#I hated how the future was shown at the end of interstellar though that was stressful…

[peteytheparrot]

Woke up with hatered in my heart for Meet The Robinsons, always fucking hated that movie as a child as the time travel stressed me out sm due to how the future was handled, I hated futuristic stuff that looks like that. I still do tbh ☠️ and time travel movies have always stressed me out because I don’t like people changing the past!! Stop! Leave it aloneeeee! Also this probably explains my love for old timey shit. It’s just better okay. Futuristic shit looks like ASS!!!!

[actualbird]

I got distracted reading 4-04 and 4-05 i totally forgot the actual thing i was supposed to ask you today, what are your thoughts on the kinds of shows the nxx team wouldve watched as kids growing up. MC and Luke have apparently watched animes and even dressed up as characters but i have this need to know the finer details. LIKE. WHAT DID YOU WATCH SPECIFICALLY?? And i remembered you said luke was the one who probably understood most of the terms zangr was saying so like?? Luke do you like these kinds of things?? -Marsh

MARSH, thank you so much for this ask and for the SPECIFIC WORDING "watched as kids growing up." because that makes me have to go back in time and thusly uncovering by far my favorite yet most under-utilized and never-brought-up detail of tears of themis:

the story of this game takes place in the year 2030

DO U HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FUNNIER THIS MAKES SHIT???? AND ALSO HOW MUCH MORE SENSE STUFF MAKES??? let me explain myself by going thru all the boys one by one

luke pearce

YEAH HE SAID HE AND MC WERE RLLY INTO ANIME AS KIDS. luke pearce who is 24 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2018-2021. this period of time, anime started getting more and more accessible, most notably getting on netflix and stuff like this. so like all the anime on netflix rn? yeah luke's watched them.

though because i kin luke, imma say that his fave is fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood. ive got no characterization proof for this, i just want to give him this honor

additionally, luke is a HUUUUGE fan of the original Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle novels (ACD Sherlock) and i think this would have pushed him to watch like, just every popular sherlock media adaptation there is. he personally liked Elementary better than BBC Sherlock. he generally just gravitates to the adaptations that dont forget about the heart of all of the characters.

also also also, luke likes action movies ranging from "hey this is "good" to critics" to "this is a shit movie but MY GOD IS IT FUN!!!"

artem wing

artem wing who is 29 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2013-2016. but also artem is a MOVIE SNOB LMAOOO, hes That Guy with the Opinions On Film and you bet that his analytical ass was into just the most extra shit to watch those days because no teenager is chill, every teenager has some kind of ego, i dont know what movies he would have watched at that point to be the Smartest Teenager About Movies, but he sure did watch them

though artem also is very into sci-fi literature and 2013-2016 had a BUUUNCH of huge sci-fi movies. Pacific Rim, Gravity, Interstellar, Arrival. Arrival is deffo artem's fave, dont fight me on this, i can explain further but not in this answer bc it will get LOOONG LOL

artem also is into "classics" which uh. wait artem what do you Mean by that, what is a "classic" for somebody born in 2001??? i dont really know exactly what he means by "classics" so i just take it to mean he's a slut for period dramas which leads me to my closing point

"Once upon a time, when [Artem] was younger, around 17 years old, he pondered identifying as asexual or as one of the subsets under that term, but he put that aside after he first watched Pride and Prejudice (2005). He had then acquired a recurring fantasy in which he would be sensually accosted by Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in a secluded study after months of furtive, charged glances, lingering, split second touches, double entendres classily and subtly masked but still implying a repressed yet voracious—Moving on." -an excerpt from my comedy smut fic where artem goes thru a crisis. yeah. yeah. Pride and Prejudice dir. Joe Wright was his bisexual awakening.

MOVING ON!!

vyn richter

vyn richter who is 27 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2015-2018 but honestly that doesnt help me AT ALL LOL BECAUSE VYN IS A TOUGH NUT TO CRACK.....

like honest to god i cant even imagine vyn as anything other than an adult KJBSJKFS (which is depressing, if i think about it more... but also what vyn would want, i assume he would hate for people to have known him as a child, imperfect and shunned.....which is ALSO DEPRESSING. VYN, U GOOD???)

okay yknow what im not studied enough in Vyn Richter Studies so i will come back to this once ive gotten more of his story and know more of his (what im theorizing to be a SHITASS TERRIBLE) childhood history. so vyn, i guess ur safe from me....ur safe FOR NOW, THAT IS....

marius von hagen

marius von hagen who is 21 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2021-2024. good fucking lord, marius was born in 2009 and that makes him so young that his Important Media Ages arent even DONE HAPPENING IN OUR CURRENT TIMELINE, JESUS....

2021 is an interesting era of entertainment because it is getting steadily more and more apparent that corporate greed is trying to swallow up good storytelling; movies and shows are made as fast food products to be consumed immediately and thrown away just as fast. there are smarter posts and articles talking about this, but my point here is that marius "believes SO MUCH in art and art's capability to make a difference" von hagen would HATE THIS SO MUCH and, through spite, get into a lot of indie medias that dont necessarily sell. smaller movies, tv shows that got cancelled way before they should have.

oh, hey, MARIUS WAS 12 YEARS OLD IN 2021, yeah he could have watched The Owl House and threw a fucking FIT when disne/y nerfed the show's third season. he has not forgiven and he has not forgotten.

regardless of his age, marius, at some point in his teens watches Vincent and the Doctor (s5 e10 from Doctor Who). for those who dont know this episode, it involves Vincent Van Gogh and a bunch of sci-fi stuff but, at the end, a scene where Van Gogh is taken to the future and shown the impact his art has made on people. please watch it, if you havent it, it's very good and no words can do the experience justice.

anyway yeah marius watches it and it makes him FUCKING SOB

yeah so these are my takes kdjbfdsjfs

[agentnico]

Top 20 Best Movies of the Decade (2010′s)

Now that we have entered the 2020s, it’s time to look back on a decade of movie magic. To emphasise the importance of each year, I’ll balance things out by including two films from each year for my Top 20 list. I’ve tried to pick films that both defined this decade as well as appealed to me personally, so my list will of course, as always, be different from yours, but hopefully, I won’t totally irritate you with my humble choice, which I deem worthy to post online for the public eye to witness.

2010:

INCEPTION - “You’re waiting for a train...” Christopher Nolan unarguably is the most exciting and original directors working today. Each time he releases a movie, its an event. A literal must-see at the cinema. Which is why this isn’t the only film of his you will find on this list. With Inception, Nolan gives us a movie that is both enjoyable and imaginative, rewarding the audience for the attention that it demands. Filled with so much detail that if you miss certain shots, you will completely get lost in confusion of the narrative (as confusing as it already is). It’s intense and complex, with great performances from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, this movie will leave you lingering for more even after that mysterious ending.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD -  “You cocky cock! You'll pay for your crimes against humanity!” Once again, another exciting director on this list (oh there are so so many!). Ever since Edgar Wright emerged from the British isles, he’s given us some of the funniest films of the past decade and onwards. His Cornetto Trilogy is a blast, Baby Driver is a blast, Ant-Man was going to be even more of a blast if Marvel allowed Wright to do his magical shenanigans his way, and the upcoming Last Night in Soho will surely be a blast also. With Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Wright creates a meta-clever universe taking inspiration from comic books and video games and filled to the brink with wink-wink-nudge-nudge humour, this is an exciting and very sarcastic over the top endeavor. Also, Brie Larson in this movie.....phew!! And unsurprisingly, its all a blast!

2011:

DRIVE - “I just wanted you to know, just getting to be around you, that was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Drive is more of an elegant exercise in style, and its emotions may be hidden but they run deep. A shamelessly disreputable, stylish, stoic, ultra-violent thriller with amazing stunt work, one of the best opening sequences of any movie this decade and a neon-pumped soundtrack that’s a must-own for all vinyl users, if you still haven’t seen Drive, there’s only one thing you can do. Clue: it’s to go watch Drive.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL - “Your mission, should you choose to accept it...” Tom Cruise’s deal with the devil allows him to do some literally impossible stuff, and though I don’t condone his Scientology ways, the man’s stunt work and efforts in his area of expertise are worth all the praise and respect. To be honest, I’m commemorating all three of the Mission Impossible flicks that graced our screen this year (Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and Fallout). This franchise is like a game of dodgeball, except that Tom Cruise is the dodgeBALL, being thrown and thrust left and right like nobody cares. Also, with me being Russian, the fact that a movie manages to destroy the Kremlin and then have me not hate the film in the aftermath shows that this film is way too fun to hate.

2012:

DJANGO UNCHAINED - “Gentlemen, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.” Quentin Tarantino is one of my favourite directors working today. And Django Unchained happens to be my favourite film of his. The writing for this film is orgasmic (I went there!). The way the actors deliver the lines and the lines of dialogue themselves sound almost poetic to my ears. I can quote so many lines from this darn thing. The cinematography is immaculate. The soundtrack choice is great. The performances, my goodness, the PERFORMANCES!! Jamie Foxx does arguably his career-best work here, but also we have Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio both chewing up the scenery, and I’m sure everyone has heard the story involving DiCaprio and the broken glass. Django Unchained is an easy choice on this list for me, and possibly in my Top 10 of all time.

LES MISERABLES - “Do you hear the people sing?” The film that is based on a musical that is based on a book that is based on certain true events. Tom Hooper did an interesting choice of having actors sing live in front of the camera during filming rather than pre-record their voices, and it works to grand effect, though Russell Crowe should have probably been given more singing lessons. The movie is one hell of a way to adapt such a popular stage musical. With an opening shot that emphasises the scale of this picture with a zoom-in towards this big ship during a storm being pulled by these poor prisoners, we are plunged into the despair and conflicts of various characters with adroit narrative thrust so that not a moment feels wasted or redundant. You’d think that a film with hardly any dialogue and an overall reliance on singing wouldn’t be so emotional. Yet, somehow, it works. Also props to Anne Hathaway for winning an Academy Award for being in a film for only 5 MINUTES!!

2013:

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET - “Sell me this pen.” Martin Scorsese’s mad look into Wall Street life is a bombastic caper and running at nearly 3 hours, Scorsese and his editing team manage to keep an astoundingly intoxicating pace that keeps you enthralled and engaged throughout. This one is definitely not for the families, as this R-rated fest is filled with drugs, money, sex and everything you can possibly imagine and paints quite the picture of the rich folks of Wall Street. And the middle of it all a bravura performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. Someone needs to give DiCaprio’s agent a raise, this is Leo’s third appearance on this list and we’re only in 2013!

THE WAY WAY BACK - “I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You're having way too much fun, it's making everyone uncomfortable.” Sometimes a little indie flick is enough to lift a human spirit. Real, fun, uplifting and innocent, The Way Way Back dedicated to anyone who felt awkward or out of place at some point in their life, which, let’s be honest, counts all of us. I’m not afraid to admit that. So stop being a b*** and reveal your sensitive side too! Yes, you, the person reading this. Who else could I possibly be talking to? Myself? Maybe. The Way Way Back though is one of the best feel-good indie films of this decade, with the loveable Steve Carell acting very unloveable and Sam Rockwell Rockwelling himself to charm city! If you’ve missed this one, treat yo’self and check it out.

2014:

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL - “And?? Where is it? What's it all about dammit don't keep us in suspense this has been a complete f***ing nightmare! Just tell us what the f*** is going on!!!” Easily Wes Anderson’s best in my opinion (I have a friend who would argue Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums has the better hand but I think my opinion is more valid because it's me), this movie is a glossy, colorful, whimsical deadpan affair with an energetic turn from Ralph Fiennes as the hotel concierge M. Gustave H. as he and his lobby boy run into various Wes Anderson regulars and deal with murderers, stolen paintings, love affairs, prison breaks, and all kinds of crazy shindigs, but all shown in such a casual Wes Anderson way. This movie is like a slice of cherry pie - damn fine!

INTERSTELLAR - “Murphy’s Law doesn’t mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever can happen, will happen.” As promised, Christopher Nolan makes another appearance on this list, now with his space time-traveling epic Interstellar, where he takes inspiration from the likes of Kubrick and Tarkovsky to give us, as always, a tad bit confusing adventure with great visuals and an interesting narrative (though it does sometimes get lost in its own way), however, the key thing holding this piece together is the father-daughter relationship with Matthew McConaughey and Mackenzie Foy (and Jessica Chastain) managing to bring so much raw emotion to their respective roles that you can’t help but want to shed a tear. I mean, I haven’t cried for over 14 years, but I remember when I first watched this film, the audience around me was sobbing quite a few times during the duration of this movie. Give it to Nolan to give us the emotional moments!

2015:

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - “Oh what a day! What a lovely day!!” Easily the best action movie of this decade. Sorry John Wick, neither you or Tom Cruise could defeat this beast. The sheer, limitless invention behind this movie's exhilarating, preposterous chase scenes highlights action filmmaking at its finest. With big monster trucks and a random guitarist rocking-it in the middle of all the action, it’s like a nihilistic version of a Cirque du Soleil show! And it makes Tom Hardy the calmest person on-screen; no idea how it managed that.

STEVE JOBS - “I sat in a garage and invented the future because artists lead and hacks ask for show of hands.” If there is anyone who can make formulaic, mathematical or technological sound fun and exciting, its Aaron Sorkin. The man has a talent for writing screenplays about difficult and complicated topics yet turning them approachable for the casual moviegoer. Pair him with director Danny Boyle, and the result is Steve Jobs, a look at the man behind the phone. Narratively set during three important product launches of Jobs’, we get to see the behind-the-scenes of his relationships with his colleagues and family members, and this character study is one that could have easily fallen into generic biopic tropes, but it holds it’s own right till the credits roll. Also props for showing that Seth Rogen can actually do a serious role. Who would’ve thought that pot-smoking fella had dramatic chops in him?

2016:

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS - “Susan, enjoy the absurdity of our world. It’s a lot less painful. Believe me, our world is a lot less painful than the real world.” Fashion designer Tom Ford does sew his suits well. Apparently, he can also make great films too, with 2009′s A Single Man and with said Nocturnal Animals. This movie is truly incredible and I remember it taking me and my friend by surprise when we first watched it at the cinema. It’s shocking. Horrifying. Depressing. Upsetting. Altogether exhilarating. Being of a fashion background, Tom Ford directs the hell out of this movie, with gorgeous shots and great use of colour as well as managing to masterfully create tension and suspense when necessary. Honestly, I know Tom Ford is probably busy at a department store somewhere, but the guy needs to make another movie. The man has a talent.

LA LA LAND - “Here’s to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem. Here’s to the hearts that ache; here’s to the mess we make.” Oh, La La Land. Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to the also excellent Whiplash. People who know me well know how much I love this movie. An old-school tour-de-force musical that’s a love letter to jazz and the golden age of Hollywood. The city of stars never looked so good. Featuring catchy original songs, excellent dance choreography (the sequence to the song “Lovely Night” is especially memorable) and a romance tale ten times better than the forsaken The Notebook, La La Land is one special movie. I know many are put off by the film’s not so happy ending, however for me it was the only way this narrative could have ended. 

2017:

BLADE RUNNER 2049 - “We’re all just looking out for something real.” Similarly to Nolan, Denis Villeneuve is proving to be one of the most exciting directors working today. He’s the man behind such films as *deep breath* Prisoners, Enemy, Sicario, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. And those have all been done within the last decade. The man constantly makes quality movies of various genres, though lately, he has been leaning more towards science fiction, which is a-okay in my books, since as Blade Runner 2049 proves, he can turn science into fiction like butter on bread. A sequel made 30 years after Ridley Scott’s classic, this visually breathtaking piece is arguably even better than its predecessor with many moments giving you the “wow wow wow wow wow WOW!” factor, and when Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford are both on-screen they are dynamite. Forget the new Star Wars film (that’s right, I'm throwing shade there), Blade Runner is where it’s at!

PHANTOM THREAD - “The tea is going out. The interruption is staying right here with me.” The supposed last Daniel Day-Lewis film, as he has now apparently retired from acting, but let’s be honest, nothing stops him from simply unretiring at any point. Exhibit A - Joe Pesci. However, like Pesci, if he comes back I’ll only be happy. He’s one of acting greats of our time, and his collaborations will director Paul Thomas Anderson bring out some of his best roles. Phantom Thread is a marvel of a movie. No, I don’t mean that’s its part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I mean as in it can fill one with wonder and astonishment. Phantom Thread is PTA’s Gothic dark fairy-tale romance film, which expertly planned shots and scenes where every word of the dialogue counts. There is no wasted moment. And as the film transpires to its dark and unsettling climax, one begins to realize that this, THIS, is what filmmaking is about. Telling an engrossing story in an interesting way with crisp-clear shots and off-the-chart acting at play, with great costume design on display, although the latter is unsurprising due to a major aspect of the movie revolving around fashion.

2018:

MANDY -  “You ripped ma shirt!! You ripped maaa shiirrt!!” An acquired taste for sure, however, Mandy is indeed something truly special. From first glance, this film might seem like nothing out of the ordinary, especially from the point of view of the plot. Its the usual revenge flick. However director Panos Cosmatos’ vision and how he presents it is so much more unique. And what’s not love in this film? There’s something for everyone! It’s artsy and slow enough for the critics, hip and metal for the nonchalant, gory and violent for the hardcore genre fanatics and of course the Nic-Cage-rage factor is present for the fans of the actor. Alright, it may not be a family film, but this one is worth a watch. The whole thing is bound together by this psychedelic otherworldly environment, with the whole movie conceived in this dark, unsettlingly beautiful yet horror-filled aura that might stray people away, as it might be just too different for them, however, if you are looking for something different to watch, take mandy. I mean, watch Mandy!

A STAR IS BORN - “Music is essentially 12 notes between any octave. Twelve notes and the octave repeats. It’s the same story told over and over. All the artist can offer the world is how they see those 12 notes.” The film that began all the rumours surrounding Bradley Cooper’s and Lady Gaga’s affair. People, heads up, they are actors! They were putting on a performance! Jeez. That being said, I totally ship them. Nuff’ said. The film though? Yes, it’s good. Some country-style music, romance blooming, Gaga can apparently act, people sing about shallows for some reason...all together works for a pretty decent motion picture. Also, the fact that Bradley Cooper wrote, directed, produced and starred in this gives me so much respect for the guy. He poured his heart and soul into this. And Lady Gaga absolutely shines!

2019:

PAIN & GLORY -  “Writing is like drawing but with letters.” Director Pedro Almodovar semi-autobiographical film takes a close look at how one deals with acceptance, being forgotten, symptoms of depression and generally all fairly negative attributes, but delivered in such an honest and profound way that there is a strange lightness that emerges from it all. Antonio Banderas is uncannily vulnerable in the lead role, delivering such an earnest performance that shows a man that is filled with melancholic regret who seeks his own form of redemption. This movie is a thing of beauty.

PARASITE - “You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all. If you make a plan, life never works out that way.” Parasite is easily the most original and surprising films of 2019, and possibly the decade, managing to subvert expectations and blend together so many different genres so naturally. To spoil any narrative element of this movie would be a sin, like this one in particular works best when not knowing anything about it. This movie comes to us from Bong Joon-Ho, a South Korean director behind such films as The Host, Memories of Murder, Okja, and Snowpiercer. It’s nice to see the awards ceremonies giving him the proper recognition finally. He deserves it.

That sums up my Top 20 Best Movies of the Decade list. Of course, there are so many other great films that came out in these 10 years, such as Whiplash, When Marnie Was There, Paterson, Silence, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Nice Guys...I can go on forever. Cinema is a constant ever-growing medium, and it is fascinating to see how it changes through the years, in some ways improving and in some parts not so much. In any case, I look forward towards a new decade of, hopefully, great movies, however, let’s be honest, for all these great films there’s always a Norm of the North, a Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse or frickin’ Cats. But let’s hope those will be kept to a minimum. In any case, bring on the 2020s!

[desperatelyreviewingdennis]

Endgame

By basically any metric, Endgame was strictly inferior to Infinity War. It was a solid conclusion to he MCU, they wrapped things up nicely. But they really didn't meet the bar they set in the last movie. Visually, sound design, effects, all the technical aspects they nailed.  As always.  But the *story*?  The plot, the meat and bones of it?  Abysmal.  

I don’t remember *exactly* how I felt leaving Infinity War.  I know I did not like it as much as most, I felt they rushed too much into the one story, and they would have been better off with a trilogy [Guardians of the Galaxy 3 followed by Infinity War and Endgame].  I disliked Thor’s sequence in the film in particular, and thought the Snap was poorly handled because it was obviously going to be undone in the next movie so there was no emotional punch [although Peter Parker sure tried, even knowing he’s not really dead that scene stings].  Despite the flaws, though, I felt the movie was largely solid.  The writers crammed too much into one film, but most narrative threads were fully realized and the ones that weren’t have a whole nother movie to wrap up.  Upon a couple rewatches, my opinion has grown.  The tightness of it all is much more apparent, and Thor’s sequence is now my favorite in the movie, despite basically being a retread of his arc in Ragnarok. 

So maybe once I will reevaluate this once its on DVD.  But I suspect my opinion isn’t going to change.  The issues are more fundamental, and there’s no sequel planned to fix the problems.  Honestly, I wonder how much of the writing team carried over, because this movie doesn’t feel like it was the planned sequel to Infinity War.

Also, it seems clear that there was some executive meddling in places that would suggest the problems of Ms Marvel are going to carry forward.

I don’t want to say its a bad movie.  Ms Marvel was a bad movie.  Iron Man 2 was a bad movie.  For the first two thirds of the movie, it had its issues but nothing irredeemable.  And the stuff it did right it did really really right.  The last act, though, really dragged the whole thing down.

Spoilers abound after the break.

First of all, I never watched so much as a trailer for this movie. I wanted to go in completely free from assumptions. I'm glad I did, but I don't know what other people took from different scenes with that additional context.

Movie opens with Hawkeye's family getting dusted. I hate Hawkeye so that was immensely satisfying.

Next scene less so. Why did Tony and Nebula get on the damaged ship? What was their end game (no pun intended)? Not a huge deal but right off the bat I'm questioning character motives. Not a good sign.

Oh, it's because if they're on a ship it's easier for Ms Marvel to save the day. How did she find them? Was she specifically looking for Stark? Why? Nobody on Earth knew what happened with him. Was there a distress signal? Can she sense those now? Nobody knows, and we're not going to find out. The only thing we learn about Ms Marvel is that she didn't help out during the previous movies because she was busy on other planets. I mean, come on. 

The sequence between Stark and Rogers back on Earth was spot on and I loved it.  This will be a recurring theme, specific scenes being perfect with the surrounding material being crud.

They then kill Thanos and we time skip five years. That was actually pretty cool, and an unexpected turn of events.  Take notes, Rian Johnson.  My expectations were subverted but it didn't make me want to murder the Russo's. It does sort of abandon the child Gamora scenes from Infinity War.  Everybody thought that was supposed to be her actual soul in the soul stone, but the Soul Stone is now destroyed so maybe it was just Thanos being crazy?  Maybe it’ll come up later in the movie [Ron Howard: It won’t.]

Commence exposition. Couple thoughts. One, I hated Bruce Banner. The Hulk was a separate, unique personality. Banner killed him, and took over his body. We can debate the morality of it, but I just found it unsatisfying. It all happened off camera, and they never really explain why The Hulk refused to fight in Infinity War. I assumed it was because he was afraid, the Russo's claim it was because he was tired of being Banner's  lap dog. Either way, that character was killed unceremoniously during a time skip and never mentioned again.

Two, Banner’s pretty confident in how Time Travel is going to work.  Time Travel has never been a thing except with Dr Strange, and the two never sat down to discuss the subject before the later was turned to dust.   So where is his confidence coming from?  Their entire plan hinges on him being correct.  What really bugs me about this is that, with about thirty seconds of actual discussion [rather than the comic relief listing time travel movies and Banner shutting them down], they could have reached the same conclusion.  “Why don’t we prevent the snap from happening in the first place?” “Because that would be a paradox, and we don’t know how time responds to paradoxes.  Maybe we all live happily ever after, maybe time itself implodes.  But if we undo the snap in the present, we know exactly what will happen.”   But instead he just knows.  And, oh, also he’s wrong.  We figure that out later in the movie, but never really address it.  

Tony with his daughter was perfect and I loved it.  It was a little unsatisfying that he just sort of tinkered with time travel for an afternoon and figured everything out, but that’s sort of his thing so it works.

Thor... less perfect.  Look, this is the third movie in a row now that is about Thor losing everything then regaining his power.  They did it in Ragnarok.  They did it better in Infinity War.  Do they really need to do it again in End Game?  In fact, it occurs to me just now as I’m writing this that was the plot to the first Thor as well.  So this is four times now that we’ve been in this exact situation.  I’m just done with it, you know?  The scenes were funny enough, and I certainly understand *why* the character is in that place, emotionally, but being understandable is no excuse for retreading old ground.

So now we’re time traveling.  This was like 90% great, but the 10% really drags the whole thing down. 

We’ll start with the Power Stone.  Having Nebula reconnect to the interstellar wifi was inspired.  Obviously they need Thanos to figure out the plan and move to stop it, otherwise there’s no climax.  Obviously there’s no present day Thanos to do that, so it has to be past Thanos.  This also wraps up one of the nagging threads from the first movie.  Thanos has been hunting for these things for years, then just stumbles upon all of them in a couple months?  It seemed a little convenient, but now they’ve shown that he had inspiration from the future telling him exactly where he could find them all.  Just wow.  Then having past Nebula take present Nebula’s place?  I loved it.

Next, time stone.  Remember my annoyance with Banner’s overconfidence earlier?  Here Banner being told he’s full of shit, but they just sort of ignore it.  Its not that you can’t change the past, its that when you change the past you create an alternate reality, and that alternate reality might be super shitty so you shouldn’t do it.  But they hand wave it away with a promise to return the stones back to where they belong on the timeline, so that the timeline doesn’t “branch” and Banner ends up technically correct.  So it works, I’ll put this in the 90% great category.

But here’s the 10% shit: how did The Sorcerous Supreme know how great Dr. Strange was going to be? She can’t see past her own death, but she knows how powerful Strange becomes after she dies?  But she doesn’t know about the Snap, so they’re definitely sticking to the original rules, this isn’t a retcon.  But Strange is dead, so how does he know everything works out?  In fact, not only is Strange dead, the time stone is dead too.  He used the time stone to go further into the future than the time stone itself exists.  This would have been a perfect opportunity to close some loose threads, but they missed them.

Also the scene after they arrive in New York where Banner half heartedly destroys some stuff was pretty cringe.  I think they were playing it as a joke, and people in the audience definitely laughed, but it really drove home the earlier point about how they killed off The Hulk and replaced him with a Green Bruce Banner.  

Next up: Space and Mind Stones.  Talk about important McGuffins.  Studying the Tesseract lead to the creation of SHIELD and Hydra and Captain America and eventually Ms Marvel.  Studying Captain America lead to the creation of The Hulk.  The Mind Stone created Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlett Witch. Important stuff here.

But anyhow, 90% good.  Everything was great right up until the end.  The plan, the banter, everything worked for me.  I even loved the bit about “America’s Ass.”  I do wonder if that wasn’t a response to criticisms of Brie Larson’s ass in Ms Marvel?  Or just commentary on comics drawing attention to asses in general?  I’m not sure but I liked it.

10% shit: the plan goes sideways at the last minute, and Loki escapes with the Tesseract.  Ok, now, its been a while since I watched the first Avengers movie, but I don’t remember Loki escaping with the Tesseract?  Isn’t that exactly what Banner said can’t happen, and the Sorcerous Supreme made Banner promise he wouldn’t let happen?  A branch in he timeline?  That’s a pretty goddamn significant change in history.  But whatever, we’re never going to comment on it.  A rogue infinity stone, in the hands of a crazy person, NBD.

So Stark and Rogers go further into the past to steal the Tesseract from SHIELD before Loki could steal it from Rogers stealing it from Hydra stealing it from the Avengers.  No complaints here, Some nice foreshadowing for Rogers, and Stark gets closure with his father.  It was great.

Finally, Soul Stone.  Look, I have always hated Hawkeye, since the first Thor, and love Black Widow so that’s all I have to say about that.  Except that Nat doesn’t get the sort of closure Stark and Rogers do.  Can’t really blame the writers on this one, they didn’t have a lot to work with, but its still disappointing.  At least it wasn’t a pointless death and her and Barton got some time together. 

Finally: the Ether/Reality Stone.  This was just an extension of the previous “we’ve covered this already why is this here?” issue around Thor.  Him getting Mjolnir was pretty tight, though, not gonna lie.  

So now we’re back in the present, we have all the Stones and past Nebula has infiltrated the group.  First of all: this would have been a great place for an Intermission.  Like, seriously, There are literally no dangling story lines, everything’s come back together to one location, and you’ve got a couple minutes of downtime before the action starts anyhow.  Just give people ten minutes to piss, please.

First of all, how did Past Nebula bring an entire fucking battle ship into the present?  Like, they had just enough Pym Particles to get their team back once.  Sure, they picked up some extras but she couldn’t have been expecting that, and the memories she got from Present Nebula should have made that clear.  So what was her end game (no pun intended)?  And if they could send a ship full of people all at once, why didn’t the Avengers do that?  Take the entire team back at once, leaving themselves with eight more doses if they fail.  

Moving on, the scene were they use the stone worked for me, given what they’ve done so far.  Specifically, with respect to the Hulk.  But bear with me here: what if they hadn’t fucked up the Hulk?  Imagine a movie where Banner doesn’t kill a character off camera.  He’s just a regular guy the entire movie.  Maybe they ask him if he still has issues with Hulking out and he says “no, I guess he got tired of cleaning up my messes so now he refuses to come out even when I need him to.”  Then, as Thor is about to don the glove, Banner transforms and everybody is certain he’s about to ruin everything when he puts the glove on himself and snaps his fingers.  After, his body is still green but its Bruce talking.  He doesn’t sense the Hulk inside him anymore.  He sacrificed himself because he knew he could do it and Thor couldn’t.

Just a thought.  As I said, the scene works as it is.

We establish the plan works, then suddenly THANOS.  Opportunity #2 for an intermission.  They launch the barrage of missiles, then fade to black, see you in ten minutes.  Would have been epic.

So we get a nice, super satisfying scene with the three original Avengers fighting Thanos.  Thor is fucking dual wielding, yes please.  And the scene where Steve catches Mjolnir?  I was literally hard.  But Thanos is even more powerful than he was in Infinity War.  Remember Infinity War, that movie a YEAR OLD written and directed by THE SAME PEOPLE?  In that one, Stark went toe to toe with Thanos in control of the Infinity Stones and held his own.  In this one, Thanos has no problem taking down a dual wielding Thor, and literally destroys Cap’s Shield without even the use of the Power Stone.  Its just... blah.  

Now, when things are at their worse: MAGIC.  Literally, Dr Strange uses magic to save the day.  Its not a complaint, its just what happens.  Again, SUPER satisfying.  But lots of things stick out.  One, half the Wakandan army just woke up from being dusted.  As far as they’re concerned its been like half an hour since Infinity War, but they’re all in pretty good shape.  Even if you assume the Wakandan army was made up of survivors, they sure mobilized quickly.  That’s impressive.  Two, where did Valkyrie get a fucking Pegasus?  They’re all dead, remember?  Hela killed them thousands of years ago, it was kind of a big deal.  Yeah, neat scene, loved seeing it, but it doesn't belong.  Third, Pepper Potts shows up.  She abandoned her five year old child to fight alongside Tony.  I get there’s an end of the world argument to be made, but it still doesn’t seem in character.  Both for her to do it, and for Tony to not call her out for it.

Still, nice satisfying fight scene.  Things still kind of go south, though, they just can’t seem to beat Thanos’s army.  Wouldn’t it be convenient if a flying god were to show up for no reason and destroy the battleship causing all the trouble?  That would be convenient, but they’re better writers than that. [Ron Howard: they were not]

To add insult to injury, they literally divide the heroes by sex and have a scene where all the women are together launching an attack.  It wasn’t even like a natural progression of the battle, where the women are thrown together.  Just the one shot of all them showing up for no reason.  

There was no corresponding scene with the male heroes.  

But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence and they weren’t pandering for woke points.

At one point Thanos grabs the Power Stone with his bare hands and uses it to blast somebody [I think Ms Marvel but I don’t remember].  He doesn’t appear to suffer any ill affects, 

Finally, Tony Stark’s big moment.  People were literally weeping in the theater.  I loved it so much.  It was honestly perfect.  Killing everybody wasn’t what I expected, I thought they’d be sent back to the past to preserve the timeline or whatever, but this way it mirrored the end of Infinity War so thematically this works better.

Everything after that was basically shit.

First of all, this movie suffers from a serious case of Return of the King Syndrome.  There was like half an hour of movie left after Thanos died the second time.  Christ.

Past Gamora might or might not still be alive in the present?  She kicks Star Lord in the nuts then kind of vanishes.  There’s no reason to assume Tony’s snap wouldn’t have killed her along with the rest of the past army, but they also didn’t resurrect Present Gamora so she probably survived for Guardians 3. Starlord is using the computer to search for her at the end, but Thor keeps trying to stop him because I guess he’s a prick now?

Also Thor retires.  Just quits.  Names Valkyrie Queen of the Asgardians.  That’s the conclusion of his story.  He just goes off to find himself, gonna spend some time with the Guardians of the Galaxy see where life takes him. Because that’s satisfying.

They still have to return the infinity stones, along with Mjolnir.  Rogers gets to do the honors, and he makes it pretty clear to everybody that he’s saying his goodbyes.  Somehow, nobody notices, and everybody’s super surprised when he doesn’t come back after.  Apparently, he choses to return to the 40s and live out his life with Peggy.  I liked this, it was a satisfying conclusion to his story.  He found a way back to the love of his life.  Nice.

Here’s what’s not nice.  Bucky and Falcon see old Steve sitting near by.  Bucky, Steve’s childhood friend who owes his life to the fact Steve never stopped believing in him, sends Falcon over to talk to him.  Because...I don’t fucking know.  Why didn’t they both just go talk to him?  Why didn’t they call over Bruce, who was standing right there trying to figure out what went wrong?  No, its Falcon’s time.

But more importantly: HOW IS STEVE THERE?  You can’t change the past.  Bruce tells us that.  The Sorcerous Supreme shows us that changes in the past create alternate timelines leaving the original in tact.  They pulled Thanos into the present and killed him before he could collect the Infinity Stones, but the snap still happened.  Present Nebula shot Past Nebula in the heart but didn’t wink out of existence. 

But somehow, when Steve goes into the past, he doesn’t create an alternate timeline where Captain America survives the war. He just inserted himself into the prime timeline, and waited until he had a chance to say hi to his old friend Falcon.

Oh, also he had a second Shield made at some point? 

Look, I liked Steve’s story.  I liked that they passed on the title to Falcon, a nice nod to the source material.  I’m thrilled that Peggy got the dance he promised her all those years ago.  But that scene ruined the core premise behind the entire movie.  Time Travel stories are hard, but if you agree on how they work and stick to those rules its fine.  This movie did neither.

Also: how did Steve return the Soul Stone? How shocked was he to discover the stone was guarded by Red Skull?  Did he just drop it off the cliff and hope the ancient magic would handle the rest? Will Thanos still have to sacrifice Gamora or does Nat’s sacrifice still count?

There’s other issues.  Ms Marvel and Wanda both just sort of vanish.  Wanda especially should have gotten more story, but they just gave her one angry woman scene then she was forgotten about.  They sort of gloss over the massive issues they’d have faced with half the population dead.  They show one overgrown neighborhood, but by and large everything seems to be exactly the same as it was pre-snap.  Just with everybody sadder.  We never see Rocket meet a racoon.  Hawkeye was in the movie.  Nothing really huge.

So that’s all I have to say about that.  Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[steal-this-idea]

Babylon 5 rewatch continues...

Now with a LINK to the original post that I had let grow to unreasonable length instead of forcing the two people who will see this scroll through ever last piece of dumb shit I’ve had to say first!

JUMP TO ORIGINAL LONG POST HERE

(Learning Curve)

I’ve taken the talk on meditation to heart (the “anyone can meditate in silence” bit) to the point where I think I can become impatient or even annoyed by those who insist upon quiet to do so (think especially for certain sports like golf and tennis...like, if you’re to the point where you’re a professional, some asshole in the stands should be able to neither faze you nor distract you)

If garlic stinks then what’s saffron? (the meal where Garibaldi starts laying into Lochley’s past and Zack is obliquely commenting on it, asking if anyone thinks the food tastes funny, suggesting saffron when it starts getting awkward and concluding garlic after Lochley puts Garibaldi in his place)

Continuing my Takashima just disappeared rant: N’grath, our season 1 praying mantis gangster, gets a mention in this episode but Lt.Cmdr. Takashima? Who’s she?

I do love that the Minbari are an advanced race but not an impassionate one...which honestly makes them scarier, as the Earth-Minbari War shown to us throughout “In the Beginning” demonstrated...

Meaning does not exist independently... I wonder if this episode is where I got that idea from?

(Strange Relations)

I don’t hate the ex-wife of Sheridan revelation of Capt. Lochley. If anything, it kinda complements how Cmdr. Sinclair got appointed to run Babylon 5. I assume, like with the Minbari when the station first came online, Sheridan insisted on veto power over anyone EarthGov might select to run Babylon 5. I wonder if Capt. Lochley was far down the list too?

Zip ties: Still good enough for the 23½ century :-)

The bottle tossing Hyach is at it again...

(Secrets of the Soul)

I do like Season 5 being like a mirror of Season 1 and giving us more standalone type episodes which allows us to be given closer looks at members of the (former) League of Non-Aligned Worlds. This episode, the Hyach; the next episode, the Brakir; and the one after that, the Drazi.

And I have to say this again. Even when he’s cheesy, I don’t hate Byron.

I think Lyta made me love bangs :-)

I liked the detail of the Drazi record not being in English

Also, why didn’t we learn Byron’s secrets too? While, yes, dramatic effect for the later episode, sure...why not? I suppose also Lyta’s walls coming down during her intimacy may have simply flooded everything else out too. Hard to say. I also wonder why Lyta’s eyes went black during their lovemaking when, since this is a Vorlon-influenced memory, they should’ve glowed white? Again, I’m sure it had something to do with dramatic effect...

(Day of the Dead)

I love that Capt. Lochley hates Rebo & Zooty. It’s like, ugh...these hacks :-)

And I also love Delenn’s reaction to one of their jokes. I wonder what Mira Furlan was thinking about to get herself to laugh so heartily and convincingly?

Nice that the guest spots got end credits billing and not upfront so as not to spoil the surprise (unlike what happened with Anna Sheridan). I wonder if that cost TNT a fine with the Screen Actors Guild? I know Lucas always had to pay a fine to get out of putting traditional title screen credits over the start of each Star Wars film.

I presume there is plenty of A.U. fiction out there about who the other characters would have met had they been on the other side of the line?

Do you think Kosh would have appeared in its encounter suit to Sheridan had he been there or would it have been more open like in the death dream sequence (or even in its true squid-like form)?

(In the Kingdom of the Blind)

The Centauri are ultra racist. That dude’s not even attempting discretion: he’s gonna talk shit about Narns right in front of a Narn with not even a hint of concern that G’Kar might understand what he’s saying or be capable of feeling hurt by it.

As much as I hate what Byron did after learning how telepaths came to be and what they were intended for, I also can’t imagine an equivalent shock that could so forcefully shake the very foundations of my world and thus how I would react to such knowledge...

Would the Drakh have worked better if they didn’t have visible sclera? I just can’t help but feel if their eyes were entirely black or red instead of looking human, if it would have increased their visual menace or just made them look goofy?

But that lighting on the Drakh’s reveal though...magnificent

Isn’t that a Brakiri warship? How could it have been unarmed? I’m not in any way justifying the attack on them but, like, of *all* the ships you could’ve used to illustrate an attack on a commercial transport...

(A Tragedy of Telepaths)

I’ll admit I’ve tried using the “There’s No Bomb” technique in my desperate attempts to quell my allergies. Trying to tell my itchy, runny nose that, despite its objections, there’s no need to sneeze. There’s. No need. To sneeze...

Can’t say it ever worked though...

Byron just dropping that some worlds developed telepaths naturally which seems strange because I thought I recalled JMS mentioning that if a species were to develop telepathy they’d never advance to civilization. Being a telepath would just be another technique a predator could use to snare prey and/or a technique a prey animal could use to avoid being eaten.

Still, if I’m going to grant him this, I wonder if the Soul Hunters were an example of natural telepaths? The behavior of the two we meet in the show’s second episode is reminiscent of telepath behavior we witness in later episodes (like Byron sensing that man’s impending death and the Soul Hunter being able to pick up on Delenn’s secrets as the machine she was hooked up to slowly killed her). Were Soul Hunters like vultures originally? Always feeling for the impending death of an animal so they could eat that night? But that particular ability wouldn’t necessarily have prevented the kind of generalization necessary for the development of language, tools, and technology so the ability served them rather than limited them and as they developed and went to the stars, the idea of preserving special souls became of paramount importance to their raison d’être. Comments? Concerns? Good idea? Poorly thought out idea?

G’KAR: Would you like some jala? It’s cold.

LONDO: Get that away from me. Jala needs to be hot. It takes heat to cultivate its flavor. To consume cold jala is to insult a Centauri. I don’t even know where you got it.

G’KAR: I saw it on a tray heading into the south end of the palace. I assumed no one would mind if I took it.

LONDO: That’s right. Only Narns can stomach it cold.

It would be interesting to have a culture which marks the peaces rather than the wars. I don’t even know if that would be so far-fetched to imagine such a people given the Incas made “constellations” out of the dark parts of the sky as well as its luminous parts.

Byron’s demand for compensation is SOOO much more reasonable than his threat of blackmail. It’s a shame he didn’t think of it first...

Is the Interstellar Alliance basically the Minbari Empire? Minbar’s going to be the home office of the ISA. After the White Star fleet (which really cannot be rebuilt), the Minbari military is the strongest in the known galaxy and I have to assume it is their fleet the ISA would lean on in the event of a major war between powers. I don’t know. I just think of it like if we were to form an EarthGov right now and it actually had real power, its power would almost certainly be heavily reliant on U.S. military might, making an EarthGov like a de facto U.S. empire, no? It’s outside the scope of Babylon 5, but I wonder if such a thing will come up in the ISA’s future?

Babylon 5 did for me with telepaths what Buffy the Vampire Slayer did for vampires. I can no longer accept any alternative :-)

(Phoenix Rising)

I wonder how this telepath colony plot would have unfolded differently had Byron had the foresight to have some non-human telepaths among them so they wouldn’t be wholly under Earth’s jurisdiction?

Do you think Bester spoke to his underlings at the briefing because he *had* to or was it solely for our, the viewer’s, benefit? I just think back to when Bester first met with Sinclair...

Regarding Bester’s “How stupid do you think I am?” speech: I’m so glad JMS didn’t pad the scene by going to commercial as the music climaxed with Garibaldi holding a PPG to him. That immediate release of dramatic tension because there never was any there to begin with; that subversion of expectations, was an effective choice.

I don’t drink but after that scene, I’d probably start drinking too...

Peter’s telekinesis seems underwhelming. I suppose I could blame it on the show’s ability to do that special effect (the ring Eilerson fires in that episode of Crusade was an effect done well). But how hard was he casting those objects? I feel like I could throw harder and more accurately; like his telekinesis was really an inefficient way to go about things, y’know?

I know from reading around that had Claudia Christian remained on the show, she would’ve been the one to fall for Byron and I have to admit it’s still hard imagining Ivanova in that role. I think I’m glad she didn’t not because it would be unbelievable but just that it would be yet another tragic love and broken trust story for her and it’s like, damn, give this woman a break already...hasn’t she suffered enough?

Did Byron program his followers with that hymn? The way they gather around him before he immolates them is practically instinctual. I suppose it’s not so far-fetched. Byron *is* a strong P12 and more than once he desperately tried to get back to his people in order to calm them down suggesting his hold over them may not have been charisma alone. I don’t know...

(The Ragged Edge)

The Drazi with the vomit bag on the shuttle, haha. I love those touches they put into the show :-)

Is it my imagination or is G’Kar’s room less red?

[rey-kryze]

WE FOUND OURSELVES WHOLE IN THE BROKEN PLACES.

a reylo fic : chapter two.  

chapter one: can be found here . 

find it on:  ao3 here.

rating : mature . though we haven’t yet reached the reasons for it, it will have thematic elements that i’d prefer a 18+ audience in reading. 

synopsis :  the aftermath of the force bond . shared secrets . a pain that’s evidently not singular in its nature . angst. suffering. the path to the dark side.

At night , desperate to sleep ....

She’d grown use to the soft chirping of porgs , the lull of the sea where it met the rocky shore -- even the Thala-Siren’s discordant songs that welcomed the sunrise, would be preferential to this .... quiet. It’s too similar to the world’s zeroing in that precedes the opening of her connection to Kylo Ren, and Rey’s found it nearly impossible to fall asleep with that looming in the back of her mind.

Her first few nights on this base are spent tossing, and turning in the thin cot that she’d been provided with . Restless , she’s usually up before the rising sun , a bloody bloom that filters through a lilac sky . It was beautiful, truly, and Rey channels the calm that’s afforded to her by the still-slumbering world around her, into meditation . Something she had not tried since leaving Ahch-to .

There’s fear first -- would doing so invite him into her mind ? , and apprehension next. Her stomach knotting in on itself wasn’t conducive to this tranquility she’s sought , not even when the trill of some bright blue bird is warped by the coming breeze - it is soft, and reminds her briefly of the quiet autumn mornings before the sun stripped away all peace. The desert had made a hard girl out of her , she wonders what this planet and its people ( her people, she reminds herself ) , would leave her with.

How much of herself belonged to her, anymore ?

Rey finds an undistributed break in the trees to the west of the compound, and at its center, a smooth, flat stone. It’s just large enough for her to sit on with her legs crossed, knees hanging over the edges a bit but it’d serve her purposes well enough. A triumphant little grin at that, as if it’d come about by fate and not chance ( never a pious child.. this harmony with the force around her has planted the seeds of .. something ) , it grants her clarity. Her eyes shut, and she breathes .

Reach out, Luke had said, not with your body but with your mind - let it touch the thousand sparks that pepper this limitless sky . Its a network of beating hearts, of thoughts, and feelings nameless to her unless she chooses to zero in on one ; feels their hand touching an interstellar map, words draw into focus and its something about capturing a non-allegiant fueling station one system over, and using it to replenish their stores here. They’d been lucky enough , rebel ships that were mostly functional filled the long-abandoned hangers of their base.

Rey draws out of this , letting their tactical plan be theirs ( what could Kylo see of her mind , when she’s weak and wanting ? and what would he do with anything he’s found ? ) . This was dangerous territory, but ever reckless, bullheaded and needing absolution of some sort, Rey lets the wavering edges of her resolve buckle, and her mind is an open plane that overlaps the force itself, feeling the outline of his signature within it.

He wasn’t as well defended as she’s usually found , the litany of defenses erected ( relics , they’d existed long before their bond ... ) , were weakened, and she feels temptation flutter, to rush headlong into it and see what he’d been hiding the night before . No , she manages to hold thinly onto her self-restraint, it could very well be a trap and she’d fall into it, drowning in whatever lie beyond . Something in the force shudders , a beast chilled to its cosmic bone -- she knows that their distance, physical and emotional , strained it , having only found that perfect balance when they stood together against everything, and everyone else.

Dammit, Ben. . She wants to hate him for it. For letting her in, for showing her that desolate star within his chest that shown all the more beautifully for the darkness around it . It was crushing to have that future, something solid and known and outline by hope -- only for it to be stripped away by his unwillingness to let go of what he was, as he’d claimed her to be guilty of the same. There’s a flicker . His attention is on her, her thoughts and feelings and for once Rey does not hide them. She lets them lay bare under his cold scrutiny. 

Let him know what he’s done. Let him feel her pain .

He does. It was blinding .

He’s , mercifully, alone in an observation deck when he feels her . Not the bond, no , something else . ( She’s grown stronger since I last felt her ) . He’s undecided on rage, or hate , fear at her strength or .... pride. The last bit sits under his ribs and try as he might to crush it, he can’t. She’s one half of this unholy , four legged beast they make up, and no matter what he does, how far he recoils from the curious tendrils of her thought, he’s drawn back into her. A moth to flame. But what a way to burn.

Kylo staggers a bit , it was winding to have so much unloaded on his mind at once. Memories, yes . First they come as a little girl curled around an old rebel alliance helmet ... asleep, but scared . He’d seen that one before, the womb of this connection birthed that night his world had been torn asunder. In the interrogation room. You , a Scavenger .. . No , she, the last jedi. Rey .

Whether he’s said it aloud , or through this tenuous link of thoughts, feelings ... no words had been exchanged and yet he’s certain she heard it. Felt it. Knew that he was aching and had nothing to do with all of  this , his pain . She wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt. He hadn’t left her . She , left him . She chose a path that she had to have known would only lead to the death of everyone around her . He might have had mercy, if she’d joined, might have let the surviving members of the resistance live out their days as his prisoners ... No. She’d secured their fate. They would all die. He would kill her, and them , and all of it. ...

But he can’t. Her arrogant doubt in his resolve shows in a white hot flash of memory . She’s angry that he’d grown mad at what she shows him -- next, is something he never expected to see .

There’s rain , he can feel it , cold and the wind rips up off the shoreline .. it tastes of salt and damp and ... its the sea. The island . Kylo’s eyes read a scene unfolding before him, unseeing , and yet offered in his mind with vivid clarity.

is that Rey ? Kylo shudders, she’s feral , a beauty illuminated by the glow of the legacy saber -- everything is tilted, off-kilter but he can see her standing above a cowering Skywalker ( that image itself sends a ripple through the force , he’s pleased ) , her words pierce him -- She’s ... She’s defending him ? Him. Ben Solo . No . Kylo Ren . His confusion is evident, as the memory fades into a grey-blue haze ... That she’d decided then and there, that he was worth saving, when a lifetime that’d show the contrary laid behind him , stirs a part of him that’d lain dormant for the better part of his adulthood . 

Why did you show me this ? He demands, indignant, but all he finds at her end of this long, red thread , is a light and love so brilliant his knees go weak , and he holds himself up by two gloved hands slamming against transparisteel, nearly shattering it with the force. He doesn’t. He’s unable to locate the rage it’d take to do so - to rip through this barrier and be sucked into the vacuum of space... Death, a neighbor , a friend . Kylo’s sullen features are bathed in blue light before she withdraws, and all he feels is as though he’s lost half of himself. He dismisses the guards in the throne room, and stands at its center, unmoving, for hours to come .

Rey comes back into herself gasping , sweat on her brow -- the sun was higher now, and the warm, thick air made her clothing stick to her skin uncomfortably. She was going to head back to her room , to use the sonic until she felt human again , but the growl of her stomach was louder than her annoyance, and so, begrudged to meet the basic need , she gathers her belongings and trudges off towards the make-shift mess-hall .

Of course, breakfast was just being served -- and whenever she entered ( or exited ) a room , she found all eyes turn to her . After living an isolated life, this was more bothersome than she’d ever admit , she hates that they see her as the second coming of Luke . Luke , who’d defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor , they see that same salvation in her , the Last Jedi . Rey swallows some of the annoyance that bubbles up into her throat, nodding at the people they’d accrued in passing , and draws a tray of food to herself via the force , unwilling to stand in a line of onlookers as they whisper about her, about her power, about Kylo Ren .

The news of her slaying Snoke echoed over the holonet, Kylo certainly had designed this lie to save his skin , but it only emboldened the resistance. Leia, alone, knew the truth, as Rey had told her of it through bracketing sobs, the only time before last night, that she’d cried. Rey’s picking at some colorless mess of vegetables, when she’s joined by Finn on one side , and Poe, on the other. They’re , arguably , the only people she felt comfortable being near at length, and mostly because they tried not to be so obvious in their worry for her. Everyone else frowned, patted her on the back, and offered sympathies for the loss of her Master .

As if her pain , and suffering , was by death , and not something worse. Death, was final , dying ended questioning and gave its answer . It was the end of something. What was worse, was this . Living in its middle. Not knowing if tomorrow would bring about a beginning, or close this too-short chapter of her life.

Rey smiles at them both , “ Any particular reason you’re caging me in ?” Harsher than she’d intended, but if they noticed, they didn’t show it, Finn’s smile is dashing between open-mouthed bites of bread,

“ Yeah. So you can’t run away.” He laughs, and Poe’s echoes his , “ You’re always off on your own . We missed you .” We . Her stomach flutters, and Poe bunts his shoulder against her ,

“ C’mon . I’ve been around the general all my life , not all force sensitives are required to be hermits . Or was that your take away from training with Luke ?” Her blink of surprise has him back peddling, seeing the pilot nervous was .. sweet, almost, that he’s worried he’d said, or done something wrong. He lifts a hand in defense , “ I only meant that -- Finn’s right. We missed you. Don’t be a stranger. I promise I won’t ask dumb questions about the force.”

Rey’s quick to shake her head , persistent in returning their respective smiles so that they wouldn’t assume the worst. The last thing she wants, was more people walking on egg-shells around her . Rey wasn’t fragile . Weakness had been burned out of her . Smothered by a life that had yet to show signs of relenting. Death. Death. Death. Luke . Han . Half the resistance. Even Leia’s force signature was weakening ... and Rey draws in a broken sigh , “ No . I’m sorry . I’ve just had a lot on my mind .” The understatement of a lifetime, but she cracks a smile again, and steals a bit of Finn’s water . Being playful , even pretend, came easily to her , a practiced skillset when she’d been forced to play to her strengths as a pretty little girl on a backwater world.

“ I promise I’ll be around more. The jedi texts I took are in some language I can’t understand, at any rate. No good in reading them. “ She shrugs. It seems to be enough for her friends, they all eat in amicable silence for a while . This was unsustainable. Living a half life. And Rey knows it , she already feels control slipping, easier and easier , was it to lean into anger -- but she’s got a thready grasp of it , and she would work harder, be better, and become the beacon of hope the resistance already made out of her. That thought has a dark, booming laugh through the back of her mind . Not Be--- Kylo’s . Snoke.

Even the thought of him has Rey’s head spinning . She hadn’t realized she’d begun screaming until her lungs burned, and her world went mottled black around the edges. And everything was quiet. Still. Silent. The last thing she remembers is the cold duracrete hitting her back, hard.

[albanflandin-blog]

Design Context Essay - Timelines in the stories

FLANDIN Alban

GIRARD Mihajlo

 SPOILER ALERT: Possible spoils about the following movies:

Deadpool, Very Bad Trip, Usual Suspects, The Lord of the Rings, Cloud Atlas, The Fountain, Interstellar, Arrival, Following, Memento, Mulholland Drive, Réalité, Sin city, Gone Girl

 Introduction

Most stories have always been told in a linear manner, be it in literature, cinema or storytelling in general. In essence, one way storytelling has always been the most logical choice since immemorial times, even during the first periods of humanity, for example, bards and poets would sing about knights’ stories from their birth to their exploits and finally their end. Stories would follow life’s course, that way they were easy to tell and easy to understand thus making them less confusing for the listeners and more captivating. Nowadays, these patterns are still used in today’s books and films but producers and writers become more and more keen to mixing up their storyline and making use of non-linear timelines to add complexity and originality to their works. Consequently, numerous processes regarding timeline manipulation became more and more popular like flashbacks, time travelling, etc… Certain producers go even further by making timeline manipulation become a major aspect of their stories itself. We will therefore seek to understand how the management of a film’s timeline can become a major aspect in its storyline and enhance the intrigue. In order to do so, we will first explain more in detail why the linear storytelling pattern is the one most widely used still to this day. We will then talk about the most commonly used ways of mixing up the timeline in one’s film and its impact on the story. Finally, we’ll see how some producers make the timeline become the major aspect of their scenario and the pros and cons it has in contrast to the classic way of telling a story.

 I – Classical timelines and chronological development of the storyline

Most films today use linear narration techniques meaning they try to display scenes in a chronological and natural order. They aim for a consistent and understandable experience in which the spectators can relate either to the characters or the action. This process adds a realistic dimension to the story as the characters’ lives are displayed chronologically, just like a normal human’s life would unwind. Aristotle was one of the first people to highlight the importance of a well-constructed story in his dramas, logically, a story must have well-defined beginning, to set-up the main plot, middle, to introduce the action and its climax and finally ending, where the problems faced by the characters are resolved. His theory is expanded upon by Gustave Freytag in 1883 who proposes a new model based on Aristotle’s, called the Freytag Pyramid in which the story generally follows a defined narrative plot comprised of 7 distinctive parts:

-        An Exposition phase, where the characters are introduced along their relations to each other, their motivations, goals as well as the context and environment they live in. Furthermore, the story displays what the main characters have to defend and what they have to loose.

 -        The Inciting Incident, where the main problems the characters are going to face are displayed as well as the beginning of their conflicts against the antagonists, if there are any.

 -        The Rising action, where the story builds up upon the conflicts and problems of the characters and the plot gets more exciting.

 -        The Climax, is the moment that the Rising action builds up too, the most intense part of the story.

 -        The Falling action then represents the events that happen after the climax that lead to the resolution and end of the story.

 -        The Resolution where the main problem or conflict is solved by either the main character or someone else.

 -        Finally, the Dénouement represents the end of the story where all the secrets, questions or mysteries which remained still after the resolution are solved.

 This narrative model implies implicitly a linear narrative approach to telling a story (The resolution of a problem should arise after it is evocated). It is used in most movies where the director doesn’t want his spectators to know more than the characters they are watching. This allows the film to keep the tension going through the whole action phase and captivate its audience with action rather than questioning. Now linear narration doesn’t necessarily mean non-complex story, even though a lot of films nowadays use this kind of pattern to concentrate on other aspects. We can see it very clearly in most blockbusters today where directors trade story complexity in order to focus on making the action scenes look more interesting and impressive with the use of special effects and such ( Yes we are looking at you Michael Bay).  In the end, the linear way seems like the most logical choice for a film producer to tell a story easily. But cinema is not only used as a way to tell a story but make the spectator experience something new and original, even though some producers manage very well to make use of linear narration to produce complex and engaging stories, some take the liberty to apply to their stories more thought out narrative outline to bring the spectators into their own world with their own crafted codes and make Cinema shine artistically.

We will now see the most used means of breaking linearity in Cinema today in the second part of our essay.

  II – The common tools used to make non-linear timelines

One of the retrospective tools most used in Cinema today is the flashback. It allows the film to communicate important information that had not been previously revealed during the story and eventually fill story gaps and questions the viewers could have asked themselves. It can also be used as a mean to make the viewers understand a character’s actions, be it the protagonist or the antagonist, by showing elements of their past that can explain their behavior or emotions. There are mainly two types of flashbacks, the objective flashback that shows something that happened in the past without the characters necessarily mentioning anything about it. It gives the viewers information that even some of the characters may not have themselves, In Gone Girl (David Fincher) a flashback explains why the wife of the main character has disappeared while he himself is ignorant as to the reasons why. Then there is the subjective flashback, which doesn’t really break the story’s course as it is mainly following one of the character’s point of view, it is sometimes used to back-up talk with images, when one of the characters is telling his story for example. There is a good example in the hateful eight, when the character played by Samuel L. Jackson explains to another one how he killed his son.  In this case the flashback is often used by producers to respect one of the main principals of Cinema, the “Show and don’t tell” as a linear dialogue would be way less engaging for the viewers. It is part of one of the cinema’s paradox, to avoid talk shows as much as possible and focus on what can be shown to the viewers and what can be explained to him without too much dialogue. It gives importance to certain aspects of the characters or the story and it lifts a problem we can have with linear narration that makes it hard to give consistency to the story and keep the viewers interested as everything is revealed from the get go. Either way, the flashback in general is a powerful tool to break storyline linearity as it allows some parts of the story to remain untold and create narrative gaps that will keep the viewers questioning until said information is revealed. It gives a realistic feel to the characters’ lives not in regards to how it would unfold but how it would be felt with its proper emotions, memories and marking events. Even though the flashback is a tool used by producers to break storyline linearity and put emphasis on certain aspects of the story, there are also other processes like ellipsis that settle only on focusing on important parts of the plot while keeping its order.

Certain movies resort to flashbacks as the main way to tell their stories:

-        “Deadpool” in essence has a very basic plot in its present form and relies mainly on flashbacks to explain the hero’s story and how he got to the point he is now.

 -        “Very Bad Trip”, where the main goal of the characters is to find out what happened to them the night before their hangover, mainly by flashbacks triggered by videos of themselves or testimonies from people that were there.

 -        “Usual Suspects” makes use of flashbacks to illustrate the testimony of the main character to the police (Even if we learn at the end that what he says didn’t really happen).

The main limit of the flashback process is that you can make the film confusing for the viewers by making them loose the notion of the timeline or story order, thus flashbacks need to be correctly delimited in the story and carefully inserted with the use of special effects and such.

There are other basic tools that are used to make the intrigue less linear, in the same vein as the flashback we have the flash-forward that shows elements of the future that are bound to happen eventually. It can be presented either as a prophetic vision or an alternative future. It can give sense to the character’s actions by showing what they have to aim for or what they have to prevent from happening and display clearly what is at stake for the viewers to see. In “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”, the queen of the elves shows to the main character what will happen if he fails his quest to destroy the ring of Sauron.

Even though these processes break the linearity of the storyline of the movies in which they are used, the movie still keeps its linear construction. So in our third part we will see some examples of movies where the non-linearity of the timeline is one of the major aspects of the plot, which is sometimes even entirely constructed around it.

 III – The timeline as a major part of the scenario

We will now talk about films based around a nonlinear construction. Certain movies choose to show multiple characters evolving in different eras by either by following a linear construction like in “2001, A Space Odyssey” where each story is showed completely before the movie transitions to the next, more recent one. In contrast, in “Cloud Atlas”, the directors tell six different stories in different ages and alternate scenes of each one of the stories. The plot bounces between timelines just like in “The Fountain” (Aronofsky) even though we can imagine that some of the stories are only symbolic and do not really happen, just like the part in the future. This way of telling the story brings dynamism into the movie and draws close to the TV shows’ ways of teasing what will happen next, a lot of scenes just end up on at a point in the story that leaves us wanting to see more (Especially in Cloud Atlas).  To a lesser extent we can also talk about “Sin City” where many different stories are told and even though they happen at the same time, each one is shown separately and the movie goes back in time when a new story begins.

In certain movies, timeline manipulation appears like a consequence of the plot itself. In “Edge of tomorrow”, the main character is thrown into a time loop and comes back to the beginning every time he dies while keeping his memories, desperately trying each time to fix the mistakes that led to his death. By doing this, the movie scrambles the viewer’s expectations as in essence, the main character could end up doing the same things over and over again. This lets the producer try to impress the viewer and renew his experience with the same scenes but with different outcomes.

In “Interstellar” the timeline mainly follows the law of physics, as an example when the main characters arrive on a planet where gravity is really strong, time flies by more “slowly” than the people that had stayed far away from the planet. The most interesting thing we can talk about the timeline of this film is when the character of McConaughey goes into the black hole and becomes able to interact with objects of the past. By doing that, the character transcends time and tries to influence his past self not to become his present one. Here too, the timeline creates a story loop which links the beginning and end of the story, more or less like in “Back to the Future”.

On some other films, there is only one story and nothing in the scenario would justify a non-linear narration in itself. But it’s the producer’s choice to just tell his story in another way, in Arrival, Denis Villeneuve tries to trick his audience by showing what appears to be flashbacks but is in reality flash-forwards revealing that the main character had in reality visions about the future making her face difficult decisions. Sometimes, timeline manipulation is an integral part of the intrigue of the movie, for instance, in “Following” by Nolan, the story of the main character is told originally, scenes from three different periods in his life are mixed up together and put end to end to form a confusing puzzle that the viewer has to resolve. The viewer can differentiate each periods of the character’s life by looking at his face: he first has long hair, then short hair and a beaten up face on the last part. It gives a disconcerting feeling to the viewer during the movie and finally a sense of accomplishment when the pieces of the puzzle are put together. It is also the case for “Memento”, by the same director, it is the story of a guy that lost his short term memory due to a rare condition of amnesia. To bring the character closer to the viewers, the film is constructed upside down, each scene ends where the previous one began. By doing that the viewer, just like the amnesic character, does not know what has happened before. In consequence, the director creates complicity with his viewers and totally changes the classical stakes of the usual movie, here the story begins with the main character killing someone and the whole interest of the movie is to show the steps that led him to doing that. As we said before, using this process can give a feeling of accomplishment to the viewer when he finally solves the puzzle, but this narration can also be used to create a confusing experience where plenty of interpretations are possible, just like in “Mulholland Drive” by David Lynch, where the movie is divided in two parts, one where the character played by Laura Elena Harring (Camilla Rhodes) is with Betty the other where she is with(Played by Naomi Watts) and Diane (Naomi Watts too). Many interpretations are possible about what the signification of each part is. This confusing effect is even more present in “Réalité” by Dupieux: this film tells a story where there is, in the beginning, a big border between two timelines, dream and reality but the more the story goes, the more the border becomes thinner between each timeline, to the point that we can’t distinguish whether the scene is a dream or reality. To conclude, the manipulation of the timeline in an intentional way can really create an original and unique experience for the viewer, furthermore, if the process is well done it can enhance the intrigue.

    Conclusion

 We’ve seen why linear narration has always been so popular being the easiest way to tell a story without losing the viewers and letting the director focus on other part of his film even though it has its limits. To face them, a lot of movies nowadays began using “classic” tools and processes that could allow them to mix up their storyline and timeline such as flashbacks and flash-forwards as we have seen. Finally, some directors decided to produce movies that embraced timeline manipulation fully and make it an integral part of the storyline to add originality to their films and make their viewers experience new emotions and discover a new way of entertainment by trying to decipher the true meaning of the story.

[mihajlogirard-blog]

Design contexts essay

                                              Design contexts Essay

FLANDIN Alban

GIRARD Mihajlo

 SPOILER ALERT: Possible spoils about the following movies:

Deadpool, Very Bad Trip, Usual Suspects, The Lord of the Rings, Cloud Atlas, The Fountain, Interstellar, Arrival, Following, Memento, Mulholland Drive, Réalité, Sin city, Gone Girl

 Introduction

Most stories have always been told in a linear manner, be it in literature, cinema or storytelling in general. In essence, one way storytelling has always been the most logical choice since immemorial times, even during the first periods of humanity, for example, bards and poets would sing about knights’ stories from their birth to their exploits and finally their end. Stories would follow life’s course, that way they were easy to tell and easy to understand thus making them less confusing for the listeners and more captivating. Nowadays, these patterns are still used in today’s books and films but producers and writers become more and more keen to mixing up their storyline and making use of non-linear timelines to add complexity and originality to their works. Consequently, numerous processes regarding timeline manipulation became more and more popular like flashbacks, time travelling, etc… Certain producers go even further by making timeline manipulation become a major aspect of their stories itself. We will therefore seek to understand how the management of a film’s timeline can become a major aspect in its storyline and enhance the intrigue. In order to do so, we will first explain more in detail why the linear storytelling pattern is the one most widely used still to this day. We will then talk about the most commonly used ways of mixing up the timeline in one’s film and its impact on the story. Finally, we’ll see how some producers make the timeline become the major aspect of their scenario and the pros and cons it has in contrast to the classic way of telling a story.

 I – Classical timelines and chronological development of the storyline

Most films today use linear narration techniques meaning they try to display scenes in a chronological and natural order. They aim for a consistent and understandable experience in which the spectators can relate either to the characters or the action. This process adds a realistic dimension to the story as the characters’ lives are displayed chronologically, just like a normal human’s life would unwind. Aristotle was one of the first people to highlight the importance of a well-constructed story in his dramas, logically, a story must have well-defined beginning, to set-up the main plot, middle, to introduce the action and its climax and finally ending, where the problems faced by the characters are resolved. His theory is expanded upon by Gustave Freytag in 1883 who proposes a new model based on Aristotle’s, called the Freytag Pyramid in which the story generally follows a defined narrative plot comprised of 7 distinctive parts:

-          An Exposition phase, where the characters are introduced along their relations to each other, their motivations, goals as well as the context and environment they live in. Furthermore, the story displays what the main characters have to defend and what they have to loose.

  -          The Inciting Incident, where the main problems the characters are going to face are displayed as well as the beginning of their conflicts against the antagonists, if there are any.

 -          The Rising action, where the story builds up upon the conflicts and problems of the characters and the plot gets more exciting.

 -          The Climax, is the moment that the Rising action builds up too, the most intense part of the story.

 -          The Falling action then represents the events that happen after the climax that lead to the resolution and end of the story.

 -          The Resolution where the main problem or conflict is solved by either the main character or someone else.

 -          Finally, the Dénouement represents the end of the story where all the secrets, questions or mysteries which remained still after the resolution are solved.

 This narrative model implies implicitly a linear narrative approach to telling a story (The resolution of a problem should arise after it is evocated). It is used in most movies where the director doesn’t want his spectators to know more than the characters they are watching. This allows the film to keep the tension going through the whole action phase and captivate its audience with action rather than questioning. Now linear narration doesn’t necessarily mean non-complex story, even though a lot of films nowadays use this kind of pattern to concentrate on other aspects. We can see it very clearly in most blockbusters today where directors trade story complexity in order to focus on making the action scenes look more interesting and impressive with the use of special effects and such ( Yes we are looking at you Michael Bay).  In the end, the linear way seems like the most logical choice for a film producer to tell a story easily. But cinema is not only used as a way to tell a story but make the spectator experience something new and original, even though some producers manage very well to make use of linear narration to produce complex and engaging stories, some take the liberty to apply to their stories more thought out narrative outline to bring the spectators into their own world with their own crafted codes and make Cinema shine artistically.

We will now see the most used means of breaking linearity in Cinema today in the second part of our essay.

  II – The common tools used to make non-linear timelines

One of the retrospective tools most used in Cinema today is the flashback. It allows the film to communicate important information that had not been previously revealed during the story and eventually fill story gaps and questions the viewers could have asked themselves. It can also be used as a mean to make the viewers understand a character’s actions, be it the protagonist or the antagonist, by showing elements of their past that can explain their behavior or emotions. There are mainly two types of flashbacks, the objective flashback that shows something that happened in the past without the characters necessarily mentioning anything about it. It gives the viewers information that even some of the characters may not have themselves, In Gone Girl (David Fincher) a flashback explains why the wife of the main character has disappeared while he himself is ignorant as to the reasons why. Then there is the subjective flashback, which doesn’t really break the story’s course as it is mainly following one of the character’s point of view, it is sometimes used to back-up talk with images, when one of the characters is telling his story for example. There is a good example in the hateful eight, when the character played by Samuel L. Jackson explains to another one how he killed his son.  In this case the flashback is often used by producers to respect one of the main principals of Cinema, the “Show and don’t tell” as a linear dialogue would be way less engaging for the viewers. It is part of one of the cinema’s paradox, to avoid talk shows as much as possible and focus on what can be shown to the viewers and what can be explained to him without too much dialogue. It gives importance to certain aspects of the characters or the story and it lifts a problem we can have with linear narration that makes it hard to give consistency to the story and keep the viewers interested as everything is revealed from the get go. Either way, the flashback in general is a powerful tool to break storyline linearity as it allows some parts of the story to remain untold and create narrative gaps that will keep the viewers questioning until said information is revealed. It gives a realistic feel to the characters’ lives not in regards to how it would unfold but how it would be felt with its proper emotions, memories and marking events. Even though the flashback is a tool used by producers to break storyline linearity and put emphasis on certain aspects of the story, there are also other processes like ellipsis that settle only on focusing on important parts of the plot while keeping its order.

Certain movies resort to flashbacks as the main way to tell their stories:

-          “Deadpool” in essence has a very basic plot in its present form and relies mainly on flashbacks to explain the hero’s story and how he got to the point he is now.

 -          “Very Bad Trip”, where the main goal of the characters is to find out what happened to them the night before their hangover, mainly by flashbacks triggered by videos of themselves or testimonies from people that were there.

 -          “Usual Suspects” makes use of flashbacks to illustrate the testimony of the main character to the police (Even if we learn at the end that what he says didn’t really happen).

The main limit of the flashback process is that you can make the film confusing for the viewers by making them loose the notion of the timeline or story order, thus flashbacks need to be correctly delimited in the story and carefully inserted with the use of special effects and such.

There are other basic tools that are used to make the intrigue less linear, in the same vein as the flashback we have the flash-forward that shows elements of the future that are bound to happen eventually. It can be presented either as a prophetic vision or an alternative future. It can give sense to the character’s actions by showing what they have to aim for or what they have to prevent from happening and display clearly what is at stake for the viewers to see. In “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”, the queen of the elves shows to the main character what will happen if he fails his quest to destroy the ring of Sauron.

Even though these processes break the linearity of the storyline of the movies in which they are used, the movie still keeps its linear construction. So in our third part we will see some examples of movies where the non-linearity of the timeline is one of the major aspects of the plot, which is sometimes even entirely constructed around it.

 III – The timeline as a major part of the scenario

We will now talk about films based around a nonlinear construction. Certain movies choose to show multiple characters evolving in different eras by either by following a linear construction like in “2001, A Space Odyssey” where each story is showed completely before the movie transitions to the next, more recent one. In contrast, in “Cloud Atlas”, the directors tell six different stories in different ages and alternate scenes of each one of the stories. The plot bounces between timelines just like in “The Fountain” (Aronofsky) even though we can imagine that some of the stories are only symbolic and do not really happen, just like the part in the future. This way of telling the story brings dynamism into the movie and draws close to the TV shows’ ways of teasing what will happen next, a lot of scenes just end up on at a point in the story that leaves us wanting to see more (Especially in Cloud Atlas).  To a lesser extent we can also talk about “Sin City” where many different stories are told and even though they happen at the same time, each one is shown separately and the movie goes back in time when a new story begins.

In certain movies, timeline manipulation appears like a consequence of the plot itself. In “Edge of tomorrow”, the main character is thrown into a time loop and comes back to the beginning every time he dies while keeping his memories, desperately trying each time to fix the mistakes that led to his death. By doing this, the movie scrambles the viewer’s expectations as in essence, the main character could end up doing the same things over and over again. This lets the producer try to impress the viewer and renew his experience with the same scenes but with different outcomes.

In “Interstellar” the timeline mainly follows the law of physics, as an example when the main characters arrive on a planet where gravity is really strong, time flies by more “slowly” than the people that had stayed far away from the planet. The most interesting thing we can talk about the timeline of this film is when the character of McConaughey goes into the black hole and becomes able to interact with objects of the past. By doing that, the character transcends time and tries to influence his past self not to become his present one. Here too, the timeline creates a story loop which links the beginning and end of the story, more or less like in “Back to the Future”.

On some other films, there is only one story and nothing in the scenario would justify a non-linear narration in itself. But it’s the producer’s choice to just tell his story in another way, in Arrival, Denis Villeneuve tries to trick his audience by showing what appears to be flashbacks but is in reality flash-forwards revealing that the main character had in reality visions about the future making her face difficult decisions. Sometimes, timeline manipulation is an integral part of the intrigue of the movie, for instance, in “Following” by Nolan, the story of the main character is told originally, scenes from three different periods in his life are mixed up together and put end to end to form a confusing puzzle that the viewer has to resolve. The viewer can differentiate each periods of the character’s life by looking at his face: he first has long hair, then short hair and a beaten up face on the last part. It gives a disconcerting feeling to the viewer during the movie and finally a sense of accomplishment when the pieces of the puzzle are put together. It is also the case for “Memento”, by the same director, it is the story of a guy that lost his short term memory due to a rare condition of amnesia. To bring the character closer to the viewers, the film is constructed upside down, each scene ends where the previous one began. By doing that the viewer, just like the amnesic character, does not know what has happened before. In consequence, the director creates complicity with his viewers and totally changes the classical stakes of the usual movie, here the story begins with the main character killing someone and the whole interest of the movie is to show the steps that led him to doing that. As we said before, using this process can give a feeling of accomplishment to the viewer when he finally solves the puzzle, but this narration can also be used to create a confusing experience where plenty of interpretations are possible, just like in “Mulholland Drive” by David Lynch, where the movie is divided in two parts, one where the character played by Laura Elena Harring (Camilla Rhodes) is with Betty the other where she is with(Played by Naomi Watts) and Diane (Naomi Watts too). Many interpretations are possible about what the signification of each part is. This confusing effect is even more present in “Réalité” by Dupieux: this film tells a story where there is, in the beginning, a big border between two timelines, dream and reality but the more the story goes, the more the border becomes thinner between each timeline, to the point that we can’t distinguish whether the scene is a dream or reality. To conclude, the manipulation of the timeline in an intentional way can really create an original and unique experience for the viewer, furthermore, if the process is well done it can enhance the intrigue.

    Conclusion

 We’ve seen why linear narration has always been so popular being the easiest way to tell a story without losing the viewers and letting the director focus on other part of his film even though it has its limits. To face them, a lot of movies nowadays began using “classic” tools and processes that could allow them to mix up their storyline and timeline such as flashbacks and flash-forwards as we have seen. Finally, some directors decided to produce movies that embraced timeline manipulation fully and make it an integral part of the storyline to add originality to their films and make their viewers experience new emotions and discover a new way of entertainment by trying to decipher the true meaning of the story.