The Olympics and man's search for meaning

These rings represent the infinite nature of being, or something.

Everyone knows that the Olympics derive their name from Mt. Olympus, the home of the gods in Greco-Roman mythology. The symbolism has always been clear: The Olympians we see at the games are the gods among us, pushing the human body far beyond what is possible for us mere mortals. This, indeed, they do. (Especially if they're American.) But our modern-day Olympians are, for all their incredible feats, only human, which makes their accomplishments all the more impressive. (Though not as impressive as Captain America.) And the contest in which they vie against their fellow deities is not some eternal afterlife, an athletes' Valhalla. It is, rather, an acute, hyper-real, adrenaline-and-sweat-soaked two weeks or so, after which every participant returns to reality.

Except Usain Bolt. He's clearly a god.

And so it goes for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, now officially over after last night's closing ceremonies. After hosting a two-week convergence of the world's greatest athletes (which it probably shouldn't have done in the first place), Rio will soon empty of its Olympic athletes, coaches, media, and spectators. We in the rest of the world who could only watch these incredible physical specimens vie for the immortality of Olympic medals turn to other things. Yet the athletes will leave behind more than Olympic infrastructure that may or may not ever again be used after the Games.

This abandoned venue from the 1984 Sarajevo winter Olympics was later used as an execution site during a war.

As these demigods come down from Mt. Olympus after the two-week adrenaline rush of the Olympics and return to their lives, many will start training and more competing, after (let us hope) some rest, ready to go the distance for Tokyo 2020 (and the potential weirdness it will entail). For others, Rio was their last Olympics. But every Olympian, whether first-time competitor or veteran, whether returning home festooned with medals or with naught but empty hands and unmet expectations, will be at risk for post-Olympic depression:

This emotional drop, in its most acute form, might be called post-Olympic depression—or, to borrow a phrase from the sports psychologist Scott Goldman, the director of the Performance Psychology Center at the University of Michigan, an under-recovery. “Think about the rollercoaster ride prior to the Olympics, and just how fast and hectic that mad dash is,” Goldman says. “This ninety-mile-per-hour or hundred-mile-per-hour ride comes to a screeching halt the second the Olympics are over. … [The athletes] are just exhausted; it was such an onslaught to their system. And when it’s all said and done, they’re just physiologically depleted, as well as psychologically.”

This is completely understandable. Imagine spending years, or, in many cases, an entire lifetime preparing for a single two-week span, or, in many cases, a single moment or collection of moments. How would you feel after that moment had passed? As an amateur athlete myself, I can relate to this to some extent. Though high school and college cross country aren't quite the Olympics, after I completed my last high school and college cross country races, after years of focus, training, and sacrifice led up to a single event that was now irretrievably in the past, I think I felt something like that. That elect fraternity of Moon-visiting astronauts have reported a similar feeling upon returning to Earth. And surely the Hobbits of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy felt something like it when they returned to the Shire after their long journey:


The article quoted above - definitely worth a full read - goes into more detail about Olympians themselves. Even those who have reasonable expectations of going to another Olympics find it difficult to readjust to "normal" life. And those whose for whom the passage of time and the weight of toil have made returning to the Olympics as unrealistic as going in the first place ever was for me (alas) find it difficult to live normal lives at all. One Olympian, multiple gold-medalist swimmer Mark Spitz (the Phelps before Phelps), even attempted to return to the Olympics in his early 40s. (He was unsuccessful.) These paragons of discipline and fortitude in the sport they have mastered have so sequestered their lives that they have to learn how to apply their Olympic hyper-virtues to life's quotidian aspects.

Although Olympians are quite different from you and me (unless someone reading this is an Olympian; in which case, congratulations, and thanks for reading! Any advice how I can transform myself from a slightly above-average post-collegiate distance runner into an Olympic-qualifying distance runner? Or can you at least get me tickets for Tokyo 2020?), there is something universal about this experience. We all go through periods of intense, purpose-driven existence. And we all also go through periods of confusing, meaning-absent existence, wondering what to do next, or whether to do anything at all. The Olympics is an intensifier of this, compressing years of purpose into moments of execution, and stretching moments of goal-achievement over years of preparation. The intensity of the experience echoes a universal truth expressed in one of my favorite poems: Tennyson's "Ulysses":

"Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!”

There is something profoundly human, moreover, in the simple Olympian desire to win. Sure, competition is thrilling, becoming the very best - like no one ever was - is rewarding, and winning is nice. For many Olympians (such as, say, Ryan Lochte, who clearly evolved to minimize his brain's weight for maximum swimming speed), just winning is probably enough. But all glory is fleeting. What I think these Olympians truly seek, whether unconsciously or consciously, is reassurance that their efforts and achievements will have been neither wasted nor forgotten. They fight, as we all do, against the cold finality of unbeing. They compete, as we all do, against the oblivion of time's passage that threatens to erase from memory even the greatest among us. They strive, as we all do, to leave some indelible mark on history, so that they can say to ages to come "yes, I was there."

As godlike as Olympians are, nothing could be more human than that.      

"Suicide Squad" is another DC Comics misfire

A.k.a, Hot Topic: The Movie

 Suicide Squad is a movie that belongs in the future.

It's not that we humble residents of 2016 were unprepared for it. Rather, Warner Bros and DC Comics, so eager -- as they were in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice last March -- to catch up to Marvel's successful Cinematic Universe, have given us a movie that required at least two movies to set up, instead of the zero it got.

In some alternative reality*, that's what we would have gotten. To differentiate itself from Marvel from the get-go, DC would have given us a villain-centric movie showing how the Joker (played in Suicide Squad by notorious method actor Jared Leto as a pimp doing a bad impression of Heath Ledger's Joker) turned straitlaced psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel into Harley Quinn (a character whom the talented Margot Robbie unfortunately wastes in her first-ever big screen portrayal by playing her as the crazed prostitute/stripper whom Pimp Joker keeps for himself), his psychotic sidekick, the sadistic Bonnie to his masochistic Clyde.

I miss the animated version.

Then, a separate movie would have shown the origin of Will Smith as hit-man-for-hire Floyd Lawton/Deadshot, which Smith--still oozing charisma after decades in entertainment--would have sold by credibly balancing Lawton's heartless killer with the pathos of caring for a young daughter. Use those two movies casually to introduce a couple of other side characters who become important later--as Marvel has done in its movies--and then Suicide Squad might have been something to look forward to, with a reasonable expectation of narrative payoff.

This is not what we got with Suicide Squad. Directed and written by David Ayer, who cut his teeth on gritty fare (writer of Training Day, director of End of Watch, Street Kings, and Fury), Suicide Squad is almost hamstrung from the start by an excess of exposition, either via flashbacks or straight-up monologues. Most of the monologues come from Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, playing Waller as a sociopath for some reason), who heads up a mysterious agency that deals with the "metahuman" threats that have escalated since the appearance of Superman in Man of Steel. Waller unsympathetically guides viewers through introductions to our principal cast - introductions that, again, would not have been necessary with some prior setup.

But that problem is endemic of WB's entire desperate, catch-up approach to the DC cinematic universe - or , to be more charitable, baked-in. If one accepts this flaw as a given, might Suicide Squad be a good movie after all?

Sadly, no. There is some good in the movie, though most of it comes in the form of Will Smith as Deadshot. Smith remains one of the best movie stars still working, and one of the few worthy of the term. Though Deadshot is part of the large cast of powerful bad-guys (also including LOST alumnus** Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as the human-crocodile hybrid Killer Croc, among others) assembled/coerced by Amanda Waller (and good guy soldier Rick Flagg, played by Joel Kinnaman) to take on even worse threats while keeping the government's hands clean, the script smartly establishes him early as its de facto leader and spokesperson.*** Jai Courtney, whose career up to this point has mostly consisted of hiding his native Australian accent to play faux-American action heroes (e.g., A Good To Day Die Hard), clearly has fun - and is enjoyable - playing Captain Boomerang, an Australian whose superpowers mostly seem to involve being a jerk, but is otherwise completely useless. Jay Hernandez plays El Diablo, a pyrokinetic-turned-pacificist who alone of the characters in the movie has something of an arc. Oh, there's also less awkward, forced DC-world-building than there was in Batman v. Superman****. And that's about all the good I can say about Suicide Squad.

As Deadshot, Will Smith continues his pretty consistent record of being one of the better parts of whatever he's in.

Were I a kind critic, I would simply stop there and tell you not to see the movie. But I write these reviews as much to get these thoughts out of my own head as I do to get them into the heads of others. Thus, I am duty-bound to reaffirm my disappointment with Suicide Squad's treatments of Harley Quinn, the Joker (he doesn't really belong in the movie, and I think I could have done a better job with the role, as I soon hope to show the world), Amanda Waller, and just about everyone other than the three performances I singled out above. I am duty-bound to reiterate Suicide Squad's excess of exposition, and to emphasize its lack of plot consistency or logic (the antagonists faced by the Squad in the movie's climax are massively powerful, but display physical weaknesses or tactical failures completely inconsistent with their supposed omnipotence), and to castigate its bizarrely nihilistic tone and faux-gritty aesthetic.

Above all, I am duty-bound to stress Suicide Squad's incredible lack of novelty. For something sold for months in advance as new, fresh, and weird, it is, with some exceptions, none of those things. An action-scene confined to an elevator was better in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. A confrontation by sarcastic protagonists with a scary god set against a lightshow was better in Ghostbusters (the first one). A slow-motion climax involving a shot fired at a key moment and a separation of a powerful being from what powers it was better in Guardians of the Galaxy (which Suicide Squad, in so many ways -- especially a use of rock music mood-sitting so insistent and forced as to be ineffective, and therefore representative of the movie's overall failure to show instead of tell and to get audience buy-in -- desperately wants to be). And an all-powerful villain shooting a light into the sky, seeking world domination/destruction, while employing an army of faceless baddies*****, has been done to death, but done better in many places. I did detect some novelty in Suicide Squad******, but probably noticed it more because of its rarity. 

But back to the future. Will DC get its act together? Wonder Woman does look promising. It's possible that Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad are inevitable early missteps, the product of a universe still trying to figure itself. out. Or it's possible that the DC Cinematic Universe gets smothered in a contrived, dark, violent, largely humorless, Zack Snyder-ized aesthetic. The future will answer that question. Meanwhile, we here in the present are stuck with Suicide Squad.

All things considered, I would have rather had a full-length movie about the Suicide Squad from Monty Python's Life of Brian.

*I'm also a fan of the approach critic Sonny Bunch outlines of making Amanda Waller the movie's "Slugworth," lurking mysteriously in the background of the capture of each member of the Suicide Squad, only to reveal herself as the orchestrator of it all when she outlines the group's purpose.
**He also had a role in Thor: The Dark World as Algrim the Strong/Kurse, making him one of the most prominent actors with roles in both a DC movie and a Marvel one.
*** Smith's natural talent would have made that happen anyway even if the script hadn't.
****But Batman, Bruce Wayne, and the Flash do all show up.
*****Though the slight body horror was a nice touch, but that may just be because I find body horror so unsettling.
******SPOILERS: El Diablo becomes...something rather unexpected, and Harley and the Joker become something...normal.

'Star Trek Beyond' enjoyably returns to the roots of 'Star Trek'

50 years ago this September, a little sci-fi show called Star Trek premiered on NBC. Though cancelled after three seasons, what is now known as Star Trek: The Original Series ended up launching an entire media franchise of multiple TV shows and movies that has put an indelible stamp on pop culture*.

Star Trek has been many things in those years. But it has been somewhat consistent in its adherence to two basic themes: the virtues of exploration and advancing human knowledge (the original series began each episode by stating the mission of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise, on which most of the show's action took place: "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before"), and the perfectibility of human nature, with the United Federation of Planets serving as a sort of outer space United Nations, an umbrella organization presiding over a future utopia spearheaded by a mankind whose nature has become largely peaceful.

Star Trek Beyond, the third in a "rebooted," alternative universe Star Trek series (which solved in one fell swoop the problems of the creative stagnation and increasing unpopularity of the original Star Trek timeline** and the inconvenient aging of that original timeline's cast) places itself firmly into this pre-established Star Trek mold. And it does so, intriguingly, by challenging both of the principles that have long guided the franchise.

Beyond opens with a Captain's Log by James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), the commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise, as it continues to explore new worlds and civilizations. Revisiting - or, some might say, reusing - a trope from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (by far the best Star Trek film, and one of the best sci-fi films ever), Beyond finds Kirk suffering a sort of exploratory ennui (on his birthday, no less!): He wonders if his mission to explore the unknown can ever truly be complete, or whether he will even have charted a measurable portion of the great unknown upon the five-year mission's completion.

Fortunately, the ship and crew are due for a rest at Yorktown, a space station that serves in the film as utopian microcosm of the diverse, technologically advanced, and peaceful future Star Trek has always imagined for mankind. But, in the grand tradition of Star Trek, a distress signal makes its way to the Enterprise from a distant planet, and off the crew goes to answer it. And - again, in the grand tradition of Star Trek - surprises greet them upon their arrival. The Enterprise is destroyed, and the crew - this time, more in the tradition of The Empire Strikes Back or X2: X-Men United - is separated, and at the mercy of a foe whose power is vast and whose motives are a mystery.

It's a great setup, and Beyond makes the most of it. We see some fun pairings as the scattered crew attempts to reunite and defeat its tormentor: Kirk winds up with Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin, who tragically died at 27 just weeks before the movie's release); the rational-to-a-fault Spock (Zachary Quinto) winds up with the folksy, down-to-earth medical officer Bones (the underrated and underappreciated Karl Urban - you may also know him as Eomer in The Lord of the Rings - who has by far the most appropriate recreation of an original series character).

Throughout the movie, new-to-series director Justin Lin (of Fast and Furious fame, and replacing J.J. Abrams, who remains on board as executive producer***), stages the action with an impressively fluid, dynamic camera. Though at times it becomes a bit difficult to follow what's on screen, he mostly takes advantage of his mobile cinematography, exploring scenes from unexpected angles, and creating both figuratively and literally off-the-wall stunts. Only twice, in my view, does he indulge in film-making tics that clearly belong more in a Fast and Furious film than a Star Trek one, though he makes one of them - the deliberately anachronistic but delightfully fun presence of a motorcycle - worth its while****. Beyond also contains simultaneously one of the best uses of the Beastie Boys in movies, and one of the more clever versions of the "destroy the hive mind" trope (see the climaxes of The Avengers and The Phantom Menace). Lin largely disproved my fears that he would simply replicate the dumb action movie aesthetic in space. 

I don't wish to say too much about the villain specifically, so I'll focus on him philosophically (though even in this I shall remain brief). Krall (Idris Elba, in heavy makeup), as portrayed in the screenplay co-written by Simon Pegg (who also plays Scotty), represents an antithesis to everything Star Trek believes about the universe and about human nature. He thinks humanity has become soft, that war is inevitable, and that the human race's softness spells eventual doom. You might say he wants to Make Starfleet Great Again. 

I won't say whether I agree with him on this point politically, nor will I spell out his ultimate fate. But it is interesting to note that the best Star Trek media - *cough* Wrath of Khan *cough* - involves direct challenges or threats to the mores which Star Trek exists to promote. This is, in part, because all good storytelling involves drama - it would be pretty boring to watch a Star Trek movie in which only perfect, nonviolent, utopian things happen - but also, I think, because even utopias need to be maintained and defended, so long as humans are running them, and so long as evil exists.

Whether that's a flaw in this movie, or in Star Trek as a whole, I'll leave it to others to decide. For now, I shall simply decide that I enjoyed Star Trek Beyond, which was better than I expected it to be. It may not be as fun or epic as 2009's Star Trek, but it is certainly superior to Star Trek Into Darkness, the unearned, pseudo-semi-remake of The Wrath of Khan that will always be the exception to my otherwise passionate defenses of J.J. Abrams.

At any rate, Star Trek Beyond shows that there's still some fuel left in the warp nacelles of this 50-year-old franchise yet, despite the fact that much of this movie - the single baddy bent on vengeance, the destruction of the Enterprise, etc. - seems familiar, and despite the unfortunate recent deaths of some of its stars (Leonard Nimoy, who passed away in 2015, and the aforementioned Yelchin*****). Let's hope Star Trek lives long and continues to prosper.

*And created some of the best parodies. See, e.g., the Futurama episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before," and the great movie Galaxy Quest.
**Though it had the noted demerit of preventing the original Star Trek timeline from progressing any more into the future, which a forthcoming new series may do.
***I have to think Abrams either came up with the scene in which the crew "push starts" an old starship, which happened to an old car in an episode of LOST.
****The other, a mid-air grab of one character by another, seems only slightly more realistic than it did in whatever Fast and Furious movie in which it also happened (I know it happened in one; I just don't know the franchise well enough to know which one).
*****Both of these actors get tributes in a credits sequence I foolishly skipped. If you see the movie, stick around for it.