The Diamond Island

These movies are very likely moving out of the theaters as I type this, if not already moved aside for the next installment of inefficiency Hollywood propaganda.

The question that comes to mind for me is:  Which of these two movies is an accurate rendering of the apocalypse?

This Is It begins with an acknowledgment of Michael Jackson’s death.  We the audience enter this experience knowing the ending—that the man we are about to see is dead-man-walking.  He has passed on.  And yet, through the magic of the movie screen we get to see him in the days leading up to his end, rehearsing a mega-galactic show.  When we see him, he is alive, yet we know he is dead.  This is the condition of being a god—both alive and dead, in two places at once.

I suggested in a previous post that there was something of the vampire in MJ, and seeing him during the movie I cannot help but think how supernatural he looks.  How supernatural his interactions with the other dancers, musicians, choreographers, and so on are.  One thing for sure is that MJ has total mastery over his music, his moves, and the presentation of both.  It is a supernatural experience, if you forget that he is mortal, as the movie has already stated.

What I enjoyed most about this movie is how we catch a glimpse of the show as it might have been, and how the creative process occurs as the participants work out the kinks.  It’s two shows in one.  Very much like life, because it is life and we know there is death because the endgame is in front of us.

It’s a glorious spectacle to behold, and yet the imperfection of the show as MJ tries to perfect it brings a human, individualized quality to it.  At the end, the film freezes to announce him as the King of Pop.  The show is ended, a life is ended, the movie is over.

Meanwhile, 2012 slakes our thirst for everyone to perish at the hands of impersonal forces.  You have the inviolable average white family struggling against the challenge of doomsday, with father doing most of the work and ensuring everyone stays together, everyone survives, and all interlopers are removed.

The doomsday special effects are everything one might hope, with entire buildings collapsing as thousands fall screaming into the black pit of destruction.  It’s been done before, in the first superman movie.  The death of Krypton is at least honest as it sets up a story situation.

In 2012 you get to watch billions die, the rich ensure their survival, and lip-service get paid to human values—allowing a few laborers to live long enough to become the next generation of slaves. How exciting!

Fear not, all will proceed as it has always done, with nothing changed in the fundamental social class of things or how decisions are made for the human race.  Even better, the predominantly white survivors get to settle in the new Africa and say they are where the human race began after the flood.  How convenient!

The movie truly ends about two-thirds of the way in, when the protagonists reach the islands of Hawaii, which have burst into flames.  It’s a genuinely sober moment in the story, when one realizes luck or skill or preparation will only get you do far–a message the rich would do well to contemplate.  They won’t—paying the Mammon dues will ensure their survival, right?  Nope.  End of line, program.  All fall down.

The movie ceases to be interesting after that and we focus on the passing on of life all doomsday movies are required to depict.  Don’t worry, it’ll all come out in the wash.  Give the audience enough special effects to slake their thirst for blood and a salve to their misery, but then bring them back from actually reflecting on their own clocks ticking.

The devil loves the old standby of “tell them there’s no hurry.”  Paid for itself all the way back to the beginning.

But with This Is It, the endgame is irrevocable.  Life does not continue on.  No ark of any kind, metaphorically or medically, is letting MJ perform a single show he rehearsed.  What we see is all we get.  When the end comes, that’s it.  Your number is up, no matter how frighteningly genius you are.

I watched This Is It and I felt whole, as if a truth had been spoken.  Yes, I’m seeing an edited program which excludes anything which might be construed as negative.  Yet I still found a sublime peace and sorrow at the same time.  All of us are headed into the last curtain call, no exceptions.

I watched 2012 and enjoyed the special effects.  Woody Harrelson stole the show as a crazy apocalypse nut.  But the story was all so phony.  Propaganda reassuring the owned that all will be well in a catastrophe.  It says more about the fears of the rich than it does about what the end of life on earth might be like.  The movie fosters a profoundly bleak, one-sided view of human beings.  At the end we’re right back where we started—get back to work, drones.

But MJ, standing alone against the actual, physical bulldozer coming out of the trapdoor on stage.  Trying to stop what in all reality is probably too late to change.  It’s complete farce.  Yet in that moment of the fool’s end I understood the fans, I saw the other side.  He’s gone, and I’m still alive—but even in the heartless heart of a vampire I see the good.

That’s what is known as sublime.

Godzilla isn’t the same for me anymore.  As a child I loved the destruction and the excitement.  But now, having been to Hiroshima, I also see the overwhelming, apocalyptic horror of the human experience crushed underfoot by the atomic unknown.

This is what is meant by the sublime.  The monstrous face we are seeing is humanity’s own hellish shadow, magnified many times over by enormous natural forces into a radioactive blast that annihilates the human completely.

I can’t know what it is like (I wasn’t there), or comprehend much of the significance—I’m just a tourist, a voyeur, a poser who caught a brief glimpse of an old claw-print.  But even having once seen evidence that Ancalagon is real, and we have the power to summon such enormous destruction against others, where can one hide?

I love the film deep and darkly, yet it is a heady draught I consume with caution and reserve.

This is the message the ghosts convey to me repeatedly for most of the night—that no one stands outside the shadow of humanity.  I lie in my bed, the other students fast asleep, and I hear the rumble of otherworldly clutches.  It might only be my conscience trying to open me up like a clam to the world, which I imagine to be the sounds of the dead.

I talk to them in my mind, twisting and turning hotly in bed unable to sleep.  I imagine myself helping them, being there with them (which is just fantasy guesswork), and suffering for them.  But these are all empty postures in the night.  I wear myself out wrestling with their noise and I finally sleep.

My dreams are of swimming in a vast underground ocean of red flame and muddy slime.  I am surrounded by people staring at me as they rot away into charred ooze.  Then I am struggling through the streets of a deserted, burning city that gives off a cloudy, shadowed heat.  I realize I’m asleep and I wake myself up, struggling to rouse my muscles and breathing out of the relaxation of slumber.  It’s daylight out.

The next stop for us is Itsukushima, which is known as Miyajima the Shrine Island.  One of the three holiest places in Japan.  No one is allowed to die here—you get shipped right off as soon as you start to croak.  People weren’t even allowed to live there until recently.  As a result, there is still a primordial virgin forest on the island.  Countless holy structures of all kinds shapes and sizes may be found throughout the island.  Plus lots of squeaking deer, and monkeys who are the messengers of the gods.

It feels good to escape the city for a while.  The sun is shining when we land, but the weather slowly changes as we meander through the streets.  A light rain begins, followed by a growing mist.  A few of us take the Miyajima Ropeway (a cable car system) to near the top of Mount Misen to snap some pictures, but by the time we get up there it’s useless.  The entire island and surrounding sea is shrouded in fog.

After a few minutes of taking things in, everyone decides to descend for some lunch, but I decline.  Taking my handy tourist map I figure I’m going to climb the summit and get some outdoor time to myself.  The map makes it look like a hop skip and a jump.  Scale, let me show you how not to use it.

I pass through a huge herd of monkeys and onto the fog-shrouded, forested mountain paths, which are well trod.  There’s no one about, and likely with good reason.  As I learned later, all tengu goblins in Japan gather in the forests of Mount Misen.  They scare away intruders by making loud noices like wooden blocks being banged together.

This is a scene only a crazy gaijin would find themselves in, ignorant of all the hazards of the spirit world.  Fools and little children protected by the purity of their motives, I suppose.

But I feel at peace, safe.  This a sacred place, whether or not I get the local meaning.  I know I’m an outsider, that I don’t belong, and yet I maintain a respectful thought at all times. I don’t hear anything but the wind and the rain.  Even the monkeys are quiet, and soon I don’t see them anymore (probably all hanging out close to the ropeway station for handouts).

I reach a small wayside shrine and make an offering of incense.  It takes considerable effort to light it in the light rain and wind, but I manage and place it in the proper place.  I struggle with my request of the gods, wanting very much to grant me some good fortune with my then-girlfriend at the time.  But all I can come up with is a request that my love for her be true, which seemed a cop-out, easy request to make in one’s prayers.

I ought to have prayed for the ghosts, or for an end to atomic weapons, yet all I can think of is my own needs at a time like this.  I spend a long time in the rain agonizing over whether I made the right request.  I tell myself that if the stick is still burning when I return this way, then I made the right decision.  I walk up the slope of the final approach to the top.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the shrine I visited is the Reikado (“Temple Which Protects Flame”).  There is a fire inside that is said to have been lit by a holy man and has been burning ever since.  This fire was used to light the Peace Flame in Hiroshima’s Peace Park, which will burn until all atomic weapons are destroyed and the world is free from their horror.

That holy man is Kobo Daishi, founder of one of the major branches of buddhism in Japan.  He’s one of the holiest holy men in Japanese culture, seriously big dude dinner stuff.  They say he’s still chilling out, hidden from our sight until the return of the biggest Buddha ever.  No messing around, seminal figure here.  Ka-boom.

I take the path where you have to bow down and walk under a stacked boulder to continue on the path.  It’s like a tunnel and a gateway at the same time.  The trees break away, the path twists one last time, and you find yourself with a 360 view of the surrounding area.  Boulders everywhere which the gods are said to rest upon and discuss/observe/contemplate the world.

Actually, I should mention that when I say “gods” I’m using it in the collectively neutral sense rather than say god/dess-s or divinities.  Shinto has a matriarchal pantheon, with all the major deities being female (for example, Amaterasu the sun goddess is no joke, takes care of her bizness, watch out).  The mother is everywhere in Japan, she’s what counts, but she’d insist harmony be maintained and everyone remain at the table, thus “gods”.

The actual summit holds an observation deck, which you climb a series of stairs to reach.  It’s a joke, actually.  You are standing on one of the most holy places you can in Japan, and there’s this ugly, cheeseball man-made structure to the side.  For some reason I didn’t mind though, it felt appropriate, like one last step into the heavens.  Taken on the stairway of ugliness, admitting our own human weakness.

This is the moment of enlightenment in the spiritual journey.  Hard climb, long travel, then revelation as the world opens up all around you.  At the top of the deck, I take in the four directions.  The spattering rain and crisp wind buffet my body, dousing my heat and strength.  Clouds and mist are rushing all around me.  The nearest shores and islands are hazy outlines.

I speak to the gods of Japan, ignorant of their names let alone their ranks and stations.  I tell them I don’t know what to say about what I’ve witnessed or how I feel.  I don’t know what to ask from them, or what to tell them.  I don’t even know if I should say anything at all.

It occurs to me I’m the only person up on this summit.  I am meant to be here, doused in the elements, shivering with the feeling of being alive.  A fragment of cultural relevance comes back to me from my studies, of how the Japanese consider themselves a “wet” people.  That is, they are a deeply feeling people who understand relatedness.  While outsiders, particularly westerners, are considered “dry”.  They have little awareness of the feelings of others.

I recognize how supremely purifying a moment this is.  Separated from the group and free to be myself, the gods are making me a “wet” outsider, if only for this moment.

Being blessed, I give thanks and take my leave, returning to the world of people with difficulty (harder to descend than ascend, and I’m low on energy).

The incense is still smoking as I shamble past the wayside shrine (if I can truly love, even after the mark of the ghosts, then the world grows). Marked, purified.  Departure, return.

At the bottom of the ropeway station, at a food stand, the group is waiting for me.  Waiting for the next ferry.  I have just enough time to scarf down a deep bowl of steamy hot udon noodle soup.

Slurp.

So me, the folks, and K are doing the loch walkaround.  We’re coming into the final lap through the square before the final uphill closure.  We pass a large piece of dirt that looks like a dried dog-doo, surrounded by tinier pieces.  I stop to take a closer look, because I sense something powerful about it.  In the space of a few seconds I believe I see a turtle shell covered by dried dirt.

I call the clan to hold up, and crouch down to get a closer look.  They think I’m picking up a dog-dropper and have gone nuts.  I pick up the little creature and get a closer look, the camouflage at last seen through—it’s a baby snapping turtle.  I recognize the long, slender, whip-like tail and curved claws.  The strong, snub beak that snaps shut like a steel trap.

The bulbous eyes blink as it shrinks into tight shell immobility.  Still alive!  How on earth it got all the way over here I don’t know, but we decide to carry it back down the path to the loch side.  I place the turtle on a flat rock half out of the water, surrounded by plants, safe to enter the water when ready.  I’ve seen huge snapping turtles in the shallows of the loch, and once in the road in the morning, so I know they exist.

This little one must have erupted from an egg in the dirt and gotten lost on that left turn in albuquerque.  Well, may the turtle find delicious morsels and grow to enormous size in the grand waters of the loch!  I’m going to bust out in song here, watch me work now:

Gamera is really neat,
He is full of turtle meat,
We all love you Gam-e-ra!

In the movie The Bermuda Depths, it’s the hatching of the baby giant monster sea turtle that creates the bond between the young Magnus and the ghostly Jennie.  There’s a familiar struggling in that story, I think, of lost souls for understanding of a love beyond mortal and immortal ability.  We create things through caring which descend into the deep and resonate with a mystery.

Some might search for the hard truth of that mystery, and get exactly that—with a locker courtesy of Davy Jones (another name for the Devil).  Others wander in and out of the mystery, finally walking away with a reluctance to face the vulnerable reflection that is revealed.  Meanwhile, clues attach themselves to minor actors we only get a few walk on scenes to notice and contemplate.  Lucky is the person who can rewind and reflect upon a slight turn of the light!

The star-crossed lovers never reach the unspoken dream.  Magnus returns Jennie’s talisman to the sea—which to me says he rightly sacrifices his old life.  Jennie keeps her promise and returns to the depths.  Given the misfortune she has spread by returning to see Magnus, this is a mercy for us on the surface.  Yet, carved in the shell of a mutual connection are their initials within a heart.

Is it a monster this mixed partnership creates, or is it perhaps we as the audience wish only to see the horror of the inconceivable?  There is an individual crumb in there that speaks again of the hybrid, if we as audience would only pull the sword from the stone of our own mind.

The movie Exorcist 2: The Heretic has been soundly trashed as one of the most awful movies of all time. I’ve seen awful movies and this one doesn’t even come close. I’m not a fan of the original, as it seems to me to be more about the disruption of the conventional as a result of people’s messed up expectations than about actual possession, which is a genuine problem today.

I am a fan of Exorcist 3, which truly is a sequel to the original. It deals more with issues of disbelief and unredeemed longing than possession, but it does so dramatically and with narrative wholeness. We are answered, by a self that is both guide and daemonic adversary.

Exorcist 2 is a development on the ideas of the first film, yet it stands on it’s own. It actually deals with issues of possession, using the locust swarm as a metaphor for the outbreaks of collective insanity in our world. Issues of obsession and willful denial make appearances in the plot, as expressed through the priest’s search for meaning and the doctor’s attempt to hide from the supernatural.

Linda Blair plays a more mature, post-exorcist girl named Regan who remembers everything of her horrific ordeal, and appears to be dealing with it quite well. Her ordeal isn’t over, but it’s obvious she has healed way ahead of anyone’s mundane views of her. In fact, she’s taking the next step in discovering that her experience has given her the ability to rescue those still in darkness.

I hesitate to support the narrative premise of “the way for women to gain power is to get jacked first.” That position too often leads to stories where heroines are violated as a means for them to move forward. But I don’t want to shy away from reality with rose-tinted glasses either.

Maybe the heroine’s journey that begins with a sparagmos (a crucifixion or tearing apart by the darkness) is the archetype we still need to come to terms with through a certain base popular culture.  I’m just keeping an eye on what I think is a little too much of one thing to be balanced.

Here, in this movie, it’s what Regan is dealing with; she’s working stuff out and not flinching. And this is some dangerous psychic material she’s working with, totally radioactive stuff that messes up the people around her. The main character is meant to be the priest, but his journey is our journey of getting on board with the real deal: A young woman’s coming to terms with how she has changed as a result of her possession.

The film is far from perfect—Richard Burton delivers solid actingas the priest at times, but for much of the film he’s off his game.  The film suffers from an undeveloped script, offering scant answers at times when a fuller revelation would have resonance. The timing on many actions is poor. There are moments when a hesitation or a cutting of scene time might have made things more clear.

However, there are ideas here that need worth thinking about. The main idea is that people who have been tainted by evil and have recovered can help other people who are possessed. There is the larger theme of how nature is working towards creating people (known as “good locusts”) who have the power to lead the rest of us out of confusion and back to harmony again. A constant theme is the interconnectedness of all things, the connection we all share unconsciously, and the forces of evil, which are both guides and adversaries.

There’s ambiguity, the hybrid effect of the individuated being, in all the characters. Regan wears white, is attracted to dove symbolism, and is sweetly friendly. Yet she has a knowing resolve, a crazy element to her that no one understands, and there’s the wicked side of her drawn out by contact with the demon. The demon itself is dangerously harmful and disruptive, yet also an instrument of destiny, with parts that can be understood and even assimilated into ourselves.

This dichotomy extends to the other characters as well, good and evil being relative, but still both aspects that can’t be ignored. The lines between science and mysticism are blurred.

At the end of the movie, surrounded by the collapse of the world, Regan discovers her true calling and completes herself, stilling the world back into harmony. The other characters still lack a complete picture, but they’re learning. Scarred, looking for the puzzle piece they have yet to find in themselves. But Regan stands out as an example of how we can find the good locust in all of us. The harvest of our lives and of others can still be saved and the hidden violence in our nature redeemed.

Like all good fairy tales (and the better Terry Gilliam films) we are brought back into the world to regard what we have witnessed. The flash of the synchronizer upon the doctor’s face as the movie fades to black leaves us with the knowledge that the struggle continues; even as nature creates a garden we have yet to notice. Given that at this point time and space are fluid, the doctor’s point of view becomes a remembering (with who as witness and/or participant?) of the last time she saw Regan and the priest.

Is the doctor showing us what she has witnessed? Are we the subject sitting on the other side of the synchronizer, descending into the earth of the unconscious so she might show us what she knows and feels first hand? The movie itself might be seen as our own “going deeper” via the synchronizer; to see how things are working out in other people’s lives, the present examining the past while the future watches the present. The connection crosses all time-space barriers because it is irrational.

The disease of possession might be something our bodies are adapting to, building up a psychic immunity, or rather more properly forcing the phenomenon to reckon with us as an evolving organism and establish ties with.

The hybrid, the cyborg, the tainted angel. Crossing boundaries and making us whole in all times and spaces.

Okay, so what did I like about the Harry Potter movies?  Some of the characters stand out as appealing to me.  There are times when I really enjoyed what was happening because it was portrayed well.

I like Snapes a great deal.  He strikes me as the most human of all the characters.  His bitterness is compelling all the more because its over a love lost to one’s tormentor.  Despite his obvious competence he wears a serious face to mask his insecurity.  He hides it well, but also seems to have a realistic fear of and appreciation for what Voldemort can do.

I continue to be impressed by Alan Rickman’s work as an actor.  His portrayal of Snapes never lets me think for a moment he is an actor playing a part.  His mere presence improves nearly every scene he appears in.  Easily, he’s consistently the best part of the movies.

I also like Hermione.  I’ve had my fill of overt, know-it-all female sidekicks, but somehow she works for me.  I totally buy that she’s a driven overachiever, attempting to live up to the pressures of being from a non-wizard family.  Despite her mask of self-control, she shows moments of vulnerability and insight.  Of Harry’s friends I feel she comes closest to being his equal in adventure.

The actress portrays her with a little less depth than I’d like, but still does a good job.  Better anyway, than a lot of the other actors around her phoning it in.  Harry always gets the attention and Ron is there for comic relief.  But I usually get the feeling that whatever Hermione is working on is based on her hard work.  Whether it’s saving the day with a little time travel or brewing a shapechange potion, when she gets to act with agency she does it nicely.  No fumbles there.

As far as scenes go, I think a few are done well enough to make me forget I’m watching a dysfunctional Hollywood movie.

I liked the scene where a torrent of letters come flying into the house to tell Harry his adventure has arrived.  I found that both hilarious and heart-warming.   It’s an affirmation that our destiny will drag us toward it willingly or not, and push anyone who stands in the way aside.

The scenes involving the cloak of invisibility tend to be pretty good.  Invisibility is an awesome power to have, and whenever Harry uses it I feel like he is being his own person.  There are so many people keeping secrets from Harry, not just enemies.  I like that he is able to turn the tables and get his own answers at times.

When Harry uses the Patronus charm to save his other timeline self and his godfather is pretty awesome.  He’s been practicing, facing his fears under the tutelage of probably the only competent Dark Arts tutor in the series.  Then when the time comes for him to be the great wizard (that is, embody the image everyone has of his father for once), he performs magnificently.

Come to think of it, the whole adventure where Harry and Hermione travel back in time to complete the timeline is pretty awesome.

The return of Voldemort just after Harry and Cedric win the tri-wizard cup is probably my favorite.  Cedric is killed almost immediately, showing us how stupid the cup challenge is as a measure of best wizard.  For once, Voldemort has the upper hand.  He achieves a major goal in getting a physical body again, punking out the so-called good guys and getting in some serious gloat while he’s at it.  He chitchats with his death-eater pals, showing us exactly how the other side interacts.

It was a mistake for him to let Harry go, given that Harry still had a really stupid Deus Ex Machina card to get him out of the jam.  But I can forgive Voldie for not having meta-story knowledge.  It’s still cool to watch Harry say, “fine, have it your way” and go out fighting.  Essentially tossing the expectations on his shoulders aside and accepting his death.

I was hoping he’d use the Patronus charm and catch everyone off-guard enough for him to escape (let that be a lesson to you Voldie!), which would make logical sense and rock the mike.  But the confusing and out of the blue save by the power of love ruins the scene, reducing it to just awesome.

Finally, even though it leads nowhere, I still liked Harry’s training of the students in the secret room.  Having fought and escaped the big dude baddie makes him somebody worth listening to.  And the dedication it takes to deceive the school authorities while teaching the students to fend for themselves is awesome.

The community rallies together in a sane and serious manner to prepare themselves for danger.  Plus the fact that the school reveals a hidden personality dedicated to just such a purpose is a nice touch.  It turns the school into something more than just an indoctrination center.

Basically I enjoyed scenes where I felt the characters had permission to matter.  That is, where they had agency enough to control their fates.  Too often I felt they were pulled around by circumstance and forced to react rather than act.  When they assumed control of their own lives, for good or ill, I was drawn in.

Fundamental problems aside, the movies themselves are awful for the most part.  Like the Batman franchise, the people at the helm have no clue about what to do with the material.  It’s dysfunctional, all over the place, amateurish attempts at audience manipulation.

Despite a pretty detailed (if simplistic) world in the books to draw upon, the movie-makers seem unable to work with the material.  They are simply unable to craft scenes that get to the heart of the plot, let alone draw out nuances implied in the text.  A lot of time is spent throughout all six movies watching scenes thrown together without logic or understanding.

Unless you’ve read the books most of the scenes are extremely confusing.  Half the time I was wondering what was going on or what the significance was of what had just happened.  So much looked like filler that could have been cut out.  That’s not an endorsement.  If you need recourse to the books to understand the film it’s a poor adaptation.

I don’t buy that there’s too much to fit into a movie.  You could literally tell the story of all seven books in one movie.  People want to believe all of it is important, but it really isn’t when you are talking the short-term medium of the film.  You want the whole thing made visual, clamor for a TV series.

Given that we have a film a book (and two for the finale!), not only is it possible to fit in the essentials but more than a few nice touches.  It’s possible, and it’s been done before for other adaptations.  These movie-makers just aren’t up to the challenge.

This isn’t a manifesto or a detailed analysis (I just ain’t that interested), but here a few major goof ups from each of the films that illustrate what I’m talking about.  I’m not even going to touch the theme that some of these ideas are pretty basic Dungeons and Dragons awfulness, that’s fish for someone else to fry.  I’m assuming that you at least buy the world as it is even if it doesn’t please you.

Spoilers are a-comin’ in, ahroo!

HP & The Sorcerer’s Stone
Too much time is spent getting us into the world of Hogwarts and not enough developing the main conflict (the race to reach the stone).  For example, once it’s established that the letters are going to keep coming until Harry goes to school, move on to the next scene people.

Instead we get a ridiculous scene where Harry’s foster family somehow manages to go to an island lighthouse just off the coast and hole up there so we can go through this again.  Never mind the believability, this just wastes time.  The point was made very well clear the first time that Harry’s Destiny is ON.  The Call To Adventure doesn’t take fifteen minutes for goodness sake!

The time they wasted on that could have been used to shorten the movie (and improve the pace) or make room for a longer scene to allow themes to develop better.  I’m biased, but for example they could have put back in the deleted scene with Snape.

It’s an interesting scene because it demonstrates his incredible knowledge (and it’s a clue for viewers as to the identity of the “prince” in movie six), as well as drives home the point that there’s something about Harry that is personal to Snape—look how close the man gets even as he applies realistic skepticism to the fanciful image of Savior Harry.  It’s a character “tell” as well as a good lesson.

HP & The Chamber of Secrets
In the first film, a hostile giant troll roamed the halls of Hogwarts without getting jacked by all sorts of magical defenses one would think the professors in a magical society would have.  We can fan-wank (that is, imagine given our meta-story knowledge) that “the man with two faces” being in a professor’s position disabled those, allowing the troll free reign.

In this movie we have a gigantic snake-like creature roaming the halls turning people to stone.  At least, I think that’s what was happening.  One wonders why the basilisk didn’t poison the victims for good measure, but Voldemort (in the form of Tom Riddle via mental possession of Harry) isn’t exactly eating with both hands here.  Which makes me wonder how he’s still alive, because crazy people tend to make mistakes in high-stakes games.

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a gigantic snake moving through the halls without somebody else noticing.  Even more so in a restrictive environment where Harry can’t walk through the halls at night without the risk of someone giving him detention.  This thing is gigantic (maybe sixty or seventy feet long), and not exactly quiet or likely to leave things like wall hangings or furniture intact as it slithers about.

I think the basilisk is made huge because Hollywood movie-makers equate size with power.  The basilisk really should have been a lot smaller.  The strength of the tooth Harry uses on the book is in the poison, not the size.  Really, you have a poisonous monster that can kill you if you look at it (or petrify you if you see the reflection), does it really need to be that size and stretch all credibility?

Go to YouTube and watch what constrictor snakes only fifteen feet long do to guys trying to capture them on nature shows.  Now imagine that if it bites you or you look at it you’re dead.

HP & The Prisoner of Azkaban
There’s a scene where Sirius Black, the super evil second-in-command werewolf to Voldemort, shows up to initiate The Big Reveal of the film.  He’s really a good guy who was framed.  Lupin, the new tutor for Defense Against The Black Arts and Harry’s new trusted friend, has been protecting him.  And he’s also a werewolf (but a different kind).  The real bad guy is rat-tooth man who has been masquerading as Ron’s rat all along.  For fourteen years.

Got that?  All of this is revealed onscreen so fast I could barely understand what was happening.  Other than a vague hint that something is amiss with Lupin, and the sudden additional screentime of Ron with his rat familiar (the function of rat familiars is never explained), there are no hints to any of this throughout the entire movie.

No sooner does Harry start to comprehend that his new friend has deceived him (like all the other adults) then the movie drags to a halt, as the plot has to assimilate these new developments and make some sense of them.

Hollywood loves the surprise ending, but they nearly always fail because it isn’t the audience that should be surprised.  It’s the characters.  Movie-makers always focus on the audience instead of the characters.

HP & The Goblet Of Fire
My favorite WTF moment is in the beginning of the film.  You have a camp of what must be tens of thousands of wizards with their families and friends.  If I understand the context it’s an international grouping so you are bound to have all sorts of people with different points of view, life experiences and magical training.  The magical arena must be seating at least fifty thousand people.  All the big dude dinners of the magical world are there, including Dumbledore.

As near as I can tell, a half dozen Voldemort supporters (called death-eaters) attack this gathering with what look like crappy fire bolts.  These thousands of wizards run screaming home as the camp burns up in flames.  There’s a panic, but only Harry gets trampled into unconsciousness (without any physical or psychological after-effects from such a traumatic experience).  The death-eaters then disappear without taking any casualties.

Nobody talks about how six wizards terrorized thousands without a scratch.  If it was just the section that Harry was in, why isn’t this portrayed?  Not that this would explain how they escaped without a scratch or why everyone panicked, given that the magical world is so violent and random.  It makes no sense at all.

I mean, at this point in the series are we supposed to be taking all this as fantastical metaphors of some kind?

HP & The Order Of The Phoenix
Two-thirds of the film is used to build up a repressive, insane bureaucrat as the villain.  The students band together and train to learn magic despite the bureaucrat’s attempts to crush them (without any interference from parents, faculty or the slight majority of bureaucrats who voted Harry “not-guilty”).

When the big moment of confrontation comes, the community doesn’t band together to remove this madwoman from power and put her away.  Harry and Hermione lead her into the forest where she conveniently disappears.

Do the efforts of the students mean anything?  No.  They neither defeat the madwoman nor show off their new skills (and foresight) fighting off a Voldemort attack.  Do the efforts of the madwoman lead to tragedy when the students are unprepared, showing how one must not surrender to repression?  No.  It’s all filler.

The movie might have well started with Dumbledore and Voldemort fighting, then ended with Prime Minister Whats-his-name saying, “Voldemort is back!”

HP & The Half-Blood Prince
Traitorous Malfoy lets the bad guys past the now-activated magical defenses into Hogwarts.  Okay, Trojan Horse idea done to death but it works.  Malfoy’s inner struggle might prove interesting if they focus on it.

Nope, all about young lust for half the film.  And letting the bad guys in is all part of the cunning plan to let the death-eaters see Snapes kill Dumbledore.  Because Voldemort, being enough of a chess player to beat the chess challenge in the first film, does not understand the concept of sacrificing pieces to set up a checkmate.

Lets see, most powerful good wizard dead.  Second most powerful on bad guys side (or at least pretending to be and thus needs to stand by while atrocities are committed).  Near as I can tell just Miss Crabapple, The Mini-me Magician, and a handful of no-liner professors left.  Students are totally unaware and vulnerable.  Bad guys have run of the place.

Do the evil death-eaters, led by crazy woman who kills people at the drop of a hat go on a rampage?  This is their chance to wipe out all the students and professors unsympathetic to their cause.  They should have a list of the dozen or so people they’d spare, given that Malfoy and others have been observing events at Hogwarts for six years now.

Do they take this opportunity to loot for powerful magical items and destroy any parts of Hogwarts not suitable to the new Voldemort order?  Do they even take Harry Potter with them as a prisoner?

No.

They blow up the dinner hall furnishings and burn Hagrid’s hut for dramatic vandalism appeal (which comes off as funny, not tragic, because Hagrid is always an un-serious character and thus the butt of jokes).  Then they depart.

This is never explained.  There’s no excuse for this kind of plain lazy movie-making.  We aren’t talking about Critters 2:  The New Batch!  I mean, to explain why they don’t go on a mass murder rampage, all you have to do is have the following occur:

Random death-eater: “Crazy woman whose name begins with a B, I sense the dementors are coming.  We’d better split, sister.”

Crazy woman whose name begins with a B: “You’re right.  Even though we could take on fifty thousand wizards in the fourth film, I feel an intestinal grip coming.  Lets leave it for the next two films.”

Sadly, Hollywood continues only to be able to make good movies by accident.  But all is not completely lost, stay tuned.

K and I watched the five DVD movies and saw the latest in the theater.  We’re now reading all the books one after the other in rapid succession (my mind is a salt water crocodile when it comes to a culture binge).  She and I had a good amount of chuckles and thoughtful moments discussing the various permutations and shortcomings of the movies.

Yes, I recognize the irony of someone who finds the series generally awful exposing themselves to the whole kitten caboodle.  I have no regrets, as it was an internal impulsion moving me to explore the series.  Now that I believe I’ve found an answer to the attraction for people, and had a chance to examine the franchise with my small microchip brain, I find myself less negative about the series.  But don’t ask me to wear the t-shirt or eat those gosh-forsaken beans.

Looking at the fantasy world of Harry Potter in general, as portrayed in the movies, there are several things I find unattractive and a few things I found myself identifying with.

Probably my biggest complaint against the series is the division of people into wizards and non-wizards.  People with magical powers and those without (known as muggles).  The Star Wars prequels made a similar mistake in making one’s power to access The Force dependent upon the number of magic ant-farms you were born with.

This automatically divides people into haves and have-nots.  Almost nobody is going to identify with the have-nots because they don’t get any cool powers.  Meanwhile, the have-nots almost always become lower class in the social structure and thus pawns in the Great Game between the Good Guys (who want the have-nots to remain ignorant and obedient) and the Bad Guys (who want to shoot have-nots into a brick wall with a cannon because it’s fun).

There are stories that take this and make for compelling drama.  The Harry Potter movies, however, treat this with a combination of whimsy and over-the-top theatrics that frankly made me uncomfortable.  Harry’s muggle parents are depicted as outlandishly stupid and hostile.

I mean, I have relatives I’ve wanted to strangle, and some of them have been incredibly clueless at times.  But caricatures are so cliché, I can’t identify with this.  It makes Mommy Dearest look understated and makes light of real family dysfunction.

It’s not clear to me what makes a person capable of wielding magic.  It looks like they are born with it.  Doesn’t that make muggles recessive carriers and thus precious?  Even if they aren’t, they’re people and thus moral agents.  Shouldn’t they be allowed to make decisions about magic too?

I understand the need to control one’s powers around people (though there seems to be a lack in that area among wizards, the makers of the movies need to learn about self-discipline and martial arts with regards to the ability to cripple or kill people with bare hands), but keeping non-wizard people in ignorance?

Well hey, those great wizards are born with superior intellect and thus more capable of making these kinds of decisions.  Kind of like the “men of best quality” who set themselves above their fellows and declare themselves above regular human beings.  It’s the same old republic run by representatives of rich people.  Only in this case it’s wizards.

I have to ask, what do wizards in this world do?  I mean, what are Harry and the other students learning exactly besides the ability to use magic?  I know it’s just a fantasy.  It’s just that if you are going to place magic in a real world setting these things have to be attended to.  Otherwise, the fantasy won’t stand up to even a moment’s reflection.

Do wizards go around building wells and schools for communities in third world countries?  Do they perform shows to raise money for charity?  Do they go around like troubleshooters, protecting non-wizards from monsters and undoing harm by rogue wizards?

Or is it that even in the “upper class” of wizards there must be a janitor class of wizards who maintain all the awesome buildings and enchantments of the folks at the top of the pyramid?  Not everyone can be an ideological gatekeeper teacher with a cushy teaching job molding young minds.

I mean, in a magical world where anything can be conjured (kind of like Star Trek with its matter-replicator economy), why even use coins at all?  The Weasleys are referred to as poor, but their cottage and the farmland around it look pretty nice to me.  They just must not have been born with a lot of magical ant-farms.  Only so many nice pieces of furniture and flying cars per year I suppose.

Well, if you have a hierarchical system of haves and have-nots, then you need a training school for the haves who will serve the wizard management.  The professors and minister bureaucrats need to be educated so they can internalize the interests of the ruling class of wizards after all.

And that means Hogwarts boarding school for the privileged!

This is my other big squirm factor.  For me, the English boarding school system represents harsh discipline and repression of the young.  Both by professors and one’s own peer group.  I always think of the teacher scenes from the Pink Floyd movie The Wall, or the deranged repression of the rebellious students from the movie If…

For me, the main forms of indoctrination displayed in the movies are the enforced identity politics of the four student houses and the violent two-team blood sport of quiddich.

Both encourage students to cooperate only with their in-group and to direct external aggression towards an out-group ritually personified by “the other house” or “other team”.  In the case of the student politics between houses, the professors decide who is most obedient while being the most competitive through the capricious allocation of points.  Students must obey orders after all, while maximizing their ability to serve effectively.

The sport of quiddich blew me away with the terrible risk to life and limb, both to players and spectators.  You have people flying around in the air at high speed, moving projectiles around capable of wrecking large sections of the arena when the magic malfunctions.  There’s no physical or magical safety system of any kind that I can detect.  As long as you are not obvious, magical tampering with the game is possible.

One can only guess at the minds of people who willingly take part in this spectacle, the likes of which Roman emperors could have only dreamed about.  Harry and his antagonists take quite a few nasty lumps while playing.  But I wondered what happened to the players without plot immunity when they slammed into a pavilion or another player.

I think of those Halloween decorations of the witch slammed into a flat surface that people hang on trees or the sides of their house’s wall.

This is the same kind of social adaptation that trained soldiers to charge the machine gun nests in World War I.

Hey!  Teacher!  Leave that kid alone!

There’s a scene in the movie version of Harry Potter And The Order of the Phoenix where Harry saves himself from Voldemort’s magical possession by focusing on what makes him different from the villain.  He chooses to focus on his friendship with people (his proper social adjustment) and that he has something to fight for (a magic system of us and them, wizards and non-wizards).

Fail.

Voldemort doesn’t have “friends”?  In the movie version of Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire there’s a scene where Voldemort talks shop with his death-eater buddies.  True, it’s presumably a co-dependent, master-minion relationship.  How is this dysfunctional, hierarchical arrangement different from the one where Dumbledore is forced to allow a minister bureaucrat to torture children (that nasty pen that uses your blood business)?

I would say Voldemort’s relationship with his minions is the more honest one.  He fixes his minion’s hand, even after castigating the guy for not being dedicated enough!  Save for the scene where Harry’s broken bone is fixed improperly (and played for laughs), I never saw anyone in Hogwarts heal Harry of his injuries.

Don’t they at least have a Cure Light Wounds spell at Hogwarts?

Near as I can tell, Voldemort and his evil buddies are all in on the evil plan to do whatever it is they plan on doing.  I never see the evil buddies struggling to share information or share clues with one another.  I get the feeling that unlike the professors, who keep their plans hidden from Harry, Voldemort at least lets everyone know what’s up.

Does Harry share what he knows with his “friends” and “mentors”?  No, when he has dark dreams or finds out crucial information he clams up.  Until the plot demands he reveal what he knows.  And his “friends” never call him out on this.  They seem to take it for granted that he always hoards information.

Voldemort doesn’t have something to fight for?  Admittedly, I’m a little unclear as to what the big dude evil guy’s plan is.  Nobody in the white hat section seems able to articulate much more than “he’s evil, has killed people and is very dangerous.”  Isn’t mere self-interest something to fight for?  We could venture a guess and say he wants to be King and Pope of the wizard republic.  It’s an unhealthy, narcissistic dream.  But still a dream that can inspire someone to go all out.

If its just causes we’re talking about, I’d say defending a repressive, aristocratic republic from a dictator’s coup does put Harry on stronger ground.  This gets to the core of what I think really makes Harry different from his counterpart:  moral choices.

Dumbledore brings this up with regards to the sorting hat and Harry’s choice to override the hat’s decision.  Harry and Voldemort are essentially the same person in terms of character sheets.  But Harry chooses differently.  That’s his point of reference—our choices make us who we are.

You pay the price for what you do in who you become.

The idea that because Harry has “friend” versus “minion” under followers on his character sheet, or “fighting for the status quo” versus “fighting for my supremacy” in the motivation text box, makes him different is ludicrous.  It’s the character of those differences that makes the difference, not the differences themselves.

Both are tinged with a certain degree of good and evil, with Voldemort favoring the shading more than the line.  It’s much less uncomfortable (and therefore easier) to identify with one side or the other.  Who wants to admit to being in the middle of things, between the awful pounding of the cliff sides with teeth?  Yet that is exactly what is required, to recognize the other within one’s own self regardless of the discomfort.

What lies between the twin pillars of fear and desire?  Can one pass through the gap created by the two guardians and into the sacred space of nothingness?

How much more complete Harry might have been if he had admitted his own shadow?  The good guy with a scar of evil running across the side of his forehead, the voice of his conscience and the source of his destiny (the evil figure is always charged with the irresistible life-force of fate).  Is not the tarnished good guy, the anti-hero, an intriguing and interesting figure?

How much more human Voldemort might have been if he had accepted his own inability to carry collective expectations?  To admit weakness and failure brings a cost as surely as refusing to do so, but it’s a human cost rather than an archetypal one.  Is not the bad guy who acts for others despite himself a compelling figure?

Voldemort could not expunge the good in his nature no matter how often he tried to kill his enemy, his only true friend.  Harry ultimately defeats the figure that does not conform with our image, but at the cost of losing what might be the best part of himself.  Love thy enemy, for thy enemy is the instrument of thy destiny.

Each, by repressing the other destroyed themselves.  The keepers of the grail groan to themselves and do a facepalm.

The two ought to have joined forces.  These irreconcilable opposites are precisely the ingredients for the mysterious solution.  The world of the non-wizards needs magic.  This locking away of magic by the forces of ministry ogre-know-it-alls and their patrician-professor gatekeepers is the reason our world is a ball of confusion.

And perhaps only Voldemort and Harry working together might have stolen the fire from the false gods of wizardry and given it to the public, to the people.

May the old fart loser-evil failure Voldemorts and young impressionable good wizards recognize each other.

Because we need magic today.  Many lives are so often not magical.

Flash back to when there were only three Harry Potter books out.  I decided to buy the first in the series—Harry Potter And the Sorcerer’s Stone.  The cover art looked compelling, the titles seemed catchy enough, and I enjoy fantasy fiction.  Most of all there seemed to be a buzz about the books.

I’ve read much worse (as in literally incomprehensible), but I still found the book a chore to read.  It made me never want to read another Harry Potter book again.

The sixth Harry Potter movie came out this weekend.  For the umpteenth time the communications channels have been abuzz with the excitement.  The whole phenomenon leaves me wishing it would end.

It’s like having a friend of the family show up every year with their enormous brood of brats and eating your brain.  I’m looking forward to the seventh and final book to appear in movie form (although the book will be split into two movies to prolong the thrill).

I decided I ought to get caught up on the source of all this legerdemain, and actually watch the movies.  Despite what I might think of the books, we are talking about one of the defining events of culture for the generation after mine.  These new mutants get to have it all—the past movements of creative wonder as well as the freshly minted attempts at civilization.  They are growing up with tremendous potential, and great things are expected of them.

As was said in the Spider-Man movie cash-in of sixties experimentation, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  I’m reminded of the mature numerological cycle of the twenty-one, wherein one has the same potential for ultimate creation and destruction as the ten.  However, there is accumulated wisdom in the world symbol as seen from space, so there is hope.

I believe that is the core of why this series is so popular.

You have the professors of the school of magic who represent an earlier, older generation who carried with them similar expectations as today’s generation.   But their race is run, their choices are made, and their failure remains supreme:  The student who turned to the dark arts and became Voldemort.  He Who Must Not Be Named.  The carrier of the ten, which is the first number to combine the one (human beings) and the zero (the divinity).

The highest fall from the highest pinnacle of achievement.  Dumbledore gets a vomit flavored bean.

Then you have the new student generation with Harry representing the hope that the dragon of the past can be overcome.  Great things are expected of him, and in no small part his friends Ron and Hermione.  Here you have a collective teen group of friends, which is not unlike the roleplaying adventure parties of today’s online games and dice-rolling dungeons and dragons crew.

The fellowship is as age-old as we can imagine.  Bands of hippies, parties of adventurers.  Carrying the ring to destruction, trying to level up.

You have the four student houses, which represent the four pillars of the world, the universe, the world, twenty-one.  The magical school Hogwarts is the setting in which choices the professors faced will play out again, in similar form.  Harry is carrying the thwarted dreams of the past and the pensive expectations for the future.

Slay the dragon that slew us, say the professors.  Give us a toffee bean.

I wonder if anyone’s back is that strong.  So often adults, parents in particular, put their fears and hopes into children.  Choke the child’s life out of them and make the child live a life that isn’t theirs.

Even Voldemort seems to have this problem.  His evil plans invariably end up involving Harry in some way or another.  See, there is a larger problem at hand than any of the principal players of the story can comprehend.  There is a need, I think, in this series for a Promethian act.  A stealing of fire is required, which they all only faintly grasp.

The professors tried to realize this unconscious dream and ended up serving the system.  Or dispossessed in some fashion.  Sirius Black is a framed criminal, Hagrid is a loner go-fer, the Weasleys are “poor” and Harry’s parents end up as corpses.  The Voldemort buddies?  Those who threw their lot in with the bad guy appear to have descended into fanaticism.  And there’s the bad guy himself who has probably gone mad and likely doesn’t remember what he was meant to do anymore.

Victims, fanatics and crazies.  You could say that the weight of the world has made them what they are.

Jung talks about this in his psychological studies.  Every child bears with it the pressures of the dead to succeed where countless millions have fallen down.  Those who have failed and yet still live, pray for deliverance before they die.

No wonder the books are so popular!  Talk about relevance to today’s moral problems.  The books are telling a story that the new mutants feel in their bones because it’s of their time.  One the professors of the sixties still hope will blossom into a rain-song sunrise.

Alas, in the Harry Potter books they are all doomed.  No one here gets out alive.  Have an earwax bean.

I believe that’s why I reacted so strongly against the series.  Even in the first book, it speaks of hope (projected images on the backs of youngsters rather than ourselves), but delivers inevitability (meet the new kid, same as the old kid — but with more obedience).  Starting at the very beginning, it perpetuates the illusion that there can ever be good without evil.

Can nature create an individual who can lead us out of darkness and redeem our previous attempts?  That is, can the terrible furor and despair of the times lead to a new imagining?  In The Road Warrior, it’s in the wasteland that Mad Max learns to live again.  Perhaps what is needed is a Parzival-like characteristic—a natural empathy, an opening up of the heart.

Okay, okay.  I’ve not been particularly positive about very many movies, television shows, or music offerings lately.  Time I put myself out there and give an example of what I do like.

I like the Underworld trilogy of movies.  Yeah I said it.

On the surface, these movies are action fantasy junk.  That’s how I went into them.  Vampire: The Masquerade rip-offs with lots of gunfire and p-leather clothing over hot bodies.  Hard to take seriously.

But there’s a message underneath that I think shouldn’t be ignored.  That the old roads are passing away, along with their long standing feuds and grievances, while a new and vital perspective is taking root.  It’s dark realism, with all the horrific 85% death rate violence that implies.  But at the end you have a completely new way of life that demands consideration.

You can ignore all this deeper meaning stuff and enjoy it for what it is.  A lot of phony intrigue surrounded by combat between two sports teams.  Quite frankly, the story doesn’t hold up to a lot of literal and practical considerations.  And I don’t much like stories where the lucky few fight it out for the future of the normal, un-powered people.

You have Underworld, which begins the story, followed by Underworld: Evolution and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.  The last is a prequel, which closes up loose ends raised in the first two movies.  We go back to the beginning for reflection on what has happened in the first two films.

Spoilers are a-cumin’ in, so ahroo!

In this dark world, unknown to most normal people, a war for supremacy rages between two factions of supernatural creatures in human form.  The vampires, sophisticated aristocrats, fight against werewolves known as Lycans.  The Lycans are street thug barbarians.  So we have a “rich versus poor”, “civilized versus uncivilized” conflict going on.

Selene, the main character, is part of an elite cadre of vampires who hunt the Lycans in the city streets.  She works for Kraven, an arrogant sub-lieutenant acting as the vampire leader while Victor (the big dude vampire leader) is away on sleep vacation in his coffin.

Against her stands Lucian, leader of the Lycans and his sub-lieutenant Raze.  Lucian is looking for a special human who is descended from the original father of the supernatural beings.  His plan is to expose this human to both werewolf and vampire bites, making the human the first hybrid of the two, a being supposedly of immense power.

The Lycans are painted as the bad guys at first (and to be truthful, they aren’t exactly great people), but as the story progresses we learn there is more going on than we presumed.  Victor’s daughter committed the unpardonable sin of falling in love with Lucian, so Victor had her killed.  Lucian is pursuing a grudge against the killer of his lover.  His attempt to locate the special human and create a hybrid is a means to get revenge on Victor and end the war between the two factions.

At first, Selene is the dutiful soldier and faithful surrogate daughter of Victor (who feels some regret at his murder of his daughter, but not enough).  As she discovers more about the feud and her part in it, she starts to side more with the special human and Lucian’s goals.

The special human turns out to be a good-hearted guy named Michael.  He rejects the world of the supernatural creatures, but has little choice but to be a pawn in their game.  I found it refreshing that a guy was the person who needed to be saved and passed around as a plot coupon for once, with Selene as the active agent in the struggle.

Selene and Michael fall in love, of course.  With Lucian’s bite and Selene’s bite, Michael becomes an “abomination”, a hybrid of the two factions with enormous power.  Basically he can whup rear end in a fight.  Together he and Selene kill Victor and send him to blazes.  Meanwhile Kraven flees back to the vampire base.

Next movie.  Selene and Michael are on the run, attempting to find out what is going on in the aftermath.  Presumably with the death of Viktor and maybe because of Lucian’s death there might be reprisals.  Michael is weak from the struggle of the previous movie, and unused to the feeding requirements of his new body.  So even though he is awesome, he’s at half strength for most of the movie–a nice touch to keep things interesting.

The big dude elder vampire with wings (the guy Viktor answered to) awakens from his coffin vacation and chases after them repeatedly, looking for a key that will unlock his brother the ultimate werewolf.  Selene meets up with the father of the supernatural creatures and receives from him his blood power, making her the new mother of all supernatural creatures.

The big dude elder vampire with wings kills father of the supernatural creatures, gets the key, and heads for the tomb of his brother.  With the vampires and Lycans in weakened confusion because of the previous movie, no one will be able to stop the ultimate werewolf from turning most humans into werewolves.

With the support of the father’s network, Michael and Selene take on the ultimate werewolf and the elder vampire in an epic combat.  The two lovers win the fight, and vow to begin a new world of supernatural beings together.  Master vampire and fully awakened hybrid together at last, in love.

Flash back with the final movie.  We learn how the vampires used the Lycans for slave labor as a result of Lucian’s special abilities.  We see how he fell in love with a vampire and how they were betrayed by her father.  The movie sets in motion the actions of Victor that define the past, and lead to the future.

Do I identify with these characters?  Not really.  They’re dark shadows of conscious existence, not something I’d like to be part of.  But I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a strong empathy for them.  Down in the depths of our “Underworld”, our unconscious, supernatural beings struggle for meaning and freedom just as surely as we do.

How did Lucian come about?  Hard to say, but he started the striving for a better world in the dark struggle.  We don’t really know what part the father played in attempting to reconcile the two sides before Selene and Michael came on the scene.  There’s a lot to unravel and unfortunately not all of the movies hold up to scrutiny.

Michael is dragged in and made a part of that world.  There’s something about the conscious world that needs to descend into the underworld to bring light to the depths.  In this world, it appears that once you’re made a supernatural creature you can’t go back to being just mortal.  So there’s no leaving the underworld once you enter.

Perhaps unraveling the vast labyrinth of the underworld isn’t the point exactly, as it’s portrayed in these movies.  What matters is making connections that heal old wounds, start new ways of thinking, and overthrow the closed minds holding back development of thinking.  Violence tends to be the solution here, and as this is dark realism the bodies pile up as the bullets fly.

But I think the definitive moments are when the characters make their choices as to what they will do.  Viktor kills his daughter.  Lucian sacrifices his special place to save the person he loves.  Selene follows her instinct about Michael.  Michael saves Selene from the car crash.

Will the new underworld be different?  Hard to say, but there’s a chance that this time, things will be different.  A change has occurred, something has stirred, and new light dawns in the underworld.