#presumably by 1986 i think they might have moved to the US at that point (mumbo was offered an engineering job in america by his employer)

[quaranmine]

also about autoCAD! according this rant an older engineer gave me, architects didnt start using autoCAD/other autodesk products until the 90s, when autodesk realized that if they got architects to use their products, everyone else had to lol

YEAHHH!! i found that too, it's buried somewhere in my 1700 words of author notes on tumblr LOL. grian, in this au, is pretty much like most people of the time period in that he knows basically nothing about computers and has probably never used one since they weren't particularly common, but he will very soon or over the course of his career need to learn since architecture is 100% a profession that uses autoCAD. he's going to get dragged kicking and screaming into the computer world sdflsjfsk

I had a fun little dive down the rabbit hole into CAD technologies while writing this chapter. I think I went into the story under the main assumption of "ah, it's the 80s, they don't have any modern technology" but that's not quite true, is it? It's the late 80s, for one--we're one year from being in the 90s. They're very much on the cusp of all of that technological innovation. Also, computer technology has generally existed far longer than most of us think, it just wasn't necessarily accessible to most of the public.

So while I was looking into CAD, I realized it was entirely possible for Mumbo to be learning it for his job in engineering. AutoCAD was released in 1982, which was directly in the middle of when he probably went to college in this AU. However, I don't know if he would have been taught it in his degree at that time since it was so new. He could, however, learn it from his job. I know that at my job one of the reasons I do most of the InDesign and ArcGIS work for my team is "ah, she's young enough to figure all that computer stuff out." I would not be surprised if that happened to Mumbo too. His bosses are probably like "fantastic he's young AND he's interested in it let's train him to do it" sdfjslfskl

Someone else mentioned CAD in one of my comments on AO3 so I was looking it up too. Something I didn't even know: the first 3D CAD product was released in 1987. Additionally, Boeing announced in 1988 that they would use a CAD software to design their 777 aircraft, which was the first aircraft to be designed entirely digitally. I read a different article about that that stated Boeing had used CAD in their engineering process for a few years before deciding to do it fully digitally, so it was definitely part of many company's "process" already within the 80s.

[calleo-bricriu]

1986.

(( So, this came about because @everyheartbesure and I have a thread going that happens just after the First War ended with the version of Calleo they also have a thread with in the Fantastic Beasts version. While I was describing that to @absintheabsence we both thought it’d be interesting to see how that version of Calleo, who had lived through that war, and who had likely at some point been targeted and actually captured, and definitely did not have The Best Time up to the point that Grindelwald was defeated would behave and/or react to finding out Grindelwald had essentially been left to die whenever the automation in Nurmengard finally completely failed.

Turns out he’s less clumsy with his flying and just as horrified at what he finds there as the main verse version of Calleo was.

Less cheerful and chatty about it, though. ))

A lot of things had a tendency to ping around inside of Calleo's head, most of them ranging from harmless to complete nonsense and the majority of all of that being one or two lines of just about any piece of music he'd ever heard in his life repeating on a loop for awhile.

This time it was a short conversation he'd had with someone from the International Magical Office of Law.

Hadn't been a long conversation, the person in question didn't often speak much, especially to Calleo on account of Calleo being the main cause of all the stress of his job.

It had been mentioned after Calleo had made a joke about being sent to Azkaban centered around it being pointless to send someone like him there, especially when he was relatively used to awful magical energy and there was nothing but Dementors keeping anyone there and had ended it with a comment about them having better luck just throwing him into Nurmengard due to its magic stripping properties.

He hadn't expected a laugh or even a smile; in fact, he wasn't even certain he'd ever seen Tadeusz  ( @pracownik-ministerstwa  the other OC I don’t write nearly often enough) do either thing around him.

He also didn't expect the dry answer of, "That place was shut down in the 1960s."

Calleo vaguely recalled reading some back page article in the Prophet about it but didn't think much of it at the time.

He didn't think much of it now either, until he followed up by asking where they'd moved Grindelwald if Nurmengard had been decommissioned as a prison.

"They didn't." Tadeusz said it so matter-of-factly as though it were common knowledge; it might have been to the International Magical Office of Law.

"Ah, he's dead then?"

"No." By now the other Wizard had resumed working and clearly was not interested in further conversation.

"They must have left a skeleton crew of staff then; that's not really shutting a place down."

"Automation." One word answers coupled with the fact that Tadeusz didn't bother to look up from what he was doing almost made him seem like a piece of automation.

Automation wasn't that terrible; not that decent either, but not the worst thing. "Interesting; who maintains it?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody?"

"Nobody."

That didn't seem right.

That couldn't be right.

Even Muggles didn't do that; Muggles in most areas of the world had long since decided that even short term full isolation was unnecessarily cruel and only caused negative effects in the prisoners subjected to it.

In many countries, it had been either made illegal outright or legal but with the 'solitary' part only being temporary. Even then, those prisoners had access to exercise yards, showers, varied food, books, sometimes television, and were able to chat through doors with other prisoners or with the guards.

If what Calleo had understood from the conversation was correct that exactly not what had happened here. There was a good chance that Grindelwald was already long dead, considering Calleo had been told that Nurmengard had been largely shut down sometime in the 1960s and it was now the mid 1980s.

That was the sort of death Calleo didn't care to think about; it would have been horrifying to experience--but possibly more horrifying to be stuck in an automated prison that (likely maliciously) would cause the automation to produce just enough to keep its prisoner alive.

Writing should have been his first option but writing might not get an answer at all, even if Grindelwald was still alive.

No, no, this situation required going back to Nurmengard--at least he wasn't likely to end up locked in a tower room he couldn’t leave this time, so that was something.

Dodging a few wolpertingers who seemed bent on catching and eating the magpie nearly caused a few collisions with tower walls until Calleo flew high enough to land on the roof, shift back, and knock the creatures back with a harmless charm; enough to scare them off, but not to injure them.

With that finished, he shifted back into the usual somewhat ratty looking magpie and landed on the strangely unwarded (and closed, of course; it was raining after all) window ledge. When it didn't open immediately, he still sat there partially considering whether this was a good idea or not and partially reminding himself that if he didn't find out what had happened here or didn't try to mitigate what he could if it was--bad--he'd feel guilty about it for the rest of his life.

That seemed inconvenient, and cruelty was cruelty regardless from where or who it came from; there was nothing, in Calleo's view, that justified being purposely, viciously cruel to someone. Doing so didn't fix anything, wouldn't return those killed to life, wouldn't undo the damage caused. All it did was add an additional knife into the mix.

The window itself looked like it didn't sweep out to the very end of the window ledge, which would give him time to hop back and jump out of reach if Grindelwald still happened to be alive and tried to grab him.

Calleo didn't know exactly what to expect; lights on in the tower didn't necessarily guarantee anyone alive up there. They could very well be part of what little automation was still functioning.

The magpie hopped up to the window itself and pecked at it in the same fashion an owl might, then immediately hopped back to the very edge of the ledge.

When the window finally did open it did so slowly; for a moment, Calleo thought it might be closed again as he might not have been the most visible, being a largely black bird sitting on a dark stone ledge. Either--Calleo presumed it was Grindelwald though he couldn't see much yet--Grindelwald couldn't see him or was expecting something else at the window and was being cautious.

Possibly both.

The window eventually opened wide enough that the light from inside the cell coupled with flashes and strikes of lightning that Calleo had already noticed a strange, artificial pattern in, and he was seen easily enough.  Calleo, for his part, found himself briefly wishing he'd nicked a Time Turner from the department before leaving so he could chase himself away from the window.

It was most certainly Grindelwald at the window, though he hardly looked it any longer; bent, frail, what Calleo thought were missing teeth, on a closer look appeared more to be broken teeth, nearly matted hair , and if the clothes he had on had fit properly at one point, they hadn't in some time.

Threadbare at that.

The eyes were the only familiar thing, even if they'd been dimmed by years of isolation and, by this point, at least a smidge of madness. Still, he seemed calm enough for the moment.

Calleo couldn't simply sit on the window ledge the entire time, staring, head cocked to one side, at the tower's prisoner and the prisoner more than likely wondering what in the hell was wrong with the magpie sitting in the rain--so Calleo took the still open window and lack of grabbing as implicit permission to enter the cell.

The instant his feet touched the inner side of the window, he took off, flying a good metre or so away from Grindelwald before shifting back into something a little less feathery and a lot more human.

Though Calleo didn't think he'd changed in terms of looks enough that someone wouldn't recognise him he had still changed in the sense that he was nearly half a century older than the last time he'd seen Grindelwald. Various forms of magic had a tendency to keep Calleo looking younger than he actually was but he certainly didn't have the, "Nearly fifty, look about thirty" look any longer--more "Slightly over one-hundred but most days looking around the 65-70 mark."

A little vanity was always allowed, as far as he was concerned.

The majority of his hair was still vibrant orange-red and was all still as long as it had been fifty years ago--not to mention still tied up at the back and the ball he wound it into skewered by three wands at three different angles to hold it there.

Still had the same old glasses that had been a good twenty or thirty years out of style back in the 1920s on the same blue, beaded chain, and still dressing in clothes that always seemed to center around something brilliantly purple as well. Evidently, time can force someone to grow older but not necessarily grow up.

Calleo's eyes were the same as they'd ever been, complete with the faint dark circles on the under eye that never really seemed to go entirely away and what flashed across them as he took a cursory look around the room, skimming the magic on the walls, roof, floor, and door, was--something that appeared to start as disbelief that anyone would allow a situation like this to happen in the first place, moved through confusion at how some of the failing magic had been pieced together, irritation as he figured it out and saw how badly it had been done and maintained, and when they settled back onto the cell's other occupant there was a flash of anger that didn't seem to be directed at Grindelwald somehow, which gave way to tired concern.

While he'd never think to suggest that Grindelwald should be released or pardoned or anything of that nature, Calleo had never been someone who could accept cruelty disguised as punishment; cruelty unchecked and unquestioned, given out by those in authority as righteous or necessary punishment only created a pointless cycle that caused nothing but harm to anyone that came near it.

It solved nothing. It couldn't undo damage already done, all it could do was create additional damage.

The director Calleo had worked under until his retirement had often accused him of having a bleeding heart in an unflattering way and there were certainly times his job would have been significantly easier if he had been able to at least temporarily shut the parts of his mind off that kept him from meeting cruelty with cruelty.

And this? This was cruelty.

For what felt like ages, Calleo had no idea what to even begin to say. It was likely that Grindelwald hadn't heard another person speak to him in decades and all that came immediately to mind were almost demanding sounding questions that he likely didn't know the answers to either.

"Do you mind if I shut some of this off?" 

The cell’s walls, ceiling, and floor lit up to make the...work...on them visible and easier to deal with; it all looked terrible, not in the sense of what it was doing, but in the sense of how it was crumbling and making an awful lot of noise that he hoped Grindelwald hadn't been forced to listen to since the prison staff left (and was almost certain he had been).

"It sounds like someone scraping a fork down a blackboard."

[angelofberlin2000]

@HadleyFreeman

Sat 18 May 2019 09.00 BST

“Hey, I’m Keanu,” he introduces himself – unnecessarily, of course, and yet very Keanu-ishly. Despite being so famous his surname has long been superfluous, Keanu Reeves has always given the impression of being utterly unaffected by his own celebrity. He is regularly described by his co-stars as “kind” (Winona Ryder) and “humble” (Laurence Fishburne) and it is easier to imagine him walking on the moon than knocking back champagne with other celebrities on a yacht in St Barts. After all, the most famous paparazzi photo ever taken of Reeves was of him sitting alone on a bench, eating a sandwich out of a plastic bag. Hard to imagine Leonardo DiCaprio doing that.

“I’ll sit anywhere you want me to. This OK?” he says, taking a chair and offering me the sofa in the London hotel room where we meet. At just over 6ft, he is taller than I expected – also unusual for an actor – and dressed in a very Keanu outfit of dark shirt and trousers with sturdy boots. Despite being recently announced as the new face of the high fashion label Saint Laurent, Reeves has long been the patron saint of normcore, decades before it became a fashion statement. And I know this all too well because, from 1991–99, I had at least five posters of him on my bedroom walls modelling said look.

The 2010 photo of Reeves on a New York bench that sparked the Sad Keanu meme. Photograph: Splash News

Should one ever meet one’s teenage crush? Up until this week, I’d assumed I was long past the point of being starstruck – I’m a 40-year-old woman, for God’s sake! But now here I am, sitting opposite Reeves, now 54, the beard more grizzled than in my posters and the forehead suspiciously smooth, but still, most definitely Keanu. There’s that devastating smile he flashed at Sandra Bullock at the end of Speed, and there he is saying – and this is where I nearly lose all vestiges of professionalism – “Excellent!” while playing air guitar. Listening to the tape of our interview later is not an edifying experience, as I hear myself – Oh, dear God – flirt with Reeves (because, clearly, a heavily pregnant mother of two is the dream woman he’s been waiting for). Happily, my mortifying giggling soon abates, thanks to Reeves’ management of a situation he has presumably had to deal with every day of his life for the past four decades. And as he does, I get an insight into what it takes to be Keanu Reeves.

We are meeting today to discuss his latest film, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. It will unquestionably boost the more than $3bn Reeves’ movies have grossed over the years. When he made the first John Wick film in 2014 – directed, as all the Wick films are, by Chad Stahelski, Reeves’ stunt double on the Matrix films – few expected that a movie about a former assassin avenging the killing of his puppy would amount to much. Despite starring in some of the most successful and seminal movies of the past 30 years – from offbeat hits like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and My Own Private Idaho, to blockbusters like Point Break, Speed and The Matrix – Reeves has been in at least as many damp squibs, including 2013’s 47 Ronin, one of the biggest box office flops of all time. Yet Wick, a stylish, brooding, ultraviolent revenge fantasy, was an unexpected hit with critics and audiences, and is now a mega-million dollar franchise, giving Reeves his first mainstream hits since the Matrix movies.

Part three – sorry, Chapter 3 – is larkier than its two predecessors, including one incredible scene in which Reeves offs some bad guys using an actual horse as a weapon (rest assured: the horse escaped unharmed). As a testament to the success of the franchise, there are more celebrity co-stars, including Halle Berry, and despite the naysayers when it comes to Reeves’ acting, he is terrific as a man still mourning the death of his wife. (She died at the beginning of the first John Wick film, from that terrible terminal disease, Convenient Plot Device.) “We certainly didn’t know when we started on John Wick that it would become like this,” says Reeves. “We’re only getting to tell these stories because of the audience. So thank you.” He salutes me in thanks, as representative of all the Wick audiences. (If you are imagining this is one of the times I giggled at him, you are correct.)

One of the canniest things about the Wick films is how they riff on Reeves’ public image. Once dismissed as an airhead by those who confused the Bill & Ted movies with reality, for the past two decades Reeves has been seen as a melancholic loner. The famous 2010 photo of him on a New York bench sparked what became known as the Sad Keanu meme, but it only struck a chord because the assumption already existed that Reeves – then in a career slump – was, well, a bit sad. Reeves, with polite firmness, denies that this echo is deliberate – “No, no, I don’t think about that” – although it is hard to believe it wasn’t in the film-makers’ minds as they shot endless scenes in John Wick 3 of Sad Keanu wandering alone through rainy New York streets, empty hotel corridors and a desert.

It quickly becomes clear that polite firmness is Reeves’ modus operandi when it comes to nosy questions: he will give the impression of being up for answering anything while, in fact, saying very little, or nothing at all. (Sample exchange. Me: “Was there ever a moment, maybe after Bill & Ted, when people started reacting differently to you and you realised your life had changed?” Him: “Um, no.” Me: “Really?” Him: “No.”) What this distancing tactic might lack in conversational intimacy, it makes up for in shutting down any embarrassing flirtations from women who should know better. You can’t kid yourself you are soulmates with someone who is building such protective walls against you.

So I’m surprised when he volunteers that Wick’s melancholy possibly has a connection to some of the most painful moments in his life. One other big reason the public perception of Reeves shifted from comedy stoner to faintly tragic figure was because, in 1999, his long-term girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, gave birth to their daughter Ava, who was stillborn. The couple broke up soon after, and two years later Syme was killed in a car accident. Reeves has never married, had any other children or even been reliably linked to other romantic partners since. He has also never spoken publicly about their deaths, and who can blame him? But given that the heart of the Wick films is about him mourning a lost love, the resonance is hard to ignore.

“With any character, the way I think about it is, you have the role on the page, you have the vision of the director and you have your life experience,” he says.

Did he bring his experience of bereavement to the role? “Oh yeah, I thought it was one of the foundations of the role for John Wick. I love his grief,” he says, visibly perking up at the subject.

What is it about grief that interests him? “Well, for the character and in life, it’s about the love of the person you’re grieving for, and any time you can keep company with that fire, it is warm. I absolutely relate to that, and I don’t think you ever work through it. Grief and loss, those are things that don’t ever go away. They stay with you.”

Has he been thinking more about the people he has lost as he’s grown older? “I don’t think it’s about getting older. It’s always with you, but like an ebb and flow,” he says.

Anyone in particular? “Lots of people,” he says, bricking those walls right back up.

***

Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon, the son of an English mother and Hawaiian-Chinese father. (His first name, as all Reeves-ologists know, is Hawaiian for “cool breeze over the mountains”.) With his sister Kim, the family moved around the world, from Australia to Manhattan, before finally settling in Toronto when Reeves was six. I reckon you can often spot an adult who moved around a lot as a kid, I tell him. “Oh yeah? How?” he says, intrigued.

They tend to have a sense of detachment, self-sufficiency, maybe loner tendencies and a strong sense of independence, I say. “Yeah, I clinically belong to that. I definitely have a bit of the gypsy in me,” he agrees.

Reeves’ father left the family when Keanu was three, and disappeared entirely from their lives when he was 13. He and his sister had multiple stepfathers.

That’s a pretty hard age for a parent to vanish off the scene, I say. “For sure, I think it’s definitely traumatising. But it’s hard to know how [it affected me] because I don’t know what the other life would have been, you know what I mean?” he says.

Did his father ever contact him again? “Yeah, in the mid-90s, but I didn’t reach back out,” he says.

This was after his father had been convicted for selling heroin? “Yeah, but that wasn’t why I didn’t get in touch!” he laughs.

So why not? “I just didn’t,” he replies, and that’s the end of that. But I can’t help but think of one of my favourite scenes of his, from Ron Howard’s 1989 ensemble comedy Parenthood, in which Reeves’ character muses about paternal figures: “You need a licence to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell, you need a licence to catch a fish. But they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.”

Often the class clown at school, Reeves liked sport and loved acting, and got an agent as a teenager after being talent-spotted in a play. He dropped out of high school before graduation. “I feel really fortunate in a way, because I knew what I wanted to do, and a lot of kids that age don’t. But I had a creative ambition and I did it,” he says. After some early television work, Reeves started getting film roles, most notably in the cult 1986 teen drama River’s Edge, followed by Bill & Ted, and from there the work never stopped.

Back in the 1990s, he was the go-to pin-up for all teenagers who wanted a beautiful, gentle and safely asexual boyfriend (hi!). But his acting, if not his looks, has been a more debatable subject. “Is Keanu Reeves a Good Bad Actor or a Bad Good Actor?” a reader wrote in to ask the New York Times’ film critics in 2011 (the answer was, “Neither! A good actor, period”). Writing in the Guardian, self-professed superfan Joe Queenan put him in a small category of actors so beloved they are beyond criticism: “In most of [his best] movies, Keanu plays a character the audience views more with affection than with reverence or idolatry, like a kid brother who has bitten off more than he can chew and may need outside help to survive.”

Today Reeves has a good riposte to the criticism that he doesn’t, or can’t, act. “I certainly never got it from any of the directors I worked with,” he says, checking off some of the most respected in the business, including Bernardo Bertolucci (Little Buddha), Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break), Francis Ford Coppola (Bram Stoker’s Dracula), Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons), Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho) and Richard Linklater (A Scanner Darkly). “It’s not like I went to meet Kenneth Branagh [who directed him in 1993’s Much Ado About Nothing] and he was like, ‘Excellent, dude!’ You know?” He chucks in a little air guitar to boot.

It would have been pretty funny if Branagh had said that, though. “Of course! But the pigeonholing just comes from journalists and, yeah, that happens a lot. I generally don’t read the press but when I do I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, you’re doing that again,’” he says with a shrug.

I’ve never really understood the criticism. OK, he might not have been perfectly cast in Much Ado and acting opposite John Malkovich and Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons when he was only 24 was never going to be a fair fight. But he has always been a far more varied actor than the snarkers allow. He proved his superlative comic timing and endearing charisma in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and, when it comes to drama and sci-fi, no one is better at maintaining an inscrutable blankness. That quality is precisely what has driven so many directors to cast him, often as a messiah-like figure in movies such as Little Buddha, 2005’s Constantine (one of Reeves’ favourites), 1995’s Johnny Mnemonic and, of course, The Matrix. And of all the improbable actors who became action stars in the 1990s – Alec Baldwin, Nicolas Cage – Reeves seemed the most at home in the genre, in the still deliciously enjoyable Point Break and Speed, which he made in between smaller indie fare. So did he do the big movies in order to fund the smaller projects?

“Honestly, I try not to do anything I don’t want to do. But I guess those movies were in reaction to each other. It wasn’t as thought out as, OK, I finished Point Break, so now I’d better play a street prostitute. It was more like, OK, I finished this, now I want to do that,” he says.

“That” refers to 1991’s My Own Private Idaho, in which he and River Phoenix play street hustlers. Reeves had already met Phoenix through the latter’s girlfriend Martha Plimpton, with whom he had worked in Parenthood. The two quickly became friends, and it’s not hard to see why: both were young actors on the rise with a love of music and a pronounced lack of interest in the glitzier, red carpet side of their job. They were the anti-Brat Pack, and Phoenix, along with Alex Winter from Bill & Ted, were, Reeves says, “definitely my closest friends from that era. We shared an artistic sensibility. River was just so down-to-earth, spiritual and a unique artist. Yeah, I miss him,” says Reeves quietly. When Phoenix suggested the two of them make My Own Private Idaho, “I was in right away,” he says.

They had something else in common, a shared experience suggested in the now almost unbearably moving scene where the two sit by a campfire and talk haltingly about their childhoods.

Mike (Phoenix): If I had a normal family, and a good upbringing, then I would have been a well-adjusted person.

Scott (Reeves): Depends on what you call normal.

Mike: Didn’t have a dog, or a normal dad. Anyway, that’s all right. I don’t feel sorry for myself, I feel like I’m, you know, well-adjusted.

Scott: What’s a normal dad?

Phoenix’s dysfunctional childhood, growing up in a rackety family who for a time belonged to the Children of God cult, has been well-documented. Reeves’ was different, but no slouch when it came to potential trauma. Was that another thing that drew them together?

He ponders the question a full 10 seconds. “Certainly our histories played a role in that movie and in that scene. So I’ll say yes to that, yeah,” he says.

Two years after My Own Private Idaho’s release, the actor who desperately wanted to avoid every Hollywood cliche died the most cliched death imaginable, of a drugs overdose on Sunset Boulevard in 1993. Plenty of his contemporaries were also caught out, either self-destructing or becoming victims of their own success. Reeves adamantly refused to do either. When I ask how he avoided falling victim to drug addiction as Phoenix did, he says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world: “I just wasn’t into that scene.”

It’s hard to tell if he’s being blithe or defiant when he insists he still lives his life totally normally, unaffected by fans. But if Leonardo DiCaprio went into a supermarket, there would be hysteria, I say.

“Yeah, but Leonardo has fame and fans that I don’t have in that way. Definitely. I don’t know what his experiences are, but I think someone from the outside would think [going shopping] might not be easy for him. Whereas I can, which is good,” he says.

Come on, surely fans bother him all the time? But the worst he can come up with is someone quoting Point Break at him in the airport the other day and someone, once, quoting River’s Edge when he was queueing at an ice-cream van. “And that’s fun!” he says cheerfully.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he was offered every hot young part under the sun, including the lead in Platoon (which went to Charlie Sheen) and Val Kilmer’s role in Heat. But when I ask if he regrets turning any of them down, he smiles and instantly replies, “No.” He also turned down a $12m pay cheque to make Speed 2 because he, rightly, thought the plot was nonsense, which resulted in him being shut out of 20th Century Fox films for the next 11 years (and no, he doesn’t regret that, either). He is about to start shooting Bill & Ted Face The Music, in which the now fiftysomething duo have to write a song so good it will save the universe. “There has to be a reason for making a movie, and the writers have come up with a good ‘why’ for telling the story,” he says. When I ask what gives him an ego boost, given that he’s not driven by money or fame, he is so baffled by the idea of his ego needing a boost that he is silent for a full 28 seconds before finally answering, “The work.”

Maintaining his privacy has been a major factor in helping Reeves retain his sanity, yet away from the press he can be extraordinarily open and laid-back. By a weird fluke, I have two friends who, separately, spent time with him in the 90s and both still talk about his generosity: he took them for rides on his motorbike and stayed in touch (yes, I am furious with them for not including me in any of this). There are legions of stories about Reeves’ kindness: buying his stuntmen motorbikes, renegotiating his Matrix contract so that the crew got a better deal, at a personal cost of millions of dollars. Shortly before we meet, Reeves was on a flight between San Francisco and Los Angeles that was grounded due to a mechanical fault. Instead of pulling rank with some “Do you know who I am?” A-list entitlement, Reeves encouraged his fellow passengers to board a van with him so they could drive to LA, keeping the mood up by sharing fun local facts and playing music from his iPhone. (Needless to say, footage of this quickly went viral.) So his four decades-long reticence with the media might well be Reeves’ most brilliantly sustained performance.

  How we made Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure                                                                                                                                                         Read more                            

But he bristles when I mention these stories. “I’m pretty private, so when that stuff doesn’t stay private it is not great,” he says.

Because he worries it will look like he’s just doing it for show? “No. Because it’s private,” he says with emphasis.

Ah well. I have accepted by this point that we probably won’t ride off together into the sunset on his motorcycle. But if the price of Reeves still being so recognisably Keanu-ish is him retaining a firm grip on his privacy and at least a pretence of normality, that feels like a fair trade-off. I assume doing this interview has been a torturous experience for him, so as we get up to leave I ask how he’d have preferred to spend the afternoon, in a dream scenario.

“Oh, I don’t know. This dream ain’t so bad!” he says, and gives me that full end-of-Speed smile again. And reader, I giggled.

• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum is in cinemas now.

If you would like a comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).

[x5red]

Sixty fun & fascinating facts about the classic Supergirl (1 / 4)

Great guns! How time flies!

May 2019 will mark sixty years since the pages of Action Comics #252 carried its landmark tale: a crashed rocket ship in a Midvale field, and emerging from within, an enthusiastic young teenager who was destined to become one of Earth’s fiercest champions. That teenager was, of course, Kara Zor-El -- otherwise known as Supergirl..!

To celebrate the classic Kara Zor-El’s sixtieth anniversary, compiled below is part one of a series outlining sixty surprising or unusual facts about the original intrepid Argo City teen who leapt from that crumpled Midvale rocket ship. Covering her original Silver and Bronze Age incarnation, in comics and on screen, each factoid is calculated to intrigue and delight -- hopefully even seasoned Kara fans will find a few morsels of trivia that had previously escaped their attention.

Enjoy...

1. She wasn’t originally known as Kara Zor-El when she debuted in comics.

What’s in a name? Well not a lot, it seems, if you happen to be Kryptionian..!

Although everyone knows Supergirl’s real name is Kara Zor-El, the Maid of Might herself didn’t deem it worthy of a mention until Action Comics #288 (May 1962), three years after her introduction, when she innocently referenced her full moniker during a dream sequence. After that readers would need to wait another fifteen years(!) before she’d mention it again in Superman Family #177 (June 1976). Outside of these rare instances Kara was usually known as Kara of Argo City, or in very early comics simply just as Kara, her birthplace itself not having acquired a name until Action Comics #280 (Sep 1961).

2. 1984′s Supergirl wasn’t actually the first movie headlined by a superhero female.

Many movie buffs will list 1984′s Supergirl as the breakthrough release that finally saw women headline a movie in the superhero genre, but this is far from the truth.

Supergirl’s record is true, but only in the English-speaking world: there had already been numerous superhero movies in non-English markets centred around super-powered female crime fighters, most notably in the Philippines. The most popular Filipino superheroine, Darna, had already racked up no less than eleven movies by 1980, plus one guest appearance in another hero’s movie.

3. She once fell madly in love with a woman.

As incredible as it seems today, the straight-laced DC Comics of the 1960s once okayed a story in which the Maid of Might fell head-over-heels in love with a woman. It happened in Adventure Comics #384 (Sept 1969), and, as you might expect, the story had a few twists and turns before the true nature of Kara’s romance was revealed.

The short version is this: Kara uses computer dating to select a match suitable for a superwoman. The computer picks Volar, a male superhero from the deeply misogynistic planet of Torma (second planet of Star-Sun 447B, in case you want to pay a visit.) Kara travels to Torma and is smitten by Volar, but he seems reluctant to reciprocate her affections. Eventually the plot reveals its twist: due to Torma’s notorious chauvinism, Volar is actually a superheroine forced to masquerade as a superhero. ”I’m heading back to Earth – where I belong!”, exclaims a disappointed Girl of Steel, “I found out Volar was no hit – but a real miss!” (Ho ho!)

4. She’s a self-professed fan of Jazz.

Growing up in both Argo City and Midvale, Kara was probably exposed to a wide range of different musical styles -- but at the end of a long day saving the world, what kind of sounds did she like to relax to? The pages of Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #7 (May 1983) dropped readers a hint when Kara expressed a strong affinity towards Jazz music. Indeed in a later issue of that same series, it is while attending a free Jazz concert with friends in Chicago’s Grant Park that Kara first tangled with the super-villain Reactron (making his comicbook debut.)

5. She once packed in her superhero career to become a socialite and style-icon in Paris.

The mid-60s was an interesting time for DC Comics; a tipping point between the juvenile gimmick-driven hangover of the Golden Age, and the more mature storytelling style of the upcoming Bronze Age, as one generation of artists and writers slowly gave way to the next. Brave and the Bold #63 (Dec 1965) fell squarely into the former category with its outlandish story, Revolt of the Super-Chicks.

The tale begins with a restless Kara feeling unappreciated: the public see her as just a hero in a gaudy costume, ignoring the sophisticated woman inside. Much to the chagrin of Kal-El, Kara abandons her superhero-ing career and heads to the bright lights of Paris to live it up. Kal sends Wonder Woman to Paris to talk some sense into Kara (the first time the pair had shared an adventure, by the way), but Diana is likewise wooed by the socialite lifestyle and joins Kara in her nocturnal revelry. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of the villain Multi-Face, the pair might have still been in Paris now.

6. Producer Ilya Salkind regretted Helen Slater’s casting as Supergirl.

When Ilya Salkind took on the task of co-producing Superman-related movies in the mid 1970s, he’d argued against the wishes of both Warner Bros. and his producer father, Alexander, by suggesting that the title role not go to a Hollywood A-lister. Ilya followed exactly the same logic when it came time to cast 1984′s Supergirl, championing an unknown actor called Helen Slater over more bankable names such as Brooke Shields (favoured by his father.)

In an interview in 2000, however, Ilya seemed to have some regrets, telling Scott Michael Bosco on behalf of Digital Cinema, “[...] frankly, with hindsight I regret it. Brooke Shields would have – not made it a better movie, but perhaps a more commercial one. This I’m convinced. I think there would have been more men seeing the movie.” Commenting on how Slater’s screen presence was more Katherine Hepburn than Sophia Loren, Salkind noted, “What happened, I think, is that we lost a lot of the audience, the male audience. I think it was also because the girl was a little unattainable.”

7. One of her most iconic costumes was originally designed by a fan.

Supergirl has had a number of crime-fighting outfits over the decades, but two particularly stand out as being iconic: Helen Slater’s 1984 movie costume (plus its imitators, such as the post-Crisis Matrix costume and Melissa Benoist’s tv costume), and the 1970s hotpants outfit.

The Girl of Steel’s hotpants attire was a racy number that screamed 70s sexploitation at a volume only Kryptonian lungs could achieve: short shorts, a plunging V neckline, billowing sleeves, and a neck choker, all in the customary red, sky blue, and yellow. The design wasn’t something dreamt up by one of DC’s staff of artists, however. but taken from a sketch submitted by reader John Sposato of Edison, New Jersey. DC had used several fan submitted costume ideas during the early 1970s -- each outfit typically receiving one or two story outings -- but John’s submission was obviously so liked by DC artists that it eventually became her permanent costume for most of the 1970s.

8. She turned Streaky into a Super Cat by accident.

DC in the Silver Age prided itself on being a family-friendly brand, free from the squalor and depravity that had once graced the pages of some of its competitors, causing moral crusaders (armed with books written by Dr. Fredric Wertham) to brand the medium as a threat to the youth of America. Without the use of excessive violence to bring thrills and drama to its superhero comics, DC relied on gimmicks such as Kryptonite. Consequently, by the Silver Age, the stuff was everywhere(!)

With her keen practical mind, Kara decided (much to the condescending amusement of her cousin) to develop an alchemy that would neutralise the harmful effects of this ever burgeoning supply of Kryptonite (Action Comics #261, Feb 1960.) She failed, naturally, but the discarded end-product, labelled X-Kryptonite, ended up accidentally giving a local stray alley-cat super powers. And so Streaky the Super Cat was born -- entirely by accident..!

9. Lena Luthor wasn’t the only female Luthor family member giving her trouble.

The Luthor family has a long history of causing trouble for the Girl of Steel. Not only did Supergirl struggle to keep her secret identity from the telepathic Lena (Thorul) Luthor -- Lex’s little sister -- but Adventure Comics #397 (Sept 1970) saw the introduction of Lex’s scheming niece, Nasthalthia. Nasty, as she was known, joined Stanhope College with a determination to help Uncle Lex flush out which of Stanhope’s students was secretly Supergirl. Suspecting Linda Danvers from the start, Nasty even followed Linda when she graduated and moved to San Francisco to become a TV camerawoman. The pair would play a dangerous cat-and-mouse game throughout many early 1970s Supergirl tales, but Nasty never quite got the proof she needed to unmask the Maid of Might.

10. She was married when she died in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

A story published in Superman Vol. 1 #415 (Jan 1986) saw the Fortress of Solitude infiltrated by a mysterious visitor from a distant planet. Intent on stealing a memento of the recently deceased Kara, the handsome green-skinned thief named Salkor is quickly apprehended by Superman.

Salkor explains how he had found Supergirl drifting unconscious in space some two years previous. He had cured her of Kryptonite sickness, but she had been left with severe amnesia. In the days that followed Salkor and Kara drew close and entered into a quickie marriage, but not long after the marriage he awoke to find Kara missing -- her memory had presumably returned. Over the next two years Salkor slowly traced his bride back to Earth, but tragically he arrived just as news of her death was broadcast around the world.

11. Her creation was part of a strategy to boost DC’s flagging superhero comic sales.

Supergirl wasn’t created on a mere creative whim; the impetus behind her introduction was likely a long-term sales strategy DC Comics had been following since the mid-1950s. According to Gerard Jones in his book Men of Tomorrow, DC knew that the demographics for the Superman radio and television shows revealed a sizeable share of young girl audience members, and that market research showed that girls read their brother’s Superman and Batman comics (second hand!) DC therefore set out to entice young girls into buying their own superhero comics by introducing titles like Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane, and characters like Batwoman and Supergirl. Although some superheroines have been accused of being nothing more than eye-candy for the young male audience, Supergirl was introduced squarely to inspire young girls.

12. She could read your mind.

In Adventure Comics #397 (Sept 1970) Supergirl investigates a mystery girl found in a coma on the Stanhope College campus. As the anonymous patient lies motionless in a hospital bed, the Girl of Steel conveniently remembers that she has the ability to perform Vulcan mind-melds: ”I'll try to delve into her subconscious -- maybe I can learn something”. The trick reveals that the mystery girl was the victim of a black magic cult, causing Supergirl to infiltrate the group undercover (literally!) Strangely, although the Girl of Steel can read other people’s minds, she seemed very poor at reading her own, as she promptly forgets all about her mind-reading abilities after that single issue.

13. She always knew how to be popular.

When Kara from Argo City first landed on Earth, she took it upon herself to pick her own secret identity name. “While you were gone”, she tells her cousin, “I used my super-hearing and heard many Earth girls’ names! I thought of a good one for myself.” The name she chose, of course, was Linda.

It isn’t perhaps a surprise that her super-hearing fixated on that particular name, given that according to names registered with US Social Security, Linda was one of the most popular girls’ names in the 1950s, beginning the decade in the top slot, but dropping two places to third by the time Kara arrived on Earth in 1959. (Kara, by the way, was 935th on the girls list at the time that Ms. Zor-El crashed her rocket ship in Midvale.)

14. Her first appearance on television was in a 1962 comedy sketch, played by Carol Burnett.

In 1962 the Garry Moore Show featured a seven minute sketch lampooning the popular George Reeves Superman TV show -- the comedy gimmick being that instead of the Man of Steel, the sketch’s evildoers were pitted against the Maid of Might, played by comedian Carol Burnett. (A similar spoof by Lucille Ball a few years earlier doesn’t count, btw, as Lucy was playing Superman, not Supergirl.)

The madcap plot sees Carol dashing to and fro, frantically switching back and forth between her everyday clothes and her hero costume, while performing an array of ridiculous feats of strength. It is debatable whether this truly qualifies as a genuine Supergirl appearance, given the obvious Reeves inspiration, but Burnett’s 1962 version does use the Supergirl name and a reasonable facsimile of her 60s costume.

15. Her first proper appearance on television was in an advert, selling underwear!

Even if the 1962 Carol Burnett sketch is ruled out as not being canonical Kara, Supergirl’s late-70s underwear commercial qualifies without a shadow of a doubt. The short advert, for the kids brand Underroos, sees Supergirl, Spider-Woman, Wonder Woman, and even Batgirl, all extolling the virtues of wearing superheroine themed undergarments. Dating from sometime around 1978, the ad seems to be the first authorised on-screen appearance of Supergirl, meaning that the ad’s opening line, “Now Supergirl is on Underoos”, is the first spoken line uttered by any actress playing the Girl of Steel. (It is unknown who the lucky voice artist was.)

That’s all for part one -- hope you enjoyed it..! Check out part two (soon) for another fifteen fascinating factoids.

[gaijinschoollibrarian]

Manga and Women: Buying Manga for School Libraries in the #MeToo Era

When I talk to other school librarians about manga and anime, many of them voice a similar concern: the manga they see has horrible treatment of women. These are not invalid concerns, especially as school librarians are working to make their collections more inclusive and affirming. And when students are requesting series that depict sexual harassment and assault as comedic occurrences (I'm looking at you, Seven Deadly Sins), or at the very least, series which treat women solely as sexual or romantic beings, I can't blame my colleagues for their hesitation.

That said, there's a lot to unpack with this debate. There are elements of Japanese society that are inherently different from American society. Many school librarians also know nothing of the distinctions between genres of manga, or have only heard of what's most popular among their patrons. Manga is often seen as the way to get boys reading, and so masculine titles tend to be extremely popular for purchasing. What I'm going to do is try to unpack these things, piece by piece, to try and provide some context- and maybe show my peers that the stereotypes of shōnen manga are not all there is out there to purchase.

Societal Differences in the Perception of Gender

If we all work from the supposition that gender is a social construct, then perhaps it might be easier to understand that Japan's constructs are similar and different to Western constructs. Japanese media can come across as being both freer and stricter with gender roles. Here are a few things you need to understand about Japan in relation to women:

Japan is ranked 110 out of 144 countries on the World Economic Forum's annual report on gender equality.

There is only one female member of the Japanese Cabinet.

As of 2017, only 3.4% of executives in Japan were women.

The ratio of female-to-male physicians in Japan is 21%.

Japan has been trying to improve the standing of women in society, but it's been difficult.

Japan has a long history of having a traditional gender balance of labor wherein women are expected to raise children and take care of housekeeping, while men are expected to work. Japanese society generally has a very heavy line down the center in this division, much more so than there currently is in the West. Since 1986, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law has been in place to try and provide more gender equity in the workplace in Japan, but it's been a struggle. Part of the problem is that there was no penalty for employers who did not adhere to the changes.

Japan, also, has a serious problem with the way it handles and reports sexual harassment and assault. Certain occurrences which Western women consider assault are not necessarily seen as such by Japanese women. In her article, "Shifting attitudes toward sexual violence in Japan", Masami Ito describes her experiences:

When I was in junior high school, a young man who lived in the same apartment building flashed me in an elevator, blocking the entrance as he did so.

When I was in college, a middle-aged man cornered me in the box seat on a train and masturbated in front of me.

When I was in my mid-20s, a man pressed himself against me in the aisle of a convenience store and then followed me home. I had to call my father for help that time.

And, of course, I have been groped on trains many, many times.

Until recently, I never considered these incidents to be sexual assaults, nor did I ever view myself as a victim. I told myself that such things happened all the time and I was never physically hurt. I compared my experiences to those of other women and I considered myself lucky.

In Japan, there's even a word for men who grope women on crowded trains: chikan. Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department reported 1,750 cases of groping on the trains. (I attempted to find figures on this particular crime in NYC from the same year, but was unable to find any exact report of figures.) It's such a common occurrence, it's often a plot point in manga. In My Love Story!! the protagonist meets his future girlfriend by stopping a man from groping her.

I want to be clear, and maybe the panels of My Love Story!! do something to show this, that the problems of sexual harassment in Japan are seen as problems by people in the country. There are Japanese feminists and citizens who want things to change. Last year, the BBC released a documentary titled Japan's Secret Shame, which went into the experiences of three different women who were raped in Japan. It's not available at the moment, but if you can find a way to see it, it may give insight into the issue if you want to know more.

Shōnen, Shōjo, and So Much More

The complaints I hear the most are in relation to what is known as shōnen manga. Shōnen is geared toward boys between ages 12 and 18. There's a reason this stuff flies off the shelf with our male-identifying patrons: it's literally made for them. The longest running series in Japan are shōnen manga, and are household names here in the West (you've probably heard of Dragonball Z, I presume). Typically, these are high-action, hyper-masculine stories. And while there are exceptions, such as My Hero Academia, there's a large history of "fan service" in shōnen. There's also some pretty big issues with some of the creators of shōnen titles.

For example, the author of Rurouni Kenshin was found with an enormous backlog of child pornography DVDs. Not only did he have this material, he admitted his attraction to young girls. His manga is currently still in publication, after he paid a fine of only ¥200,000 (about $1,800 USD). No, I am not joking.

I don't want you to come away from this thinking shōnen manga is evil, by the way. What I want is for fellow school librarians to know that what they're seeing is just a fraction of what manga has to offer. Some shōnen has female protagonists (Yotsuba&! features a mostly female cast with little to no fan service, as its main character is a child). And a lot of women and girls read shōnen.

Shōjo manga is the counterpart to shōnen: manga written for girls between the ages of 12 and 18. Honestly, shōjo can have its own issues. Some titles feature girls whose identities revolve solely around romance or a desire to get married and make babies. Kidnapping and threats of sexual assault can be normal (the idea being that these girls need to be saved by their boyfriends, who frequently are much older than them). There's a whole slew of manga revolving around schoolgirls having romantic relationships with their teachers. So, I also don't want you to think that being labeled shōjo makes the content automatically appropriate for students.

I recently reread a manga I loved as a teen, Ayashi no Ceres. It featured multiple rather explicit sex scenes and the main character dropping out of school to have a baby. It was an easy decision to select other series over that one, although I still consider it a classic. I leave it to students to select series with those sort of themes at their own pace through alternate pathways such as the public library, bookstores, or manga apps.

However, I do want to point out that shōjo manga is a category in which feminine fantasy and identity is often at the forefront. And while this is the case, there are many shōjo manga which widely appeal to boys. Titles which spring to mind are Escaflowne and Magic Knight Rayearth.

There are other categories as well: seinan (for adult men), josei (for adult women), kodomo (for children), and gekiga (for adults, with a more "artistic" and "literary" reputation). The differentiation between adults and teens has more to do with the difficulty of the Japanese than the content or target demographic. Gekiga is probably the most "different", because it strives to be taken more seriously. (I have a plan to talk more in-depth about each category in their own posts).

Look For Women

When purchasing, if you are looking to move away from the pure moe that is popular among certain titles, I'd suggest looking for women who are mangaka. The likelihood that problematic behavior will be present is lower, and honestly, women creators can always use the boost. Series that are beloved by boys are written by women: Fullmetal Alchemist, Inu-Yasha, and Ranma 1/2 are examples (admittedly, the latter two were both written by Takahashi Rumiko).

Note: I kept this fairly pared down, so if you'd like to know more or have any questions, please don't hesitate to comment. If you would like me to go more in depth on any topic, please let me know, and I will do an expansion in a future blog. I have some deeper dives planned, but if I know of a direction people specifically want me to go, I’ll tackle it.

[racingtoaredlight]

On This Day...

On this day in 1986, Top Gun was released by Paramount Pictures. In that spirit, rather than wax poetic at length about what remains one of my favorite movies--especially for how re-watchable it is--I will instead just link to the post I did for July 4, three years ago in which I spent far too much time breaking apart every aspect of the movie. It was a truly inspired move by me to spend hours writing a post that went up on a day in which virtually no one was going to visit RTARL. That said, the comments, what few there were, were still more positive than those I received on the Pearl Harbor movie post. Going through this, I think it’s pretty clear why I only did three of these posts (the other one, besides Pearl Harbor, was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves...which I refuse to link to because of how horrible the writing is). Anyways, a selection from my “Deconstructing: Top Gun” is after the jump.

“Today is the Fourth of July. There are Americans who will take the opportunity today to attempt to place themselves in a stifling meeting room in Carpenter Hall while a draft of the Declaration of Independence was voted on and agreed to by a body of wealthy, white male landowners. Then there are those that will purchase a case of Keystone Light, a handle of Bacardi, a liter of Cherry Coke, some fireworks, bland pre-formed hamburger patties and say “It’s time to grill because fuckin’ ‘Merica!” This post will borrow from a little of column A, and a little of column B.

There are a handful of movies from the 1980s that capture the zeitgeist of that decadent decade in a manner that is both enjoyable and relatively accurate from a sociological point of view. Wall Street, Ferris Bueller’s Day off (or any John Hughes movie for that matter), Weird Science, Ghost Busters, Adventures in Babysitting, Goonies, and Top Gun fulfill the role of 80s archetype handsomely. It is the last one mentioned that I wish to give the ‘Deconstructing…” treatment to today.

 Top Gun occupies an important role in my life. While I am not old enough to have experienced Top Gun in the theater—and this is an absolute shame given the achievements in sound, lighting, and cinematography which the movie can lay claim to—it is the first movie which I can recall it being a ‘big deal’ for a household to have purchased on VHS. Top Gun was the best-selling VHS of all time on the strength of its pre-orders alone. Sales of Ray Ban Aviators jumped 40% after the movie was released. My brother and I both became proud owners of faux fur trimmed leather jackets, complete with ridiculous, fake military patches. Sadly aviators were not made for the under 12 year old crowd at that point, otherwise we would have rocked those as well along with crisp white t-shirts (fortunately we did not develop an affinity for volleyball).

Ours were nowhere this good looking. Though we certainly thought they were at the time.

 I still own our copy from 1987 which includes the 30 second Pepsi spot ahead of time and I treasure it. To say that I love this movie, despite its inaccuracies, is to understate what love of cinema is. This movie is built upon the paradigms, tropes, jingoistic assumptions, and nationalistic predispositions that would later be manifested, could only be outrageously be manifested by the later concept of “Merica…fuck year” that grew out of post-9/11 American patriotism. It could also be said, accurately in my opinion, that Top Gun represented the first unapologetically militaristic film that gained widespread and even some critical acclaim in the post-Vietnam era. 1986 was, after all, the same year that Oliver Stone’s unflinching view of the Vietnam War, told from the point of view of a line infantryman, was released as ‘Platoon’; an epic war movie in its own right though clearly one which is diametrically different from Top Gun. In short, Top Gun was the pro-military, pro-American lifestyle movie which we had all been craving in one way since John Wayne’s ‘The Green Berets’ in 1968 and in yet another way since the sunset of World War II movies during the Korean War. It is the late Tony Scott’s gifts as a filmmaker that make Top Gun a positive, if overly idealized, symbol of 1980s America and which in turn make Top Gun an important exhibitor of 1980s Americana.

Though the point of this is not to analyze the effectiveness of cinematic skills, it must be said that the opening title cards followed by the low-light scenes aboard an aircraft carrier during flight operations (variously described to have been captured aboard the USS Enterprise, on which ship the action of the story takes place, the USS Ranger, and the USS Carl Vinson), are incredibly effective at introducing with an air of mystique the importance and the danger of flight operations aboard a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. That the crewmen involved seem, at a distance albeit, to perform their duties with a laconic, matter-of-fact nature only underscores the attitude of the film that we are about to experience. This was, for many Americans, the introduction to the technical reality of naval aviation aboard an aircraft carrier and this reality, presented in such dramatic lighting and tones along with the amazing acts of man and machinery on display, make for a viscerally satisfying experience.

After this inspiring introductory sequence, we are foisted in media res to the activity of the carrier’s Combat Information Center (CIC). The CIC is, outside of the bridge, the center of command activity upon the carrier. This is the compartment on the ship into which all data—ship’s position, aircraft in flight, radar contacts—are fed and in which important decisions are made. One interesting omission of the movie which is worth bringing up now is the apparent lack of AWACS (Airborne Early Warning and Aircraft Control Systems). The E-2 Hawkeye, Navy’s primary platform for surveillance of radar threats that approach the Combat Air Patrol (CAP) around a carrier group, is never once mentioned or even referred to. All radar contacts are made and tracked from aboard ship and then radioed to the respective aircraft or detected by the aircraft themselves (sometimes, as will be seen later, in isolation of what the carrier can detect). The soundtrack provided, at this point, by Kenny Loggins distracts all but the most ardent followers of naval warfare from this.

A title shot, showing the carrier in profile, tells us that this is the “Present Day” in the Indian Ocean. I’ve always found the Indian Ocean to be an interesting point of geography to place this movie’s conflict zone. Early drafts of the script by Jack Cash had the movie taking place in Cuban airspace. This was rejected for various reasons by the Navy and the movie studio. Instead the Indian Ocean was selected. While the Navy has, in the Cold War and even post-Cold War period, maintained a carrier strike group in the Indian Ocean, the exact nature of the enemy being shadowed in this opening sequence, and again in the later sequences, is never mentioned. We only know that they are bad because they fly black jets with red stars on them (those of us who were born in the early 80s or earlier know that a red star means ‘Soviet’ or allied to the same; bad either way), and the pilots wear black helmets with darkened visors (the ‘they are hiding their faces so they must be bad’ trope in full force). There were certainly people in that part of the world who were not necessarily friendly to American interests (India was very iffy in their affiliations prior to the end of the Cold War), but the notion that we would might find ourselves in aerial combat with India or Pakistan is laughable now as it would have been then. Our enemies at the time resided in Southeast Asia, but I suppose that revisiting Vietnam only 11 years after its end would have been somewhat redundant given the success of the Rambo franchise.

“Clearly, I hate freedom and puppy dogs.”

We find our heroes, Maverick and Goose along with Cougar and Merlin, in two F-14 Tomcat fighters on a typical Combat Air Patrol (CAP). The CAP, whether flown by a small handful of aircraft on a radar picket mission or by dozens of aircraft in a combat zone, is something which has been standard practice for any carrier group to maintain since the advent of modern carrier operations during and immediately after the Second World War. I remember in middle school visiting the USS Lexington, by then a museum ship, in Corpus Christi, Texas. One of the guides haughtily informed us that our ideas of naval aviation and carrier operations, obviously misinformed by Top Gun and the somewhat later and underrated Flight of the Intruder, were incorrect; aircraft carriers do not launch only a handful of fighters at a time. When they launch their aircraft, they launch them all at once. Unfortunately my middle school mind was still in the formative stage and while I knew that what he was saying was not quite correct, I did not have the intellectual ability at that point in my life to say “Hey fuckface, you are completely misrepresenting the difference between an air strike and a Combat Air Patrol”. If only it were so, I might have affected so many minds at the USS Lexington Museum.

Back to the movie: because of the aforementioned anecdote, we now know that it is not unusual for a carrier group to only have a handful of fighters deployed. There is even a line in which one officer says to the principal from Back to the Future, whom I presume is the CAG (Commander Air Group, i.e. the most senior pilot aboard who isn’t the Captain or the Executive Officer…by Congressional mandate, aircraft carriers must have both a captain and an executive officer who are each qualified naval aviators)  that they—the carrier group—were not expecting any ‘visitors’ that day. So based on this we know that the carrier, identified earlier as the USS Enterprise, was not expecting any aggressors; thus the reason for the relatively small CAP of only a couple of fighters.

Some of these ‘visitors’ engage the CAP, probably for geopolitical reasons—not intending to fire, but certainly looking to make a statement—and Cougar immediately gets cornered by one while Maverick instantly gets ‘missile lock’ on one and scares him out of the area. Cougar’s aircraft is engaged in radar missile lock or “painted”—meaning that his F-14’s systems are telling him that the enemy aircraft has locked onto him with radar and is ready to fire—and he immediately loses his composure. Maverick’s subsequent remark, something to the effect of “He’s just trying to piss us off”, correlates well with the tactics of Soviet bloc nations during the Cold War; harass U.S. military aircraft and try to force a showdown in which the U.S. would appear the aggressor. This practice was so common during the Cold War that American aviators took pictures of their opponents and did things to ‘engage’ them without firing a shot. So, while the ‘international exchange’ by Maverick and Goose may have been a bit of Hollywood exaggeration, it absolutely has foundation in the truth.

  The next series of events revolves upon Maverick returning to the Enterprise while Cougar, the target of the last enemy MiG’s machinations, having completely lose his nerve and unable to fly his aircraft back to the carrier (not an uncommon occurrence actually). The part of this which beggars belief is Maverick’s sudden realization on final approach to the carrier that Cougar was in trouble and that he might need some assistance in landing. This is video of fighter landing in normal daylight conditions on an aircraft carrier; where in this do you think the pilot had the opportunity to consider the welfare of anyone but himself and his aircraft?

But, despite all of this, Maverick has jumped all four arresting wires and completed a ‘touch and go’ in order to help shepherd his friend back to the carrier. While the drama of Cougar’s inability to land properly is very real and is a testament to the daily pressures of naval aviation which we rarely, if ever, hear about, the dramatic tension caused by the fact that they are both low on fuel is made comical by the fact that every aircraft carrier had several refueling aircraft on board, including some in the air during landing operations just in case something like this exact situation with Cougar occurred. Granted air-to-air refueling isn’t easy, but it is easier than landing a 43,000 lb. aircraft on a heaving ship’s deck. Providing the possibility of an airborne lifeboat of sorts would certainly decrease the drama of the movie. And we can’t have that.

I am going to ignore, for now, the disciplinary issues with Maverick ignoring a direct order to return and land his aircraft, mainly because ignoring orders and ‘going against the grain’ or ‘flying by the seat of his pants’ is used by the filmmakers to enhance Maverick’s already burgeoning hero capacity (seeing someone give someone else the finger while inverted always enamored me to that person, granted my sample size may be restricted to this movie alone).  The approach by Cougar does accurately demonstrate just how difficult and terrifying the land approach to an aircraft carrier is. The voices you hear over this, added for dramatic effect but important nonetheless, are from the Landing Officers on a catwalk adjacent to the deck. These white-jacketed individuals seen earlier in the movie during the opening sequence are not desk jockeys who got a chance to breathe over the radio to pilots on a given day, but are in fact pilots themselves. It is customary in the U.S. Navy for pilots on their day off to stand in as Landing Officers to guide in, and grade, their fellow pilots on final approach. While it is not  immediately  clear which of the Enterprises’ four landing wires Cougar manages to snag, I think his approach could nonetheless be classified as ‘DNKH’ (‘Damn Near Killed Himself’). 

Moving along: Cougar turns in his wings to the CAG (once again, my presumption) and he (the CAG) is now required, unbeknownst to the viewers, to send Maverick and Goose to the Navy’s preeminent Fighter Weapons School: Top Gun (but, you already knew that from the title). What is amazing about this is that the CAG—who I am struggling not to call ‘Mr. Strickland’—offers positions in the Navy’s elite fighter training program to two guys (well, Maverick, but whatever) who just half an hour earlier defied a direct order of his. Article 90 of the U.S. Code of Military Justice states that it is a crime to willfully disobey a superior commissioned officer. Even if Maverick was to make the case that he did not willfully disobey, that he was in fact compelled to assist his fellow pilot and safeguard military hardware, he would still likely face some time with JAG lawyers and would likely not be given his ‘dreamshot’ simply because another pilot ‘ahead of him’ decided that that day’s events were enough for him and turned in his wings.

*sidenote: Merlin (Tim Robbins) gets treated pretty badly in this movie…Maverick and Goose are treated as a team, albeit with Maverick being the more talented of the two, while we don’t see Merlin again until Maverick conveniently needs a back-seater later in the movie. What was Merlin doing on Enterprise this whole time?

I will at this point address and dispose of the whole “Maverick is haunted by the legacy of his father” storyline. It’s an interesting storyline, one which underpins Maverick’s motivation throughout the movie, and it leads to a great payoff scene with Viper—played ably by Tom Skerritt and his amazing mustache—later in the movie. But for the purposes of this (since we’re already beyond 2,000 words) I’m not going to address it.

The introduction, by the inimitable Michael Ironside, to Top Gun does accurately illustrate the changing ratios in air combat victories by the U.S Navy aviators from Korea to the early stages of Vietnam. After Top Gun graduates began to flow back to their squadrons in and around Vietnam, the kill ratio did indeed increase from 2.5:1 to 12:1. This is a somewhat controversial figure which I will not examine further here, but suffice it to say that enough people were convinced by these figures to label the Navy Fighter Weapons School, or Top Gun, to be a success. It is at the tail end of this scene that we are introduced to Commander Mike Metcalf, callsign “Viper” (be honest, you all just read that in Michael Ironside’s voice). “Viper” is the actual call-sign of retired Rear Admiral Pete Pettigrew, who was both the primary technical advisor for the movie (along with the several others, some of whose callsigns are reflected in the movie and some whose are not) and is the “older man” that Kelly McGillis’s ‘Charlie’ is meeting with in the subsequent scene.

“I may not have a mustache, but I could still mess you up.”

The role of ‘Charlie’ is, despite what the chauvinist mind may think, based on an actual person. That said, it is difficult to imagine a military classroom being allowed to devolve, with a fellow instructor present, into the scene which follows. However, this is the first time in the movie in which reference is made to the MiG-28 (for those not familiar, MiG (short for Mikoyan-Gurevich) is and has been one of the primary aircraft design firms in Russia since the Second World War…though now is certainly also the time to mention that MiG aircraft, designated as the MiG-28 in the movie, have only ever received odd-numbered designations. This is also a great time to mention that Val Kilmer’s coughed ‘bullshit’ was completely ad-libbed and the reaction of the other cast members was genuine.

*sidenote: “Mighty Wings” is a pretty bitchin’ song and, in retrospect, a great way for Cheap Trick to keep their name in the spotlight in what was otherwise the doldrums of their career.

After the first flight-op, which Maverick and Goose successfully engage Jester (Michael Ironside) below the ‘hard deck’ of 10,000 feet, they are dressed down by Viper in his office. The seriousness of this is underscored immediately afterward when Goose (played by Anthony Edwards before he came the whiney Dr. Green on ‘ER’) jokes that he should look into being a truck driver and then again, later that night, when Goose visits Maverick in his dorm to say that he is worried now about whether they graduate at all. I do not have much to say about this other than what must already be obvious, but I do not think that the Navy is in the practice of constantly putting into challenging technical educational programs pilots who have a history of saying “fuck it, I’m doing this instead”. But here we are.

I guess, while we are on the subject of stating which aspects of a film we are not going to discuss, then I suppose now is the time to make it known that I’m not going to analyze the student-instructor relationship in the film other than to say that it was substituted into the movie in place of the original enlisted female sailor love interest because it was considered ‘more realistic’.

[cue sweaty volleyball match….really, volleyball in jeans? And then he puts on shoes and a leather jacket afterward and we are to believe that he doesn’t smell like a surfer’s asshole? Okay…

Fun fact: the elevator scene with Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis was a late add; it was shot so late in post production that Tom Cruise had noticeably longer hair and Kelly McGillis had to hide her own hair, now dyed brown for her next role, under a hat.

The very next scene has an exterior shot of the terminal and control tower at, presumably NAS Miramar, where we are about to meet Goose’s wife (the very young and vivacious Meg Ryan). But the brief shot outside the terminal shows at least four mint condition classic cars (one of which is a Chevy Bel Air).

This movie was filmed in 1985 and released in 1986. I accept that there were more ‘classic’ cars in existence in the 1980s than today, but for so many to be outside the terminal at a Naval Air Station…something doesn’t seem right. Seriously, draw a vertical line from the control tower in this picture straight down and tell me that the cars on the left have any business being there in a 1986 action movie.

There is, not long after this, an interlude in which Maverick succeeds in seducing Charlie and all is well within both of their worlds for a brief time. It is worth noting that the music which plays over this is by Berlin and it is both their most popular single and the song which tore them apart.

And no, I can longer hear that song or see this movie without picturing this either.

We have, at this point in the movie, arrived at the point where everything is right in the world of the protagonist and those closest to him. Maverick has successfully built a relationship with an intelligent and thoughtful female instructor, has cultivated a reputation as a brilliant if unpredictable pilot and wingman, and is poised to take the points lead in his Top Gun class. It’s at this point that during a flight-op Maverick allows his ambition to overtake his sensibility and the skills he has learned so far in order to try to take down the legendary Viper, who has unexpectedly joined the fray for the day. Maverick, awed by Viper’s reputation and possibly eager to seek his approval by engaging and defeating him in air combat, breaks off from covering Hollywood. The issue I have with this section of the movie is that Maverick is supposed to cover the six of Hollywood while he takes his shot on the aggressor and by breaking off he allows Hollywood to be somehow taken out by another aggressor. Hollywood is directly behind his target and, instead of taking a shot, he hectors Maverick not to abandon him to go after Viper….during which time Hollywood could have easily taken the shot and thus obviating the need for Maverick to cover him! Maverick not only fails to bag Viper, but he is also taken out by Jester who, inexplicably, has gotten out of the clutches of Hollywood…possibly because Hollywood had, instead of shooting Jester, had taken the time to read through a Restoration Hardware catalog, or something.

Because Maverick broke a tactical rule and did not profit by doing so—didn’t cover Hollywood and got taken out by Jester before he was able to get Viper—he is made to feel like a reckless asshole; your ‘loose cannon’ movie trope. Yet, there is a subtextual reference to the fact that if Maverick had succeeded in getting Viper, perhaps the sin of breaking off from his coverage of Hollywood would have been forgiven. It is difficult for me to believe that a school which teaches effective air combat tactics would, if a pilot ignored one aspect of them, be lauded for doing so if he was successful in his gambit; an example of the “Ends Justify the Means” Fallacy if there ever was one.

After a short period of self-reflection, we see Maverick and Goose having a night on the town with their significant others. I don’t have much to say about this scene other than to introduce the FAA rules on alcohol in relation to piloting an aircraft—8 hours bottle to throttle—and to point out that this particular bar, Kansas City BBQ, is still in operation in San Diego today, with a large amount of Top Gun memorabilia as I am certain most of you imagined.

*Charlie’s beach front house is still standing today, though if you scroll through the link above you’ll see it’s in less than ideal condition while the other vintage homes around it have been torn down for another ubiquitous ‘mixed retail/condo’ development.

  Next, we have the climactic Top Gun school scene. We know that because ‘Danger Zone’ is playing again. The pilots’ time at Top Gun is winding down and they are being presented with increasingly more complicated scenarios which they must deal with; they are often outnumbered. In this flight-op we experience Maverick being held up by another pilot again. This time it’s Iceman, despite being right on the tail of the aggressor, needing an absurdly long amount of time to line up the shot. Look, I understand that I am neither a civilian nor a military pilot and nor I have ever been and or will I ever be. But the notion that someone, who is directly in the ‘hip pocket’ of his target and cannot line up a freakin’ radar guided missile shot, especially the one pilot who is presented as like Maverick but more capable due to his personal discipline, is beyond belief for me. Then, asshole that he is, Iceman pulls off and lets Maverick run right through his jet wash.

The turbulence is extremely disruptive and causes both of the aircraft’s engines to flame out. Maverick cannot regain control or restart the engines and so he and Goose , with much difficulty, eject. This is the infamous ‘Goose Death Scene’. As the primary comic relief of the movie, it is of course upsetting to see this character depart. But the physics of his death, what appears to be a neck vertebrae fracture caused by his impact against the jettisoned canopy after ejection, are often in question. At least one online forum asserts that this Goose’s death was caused by a mechanical error of the ejection seat; that it ejected him a second too quickly. While I am not an aerospace engineer or an expert in physics, I do find it difficult to understand how an aircraft moving at hundreds of knots could have a recently ejected canopy floating above it long enough for a crewman to be ejected into it. Video seems to show this to be nearly impossible. Yet, here we are.

*Cool fact: when Maverick and Goose are floating in the ocean, waiting to be rescued, they seem to have, out of nowhere, an inflatable cradle keeping them above he waves. See the light gray, slightly puffy things which start the pilot’s chest and go back over his shoulder? Yep, that’s his built in, salt-water activated, life raft. Also a nice feature that they included the automatically deployed dye marker that would have come out upon landing in the water

Skipping ahead: Maverick stands before a Board of Inquiry which has investigated the events surrounding his crash. This is completely normal and the conclusions of the board are totally believable (said by a non-pilot) and so it is not unusual that Maverick would be immediately returned to flight status. I have no direct knowledge of this, but it seems to me that pilots who are assigned to the Navy’s elite fighter weapons school would also go through some manner of psychological evaluation. I am not saying that such an evaluation would have done much good for Maverick, this is after all a character who spurns authority and any attempt to analyze his psyche, but given his state of mind, I think it at least possible that a Navy psychologist might have suggested that he may be a head case still.

After some soul searching, Maverick has decided to stick with being a Navy pilot and not to resign his commission and become an United commuter pilot. The scene at the Top Gun graduation ceremony is amusingly reminiscent of a certain scene involving the view of the U.S. Navy’s white uniforms or ‘whites’ in another Tom Cruise movie six years later; A Few Good Men.

At the graduation ceremony/burgeoning frat party, Michael Ironside suddenly appears—with the voice of authority that only he can muster—and announces that some of the pilots present have to depart immediately and head to a ‘crisis situation’. The U.S. Navy in the 1980s was absolutely massive in both hardware and personnel as it sought to meet Secretary John Lehman’s (and by extension Ronald Reagan’s) goal of a 600 ship navy (for reference, the size of the current fleet is 290 ships). I realize that Top Gun trained pilots are the ‘best of the best’, but Top Gun has been at this point around for around fifteen years…..are there not pilots in the squadrons currently aboard the Enterprise capable of handling this situation in the Indian Ocean? And, if not, how in the blue fuck did those pilots make their way from San Diego across the Pacific to the Enterprise sailing somewhere in the Indian Ocean with 24 hours? I accept that the transportation abilities of our military are such that they could probably pick up and transport someone or a group of people across the globe in a matter of hours, but what exactly is so special about these pilots that they must be whisked across the Pacific Ocean—and, mind you, the International Dateline—to join a squadron, which would be one of at least four on the carrier, which is facing a ‘crisis situation’.  A commercial flight from Los Angeles to Singapore takes at least 18-19 hours. Putting that aside, or accepting that the military would be ready, willing, and able to transport a handful of Navy pilots across the globe to an aircraft carrier, are we now supposed to accept that they would be ready for combat? They are jet lagged and probably exhausted from travel. It’s no wonder that Maverick nearly cracks up in the following scene.

There is next the briefing scene on the carrier in the squadron Ready Room—I guess the other squadrons already had their briefing or were told, I can only assume, “Hey, you guys are off, go get some sun on deck”. It is here that we again come across the somewhat peculiar tactic of sending up a limit CAP (and of jet-lagged pilots no less….how do the other pilots who have been aboard ship the entire time feel? Have to imagine they are feeling somewhat insulted that a handful of pilots just in from the States are being entrusted with such an important mission).

Hollywood and Iceman are tasked with maintaining the CAP and preventing planes with the Exocet anti-ship missile—something which gave nightmares to British sailors during the Falklands War—from getting near enough to the carrier. One aspect of the flight deck operations we subsequently see and which I approve of is that a red-shirted deck crewman goes up to a missile mounted on an aircraft immediately prior to launch adjusts a switch/handle/toggle on it. This crewman was arming the missile and it is completely accurate to show him doing so immediately prior to the aircraft being launched. Such procedures are in place to prevent another catastrophic incident on the desk, something which Enterprise in particular has experience with.

Maverick is not among the primary flights for the CAP, but he is on ‘Alert 5’, meaning his aircraft is in a position to  be launched in less than five minutes upon receiving the order to launch. Once Hollywood and his mincing air combat techniques get his ass shot out of the sky, Maverick and—we discover—Merlin are launched. Maverick, however, is the only aircraft on Alert 5. The USS Enterprise had four catapults and there is considerable on the carrier that the fact that ‘both catapults are broken’ will prevent any aircraft from being launched. That just…doesn’t make any sense.

We are now at the scene that I have truly wanted to write about. Iceman is on his own against five enemy aircraft, or bogeys, and Maverick is on his way to assist him after being launched from his Alert 5 status. Maverick approaches the area, sees Iceman engulfed in a ‘fur ball’, and immediately disengages. This is met with considerable irritation and dismay amongst all involved; including Iceman. Maverick, holding with some random free hand that pilots must have, reflects midflight over Goose’s dog tags and, and after consideration, decides to reengage. Putting aside the fact that Maverick shoots down or assists in shooting down 4 of the bogies present, the fact that he initially disengaged would seem to be a violation of Article 99 of the Code of Military Justice.

I don’t care how successful a pilot someone is. If a pilot had, even initially, turn away in the face of the enemy, I am fairly certain that that would be an automatic court martial. Within the context of the character Maverick, it seems another trait in his unstable, ‘flies by the seat of his pants’ personality. Regardless of the end result, I do not see how some individuals in the Navy would not confront Maverick on his personal conduct and conduct before the enemy prior to his success. Shit, that’s happening now with a vetted Medal of Honor winner.

Based on his actions, I feel fairly certain that Maverick would have found himself before a Board of Inquiry again.

Oh, and the celebration on the aircraft carrier deck would have never happened.

All of this said, Top Gun is an amazing movie which captures a sensibility and moral feeling which the United States exhibited at the time in spades. It is a movie which set a tone and created a popular sensibility of military aviation in general and naval aviation in particular which is still alive and well to this day. Top Gun was created at a time when we ‘knew’ who the bad guys were and, perhaps more importantly, where they were. In this post-Cold War, post-9/11 world we all now inhabit, Top Gun I think represents a time when we were certain of who we were and what we represented, even if it is an exaggeration of all of those things.

Happy Fourth of July everyone!”

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

[amplesalty]

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Well, it’s Saturday the 14th now but who’s counting?

It’s been a hot minute since I bad mouthed this franchise but since it was Friday the 13th yesterday, why not dive right back in? I’m still trying to slowly work my through and this marks the halfway point. We do have another Friday the 13th in November but then the next ones aren’t until August 2021 and May 2022 so it might take a while at this pace.

Let’s make no bones about it though, it’s still not good and pretty boring throughout, suffering as Halloween did in its need to do something new that’s exactly the same as it shuns the attempt to make Tommy the new killer and instead brings back Jason from the dead. But that also underlines the saving grace of the film as it pushes slightly into the realm of the absurd which brings some humour and charm to it.

For as much as this movie distances itself from Part V, the opening is very reminiscent of it as two guys go to dig Jason up. Only this time one of them is Tommy Jarvis who is out to exorcise some demons by giving Jason an overdue cremation. I wasn’t sure at first how much retconning was going on, like maybe this was child Jason’s body in the grave but this is adult Jason so presumably this is where they buried his body after Part IV. I don’t know why you would bury him at all though. Later on in the movie, the town sheriff is chewing out Tommy for coming around shouting about how Jason is back from the dead, that the town changed it’s name specifically to move on from the past and the stigma of the Jason killings. So why would you put him in a marked grave? It’s like when they buried Osama Bin Laden at sea to avoid his gravesite becoming some sort of shrine, you just know that every Goth in a 50 mile radius would be coming to hang out at the grave of Jason Vorhees.

Turns out there is a much graver danger attached to having his body laying around though when Tommy digs him up with the intention to burn his body and ‘send him to Hell’. Only, his emotions get the better of him and he starts plunging a metal pole into his body instead. This inadvertently acts as a lightning rod and a sudden freak bolt of lightning serves as the appropriate catalyst to bring Jason back to life like he’s the Frankenstein monster or something. One has to wonder if they had that in mind considering a later scene features the Alice Cooper song ‘Teenage Frankenstein’ that was written for the movie.

This is all pre-title by the way. Upon realising the futility of fighting the monster, Tommy makes his escape and leaves Jason to don his mask as the camera zooms in on one of his eyes. Bizarrely, there’s an effect of his pupil dilating as Jason walks in from off screen in profile, before turning to the camera and slashing. Jason Vorhees taking on the role of 007 once Daniel Craig finally hangs up the Martini glass would be an interesting move...

There’s other moments of humour sprinkled throughout that help brighten things up, like Jason hunting down a bunch of paintballers out on some corporate retreat. One of them is especially nerdish with glasses and goggles, complete with his own comedy soundtrack that seems to follow him around wherever he goes. That is until Jason rips his arm off...

Or the two particularly melancholic kids who seem to have accepted their own fragile mortality at their young age, one suggesting that they’re ‘definitely dead meat’ whilst the other asks what he had wanted to be when he grew up.

But other than that, it is what it’s always been; another round of Jason killing another round of camp councillors. I will say though that still having Tommy around lends it a greater sense of continuity and gives you at least one character that you vaguely care about, everyone else might as well be nameless and faceless machete fodder.

They recast him again for this one, Thom Matthews of The Return of the Living Dead fame taking the role. He seems to be the prevailing image of Tommy given that it’s this version that was used in the Friday the 13th game that came out a few years ago. Personally I preferred John Shepherd in Part V as I think his appearance gave a greater sense of that unhinged part of Tommy’s character. It’s something that play up here with the sheriff talking about Tommy’s previous run in with Jason and how he’s meant to be in a psychiatric clinic. He spends the entire movie talking about how dangerous Tommy is and how he’s the one probably committing the murders in order to convince everyone Jason is back. This is my ‘shades of grey’ mindset talking again but that would have been neat to go into more, even if you didn’t want to commit to Tommy being the new killer, you could imply he was and then reveal that Jason was back but you see right from the off that Jason is alive and everything takes place concurrently with Tommy being locked up.

There does seem to be something of a connection between Tommy and Jason though, at the climax Tommy has a plan to rid the world of Jason once and for all and manages to goad him into a final showdown, Jason even abandons killing one girl in order to go after Tommy. It’s pretty obvious at this point that you can’t kill Jason, you can shoot him as much as you want, even point blank with a shotgun but it’s not going to do anything. But incapacitate him? Now that’s the ticket. That’s why Tommy is going to anchor him and let him sink to the bottom of Crystal Lake.

Either that or he’s just taking his boulder for a walk...

Speaking of the Universal Monsters though, this seems to poke at something of a Dracula/Vampire vibe as well with Tommy suggesting he has to lure Jason back to his original resting place. It’s almost bringing things full circle to his origins of drowning in the lake as a kid, an odd sense of symmetry for a series that has already disregarded that it called one of its previous entries ‘The Final Chapter’ and would spend the next few with pseudo reboot subtitles like ‘A New Beginning’, ‘Jason Lives’ and ‘The New Blood’.

But the final image of the movie is one that has been recurring throughout, the eyes of Jason still moving from behind his mask, showing he still has life in him yet as he will no doubt one day rise from his watery grave to wreak havoc on another bunch of teenagers around Crystal Lake. But that’s a story for another day in about 8 months time...

[tenorcolt8-blog]

Why tech experts so often struggle to become leaders — and what they can do about it

There was a short essay published on the early internet — 1986, to be exact — called “Hacker Manifesto.” It’s a cringe-worthy screed that would be right at home on the “I’m 14 and this is deep” subreddit, but there’s a concept buried within it that has stuck with me over the years, even if my own teenage angst has faded.

Amidst its cyberpunk-inspired social commentary, the manifesto describes the objectivity of computers: They are impartial machines, free from bias, and carrying with them no particular agenda. “If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed up. Not because it doesn’t like me.”

Especially for socially awkward kids who gravitated toward computers at an early age, there’s something appealing about that type of objectivity. The machine doesn’t treat you differently based on your physical appearance or your social status. It doesn’t bring any prejudice or past experience to that table. It isn’t still upset because of something that happened yesterday. It’s a fresh chess board, a puzzle to be solved. Ordered. Predictable.

We spend hours alone evolving our problem-solving skills in that unbiased world where the right solution always exists if you press the right keys in the right order. We get very good at solving puzzles, and eventually join teams of other folks who have presumably mastered the same skills.

At some point, we’ve advanced to being put in charge of our fellow key-pressers. We’re spending less time working with the machine and more time working with the team. And this is where things start to unravel for us, at least from what I’ve observed in myself and others around me. As emergent leaders, we’re often seen as dismissive, contrary, and lacking empathy. We’re terrible at delegation. The technical solutions often seem so obvious to us that “it’s faster if I just do it myself.” We’re constantly putting out fires rather than spending our time building a fire-resistant team and implementing processes that serve as fire-suppression systems.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone, and you’re also not in checkmate. There’s a way to break through the leadership barrier, but it involves admitting to a fundamental truth: The practices you’ve used to become such a quick-witted technical problem-solver will very often fail you, and you need to introduce some entirely new, possibly very foreign skills into your repertoire in order to succeed.

Humans, unlike machines, do bring their individual biases, past experiences, and hopes for the future to the table. They have external complicating factors in their lives that might alter how they act, even on a day-to-day basis. Where the machine was ordered and predictable, people are constantly adapting and reacting to changing circumstances in their lives and in their work.

They also don’t all operate on the same instruction set: Each individual’s personality has been shaped by genes, upbringing, and life experiences. If you apply a rigid problem solving framework to management — one where you expect the same set of inputs to always produce the same results — you’re in for a very tough time.

When moving from technology practitioner to a leader, success is probably not a matter of tweaking a few of your old habits or adding a few new problem-solving tools to your belt. You need to deeply assess your own skills and personality and be willing to deconstruct everything you thought you knew about communication and problem-solving. It’s not just about learning “leadership”; you will almost certainly have to unlearn some deep-rooted habits and break through assumptions you have about how effectively you interact with people around you.

How well do you really communicate with other people? Most of us, in my experience, have learned frightfully bad habits when it comes to communication. We hold back where we should be candid, and we take a strong stance when we should be open-minded. Have you ever thought about communication as a skill you should develop, or do you think of it as an intrinsic personality trait? (Spoiler: It’s not.)

How empathetic are you, really? That word has been thrown around so much that it’s losing its meaning. Empathy is not just about being nice to people. Do you actually acknowledge other people’s perspectives, personal constraints, and long-term goals, and use that as a way to inform your behavior and decision-making? Or do you just broadly apply your own life experiences to your expectations for other people, then get confused when they act differently than you would?

How good are you at accepting criticism and feedback? Do you default to a defensive posture when people suggest that you have deficiencies, or do you accept constructive criticism as the gift that it is? When was the last time you changed your mind?

These are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself, and you need to be honest about the answers.

To bolster your leadership skillset, I strongly recommend seeking out books, podcasts, and articles about psychology, communication, relationship-building, and general self-help. Remember, you’re not just “adding” leadership skills: You need to develop a clear lens through which to view yourself, and the proper tools to motivate, inspire, and mentor others. Construction almost always starts with some amount of demolition.

Make sure to expose yourself to content that will help you question yourself at a more fundamental level. You want to break down assumptions you hold about yourself, your values and motivations, your communication style, and your decision-making practices. Some of my recommendations to these ends are below:

“How to Win Friends and Influence People” — Dale Carnegie

I feel like people often roll their eyes when I recommend this book, like it’s somehow just too old-school to be valuable. But I find myself referring back to it again and again, and it really helped to transform how I think about my communication practices.

“Predictably Irrational” — Dan Ariely

Another book I find myself referencing often, Predictably Irrational offers compelling insight into the decision-making patterns behind human behavior, highlighting how often we are wrong not only about the motivations of others, but even in predicting our own motivations behind decisions we make.

“Dare to Lead” — Brené Brown

This one was recently recommended to me by our director of projects (and digital PM extraordinaire), Abby Fretz. While, yes, it’s technically a “leadership” book, Brené’s approach to leadership through courage and vulnerability insists that emerging leaders inspect their own behavior and be honest about their own deficiencies. Brené and I also shared a similar perspective on the dangers of misconstruing skills (courage, communication) as inherent personality traits that you either have or don’t have.

Finally, in addition to reading as much content as possible, expose yourself to situations that ask you to draw upon your emerging leadership qualities. If there’s an opportunity to lead a new initiative or to have a conversation with someone that you might otherwise put off, just dive in. Approach it as a necessary learning experience — you need a lot of those at this point. Remember: Your comfort zone is a tomb; stay away from it as much as possible.

-30- Source: https://technical.ly/philly/2019/05/15/leadership-development-tips-tech-experts-dev-jim-keller/