Requiem for a Scheme

As the saying goes, cats have nine lives.  Zsa-Zsa Korda has more.  When we meet him for the first time, he’s sitting on his private plane, which explodes, killing the only other passenger, before crashing.  An assassination attempt, nearly successful, and his seventh plane crash.  He’s survived the previous six and, despite a vision of the afterlife, in which his own grandmother doesn’t recognize him, he survives this one too.  And that’s how Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme begins.

One close call in a long line of many, Korda decides to name his only daughter Liesl (sounds like), an aspirant nun, as his sole heir and executor of his estate.  His nine sons (some biological, some adopted) seem none too happy about the idea, one in particular sharpening his toy crossbow bolts and taking a few potshots at dear old dad while he explains the scheme to Liesl.  It’s a grand scheme in Phoenicia, the former name for parts of Syria and Lebanon, taking an arid area, going deep, and essentially stripping it of all its natural resources in a highly lucrative operation that will make a wild amount of money for his family for generations to come; 150 years by his estimates.  Korda, played by Benicio Del Toro (The Usual Suspects, Sicario), is an absolutely ruthless businessman and he doesn’t care a damn thing about anyone or anything but the money.  Much to his daughter’s dismay, played by relative newcomer Mia Threapleton (The Buccaneers) in her first Wes Anderson film, he uses the most underhanded tactics to get his way, including slave labor and causing famine in areas of operation so people have no choice but to work for him and take his meager wagers.  Make no mistake, Zsa-Zsa Korda is a terrible person, an awful father, and perhaps an even worse husband, as he’s currently on three dead wives, with rumors swirling that he murdered them, including Liesl’s mother.  But he has this Rasputin-like ability to survive the many attempts on his life—the multiple plane crashes, of course being the most dramatic, but this is a guy who tests everything he eats and drinks for poison, and with good reason.  I mean, I kind of want him dead and he’s the protagonist.

Meeting with Liesl, they see each other for the first time in years and Korda tells her about the plan and tries to coax her into leaving the Church so she can fulfill these duties he’s trying to thrust upon her.  Initially hesitant, due in no small part to her belief that, as rumors say, Korda murdered her mother, Liesl resists and states her devotion to the Church.  He emphatically denies it, of course, but there’s still doubt in her mind—and yours, when you’re watching.  Eventually she’s convinced after a dinner at his large home with her brothers.  It’s an odd affair, as there’s no fondness between father and sons and Korda’s staff is treated with indifference.  One of the sons says that the soup is good, so Korda summons her to tell her so by banging his foot on the floor twice, prompting the cook to come upstairs.  You can see the real apprehension in her face; she has no idea what will happen when she gets up there.  The meeting between Korda and Liesl is absolute comedy gold.  There’s a deep strangeness between the two and when Liesl finally acquiesces, they go so far as to replace her rosary with a more secular one—the absurdity of the statement left me laughing out loud.  Now, to be fair, I don’t know much about Catholicism, but I’m pretty sure that the rosary is inherently tied to religion and I can’t imagine how you would have a secular version of that.

In the background of all this, there is another scheme in the works, as a shadowy meeting of competing business tycoons and governments who are threatened by Korda convene to find a way to neutralize him.  After all, if someone keeps trying to kill your protagonist, you’ve got to figure that someone is out there orchestrating the whole thing.  And indeed they are, but in this case, the cabal says that killing Korda is over the line; they just want to ruin him, not take him off the map entirely.  Which, I suppose is good and an interesting introduction to one of the main themes of the film, morality and sincerity.  We see two opposite ends of the spectrum at the beginning of the film: Liesl, the pious aspirant nun, fully sincere in her beliefs in what was considered a traditionally moral organization, and Korda, as cutthroat a businessman as you can imagine, someone who only values money even over life and is only barely convincing when he says that he would never murder anyone (or have anyone murdered, which I feel is a distinction that, if you have to make in the first place, casts serious doubt on anything you say you would or wouldn’t do).  The cabal here represents the first of many gray areas that get introduced in the film; obviously they’re not the best folks out there, but they do have lines they won’t cross, which suggests some sort of moral compass within them.  And not one from religion, that’s for sure.   

After Liesl joins up with Korda, he replaces his tutor, a person he hires to teach both him and his children things about their areas of expertise.  The last tutor, you may remember, was bifurcated when the plane in the opening scene went down—he was the passenger who died.  Enter Bjorn, played by Michael Cera (Arrested Development, Barbie), a professor of entomology and some other unimportant disciplines.  It surprised me when I realized Michael Cera has never been in a Wes Anderson film before, because he’s such a natural fit.  He has that deadpan awkwardness down to a highly skillful degree and fits in so well with all the rest of the delivery in Scheme.  It’s pithy and quick, but no one ever makes a joke in the fiction of the story.  It’s purely an absurdist measure—in the world of the narrative, this is how they act and it’s perfectly normal.  But from the outside looking in, I would wager that Scheme is the most laugh out loud Wes Anderson film I’ve ever seen.  I spent a couple hours whiling away time in a hotel room this weekend watching Happy Gilmore 2 and because I couldn’t put together a coherent thought about it other than “I didn’t like this”, I dove into Scheme when I returned home and found myself laughing out loud even more than I was cringing at Adam Sandler’s antics. 

The casting choices are many of the Wes Anderson mainstays, like Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Tom Hanks, Richard Ayoade (another perfect fit for this kind of deadpan comedy), Scarlett Johansson, Willem Dafoe, and Rupert Friend, and seeing a newcomer like Michael Cera bed into his first Wes Anderson movie so well shows off why Anderson is so keen to work with the same people over and over again.  There’s obvious aesthetic and vibe to Wes Anderson films and its makes sense to work with actors who are on board and familiar with it already.  There was really only one other notable newcomer to the Wes Anderson ensemble (outside of Mia Threapleton, of course) in the form of Riz Ahmed (Rogue One, Sound of Metal); a small role, but acted well with a surprising amount of laughs generated from the dramatic actor and rapper.  I was surprised not to see perennials like Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzmann, and Owen Wilson in the film, but that’s fine, because it was packed with tons of great actors and actresses in mostly very good cameos (I’d say only Scarlett Johansson’s casting felt off; her character and performance were very forgettable in a movie full of noteworthy performances).

Speaking of Wes Anderson’s aesthetic and vibe, Scheme has it in spades.  It immediately looks and feels like a Wes Anderson film, and if that’s a positive for you, then I think you’d definitely like this.  It’s even set in 1950 to help fit that aesthetic.  If you’re on the fence about Anderson, it’s still worth a shot; but if you absolutely can’t stand him, you’re not going to enjoy the film because he’s not doing much different with the way he’s making his film here than he does with the rest of the films he’s made thus far.  But there is one thing that struck me as very different from the movie that got me to perk my ears up and start to revisit his work after being kind of a Wes Anderson hater for much of my life, Asteroid City.  Yes, both movies are stylized and at least somewhat absurd, but Asteroid City drew me in with its portrait of profoundly sad people in a very strange situation.  From there, I gave The Darjeeling Limited a try and while it didn’t beat out Asteroid City for me, I liked it quite a bit and it was also about profoundly sad people.  I don’t know what it says about me that as I get older I am enjoying and identifying more with movies about sad people in strange situations, but there you have it.  However, Scheme isn’t about that; Liesl is lonely, sure, being in a convent and all, and I’m sure Korda is lonely as well, living a solitary life despite being surrounded by staff and children, and fending off near-constant assassination attempts is its own sort of intimacy, I suppose.  But I wouldn’t describe either of them as sad or depressed.  Longing, perhaps; looking for something that’s missing in their lives, even though they don’t quite know what it is yet.  But not sad.  And I think that’s what lends itself to this more overtly comedic film; even though there is depth to it, it is very funny.  In a way, the idea of seeking morality and sincerity in a world of chaos and relentless mercilessness is funny in itself, but not in a “ha ha” funny kind of way, more in an odd funny way.  However, Anderson and the cast bring this absurdity out to you in expert fashion.

But it’s not just funny, there is depth here.  Yes, there’s a lot of religious imagery and every time Korda has a near death experience or even nods off unexpectedly, we’re treated to a black and white vignette of Korda meeting his maker, being judged for his actions, and all the stuff that tends to come along with that.  What ensues is a journey between two opposite ends of the morality spectrum.  Liesl faces temptation, both in the form of both Korda’s money, always a corrupting influence, and Bjorn, who is immediately smitten with her.  What we see throughout the film is a painting of people trying to find acceptance and understanding of themselves in a mad world.  The idea of living a moral and sincere life that comes from within yourself instead from an external source, like religion, runs through the entire film—it starts with a despicable protagonist and ends with something else.  Korda has to learn a new way of interacting with the world as he realizes that he is indeed incomplete with the life that he’s been living.  Every major character in the film needs to change to live a life true to who they are and a good one as well.  So on top of being really quite funny, it’s a fairly beautiful film and I kind of can’t wait to watch it again.

The Phoenician Scheme may not make a fan out of a Wes Anderson hater, but if you’re open to his very distinct style of filmmaking, the brisk 1 hour, 41 minute film is worth your time and it’s available for streaming on Peacock.  With a 77% RT score, I was, like Liesl, hesitant myself, as I’ve discussed the curse of corporate mediocrity in the 70% range, but this doesn’t fall into that trap at all.  I, for one, am looking forward to revisiting even more Wes Anderson movies that I might have passed over because this is three in a row now that have really spoken to me.  It’s a movie that asks you to help yourself to a hand grenade and in this case, my answer is an emphatic yes, please, I’ll take one.

Lone Wolf and Stub—The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Well, it’s that time again.  Another trip to the celluloid cathedral for me to tell you about.  As a reminder, this Lone Wolf and Stub series of posts are spoiler-free looks at movies I went to go see in the theater.  Today, I want to tell you about The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

It’s no secret that Fantastic Four movies in the past have failed miserably.  In the pre-MCU days, we had Chris Evans, Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd, and Michael Chiklis portray the title family and that was the most successful movie we’ve had from the foursome, enough to get a sequel even worse than itself.  Then we had the utterly misguided misstep that was the Miles Teller-led Fant4stic, and the less said about that movie the better.  I did watch it once, but it had the effect of a white noise machine; it made folding and putting laundry away a welcome distraction from paying attention to that disaster of a movie.

I was cautiously optimistic after Thunderbolts*, but everyone knows that one home run doesn’t make for an MVP season and whether or not I would allow myself to be hopeful that the MCU was turning things around would hinge on subsequent films.  And now with First Steps, I can officially say I think the MCU is on the road to recovering the magic it had lost.

If you’re not familiar with the Fantastic Four as a group, they are four explorers: Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm (later Richards), and Johnny Storm, her brother.  While in space, they were bombarded with cosmic radiation that forever altered their DNA.  Reed became Mr. Fantastic, a full size version of Stretch Armstrong.  Played by Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent), a man of whom I am a big, big fan, in one of the most well acted, touching, and emotional roles I’ve ever seen him play.  It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch (I’m sorry for the pun) to say that his performance in this movie gave me faith in the concept of fatherhood again.  Almost, anyway.  Ben Grimm comes back as a large rock monster kind of insultingly called The Thing, and this time he’s played with absolutely sincerity and warmth by Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear, The Punisher, which I suppose means we won’t be seeing his return in any future Punisher projects).  Sue comes back as the Invisible Woman, with the power to turn invisible, as it says in the name, and create powerful force fields.  Played by Vanessa Kirby (Mission: Impossible, The Crown), she is the heart and soul of the Fantastic Four, and probably the strongest member of the lot, both in power and emotional fortitude.  Not only that, Kirby stands out in this film, delivering a wonderful performance I can’t wait to sit down and watch again.  But stealing almost every scene is Johnny, who returns as the Human Torch, able to catch fire and fly, played by Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things).  In a role that easily could have been obnoxious, Quinn plays it with an earnestness that is incredibly endearing.  And how could I forget H.E.R.B.I.E., the Wall-E style robotic assistant to the Four, who is almost almost too adorable?  And no, I don’t know what it’s an acronym for and that doesn’t bother me one bit.

They made some very smart decisions with First Steps.  Instead of doing another origin story, we see the group already established and an explanation of what happened, quickly at the beginning of the film.  It allows them to get right into the story they want to tell rather than retreading the same ground that’s been done before, in a paint-by-numbers exercise.  Another thing they did was give proper stakes by setting it in a different universe than the sacred timeline; because you know when someone wants to eat Earth-616, it’s not going to happen.  Because all my stuff is there.  But here on Earth-828, anything could happen.  The 1960s retrofuturistic style of the film gives it a unique look and feel compared to the rest of the MCU films and allows for a very fun and interesting aesthetic that draws you into the world.  A complete opposite turn from Fallout, this is the clean, kind version of the retrofuturistic world, the kind of thing you can imagine Walt Disney thinking up when he opened Tomorrowland in 1955.  Normally I don’t like multiverse stuff because a lot of that is an excuse for “shocking” moments that ultimately mean nothing because your protagonists are usually tourists in an alternate reality, but in this case, you’re there with them.  Their struggles feel real, the people feel real, and, well, when faced with impossible odds, a win isn’t necessarily guaranteed.  And all those people who feel real feel like they’re in very real danger.  It also avoids questions like “Where are all the other superheroes?” because there aren’t any.  The Fantastic Four are the protectors of their world, it is up to them.  No one’s coming to save the day, they’ve got to do it themselves.

On top of all that, First Steps is an incredibly wholesome and heartfelt movie.  Where Thunderbolts* had a great message couched in a lot of snark and darkness, First Steps is the kind of movie you can watch with your kids after Thanksgiving dinner because there’s something there for everyone and very little that parents wouldn’t want their kids to see.  The violence is largely sanitized, the swearing is basically nonexistent, if that’s something you care about, and while there are some scenes that could be a tad bit scary for the youngest of viewers, I don’t think it’s too much for most kids to handle (ultimately, you the parent would have a better grasp of what your kid as an individual can handle or what you want them to be subjected to than I am, and it is PG-13, so, at your discretion, of course).  This movie is the beacon of hope—not just for the MCU—that I’ve been hoping to see on the silver screen and for that, I love it.  I want to see this movie again and I can’t wait to give you a full post on it in the future.

Dial M for Murderbot

Being human is hard.

So being a robot has to be easier, right?  Sure, you don’t get a say in things, but at least all you really have is the task you’re assigned and you don’t really have aspirations or disappointments.  Robots are basically appliances; I’ve never wondered if my toaster wants more for itself and I’m pretty sure my microwave doesn’t lie awake and night thinking it hasn’t done enough with its life.  No, it just spins things around and makes them hot for the specified amount of time.

Meet our protagonist, Security Unit, standing guard at a mining colony in a corporate-owned dystopian future (think Weyland-Yutani without the pesky Xenomorphs), as he (the security unit is mostly referred to as “it” throughout the series, but for clarity, I’ll be referring to the the bot as he or him because the Security Unit is portrayed by a man, but the unit itself doesn’t really express a gender identity) watches a bunch of rowdy miners engage in some bacchanalia.  But he’s not just any security unit.  As he’s standing there, he’s finishing the hack on his governor chip, the overriding control unit that ensures he complies with any orders he’s given and, perhaps most importantly, does not harm the people he was assigned to protect.  He essentially hacked his way to free will.  Pretty impressive, but also a scary prospect when you think about it.  Here’s a sentient man-shaped robot that has guns in his arms and has been enslaved since the moment he was born, if you want to call it being born, and now he can do whatever he wants.  And the first thing he wants to do is give himself a name.  And that name is Murderbot.  Yeah, I thought it was concerning too.

Murderbot is AppleTV’s new streaming series, based on the book series The Murderbot Diaries written by Martha Wells, made up mostly of novellas.  The titular bot, or an artificial construct, called “SecUnit” by his clients, is played by the easily hateable Alexander Skarsgård (if you’ve seen Big Little Lies or Succession, you’ll know what I mean, though that’s really a testament to his abilities as an actor), but in this role, his detached performance is decidedly endearing.  For whatever reason, in the fiction of Murderbot, these Security Units are made with a mix of inorganic and organic parts, so they look like human beings in suits.  Most people, the corporation that manufactures and leases them included, treat them as simple machines, equipment to be used and updated and discarded, so they don’t even know these bots have faces, because they’re always hidden behind a mask.  But after being assigned to a group of hippies from the Preservation Alliance, a sort of independent commune planet from outside the Corporate Rim, Murderbot reveals his face to calm down one of the crew when another is attacked by a wild creature.

What goes on from there is the eternal struggle—how do you do your job without the people you work with noticing how strange and different you are while you try to secretly watch TV, hoping that nobody notices that you have free will and the ability to exercise it?  The PreservationAux team is fairly naive and trusting, even going so far as to being uncomfortable with the idea of having a SecUnit in the first place because they consider these artificial constructs to be people and not possessions.  But one member of the team, an augmented human called Gurathin, played by the always excellent David Dastmalchian (Late Night with the Devil) is immediately suspicious of SecUnit’s behavior, which puts SecUnit on edge.  If he’s discovered, the team will be obligated to report him to the Corporation as defective equipment and he’ll have his governor chip reinstated or get the acid bath.  He has no reason to trust them and they have no reason to trust him—after all, his experience with humans has left him with a pretty low opinion of the species (and, well, I commiserate) and they are distrustful of anything corporate (and, yeah, I commiserate).  After the attack on the PresAux team, they discover that their maps are out of date and some of their systems aren’t working properly, which sets up the central mystery of the series.

Positioned as a comedy, Murderbot runs for about half an hour per episode with a ten episode season, and it delivers on funny moments.  I’d say I got about one big laugh out loud moment in each episode, with several smirking chuckles in between, but more than that, I found the central mystery and story of the series to be very compelling, aided by the interspersed action sequences that are peppered in, often ending each episode in a cliffhanger that leaves you craving more.  There’s a lot of funny here, sometimes it’s in the form of SecUnit’s own observations, sometimes it’s the PresAux team, sometimes it’s the soapy Star Trek like show where the captain falls in love with the navigation bot, but you’re not going to be falling off your sofa because you’re laughing so hard; it’s dry, it’s observational, it’s not flashy.  The show within a show is called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, which is every bit as over-the-top as you’d expect from a Trek-like soap opera starring John Cho, Clark Gregg, and Jack McBrayer.  It’s got a certain amount of ridiculousness to it that is incongruous with the rest of the comedy in the series, but it’s nice have that contrast.  If you like a dry humor and good action, you’ll find yourself craving the next episode as soon as the credits start to roll on the one you’re watching.  In fact, I watched the entire season in just two days and it felt like I flew through each episode, forcing myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour, otherwise I might have finished the whole thing in one sitting.  If you’re expecting a full on sitcom, you’ll be disappointed (that’s what reruns of The Office and Parks and Rec are for), but there are still plenty of laughs to be had—and like many of my favorite comedies, there is an undercurrent of sadness that runs through it.  And like much of the best science fiction, Murderbot is always asking the question of us what it means to be human and what the human experience entails.  SecUnit is always observing human behavior and is generally surprised by how these people react; in the aftermath of the attack, one PresAux member starts to head to the site to retrieve their equipment and when he’s warned off it because his life is worth more than the equipment, SecUnit is taken aback.  He’s never worked with any client who has felt like that before.  To everyone else in the Corporate Rim, people are replaceable, but losing equipment hurts the bottom line and that’s what really matters.

Despite the fact this is set in a dystopian spacefaring world, there is something of a Star Trek feel about Murderbot.  SecUnit may be a piece of corporate-owned equipment in a corporate-owned reality, but there is a certain amount of optimism that’s foundational.  SecUnit wants to be seen as an individual, in the way that Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation wants to be seen, though he doesn’t necessarily want to be human.  Because of his role as a robot security guard with incredible observational abilities, he has taken in tons and tons of human behavior that often disgusts him, because humans are messy and irrational and selfish, so he doesn’t romanticize humans.  The funny thing about that, though, is that he’s so human already.  He has anxiety, he feels depressed, and he dives into his comfort shows to help deal with that.  SecUnit has Sanctuary Moon the way I have Bob’s Burgers.  He has trouble understanding human relationships, he doesn’t know what his purpose is once he’s found a way past his programming.  Just like any person, he’s still figuring it out; what’s more human than that?  SecUnit’s struggle is incredibly relatable—after all, much of life is finding our place in the world, that’s what makes being human so hard.

There are some moments where I wonder just how the PresAux team could be so naive and some moments I wanted to yell at the TV because what they were doing (or in some cases, not doing), was so illogical to me that it gave me a visceral reaction, but there was nothing about this that seemed overly stupid of them.  Yes, there are many moments where characters in shows and movies do things that are unbelievably irrational or nonsensical for the purpose of moving the plot forward that it can be jarring.  But there are a few things that help Murderbot in this regard.  First of all, the PresAux team is never claimed to be the best and the brightest at anything.  And while they have their core competencies and areas of expertise, they’re not billed as being the smartest people capable of doing all things.  They’re introduced as being from a simpler place, a communal planet that seems to have a post-ownership society; compared to the people in the Corporate Rim, they’re seen as rubes, even though they’re not, they’ve just chosen to live life in a different, less exploitative manner.  And not only that, the characterizations are very consistent—people act in line with how you’d expect them to react in their situations given their previous behavior, consistently within each character.  One is full of bravado and confidence in the face of danger, even though they missed weapons training, another is preoccupied with their love life, and more than anything, they’re all concerned with everyone’s well being, perhaps to a fault.  They are naive, but in a very sweet way.  And it’s nice to see that sort of naivety and innocence in characters who aren’t just young and not world-weary yet or in need of becoming cynical to survive, but rather ones that are idealistic and complete in their natures.  The point of the show isn’t that SecUnit needs to become a little more like them and they need to become a little more like him, the point is that every person (or robot) needs to live the way they think is right.  The show does come down on the side of empathy more often than not, which, again, is nice to see.  It’s not quite Ted Lasso and Murderbot is definitely not Hilda, but there is a warmth and kindness in how this show plays out, the dystopian backdrop playing a strong foil to the PresAux team’s good nature.  And if I were to pick a group of people to usher in a construct who calls itself Murderbot through his burgeoning free will, I would think the guns in his arms are in good hands with them.  As a character-driven show, good characters are a must, and Murderbot has them.

Murderbot is premium quality entertainment for sure, as SecUnit himself would put it, and it’s already been renewed for season two, with plenty of books out and more incoming, so there’s no worry about getting invested in something and then seeing it cancelled out from under you—luckily, Apple TV seems far more willing to invest in their shows, giving them the time and resources they need like they have with Severance, than other streamers like Netflix and Prime Video.  I highly recommend giving Murderbot a watch.  With episodes ranging between 22 and 34 minutes, I would suggest watching it like a two part movie if you can—watch the first five episodes together and then watch the last five together.  I’m normally against binge-watching, but in this case, the way Murderbot is structured lends itself to watching multiple episodes at once.  But even if you can only catch an episode here or there, it’s still worth your time, because it somehow turns deep human concerns into relatively light entertainment and that is something really nice.

Straight Outta Gangnam

This is possibly the most preposterous setup for a movie that I can remember bringing to you, even more so than using improv comics to train undercover cops—throughout the ages, singers have been using their songs (and weapons, of course) to fight demons and protect our world, a tradition now carried on in the form of K-pop idols.  In the case of Netflix’s new film, KPop Demon Hunters, it’s the girl group Huntr/x, made up of Rumi, Mira, and Zoey.  Rumi’s mother was a K-pop singer and demon hunter herself and died when Rumi was young, so she was raised by her mother’s bandmate and Huntr/x’s mentor Celine (voiced by Yunjin Kim).  Mira was the black sheep of her family, never fitting in, and grew up ostracized from them.  Zoey is a Korean-American, born and raised in Burbank, living with one foot in two different worlds, balancing on the tightrope of her heritage and her surroundings.

With a little exposition and flashback, we get to the first scene of the narrative.  A stadium full of screaming fans.  A nervous manager wondering where his group is as their plane flies inexplicably away from the stadium.  Then we finally get to meet Huntr/x, aboard their jet, devouring snacks Monkey D. Luffy style to carb up for the show.  When the manager, Bobby, played by Ken Jeong (Community, he can never die), calls them to ask where they are, they notice some odd things about the flight crew.  Watering plants with coffee (I can’t imagine that’s good for them), unable to work a seatbelt, and then the telltale sign—purple patterns on their skin.  Yeah, turns out the flight crew is all demons and we get the first musical number of the film.  And it’s a pulse-pounding pop anthem that gets your toe tapping (or more if you have rhythm, which I, sadly, do not).  The fight is a fittingly exciting and inventive combination of music and action from the studio that brought us the Spider-Verse films (though the creative team is different and the animation is unique, you can see the DNA).  It’s a very strong opening to the film as they make it to the stadium for their show.

After the demons are vanquished, they get a dressing down from the Demon King, Gwi-ma, voiced by Squid Game alum Lee Byung-Hun.  He’s interrupted by one demon, called Jinu, singing a folk ballad about Gwi-ma losing his grip on Earth to the songs of the demon hunters and he proposes a bold strategy: create a demon boy band to take away the fandom of Huntr/x, which is the power that keeps the demons at bay.  There is a magical barrier that keeps Gwi-ma from taking over the Earth called the Honmoon and it’s powered by the songs and the fans; the more fans they have, the stronger the barrier.  The more together and enthusiastic the fans are, the stronger the barrier.  The demon Jinu strikes a bargain with Gwi-ma—help him take over the Earth by defeating Huntr/x in exchange for Gwi-ma erasing his memories.  Feed Gwi-ma enough souls and he’ll be free.

Just at the start of Huntr/x’s two week vacation, Rumi decides to surprise release their next single “Golden”, a catchy empowerment tune about their personal stories.  However, not all is well with Rumi—at the end of the show, her voice started to go, as she was losing the ability to hit some notes.  It’s at this point, it’s revealed to the audience that Rumi has some of the same markings that demons do, and through a series of touching flashbacks, we find out that Rumi’s father was a demon and she was instructed by Celine to hide her patterns.  We also see the shame she feels and the extent to which she hides her patterns from her bandmates, always skipping out on group activities like going to the bathhouse, where her body would be exposed (these Korean bathhouses, called jjimjilbang, are like spas).  All this happens in the first 15 minutes; this movie does not hang around and it has no interest in playing hide the ball.

When they contemplate announcing why they had to cancel the show and contacting Celine for guidance, they recite Celine’s mantra word for word: “We are hunters.  Voices strong.  Your faults and fears must never be seen.”  A subtle nod to gender biases in society, where women are pressured to act a certain way or be deemed weak or pushy.  This is further underlined by the next scene. They go to a quack doctor (voiced by Daniel Dae Kim, Lost reunion!) to have Rumi’s voice looked at and they stumble upon a street concert by the Saja Boys, the demon boy band.  Their song is pure bubblegum pop—literally called “Soda Pop”—a lovely, catchy, generic song about the catchy generic pop fluff that goes into that kind of song.  There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s fun, it’s romantic, it taps into that thing that makes songs like that popular.  But it shows a stark difference in their music—Huntr/x’s tracks are strong, powerful songs of empowerment and the Saja Boys show up with lyrics like “You’re my soda pop” and are immediately almost as popular as they are.  Even the outfits are diametrically opposed.  Huntr/x wears dark and bold colors, the Saja Boys’ outfits are bright, with loads of pastels and florals, very flirty and light by comparison.  Huntr/x has been at this for at least five years, but all it takes for the Saja Boys to rival them is one catchy single and some abs and people go crazy for them.  With one little bow, they get audiences swooning over how respectful they are, something that kind of just should be baseline for anyone.  It highlights without smacking you in the face that things are just easier for them.  Now whether there’s some sort of magic that’s helping them gain popularity isn’t clear, but I don’t think there is.  I think it’s just effective social commentary.

Huntr/x clocks them as demons immediately and during a fight, Jinu, now the lead of the Saja Boys, catches sight of Rumi’s patterns.  And very demon-like of this demon, he realizes this is a weakness that he can exploit—because she has shame that she’s hiding.  What happens next is a clandestine meeting between Jinu and Rumi, arranged by a magical and strange looking tiger with a hat-wearing crow friend.  The tiger is really unnatural and cool, oddly cute; I really love this design choice.  It screams magical in a world that has all this secretive magic going on and it’s just so neat to look at and enjoy.  The crow is also quite interesting—I know I mentioned the hat already, but it’s also got more pairs of eyes than you’re used to seeing on a crow.  They’ve both got a very Studio Ghibli feel to them in a movie that’s very much in the aesthetic world of Into the Spider-Verse, grounded in reality.  In this meeting, Jinu tells his story to Rumi, haunted by it and his shame for the last 400 years, because Gwi-ma forces him to relive it constantly, with a ceaseless voice in his ear.  This not only humanizes Jinu (and by extension, other demons), it also introduces the main theme of the movie and it’s one that’s terribly, terribly relevant.

Shame.  Shame isolates.  Shame cuts us off from support.  From each other.  Shame destroys.  And sharing those things, the things that make you feel shameful that you should have no shame over—your past, your sexual orientation, your gender identity, or, in this case, your parentage—makes the weight of carrying them lighter.  People carry so much with them all the time that it creates this burdensome feeling, a feeling that is not easy to shake off.  Rumi has no control over who her father is, yet she’s compelled to hide who she is as a result.  In isolation, her shame grows and therefore so do her patterns, robbing her of the thing she values most, the thing that makes her the hunter she is—her voice.  And in this, she faces even more shame and fear.  Letting Mira and Zoey down, losing grip on the Honmoon and the protection of Earth.  She carries so much on her shoulders and because she’s has to keep this secret, there’s no one there to help her lift it up.  Rumi goes so far as to call her birth—and subsequently her entire life—a mistake.  That’s shockingly depressing and a very deep notion to touch on for what is ostensibly a kids’ movie, but it’s genuinely wonderful that the writers are willing to go there and handle it with such care.  I know there are people who have felt this because they were different from others—in fact, I know people personally who have felt this.  The idea that being different is some kind of mistake that you should be shameful over is entirely destructive.  And Demon Hunters has the courage to make this a central theme to the film and I absolutely love that.

In fact, I absolutely love this movie, full stop.  The animation is incredible and while nothing visually gives you the same chills as that moment in Into the Spider-Verse, so many frames of this are just pure art that you would want to put up on your wall (and I definitely would).  It’s almost expected at this point that Sony will deliver in the animation department and it’s still enough to blow you away.  What has become a Sony signature, and now a staple among many animated films, the way the animation style shifts is always such a visual delight and a skillful flex by the animators.  I should take a moment to address the thing that’s making this movie such a sensation, even though it’s hardly as impressive to me as the rest of the film, the music.  As much as K-pop isn’t my genre, I’d struggle to say there’s a song I didn’t like, even the so-sweet-it’ll-make-your-stomach-ache “Soda Pop” with its purposely infectious melody and catchy refrain works for me.  The music is also synched so well with the action sequences, it reminds you what was missing from Across the Spider-Verse (a fantastic movie in its own right and more than a worthy sequel to the basically perfect Into), which eschewed the strong, original, thematic hip-hop soundtrack in favor of an original score.  It lost a little of its identity (I hope we’ll see a return to that for the sequel to Across) and Demon Hunters has personality in spades in large part due to the original soundtrack. 

It may not be a perfect film—other than Jinu, I wouldn’t even call the Saja Boys stock characters, they’re little more than backup singers.  They have no personality and very few lines, if any, outside of the songs.  Just about no characterization occurs with any of the Saja Boys who aren’t Jinu, but it’s not so much a flaw as a side note; they’re the bad guys, they’re literal demons, we get it.  The bigger issue is that Mira and Zoey aren’t given nearly the same care that Rumi is and their stories happen quite quickly.  Indeed, Rumi is the main character of this story even though on its face it seems like it’s supposed to be about all three of them, but with what a sensation this has become, I hope there’s room in Netflix’s budget for more depth in the future.  There’s a lot there that could have been said, but wasn’t.  Mira’s background is interesting, cast out from a wealthy family for being different, although how she’s different exactly, other than her fashion choices and Daria-like attitude, is not really examined, just stated.  When we were introduced to Zoey’s story, I was excited to see that explored in a film, because that’s my background.  Sure, not Korean-American specifically, but I am a first generation Asian-American born in the US, having to balance on that two world tightrope myself; I wanted to see that told in a movie this big.  But it’s just a few words here and there that speak to her background.  I was dying to see more about Zoey’s upbringing and her struggles, but, again, it’s Rumi’s show.  Not that I’m complaining because Rumi’s story is extremely compelling and deeply realized, but it’s definitely left me wanting more from Huntr/x’s trio.  The movie is only 95 minutes long and it feels like every frame is jam packed; we definitely could have had more time in this and I wouldn’t be opposed to a director’s cut that gives us more of this film (though I don’t know how feasible that is for something animated).

A few problems aside, this is one of the best movies I can remember seeing in years.  I don’t think there’s been another movie that I just wanted to start over once the credits rolled since The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.  While its themes are well-trodden, its execution is what makes it a standout.  It was such a surprisingly emotionally resonant film for me, which goes to the power of music in general, but also to the strength of the storytelling—narrative, visual, and aural—of Demon Hunters that makes it such a fully a realized film.  I want to call it successful, but not in the metric of watch-hours or clicks or whatever, I mean as a self-contained story, it’s well done in that it succeeds in doing what it set out to do.  I’m not going to lie, this movie hit me much, much harder than I ever thought it would, making me feel pretty close to how Pedro Pascal feels about Paddington 2 (I agree with him)—I cried for the entire thing, it made me want to be a better man.  What makes this movie so special is how it approaches sensitive topics with care and thoughtfulness, the strength of its self-acceptance message, and its reminder that as much as our worries—our shame—can force us into isolation, the burdens of life are better carried with people who are there for you and you for them.  And that through leaning on each other to prop each other up, we can get through far more together than we can alone.  This movie takes a fluffy premise and gets into deep concepts and if more blockbusters would do the same, I think we’d all be having a better time with movies and we wouldn’t be getting more recycled franchises.  KPop Demon Hunters is a movie that stands on the shoulders of others and delivers an original idea without an established IP because the people behind it put care in every step of its creation and trusted its audience to understand its message.  It’s a must watch.