Knights of the Old Republic #16–18: Nights of Anger
Author: John Jackson Miller
Artist: Brian Ching (issue 16), Harvey Tolibao (issues 17 and 18)
Medium: Comic
Publication Date: May – July 2007
Timeline Placement: 3,963 BBY
Series: Knights of the Old Republic
Sadly, we’ve reached the end of Knights of the Old Republic‘s high school-themed titles (Commencement, Homecoming, Reunion, Days of Fear,
etc.). Instead, we spend a few minutes with Zayne as he helps Carth
Onasi and Admiral Karath escape from the Republic flagship Courageous while it is overrun by the Mandalorians. Then we spend the other two and a half issues watching Jarael play dress up.
Camper is now apparently dying of craziness
or something so Jarael takes him back to their species’ homeworld of
Arkania to find a treatment. Arkania is a racially segregated hellhole
run by amoral eugenicists who have genetically engineered offshoot
breeds of their own species to perform the undesirable functions of
their society. An offshoot herself, which finally explains why she’s a
hot elf instead of a yellow weirdo with claws, Jarael is soon found out
by the Arkanian authorities and brought before Lord Arkoh Adasca, Wall
Street CEO and King of Science.
Fortunately, Adasca has the hots for her,
just like every other male character in this series, and he agrees to
cure Camper’s cancer. Although Camper explained repeatedly to her that
he is on the run from Adasca’s company, Adascorp, and would rather die
than be found by them, Jarael turns him over to his sworn enemies
without a second thought because Adasca seems like a pretty keen guy.
Five minutes later, Adasca explains that Camper has been afflicted with a
disease called “Balinquar’s Virus,” but his miracle medical staff have
worked their magic and Camper is now completely cured. Jarael is like
“Okay cool” and stands around posing in flimsy low-cut dresses for
several weeks.
There has been an awakening . . . [in my pants.]
Since Jarael is an idiot and WebMD doesn’t exist in Star Wars apparently,
she doesn’t realize that Adasca is clearly evil and Balinquar’s Virus
is a completely made-up disease. Really there was just mold or something
growing in their ship’s air vents and Camper got sick from breathing
that shit. Sure, why not.
The truth is that Camper, or should I say
DR. GORMAN VANDRAYK, used to be one of the top scientists at Adascorp,
specializing in the study of space slugs. You will of course remember a
space slug almost eating the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back and another one being mutated by Naga Sadow to become the feared Sith wyrm. Oh, you don’t remember one of those?
Camper, now completely sane again, has been
forced back into Adasca’s service by his power over Jarael, who is too
stupid to know she is being held hostage. Camper must continue the work
he abandoned when he went into hiding many years ago, which
unfortunately involves revealing that the true science fiction-y name of
the space slug is the exogorth. Sure, why not.
Adasca invites Jarael to a romantic
candlelit dinner for two, then immediately starts coming on to her with
dirty talk about genetic purity and racial cleansing. “This is the worst
dinner I’ve ever had,” Jarael complains. Adasca assures her that he
won’t let their future children bear her Mudblood shame. Arkoh Adasca, I
present you with the Completely-and-Totally-Understands-Women Award.
You’ve earned it, my friend, you’ve earned it.
He pulls open the curtain and reveals that
his ship is parked right outside a giant nest of space slugs—sorry,
“exogorths”—and that each of them has a hyperdrive duct taped to its
head. He plans to weaponize the monsters and sell them to the highest
bidder among the galactic power players, who can then use them to crush
their enemies by sending them through hyperspace to eat everything in a
given star system.
Sure, why not.
And it’s on this exciting high note that we
end the comic. There was something in there about Mandalorian stowaway
Rohlan Dyre getting chummy with Adasca and revealing himself to be a
huge science geek all of a sudden, but we’ll get deeper into that later.
Why are all the pages in this comic book stuck together?
Meditations
This story marks the beginning of the, or at least a, low point of Knights of the Old Republic.
It’s a fun, light-hearted series with likable characters, but there
really isn’t much depth to it. Certainly not enough to warrant a
six-issue diversion into some B-plot about a boring mad scientist trying
to blackmail the galaxy with giant space monsters, especially when it’s
soon followed by a four-issue B-plot about zombies and an editorially
mandated title crossover. Don’t call your spinoff comic Knights of the Old Republic and then go off on a bunch of tangents unrelated to the back story of Knights of the Old Republic.
This arc isn’t exactly bad, per se,
it just feels gratuitous because you know there are much more
interesting things happening to much more interesting characters just
off the edge of the page. Great, Jarael’s been kidnapped and held
hostage again, now can we get back to the massive galactic war?
The art in this run left little impression
on me. I still don’t care for Brian Ching’s style, but I appreciate that
he at least has one. Harvey Tolibao, who we last saw penciling Reunion,
doesn’t do his distractingly weird disembodied hand thing this time,
but I really, really wish that they’d just paid Dustin Weaver enough to
do the whole series. If he missed as many deadlines as Doug Wheatley, the series might still be running today.
Publication Date: April 2008 on StarWars.com (republished on Unbound Worlds)
Timeline Placement: 3,963 BBY
This first-person story, a rarity for Star Wars fiction, is
an excerpt from the memoirs of Marn Hierogryph, narrated by the Gryph
himself. Gryph and Zayne run a con on two art collectors on the planet
Ralltiir: a gullible Muun and his “father,” a morbidly obese Rodian in a
hoverchair.
I love these guys. Someone should have given them their own series.
There’s some weird moral obfuscation where Zayne objects to this
swindle (the alleged “art” they are trying to pawn off is just junk they
stole from Camper’s workshop) but Gryph convinces him to come around
because the fact that their marks are buying what they think is stolen
art makes it okay to rob them. Whatever helps you sleep at night, I
guess.
This story is completely inconsequential fluff but it’s funny. 3/5 Death Stars.
Knights of the Old Republic #13–15: Days of Fear
Author: John Jackson Miller
Artist: Dustin Weaver (issues 13 and 15), Brian Ching (issue 14)
Medium: Comic
Publication Date: January – April 2007
Timeline Placement: 3,963 BBY
Series: Knights of the Old Republic
We meet up with our less-than-intrepid heroes on the planet Ralltiir,
where we left them at the end of the preceding short story. Zayne spars
with Jarael outside the The Last Resort to test the vambraces
she’s given him. Gauntlets laced with phrikite, a lightsaber-resistant
ore, the vambraces prove to be fully functional when Jarael steals
Zayne’s lightsaber and attempts to cut off his hands while he screams
for her to stop. No means no, kids.
[Continuity Note: Phrik, the alloy produced from phrikite, dates back to the mid-‘90s EU, originating in the videogame Star Wars: Dark Forces,
where it was used to construct the robotic dark troopers. One of
several lightsaber-proof substances in the EU, phrik eventually fell
largely out of use among Star Wars authors in favor of
cortosis. Of course, cortosis ore was introduced as a very brittle
material that caused lightsaber blades to temporarily short out instead
of being outright energy-resistant armor. As is the nature of the EU, in
most of its appearances, including the KotOR games, cortosis was written to function more like the previously created and underused phrik.]
Flush with cash from Gryph’s bank account on Telerath, Jarael and Camper prepare to take the The Last Resort
and go back into hiding from their mysterious pasts. Zayne is forlorn
about Jarael leaving with no apparent reluctance. She tries to make up
for her indifference by saying she’s glad she didn’t kill him when she
had the chance. For some reason that doesn’t do the trick though.
“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
– some stupid guy
The The Last Resort makes orbit, where they find the
Republic fleet massing in preparation to meet the Mandalorian invasion.
Jarael says she hopes Zayne and Gryph will be able to sneak past without
getting caught. Camper tells her to mind her own business. Meanwhile,
in the ship’s hold, a cargo container pops open and out steps assassin
droid HK-24.
[Continuity Note: HK-24 is, of course, meant to be a precursor to HK-47, a companion character in both KotOR
games. Although the games established that HK-47 was personally
constructed by the Sith Lord Darth Revan, later sources introduced a
whole line of HK-series assassin droids mass produced by Czerka
Corporation. The first was HK-01, a prototype model who was retconned to
be the instigator of the Great Droid Revolution mentioned by Arca Jeth
in Tales of the Jedi. So we’re left with a Darth
Vader-building-C-3PO situation where apparently instead of designing
some kind of unique robot from his own imagination, Revan just opted to
buff the specs of some manufacturer’s product line. Isn’t continuity
great?]
HK-24 shoots poor Elbee and overwhelms Camper and Jarael, but they
are saved when Rohlan Dyre steps out of a different cargo container and
shoots HK- in the head. I guess he’s just been hiding in this box since
the end of Flashpoint, presumably surviving on space cockroaches and his own urine.
Meanwhile, Gryph secures a new ship by hiring the galaxy’s worst
starship thief, a Trandoshan named Slyssk, who is also the most twee Star Wars character since that dog dressed as an AT-AT.
So kawaii!
Slyssk decides to hold out for more money than Gryph had hired him
for so Zayne uses the Force to endanger his life by collapsing a giant
pylon on him. Gryph pretends to save him by pushing him out of the way,
causing Slyssk to name Gryph his “grakhowsk” and swear a life debt to
him. Our heroes!
The original crew of the Little Bivoli, the stolen ship,
shows up looking for their craft. Zayne, Gryph, and Slyssk escape under a
hail of blasterfire, realizing once they are aboard the Little Bivoli
that it is a military provisioning ship. They make it to orbit and run
smack into the Republic fleet, where they are hailed by newly promoted
Admiral Saul Karath’s warship Courageous and ordered to fall into formation. Flying as inconspicuously as possible, the Little Bivoli tags along with the fleet as it makes the hyperspace jump to the planet Serroco.
Gryph puts a chef hat on Slyssk and they quickly gain a reputation
among the Republic soldiers for having the best food in camp. Zayne
disguises himself by wearing goggles and goes to work as a dishwasher,
in which capacity he makes the acquaintance of the fleet’s most talented
pilot and the first recruitable party member in KotOR, Lieutenant Carth Onasi:
Carth strikes up a conversation with Zayne about Serroco’s native
intelligent species, the Stereb, when they see one picking through the
trash for leftovers. Carth is moved by Zayne’s kindness in offering the
alien a free meal and tells him about the practical jokes he used to
play on the dimwitted aliens back when he was stationed on the planet’s
orbital watchstation. Using the Republic’s communications network, he
would broadcast tornado warnings and send the Stereb scurrying for
shelter below ground. He used to think it was great fun, until he went
down to the planet and met its people in person.
Zayne wonders if the Republic is endangering the Stereb by placing
their military encampments right next to the natives’ stone cities, but
Carth explains that Republic command ordered them here against Saul
Karath’s better judgment. Zayne wanders off by himself and unknowingly
falls into a trance, in which the Force grants him a vision of the
future: the Mandalorians will destroy Serroco in one day. “I see what
they’re doing,” he hears Mandalore say. “I see a defense without honor. Let them see what such a defense deserves. Let them burn.”
He runs to tell Gryph to pack up and take off immediately, then stows
away on Carth Onasi’s ship to warn Admiral Karath aboard the Courageous.
Carth catches him but Zayne reveals that he is a Jedi, leading Carth to
trust his clams of precognition and agree to take him to the admiral.
Meanwhile, Gryph and Slyssk talk about how they should probably get the
frak out of there, then nonchalantly continue serving breakfast because I
guess they’re stupid or something.
Carth takes Zayne before Admiral Karath, who immediately recognizes
him as the Jedi killer of Taris and, he believes, a Mandalorian spy. As
Zayne is put in handcuffs, he tries to explain that the admiral has to
move the Republic forces away from the Stereb cities to avoid insulting
the Mandalorians’ sense of honor. He suggests they call his good friend
Squint for a character reference, but the fact that he doesn’t even know
his friend’s real name puts the kibosh on that.
Just as the Republic expected, the Mandalorian fleet suddenly arrives
in the system, but for some reason they don’t advance and hold position
outside their enemies’ weapons range. Zayne continues to plead with
Admiral Karath, who ignores him, and the Mandalorians fire a spread of
nuclear missiles. To the surprise of everyone but Zayne, however, the
missiles avoid the fleet entirely and head for the planet.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have served seconds . . .” Gryph muses, looking
up from his pile of gold-pressed latinum, and then the entire planet is
consumed in mushroom clouds. Across the galaxy, various characters sense
Serroco’s death through the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly
cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Oh hi Malak and Revan.
“The people! The people!” screams Zayne. Morvis, Saul
Karath’s second in command, reports that Serroco’s human settlements
have sustained heavy damage, while the Stereb cities have been
completely wiped away. Only eight Republic ships managed to escape the
planet’s surface. Zayne, still reeling from the mass deaths, asks if the
Little Bivoli was among the survivors. Carth calls up its burning hull on the monitor and is like NOPE.
Admiral Karath vows that he will personally hand Zayne over to the
Jedi Masters from Taris, then has him locked in the brig. That night,
Carth Onasi stops by and tells Zayne he had decided to prank the Stereb
for old times’ sake and called in tornado warnings to seventeen of their
cities. The Republic has yet to hear from any survivors, but given the
depth of the planet’s catacombs, Carth believes that some Stereb have a
good chance of making it.
He wasn’t sure if he should trust Zayne’s vision, but says he hopes
someone would play the same joke on his family if the situation arose.
(This is a reference to how Carth will eventually lose his wife and son
when Saul Karath bombs their homeworld during the next war.) “Hang in
there, Zayne,” says Carth, and closes the door.
Meditations
So this story is really good but before we get into that let’s talk
about the massive, gaping continuity error! The Mandalorians’
destruction of Serroco originated in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
“I heard about Dxun. Everyone has. I heard about Serroco, and I sure as
hell know about Malachor V. What makes you think you’ve got the right
to interrogate me on anything? You’ve got plenty of lives to answer
for—all you Jedi do,” party member Atton Rand Paul tells the player
character. The implication here is clear: the Jedi were somehow
responsible for Serroco’s destruction.
Except the event as depicted in the comic has nothing to do with the
Jedi whatsoever. The Mandalorians were provoked not by the Jedi, but by
the Republic command’s decision to use the Stereb cities as shields.
KotOR II also establishes that the player character was present on Serroco during its destruction. Days of Fear
just barely covers its ass regarding this, giving Carth a brief line
about rogue Jedi rumored to be investigating the front. Galactic
Republic Defense Ministry Daily Brief #KD0092, the in-universe news
supplement included with Knights of the Old Republic issue #24,
also makes reference to a lone Jedi escaping the planet’s destruction.
So they remembered that your character from the game was supposed to be
there, but not that you were supposed to have somehow played a role in
the bombing. Whoops!
Minor continuity hiccups aside, though, this is a pretty good little installment in the series. Unlike in Flashpoint,
half the cast doesn’t get much to do, since Jarael, Camper, and Rohlan
are missing from much of the story. I would still rank it above that
earlier arc, however. This series’ original characters are great but
I’ve always regretted how underutilized the characters from the actual KotOR
games were, so having Carth show up here and actually be a pretty cool
guy instead of the paranoid whiner most people remember from the game
was a nice little surprise. The entire sequence from Zayne’s vision of
the future to the moment that vision comes true is the most intense in
the series so far.
Although we don’t know Serroco and its people that well, we spend
just enough time there to appreciate the shock and pain its destruction
causes in our characters, Jedi and Republic alike. One of the nice
things about having a cast this large is how you can use them to jump
across the galaxy just for a moment and get a snapshot of what’s
happening in the part of the story you’re not seeing at the moment. Revan and Malak
“The Revanchist and Alek” only show up for a single panel but it’s one
of the highlights of the issue. It’s cool seeing how everything fits
together, how Zayne slots into the parts of this war we’ve only heard
about, and the parts we’ve yet to see.
Artist: Brian Ching (issue 11), Harvey Tolibao (issue 12)
Medium: Comic
Publication Date: December 2006 – January 2007
Timeline Placement: 3,963 BBY
Series: Knights of the Old Republic
The gang arrives on Telerath, the Inner Rim’s most luxurious banking
planet-cum-pleasure resort, to scam 100,000 credits out of Gryph’s
frozen bank account. Posing as Baron Hyro Margryph and Chantique, Camper
and Jarael meet with a banker named Arvan to spin their cockamamie yarn
about the bank confusing the baron’s name with that of wanted criminal
Marn Hierogryph.
Their meeting is interrupted when a pair of Ithorian bounty hunters
leap out of the bushes and abscond with the banker. Hearing the
commotion over Jarael’s hidden earpiece, Zayne and Gryph run out of the The Last Resort
to see what’s going on. Camper randomly goes catatonic so Zayne is left
to pursue the kidnappers by himself. He ends up coming face to face
with them and realizes that the banker being abducted is, in fact, his
father. “Hi, Dad. Umm . . . how’s it going?” he asks.
Then somehow by the next page the Ithorians have made it back to their
ship with Arvan while Zayne has lost them completely. Did they forget to
write a transitional scene here?
The Ithorians, idiot brothers Del and Dob Moomo, have Raana Tey on
speakerphone and she’s bitching them out for kidnapping Zayne’s father
when all she hired them to do was report on his activities. Now that her
trap for Zayne on Telerath has been prematurely sprung, she tells the
Moomos she will rendezvous with them in a few days and eliminate Arvan
herself.
The brothers start arguing and throwing things at one another,
prompting one of them (it does not matter which) to go to a bar. Gryph
tracks him down there and scams him into thinking Zayne will turn
himself over to him if he releases his father. Zayne follows this Moomo
back to his ship, the Moomo Williwaw, where the Moomo brothers start punching each other again.
While they’re distracted, Zayne sneaks in and frees his father, who
tells him that he and Zayne’s mother never believed that Zayne actually
killed his classmates. He then adds that if Zayne did do it, he must have had a good reason. Goddammit, Zayne’s dad.
Arvan completes Camper’s transaction, which means that Gryph can
finally pay Zayne for all the work he’s done since being promoted to
henchman. Zayne asks his dad to transfer his first paycheck to his dead
friend’s sister on Taris, aka that blonde he had a crush on in the first
book. Now that he knows the Jedi Covenant has stooped to targeting his
family, Zayne has his dad put in a transfer request to the bank of the
Jedi Enclave on Dantooine, the one place Zayne knows his parents will be
safe.
The greatest criminal minds of our time.
Meditations
This story is twice as long as the previous one and I described it in
half the space. I’m pretty sure Arvan Carrick doesn’t even appear in
the series again after this so I’m not sure why we needed to spend two
issues on one of the Jedi Covenant’s many backup plans. They’re leaving
no stone unturned in their quest to catch Zayne, I got it. Just humor my
attention span with more videogame references please.
The art duties on this story are again split between Brian Ching and
Some Other Guy. The other guy’s style isn’t the worst ever but it’s
still noticeably and distractingly worse than Ching’s, which I’m not
even that crazy about to begin with. There’s this weird thing that he
does at least twice where he’ll have a close-up of a character’s face in
one panel, then adorn it with an illustration of their disembodied
hand, because it’s vitally important that we see both their facial
expression and how many fingers they’re holding up at the same time.
It’s peculiar and I don’t care for it.
Having the perpetually befuddled Camper impersonate a baron provides a
fun little character moment at the beginning of the story, but there’s
not really a lot going on here. Fortunately, this arc also introduces
the Moomo brothers, who are great fun in a developmentally arrested,
physically abusive sort of way. Nearly all Ithorians in the EU are
depicted as peaceful nature-lovers, and Gryph explains that they
maintain that reputation by kicking out violent knuckleheads like the
Moomos.
They’re fun characters but the rest of this just feels like filler.
I’m sorry but I don’t care about Zayne’s father. I just don’t.
Knights of the Old Republic #9: Flashpoint Interlude: Homecoming
Author: John Jackson Miller
Artist: Brian Ching
Medium: Comic
Publication Date: October 2006
Timeline Placement: 3,963 BBY
Series: Knights of the Old Republic
After Zayne Carrick’s escape from Taris, the Jedi Masters stationed
there were recalled to Coruscant. On their way to meet with the Jedi
High Council, Lucien Draay, Q’Anilia, Raana Tey, Xamar, and Feln stop by
Lucien’s family estate to see his mother, but Lucien is turned away at
the door by his family’s droid butler.
The Jedi Council of this time consists of NPCs from the KotOR
games, including Vrook Lamar and Vandar Tokare, both of whom we’ve
previously met, as well as Atris and Zez-Kai Ell. When the “Jedi
Covenant,” as they call themselves, arrives at the Jedi Temple, the
council is already in session with Alek’s mysterious Master, a hooded
man whose face is never visible.
Master Vrook (played by Ed Asner)
and Atris lecture him for nosing around the Mandalorian invasion
against their wishes and getting many of his followers captured on
Suurja. The unnamed Jedi passes Lucien and the others on his way out,
reminding them of his warning about the coming war back on Taris. “The
truth is written in blood!” he cries flamboyantly.
Master Vrook will brook no more backtalk today, so when Lucien
suggests that the Jedi make the hunt for Zayne Carrick their priority,
he puts his foot down. “If we’re going to have a Jedi Council at all,
then somebody, somewhere, is going to do what it tells them!” he snarls,
suggesting that the council’s existence is relatively new. Too bad Shadows and Light already jumped the gun and had a Jedi Council calling the shots 30 years before this.
Despite their protestations, the five Taris Masters are reassigned to
separate positions and dismissed from the Council Chamber. They go back
out to their car and Lucien tells them that the Jedi Council can eff
off, they’re the Jedi Covenant and they do what they want.
“A Sith Lord could walk right in front of the council and they’d lecture him about neutrality!”
Raana Tey complains (emphasis mine). Feln, a Feeorin, says that among
his people there is no nobler cause than to retake conquered territory
like Alek’s Master is doing, and asks what the Basic (English) word for
that concept is. “Revanchism,” Lucien answers.
Hmmm . . .
Lucien gets a text from his butler droid and they head back to his mom’s house.
A series of flashbacks throughout the comic reveals Lucien’s back
story, starting with his early childhood. His mother, Krynda, was a
half-human, half-MiralukaJedi seer obsessed with clairvoyance. Her husband and sister, both
Jedi, were killed in the Great Sith War, after which Krynda, terrified
that the Sith would one day rise again, devoted her time to training
seers without the Jedi Council’s supervision. Since Lucien was born
without the gift of Force prophecy, he was always a disappointment to
her.
Krynda founded the Covenant, a secret fanatical cabal within the Jedi
Order. She devoted all her time and energy to training Q’Anilia, Raana
Tey, Xamar, and Feln, her greatest group of students, while Lucien was
left to learn rudimentary Force skills from his mother’s assistant,
Haazen, a former Padawan who flunked out of Hogwarts when he lost his
arm, eye, and both legs during the war. Haazen convinced Krynda to allow
Lucien to formally enter the Jedi Order so he could serve as her
apprentices’ manager and protector.
Lucien returns to his house in the present day, where Haazen berates
him for taking it upon himself to murder the Taris Padawans after he had
been explicitly instructed to bring them to the Draay estate for
further investigation. Because of him, the Jedi Covenant has just barely
escaped exposure. Then Haazen kicks him out and slams the door in his
face.
It’s really cool seeing this series beginning to reveal how deeply
its roots are sunk into the previous lore of this era. This issue is
filled with organic references to both the KotOR games and Tales of the Jedi, with Krynda Draay even name-dropping good old Master Vodo. Short but sweet.
The crew of the TheLast Resort (seriously, why didn’t they just name it Last Resort?
Everyone’s going to put “the” in front of it anyway) set down on the
planet Vanquo, posing as refugees from the Mandalorian invasion. Using
Zayne’s lightsaber, Jarael disguises herself as a Jedi and cons the
occupants of a mining outpost into thinking the Mandalorian fleet is
attacking the planet. They run for their lives, leaving their food
stores to be plundered by Zayne and his friends. Zayne, Gryph, Camper,
and Elbee begin loading supplies onto the ship while Jarael plays with
Zayne’s saber (bow chicka wow wow). They are suddenly interrupted when
the Mandalorians decide to invade the planet for real.
And just like that, the Mandalorian Wars have begun!
Today we celebrate our Independence Day!
Separated from the group, Jarael is immediately captured by the
invading horde, while Zayne and the others hightail it back to the ship.
They are pursued by a detachment of Mandalorians commanded by Rohlan
Dyre, who beats them to the TheLast Resort and takes
off in it without them or the rest of his men. Just, like, for a ride I
guess. With Zayne, Gryph, and Camper clinging to Elbee, the taciturn
droid grabs hold of the ship’s loading ramp and everyone manages to get
inside before the ramp closes.
Camper promptly beats up the Mandalorian carjacker with Jarael’s
lightning-stick and sets course for Mandalorian space, following the
tracer signal from Jarael’s bracelet. Gryph suggests that the
Mandalorians might just really like expensive jewelry. Rohlan explains
that, since his people think Jarael is a Jedi, they are taking her to
their scientific research station for studying captured Jedi on the
planet Flashpoint, a world so close to its star that its day is only an
hour long and no life can survive outside a small shielded zone.
Their jump to Mandalorian space is observed by Captain Saul Karath of the Republic warship Courageous. A secondary villain from the first KotOR
game, Karath is still a loyal Republic soldier at this time, and upon
identifying Zayne’s ship as belonging to the killer of the Jedi students
on Taris, he decides Zayne must have been a Mandalorian agent all along
and vows to hunt him down and bring him to justice. Doesn’t he have
anything better to do, what with the invasion and all?
Zayne asks if Rohlan is some kind of deserter, but Camper tells him
that such a concept doesn’t even exist for Mandalorians. Rohlan tells
them that he was the only one of his people to question their leader’s
tactics in this war and his motivation for starting it. He has
repeatedly run off to search for answers, only to be caught and sent
back to the front to die in glorious battle. Failing to convince Zayne
and Camper to give Jarael up for dead, he resolves to help them
infiltrate Flashpoint in the hope of finding answers there.
Meanwhile, we’re introduced to the “big bad” in this period of
galactic history, the supreme commander of the Mandalorian forces and
architect behind the burgeoning conflict, Mandalore the Ultimate.
Despite wearing the mask of the Mandalore we previously met in The Sith War,
this character was established in an RPG sourcebook as not being the
same Mandalorian who took up the mask at the end of that story. I’m not
sure why.
Don’t act like you’re not impressed.
Mandalore is chilling with his bro Cassus Fett, talking strategy and
shooting the shit. He’s like “Oh hey btw, did you send our bud Rohlan on
another suicide mission yet?” and Cassus is like “Yeah but he ran away
again lol.” To which Mandalore the Ultimate replies, “For his sake, he’d
better hope he’s dead!” Which doesn’t make much sense, but he’s drunk
so whatever.
On Flashpoint, Jarael is dragged into the Waiting Room of Doom, where
all the captured Jedi just sit around completely unfettered until
they’re brought in to be experimented on by the sadistic Mandalorian
scientist Dr. Mengele
Demagol. There are like a dozen Jedi and only a handful of guards, so I
guess they all just forgot how to use the Force or something.
Soon after Jarael gets smacked in the face with a blaster rifle and
thrown into the room, Squint, the Jedi who saved Zayne’s life on Taris
at the beginning of the series, is dragged out of Demagol’s laboratory
and deposited on the floor near her. Almost all his hair has fallen out
from Demagol’s experiments, which is important. Jarael tries to explain
to him how she’s not supposed to be there, but Demagol comes in and
selects her for his next experiment. Sensing that Jarael is not a Jedi,
Squint volunteers himself to go back under the knife in her place.
Despite talking about how long he’s waited for fresh Jedi to study,
Demagol agrees to have Squint taken back to his lab for some reason,
even though he just finished with him thirty seconds ago.
The TheLast Resort arrives on Flashpoint, with
Rohlan convincing the Mandalorians to let him land by pretending that
Zayne is a Jedi Knight he captured while Gryph and Camper hide in Han
Solo’s secret smuggling compartment. Rohlan marches Zayne into the
station just as Squint is dragged back out.
Jarael cradles the bleeding Jedi in her arms and they have some kind
of moment I guess, then Demagol starts creepily running his hands
through her hair and notices her pointed elf ears, not a baseline trait
of her species. He excitedly orders that she be taken to his laboratory
at once, but Rohlan comes in with Zayne and says “No do this guy first”
and Demagol inexplicably goes “Yeah okay.”
Almost paradise.
Once the three of them are alone in Demagol’s lab, Rohlan clonks the
mad scientist over the head with a femur that was just lying on the
floor for some reason. Bone is apparently harder than Mandalorian armor,
because Demagol instantly goes down. Zayne puts on his armor and helmet
and they stash him in the closet, then walk out of the lab loudly
discussing how it’s too bad that Zayne died so quickly. Jarael knocks
the disguised Zayne to the floor and begins strangling him, but stops
when she hears Zayne telepathically say her name, which means that she
has the Force now I guess.
Rohlan and Zayne go outside just as the station’s guards receive a
hologram transmission from Gryph, posing as an admiral aboard the
Republic cruiser Glomkettle (his mother’s name). Since
Flashpoint was once a Republic research station, he claims that when its
former inhabitants were driven out by the Mandalorians, they left
behind a series of booby-traps that he is now going to activate. Zayne
uses telekinesis to surreptitiously plant mining charges around the
compound, which Gryph then detonates from aboard the TheLast Resort.
Fearing that Flashpoint’s shield is going to fail, leaving them to be
cooked by the sun’s heat and radiation, the Mandalorians abandon the
planet. Zayne runs back into the station on the pretext of saving his
research and Rohlan goes after him, bidding the retreating warriors to
tell Mandalore that he died nobly for their cause.
With the Mandalorians gone, Zayne outfits all the Jedi with spacesuits from the TheLast Resort
so they can breathe outside of the station. Rohlan drags an unconscious
Demagol over to the Jedi so they can take him back to Coruscant as a
prisoner, explaining that he had to knock him out again while putting
his armor and mask back on him.
Zayne thanks Rohlan for all his help but tells him he should go with
the Jedi. They’re going to blow up Flashpoint Station, so Mandalore will
think he’s dead and he can get those answers he was looking for from
Demagol. Rohlan stares across the courtyard at Jarael for a moment, then
admits that Zayne’s right and boards the Jedi’s ship.
Zayne and Squint take a moment to catch up. Zayne tells him how the
war has now broken out for real, and Squint invites him to come with
them and be a part of his Master’s plan to defeat the Mandalorians.
Zayne says no thanks.
Squint goes over to say goodbye to Jarael, because every guy in this
story is obsessed with her. He tells her that Squint isn’t even his real
name, and next time they meet she should call him Alek. Then he thanks
her for giving him this sweet red spacesuit with an opaque red helmet,
which coincidentally is what the figure in Zayne’s Masters’ prophecy of
doom was wearing. Hmm, now who do we know from this era who’s a bald
Jedi involved with the return of the Sith who dresses in red and whose
name sounds something like “Alek”?
Could it be this guy?
Anyway, then Zayne, Jarael, Gryph, Camper, and Elbee get on the TheLast Resort
and Squint and the other Jedi get on their ship and they go their
separate ways, but at the last second Rohlan jumps off the Jedi ship and
sneaks back aboard the TheLast Resort without anyone noticing, THE END.
Meditations
Flashpoint is one of the high points of this series. Maybe even the
the high point, I won’t be sure until I’ve read all of it. It’s pretty
good, though. It’s amazing what a difference Dustin Weaver’s art makes;
it’s a perfect match for the tone and content of this series and I’m not
looking forward to settling for less in the next arc.
For a long time the Mandalorian Wars were not that fleshed-out.
Unlike most major galactic conflicts, which were created to serve as a
setting for telling stories, the Mandalorian Wars were introduced as
back story to a different war. Mostly we just heard about them from
characters who were there, so it’s gratifying to see these events
actually taking place on the page. Even though those who’ve already
played Knights of the Old Republic know how all this is going to end, it’s still cool to see how the galaxy moves to that point.
Unlike Commencement, which started to drag after a while of
essentially the same thing happening over and over while Zayne tried
incompetently to clear his name, Flashpoint, being a mere three
issues long, boasts much more condensed and therefore exciting
storytelling. It produces a major shift for the galaxy as a whole with
the advent of the true Mandalorian Wars while also providing a
trajectory shift for Zayne’s story by introducing him and his crew of
misfits into this macro conflict.
At the same time it deftly weaves in the introductions of important
new characters like Demagol, Rohlan Dyre, Mandalore the Ultimate, and
Saul Karath, as well as reintroducing Squint and setting him down his
own path, while his mysterious Master’s machinations continue in the
background. A pretty solid little comic, all in all.
Sadly (or not), we won’t be seeing any more of Nomi Sunrider, Sylvar,
Master Thon, or the Twi’lek Jedi Tott Doneeta. Even little Vima, who
was established in reference books as becoming the greatest Jedi Master
of her era and eventually training the Jedi Exile, the player character
from Knights of the Old Republic II, will never appear again. Del Rey had plans to publish a Nomi-and-Vima novel called Mandorla, but it was canceled because they can’t ever try anything different, ever, so here we are.
Enter our new protagonist, Zayne Carrick, a Padawan stationed at the
Jedi training facility on Taris during the Mandalorian Wars, the next
major conflict as we progress through the Old Sith Wars (the Cleansing of the Nine Houses doesn’t count because nobody knows what the hell it is).
Zayne attempts to arrest a Snivvian conman called “the Gryph,” but
instead ends up falling off a skyscraper because he is incompetent. He
is saved by a passing Jedi Knight on a speeder who has been sent to look
for him by Zayne’s teacher, Master Lucien. The Jedi, a dark-haired man
called Squint, explains that he and several other Jedi, including their
Master, are passing through Taris on their way to join the war,
something the Jedi Council does not approve of. Squint offers some vague
foreshadowing about darkness and destiny and then departs.
Meanwhile, the five head instructors of the Taris academy, including
Lucien, have gathered to grab a group selfie with Squint’s Master before
he heads out. One of them, Q’anilia, suddenly has a Force vision of bad
things happening in the future and the Jedi Masters resolve to do
something about it.
All of this is just unnecessary foreshadowing for the next arc, hurray!
2/5 Death Stars.
Knights of the Old Republic #1–6: Commencement
Author: John Jackson Miller
Artist: Brian Ching
Medium: Comic
Publication Date: March 2006
Timeline Placement: 3,964 BBY
Series: Knights of the Old Republic
Another day, another bungled attempt by Zayne to apprehend Marn “The
Gryph” Hierogryph. Zayne gets drenched in sewage and ends up crashing
through a window of a restaurant, interrupting the celebratory banquet
for his class of Jedi initiates that he forgot he was supposed to be at.
Having recently completed the Jedi Trials, Zayne and his friends will
soon be informed by their Masters whether or not they have been approved
for Knighthood.
Zayne confides in his friend Shad Jelavan that he’s confident he’s
the only one who won’t be promoted. Shad helpfully suggests that Zayne
failed on purpose so he could stay on Taris and continue nursing his
crush on Shad’s sister, Shel, who is awkwardly standing right there.
After the banquet, Zayne is left behind to compensate the restaurant
manager for the damage he caused. Master Lucien has also stiffed Zayne
with the bill for the entire meal, leaving his hapless apprentice
penniless. Suddenly, Zayne spots Marn Hierogryph wandering around
outside. He immediately pulls a dine-and-dash on the beleaguered
manager.
Now penniful once again, Zayne seizes Gryph with the Force and
handcuffs him to his speeder, taking him back to the Jedi academy as a
prisoner. Why was this so difficult an arrest for him to pull off
before? I guess it was destiny or something. They arrive late to the
commencement ceremony and Zayne leaves Gryph handcuffed in the garage
while he rushes in to catch the end of his friends’ graduation. Instead,
he finds their newly murdered corpses cooling at their Masters’ feet.
“You’re late, young one,” Lucien chides.
The Jedi Masters—Xamar, Raana Tey, Lucien Drey, Q’Anilia, and
Feln—pursue Zayne through the academy, back to the garage. Zayne jumps
on his speeder and takes off with Gryph, who is so confused he
pronounces the word “help” as “HAAALLLLPPP!!!” The Masters
follow on their own speeders, but lose their quarry when Zayne and Gryph
jump down the garbage chute of a college cafeteria.
After they put on the freshman fifteen, Zayne explains to Gryph what
the hell is going on. Gryph wisely decides to ditch the clueless
Padawan, but reconsiders when he discovers that the Jedi have framed him
as Zayne’s accomplice. Realizing they have to get off the planet, Gryph
takes Zayne to meet with a discombobulated inventor named Camper, but
when they arrive at the junkyard where he lives, they are attacked by
his bodyguard, Jarael.
Camper and Jarael are Arkanians, the same alien species as Master Arca Jeth from Tales of the Jedi,
despite the fact that they look nothing like him. This discrepancy will
be explained in a future comic, but that story arc is so bad I wonder
if John Jackson Miller didn’t write it solely to justify having Jarael
look like a sexy albino elf babe while Master Arca looks like death. I
mean, no one ever bothers explaining why Gryph looks nothing like a
regular Snivvian.
Nope, not seeing it.
Zayne tries to explain that he was set up but the Jedi suddenly
arrive with the Constable of Taris. Gryph and Zayne take cover in the
Arkanians’ junk-house, which they are surprised to discover is actually a
ship, the TheLast Resort (why is The part of its name?). The TheLast Resort takes off from beneath a pile of garbage and heads for space, where they go into hiding in the system’s asteroid belt.
Zayne, Jarael, and Gryph bicker for a few pages while Camper sits
alone muttering to himself because he is crazy. Camper passes out and
Jarael tends to him while Gryph goes off to take a nap. Later, Zayne
sneaks away to contact his Jedi instructors on Dantooine while no one’s
looking, piloting the ship out of the asteroid field to send a clear
transmission.
The phone is answered by Master Vandar Tokare, a Yoda-type alien and
an NPC from the original KotOR game. Despite his vaunted Jedi insight,
Vandar just goose steps along and tells Zayne how disappointed he is in
him for murdering his classmates. Zayne argues that he’s such a terrible
Jedi he never could have overcome all his friends, and Vandar has to
admit that that’s true. Then Jarael hits him with a stick for
endangering everyone’s lives on this pointless phone call.
Zayne decides that they have to crack the case themselves so they take the TheLast Resort
to the last place all the Jedi Masters and Padawans were together
before the day of the massacre: the Taris system’s rogue moon. Lucien
and his buds dropped off their apprentices there for their final test
before being knighted. Wearing spacesuits with opaque helmets, they had
to use their Force senses to navigate their way across the moon while
avoiding the constant bombardment of debris from the asteroid field. The
Taris Masters, meanwhile, drank lemonade and worked on their tans while
waiting for them beneath a giant deflector shield. Seriously no one
could have figured out that they were a bunch of psychopaths before the mass murder? Really?
Zayne and Jarael go down to the moon and recover the remains of
T1-LB, the Jedi’s labor droid who had mysteriously fallen off a cliff
during the Padawans’ trial. Zayne uses his physics degree and one
semester of detective class to deduce that Elbee didn’t fall, but was in
fact telekinetically thrown. As they attempt to salvage him, Lucien
shows up with the cops again. This whole story is one long chase scene.
Zayne whispers to Jarael to get close to him, like he has some kind
of plan to get them out of this, but I guess he just wanted to cop a
feel through her spacesuit or something because they just sit there and
then the TheLast Resort shows up and saves them by shooting at the cops’ spacecar.
One quick getaway later, Camper has rebuilt Elbee and added a
hologram emitter to his head so they can see the droid’s final memories
before his death. While the Padawans stumbled around dodging death from
space, Xamar, Raana Tey, Q’Anilia, and Feln entered a meditation trance
while Lucien awkwardly just stood around because he didn’t properly
allocate his skill points to achieve the Jedi Consular class.
The four Jedi experienced a shared vision of their own deaths, with
the Sith rising once again and the galaxy in flames. The center of the
vision was the person who appeared to be responsible for everything: a
masked figure wearing a red spacesuit identical to the ones currently
worn by their apprentices. Logically, they decided that the only
possible recourse is to murder all of their surrogate children in the
off chance one of them becomes the Sith in the mass-produced spacesuit
probably owned by trillions across the galaxy. Lucien then noticed Elbee
watching them and Force-pushed him off a cliff.
Elbee is so distraught over witnessing his own death that he
immediately deletes the recording from his memory, conveniently
destroying the evidence that could have cleared Zayne’s name and wrapped
up this series a couple dozen issues earlier. The TheLast Resort
is then captured by bounty hunter Valius Ying and his crew, looking to
collect the price on Zayne’s head. Gryph leaves Zayne with him because
he’s a scoundrel, but later Zayne mind-tricks the guards and sneaks away
in the dead of night, but Jarael shows up and says that he’s screwing
them over by hanging around and inviting the wrath of Jedi who can’t
tell one spacesuit from another. Zayne decides he can’t continue to
endanger his newfound friends and agrees to peacefully return to Taris
in Ying’s custody.
Ying brings Zayne before the Jedi Masters, hoping to get his money
and be on his way. For some reason Lucien explains their entire evil
plan and the circumstances behind it, then murders Ying for having
learned too much. Before he can strike down Zayne, however, someone
wearing the same red spacesuit and helmet from the Jedi’s vision crashes
through the window. The Jedi are thrown into chaos, giving Jarael time
to take off her helmet and rocketpack away with Zayne. You would think
this incident might teach the Jedi that there are more than five of that
same model of spacesuit in the galaxy, but NOPE!
Back aboard the TheLast Resort, Jarael explains
that they couldn’t bring themselves to leave Zayne behind to try his
luck with the psychotic Jedi. No one had ever sacrificed themselves for
her before, and she didn’t want him getting a big head over it. Gryph
then offers Zayne a job in his criminal empire, which doesn’t exist.
Zayne agrees, but only if Gryph stops calling him “intern.” Cue studio
audience laughter, freeze frame, producer credits.
Meditations
Let’s not beat around the bush, John Jackson Miller’s Knights of the Old Republic is a pretty good Star Wars comic overall, so there’s only so much here to snark about. Commencement
isn’t the greatest story arc, but it’s a decent introduction to the new
cast and setting. My biggest problem with it (besides the unfathomly
horrific art in issue 5, excepting the intentional stylization of the
prophecy sequence) is how structurally repetitive it gets after a while.
Every scene seems like it ends with the Jedi and the cops randomly
showing up, only for Zayne and his friends to somehow slip through their
fingers yet again. The whole book really is, like I’ve said, one long
chase scene. And Jeff Goldblum isn’t even in it!
There’s also the issue of the Jedi becoming an unrepentant cabal of
murderers based on an extremely vague and unspecific vision of the
future. Literally anyone could go to Space Kmart and get that same
spacesuit, let’s use a little reasoning here, guys. Admittedly, this is
only the first arc of the series; maybe later revelations about the
Masters’ history and the true subject of their prophecy will justify
their single-minded certainty (spoiler: no).
Travel Foreman’s pencils in issue 5 are just terrible. Everyone looks
like some horrible nightmare doppelgänger of themselves. It’s just
bizarre how randomly awful everything looks for one sixth of the story.
Brian Ching’s art is much better, but I’m not really a fan of his style
either. Everyone is always scowling and hunched over with claws for
fingers. Unfortunately, he’s the primary artist of the whole series.
They should have just gotten Dustin Weaver to illustrate everything.
There’s also a montage at the end of the book showing the state of
the broader galaxy after Zayne’s escape from Taris. Several of the Jedi
who left to fight in the war, including Squint from issue 0, have been
taken prisoner by the Mandalorians. This news report is watched by a
cloaked figure sitting in a chair. You would expect this guy’s identity
to be revealed at some point in the future, but I’ve read this series
before and there are multiple characters who wear cloaks and I still
have no idea who this was supposed to be.
“He’s a pushy, smarmy sexist, and she’s an uptight bitch. What’s the problem?”
—Mike Stoklasa on Jurassic World
Is Jurassic World sexist? That’s the question that seems to be on everyone’s cyber-lips,
for some reason. I don’t claim to know the answer, but I do claim that
some of the arguments flying around to that effect are somewhat specious
at best, if not entirely hyperbolic.
People can be offended by whatever they want, of course, and it’s been quite the season for it. We started the summer with Avengers: Age of Ultron,
a big dumb action movie decried for the sexism of having its amoral
super-assassin talk about her uterus and get captured by the bad guy for
five minutes. Then came Mad Max: Fury Road, a big dumb action
movie hailed as a triumph of feminism because Charlize Theron did more
stuff in it than Mad Max. Now we’ve arrived at Jurassic World (known in foreign markets as Jurassic Park 4: Dumber Than a Box of Rocks),
a big dumb action movie whose unabashed sexism includes having its
female protagonist wear heels and learn to care about her family.
Why do we expect so much from big dumb action movies, again?
Let’s not forget that the first Jurassic Park is the only
real movie in the franchise; all three sequels are just monster flicks
populated with stock characters who exist only to carry the plot between
scenes of people being eaten. Which is exactly where you expect to find
the most nuanced representation of progressive gender politics. I just
wanted to see people running from dinosaurs, not get sucked into an
Internet vortex of amateur feminist film theory.
A common thread I’ve noticed in several articles is that apparently the Jurassic Park
franchise is renowned for its strong female characters. I had never
heard this before, and I suspect that it only recently became the case
(when people reacted negatively to the lead female character in the
latest movie). Multiple reviews, however, talk about how Jurassic World’s
Claire Dearing (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) represents a step
backward from the previous films’ iconic feminist characters.
Laura Dern’s Ellie Sattler from the original JP was a fine
character, sure: strong, confident, reasonable, passionate about her
work, and equally passionate about having kids with Dr. Grant. Her big
scene in the movie comes when a man with a gun escorts her across the
park so she can flip a circuit breaker then run screaming from
dinosaurs. No disrespect to Ellie (the honest reactions of the first
film’s characters to their situations is one of its many strengths), but
let’s take off the feminism-tinted glasses.
Then there was Julianne Moore’s memorable character Jeff Goldblum’s Girlfriend from The Lost World.
She inadvertently kick-starts the entire regrettable plot of the movie
by going to Dinosaur Island, prompting Jeff Goldblum to fly to her
rescue. The first thing she does when he arrives is tell him she doesn’t
need a man to save her. The second thing she does is piss off a herd of
stegosaurs and need Jeff Goldblum to save her.
Even Téa Leoni’s character from Jurassic Park III is given
higher marks than Claire. You’re a better person than I am if you can
remember anything about Téa Leoni’s character from Jurassic Park III,
besides how she lied to Dr. Grant and tricked him into risking his life
to help rescue her son from the dinosaurs. Endangering others to save
your stupid kid is a more feminist character trait than coming to
realize you can be more than an uptight business professional all the
time.
It’s also Jurassic Park III in which we learn that Ellie
Sattler, fearless kickass adventuress from the first movie, has settled
down and become a stay-at-home mom. At least two reviewers leapt to
defend this development, however, pointing out that this was perfectly
okay because it was Ellie’s choice. Unlike Claire, whose
character development was the result of a gun pointed at her head, or
something. Oh no, her sister told her she should have kids someday; now
she has to do it.
The most dishonest thing about this is that the third movie’s bungled
handling of its returning characters didn’t even need to be taken into
account. It was a cash-in sequel with no interest in respecting the
character arcs of the first film (just look at poor Dr. Grant, who is
still a lonely, childless grump in Jurassic Park III, despite
the growth and change he underwent in the original). It’s not the
viewer’s job to justify bad writing. But that isn’t allowed to be the
case, because these arguments hinge on painting Jurassic World as the black sheep in a franchise of otherwise unimpeachable feminism.
Claire, in contrast to her predecessors, stealth-kills a Dimorphodon to save her boyfriend and uses herself as bait to lure a Tyrannosaurus
into battle with the evil hybrid dinosaur to save everyone. Despite
apparently being a horrible sexist stereotype, she’s kind of the most
badass chick in these movies. Except for Jeff Goldblum’s adorable
daughter Kelly, who uses gymnastics to kick a Velociraptor out a window (note: this is the most stupid thing that happens in any of these movies/in any movie).
All of her accomplishments and character development are undercut,
however, by her wardrobe. More than one critic, male and female alike,
derided Claire’s skirt suit and stiletto heels, specifically calling her
out as a “damsel in distress” because of them, which makes me think
they don’t know what that term means (one prominent review even included
Claire’s bangs as part of that problematic ensemble, which . . . what? I
mean, what?). None of them can understand why, when the park she runs
breaks down in the middle of a business day and her nephews are lost in
the dinosaur onslaught, Claire doesn’t go home and change out of her
work clothes into more practical jungle gear.
Honestly, I don’t get it. Aren’t we pretty blatantly reaching for
something—anything—to complain about now? I remember reading an article
last year criticizing the female protagonists of popular young adult
franchises (Divergent, The Hunger Games, etc.) for all
having the same body type, but instead of advocating diversity of
female empowerment, it just came off as body-shaming petite women. Have
we come so far that we’ve somehow looped back around on ourselves and
become the thing we hate? I don’t know what else would qualify us to
judge this character based on the way she dresses. How disappointingly
reductive.
So what if Claire wears heels for the whole movie? She kicks ass in
her heels, without calling attention to that fact. She dresses like a
professional corporate executive; there’s nothing objectifying or
exploitative about her outfit at all. It suits her character and
personality—she belongs in a boardroom, not roaming around out in the
field. Despite being ill-suited to the action hero role, however, she
doesn’t shy away from venturing out into the Mesozoic wilderness to
rescue her dimwitted nephews.
But because Chris Pratt, a Navy veteran-turned-dinosaur wrangler
hired by the park’s CEO specifically for that talent, is a badass from
the start instead of learning how to become one, Claire’s journey is
somehow negated. Her heroic actions are just “mirroring” Pratt’s (no
examples given), and played for the novelty of a girl kicking
ass (no examples given). In reality, she’s just an object of disrespect,
a punchline for her male colleagues’ inappropriate humor (no examples
given).
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the only park employee who
offers Claire any insubordination is Chris Pratt, and it’s not because
he’s a macho hunk and she’s a fragile little girl with the vapours, but
because he’s a douche. “He should have been fired for sexual
harassment!” Yeah, but . . . it’s a movie, that’s his character. The
“charming rogue” would be an asshole in real life, but we’re still
allowed to find him a fun archetype in fiction, right? In The Empire Strikes Back,
Han Solo sexually harasses Princess Leia for the whole movie. These are
exciting adventure films, not how-to guides for interacting with your
female coworkers.
The last line of defense, of course, is hyperbole, also known as
“bald-faced lying.” These professional film critics/gender commentators
would have you believe that Chris Pratt is “shocked,” “horrified,” and
“disgusted” that Claire doesn’t know her nephews’ ages, but I saw the
movie too and he just looked momentarily confused, then immediately
moved on to something else. The movie did not want us to hate Claire for
this, but it seems that plenty of people wanted it to want us to.
How about that ending, though, where Claire willfully decides to
throw away her career so she can get married and become a mother,
because having children is the answer to literally all of a woman’s
problems? Virtually every condemnatory diatribe against this movie that I
read included this summary of its conclusion. Except that Claire
doesn’t get married or have children, she just gets a boyfriend, and she
doesn’t quit her job to become a housewife so much as the company she
works for self-destructs when the dinosaurs it created start eating its
patrons.
(Childrearing is hardly presented as a panacea in any case. Claire’s
sister, Karen, only sends her kids to the island in the first place
because she’s in the middle of an embittered divorce with David Wallace
over the rights to Suck It®. Many were quick to jump on her suggestion
that Claire settle down as the film asserting that marriage and children
are key to a woman’s happiness. Except Karen’s marriage is a sham and
her life is falling apart. So much for eternal wedded bliss.)
The final lines of the movie actually imply an open, unfettered
future. Having shed her self-imposed restrictions, Claire is finally
able to look ahead without the need for constant certainty and
meticulous planning. “What do we do now?” she asks as the remnants of
her old life burn down around her. “Probably stay together. For
survival,” Chris Pratt answers, smarmy egotist that he is.
Maybe they’ll stay together and maybe they won’t. The point is that
Claire is now capable of seeing all her options, not just the safe ones
she can control. As Jurassic World CEO Simon Masrani says earlier in the
film, “The key to a happy life is to accept you are never actually in
control.” It’s like a theme or something.
So, then, is Jurassic World actually sexist, or just
T-rexist? There is one central aspect of the film, buried beneath the
circular arguments and unconvincing justifications, that the above
clutter was invented to protest. Claire is a successful, career-driven
woman, and her arc over the course of the movie involves her becoming
receptive to a life beyond that career by forming a relationship with a
man and two surrogate children. Through her ordeal she is “softened,”
changed in a way that paints her earlier worldview as incorrect, or at
least incomplete.
This is, if not sexist, not particularly deep or original either (but
consider that this is the third sequel in a 22-year-old franchise about
dinosaur clones and you can see how much the studio prioritizes depth
and originality); Dr. Grant had almost the same arc back in the first
film, after all. If it is sexist, however, it’s so mild and non-malicious I can’t see calling it out as anything harsher than “somewhat problematic.”
But what Hollywood movies aren’t “somewhat problematic”? What is it about Jurassic World
specifically that has drawn so much ire? Many articles credited their
initial awareness of the movie’s sexism to “well-respected voice” of
feminism Joss Whedon’s now-infamous tweet.
Good call, guys, but maybe we shouldn’t jump to appeal to the authority
of the dude who just wrote a movie where a character talks about how
her hysterectomy makes her feel like a monster. (That’s something that
happened, right?)
“Like so, so many of you, I bought a ticket to see Jurassic World this past week,” wrote Kelly Lawler
of USAToday.com. “I went to recapture that feeling I had when I saw the
original as a child. Unfortunately, I walked out of the theater not
with the sense of wonder and amazement Jurassic Park gave my 10-year-old self, but instead with a familiar mix of anger and depression.”
Of all the reactions I read, this one saddened me the most, because
it was the most honest and most understandable, and also one of the most
unfair. We can’t go home again, Kelly. If we watched the original Jurassic Park
today for the first time, who among us would still feel that childish
sense of wonder and amazement? Who would be bored by the middle-aged
cast, the talkiness and debates about morality, the low body count and
scant dinosaur screen time, and play Angry Birds on our phones
until something loud happened? Who would be underwhelmed by
no-longer-special special effects we’ve seen a thousand times before in a
thousand other movies, a thousand times as big and fast and loud? Who
would live-tweet their outraged scorn for how Ellie Sattler does nothing
but talk about wanting babies, get fought over by two men, shriek while
being chased by monsters, and break down crying at the end? We can
never go home again, never look at something new with fresh eyes, never
allow ourselves to be shaped by an experience rather than trying to
reshape the experience to fit what we already know. Maybe Jurassic World is perfect; maybe it’s we who are broken.
Then Kelly started talking about how the movie was brainwashing
little girls into believing they are morally bad people if they don’t
become mothers (“Won’t somebody please think of the children!”) and she
lost me.
It’s perfectly natural to lash out when we perceive a threat to
something we care about, have fought over and struggled for. Sexism is
all around us, its talons sunk deep into the fabric of our everyday
lives, so we’ve conditioned ourselves to be on the lookout for it at all
times. On the bus, on the subway, at work, at school, on the news, at
the club, on the street, in advertisements, online, in the movies. We
can’t escape from it, and we’ve gotten used to the idea that we never
will. So when we see something, even something ultimately harmless and
well-intentioned, that sets off the subtlest of alarm bells in the back
of our minds, it’s easy to go off half-cocked with that tweet or Tumblr
post or overly self-congratulatory web editorial.
If you felt offended or belittled by Jurassic World, that is
of course your right. But let’s allow ourselves at least a little
honesty: even if the movie is sexist, most of the ways people have gone
about arguing it are crap. This is not a particularly feminist film
franchise. There is no reason a strong female character can’t wear heels
and a skirt and be more comfortable making an itinerary than going on
an adventure. There may be some small irony in lambasting a movie for
being written exclusively by four men when it was really written by three men and a woman.
Jurassic World has its problems, as every movie does. Some
mild form of antiquated chauvinism may well be one of them, but it’s a
problem you can encapsulate in a single sentence. If you find yourself
writing a dissertation on how sexism is inextricably baked into this
movie’s 65-million-year-old DNA, there’s a good chance you’re doing it
wrong.
Movie still wasn’t that great though, better luck next time, Chris Fatt.
