Skyfall: Random Observations

• My goodness, the Bond franchise really is 50 years old now, ain't it!
• Good to see this franchise reboot has completed the character-development arc begun with Casino Royal, of Bond transforming from an angry, reckless young recruit into the classic Connery-era gentleman, complete with fine Oxford suit, Q, and Moneypenny.
• I only wish the Martin DB5 had had more to do.
• The caretaker of Skyfall lodge: that role was totally written for Sean Connery, wasn't it.
• Man, Javier Bardem really just played his same character from No Country For Old Men, didn't he.  When he and Bond first met, I half expected him to flip a coin and ask Bond to guess which side.  At least I got to see Javier die this time.  (I admire the Coen brothers' technical proficiency, but seriously, I hated No Country For Old Men).
• "And what is your hobby, Mr. Bond?" "Resurrection."  Given the stubborn tenacity of this franchise's vitality through multiple actors, directors, incarnations, etc, that was probably the most meta line of the movie.
• Javier Bardem's character was also just a rehash of 006 from Goldeneye.
• Come to think of it, he was also the computer hacker from Goldeneye, as well.
• I think it's officially time we retire the ol' "He wanted to be caught!" plot-twist--the Joker already used it 4 years ago in The Dark Knight.  Shoot, Loki used it just this last summer in The Avengers!
• The motorcycles atop the rooftops feels like it was from a Bourne film--and James Bond needs to be the O.G., not the copycat of his manifold imitators.
• I believe this is at least the third time Bond has faked his death--first time in You Only Live Twice and again in Die Another Day.
• But maybe I'm being too harsh on all of Skyfall's Bond-trope re-treads: perhaps these re-treads were all, like the Martin DB5, winking references to how this film was taking the series back to its farthest roots, to the point of actually showing us Bond's ancestral birthplace.  In order to take this series into the future, this film first had to go deeper into Bond lore than any previous film had dared go.
• If so, then perhaps the film's most meta moment instead belongs to Bond's decision to finally be one step ahead of Bardem by returning to the distant past.  
• Final verdict: Skyfall's better than Quantum of Solace (which I still defend, btw), but Casino Royal remains the best of the reboot series.

Election Day Facts

I hope I have treated my conservative roommates and friends with the same respectful deference as I am sure they would have shown me if Tuesday's outcomes were reversed.  Nevertheless, I feel the need to express my gratitude, for as I woke up Wednesday morning, I was reassured of certain American facts:

• My friends with pre-existing conditions will continue to have access to health care.
• The uninsured and underinsured (myself included) will not be left all alone in a medical crisis.
• Rape apologists do not get elected in this country.
• Millionaires and billionaires cannot just buy elections, Citizens United be damned.
• Voter-restriction laws backfire.
• Bosses cannot intimidate employees into voting a certain way, for we are free Americans.
• Anti-Union referendums get voted down across America--including the South.
• Auto-workers will keep their jobs.
• Minorities believe their voice can be heard--and they are growing.
• Those who would make the rich richer through further tax-breaks while expanding the world's largest military, all at the expense of literally everyone else, will not be setting policy.
• A Utah Democrat in a gerrymandered district can still defeat a Tea Party radical.
• A brazenly opportunistic and flagrant liar will no longer serve as the most prominent face of my faith--nor will he be leading my country.
•  And perhaps most comforting of all: after living near all my 20s in the ultra-conservative bubble of the Idaho-Utah corridor, I was reminded that there are far more Americans who think like me than I realized.  

Please don't get me wrong, none of us are naive--this country still faces many grave and perilous problems in the coming weeks, months, and years, none of which magically disappeared Wednesday morning.  We are as divided and polarized as before.  But for all the manifold things wrong with America, it was nice, for once, to wake up reminded of all the things that are still right.

Young Goodman Brown: How It Should've Ended

(Please first read the classic Nathaniel Hawthorne tale of devils and witches meetings in Puritan Salem here.  The original ending is one of those Inception-y ambiguities that leave the reader unsure of what exactly happened.  But as one of my students said yesterday, the story really should've ended like so!)

...Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?

Be it so, if you will. But, alas! it was a dream of evil omen...for Salem!

Our Goodman Brown, thou seest, was Salem's truest black-smith, and didst spend the remaining day in shop.  With fire burning and furnace blazing, Young Goodman Brown swung hammer upon anvil, ceaselessly and with great exertion preparing for the great cleansing he knew must shortly come to pass.

As the Salem sun lowered upon another day, Young Goodman Brown didst at last emerge from the doors of his iron smithy, his face and clothing blackened with the soot and ash of his forge; a most curious sight didst the Goodman present as he marched down the streets of Salem town, with multiple muskets of black-powder, loaded and ready, strapped across his backside, and blades of steel in crucifixes dangling from his sides.  

Again was the good old minister taking a walk along the graveyard, to get an appetite for dinner and meditate his sermon, and again did he bestow a blessing, as he passed, upon the most curious of visage of Goodman Brown. Hardly had the good minister spoken, however, when Goodman Brown didst straightway remove his first musket from his arsenal, and without warning or remorse blew away the good minister with thunder.

In a fright, Old Deacon Gookin didst emerge from his stately old home in a wonder at the thunder--"what wizard dost thou pray to!" shouted the Goodman, and didst thrust a blade of steel through the air, and direct into the heart of the poor Gookin.

Continuing down the streets of Salem, Young Goodman Brown didst again spy Goody Cloyse, that excellent old christian, catachising the young girl delivering her evening milk.  With one fluid motion, Goodman Brown didst launch a lasso with one hand, by which means he grappled and drew away the endangered child, and with the other hand removed yet another musket and blew the witch through her front porch door.

In great alarm didst all of godly Salem emerge from their habitations, armed hurredly with pitchforks and torches and a general aclaim of, "Forsooth!  A devil hath possessed Young Goodman Brown and he dost go on murder spree!  Burn him, burn him!"

"Ha-HA! Hypocrites, villains, fiends, devils!" cried out Young Goodman Brown, a fresh loaded-musket in each extended arm pointed at the encircling townsmen, "Didst I not behold the each of thee in the Devil's worshipping assembly the night previous?  Clamber not to confuse nor distract me, for I have beheld thine true visages.  Dissemble no longer!  It shall not save thee."

"Goodman! My dearest Goodman!" came the plaintive cry of his goodly wife Faith; her voice was strained and her eyes redenned by her hours of sorry weeping since her husbands stern reproach of that morning, "Of what dost thou speak?  I knowest not what wickedness hath possessed thee, but I pleade, drop thy instruments of death, by the love of all that is just and holy--"

"Just and holy, BAH!" shrieked our Goodman, "Seek to deceive me no longer my wife, for didst we not behold each other in the wicked one's awful baptism of yon fortnight!"

"Goodman!  Oh, dearest Goodman, I knowest not of wost thou speakest!" cried Faith despairingly, "Dost thou not well discern and behold, that it be not we who deceive thee, but the devil himself, who hath gained possession of thy soul?"

"Be it so?" said Goodman, "Then what of this?!"  And from his left gun hand, Goodman Brown let fall a single pink ribbon.

Absently did Faith Brown check her own hair for the pink ribbons.  "Why, Goodman Brown, thou hast, um, recovered mine purloined ribbon --"

"Fiends!" cried out Goodman Brown at the steadily closer creeping crowd, brandishing his muskets wildly, "Stay back or feel my holy vengeance!  Tell me this alone, my dear Faith, didst thou resist the wicked one?  Art thou a witch as Goody Cloyse?!"

"Witches?  Good Cloyse?" cried Faith, "Really?  The woman who taught thee thy catachism?!"

"Aye, yeah verily," intoned Young Goodman Brown deeply, "and she was all anointed with the juice of smallage and cinque-foil and wolf's-bane--"

"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe!" came the cackle, as Goody Cloyse, a most awful and otherwise-mortal ball-and-powder wound gaping from her face, emerged from her front porch and on broomstick, "Thou knowest the recipe well--and be that thy epitaph!"

And with another cackle and a cry, she flew threw the air at Young Goodman Brown.  In an instant, he dived to the side and escaped her assault, but not before his lasso latched the sweep end of her broom and was carried off into the sky with her.

Wildly did she navigate her broom between the buildings and over the trees of Salem town, struggling to smash the dangling Goodman into any of the edifices and obstacles below.  But Young Goodman Brown held fast, climbed the short length and onto the flying broom itself.  With a bloody thrust, he drove a steel blade through her heart, threw her desecrated corpse to the streets below, and now rode the flying broomstick like a surfboard.

"Behold!  Forsooth Young Goodman Brown hath uncovered our secret forms!" cried the townsfolk, "The need for appearances is past, destroy him!"

Quickly and frighteningly, the Salem townsfolk didst transform into werewolves, vampires, and witches, and with one accord attacked the rampaging Goodman Brown.

But Young Goodman Brown was prepared.

Soaring close to the ground his broom stick, Goodman pulled out his specially-forged three-shot repeating-musket, and fired trios of molten-silver-bullets into the charching werewolves, killing them instantly. 

The witches flew after him, launching fearsome fireballs from their accursed hands--Goodman on broomstick avoided these weapons adeptly--allowing the fireballs to destroy the surrounding stately buildings--and as he did so, let loose spinning steel blades that didst sail through the air and decapitate the witches, each in turn.

The vampires set flight through the air blood-curtling screams--yet before they could react, Goodman Brown lassoed them in with strings of garlic cloves, and whilst they now screamed in painful agony, he didst drive a crucifix-handled-stake into their hearts.

But then, without warning, an awful lightning bolt pierced the sky, which threw Goodman Brown from off his broomstick and into the Salem graveyard.  Quickly recovering from this most unwelcome shock, Young Goodman Brown arose to his feet, to behold in the cemetary gates, sillouetted against the burning hell-flames of Salem town, the sable form of he, the traveler with the withered staff, with whom he had discoursed the night before.

"Well, well, well..." said the image of his grandfather, Old Goodman Brown, "It appears the Young Goodman has disavowed the heritage of his race..."

"Thou art only of a race of fiends!" cried Young Goodman Brown, preparing a pair of blades—one emblazoned with John 3:16, the other with Romans 12:19— "And thou art not my grandfather!"

"Indeed!" laughed the sable form, "Thou art not, for mine children cannot die!"  And with a maniacally laugh, he raised his hand, and the corpses clawed their way out their graves. 

Suddenly zombie-Puritans marched on Young Goodman Brown with a wicked moan, intent on tearing him limb from limb. With violence and precision, Brown swung his blades through the air, decapitating each of the walking-corpses with a speed and swiftness that defied the eye to follow.

The cemetary was now littered with putrid corpses, and filthy buckle-hats and bonnets strewn about.  Young Goodman Brown turned to face the sable form.  "No more images," he intoned, "No more tricks.  Show yourself!" The traveler dropped his withered stick, cracked his knuckles, and said with a suddenly deeper voice, "As you wish."

In an instant the Old Man’s clothes ripped off, as his red-muscles greatly expanded to three times their size, his cloven-feet tore open his boots, and great horns sprouted from his head. The terrible form towered high over head, his eyes glowing red.  Young Goodman Brown prepared his battle stance.

But at critical moment, as the Demon fired his lethal lightning bolts from his eyes, a witch on broomstick sped by and snatched away our Goodman. "Faith!" cried out Young Goodman Brown, "Thou hast saved me!"

"I didst not resist the wicked one," confessed Faith, "And was indeed initiated into his assembly, and became a witch myself, my beloved husband.  But now I repent, and use only my witch's powers for good!"
"I'll allow it," said Young Goodman ruefully.

But now the Demon had turned around and was firing lightning bolts from his eyes at the erratically flying pair of lovers.“I’ll destract him,” said Faith to Goodman, “Do what you must!”  And with a passionate kiss, Goodman leaped off the broom and into the burning town, sprinting to his blacksmith shop.

The Demon roared with rage, as Faith flew wildly through the air, defying his eye-bolts.  So enraged was the wicked form that he did not notice Goodman Brown emerge with a shoulder-cannon of sorts, loaded with a barrel of holy-water.

He took aim.  “Hasta la vista,” he said, and fired his artillery into the beast’s open, roaring mouth.

The Devil stopped, chocked, staggered—bright beams of holy light shot out of his mouth, eyes, and ears, as he screamed in pain—and then, in a massive mushroom cloud, the Devil was blown to smithereens, taking wicked Salem with him.  Young Goodman Brown only walked away, not looking behind him.

Faith snatched him up on her broomstick, and they kissed passionately as they flew across the sky before the rising full moon.  “Let’s haul ass to Rhode Island!” said Faith.  “You got it babe!” said Goodman.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!