Weathering With You, or The Portrait of the Artist as a Questionable Storyteller

On the way back from the movie theater, I googled Weathering With You to get to the Wikipedia page, a page I'd been avoiding until I saw it. The first result I saw above my desired destination was the headline for a review that read "Weathering With You is as light as a cloud." If I had opened the link, which I didn't, I'm sure I would have found the author praising the movie for being pleasant and breezy, like a spoonful of sugar... or this song:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
Please don't take my sunshine away...

In no way is that sentiment true.

Not only are the characters weighed down by hard luck and loss, and the narrative by its searing desire to say something profound, but the movie and Makoto Shinkai, himself, are caught underneath the pop culture behemoth that is Your Name. The latter film was always going to be referenced. Its artistic and storytelling brilliance and its widespread commercial success were too big to ignore. The hope was that Shinkai would tell the story he wanted to tell and sweep the audiences off their feet with his unrivaled animation quality and talent (the animators at ComixWave deserve a lot of credit here, certainly more than this parenthesis). 

That, unfortunately, did not happen. The film cannot be separated from Your Name in terms of its structure and Shinkai's conspicuous attempts to make the film breezier by trying to create a roguish set of main characters who try to work outside the system. He is not a natural crowd-pleaser and it shows.

What I cannot and will not criticize, however, are the film's artistic qualities. Tokyo feels so pulsatingly alive, captured in a way even a live-action movie could not equal. Shinkai and his animators continue to up the ante on the rest of the industry. The attention to detail is breathtaking, leaving us with a visual masterpiece. The fireworks scene...just wow.

Ah, if only the story was even a few notches below this, we're talking about another all-time classic, but it wasn't. The story and the characters left much to be desired. The former, in many ways, is a slight adjustment to the ingredients that made Your Name so successful: boy meets girl with younger outspoken sibling, rural vs. urban, a supernatural connection, romance, death, reversal, and, yes, boob jokes. Structurally, the plot is a little more streamlined, but the framework is essentially the same.

The boob jokes may have worked in Your Name because they weren't a crass way to appeal to adolescent sexuality. Here, they fall in line with one of anime's worst instincts, the cynical belief that teenage boys are the primary audience and will only watch if the female characters are objectified. This is where Miyazaki, Takahata, and Studio Ghibli in general, along with Mamoru Hosoda, differ from the crowd. You'd think Shinkai would know better.

Puzzling me the most is the rationale behind the characters. I don't understand why they have to be the people they are, especially the main character, Hodaka. His status as a runaway who fled his more parochial hometown because it was "suffocating" does nothing for the story.

What we are left with is a true technical and artistic marvel matched with a mediocre story. Sadness.

The Rise of Skywalker: Let The Past Return, Revive It If You Have To

There comes a moment when a wayward prince, a highborn child with powers beyond measure, must face the spite caused by his past actions. He has to contend with a legacy of suffering left behind and choose how to move forward, should he be given the opportunity. It's a moment with no clear solutions.

Oh wait, this isn't a review of Avatar: The Last Airbender. No such moment exists in The Rise of Skywalker - a title that continues to confound me. A more accurate title (read no further if you don't like spoilers) would be The Rise of Palpatine, as the only true villain in the franchise returns from the dead to reclaim his devilish mantle.

And from that sentence stems all the movie's problems.

In his two outings as director, J.J. Abrams found a way to include another Death Star in Starkiller Base and to resurrect Palpatine. He would like nothing better than to remake the original trilogy under the guise of something new. It is an easy thing to do. Like no other major franchise, Star Wars banks on nostalgia. Referencing the old is a move that goes over well, but it should just be that, referencing, not a wannabe cover album of The Return of the Jedi.

Despite this overt love for the original trilogy, Abrams's biggest accomplishment in Rise of Skywalker is to take the three movies that changed Hollywood and render them irrelevant. Darth Vader didn't kill the emperor. Han and Leia didn't end the Galactic Empire. Luke didn't...do anything except lose his hand in a battle that didn't matter. They were never gone, just hiding in the shadows and developing more planet destroying technology.

That is a far, far worse crime than any Rian Johnson stands accused of. For all the fans' gnashing of teeth over his handling of Luke, he set the stage for a saga finale that didn't include a one-dimensional puppet master controlling everything. Adam Driver's Kylo Ren/Ben Solo would have had to come to terms with killing his father, being rejected by Rey, who seems to understand his inner turmoil, and becoming the Supreme Leader of an army fighting Rey and his mother.

We all know from how skilled an actor Driver can be. Let him and Daisy Ridley take the story in a new direction and provide a more satisfying conclusion than yet another "destroy the Death Star and the emperor" story.

Furthermore, the return of the emperor feels more like an impression of the ever meme-able villain than the earlier iterations of him. He's more one-dimensional than ever, and that's saying something. Here, he just cackles and shows off his lightning-empowered force abilities. He even says, "Do it!" in the comical way we all know. If you are going to make the ill-advised choice to bring Palpatine back, can you at least get him right?

What I can say in the movie's favor is the momentum. Though it may skip steps and is illogical at times, Abrams has a good sense of pace. He's always had that. He's a professional crowd-pleaser and knows how to make even mediocre productions watchable. Driver and Ridley also get the most mileage out of the material given to them. Less committed actors would've put this film in Attack of the Clones territory.

Where I should be contemplating the course of the saga and feeling both elation and sadness at the series coming to an end, I'm left with mild exhaustion and annoyance. For a universe with essentially limitless possibilities and an expansive lore, the lack of variety in the stories makes no sense. Not everything needs a Death Star (or something like it) and an emperor (or something like him). Please, Disney, let someone take a chance and reward them when they do.

Last Christmas I (Literally) Gave You My Heart

 *Opens Christmas Movie Recipe*

- Classic Christmas tunes (Preferably sung by cast members)

- Romance

- Quirky characters obsessed with the spirit of Christmas

- An initially cynical lead who is charmed by their festive surroundings

- Likability

- Overt (and sometimes obvious) life lessons

- Heart (elusive but necessary)

- Poverty (optional)

*Returns Recipe to Hallmark*

I have always had a soft spot for Christmas movies. If anything, they are an excuse to indulge in the comfortable and cheery tunes that mark the holiday season. Right around my birthday, I turn on the movies I’ve seen countless times – Holiday Inn, White Christmas, and It’s a Wonderful Life – the movies that created the formula that we have now become ultra-familiar with.

Last Christmas is a highly engineered attempt to capture the elements audiences expect from the genre and offer a mild twist. Even with talented (or at least prominent) individuals on board, I came into the movie with low expectations – these sorts of things are often imitations of classics and having high expectations is masochistic. Still, I left the theater having been let down. The movie doesn’t have the cheer to make up for its massive shortcomings.

The largest humbug is the story. Emma Thompson can write. Her screenplay of Sense and Sensibility is fantastic. Creating a formulaic yet pleasant enough story seems like a reasonable expectation. It never quite gets there. Emilia Clarke’s character is ailing in body and soul when we first meet her, and following a few chance encounters with a guardian angel-like Henry Golding – can someone please get this guy a more than one-note role? He has all the makings of a star – she’s having a holly jolly Christmas. The twist ending falls flat.

That, however, is not the worst part of the story. It is everything around them. The Christmas emporium run by Michelle Yeoh (this is a Crazy Rich Asians reunion) has the right quirk, but scenes depicting her as a giddy schoolgirl at heart come across empty and lack the humor they were going for. The last part is especially prescient, as there isn’t even enough humor in the story to bring a half-smile across your face, let alone laughter.

Without the humor, the little moments in the movie meant to elevate it beyond simple Christmas fare don’t have the punch they need. The film is very apparent in its lack of sympathy for Brexit yet the film’s politics seem shoehorned in, and it’s not just the nonexistent laughs. The story relies heavily on immigrant stereotypes. They are poor, isolated, and speak with an accent and sing songs from the old country, and they are meant to be pitied. Some things, even in a Christmas movie, cannot be oversimplified.

Because there are so many problems in the story and how the characters are conceived, passing judgement on the acting is difficult. Clarke soldiers on, trying to make the most of it, and trying to make it seem like her transformation is earned. Golding and Yeoh also do their best, while the rest are little more than window dressing.

I also want to take issue with the title. If the creatives behind the film weren’t so invested in an all too literal interpretation of the titular song’s opening line, then they should’ve named it Change of Heart. Alas, a missed opportunity.