#so much of her subplot is literally about destroying/remaking herself for love

[winepresswrath]

Camilla is a baby with a baby but she's so thoughtful & resigned and committed to a articulating a coherent moral framework she can stand behind. But really the sixth in general being ethics nerds who talk everything to death because they really care about getting it right is a nice touch & a fun contrast to the eighth and the ninth.

[merrymjolnir]

my thoughts when i saw TFA

cool, disney is doing a cash-grab by remaking last hope

i mean i really like the new characters but,,,,

desert planet, droid with secret info, fascists with stormtroopers, the rebellion 2.0, big-ass death star

🤷‍♀️

i’m pretty sure rey and kylo will be a thing

i was much more impressed with TLJ

everyone got so pissed about the “subverting expectations” soundbyte that you just forgot that the second movie in a trilogy is always about failure?? the end of AotC is the beginning of the clone wars and also Anakin did his first genocide, and everyone’s fucked at the end of ESB

unfortunately, rose’s character was a #mistake who was only put in to try to make us stop shipping finn and poe

our boy poe finally gets screentime and tbh they kinda made him look like an ass

but honestly i loved everything else! rey had a real tough time getting a grip on herself to understand and connect with the force, loved that journey

get over yourselves about luke going into exile, yoda and obi-wan did literally the same thing

kylo clearly empathizes with rey’s feelings of abandonment with her family and her frustration, sees her as a kindred spirit

what were people expecting with snoke? if he lived to the next film, it would’ve been a RotJ remake

also i just genuinely thought the humor was better in this one

that fight scene against the guards was e v e r y t h i n g

i was so super hyped for rey to be a nobody! that’s who the original jedi were, randos from around the galaxy! not everybody has to be somebody! and what a great parallel to shmi skywalker, a nobody on a desert planet! rey the nobody, an amazing message

broken anakin lightsaber? oh heck yeah, bring on rey making herself a dual-ended staff saber

i left this movie super hyped, and my bet was that in the next movie rey would accidentally tap into the dark side in a moment of dire need (as hinted at on ach-too, how easily she went to the dark) and kylo would find himself drifting to the light

and then........ RoS happened

i was super down for the concept of palps being around as a force ghost or in an extremely vegetative state but like... really, that marionette thing? what

i mean i was really into the first 3rd but damn, some of those plot choices were just.... unforgivable

we had that beautiful moment and arc of kylo destroying the helmet and.... backpedalling on all of that, alright. a choice.

rey using force lightning?? aw yeah, i called that shit

okay but you had a whole subplot of messing with threepio’s memories and you didnt have him revert back to pre-getting memory wiped by organa? not even for a little bit?

fuck EVERYTHING about rey being palps’ granddaughter. fuck that so, so hard

i know that the sith have a bunch of sith planets everywhere from the olden days, but you really expect me to believe palps had a whole goddamn planet’s worth of acolytes/cult followers (that arena at the end was so full wtf!!) with the resources to build that whole fleet? a stretch.

how could you blatantly have the missed opportunity to have it be anakin’s force ghost instead of the ~~memory~~ of han talking to kylo. would have been so much more meaningful.

and yeah i know that leia got jedi training in the extended canon and legends but to bring in her lightsaber, which the audience has never seen before.... why not have rey recover luke’s green saber instead

speaking of which at the beginning of the film rey refers to anakin’s saber as “your brother’s” when talking to leia and that is mmmmmm not correct

i really thought the palps idea had potential but that was such an insane plotline

they even did hux dirty! like what the hell was that!

if they had used luke’s green saber instead of leia’s i would be more forgiving of the burying them in the sand on tatooine

“rey skywalker”

fuck that honestly, rey being a nobody or rey embracing being a nobody over palps’ granddaughter would have been such a more meaningful arc

we were robbed of rey having a yellow dual staff saber

relyo’s, anti’s we were all robbed

the one shining moment of this piss poor excuse for a film was artoo calling threeprio his best friend

[briangroth27]

The Shape of Water Review

The Shape of Water is an enchanting 1960s-set fairy tale told very well; a powerful, expertly-made work of art about the marginalized in our society. Director Guillermo del Toro got outstanding performances out of his stars while capturing the style and feel of the era perfectly, then used the time period to comment on today’s social issues through a story about the downtrodden rallying together against the establishment to preserve life and love.

Full Spoilers…

Sally Hawkins brilliantly conveyed character and emotion entirely through her expressions and sign language as Elisa Espostio (Sally Hawkins), a mute cleaning lady at a top-secret government laboratory who falls in love with an amphibian man (Doug Jones) captured in Latin America. It’s great to see a mute lead character and even better that the film doesn’t allow it hold her back at all, despite what those in power might think of her capabilities. Conveying the romance with and genuine love for the Amphibian Man was mostly on Elisa’s shoulders and Hawkins absolutely sold every bit of it. A wonderful moment late in the film includes an unexpected musical sequence that perfectly illustrates the impact he has on her heart, showing love can transcend even the strangest of barriers. That said, I don’t think Elisa is fully human herself, but the product of an earlier romance between a human and a different aquatic cryptid: her mysterious “scars” and backstory of being found by a river felt like a classic superhero secret origin. If that’s the case and the Amphibian Man healed her gills instead of creating them, then their relationship not only fuels her voice, but allows her to discover her truest self.

I also liked the easy friendships Elisa shared with her coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and next-door neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins). It was a nice and all-too-rare touch that these platonic relationships were just as important to Elisa’s life as her burgeoning romance with the Amphibian Man. It was a relief to find Elisa living a fully-functioning life even while she was longing for romantic love. I loved Zelda’s reactions to the Amphibian Man and to updates about Elisa’s love life. In addition to comic relief, Zelda brought common sense to Elisa’s interest in the Amphibian Man, at first keeping her friend’s head level and later recognizing that risking her life and career to help Elisa save him was something they had to do, even though she was greatly concerned for her best friend’s safety. Zelda being so dismissed in her marriage and having her decisions undercut (even if it was to save her life) by her husband (Martin Roach) was a solid mirror to Elisa and the Amphibian Man’s more mutually respectful relationship and to Strickland’s (Michael Shannon) domineering, controlling marriage. While Zelda was a fully-formed character, it would’ve been nice if she had a subplot of some kind of her own, like Giles did. His failed advertising posters (and failed interest in a guy (Morgan Kelly) working at a not-so-great pie shop) gave the movie a glimpse of the world and society outside the lab that we didn’t get from many other characters. Then again, perhaps it’s the fact that Zelda and Elisa work together and Giles doesn’t that made his world feel bigger than hers. It may also be that his ability to pass as an “acceptable” member of society grants him the ability to travel a wider world than Zelda can, as exemplified by the Pie Guy kicking an African-American family out of the pie shop. Despite his long reach, the sadness and rejection encompassing so much of his world, be it from the Pie Guy or the ad agency he was trying to sell to, painted a haunting picture of the world inhabited by those who “proper” society ignored or—at best—used, and I hope the world Elisa gets to travel to at the end of the film is happier and more equal. Still, I liked that Giles had a sense of hope to him; even if the world was clearly weighing on him, he still believes in the possibility of “happily ever after.”

The make-up for the Amphibian Man was mind-blowing and the movie deserved the Best Costume Design Oscar for it, while Doug Jones did an amazing job of conveying emotion and a sympathetic nature under all those prosthetics. The biggest thing I would’ve liked to see more of in the movie was his backstory. Actual god or not, I wanted to know what he wanted (beyond freedom and to love Elisa), what he thought of the world of men, etc. Who were his followers in South America and what “primitive” rituals did they use to worship him? What did he give them in return? Did he even register that he was worshiped as a god, or do his thoughts transcend those labels? What was his thought process as he went from worshiped to imprisoned? I wish he could’ve communicated better to give us some grander idea of his opinion on things, because his actions made him seem torn between gentle emotions and instinct-driven outbursts, like killing one of Giles’ cats. Perhaps it would be an interesting comment on society if this “god” were really just a different sort of animal and the people who worshiped it had simply projected their need for a god onto him, but I’m almost always against “grounding” half-measures in stories like this (if you’re gonna go there, go there), so I interpreted him as truly a god and would’ve liked to know more. That said, having Elisa fall in love with someone so outlandish was a strong metaphor for how those in power at the time (and honestly, in the present as well) saw homosexual and interracial love.

Michael Shannon’s Colonel Richard Strickland was a great villain and I loved how his control-freak nature demanded everyone around him become subservient, much like the paranoid American government he works for and represents demanded conformity. This made him simultaneously threatening and weak, hiding behind a thin veneer of socially-acceptable power. I especially liked his reaction when he found out just how replaceable he could become if he didn’t find the Amphibian Man; his easy dismissal in the event of his failure also contrasted nicely with how Zelda was always willing to cover for Elisa, from rescuing the Amphibian Man to simply holding her place in line to ensure she clocked in on time. Clearly there’s no friendship, loyalty, or leeway among the conformists, only control or destruction. Watching him break down as many people around him as he could—even his wife (Lauren Lee Smith), forcing her to be quiet while he focused on what he wanted out of their sex life—was very uncomfortable, so it was great to see his frustrated reaction to his inability to intimidate or break Elisa and Zelda. Not allowing his wife to speak was a great contrast to the Amphibian Man, who helped Elisa to not just talk, but to sing. The whimsical, silver screen nature of their classic Hollywood dance sequence also contrasted perfectly with the rot just under the “idealized” surface of 1960s America that Strickland upheld. Though the dance sequence is pure fantasy, it’s the only place where “the good old days” were actually good.

Another aspect that perfectly utilized the era was Dimitri Mosenkov/Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Soviet spy embedded in the lab. Like the threat of the Other found in African-Americans, the gay community, and a sea god, the Red Scare epitomized America’s desperate drive to destroy what it couldn’t control or understand. As I’ve seen noted elsewhere, it was very cool that the film subverted expectations and had Mosenkov not only help Elisa save the Amphibian Man from vivisection at the hands of the Americans, but that he gave Elisa information on how to keep him alive once she’d extracted him. That he cared more about the Amphibian Man as a living thing than as a means to attain Soviet superiority by vivisecting it was great; I definitely expected him to try to give him to his spymasters, where the South American god would’ve met the same fate the American military planned for it. It’s certainly a powerful indictment of our government that this spy sent to undermine us had more humanity than our people, who are only concerned with being “the best” no matter what that does to their souls. The fact that Mosenkov literally had a secret identity is also a nice thematic tie to Giles’ closeted homosexuality, Elisa’s mysterious origins, and the hidden power and passion the oppressed in this time concealed from their conformity-demanding government.

Universal’s classic Creature from the Black Lagoon was an inspiration for this film, and The Shape of Water is an excellent sort of remake, touching on similar themes while updating them and making them relevant to a modern audience. It was very smart of del Toro to explore the limitations of social mores of 1962 by focusing on a cast made up of those without power back then (who are still facing under-representation and lack of power today). However, I would argue that while setting this in the past has the desired effect of getting the audience to let its guard down, it also allows the audience to distance themselves too much, letting us say “those problems have been solved” and never forcing us to inspect ourselves. Still, I absolutely loved the score and the entire 1960s aesthetic del Toro achieved! I could easily have seen this taking the Best Cinematography Oscar. 

The Shape of Water looks beautiful, has an excellent cast who are all on point, and has a very strong love story at the center of a powerful tale of those without power subverting the accepted system. I definitely recommend it!

 Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!