Watched: Get Out, Ex Machina, John Wick 3, The Magicians s4, Professor Marston..., Her, I Am Mother

[juushika]

That thing were I finally figured out I really can get movies through the library, and have thus been getting through some of my not-on-Netflix backlog, has taught me to watch movies again—without the restlessness or need to multitask that usually accompanies visual media longer than ~40min. It's a pleasant ability to relearn.


Get Out, film, 2017, dir. Jordan Peele
I had a rough start with this, but once I clicked with the The Stepford Wives-vibes, cutting but satirical & stylized, this really worked for me. The girlfriend reveal was—maybe not the tipping point of success, but certainly the moment when I realized that success: being denied that one last good thing pointed out my own biases (re: expectations of what are "good things") and showed me the strengths of its ruthlessness.

Ex Machina, film, 2014, dir. Alex Garland
Of the "beautiful female robot causes problems between white knight and inventor" genre, this is easily the best, but the bar is admittedly low. There's not a lot of surprise to the reveals, and the end feels cheap, a sort of heartless exaggeration for thematic payoff. But the truth is I appreciate the themes and particularly the ending, which manages to defy expectations of what women "owe" men but moreover reframes expectations of AI ethics and AI identification with humanity.

John Wick 3: Parabellum, film, 2019, dir. Chad Stahelski
The scene with the working dogs is everything I love in this series: the writing and characters are charming and trope-aware but absolutely secondary to "what gimmick haven't we used in a fight? what setpiece, what style? how can we frame it in the most satisfying, competent way?" Like, I don't have a lot to say, but I did hugely enjoy.

The Magicians, season 4, 2019
I never watch things as they air, so I'm never caught out by shows suddenly fucking things up—a good thing, because this does really fuck up. But I also find that character suicide, particularly of disabled/neurodivergent characters, functions as wish fulfillment for me. It's still a problematic trope, and I agree with criticisms of it, especially in this particular, but that was a fun thing to learn about myself! And by fun, I mean distressing!

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, film, 2017, dir. Angela Robinson
I enjoyed the hell out of this. There's something about framing atypical love through that particular tropey, sweeping, orchestral, glowing lens so common in romance that feels fresh and lively and yet so effective, resting on the expectation that because these are obvious romance cues, the viewer will accept the romance—and playing that against the tension of social deviation in poignant but also playful, sexy ways. Researching to see the way this deviates from history was a more complicated experience, and the frame narration fits that playful tone but also gets preachy; there are caveats. But, oh, this was just delightful.

Her, film, 2013, dir. Spike Jonze
I'm crazy about AI waifus, both as a personal life dream but also the easiest, biggest example of the way we conceptualize AI gender and why it's problematic. ...Yet this manages not really to be about that? So much time is given to embarrassing social satire, towards creating a world of exaggerated distance and sentimentality; the more interesting speculative elements are pushed to the very end of the movie, leaving itself little time to follow-through. Would that they came at the midpoint, because AI emotional & conversations capacity (as opposed to emotional/conversation ability; as opposed to knowledge/processing capacity) is so interesting, and could have dovetailed nicely to the otherwise-traditional (in that quirky indie way) romance & interrogation of the magic pixie dream girl trope. I liked this, despite its humor, thanks in large part to Johansson's lovely voice work—but I liked it for its potential more than its actuality.

I Am Mother, film, 2019, dir. Grant Sputore
The easy worst in my AI film binge. It has such a predictable source of tension and the reveals rests on the viewer not considering common-sense elements of how AI consciousness/embodiment works. (I enjoy elements of robot embodiment like wear and tear and repairs, and the way it could explore robot/human physical intimacy and robot body horror. But that it's a reveal that Mother isn't a single unit housed in the mother-robot-body, that Mother is instead networked and has sensors in every room and is lots of other robot bodies, etc. is outright ridiculous. It engages robot-body issues raised previously (who made repairs when the daughter was a baby? who made repairs between daughters?) to underwhelming, obvious effect; and the idea of a super intelligence limited to a single corporeal form would be really bad design, but a robot living a single corporeal life in a super-future-tech-bunker is ridiculously improbable. So the reveal depends on the protag + viewer being trope-unaware, and refusing to interrogate the worldbuild, and refusing to think about how AI do. It's such a pivotal fuckup that later reveals of "Mother was the extinction event, Mother is the global conspiracy," feel even more predictable and shallow just by proximity—and, to be honest, they're not that robust in the first place.) So if the acting is fine, or the idea has potential, or the atmosphere decent (except for the exterior shots, which the special effects can't support), which is all true, it honestly doesn't matter because the underlying concept is so bad.

Comments

[ambyr]

I enjoyed the hell out of this. There's something about framing atypical love through that particular tropey, sweeping, orchestral, glowing lens so common in romance that feels fresh and lively and yet so effective, resting on the expectation that because these are obvious romance cues, the viewer will accept the romance—and playing that against the tension of social deviation in poignant but also playful, sexy ways

Huh--it is really interesting hearing how this movie came across to someone with (I think?) a more monogamous mindset. I found it a difficult movie to watch as a poly person because the romance hit every painfully familiar beat I recognize from poly forums and real-life observation as those of a particularly common and catastrophic type of failed poly relationship.

[juushika]

Nah, I'm poly, but currently in orientation rather than practice (b/c spoons) & with a social group that's about 50% ace and 50% poly-but-in-orientation-b/c-spoons, so I probably have a different view on poly culture, more theoretical/idealized, certainly with "closed triad holy grail" feelings picked up from media. That said, I can totally see or guess at those familiar beats of failure.

But a lot of my identity & personal history with/as poly stems from the very messy transition from assuming I was monogamous, or rather assuming that polyamory was a sort of ... fictional/theoretical thing and not Real, not For Me—to realizing I was polyamorous in my attractions, and struggling to navigate that (ethically, or at all!) from within an until-then monogamous relationship. I didn't have a Professor Marston-experience re: the relationship dynamic, but did similar fucking-up re: communication and self-knowledge, and it was a lot of work to see things through successfully. So I'm fascinated by fiction that covers the same territory, in part to see how it reflects or idealizes my own experiences—but also because I imagine there must be more baby-mes out there, internalizing from fictional representations that maybe polyamory actually is for them.

And I want that! It's something I wish I'd figured out sooner, and that I want others to figure out, even if they're in monogamous relationships. I want realistic depictions of the problems navigating from mono to poly dynamics, but I also want the idealized ones that gave me hope. ...I also imagine that that idealized view can lead baby-poly folk into those exact same pitfalls; the answer, as always, is probably just: more stories, more non-fiction information, more visibility, and more representation from within the community instead of external works like this film.

[starshipfox]

Ahh,I loved Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. I just found it so much fun to watch, and I liked the relationship between Olivia and Elizabeth so much. I don't watch a lot of movies -- probably for the same reasons as you, so it's good to hear you've been able to relearn the ability!