#Topher's just a little menace

[perpetualexistence]

Since you seem to be the expert, could you write a quick fic of Chris or Don putting tiny Topher in their wallet and then putting their wallet in their back pocket?

Topher would be so excited to be in the wallet in the back pocket of his favorite hosts.

It's been 500 years pocket Topher anon. And I'm so sorry I took this long. But I finally got around to it! Don't know if this is what you were expecting, but it's what came out of my brain.

Also it's like nearly 1000 words. I hope it makes up for the wait.

There are many advantages to being a tinyshifter. Others would argue that being able to shrink was more dangerous than it was worth. What with being stepped on, or being seen as prey by now much larger animals, or just how long it took to get from one place to another.

Those people didn't see the potential that Topher saw. Being small was perfect for a gossip like him. You could get into anywhere before any security detail noticed. He'd even snuck his way into the hottest party of the year once! Yeah he'd nearly gotten mauled to death by a fiesty purse dog. It had been worth it to actually spot the Chris Mcclean. For the 5 seconds it took for someone to see him unshrunken and kick him out.

So when his dad revealed that he was going to host a new show traveling the world, Topher was more than excited. He could sneak onto the most hyped up reality show AND get a free flight to wherever he wanted?! Sweet! Or, it would be if his dad had said yes to tagging along.

But he never listened to the word 'no', and he wasn't about to start now.

He waited until Don was about to leave. He always forgot something last minute. He always panicked, and it always made it easier to snatch his wallet.

Not that it was hard to steal his dad's wallet in the first place. Oh the things he'd charged on that credit card. And he WAS running low on hair products...

Wait, focus! eyes on the prize Topher!

He set the wallet down on the coffee table right by the front door. Perfect, now for the fun part.

He focused on making his body curl in on itself without actually moving. Just have to be as small as a mouse to slip into places and get the best gossip. Smaller, smaller...perfect! He was pocket sized now. Now to just slip himself inside of the wallet.

That was on the coffee table miles above him. Oh. Whoops. No problem, he just had to grow back to normal, sit on the table, and THEN shrink.

And he had to do it now because he could hear the thunderous creaks of his dad coming down the stair.

Crap crap crap! He thought of getting bigger as quick as he possibly could. The second he was able to reach the coffee table, he climbed onto it. The table creaked at his weight but that didn't matter now. He could hear Don's footsteps getting louder. It wasn't hard to shrink when he desperately wanted to hide. He dove into the folds of the wallet just as he heard Don stop in front of the table.

"Oh, there you are! I've been looking everywhere for you!"

Topher could feel himself jostle as the wallet was being picked up. He couldn't see much of anything now that it was closed, but that didn't matter. He was so close to spoilers galore and worldwide shopping and why wasn't the wallet moving anymore?

He yelped when artificial light hit his face. He closed his eyes at the shock. When he opened them he could see Don's disappointed face staring at him.

"Topher, get out of my wallet." Don ordered.

"Aw, but the plan was so good and everything! How'd you know?" Topher whined. He crouched deeper so only his head was popping out of the wallet. If Don wanted Topher out, he'd have to grab him himself.

"You really thought I wouldn't notice my wallet being heavier?"

"Are you calling me fat? I can see the headlines now. 'Up and coming reality tv host Don Mallory gets cancelled for fatphobic comments. Public devastated!' Your career would be ruined. But if you were to, I don't know, make it up to me with a trip around the world-"

"Topher, you know I can't just bring you along! The network won't just let me bring a plus one."

"Then the network doesn't have to know! Let me hide in your wallet. We can call this father and son bonding!" Topher knew Don was always desperate for ways for them to connect, so maybe this would work?

"We've already done that in a way that won't get me in trouble with the network! Remember disco night?"

"Disco is dead and you killed it."

Topher knew he screwed up when he saw his father's face fall at that comment. Okay, maybe that one was a bit too far. Don had been really happy when he'd dragged Topher along. It wasn't his fault his dad was super embarrassing!

"Topher."

"Okay, fine, sorry! Just...please? Who knows when I'm going to get a chance like this again?" Don was still looking hurt so great, okay, fine, Topher would make it up to him. "...You can tell me all the history facts they make you cut for time?"

The smile began to return to Don's face and Topher knew he had him. Don still let out a light sigh. "Alright, BUT. You have to stay in my pocket the whole time we're airing. No trying to get on camera."

"Promise!" Topher lied. He wouldn't ever stop trying to do that, but he could stop himself from making it TOO obvious. "Now, don't you still have a flight to catch?"

"Right, right. Sorry, this is going to be a bit bumpy." Don moved his thumb and gently pushed Topher's head back all the way into his wallet. Topher immediately began trying to fix his hair from the safe confines of the wallet before being jostled as he was moved into complete darkness.

By the way he was now moving, he was in Don's pocket now, moving rapidly as Don moved to grab his luggage.

Luggage that Topher wouldn't have with sneaking himself on.

Oh well. He'd just figure something out later.

[fraudulent-cheese]

opinions on sugar

hehe i loveeee her

probably the funniest part of Pahkitew for me, along with Max's EVILLLL schemes! She'll just say the most out of pocket weird shit and then move on it's great. She's super mischeavious and is just a menace all season. Amazing.

Her perspective is also so so interesting. Since she was raised in pageants she treats TD like one and it informs her relationships with most of the other contestants - her throaway line about Topher being a suck-up, being willing to bend the rules to get by and driving a wedge between her and Sky, hell her entire dynamic and relationship with Ella's driven by that!

She thinks Ella's full of shit and just manipulating people but no that's just how Ella is! But how would Sugar know? This is a competition. Why be nice and innocent and play by the rules if you're not just gonna use that goodwill to backstab your opponents into the dirt afterwards? It's kind of tragic they never did hit it off, Ella was really desperate to befriend Sugar and it just. Didn't work out. Sad.

Also i love how she's impressed by Leonard and finds Max incredibly endearing, it's awesome. She in awe of their tism fr

I didn't wanna end this post on a bad note, but i feel the need to mention that im a little uncomfortable with what she was based on. At least when other TD characters were based on things that weren't tropes they were fictional characters (you cannot tell me Harold and Heather weren't based on Napoleon Dynamite and Heathers/Mean Girls respectivaly, and MK's based on a character Aquafina played to my knowledge) or at least adult celebrities (i belive Anne Maria is one such case)

but. Sugar's based on Honey Boo Boo. Who was like 8 years old in 2014? And the show treats Sugar super awfully. It constantly treats her as unattractive, annoying, gross and untalented, and while i don't think making a character gross on it's own is a bad thing, coupling it with the previously mentionned traits and the fact she's fat... Just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It really feels like they're using this fictional teenage girl to mock a literal child. She deserved better from the show, but it's Total Drama. It was never gonna happen.

[jittyjames]

K ANOTHER QUESTION

what is something that you imagine happening in any scene that you did not write in. like, during the encounters between alex and eliza in these latest chapters, i’ve been imagining that little toddler philip just being really restless and thinking he did something to upset alexander or smtn.

so yeah, are there any details not written in that you imagine happening?

*OKAY SO SPOILERS FOR MEANS TO GO ON IF YOU'RE NOT CAUGHT UP*

oh absolutely. little pip is an absolute wreck and he doesn't understand why. it has the same energy as sitting at your closed door and hearing your parents argue over something you can't comprehend. and where alexander is so closed off he can only assume it was something he did. pip is a really really sad boy and will unfortunately probably have trauma of his own from all of this. like in the scene after the reynolds pamphlet is released and alexander is having his breakdown, i wanted to make sure that i made it clear that philip was watching and he was more observant than alexander wants or expects him to be. just the thought of little philip standing on a staircase and clutching his stuffed toy tightly to himself while he just watches his father fall apart makes me SO-

also obviously i don't write much of angelica BUT it is her house after all so she hears and sees stuff, too. like her heart breaks for eliza and alexander so much. she tries not to pay attention because she doesn't want to eavesdrop, but she can't help it sometimes. like i imagine her just folding laundry or something and pausing when she hears eliza pleading with him to just look at her and just speak to her. then she has to go about her day as if nothing even happened.

OK SO ON A LIGHTER NOTE it's the most unserious thing ever but i love imagining philip church absolutely not giving a SHIT about anything. like it's literally an inside joke for me to me. like uncle alexander is having a mental breakdown on the parlor floor?? cool, but mOM WHERE THE FUCK AND MY FUCKING NUGGIES. like he's the type of child that would kick people in the shins and run away cackling. he is a menacing child and i love him, but i can't actually write him in the fic like that bc that would totally take away from the actual story. but just know there is indeed a menace child running around the church estate. honestly, if you were to release him on king george the third, the problem would be HANDLED. every family needs an absolutely psycho little cousin/nephew. thems the rules EDIT: OMG FOR PPL ON TIKTOK HE GIVES TOPHER VIBES LMAO

also the philips are absolute besties but they absolutely are polar opposites. like these two are as close as the schuyler sisters

the family and living dynamics are something i haven't delved into yet, but the hamiltons aren't the only family living there. angelica and philip church definitely have reactions to all of this. (and peggy. sometimes. she is living her best life too most of the time. she didn't get to live long in the musical or irl but she is galavanting happily around New York. for now.)

[ghostsxagain]

He wanted to tell her off, and try to convince her that defending him was pointless. He could feel the anger flaring but just as he opened his mouth to say something cruel a voice in his head advised against it. Candace didn't deserve his shit, not when her kindness was on full display. "Yeah, I bet that's really tough. I guess I should thank you for putting in the effort for me," was what he came up with instead.

"Yeah, I don't see why not. I'll try my best to answer them if anything comes up." Topher refilled both glasses again then set the bottle down. He picked his glass up and clinked it against hers and then downed the shot. Four should be enough to start and he'd take more as he needed it. "We were shitheads with nothing better to do than cause mayhem. You know that stereotype about neglected kids turning into criminals? Well there's truth to it. There weren't any adults that gave a shit so... we got into dealing early and I wish that was the worst of it but nah, not by a long shot. We skipped school to break into the rich kids houses and pawned their stuff. We got into a lot of fights. The worst was probably the one that got me expelled. It uhh, involved a teacher." His face clouded over and he averted his eyes from hers. Topher wasn't proud of any of this shit. "You get the idea. Menaces and definitely not the cute kind. There were days it was as simple as us all hanging around fucked out of our minds and an unsuspecting person passing was fair game to beat on. But there's only so long you can go acting that way since eventually it puts a target on your back. We caught the attention of the wrong dude who didn't like out attitudes. So he arranged to meet with us and that's where shit went bad." A pause, to steel his nerves and to allow Candace to ask questions if she wanted to. His hands shook a little as he grabbed the bottle for another round of shots. @blumhouses

Candace needed answers, even if they didn't come all at once? She needed them so that she could actually stand her ground against her family when it came to him. She didn't believe he did anything so horrible that he wasn't worth loving but she wanted to know she was right to defend him too. "I'm not trying to, I'm just, I don't know Topher. I defend you to my family and everyone else that tells me to stay away from you but I don't know the why you were there. It's a rough spot to be in."

She was a pretty open person with things but then again she couldn't hide her feelings like other people could either. She watched as he poured the shots and immediately downed it before she listened to him, taking the information in before she took her shot and nodding at him at his request. "It's a deal. Am I allowed to ask questions though?"

[ultraericthered]

1. Daran Norris - This is exactly how Venom should sound. Rather than being just Eddie Brock’s voice with a deep, garbled filter over it, it really sounds like a total merger between a man and a monster, two entities speaking with one deep, snarly voice. And in terms of performance, Daran most nails both the frightening and the comical parts of the character.

2. Tom Hardy - Rivals the above in excellence, sounding eerily similar at many points and also giving a fantastically scary yet silly performance, making him that film’s definite highlight.

3. Brian Drummond - Also remarkably similar in sound to the above two, and it’s just ideal casting for the role. The one issue is the lack of consistency - sometimes he sounds like Ryuk, other times like Oozaru Vegeta. Either one sounds great, but he really should’ve just picked one and stuck with it, though admittedly this could be voice direction at fault.

4. Hank Azaria - The classic Venom voice and a stellar example of a mostly comedic actor playing against type. But you can still kinda hear Hank and his Brooklyn accent beneath the filter and it’s a bit distracting at times, which would be my only complaint about him..

5. Ben Diskin - While Ben is phenomenal at sounding creepy and evil in this role, this one is a clear cut example of “just Eddie Brock with a voice filter”, and that filter didn’t even stay consistent between Seasons 1 and 2. Other than that, it’s a great take on young Venom. 

6. Keith Szarabajka - His Venom is positively bone-chilling and sinister, but for that reason I’m not sure it’d work for other, more humane versions of the character.

7. Ben Pronsky - He does a really good job at gruffening up his voice even without that voice filter factoring into the performance, even if his delivery is kind of goofy.

8. Troy Baker - Does as above adequate a job as you’d expect of a VA of his caliber. 

9. Andrew Morgado - His take is solid and works very well. Sounds a bit like Drummond’s.

10. Neil Kaplan - He does a great voice for Venom, but damn that filter for making him sound so unintelligible! 

11. Jason Bryden - He does an alright job. Not the best or the worst - just alright.

12. Steve Blum - Blum does a fine Venom in the game he voiced him in, but it’s rather disappointing ‘cause I know for sure he could do an even better Venom if he used more of his Vilgax voice. As is, this Venom sounds too close to Blum’s later Green Goblin for comfort.

13. Travis Willingham - Huh? OK, why does he sound more like how Blum should’ve!?

14. Dee Bradley Baker & Dave Boat - They both voiced the smaller, more high pitched Lego Venom in ways that sound virtually identical to each other, and both did it well.

15. Quinton Flynn - Is also high pitched and super raspy as Venom, but I’m not sure it was warranted. His brief performance is certainly fun but...this is VENOM, not Gollum!

16. Topher Grace - Deepening his voice just a little bit like they did in the movie doesn’t make him sound any more menacing, and giving him a deeper, garbled filter only makes him unintelligible! Topher was a great Eddie Brock, but he fails as Venom.

17. Matt Lanter - Did not feel this take on Venom AT ALL. It’s just Matt Lanter’s Harry given a deep voice filter, and like Topher Grace, it doesn’t make him any more menacing.

18. Arthur Burghardt - OK, Venom might be an alien being, but why make him sound like an evil, monstrous sounding Yoda or Spock? Burghardt could be so much more intimidating than this!

19. Danny Trejo - Huh? Just...why? He can barely disguise his accent. Who thought that casting him, especially for so few lines, was a good idea?

20. Roger Craig Smith - Phoned in and boring. I expect better from you, Rog!

21. Brian Stivale - Same as above, only with even more wooden delivery.

22. Chopper Bernet - This was a ridiculous miscast. Don’t get “Venom” at all from this dude!

23. Rod Wilson - Uuuh...did he...did he even LOOK at the character he was to be voicing?

[aion-rsa]

How Tom Hardy’s Venom Finally Made the Character a Superhero

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For decades, Marvel has been confused about what to do with Venom. While one of their more marketable characters, the company has never been sure what his deal is. Is he a villain, blinded by his own failures and driven mad? Is he a self-described hero, trying to use his status to justify his endless bloodlust? Is he the hulking agent of a corrupt Avengers, existing as a monstrous alien costume controlling a pathetic criminal too desperate for relevance? Is he a handicapped war hero trying to live up to Spider-Man’s example by using the violent symbiote as a weapon against evil? A mafioso? A space knight? A knock off of John Carpenter’s The Thing?

Even with the movies, the two incarnations of Venom are as different as the two Deadpools or the two Banes. While both Topher Grace and Tom Hardy‘s Eddie Brocks are media screw-ups who bond with alien goo that unleash the id, they also represent very different versions of how Venom has existed in the comics. The version from Spider-Man 3 died and that was that, but the one from 2018’s Venom has not only gone on to turn himself into a franchise, but he’s been able to finally settle Marvel’s mind. The movies, including this weekend’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, have redefined the character.

To understand, you have to go back to the beginning when Venom first started showing up in the late-1980s. Venom was two beings bonded over a shared hatred of Spider-Man. Spider-Man had been spending time wearing a black costume he figured was made of alien technology, only to discover it was a living being that wanted to become one with him. After he removed it, it joined with Eddie Brock, a reporter whose faulty article about a serial killer’s identity was proven wrong by Spider-Man catching the real killer. Rather than realize that he made a mistake, Eddie doubled down and blamed Spider-Man for the way his life crumbled. Together, the symbiote and Eddie became Venom and they wanted to make Spider-Man pay.

But there came a bit of a twist. While Venom was very much dedicated to gruesomely murdering Peter Parker, he was deluded enough to think that this was for the greater good. To him, Spider-Man really was a menace who ruined Eddie Brock’s life. Venom wasn’t spending his off-time robbing banks or trying to take over the world. He wasn’t teaming up with other villains. In his mind, he wasn’t a villain. He was just a good guy pulling off some good old fashioned vigilante justice.

Between Venom’s popularity, his alienation from the rest of the villains, and the fact that he was never going to actually kill Spider-Man, the writing was on the wall. Venom was going to have to actually start fighting crime, even if it was in the Punisher style. A couple What If…? comics from the era played with the idea. There was even a backup story that showed Venom saving a teenager from criminals while preparing for his first fight against Spider-Man.

In 1993, Venom went full-on antihero with the miniseries Venom: Lethal Protector. That started a five-year stretch of Venom comics where the hero went around murdering muggers and getting roped into the occasional superhero team-up, whether it was with Spider-Man, Wolverine, Ghost Rider, or Morbius. As is normal with changes in the comic book status quo, it eventually rubber-banded back to Venom being a full-on villain who wanted nothing more than to kill Spider-Man. It’s always so simple to just go back to the past and treat recent stories as a failed experiment.

Marvel wasn’t sure what to do with Venom for years, but they wanted Venom to be synonymous with villainy. Yet at the same time, they understood the novelty of a heroic Venom, so they tried to have their cake and eat it too. Mac Gargan (formerly the Scorpion) became the new Venom and was treated as genuinely monstrous. In the meantime, Patrick Mulligan was introduced as the new symbiote superhero Toxin. Once he fell into obscurity, Eddie Brock started fighting crime again as Anti-Venom. Then later on, Eddie became host to the Toxin symbiote.

Flash Thompson became Venom for a time, and it was Marvel once again trying to have it both ways. Although the symbiote was evil and overly violent, Flash was able to control it via drugs and willpower. Dealing with the symbiote was treated as a metaphor for recovering from alcoholism. Then when the symbiote took a liking to Flash and became good, it was forced to bond against its will to criminal Lee Price. This culminated in Eddie Brock becoming the symbiote’s host again for the first time in years, and he was again at least trying to do the right thing.

After all this time of playing Hot Potato with alien fashion, we hit the point where Venom was fighting crime again. It was roughly 20 years since his Lethal Protector days, but those days had become a base of nostalgia. Instead of reverting Venom back to how he was in his original handful of stories, writers were starting to remember the antihero stories as the “good old days.”

Now when Spider-Man 3 came out in 2007, it was a little after Eddie Brock got rid of the symbiote in the comics and during the early days of Mac Gargan’s turn. There was nothing modern to latch onto and there was little problem with just going with an early depiction of comics Venom, albeit with some differences. Mainly that Topher Grace’s Eddie was supposed to play like an evil mirror of Peter Parker to the point that he was a photographer instead of a reporter and wasn’t supposed to come off as especially bulky. Bloated as the movie was, this version of Venom didn’t have anything going for him other than being all about revenge, so we have no idea what his next step would have been had he won.

Conversely, the Tom Hardy version of Venom had to be fully formed without Spider-Man’s existence, complete with not only a new origin story but also a new motivation for Brock and the symbiote to stay bonded. That meant going to the Lethal Protector well once more. Both Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage are filled with references to that era of Venom. Carlton Drake, the Life Foundation, Riot, Shriek, Eddie having homeless friends, the symbiote hungering for the chemical that’s found in brains and chocolate, and so on. The details of Cletus Kasady’s childhood were taken directly from Venom: Carnage Unleashed.

Even the goofball sense of humor was something Venom had going for him back then, though it was more Eddie than the symbiote (it really didn’t get a “voice” until years later). This was a guy who murdered a room full of goons while singing David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” then admitting he forgot most of the lyrics. He once went undercover in a church by cross-dressing as a nun. The dude went on TV and crashed a news broadcast with the Incredible Hulk while doing a Hans and Franz impression!

But more than anything, it went with the idea of Venom being a problematic attempt at being a hero. Eddie is a mess of a man who ruined his own life and needs to be led on the right path. The Venom symbiote is a petulant child that wants to feast on human flesh and unleash havoc, but can be won over to do the right thing and be civilized. While Venom does good overall, it’s also an excuse to do what he wants. Murder and eating people is okay as long as they have it coming. The sequel makes it apparent that such an attitude leads to repercussions and it’s not a sustainable lifestyle for someone who wants to hold onto a normal life.

When Venom made all that money at the box office (over $850 million internationally), it sent a message: Marvel realized that the world wanted Venom as the good guy. He wasn’t there to chase Spider-Man, but to have his own adventure. Be the protagonist. Be the hero. Be over the top about it all.

While Venom’s comic adventures have certainly been weird in the last few years, they have been consistent in making it clear that Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote are on the side of good. Eddie had a great, cathartic moment where he admitted to the Avengers that he doesn’t know whether to call himself good or bad because once upon a time, he thought killing Spider-Man was the right thing to do. How can he trust his own judgment if he had that going on?

Then he went on to pull this shit.

He’s still not nice enough to let Spider-Man eat his fries, but they’re at least on good enough terms to get lunch together. That’s progress!

The success of Venom: Let There Be Carnage only solidifies Venom in the eyes of the public. Tom Hardy’s CGI space monster is someone we want to cheer for. Let him be redeemed. Let him protect.

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The post How Tom Hardy’s Venom Finally Made the Character a Superhero appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[perpetualexistence]

I decided to put the Pocket Topher ask into a fic on AO3!

As I continue to spread the giant/tiny propaganda, I finally decided to post the ask that turned into a one-shot onto AO3. If you've already read the ask, I pretty much just copied and pasted it. If you haven't, please give it a read! It's got Topher being a little menace and Don being a tired father.

I'm going to put my Nowen one-shot onto AO3 too, and then after that I'll be back to writing now that I've finished with fic rec week and come back from my break. So, be back with an update on the cross-posting soon!

[aion-rsa]

Tenet’s Release Date Forgets the Lessons of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar

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It seems fairly certain now that Tenet will be released in theaters at the end of the summer. Warner Bros. confirmed as much Monday when the studio announced Christopher Nolan’s latest epic is set to open in 70 countries, including the UK, on Aug. 26. It will then make the jump stateside to vaguely determined “select U.S. cities” on Sept. 2, just in time for Labor Day weekend. While plans can change—they have before—there is almost a weary resignation about this announcement. We’re opening this in theaters in 2020, come hell or high water.

Yet one of the many bitter ironies about this choice is that it ignores a central theme of another Christopher Nolan odyssey, the star-gazing Interstellar. Every bit as ambitious and grandiose as Nolan’s other IMAX spectacles post-The Dark Knight, Interstellar grappled with cerebral concepts, including Einstein’s theory of relativity, intergalactic wormhole space travel, and the existential threat of depleted resources on Earth. The movie also, much more bluntly, dramatized the danger of anti-intellectualism and a willful rejection of scientific facts, especially  the danger of beleaguered resignation.

The scene that most crystallizes this occurs during the climactic moments of the movie’s second act. Literally worlds away from where the movie’s hero Joseph “Coop” Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) struggles with the pitiful Dr. Mann (Matt Damon), Coop’s children back on Earth also face a reckoning. Now both adults who took radically different lessons from their father’s NASA legacy, Murph (Jessica Chastain) is a scientist who followed Dad into the space program, and Tom (Casey Affleck) is the estranged brother who’s happy to keep his eyes squarely focused on the ground. There is nothing wrong with farming, of course, but for Tom it’s as much a form of self-denial as it is a profession.

When the confrontation comes, Murph and friend Getty (Topher Grace) have come to the farmhouse where Murph and Tom grew up with their grandfather, and where Tom now lives with his own wife and son. In actuality Tom had two children, but one of them, Jesse, died of a lung disease caused by “blight;” a new type of dust and ecological menace that’s spread around the globe and is now coating every crop Tom owns. On this fateful day, Tom’s living wife and son are also showing symptoms of disease, and Murph wants Tom to make the tough choice: Face the reality of the situation and leave his family home.

One look at Affleck’s glower when his character enters the house announces this isn’t going to happen.

“Let me make something abundantly clear, you have a responsibility—” begins Getty before Tom punches him in the face. Murph then more succinctly cuts to the chase, “Dad didn’t raise you to be this dumb, Tom.”

And here in this moment, like many a story before it, Nolan’s Interstellar has distills  the age-old conflict between science and commerce, hard truths and comforting delusions. When boiled down to its fundamentals, the scene isn’t that different from Chief Brody trying to explain to the mayor of Amity Island they need to close the beaches in Jaws, or Cassandra warning the Trojan court of a doom to come.

And yet, what’s intriguing about the Interstellar variation is that it sympathizes with Tom and his position. Unlike Murph, he wasn’t Daddy’s favorite; the educational system likewise didn’t see much promise in him. In high school a single test prevented him from going to college. Instead he was left behind, conscripted to do what society viewed as a less financially important task while his little sister excelled at university. In a handful of minutes, the implication that Tom grew bitter about both his lot and their father’s absence is self-evident. As is their connection since Cooper disappeared trying to mitigate an existential threat which has come all the same in Tom’s adulthood.

But as that grown-up, what once seemed like an abstract idea is now tragically obvious. The danger of the blight is visible in the small Cooper family cemetery outback, and it’s there on his sister’s face as she stands in his kitchen, calling him dumb. But then it’s uncomfortable looking reality in the eye like this—or being asked to forsake the only thing Dad ever left him, which was this farm.

“Dad didn’t raise me. Grandpa did,” Tom snarls. “And he’s buried out back with Mom and Jesse.” Interstellar empathizes with Tom’s plight and desire to ultimately do nothing—just keep going on and pretending everything is normal—even though the movie knows it’s a deadly delusion. After all, the film crosscuts this scene with Coop calling Dr. Mann “a fucking coward.”

What Tom is doing is cowardly. But it’s also tragic, because he refuses to accept the scientific facts of a worldwide disaster, even as they come from his own sister. So Tom refuses to uproot his remaining family, to live with Murph and what’s left of the United States’ science community, waiting for a proverbial cure that hasn’t been invented yet. He’d rather just do what makes him happy until it kills him. And not only him. “You’re going to wait for your next kid to die,” Murph apprises of the situation.

The scene is obviously a work of fiction in which there is a fantastic agricultural blight so deadly it’ll kill off all organic life on Earth in several generations—and it exists in a world where the U.S. government is still even-headed enough to launch a program to save its citizens and species. With that said, the echoes of the conflict between data-minded experts versus the wishful thinking of those who just want to keep on keepin’ on, even if it kills them and everyone they love, obviously speaks to our moment. You can see Tom in each American, maybe some of whom have legitimate reason to feel “left behind,” now refusing to wear a mask during the coronavirus pandemic.

Hence the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases currently increasing in 30 out of the 50 states. As of the time of writing, more than 4.3 million cases have been confirmed in the U.S. alone, and the death toll is about to cross the morbid threshold of 150,000 Americans. There is no sign of things getting better in North America. In fact, things are expected to get much worse, particularly as the White House attempts to force public schools throughout the country to reopen at full capacity.

As WB pointed out in a press statement, more than 30 states currently have given movie theaters the go-ahead to reopen at reduced capacity. However, there is undoubted crossover among the states where indoor theaters can reopen and those with rising infection rates. Similarly, studios and theater owners are aware of a certain risk level of opening Tenet during a pandemic, even in areas where infection rates are down. According to a report in Variety, multiple studios are likely considering releasing movies in Europe this summer “in case more theaters in Spain shutter” due to a second wave of infection.

This is not to say Warner Bros. is making the choice to release Tenet out of cynicism. Indeed, we can only speculate as to what the private conversations are behind closed doors between studio executives, filmmakers, and exhibitors. But we know Nolan is desperate to protect his love for theatrical moviegoing, which he vocalized in The Washington Post in March by correctly saying cinema is a vital part of our collective social life. It’s about as democratic a form of art as can be imagined, with all economic classes able to afford and share an experience of going to the movies.

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Horrifyingly, movie theaters are facing an existential threat at the moment. The CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners warned last week if Hollywood keeps delaying their movies until there is a vaccine “we won’t be there in a year.” So it appears likely Nolan is trying to turn Tenet into a kind of economic refuge, or at least respite, for movie theaters to weather a storm that is likely to last well into 2021.

But like Tom trying to will away the threat of blight to his family, or ignoring the protestations of his sister, Nolan and Warner Bros. are playing a risky game. Even in areas where infection rates are down, people who go see Tenet in September will be gathering in indoor theaters for hours at a time, with more than a few lowering their masks every so often to enjoy a snack or drink. On some level, I want to be one of them. I’ve savored every Christopher Nolan movie to date, and find a kind of sacrosanct comfort each time I go to a movie theater. But as with Tom and Murph’s childhood home, one needs to face the risks hidden in that comfort as the world changes.

A month ago, epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert Dr. Carlos Del Rio told CNBC, “I would honestly say I’m not comfortable going to the movies right now. I want to see the numbers come down, want to see the cases go down. Right now, the only place I am comfortable going to the movies is my living room.” In the same report, Dr. Ravina Kullar, a Los Angeles-based infectious disease specialist said, “What we are seeing now is that wave one is still going on… there has not been a decline or a plateau and that is a concern. I don’t see any change in a positive direction.”

Since then, the daily increase of new reported COVID cases has risen from around 30,000 new cases a day to between 50,000 and 73,000 cases a day. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicts we could likely soon see 100,000 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infection a day.For me, going to a movie theater is like going to church, or like working the same field as your father and grandfather is to Tom in Interstellar. It’s home. But until there is a solution to the problem, it is better to listen to the Murphs and Faucis of the world than wait around for another kid to die.

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