had already firmly established himself, which seems a bit unusual.

I don’t have statistics on this, but I venture most people arrive at a stage name before they are cast in multi-million dollar Hollywood films. In fact, you often change the name specifically to help you get cast in such a movie. Clearly, “Lieberher” wasn’t holding Jaeden back.

If you want proof, well, how is Aloha, Midnight Special, The Book of Henry and It for proof? I mean, I’m a guy who can identify and name actors that others can’t, so I may not be the best example. But I usually only bother when I’ve seen them a couple times and I consider them significant enough to note the name. In the case of Jaeden Lieberher, I think I remembered his name specifically because the last name was a bit of a mouthful … kind of like “Schwarzenegger.”

Which is why I immediately noticed the change when I was watching The Lodge. I identified pretty early on that this was, indeed, the star of It and Midnight Special, but I thought there was at least a 20% chance I was confusing him with someone else, so I waited for the credits to confirm my guess. But there was no Jaeden Lieberher in the credits, only Jaeden Martell.

And though “Martell” is undoubtedly a cool name, it feels a ton less distinctive than Lieberher.

Even IMDB is a bit confused by the change. As is the standard practice when an actor changes how he or she is credited – you know, when a Richard E. Jenkins becomes Richard Jenkins, or when a Larry Fishburne becomes Laurence Fishburne – IMDB lists his older role with the following designation: “(as Jaeden Lieberher).” But they’re actually confused about exactly when the change occurred. For The Lodge they have “(as Jaeden Lieberher)”, even though this is where I actually noticed the name change.

The thing that makes it even a bit stranger is that the change occurred in the midst of an ongoing movie franchise. Sometimes you have to switch out an actor between movies, like when a Terrence Howard decides he no longer wants anything to do with the MCU. They kept the actor between It and It: Chapter Two, but switched out the name. Which could also confuse some people, though probably only nerds like me who care about such semantics. 

This post is as long as it is just to hear myself talk, or maybe to hear myself type, or maybe because it’s the end of the day on the last day my boss is in the office for ten days, after she’s already left. This issue does not actually warrant this many words.

Especially if Jaeden’s dad is a dickhead and he just didn’t want anything more to do with him.

Either way, his It director probably sympathizes. Back when he made Mama, Argentine director Andy Muschietti was called Andres. At least he kept the ethnicity of one of his two names, though you could argue that "Muschietti" was the harder name to spell/remember than "Andres."

Anyway, I guess Martell is working for Jaeden, as he’s also going to be in Knives Out, Rian Johnson’s new movie. Then again, who knows if Johnson cast him before or after he left Lieberher.

When I first posted this, I noticed that I used the label "jaeden lieberher," not "jaeden martell." I've since changed it, as I suspect I'll be writing about this talented actor again in the future, when everyone but me will have forgotten his original name.