Top Gun: Maverick: a review

Before anything else, I'll get this out of the way first: I think anyone who knows me intimately knows I like fighter planes. Thanks to the original Top Gun, various anime series (mostly Macross) and the Ace Combat series of video games, I have a love of planes that I rarely express in public (I had a classmate who also loves planes, but of the commercial airliner kind.)

Since the original film came out more than 30 years ago, the world has changed. The Berlin Wall fell, and with it, the USSR, leaving the United States to find another enemy to fight. The idea of 'terrorism' eventually became the next target, but compared to the monoliths of the Cold War, it's hard to fight an idea, let alone a collection of barely connected organizations that mostly operate in small groups, and often in secret. The role of the fighter jet is nearing its end, supplanted by drone warfare and other similar tools of war.

It is here where Top Gun: Maverick starts, with an aging Maverick (and an equally aging Tom Cruise) ending a short lived test flight by being himself - just recklessly pushing things beyond the limit until things break. Either way, Maverick would have been on his way out, as the program was about to be scrapped anyway to give way to funding for drone technology. This plot point isn't visited again in the movie, which implies that despite any heroics that take place during this movie, the obsolescence of this way of life will only continue.

And obsolescence is one of the biggest themes of this movie: Maverick is tasked with teaching a number of (younger) hotshots like him how to fly an extremely dangerous mission, one that top brass doesn't believe is survivable. Because of story-related limitations, they will not be flying the F-35, currently one of the US' most advanced multirole fighter aircraft in service now. Instead, Maverick's team will be flying the F-18 Super Hornet - a respected workhorse of an aircraft that has served the US for more than 20 years, but is overshadowed by its faster, stealthier more maneuverable, more heavily armed successors - a plane much like Maverick himself.

You can see the haunt in Maverick's face whenever he is reminded of his storied past - and his fixation is perhaps not of glories now gone, but instead of memories of friends that are no longer here. He is a dinosaur, the last vestige of a way of life that is quickly disappearing. In a way it is similar to Cruise's turn in The Last Samurai (2003), albeit in this film the culture is his own and not appropriated from somewhere else. The competitive spirit of the first film is all but gone in this film. There are no pissing contests to speak of, because there is no true opponent - even in the film, the 'enemy' is vague, nameless and indistinct. They are merely targets to be destroyed; objects (or rather, objectives) to be met.

And yet, Top Gun: Maverick also examines fatherhood, or rather, a pseudo-fatherhood shaped by generational trauma. The sons of Top Gun are often sons without fathers: in the original film Maverick's character was shaped from a father that left him too soon; his recklessness is a product of faux machismo, toxic masculinity so to say, created to hide his own insecurities. On the other hand, Rooster (Miles Teller) had his career shaped both by the loss of his own father and by the influence of the man involved (though to be fair, not responsible) for his father's death. Maverick and Rooster's relationship is not clean-cut - there are no speeches or melodramatic moments between the two, to the point where one could argue the relationship is 'underdeveloped'. But that's often how fathers and sons go: often it boils down to the formation of an unspoken understanding, much like any father and son relationship.

In my plane-obsessed mind, there's an interesting kind of symmetry in this kind of relationship to the other themes of the film: the father, like an old but trusty F-18, scared of his own impending obsolescence, has difficulty imparting his wisdom to his younger, healthier son, an advanced and state of the art F-35. That's probably stretching the metaphor a bit. In any case, 'it's not the plane that matters, it's the pilot', and for these macho hotshots, self worth might have been the best thing to have all along.

Carousing with Corpses: This is (not) a review of Ang Bangkay

 

sorry Fred, I stole your shtick.

Foreword:

This piece is primarily concerned with the cinema experience of Vince Tañada's Ang Bangkay and only tangentially the movie itself. Most of the things that go on in this review really happened, but some events have been embellished for obvious reasons. For those looking for a more traditional review imbued with 100% more sanity, I recommend Jason Tan Liwag's review of the film. Enjoy.

THE PERFORMERS:

John Tawasil (age redacted): guy who reviews movies on the side

Jason Tan Liwag (looks young): guy who reviews movies and is much more of a pro about it

The cast and crew of Ang Bangkay (which creates a nested list of characters if you think about it)

Various hangers-on, including a handful of beauty queens

THE STAGE: 

Shangri-la Plaza Red Carpet Cinemas, located on the upscale mall's 6th floor. While previously the height of upscale film viewing in the metro (arguably), the pandemic has taken its toll on the surroundings. The elevators providing access to the (still closed) second floor cinemas are inoperable and the concessions stores are a far cry from their heyday.

ACT 1: WHAT IS DEAD MAY NEVER DIE

John looks ambivalent as he scans the press kit given to him by the gala's organizers. He muses that at the very least, whether the movie is good or bad, he's gotten a document envelope out of it. He takes a look at the disabled access stairs leading up to the theater entrance; it forms a U shape around the side of the walls of the building. For some inexplicable reason, a glass wall was constructed to close off the U shape, creating an enclosure with no practical use other than to serve as a trap for various things to fall into.

Jason:    Ah...!

Jason's press kit has fallen into the enclosure. He is now trying to fish it out with an umbrella.

John:    Let me help you there.

With a bit of straining and positioning, John helps fish out the unfortunate press kit. After a bit of small talk, he takes a look at the people set to watch the film. He does not recognize any of them. He notices the large posters for a medical aesthetics group in the background and wonders how heavily they supported the film financially.

Jason: let's go inside?

John nods and enters the theater. The air is a bit dry and musty, as if it hadn't been used in a while. He asks the ushers where their designated seats are.

John:     I usually sit at the back.

Jason:    I just wish I could see the crowd's reactions. 

They are directed to a number of seats to the right of the theater. With a bit of mirth, John notices that one of the seats is labeled "Wife of John Tawasil." He had asked his wife (also a film enthusiast) if she wanted to join, but she refused. A faint sense of dread begins to overtake him, and he wonders if his wife was wise to refuse.

John watches the screen. A commercial for the medical aesthetics group is playing on endless loop. He wonders where the other trailers went. The repetition numbs him. Time passes.

Jason:    I'm sorry, I'm not used to these galas. When is the program supposed to start?

John looks at his watch. It's a little past 4 in the afternoon.

John:    Based on past experience, I'm betting sometime around 5:30.

John would later realize that this was a gross underestimation.

More time passes. 5pm comes and goes, and so does 5:30. As the minutes pass, he grows ever more nervous. He hears a cough in the distance, then two. He notices several people not wearing masks at all - the masks are not even half-worn, they simply don't exist. A person on the row next to him removes her mask to cough, then puts it back on, completely invalidating the need for masks.

It is nearing 6pm. John frowns under his mask. Only he will be witness to his dissatisfaction. Suddenly, there is a flash of hope: it looks like the program is about to start. The cast and crew are introduced. Each person is given a lengthy introduction with their accomplishments.

Jason:    is this supposed to be (what these kinds of introductions) are like?

John:    unless they are the main stars, no. Usually only the name of the person and their role in the film.

One of the cast members comes out. His main claim to fame is winning the award for Best Host. Whatever that means.

One of the people involved in the gala lineup, a beauty queen, is made to speak. John isn't sure either way, but he could hear a similar discomfort in her voice as she is instructed to remove her mask to speak.

Beauty Queen 1:    I'm not used to removing my mask, it's like part of my ensemble already, you know?

John (internally):    Is there some kind of health bulletin I'm not aware of?

John could feel the virus worming its way into his nostrils. Three more people cough; the dry air inside the musty theater isn't doing anyone any favors. Meanwhile, Jason is furiously scribbling in his notepad.

Another beauty queen enters the front of the stage, proudly proclaiming that the film has successfully entered Cannes. The lead and director of the film quips:

Vince Tañada:    Cannes? Maybe the trash Cannes.

This elicits a laugh from the audience. John raises an eyebrow. Though the tone was clearly deprecatory, he remembers the saying that jokes are often half-meant.

"ah yes, Arial Bold and cutting off text at the bottom of the picture is totally acceptable"

ACT 2: PEOPLE DIE IF THEY ARE KILLED

The film begins. Aside from a short title card providing the historical background of the film, there is another title card proudly announcing that this screenplay got a Palanca Award. John would later investigate, read the entire script and confirm that yes, indeed, this film won that award in 2012, but NOT for a screenplay - it would be for a full length play. Given the quality of other winners he had seen in the past, including a mediocre work written by a guy with non-reflective tape under his eyes, he would also later doubt the taste of Palanca judges for the rest of his life until his untimely death in 2047 involving several pool noodles, a copy of the May 1987 edition of Sports Illustrated, and a rubber duck.  

The film focuses on its protagonist, Segismundo Corintho, as he begins eviscerating and embalming a fresh looking corpse. In the middle of the proceedings, he vainly runs his gloved hand through his hair, no doubt leaving blood, bits of human and oily debris in his hair. As someone who is very familiar with the conduct of eviscerating dead bodies, John recoils in horror. His suspension of disbelief has been ruined in the VERY FIRST SCENE OF THE FILM. He has no recourse but to laugh. Yes, he realizes in horror, the title card was a huge red flag. This is one of those films.

John also muses that Segismundo Corintho joins the cavalcade of honorable cinematic names such as Flipper Purify, Cleveland Heep, Johnny Goodboy Tyler and Pistachio Disguisey. Truly a pantheon of venerable cinematic names.

The rest of the film, at least for the first third, is filmed in excruciating closeup, as if the actors were breathing down your neck and violating all kinds of personal space. For a film that wants to escape the realms of theatrical form, it is doing a very bad job at it.

John reflexively covers his face with his press kit folder, as if to shield himself from the film. It does not work.

The film continues on. Segismundo's wife has just died, and he is lamenting her death. He imposes his will over the household and on all the people living in it. The main housekeeper, Miding, is his enabler. The film and the play it is based on is an examination of toxic masculinity, and of twisted and evil men bringing that toxicity into everything in their lives. In many respects, it is plausible for people to make connections between this film and the classic 1981 film Kisapmata, but as Jason would write in his review of the film, the similarities are superficial at best. Days later, in retrospect, John would think of the Vivamax film Mahjong Nights as a better point of comparison, and even then he thought Mahjong Nights was arguably the better made film. If only Ang Bangkay explored -

Something catches John's eye. it is the glare of a cellphone screen. Right in front of him, someone is furiously texting their friend over some inanity. In 1181 AD, Chinese and Japanese astronomers took note of a "guest star" that shone brightly in the night sky for six months, and was so bright that you could read off of it. Scientists believe that it might have been the light of a distant supernova, yet even then, that light probably did not hold a candle to the cellphone screen's brightness. 

Turned off by the boring film that is screening in front of him, John draws closer to the cellphone screen. Is someone dying? Is this disrespectful texter actually in grief over the impending loss of a loved one? Did her car get stolen and she is trying to report the incident to the police? He draws in closer. The glare is a little too much but he can make out the words "sarah g." He inwardly gasps. Did anything happen to YES! Magazine's Most Beautiful Star? Did she release a new single????

John has had enough. This lady did not respect the film, even though he thought it was bad. He leans in as uncomfortably close as he can. In the distance, two people cough.

John:    Does that phone have Candy Crush? Let's play it together. Tell your friend hello from all of us in the back row.

The woman looks at John with a sour face and turns off her cellphone. She would later leave the theater premises. John's jaw trembles in anger he didn't know he had. In the distance, he could hear shouting.

Voice:    Miding!

John realizes that it is not coming from the movie. For now, he sets it aside.

In the meantime, Segismundo is threatening neighbors with random outbursts of insanity. For the Nth time, he notices his hair. John leans towards Jason and aggressively whispers.

John (whisper):    WHY IS HE BLONDE????

Jason can only give a shrug in reply. John notices a defeated look on his face. After watching more of the film, John will confirm that Segismundo's hair is blonde, but his eyebrows (and pubes! more on that later) are not. He would later research this and find that hair bleaching techniques have been around since the 1700s so it is not outside the realm of possibility. He still thinks its super weird though.

John settles in, but the silence is broken by a loud series of coughs behind him. The person behind him is coughing, and it's a hacking, phlegmmy cough that at least suggests "upper respiratory tract infection." He grows even more nervous. He hears a cough from the masked-but-not-really-masked lady to his side, who removes her mask with every hack. He looks around the theater and sees people sitting side to side. He notices the woman seated directly next to him. John begins to lean towards Jason, who had correctly agreed to position himself one seat apart. John covers his face with the press kit envelope, but this time it's not to protect himself from the film - it's to protect himself from other people. It is his third time in cinemas, and this was easily his worst time back. He thought these people must be in some sort of timewarp, where it's 2019 and the virus didn't exist. He knows his own risk factors, and he knows that if he catches COVID, it would not leave easily.

John flashes back to 2005. He is on a plane to a small island in Malaysia. Unfortunately a typhoon stands in their way, and the hapless captain of the plane has decided to brave the storm. What is originally a 20 minute flight has now taken at least an hour. During this flight the plane shakes violently. John has already vomited twice; during his second vomiting episode he is no longer in possession of a barf bag and vomits all over the seat in front of him. He hears loud, nervous prayers from the other passengers on the plane. He would later learn that another, later flight flew under similar circumstances and had crashed, leading to the deaths of everyone on board. He had never stared death in the face that closely again until now. 

He is not a particularly religious man, but John begins to pray silently. A voice begins to ring in his head.

Voice (distant):    Miding...!

ACT 3: AND THEN JOHN WAS A ZOMBIE

Minutes pass. Miding is telling her underling Oryang about one of her past romances. Miding is being coy about it even though that person is likely dead. At around the halfway mark, the camerawork has improved a bit, but that is like comparing getting punched in the balls with getting your balls blown off by a Remington Model 870 shotgun.

The coughing fits from the back have not stopped, and each cough has increased in both intensity and frequency. Despite assuring himself that "well. this is probably just an allergic reaction," John grows ever more fearful. He is seriously considering walking out. The last time he walked out of a film was during the three hour cut of Ligaw, a film so wretched and boring that it made him physically sick. Though Ang Bangkay is no Citizen Kane (an understatement to end all understatements), he has endured infinitely worse films than this.

In another scene, Segismundo beholds his naked body, barely draped in shadow. John wonders why this is a thing. It's not even a remarkable body; it's less a Greek statue and more a joke cast of a dadbod made for a out of shape accountant on his 43rd birthday. He remembers the enclosure that he saw earlier that blocks off the access ramp to the theater: a completely useless addition that only contributes negatively to that thing. There is no more appropriate metaphor. Perhaps God truly exists and his mission is to create opportunities like this. John would later question Jason on this scene's utility. "Perhaps we have to analyze the film further" was, to paraphrase, one of the conclusions from that conversation. Later John realizes that this is a very charitable take.

The coughing lady behind them leaves, never to return. John looks around and more people are staring at their phones. Perhaps they've already seen a cut of the film, or perhaps they just don't care. The film is certainly not doing their attention spans any favors. The compulsion to walk out still remained in his mind. The voice in his head is clearer now: Segismundo is calling out to him.

Voice (now closer):     Miding!

As he grows more and more unhinged, Segismundo begins to tighten his grip on the poor members of his household. He exerts pressure on his daughter Isabel, controlling her so that she could not marry. He conspires with another person to prevent a marriage from happening; it is obvious Segismundo wants Isabel for himself.

After witnessing his maid Oryang engaging in naked congress with another man, Segismundo rapes the poor woman later on. The rape scene in itself is disturbing enough, but the accompanying O Fortuna-ish soundtrack makes it sound like Segismundo is a privateer firing cannons at several pirate ships, not sexually assaulting someone. John mutters under his breath as he covers his face with his press kit folder once more.

John (to himself):    Rape isn't supposed to be bombastic.

Unsure how to react, he laughs at the ridiculousness of it. Minutes pass and he feels his phone vibrating. It is Jason, and he is completely out of the film. Through text, he tells John that he wants to leave. It looks like all he's looking for is an excuse to leave, and John obliges. John stands up, leaving a film behind for the first time in six years.

John and Jason engage in a postmortem outside, where John's wife is waiting for him. She acts as an outsider perspective on the film as the two discuss it with her.

John:    It's not that the film is bad... well it is, but the cinema experience was equally horrible. 

John's wife:    Would you have walked out if the cinema experience was good?

John hesitates for a moment.

John:    I think I might have stayed.

John recalls a writing cliche among video game critics describing certain games as games that "really make you feel like you're X," X being whatever character or profession applies. It was later popularized by youtuber videogamedunkey, who gave the phrase its current memetic status. Of Arkham Knight, critics claimed that it "really made you feel like Batman." Of the 2018 Spider-man video game by Insomniac games, people on the internet joked that it "really made you feel like Spider-man."

Ang Bangkay, with its amateurish camera work and editing, wasted acting potential and general incompetence, is an aberration. It is a mediocre play that has been made into a worse film. in its current form, it literally has no reason to exist. And worst of all, the cinema experience only served to add a layer of dread-infused verisimilitude to the whole affair. Ang Bangkay the movie really makes you feel like a corpse.

As the night draws on, John and Jason go their separate ways. But as he leaves the mall, Segismundo's voice stops him.

Segismundo:    Miding! MIDING!

John turns his head and sees Segismundo, with his bleached hair, dad bod and curly pubes on full display. He is the only one who can see him. He recalls the fan fiction work DOOM: Repercussions of Evil by Peter Chimaera. Like Ang Bangkay, it takes an existing fictional work and adapts it to, perhaps, service a man's vanity. Like Ang Bangkay the movie, it is a staggering failure of form, full of grammatical and continuity errors. Like Ang Bangkay the movie, it delves superficially into certain themes while also injecting appendiceal scenes that exist purely for shock value.

Segismundo:    I will shoot at him, 

And Segismundo fired the rocket missiles. John plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.

John (shouting!):    No! I must kill the demons.

Voiceover:     No, John. You are the demons.

And then, John was a Zombie.

THE END

Maidenless behavior and other stories

It's been a slow two months for me in terms of movie watching. It's not because movies these days are bad (some are pretty decent) and not because I couldn't watch any (more on that later) - it's because I've been preoccupied with a couple of very time occupying activities.

First of all, I've recently played and finished Elden Ring. For a dude who has previously played three Soulsborne or Souls-like games but stopped after a few hours, this is a big freaking deal. Since everyone and their cat has played this game, I won't bore you too much with expansive paragraphs describing what the game is about, so I'll just say this: in this game, you roam around a HUGE open world, kill some bosses and become Elden Lord. Maybe. Or Maybe Not. It depends on you. 

"The game in its first few hours is difficult" is an understatement, at least to me. A lot of it is just trying to survive and earning enough to get better weapons and levels. But after a certain point, I got enough stuff to start making a little headway. As someone who was trained in the JRPG style of grinding and steamrolling everything by exploring every possible nook and cranny before advancing the story, the difficulty curve began to flatten over time. It didn't totally plateau, since endgame bosses ramp up in difficulty after a certain point, but it was at least manageable. Now I will be the first to admit: in a PvE situation where I'm only fighting against the computer, I am not a wholly honorable man. If there is a way to defeat an enemy using cheap or underhanded tactics, I will do it, sometimes even if it's more cumbersome than fighting something the "intended way," whatever that means. I buy, sell and eat cheese wholesale; discovering strategies like that brings me the most joy.

Ultimately, the game is only as easy or as hard as you want to make it. Choice is the most important thing in this game. You absolutely have the power to fight this guy, or go off on an adventure for a few hours somewhere else and come back, or fight someone else. Sometimes you don't even have to come back at all.

The thing I liked the most out of Elden Ring, after 200 hours of playing it, is that emphasis on player choice. Gameplay and story (as equally simple and esoteric as From's stories can be) are both closely intertwined, unlike other games whose gameplay and story choices don't exactly line up. I'm looking at you, The Last of Us 2, but that's a story for another day. Is Elden Ring a perfect game? No, no it is not. But the way it approaches its open world and how it masters the gameplay loop it has been trying to perfect for more than a decade easily makes it one of the year's best games.

Speaking of maidenless behavior, it was around 2013 when I began to drift towards media and videos of a certain ideological inclination. I had joined the movement our of righteous indignation at a tangentially related matter, but the group I involved myself in had other things in mind. Little did I know that movement I was getting into was part of one of the opening salvos of a culture war that would consume the world in the 2010s, culminating in the 2016 US presidential elections. My S.O. (then fiancee, now wife) noticed the videos I was watching and asked me, concerned, "isn't that alt-right stuff?" back when the term was in its infancy. I answered with "this is what the media isn't telling us" or something to that effect. I said that unironically back in 2013-2014. Obviously I don't feel the same way now - it came to a point where I took a step back, looked at everything critically - including the 'other side' - and saw the movement for what it is.  It boggles my mind that I drifted towards that kind of thinking. 

But on the other hand, it's not entirely far-fetched; I remember the days when I was deep into this emerging movement, there was a sense of community. It was us versus them, yes, but the "us" was definitely an "us" - formed by solidarity over sometimes completely arbitrary or tangential reasons, but we were together. It felt good being with these people for a while. It was a true manifestation of humankind as a social species, even if this bonding was over things that, looking back, repulse me to my core. There is nothing more dangerous than a misplaced sense of self-righteousness, but it happens often, and in media, people who are entrenched in this mindset make the best villains - the people who think they are the heroes of their own stories.

Matt Reeves' take on Batman approaches the caped crusader and the villains who oppose him through this lens. The central villain of this movie, The Riddler (Paul Dano), is a man who believes in his own hype, a fan of the Batman who is exposed to dangerous ideas, is introduced to a cult not unlike what we see today in America and in some parts of the world, and acts upon these ideas with his intellect. Reeves' Riddler does not believe he is a villain, he believes he is doing the things he does for the better good. He found a community with conspiracy theorists and these dangerous ideas made him even more dangerous.

As for the titular Batman, I recall a well known picture from Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman Annual no. 1, where Wonder Woman, in an attempt to suss out imposters, uses the Lasso of Truth on herself, Superman and Batman to state their true identities. Wonder Woman and Superman respond as one would normally expect, but Batman states that he is the Batman.

Reeves' The Batman may take place during the caped crusader's first few years on the job, but it too is an origin story: not for Batman, but for Bruce Wayne. When in the climax of the film, Batman realizes that his vigilantism and the Riddler's self righteous crusade aren't all that different, he decides to become something more. The Batman's existence and the existence of most, if not all his enemies stem from a system of justice that is deeply dysfunctional, inequitable and corrupt, if not outright non-functional. Perhaps what Batman decides at the end is not to supplant that system entirely with his vigilantism, but to become a beacon of hope, to hopefully fix and restore trust in the system - effectively removing the need for a Batman at all. I don't know if that's really what the film meant to say, or even if it did so properly, but I'd like to believe it's something like that.