Movie Trailer: The Conjuring (2013)

Movie Trailer: A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

Movie Trailer: Curse of Chucky (2013)

The Shyamalan Series: After Earth (2013)

When I was a young boy, I received for Christmas one year a book with the (now politically-incorrect…) title Adventures for Boys. 

After avidly reading the selections within that anthology, I devoured other, similar stories of outdoor adventure such as Jack London’s (1876 – 1916) The Call of the Wild (1903), and White Fang (1906). 

Those tales featured genuine simplicity -- or clarity -- of theme and morality, and to this day, I find that writing voice and style appealing.

Almost universally set in a harsh climate or natural terrain, these “adventures for boys” also concerned,  specifically, a character’s rite of passage, even if the character in question happens to be a canine.

M. Night Shyamalan’s much-maligned science fiction movie After Earth (2013) is an affair in an almost identical vein. It’s a boy-against nature, rite-of-passage movie, and one uncluttered by story fat or extraneous plotting and incident.

In fact, After Earth is a stream-lined, enjoyable adventure for boys and girls.  And likes its literary antecedents, the film even focuses on a very specific philosophy of life, and explores that (spiritual) way of knowing with a surfeit of clarity, even grace.  

And I'm not talking about Scientology, either.

In short, the film is more enjoyable, and worthwhile than I anticipated it would be, and much more so than most reviews have indicated.

After Earth is set in the distant future. Man has left Earth behind after polluting and ruining it.  

One thousand years after that exodus and re-settlement on another world, Nova Prime, man has established himself as an interstellar presence. 

Unfortunately, a competing alien race has bred monstrous predators called the Ursa who can smell our fear, and who are engineered to do nothing but hunt and murder humans.

On a routine space mission aboard a ship called the Hesper, a hero father, Cypher Raige (Will Smith) and his estranged, troubled teenage son, Kitai Rage (Jaden Smith) face danger when their ranger ship encounters an “asteroid storm.” 

The ship crashes on wild, untamed Earth, after cracking into pieces.  Alas, a rescue beacon is located on the tail section of the ship…located more than fifty miles away from the fore section’s crash site.

Side-lined by a severe leg injury, Cypher must send his inexperienced son into the wild alone to retrieve the rescue beacon and send a distress call to the authorities. 

Making matters more dangerous, the Hesper was carrying in its hold a deadly Ursa captive, a creature now unloosed on Earth and ready to resume hunting human survivors.

Cypher has mastered the art of “ghosting,” of suppressing his fear so that the Ursa can’t detect his presence.  But his son, Kitai, has no such experience…

In my introduction above, I wrote about After Earth’s central, fully-explored theme or philosophy. 

That philosophy of life -- short and sweet -- is mindfulness: the attentive awareness of the reality of things; of the happenings of the moment.  It’s a Buddhist belief, but also one that has been adopted in contemporary psychological counseling.

Mindfulness is considered one way of understanding life, and of vanquishing emotions that aren’t important, or serve no useful purpose.  And in After Earth, mindfulness is the gateway to adulthood and the key to survival in a frightening situation.  And we have seen in the Shyamalan series how purpose, and understanding of purpose -- clarity of one's destiny -- is a crucial leitmotif.

Specifically, Cypher delivers a lengthy monologue about the nature of fear in the film, and how, via the auspices of mindfulness, he was able to subtract fear from his mental gestalt.  Cypher describes danger as “real” but fear as nothing but a choice, an emotion that is “imaginary.”  

Hence, it can be controlled.

Cypher’s key to short-circuiting the un-real aspect of fear, as he describes it, is his recognition of his immediate, surrounding environment.  He describes a terrifying battle with an Ursa, and how fear left his body.  His eyes registered sunlight.  He describes the sight of his own blood.   But Cypher distanced himself from his emotions even as he tuned into his environment, so he could survive. In a crisis, Cypher suggests, we must deal with what surrounds us, instead of imaginary boogeymen that are unreal, and therefore unrelated to the life-and-death struggle at hand.

Mindfulness is the philosophy that guides and informs After Earth, but the mode of that philosophy’s transmission is of equal interest to the message itself.  This is a film about generations, and about fathers-and-sons, specifically.

Indeed, one might gaze upon the film in its entirety as a metaphor for fathering (or on a bigger scale, parenting in general).  Here a father must share with his child the way he sees the world, and then hope that this very knowledge will be useful when that boy must stand up and fight alone.  

Without being maudlin about it, the movie is about the wisdom we impart to our children. Other Shyamalan films have been, more or less, about the same idea.  Think of Morgan and Bo in Signs (2002), or Joseph in Unbreakable (2000).  Do we pass on our perceptual sets, or do we show them how to see the world in their own way?

And, of course, in this case, it’s absolute murder to see the boy stand up and fight alone, when it’s clear that Cypher wants nothing more than to fight Kitai’s battles for him. 

That’s an urge all parents feel and yet, in some important instances, must resist.  We send our children out into the world knowing that we can’t always be there for them, but that, hopefully, the things we taught them will resonate and prove meaningful. Those seeds will sprout in their memories, and they will survive and endure, and then -- one day -- pass on their version of that knowledge to the next generation.

The father-son relationship in After Earth is emotionally-moving because even a helpful philosophy such as mindfulness can be perceived, in certain situations, as negative.  

From the outside, it looks a lot like distance, or the lack of feeling...the lack of love. 

As Kitai's mother suggests, he is a sensitive, intuitive, feeling boy, one who needs a father, not a philosopher or commander.  He doesn't understand why his father is so remote.  There is a price to pay for mindfulness, for always living life in the "ghosting" mode, in the film's vernacular.

In terms of family issues, Cypher and Kitai both experienced a tragedy involving a family member, and Cypher doesn’t know how to handle his guilt.  So he deploys mindfulness in his family life too, but there is a cost to those around him.   It is not difficult or inappropriate to see Cypher as a character like the Reverend Graham Hess in Signs, someone who has suffered a tragedy and changed, withdrawing, essentially, from his children.

Cypher -- adhering to the stoicism of mindfulness -- can’t reach out emotionally, because he believes emotions don’t help in a crisis.  Cypher has been practicing mindfulness in his personal life for so long that he forgets what it means to really connect with someone. In other words, the very philosophy that keeps him alive is the thing that keeps him from truly connecting with his son.

Accordingly, After Earth reaches its zenith of emotion during its climax, when Cypher attempts to express his new-found regard and respect for Kitai in a kind of socially-acceptable but ordered and restrained gesture: a military salute.

Delightfully -- and outside of movie tradition -- Kitai doesn’t reciprocate.  

Instead, he hugs his father, an absolute assertion that sometimes emotionality, not mindfulness, is the key to life.   

Thus, like all children, Kitai has taken his father’s “lesson” and interpreted it in a way that is meaningful to him as an individual.  

That is the very rite-of-passage meted in the film: Kitai’s ability to understand his father’s choice, and then to make his own meaningful choice about whom he hopes to be.

The movie is about nothing more and nothing less than that kernel of an idea: one man’s way of seeing the world and his son coming to understand that “vision..." and divine his own belief system from it.

Sadly, you likely won’t read about any of this thematic substance in the majority of mainstream critical reviews.  Instead, the reviews for After Earth have been harsh, even savage.

That rampant negativity is a result, I suspect, of a perfect storm of bile and jealousy: the continuing backlash against Shyamalan (because he dared to trick us with The Sixth Sense [1999] and then minted a fortune), and the relatively fresh backlash against Will Smith and his son Jaden.

So if hating is the game, After Earth is a two-fer!

I should also state this fact: After Earth isn't a movie about Scientology.  I've read reviewers insist it's about Scientology because -- wait for it -- there's a volcano placed prominently in the action.  I suppose this means that Revenge of the Sith (a whole planet of volcanoes there!) is also about Scientology.  Who knew?

Perhaps more to the point, even if After Earth did feature principles of Scientology, would that fact immediately, a priori, render it a bad film?  Does the same rule apply to Catholicism or other branches of Christianity, or only to unpopular religions?

But I'm not in the business of defending movies, only watching them, interpreting them, and presenting my analysis.  Having seen and enjoyed the film, I conclude that it is a well-made, enjoyable “adventure for boys” (and girls too…) -- nothing more, nothing less --  with an authentic sense of humanity. It is a simple, straightforward "shipwreck" movie, and parts of the adventure reminded me of Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson.  The production design is original and compelling, and the location shooting transforms Earth into the most vividly dangerous of wildernesses.

We live now in a culture of noisy, hectic movie blockbusters, where event piles upon events, where there are feints and counter-feints, and where “surprises” and reversals come at the audience by the dozen (and often in 3-D to boot).  We leave the theater after such films not exhilarated and moved, but throttled.

Refreshingly, After Earth doesn’t care about throttling you, or layering on a multitude of high-intensity incidents.   Instead -- and much like The Call of the Wild or White Fang -- the film simply and directly vets its adventurous tale of extraordinary survival, and of a father and son discovering each other.

The key is that After Earth accomplishes those tasks with heart, and a considerable degree of humanity.  It's a shame people aren't looking at the movie with open eyes and open hearts, but bitterness instead.  It's more fun, I suppose, to fit the movie into another edition of the "M. Night Shyamalan-has-lost-it" narrative than to grapple with the ideas the movie actually presents.

Frankly, I think the critics could use a lesson in mindfulness.  

So you may love After Earth, or you may hate it, I guess.  But when you watch  the film, at least do this much: drop your expectations and biases, be in the moment, and judge the work for yourself, and on its own merits.

Tomorrow: Our final entry in The Shyamalan Series: The Visit (2015).

Movie Trailer: After Earth (2013)

Movie Trailer: Unaware (2013)

Movie Trailer: The Frankenstein Theory (2013)

Movie Trailer: Enemy (2013)

Movie Trailer: The Battery (2013)

Movie Trailer: American Mary (2013)

Movie Trailer: Last Days on Mars (2013)

Movie Trailer: Odd Thomas (2013)

Cult-Movie Review: Ender's Game (2013)

The film adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (2013) attracted some strong criticism last year around the time of its theatrical release, up to and including the threat of a boycott. 

The criticism was political in nature, and had everything to do with the book’s author and his personal history of making unfortunate statements. The criticism had very little to do with the nature or specifics of the movie, or apparently the Ender’s Game narrative itself. 

I don’t seek or desire to re-litigate the unfortunate matter here, but Ender’s Game is so good, and so valuable a science fiction epic that, if necessary, one might resort to the “separate the art from the artist” defense…at least if that helps fence-sitters give the film a chance.

That’s what I did, and I’m glad I threaded that particular needle.

In short, Ender’s Game is a science fiction spectacular that seems relevant right now, at this point in our history. By my tally, it is now the second big genre film (after Star Trek: Into Darkness [2012]) to attempt to exorcise America’s worst demons of the War on Terror Age.. 

Specifically, Ender’s Game concerns the idea that you don’t beat your enemy by lowering yourself to your enemy’s level or standards. 

On the contrary, you defeat your enemy -- and perhaps even turn him into an eventual ally -- by holding fast to the time-tested values you already hold dear.

You “win” by staying true to yourself.

Appropriately, Ender’s Game makes a difficult, cerebral, and worthwhile point: Even those who have been -- objectively -- wronged by another person or force shall be judged by history in part by their response to that wrong.   

To approximate the film’s stance, a poor response becomes a burden, an albatross, a “shame” that people will have to “bear,” perhaps “forever.”  Thus the film believes that even the most heinous wrong -- a surprise attack, for instance -- deserves a measured, thoughtful, proportional answer.

Otherwise, we risk becoming as bad (and lawless…) as those who attacked us in the first place.

Given the film’s clever and timely expression of this theme, Ender’s Game is strongly anti-war in tenor, and it expresses that viewpoint in quite a different style from another, equally powerful man-vs.-bugs space epic of the same bent: Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997).

I also noted in Ender’s Game some ideas that are very much like those dramatized in Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986).  Like that Oscar winner, Ender’s Game is also a movie about a boy soldier whose identity is apparently up for grabs, and thus two sides wage war over it.

One side is brutal and violent, and the other is compassionate and thoughtful. The boy, ultimately, must choose what kind of man he is going to be, and which spiritual “father” or “mother” he will follow.

At the heart of Ender’s Game is one simple question: do we follow the better angels of our nature during the bad times, or do we allow our worst instincts to carry the day…to our everlasting shame?

“We don’t really understand our enemy.”

Half-a-century ago, a race of alien insectoids called the Formix launched a surprise attack on Earth in an attempt to colonize our planet. 

The invaders were barely defeated, and only by the clever, unconventional tactics of a soldier named Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley).

Now, the Earth’s military-industrial complex is paranoid, and obsessed with forestalling another attack, despite the fact that the Formix have never returned. 

In particular, Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) ruthlessly trains children as soldiers at Battle School because they are “intuitive” and “decisive,” and therefore hold the key to another victory.  Graff is teamed with a psychologist named Gwen Anderson (Viola Davis), who polices him to make certain he doesn’t go too far in his sculpting of children into warriors.

One such new recruit is sensitive Andrew “Ender” Wiggin (Asa Butterworth). He is a third child, and both of his older siblings washed out at the same school. His older brother Peter (Jim Pinchak), a bully, failed because he was too violent. His sister, Valentine (Abigail Breslin) failed because she showed too much compassion.

Though Graff takes steps to isolate Ender and make the other trainees resent him, the intuitive, thoughtful boy soon charts his own path toward leadership, and eventually becomes the planet Earth’s best hope to defeat the Formix.

Soon, Graff is trained by Rackham himself on a former Formix colony world.  All Ender has to do to succeed now is play one final war scenario simulation along with his hand-picked team of misfits and outsiders…

“I still know nothing about my enemy.”

 In Ender’s Game’s first act, there are many visual and narrative signs that the beleaguered Earth has lapsed into a permanent culture of fear, militarism, and even fascism.  

For instance, Earth’s children are systematically indoctrinated into hatred for the Formix through many auspices including propaganda posters that read “We Remember. Never Again.” and “One World. One Peace.”

Yet, on a basic level, the children don’t remember. They weren’t even alive when the Formix attack occurred. They are expected to fight the war nonetheless.

Military cadets are also under surveillance at all times by their superiors -- a tell-tale sign of a totalitarian state -- courtesy of monitor implants on the back of their necks.

The reach of the military industrial complex is so great that it can even insert itself into family matters and personal decisions.  At one point, Graff tells Ender that the fleet “owns you.”

Similarly, Cadets are imbued, at an early age, with a sense of heroic purpose and destiny, a common factor in fascist societies. “It’s what I was born for, right?” Ender says of his destiny to totally annihilate the Formix. 

This too is what he has been conditioned to believe.

As the movie commenced I wondered if Ender’s Game would meaningfully address this pervasive culture of fear and militarism, and I began thinking of Starship Troopers.  That Verhoeven film utilized mock-propaganda “news reels” to satirize nationalism and imperialism, and a close reading of the film -- from the military uniforms to some of dialogue -- reveals that, in fact, that the human “heroes” in the film are not unlike the Nazis.

 To my delight, Ender’s Game criticizes the fascist world view, but in an all-together different way.  The tone here is not humorous, satirical or mocking, but simply earnest.  One gets the impression while watching the film that people have been afraid of another attack for so long that they don’t even realize how much freedom they have lost in the meantime.  It takes the non-sullied viewpoint of a child, essentially, to point it out.

At one point in the story, Ender notes that neither he nor the military really “understand” the enemy.  Because of this lack of understanding, the military will not allow itself to consider an important option.

Perhaps the Formix will not attack again at all.  Perhaps the war is over…forever.

But this is a message that the fearful defenders of Earth simply cannot hear.  “Their very existence is a threat” Graff insists.  Furthermore, he tries to put an idealistic spin on his pursuit of an enemy that has not attacked in half-a-century.  “The purpose of this war is to prevent all future wars,” he tells Ender.

Because of Earth’s rampant and irrational fear about another attack, reason can no longer gain traction in Graff’s mind.  Ender wonders why communication hasn’t been attempted with the aliens, why humans don’t attempt to “think” to the Formix, but he gets no meaningful answer.

When one thinks about it, if you know “nothing” of your enemy…then you don’t even know for sure if your enemy is still an enemy at all. 

Ultimately, Ender is tricked by Graff and the military into committing genocide, the total and complete annihilation of a race of sentient beings.  When he protests about his mistreatment and the mass murder of the Formix, he is told: “We won. That’s all that matters.” 

And at this point, the movie reaches its key point.  “The way we win matters,” Ender replies.

Those are words that we didn’t hear enough in the decade of Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, and the Patriot Act, I’m afraid. 

Ender can so readily understand this notion, perhaps, because he is always being torn between two sides, and thus must navigate between them.  In the film, he actually has two sets of role-models, one adult, and one child, and to find his own way, he must not merely “win” but win in a fashion that brings him the end he desires, and which maintains his family.

His two spiritual “parents” of the adult mode are Graff and Anderson. 

Graff doesn’t care about feelings or friendship, or cooperation.  He just cares about the competition, about carrying the day.  Graff likes Ender because he knows Ender thinks tactically.  And in this case, thinking tactically means erasing a future threat…even if it has not yet materialized as a real threat. 

This is an appealing viewpoint to Ender because he has been bullied at school and also at home.  He doesn’t want to live in fear of another incident, and to end that fear, he has to end not the threat, but the possibility of a threat.

Yet as we see in the film’s conclusion, when you eliminate a possible threat you also, finally, eliminate a possible ally.

And really, can a human being ever kill an amorphous fear that is based on ignorance or a lack of information?

By pointed contrast, Anderson worries about Ender’s mental health, and wants him to be healthy, the brand of leader with the moral authority and stability to lead wisely.  Anderson’s computer game tests Ender, but also shows him that life is not as easy as choosing between Option A and Option B.  Sometimes, a third option must be “imagined,” and imagination can only stem from empathy, from knowing your enemy.

This dynamic is echoed very strongly in Ender’s own family. His brother Peter is the Graff surrogate, one who acts as though might makes right.  His sister, Valentine, is empathetic and compassionate.

In both cases, Ender is in the middle, and therefore forced to find a “third way” that takes into account both influences.

In Platoon, a soldier in Vietnam named Chris Taylor, played by Charlie Sheen, also had to choose a path between two philosophies. He had to choose between spiritual fathers in the form of Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) and Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe). 

They too held diametrically opposed views about life and death, and the way in which to prosecute a war.  Ender’s plight echoes Taylor’s because the one thing no child ever wants to do is let down or otherwise disappoint a parent.  Ender wants to do the right thing, but he also wants to please Graff. 

Ultimately, however, he finds that he outgrows Graff’s narrow (and implacably hostile…) world view, and dedicates his life to a cause Graff could never accept: helping the enemy re-establish itself.

Beyond its leitmotif that “the way we win matters,” I appreciate that Ender’s Game also examines, head on the way that our culture measures “strength,” particularly as it applies to men, and boys.

Graff seems to think that to be strong, one can’t have friends….only competitors.  He also believes that to be strong, one mustn’t “feel” or “empathize” with the enemy. 

Yet Ender’s very strength rests in his ability to make friends and convert enemies, and in his desire to understand and empathize with those he opposes.  He becomes a leader not by taunting or bullying others (like Peter or Squad Leader Bonzo do), but by welcoming other “misfits” into the fold.   The compassion that Graff derides is actually the key to Ender’s success.

Ender’s Game thus stresses the idea that rigid “certainty” is not necessarily a sign of strength…but a moral and personal failing.  Ender constantly seeks to adapt to new situations, and learn new information so he can make the right decision. There is nothing closed-off, locked-down or certain about him.  Accordingly, all options remain open to him.  Too often in the world today, these character qualities are considered weaknesses. But in reality, changing your mind is not a sign of weakness, but a symptom of the adaptability required to navigate new challenges, or incorporate new data into one’s world view.

In Hollywood, as in Battle Command School, “the pressure to win is intense,” and it appears that Ender’s Game was only a modest success at the box office.  This probably means no further films are forthcoming in the franchise.  Although that news is disappointing, Ender’s Game resolutely delivers all the points its makers hoped to make. It does so with some terrific special effects, and with remarkable performances, particularly from Harrison Ford and Asa Butterworth.

So the box office might be “MISSION FAIL,” but in terms of art, Ender’s Game provides much food for thought, and t even enunciates a point-of-view relevant to the Zeitgeist.

Movie Trailer: Ender's Game (2013)

Movie Trailer: Skinwalker Ranch (2013)

Movie Trailer: Contracted (2013)

Cult-Movie Review: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

My gravest concern with Catching Fire (2013) is that it never quite does. 

This sequel to 2012’s The Hunger Games takes ninety lugubrious -- if earnest -- minutes to get to the film’s central action and when it does so the action is a straight-up regurgitation of the previous film’s arena game show environs, only this time with no clear winner…only losers. 

What’s more, the involvement of the central character, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), in the new “Quarter Quell” games makes no brand of sense whatsoever, especially given the film’s clever, even knowing dialogue about Everdeen’s value/threat to President Snow’s (Donald Sutherland) regime.

In other words, if President Snow were any sort of fearsome and intelligent leader at all, he would follow the sage advice of his new game designer, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and destroy Katniss outside the games, via the auspices of propaganda.

As Plutarch deviously suggests, Snow could transform this young woman of the woods and dirt into a celebrity fairy princess of sorts, thus negating her “common folks” credibility, and simultaneously subtracting her worth in the rebellion’s eyes.

Of course, Snow doesn’t do that, because this (blockbuster) film must, in the end find a way to get the audience -- and Katniss -- back to the Hunger Games arena…no matter what. 

Yet to make that eventuality occur, you can practically hear the narrative cogs and wheels groaning under the strain.

In terms of the original The Hunger Games, I’ll re-post my original review later today. But in broad strokes, I felt the first film’s biggest strength and biggest weakness simultaneously involved casting.

Jennifer Lawrence was (and remains…) a strong, compelling central figure as Katniss.

But on the other hand, all the teens who served as Tributes in the 74^th annual games had so much muscle mass that it was difficult to buy into the reality that they arose and grew-up in an era of scarcity and starvation. The narrative told us they did so, but the visuals revealed that these kids grew up in close proximity to the local gym.

To Catching Fire’s credit, it doesn’t make the same mistake. Lawrence remains a power-house performer who galvanizes attention and projects levels of complexity, and the regurgitation of the games scenario in the last act features folks of all ages, shapes and sizes, and so doesn’t look like a casting audition at the CW gone violently wrong.

Last week, I wrote about Veronica Mars (2014) and about how the film industry could use more films featuring a strong female lead character. Katniss clearly fits that bill well, and so I would definitely recommend the sequel on that basis.

In Lawrence’s hands, Katniss is never less than intriguing to watch. Like Veronica, Katniss is not a princess, and she doesn’t have a pony. In fact, Katniss must always be the very antithesis of a princess in her life. To make her a princess would be to destroy her, and that’s a message I can get readily behind.

But despite the presence of Lawrence in her career-making role, the saga has yet to provide the actress a coherent script that makes full use of her abilities.

Still, I find it admirable that in its own small way, Catching Fire attempts to forge a social critique about celebrity culture, and its inherent corruptness or emptiness. The film would have been even stronger if  it had pursued those points more assiduously.

“I don’t want to kill you. I want us to be friends.”

A year after the 74^th  Hunger Games, victor Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) still suffers from survivor’s guilt. She also feels ambivalent about choosing between the two men in her life, agreeable Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and alpha male Gale (Liam Hemsworth),

But President Snow (Sutherland) presents Katniss with graver concerns. After Katniss’s show of defiance and independence in the games, the districts are threatening to rise up against the totalitarian ruler.  Snow demands that Katniss serve his agenda, lest it become necessary to wage war against her home, District 12.

To save lives, Katniss agrees to Snow’s terms, and decides to marry Peeta as a show of her obedience and loyalty.

But when Gale is injured by Snow’s shock-troopers Katniss intervenes, and reveals her true colors. An angry President Snow promptly orders up a diabolical twist in the long-standing Hunger Games, this time known as “The Quarter Quells.” 

This year, tribunes shall be selected from among former victors.

In short order, Peeta and Katniss are back in the games fighting for their lives and their freedom.

They must go through training again, find new allies, and prepare themselves for the worst.

On the day of the games, they are dropped into the arena, now in a tropical setting, and must contend with fierce baboons, spinning island rocks, and poison gas…

People are looking at you, Katniss. You've given them an opportunity."

There’s a great idea lurking in Catching Fire, and it often attempts to come to the forefront. Basically, that idea concerns the emptiness of celebrity culture. For instance, at one point, Katniss is told that she is famous, and she replies, tersely, “Famous for what? Killing people?”

In a celebrity culture, it doesn’t matter why one is famous, only the fact of fame itself.

The Kardasshians, Paris Hilton, Honey Boo-Boo, the Duck Dynasty family and (the recently-deceased) fellow with the 132 pound scrotum all prove this point rather nicely. There is no compelling reason for them to be famous since they all seem absent of talent of any kind. 

But these folks are famous nonetheless. 

For some reason, our society wants us to look at them, and keep looking.

But why? 

What is their “value” to the corporate-owned media?

And to us as viewers or consumers of that media?

Catching Fire attempts to tackle this issue, and one scene in particular really does well with the concept.  In fact, the film momentarily teeters on brilliance when Plutarch outlines his scheme to destroy Katniss.

He tells Snow not to kill the famous icon, Katniss, but rather turn the State’s camera to her constantly, like a 24-hour reality show.

Thus the people will see her trying on wedding gowns, attending parties and so forth. Thus the message (interspersed with footage of uprisings being quelled…) will be that she is one of the fancy ones; one of the elite. She will be seen as compromised, co-opted.

To actually see Plutarch’s plan enacted would have made for a great genre film, I suspect, and would have presented Katniss with a new and fascinating set of challenges.  She’s already conquered the bow -- as demonstrated in a vivid training sequence involving attacking holograms -- but what about the adoring press?

What would she do if a mountain of wealth were thrown at her?

If President Snow were to shower District 12 with wealth?

It would have been fascinating to see Katniss tempted by wealth and fame, and have to fight back against the power of the capitol in a material sense.

In this case, the “hunger” game would have been about the “hunger” for material things, for the safety and security that comes from wealth.  She says she isn't interested in jewels or wealth in the film...but has she ever been faced with them? Awash in them?

Would Katniss have been able to continue her campaign of resistance if Snow got Prim into the best school in the capitol?

Alas Catching Fire doesn’t think of such things. In no time at all, Snow drops Plutarch’s clever plan, and instead decides to send Katniss back to the arena for the Quarter Quells.

This is not very smart.

After all, Katniss achieved her fame in that domain. She survived the games, and become the symbol of the resistance through her experience on national television, and in the arena.

Knowing that, why put her in the exact same position again? Where she could again influence millions of people through her behavior?

Talk about making the same mistake twice…

Snow has nothing to gain by throwing Katniss to the lions this time around, and especially since his people could have the same response to her feats. 

Had he been thinking more clearly and effectively, Snow would have escorted Katniss’s family out of District 12 and moved them into a castle in the Capitol. 

He would have asked Katniss for her thoughts about how he could make the people happy. He would have truly made her “a friend,” in the eyes of the people, negating her power as a symbol of the peoples’ struggle.

Also, it’s baffling why Plutarch -- secretly Katniss’s ally --would propose the whole “make her a celebrity” strategy, given that it makes so much sense and seems so efficient. It’s better to rob Katniss of her currency as a symbol, than to make her a martyr, but why would someone on her side suggest something so diabolical?

Because he knows Snow is an idiot and won’t listen to any counsel but his own?

No, there’s another reason, and it is called Screenwriting 101.  Virtually every blockbuster sequel – book or film -- must apparently be obligated to re-stage “popular” moments from the first “chapter” of the saga.  

So we get an underwhelming return to the arena in Catching Fire that makes no sense at all. 

What’s worse is that after we have waited so long to get back to the arena, the game itself feels half-hearted.  We get several deaths, but no conclusion, and no victor at the end.  This denouement reveals what I already suspected: the games are, essentially, a time waster in the movie.

To put this matter another way, Catching Fire takes the better part of ninety minutes to get us right back to where we started in The Hunger Games, and then, instead of giving us a victory or defeat for Katniss, just whisks her away from the arena and ends the movie. 

Why bother with telling us the rules of the new game, or making us weigh the allegiance of new allies and enemies if the games are going to simply end without closure or resolution?

Why not instead have made the book and the movie about Katniss legitimately joining the resistance movement?  Seeing her do that would have felt more like a step-forward and not merely a regurgitation of scenes we’ve already seen before.

Another problem with Catching Fire is that the writers don’t always trust audiences to get what they are “saying” about the characters.  How many scenes do we need of Effie (Elizabeth Banks) crying and apologizing to Katniss, for example? 

We get the point from one short scene that she has had her faith in the system shattered, and that through “knowing” Katniss, Effie has seen the degeneracy of both the games and the president.

But the movie shows us this scene once, and then it shows it to us again, just in case we didn’t get it.

In a movie that is two-hours and thirty-four minutes, it would be nice to have those two minutes back. Some judicious editing seems to be in order.

Catching Fire is very lucky indeed to have Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role, revealing and exploring many sides of an intriguing character. It’s rewarding to watch Katniss no matter what she’s doing, because she is an independent, fiercely loyal person.

“You’re a strangely dislikable person,” a character notes at one point, of the franchise’s hero.

 Isn’t that wonderful?

That description is true only in the sense that Katniss does nothing to please those around her. Instead, she does only the things that she must do to stay alive, and to preserve her family and her district. She isn’t going to make nice about that fact, either.

Katniss’s best scene in the film occurs, in my opinion, when she applies logic to a statement made by Snow about the general instability of his administration. Her remark isn’t a quip or a wisecrack so much as an arrow straight through the heart, cutting right to the point. 

Quite simply, I can’t find any grounds to quibble with the presentation here of Katniss, or Lawrence’s acting. I hope, indeed, that young people are widely attracted to Katniss Everdeen as a role model because she is an engaged, intelligent, resourceful person. 

Both Katniss and Lawrence are too good for such a middling, confused, long-winded, and incoherent script. The movie doesn’t do either of them justice.

Lastly, I am very curious about the next part of the saga, Mockingjay, simply because it should have no obligation to return to the Hunger Games and their milieu.

Instead -- like the book -- it should be able to focus on uprising, rebellion, and the idea that no matter what regime is in power things have a way of staying exactly the same. 

That’s the kind of narrative innovation this sequel needed, a leap away from the cruel dystopian game -- been there, done that -- and a step closer to a more serious consideration of the way that those in power are corrupted by it. 

Because it fails to really innovate in any significant way -- even when Plutarch gives us the blueprint to do precisely that -- Catching Fire is barely Treading Water.