In Search of True Justice: A Conversation on the Dark Knight Trilogy (Article for FilmFisher, Co-Written with Timothy Lawrence)

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight – still the unchallenged zenith of bold and brainy blockbuster filmmaking in the 21st century – turned 10 years old this summer. FilmFisher’s own Joel Bourgeois just published a retrospective on the film, and doubtless there are dozens if not hundreds of similar appreciations and analyses popping up all over the internet – and rightly so. However, this is also an ideal time to revisit and discuss The Dark Knight’s less popular and less accomplished older and younger siblings, Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Certainly, The Dark Knight is by far the best of the trilogy, but even so, it is all the more striking when framed between the bookends of its prequel and sequel. Taken together, in themes and in story beats, Begins and Rises form a rhyming pair to contrast with The Dark Knight’s singular line – the three form an A-B-A rhyme scheme, if you will. To change the metaphor, the first and third films are like major chords placed before and after the dissonant minor chord of the second film. The hopeful ending of the first film deepens the tragedy of the second, and the third film brings needed resolution and closure.

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An Ode to Po: Celebrating Goodness in the Kung Fu Panda Trilogy (Article for FilmFisher)

How’s this for a youth group or team meeting icebreaker: If you could bring one action hero to life, in the belief that their existence in the real world would make it a better place, who would you choose?

Actually, let’s make the question more challenging: If you could bring one action hero to life, solely on the basis of their character, not their fighting skills, who would you choose?

My answer is that — if someone in the room has already picked the Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire iteration of Spider-Man — I would choose Po the Panda from DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda trilogy.

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Ant-Man and the Wasp (Review for FilmFisher)

When the first Ant-Man was released three summers ago, it was a refreshing breeze that aired out an increasingly stuffy and stultifying superhero atmosphere. After the previous four MCU entries all ended with a large population barely escaping decimation from some magic stone or tech-turned-terror — and especially after the heady philosophy, jumbled plotting, and visual mayhem of Age of Ultron — it was a relief and a delight to watch a game cast and a novel superpower excel in the service of a simple yet emotionally resonant story. After original director Edgar Wright was replaced by Peyton Reed, apocalyptic predictions ensued, and Ant-Man dropped from being the most anticipated Marvel film to the least. Those lowered expectations, and its own modest aims, actually worked in the film’s favor. While in hindsight I would argue that Age of Ultron was the better Marvel film that summer, there is something praise-worthy about any film that recognizes what it is, accepts what it is not, and then proceeds with quiet confidence to be itself.  

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Inside A Scene: The Bourne Supremacy (Article for FilmFisher)

I’m going to cheat a little and write about two scenes. When Timothy asked if I could write an article for FilmFisher’s “Inside a Scene” series, I automatically thought of the Moscow apartment scene at the end of Paul Greengrass’ 2004 espionage-thriller sequel, The Bourne Supremacy. I’ve always been intrigued and moved by this scene, and it continues to be one of the reasons why I’d argue that Supremacy is much more than a serviceable genre exercise. The Bourne trilogy is typically remembered as the brainy, grounded alternative to James Bond, as an action-hero vehicle for Matt Damon, as the proving ground for Paul Greengrass’ later critical hits (United 93, Captain Phillips), or as the series that either reinvigorated Hollywood action films or ruined them forever, depending on who you ask. However, I don’t think there’s been as much discussion about how the trilogy — especially Supremacy, the middle film — is rooted in ex-assassin Jason Bourne’s very human struggle to change his ways and make restitution for past sins. This is what elevates The Bourne Supremacy and makes the quiet and understated apartment scene — not a car chase or fistfight — the high point of the franchise.

However, as I began to revisit the film in my mind, I realized that the scene between Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) and Irena Neski (Oksana Akinshina), though powerful in itself, is even more significant when viewed as the mirror image — in purpose, staging, visuals, and themes — of an earlier scene: the Berlin hotel room scene between Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) and Pamela Landy (Joan Allen). The two scenes are halves of a single, cohesive unit.

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Peace In Our Time: A Conversation on Marvel and Star Wars (Article for FilmFisher, Co-Written with Timothy Lawrence)

The premise of this conversation is that there are a number of intriguing similarities between the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU for short) and what I’ll call the Star Wars Revival. Hollywood is obsessed with creating cinematic universes right now, and the obsession began with the success of Marvel’s multi-film set-up of the 2012 blockbuster hit, The Avengers. However, so far the only other attempted cinematic universe that has been able to imitate Marvel’s financial and critical success has been the return of Star Wars to the big screen, beginning with 2015’s The Force Awakens.

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Avengers: Infinity War (Review for FilmFisher)

I’m going to hazard a generalization. Whenever a new Marvel movie hits theaters—or for that matter any film based on an Intellectual Property™ with a zealous fanbase—the critical responses congregate overwhelmingly in two opposing camps. The first group is the professional critics, the serious auteurs, and the intellectual viewers who decry Marvel as a prime suspect in the corporatization of filmmaking and the infantilization of audiences. The second group is the aforementioned zealous fans, a number of whom grew up reading the comics and are ecstatic that their beloved heroes are no longer only two-dimensional drawings on panels but also (real or CGI) flesh-and-blood giants on IMAX screens. I’m sure there are some fans who don’t like the homogenizing cost of Marvel’s entry into the cultural mainstream, but overall it seems fans are grateful that the rest of the world has finally caught up with them and now embraces what was once niche and only for nerds. Whereas the first group prophesies the death of cinema, the second longs with eschatological fervor for every new chapter and sees a bright future. The first dismisses the second as shallow. The second dismisses the first as snobbish.

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Brother Bear (Review for FilmFisher)

I’ll begin with the bold claim that Brother Bear is one of the finest animated films Disney has produced in the past quarter century. At least, it is one of their most underrated and unappreciated. 

Granted, I tend to favor a handful of Disney’s supposed flops over a number of their “canonical” hits. I tend to root for underdogs, and perhaps I’m too loyal to films that left a deep impression on me in my childhood. Even so, I will attempt to make a case for the film’s greatness, not for the sake of nostalgia or to be contrarian, but because I believe the film’s craftsmanship, and the surprising richness of its many thematic preoccupations, ought to be recognized and discussed.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER. 

Watching High Noon: A Case Study in Christian Film Criticism

“Pay attention.”

       It is a fascinating expression. Like “give attention,” it visualizes attention as something that passes from a subject (a person) to an object: another person, a lecture, a picture, a flower, a film. But “pay” is more interesting than “give” because it implies more. If I am told to pay attention, it means that attention is going to costs me something: time, patience, and mental or even emotional energy. If I am told to pay attention, it means that attention is owed. When someone speaks to me, I am obligated to pay attention in the same way that, when a fruit vendor gives me an apple, I am obligated to pay money. If I do not pay attention, I have robbed someone of what is due. 

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"The Grace That I Talk About on All of My Records": How Andy Mineo Raps the Gospel

       In a previous essay, I made the case that Christian art should be defined, quite literally, as art about Christ. [1] Truly Christ-ian art, though it comes in various ways, shapes, and forms, is always ultimately about the gospel of Jesus Christ, the message “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3): that Christ the Son of God, the sovereign Lord over all things, became a man, died for our sins, rose again, and is someday returning to judge the world and to gather up the church that He died to save. [2] 

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Lost Tails and Bruised Reeds: The Grace of Divine Discipline and the Joy of True Repentance

       Three weeks ago, I wrote about how the protagonist of the film Fantastic Mr. Fox is an accurate representation of the unrepentant. [1] However, for all that the essay said about what repentance is not—making excuses, hating the consequences of sin but not sin itself, making confession without changing, and even having some understanding of the seriousness of sin—I failed to explain what repentance actually is. In particular, the essay lacked a biblical explanation of repentance. Without a biblical understanding of repentance, one could get the impression that all that Mr. Fox needed to do was to stop stealing from the farmers and pay restitution, however costly—and deadly—that price may be. While true, biblical repentance would require such actions, such actions in and of themselves would not be true, biblical repentance. True repentance, while it must manifest itself in repentant actions, must begin in the heart—and if it does not begin in the heart, the repentance is not true. 

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The Fantastic Un-Repentance of Mr. Fox

       There is a moment one-third into Wes Anderson’s 2009 animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox—based on the children’s book by Roald Dahl, adapted for the screen by Noah Baumbach and the director—when the moral and mortal stakes of the story become starkly apparent. Mr. Fox has returned to his old life of crime, stealing from and inciting the wrath of three farmers. Those farmers retaliate with extreme violence, and Mr. Fox and his family are driven into hiding underground when their home is destroyed. Mrs. Fox takes Mr. Fox aside and lets him know just how much damage he has caused, and will cause if this continues.

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Of Love and Lightbulbs: VeggieTales and the Power/Folly of the Gospel

       I’ve come to realize that much of one of my favorite examples of Christian culture-making growing up, Big Idea’s long-running animated series VeggieTales, was not all that distinctly Christian. What I mean, taking the word very literally, is that VeggieTales has little to it that is uniquely Christ-ian. Is VeggieTales theistic? Certainly. Does it teach biblical morality? Yes—but morality without Christ creates moralists, not Christians. Though theistic, biblically moral, and embedded in the fabric of the evangelical, American, cultural Christianity of the past twenty years, not much of VeggieTales is centered around a theology of Christ the cosmos-creating, cosmos-sustaining, incarnate, crucified, resurrected, ascended, someday-soon-returning, and eternity-reigning Lord.

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A Prayer for Inauguration Day

Heavenly Father,

       We acknowledge and honor You as the one who “removes kings and sets up kings” (Daniel 2:21). [1] We worship and give all allegiance to You who are the Sovereign Lord of all creation. We believe that “[Your] kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and [Your] dominion endures from generation to generation” (Daniel 4:3). All earthly rulers have power only to the extent that You grant it to them. We affirm that “the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men” (Daniel 4:17). The Apostle Paul taught us that “there is no authority except God, and those that exist have been instituted by God”; therefore, it is a serious thing to “[resist] what God has appointed” (Romans 13:1–2). The Apostle Peter, too, taught us to “be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution” and to “honor the emperor” (1 Peter 2:13, 17). 

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The Stuff of Earth: Rich Mullins’ “If I Stand” and a Brief Theology of Creation

       In Rich Mullins’ 1988 song, “If I Stand” (cowritten with Steven Robert Cudworth), there is a line that captures an enduring tension in the heart of any Christian living in a material world: “The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance / I owe only to the Giver of all good things.” [1]    

       There is a paradox here, because “the stuff of earth” and “all good things” are equivalent. “The stuff of earth” that Mullins describes in the song are the rising sun, the shining moon, the warmth of a fire, the shelter of a room, the virtue of loyalty, music, the wind on the prairie, the ocean tide, the love between friends, and the gentleness of a mother toward her newborn. Clearly, the term “stuff of earth” does not represent bad things, because the stuff of earth Mullins has in mind are “all good things,” gracious gifts from God “the Giver.” And yet, these good things from God are in competition with Him for our loyalty. The implication is that “all good things,” while good in and of themselves—for they were made by God who declared them all “very good” (Genesis 1:31)—can nevertheless be bad for us when they entice us to treason. [2] 

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