Now for something topical! A fifteen-year-old review of Rango

 I originally wrote this review for Geek Speak in 2011. I tried to be good about not double posting if I was writing somewhere else. I didn't want to steal their traffic. (I'd typically just post a link.)  However, Geek Speak has long since folded, so I figured I might as well post this here. If you were wondering what I thought of Rango fifteen years ago, wonder no more! 

Rango

Fifteen minutes could save you 15% on your car insurance

I was pleased to be the one to review Rango because it got me a night at the movies with my kid  (My wife was pleased as well because it got her a night to herself. Everybody wins on movie night!)

We went to our local theater and got there in time for the coming attractions. Coming soon to a theater near you:

• Born to be Wild: Cute baby Animals! In 3-D!
• Puss in Boots- The length of the Shrek series is out of proportion with my interest in it. In 3-D!
• Kung Fu Panda 2: The Dreamsworks Face! In 3-D!
• Smurfs: My childhood dies! In 3-D!

And then there was Rango. We open on an owl mariachi band, which is, by definition, awesome. I firmly believe that there does not exist a movie that cannot be improved by the presence of an owl mariachi band.

We then cut to our nameless chameleon, hamming it up in a one-man play with some toys while in a car with a human family. But there is a near accident and the chameleon and his terrarium are thrown from the family car. He briefly winds up on the windshield of a car driven by someone who looks an awful lot like Hunter S. Thompson, which was an awesome cameo, because Depp played Thompson in the film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I really like the design on Rango. I had never owned a chameleons and I had to ask myself do they really look that freaky? The internet says yes!

Look at those bug eyes, man!

He meets an Armadillo with the voice of an octopus (Specifically "Doctor" Octopus, Alfred Molina) a combination certain to give taxonomists fits for years to come and is told to seek the Spirit of the West.

He has a surreal series of dreams overnight involving his experiences and then runs into Beans. I didn't know what kind of animal she was supposed to be while watching the movie but the promotional materials assure me that she's a desert iguana.  Whatever she is, she needs to cut back on the sodium.

Our still nameless Chameleon enters the town of Dirt, where he decides that nobody knows him here, he can reinvent himself, and he does, taking on the identity of the hard-drinking, tough-talking, straight-shooting Rango with chameleon-like ease.

Through a series of misadventures, Rango winds up defending Dirt against the hawk that haunts the town. I thought this was a really well done sequence, with the filmmakers doing an excellent job of depicting the difference in scale between the tiny Rango and the much larger bird. There is also an amusing bit where Rango hides inside a vending machine, which makes an ideal fortress...until the hawk finds a quarter and drops it in a slot. Rango can't bring himself to shoot the hawk, so he aims at random, and kills the hawk when his ricocheting bullet drops a water tower on top of it. For his, uh, heroism, he's promoted to Sheriff by the evil Mayor (Ned Beatty).

And boy, you'd think that someone as infatuated with the concept of theater as Rango would recognize a villain when he sees one. It's a shame that tortoises can't grow a mustache, because twirling it would have given him something to do with his hands. And I guess that's kind of an itty bitty spoiler, which I try to avoid in my reviews, but the mayor was obviously the villain from the start. The big surprise would have been if the mayor were anything but the villain.

We follow Rango the sheriff around for a while, and he has a charming goofy enthusiasm for the job matched only by his utter incompetence at it. Eventually the water bank is robbed, leaving the impoverished town even more parched. Rango organizes a posse and they find the robbers. There follows an ambush, a reversal, a lengthy chase scene and a couple chords of the Ride of the Valkyries on a banjo, which is just neat! The action sequence was characteristic of those in the movie, very quick moving but also very easy to follow. I wish more live action movies would film action sequences this tight.

They arrest the bank robbers and take them in, though they protest that the water was already gone by the time they found the bottle. Nobody's sure what's going on (hint: the mayor is what's going on), but they take the water thieves back to town.

Rango confronts Mayor McEvil about his evil, but doesn't have any proof. The mayor decides to call in Rattlesnake Jake to rid him of this meddlesome sheriff.

Jake slithers into town and he's downright terrifying, just endless miles of coiled menace, blood-red eyes, and some kind of gatling gun for a rattle. He's voiced by Bill Nighy, cementing the impression of evil incarnate. He scared my four-year-old child He scared me!

He sees Rango for the fraud he is and intimidates him into admitting the whole masquerade and then runs him out of town.  Rango finally gets to the other side of the road, where he meets Roland Deschain, Clint Eastwood, the Spirit of the West in a scene that was quite a bit too cutesy and self-referential for my tastes. (Specifically, the idea of the Man with No Name riding around in a golf cart full of Oscars)

No-Name tells Rango that he can't just walk out of his own story, and this inspires Rango to make things right. TV Tropes calls it "becoming the mask". You probably know the concept, if perhaps not the name, where the character who was trying to pull off a con finds redemption by embracing the ideals of the identity he was faking.

The problem is resolved about like you'd expect. Rango rides back into town, there is a confrontation, Mayor McEvil is evil and he dies in such a way that doesn't require Rango to compromise his values.

The movie got made because Gore Verbinski wanted to do a "small film" between films #212 and #213 in the Pirates of the Caribbean series and Johnny Depp had 20 days to kill. Overall? It's not bad. Johnny Depp can usually be relied upon to give a quality performance, and whatever problems the film has, it's not with his performance. It's a somewhat above average CG adventure story.  It never reaches the heights of Up! or becomes as incredible as the Incredibles, but it's a cute little flick for kids and for adults who don't mind hearing paraphrased Rango quotes for the next six weeks from their kids.

A Wind in the Door

I liked Stranger things season one, though looking back ten years later you could see the rot that would take root.

I felt that each season was worse than the last and I was annoyed when they adopted Vecna, who was just an iconic D&D villain.

But I am really honestly angry that they co-opted A Wrinkle in Time too.

Looking back, Madeleine L'Engle really was a huge influence on me. Forever Fallen has a nod to A Wrinkle in Time (“And yet often it is the weak things of the world that confound the mighty") and one of my stories from the Lovecraftzinene of my stories from the Lovecraftzine features The Echthros Club. Most specifically, her views on Christianity inform how I'm writing one character in my current project. ("All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.)

Recent events had caused me to think about A Wind in the Door, the direct sequel to Wrinkle, and I'll get to them at the end of this post, because the context that surrounds them has spoilers for the climax. In fact, this whole post has a bunch of spoilers, so if you haven't read A Wind in the Door, you've been warned. 

I'll sometimes say that the first Star Wars movie is the only one that doesn't take place in the Star Wars universe. It has that early installment weirdness and the conventions hadn't yet become codified. The same is kind of true for A Wrinkle in Time. It's one of the greatest children's books ever written, but it doesn't quite fit in with the other four in the series.

A Wind in the Door asks the question, "What if an angel was a drive of dragons  and also Frasier Crane?"

"I'm listening."

Okay, maybe that's a little harsh on Proginoskes. He's slightly snobby at first, but is mostly a supporting albeit alien presence. I was probably thinking of Sporos, who is super-douchey for a lot of the book.

At one point he's like, “All I want to do,” he was murmuring to himself, “is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars . . .” and I'm like, "Bro, I know that feeling."

But I'm getting ahead of things. This book takes place shortly after the first. Charles Wallace is now enrolled in kindergarten and having significant trouble adjusting because, well... 

Meg is off at high school this year and can't help him, though she's very concerned about his welfare, even to the point of slipping off her bus and sneaking into the elementary school to confront the principal Mister Jenkins, with whom she had had her own run-ins. 

She gets home from school, and Charles Wallace tells her about dragons in the twins' vegetable garden. She delays responding by making herself a liverwurst and cream cheese sandwich. The Murrays and their liverwurst sandwiches! Her mom ate one in the first book. I don't know if they were more common 50 years ago, or if this was a favorite of L'Engle who brought it into her own writing or what. All I know is that I won't be buying the Wrinkle in Time cookbook.

So they go out to look and find some weird feathers and Charles Wallace mentions that there may be something wrong with his mitochondria (The powerhouse of the cell) and that's making him sick. I think the farandola/mitochondria parts are the weakest parts of the book, tbh. L'Engle wrote that she  knew that Proginoskes and the Three Mister Jenkins would be part of the story, but had trouble developing it beyond that until a physician friend (the inspiration for Doctor Louise, I'm certain) gave her some articles about mitochondria.

On one hand, I like it when authors do this. It's one of the things I really enjoy about Roger Zelazny's writing. "Hey, I'm really excited about learning this thing and I want to share it with you through this story!" (And, in the purest sense, is what my writing here is all about, come to think of it.) On the other, since it was a later addition to the story, the mitochondria stuff feels less fully developed than those previously mentioned elements. 

Anyway, the siblings go out again and meet Proginoskes and his Teacher Blajeny. Proginoskes is a cherubim, all eyes and wings.

Charles Wallace’s drive of dragons was a single creature, although Meg was not at all surprised that Charles Wallace had confused this fierce, wild being with dragons. She had the feeling that she never saw all of it at once, and which of all the eyes could she meet? merry eyes, wise eyes, ferocious eyes, kitten eyes, dragon eyes, opening and closing, looking at her, looking at Charles Wallace and Calvin and the strange tall man. And wings, wings in constant motion, covering and uncovering the eyes. When the wings were spread out they had a span of at least ten feet, and when they were all folded in, the creature resembled a misty, feathery sphere. Little spurts of flame and smoke spouted up between the wings; it could certainly start a grass fire if it weren’t careful. Meg did not wonder that Charles Wallace had not approached it.

Blajeny informs them that they will have to pass three trials. The first is to identify the Echthroi Mister Jenkins. You see, two of them have taken his form, and Meg has to identify the real one. 

The Echthroi are the source of all that is evil in the universe. Proginoskes says humans would consider them fallen angels. He is a Namer, recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of entities by recognizing the beauty of their truest, most perfect self, and the Echthroi are Un-Namers, who would make everything into nothing, "Sky tearers. Light snuffers. Planet darkeners. The dragons. The worms. Those who hate."

I like this scene a lot. Meg watches and listens. One Mister Jenkins in compassionate, promising Charles Wallace the care and protection he needs to thrive. Another is strong  and decisive. The third is scared and confused and wants to know when this whole thing is  going to be over.  That, of course is the real one.

Meg remembers a story from Calvin, which allows her to love Mr. Jenkins enough to Name him.

“When I started seventh grade and went over to Regional, my mother ought me some shoes from a thrift shop. They cost her a dollar which was more than she could spare, and they were women’s Oxford’s, the kind of black laced shoes old women wear, and at least three sizes too small for me. When I saw them, I cried, and then my mother cried. And my pop beat me. So I got a saw and hacked off the heels, and cut the toes out so I could am my feet in, and went to school. The kids knew me to well to make remarks in my presence, but I could guess what they were sniggering behind my back. After a few days Mr. Jenkins called me into his office and said he’d noticed I’d outgrown my shoes, and he just happened to have an extra pair that he thought would fit me. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to make them look used, as though he hadn’t gone out and bought them for me…I’ll never forget that he gave me the first decent pair of shoes ever had."

I just love that story of decency. He's a good character. After Meg Names him, he joins them on their journey, even though it would have been easier to return to his "safe life as a failure." 

As an aside, I think I'd be annoyed at Meg if I had to deal with her every day. Look, I love that character, but she must be exhausting. She's impatient and hot-headed, in need of constant reassurance and her breath probably smells like liverwurst, but she's wonderful because of it and no less deserving of love. And the same is true of Mr. Jenkins. He's an adult, he's had to compromise, and he's compromised when he should have stood firm. He feels that he's too old for the world he finds himself in, but he perseveres. 

They shrink down to visit one of Charles Wallace's mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell) and the second test is to convince Sporos, a farandola, to put aside childish things and mature. 

Sporos is a fucking dickhead. He almost throws in with the Echthroi, but they convince him to Deepen at the last possible moment. Also, the Echthroi are still using Mr Jenkins' form to walk around and be evil, sometimes in a giant-size and it must be a sobering experience for him.

He rescues Meg, but leaves himself vulnerable to possession by the Echthroi. The third task is to save him, which is achieved when all of those assembled use their own light to fill in the emptiness of the Echthroi.

Cold.

Cold beyond snow and ice and falling mercury.

Cold beyond the absolute zero of outer space.

Cold pulverizing her into nothingness.

Cold and pain.

She struggled.

You are not to X me, Echthroi. I fill you.

Cold.

Darkness.

Emptiness.

Nothing.

Naught.

Nought.

Echth

X

Then

Prognoskes.

A great cry. A tempest of wind. A lightning flash of fire across the cold, breaking, burning the cold and pain.

Prognoskes Xing.

Wings. All the wings. Stretched to their fullest span.

Eyes. All the eyes opening and closing, opening, dimming—

Oh, no—

Going out—

No—

Flame. Smoke. Feathers flying. Prognoskes flinging his great cherubic self into the void of the Echthroi who were Xing Mr. Jenkins and Calvin and Meg—

and Charles Wallace.

Wings and flame and wind, a great howling of all the hurricanes in the world meeting and battling—

And that brings me to my point way at the beginning of this post. I was thinking about the series with the dissolution of the corporation for public broadcasting. 

Proginoskes chooses to erase himself from existence rather than allow the Echthroi to do it to him. And CPB said they did pretty much the same thing, dissolving the organization entirely rather than allow it to be suborned

A Wind in the Door is not a story about a big bad you punch harder. It is about Naming instead of Un-Naming, about filling emptiness rather than conquering it, about choosing to spend yourself so that something fragile can continue to exist. Proginoskes does not win. He refuses corruption by opting out of being usable at all. That is a theological, moral, and civic idea, and it is vanishingly rare in modern genre work.

So when I look at CPB choosing dissolution over capture, I do not see cowardice or defeat. I see something very old and very unfashionable. A refusal to become an instrument of negation. A choice to leave the door open, even if the wind that comes through it is loss. L’Engle understood that some things can only be defended by being given away, and some evils cannot be beaten, only denied purchase.

"What, nephew", said the king,

"is the wind in that door?"

Roger Zelazny Book Review: He That Moves

Hey, been a while since I've done one of these! 

I recently needed to drive down to Florida to help someone out and I flew home after it was done. I'm glad I could help, but that drive is not an experience I'd want to repeat. Shades of Damnation Alley.

I traveled light. Carried everything I needed in one backpack. Among those essentials was my copy of Volume 3 of the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: This Mortal Mountain. I read some stories for the first time in years and others for the first time ever.

I don't think I had read He That Moves previously.  It is not, as the title may suggest, a companion piece to He Who Shapes, but rather something else entirely.

I think I would have remembered it. It's everything I love about Zelazny's writing. According to the Speculative Fiction Database, the Collected Story represents the first time it was published since its debut in 1968, so it's unlikely that I would have encountered it elsewhere and if I missed it during my initial readthrough, as it now seems I must have, then this is indeed my first time encountering it.

I'm delighted to have read it within the Collected Stories, because the endnotes serve to provide some much needed context and background. I love it because it's classic Zelazny, mythic! Literate! One of the introductions to the volume notes that Zelazny was one of those writers who made you feel smart for understanding his allusions and that's on full display here. However, had I encountered it as a young teen, the age where I first started reading him, I feel I might have found it frustratingly opaque in parts. I doubt that I would have identified Eric Weiss as Harry Houdini, though I would have felt clever for recognizing Sappho and Agamemnon. Perhaps that's why it had remained unpublished for so long. If you're unfamiliar with the inscription on Shakespeare's tomb,

Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare,

To dig the dust enclosed here. 

Blessed be the man that spares these stones,

And cursed be he that moves my bones.

then you'll likely have the nagging sensation that you're missing something vital. 

It's difficult to explain succinctly and I'm somewhat loathe to give too much away. It seems to hardly exist at all online, and I'm reluctant to spoil the chance for someone to discover a new-to-them Zelazny story so long after his passing. So instead, I'll touch on its origins. It was another story written to match the cover art, a la Angel, Dark Angel, which endlessly fascinates me. Given a million years to write, I would have never gotten from there to here.

Science Fiction’s bold vision of the future where everyone lives inside a lava lamp

I like it a lot. I love living in a world where this exists. I particularly enjoyed the final line: Eric Weiss turned away from her strange, sad eyes, prisoner once more in the barless cage of himself.

That's your reading assignment, everyone. Find your copy of This Mortal Mountain and treat yourself to this story!

I'm back! (Redux)

Although I'm back, Google has been slow to reindex the 1100 pages in the blog, which is kind of disappointing. You can find it with a direct link, but search engines don't yet have it. This was a silly distraction, but it represents fifteen years of my life. I like sharing what I've made with other people who might appreciate it (Where there had been darkness, I had hung my words...) and I hope it gets corrected sooner rather than later.

I'm back!

I briefly took the blog private because I was involved in running for local office and it got really ugly really quick. I had people selectively quoting movie reviews I wrote more than 25 years in an effort to smear me.  So I figured that this would be one less point of vulnerability.

But now I'm back! And I can get back to the business of bimonthly Zelazny posting.