Having been refreshed and reinvigorated by Noble House, I subjected myself to the latest Youtube takes on Agatha All Along (which would truly be insufferable without critical narration).
Obviously, this is already a creative dead-end, a zombie production whose own cast and crew have given up on it. That being said, it is remarkably similar to Amazon’s awful The Rings of Power and the late, unlamented single season of Star Wars The Acolyte.
Anyhow, as I watch this hot mess of a show shudder to its conclusion, I realized that – despite being different genres – all three productions made the same mistakes and were built around the same flawed concepts. Rather than simply bash them, I thought it would be instructive to compare it with a fairly recent film that made a massive box office by doing none of these things: Top Gun: Maverick.
Strengthening Brands vs Destroying Them
One of the reasons I’ve picked Top Gun: Maverick is that it is one of my worst misses ever, and I think it’s important for critics to own their mistakes. This film also works because it is a sequel that traded heavily on nostalgia, even to the point of using an almost identical title sequence and featuring frequent flashbacks of the original. What this did was immediately assure the audience that a film they love was going to be treated with respect rather than denigrated.
Contrast this with the wanton desecration of canon in The Rings of Power or The Acolyte. Sure, both productions threw a few crumbs to the audience by recycling dialog and even whole scenes from previous work, but it all rang hollow, particularly when none of the underlying themes were present. Agatha All Along is more of a niche product, but its very existence is proof that the former juggernaut that was the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now played-out garbage.
What’s a Leading Man?
The first obvious difference between Top Gun: Maverick and what we shall call the “Twisted Trio” is the existence of a leading man, in this case Tom Cruise. Call it patriarchy if you want, but even female-centric films need a strong male to play off of. The male-female relationship is etched into our DNA, and no amount of woke reprogramming can completely erase it. One of the reasons the aforementioned Twisted Trio flopped was that they positioned themselves in total opposition of this key element of storytelling.
Just to be clear, one can have an all-female cast and get an excellent production, but even then, men are still present in some form. The Women, for example, is all about women and there are no male roles, but there are definitely male characters.
Top Gun: Maverick obviously features a strong male lead and interesting supporting characters, which was essential to its success. Our Twisted Trio did not, and even ‘The Stranger’ in The Acolyte was basically a thirst trap and object of desire for the girlbosses who surrounded him. Agatha All Along has a whiny gay simp and The Rings of Power is entirely devoid of strong men – even Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor, Lieutenant of Morgoth is reduced to a crying pretty boy.
The vieweship figures speak for themselves: no one wants to watch this. People want strong women and strong men, people they can identify with and perhaps fantasize about. Top Gun: Maverick is packed with interesting, sympathetic characters designed to appeal to the widest possible audience. The Twisted Trio can only appeal to fringe weirdos.
Clear Plot, Meaningful Decisions
The storyline of Top Gun: Maverick is pretty basic. While we can chuckle at some of the plot twists, they represent new challenges imposed on characters rather than random decisions made by them. For example, it is highly plausible that aircraft on a dangerous mission will get shot down. It has also happened that shot-down aviators have stolen aircraft and flown to freedom. The larger point is that these episodes represent the characters being themselves. The same dedication and skill that they have shown throughout the film is still on display.
The Twisted Trio, by contrast, uses a whirlwind of heel-turns and flip-flops to drive their stories. As I noted before, not only are these productions unfaithful to the lore, they aren’t even faithful to the previous 30 seconds! The Acolyte and The Rings of Power both rely on bizarre withholding of information to push plots forward – quite literally writing a character who could solve a problem with a single word to inexplicably not say anything just to keep things moving.
There is also a tendency for their characters to make what seems to be an important decision that produces zero results. Things start out, follow a convoluted action sequence, and we’re right back where we started from.
Top Gun: Maverick is a model of story efficiency, conveying layers of detail and nuance through the judicious use of language, images, costume elements and subtle gestures. A single line of dialog, a single background photo is enough to convey what the Twisted Trio would need a hour of screen time to achieve.
No Stakes? No Drama
Perhaps the biggest difference between the Twisted Trio and better films like Top Gun: Maverick is whether there is something at stake. The Twisted Trio features countless escapes from certain death, and even the most gruesome sword strike or bone-crushing fall can he shaken off in mere minutes if the plot demands it. Galadriel is apparently impervious to being stabbed, drowned or falling a thousand feet and landing on a rock. Being impaled by a lightsaber is lethal until it’s not. Poison will wipe out Agatha’s coven, but only if they forget to take the antidote (or clumsily ignore a side character).
This, more than anything else, destroys any sense if importance in the stories. It makes what should be tense fight scenes tedious and crushingly boring.
Let us contrast this with Top Gun: Maverick, which pushes the envelope on lethality, but acknowledges that this line cannot be uncrossed and that death can come in unexpected ways. Its writers understood that death is not the end of a character’s existence. Reminiscence, longing, regret – these are powerful emotions that stay with us. Perhaps Disney and Amazon writers are so emotionally stunted and self-absorbed that they’ve lost the capacity for this kind of relationship. Another possibility is that the feelings are too profound for their feeble vocabularies to articulate.
But the writers of Top Gun: Maverick do not have these limitations. The death of a close friend, the legacy of his son – these are still matters that must be addressed.
Perhaps the most impressive and poignant moment of the film was the death of “Iceman.” This was completely unexpected, and the antithesis of how Disney handles aging heroes. Instead of showing the antagonist of the original film as old, lonely and broken, we see that he grew from his experiences and had a wonderful and successful career. Again, the filmmaking is incredibly efficient – all we need to see is the bright, orderly household, the smiling faces of his sprawling family, the citations on the wall and of course the revelation that old rivals are now close friends. At the same time, amidst all this success, death still comes and that it should strike such a good, successful man at the peak of his career adds to the sense of loss.
In addition to providing emotional depth and an uncomfortably strong dose of reality, the reality of Iceman’s condition also adds a further sense of finality to Maverick’s career, because his patron and guardian angel is gone.
None of the Twisted Trio can even approach the poignancy of this story element.
The Final Failure – Justifying Evil
One does not need to bother with our They Live spirit shades to notice that all of the Twisted Trio have set as their goal the rehabilitation of evil and the demonization of good. The protagonists in all three are motivated purely to seek power for its own sake. Oh, they’ll sometimes talk about freedom, or some vague “greater good,” but at no point do they diminish themselves or sacrifice for the sake of others. All of the relationships are transactional, exploitative and rely on lust rather than selfless love.
There is no trust in any of these shows. Characters often can barely finish making a promise before breaking it – and this is always shown in a positive light, especially if it’s a woman. No taboo is inviolate – the Jedi sleep with their apprentices, the characters in Amazon’s Middle Earth have more shipping than the English Channel and Agatha’s story seems to center around lesbians hate-screwing (hate scissoring?) each other.
Contrast this with the centrality of trust and loyalty in Top Gun: Maverick. We’ve already noted how rivals can become best friends, and this theme is carried forward into a new generation. At the same time, the main character – who has hitherto been feckless and unreliable – makes a life-changing decision to accept new responsibilities and obligations.
Disney shills speak of “gray areas” or “nuance,” but there is nothing nuanced about valorizing orcs or celebrating evil. Far from adding complexity, the Twisted Trio’s cast are simply erratic, morally compromised and – particularly in The Acolyte – abject cowards. Not a single one of them voices a call to truth, virtue, or courage. Instead, they are filled with doubt and self-loathing, lying and prevaricating.
So Why Are They Doing This to Us?
All entertainment involves some level of escapism. While watching a film, show or even a sporting event, the audience temporarily sets aside day-to-day worries and immerses themselves in something different. Hollywood actually knows how to do this properly, creating a place with attractive, interesting people with whom we can identify and perhaps aspire to be. For some reason, these stories have become quite rare, and are now replaced with miserable people doing miserable things to one another in a slow, plodding, random way.
Is it incompetence? Diversity hiring? Woke ideology? Demonic heresy? Settling cultural scores? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Hollywood was never a haven for angels, but it was once able to tolerate uplifting religions stories for the sake of stupendous profits. The cast and crew of Top Gun: Maverick were personally invested in the artistic and financial success of their venture. One gets the sense that the people responsible for the Twisted Troi are ultimately indifferent to the fate of the properties involved, which is why they treated them so carelessly.
The latter approach is ultimately unsustainable, and hopefully we’ll see a return to cinematic excellence.
*****
English (US) · 