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If you told me last year that one of the best films of 2025 was Rental Family, I wouldn’t have believed you. It took me awhile to get this one due to a late February release in Japan and some other writing projects that took up my time, but I’ve finally seen it. My opinion now could not be more different. When I first heard about its premise featuring an American actor working for a family rental agency in Tokyo, the only thing that really caught my interest was that it starred Brendan Fraser in the lead role. I consider him to be among the best actors alive and knew that his performance would at least provide some entertainment. Rental Family’s titular subject, however, gave me some pause.

The story follows Phillip Vanderploeg, an American actor who has been living in Tokyo for a few years. Phillip is no celebrity, but he makes an irregular living as the token foreigner needed for commercials and background bit parts on television shows. One of these day jobs eventually gets him working at a company which aims to provide temporary companionship for the countless lonely souls living in Japan’s exhausting capital city. It’s almost like prostitution, but instead of sex, people in the “rental family” industry work to fill a lacking emotional or social absence. Phillip naturally has serious reservations about his new occupation, but he soon begins to realize there may be more to it than just fakeness.

Hiring who are essentially paid actors to play family members, friends, lovers, or other roles to keep up social appearances is indeed a real service in Japan, but it’s often something that Western media uses to portray the country as “weird” for the sake of entertainment. The exaggerated urban legends around used panty vending machines or the misconception that Japan has more adultery than other countries come to mind as other similar clickbait stories. In reality, rental families are a very niche business that most Japanese people would likely not be comfortable using or find rather sad.

This, however, is where Rental Family truly surprised me. Pretty much every fear I had about this film exoticizing Japan vanished during the first act when it became clear that this would be an intelligent screenplay about believable human drama. Phillip is naturally our audience surrogate, but he isn’t a clueless foreigner. He’s lived long enough in Japan to speak the language at a reasonably conversational level, and the code-switching with Japanese people who speak fluent English will be familiar to anyone who has lived here in a similar situation. Brendan Fraser’s performance is fantastic and despite having only phonetically memorized Japanese for his role, he could pass fine for your average expat.

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My late father was a violinist for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, so music was naturally an integral part of my own life growing up. I was raised (reluctantly) learning how to play the piano and violin, the latter of which I took up until the end of high school. Having lived through the entirety of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Dad didn’t come from an educated background. He survived that tumultuous world by getting a job with the Peking Opera as a violinist, which eventually allowed him to get a scholarship to leave China, study in Switzerland under the tutelage of Yehudi Menuhin, and make his way to the United States where I was born.

With that in mind, you can imagine how it was essentially impossible for someone from my kind of familial background to not have regular encounters with The Sound of Music. Dad ensured it was one of the first films my younger brother and I watched when we were old enough to understand the basic plot. Pretty much all of my Chinese musician relatives know the main melodies of the songs even if they don’t fully understand the words. If you were brought up on classical music, good luck trying to avoid Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most famous musical.

To be frank, I long resisted The Sound of Music. As a kid I thought it was long, boring, and hardly befitting of my attention which could have been spent on more exciting films for a six-year-old. Like Stairway to Heaven, the songs themselves were so ingrained into America society to the point of nausea. Why would I want to watch the film when my mandatory elementary school music classes insisted on drilling “Do-Re-Mi” into our heads for the billion time while the children’s concerts at Heinz Hall that Dad dragged me to inevitably went ham on The Sound of Music?

Fast forward to 2015 and much had changed. I was now in the last year of high school, had more appreciation for classical music, and was spending the better part of that period religiously practicing John Williams’ theme from Schindler’s List for my senior solo performance. I was in a better state of mind to watch The Sound of Music and as luck would have it, the Hollywood Theater in Dormont was showing the film again for its 50th anniversary. A bit older and wiser (as much as a high school kid thinks he can be), I was able to drop my prejudices and appreciate the musical for what it was — a completely uncynical crowd-pleaser deserving of its classic status.

Jump ahead another ten years for the 60th anniversary, and things are once again very different. I’m married, living in Japan, my student musician days are long behind me, and Dad has sadly passed away. When I saw that The Sound of Music was being reissued on a 4K UHD Blu-ray boasting a brand new restoration, I decided to watch it again for old time’s sake. After loading the disc, the sweeping mountains of Salzburg and Julie Andrews’ dulcet tones once again greeted me like old friends. I was completely hooked.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown so disillusioned with the lack of seriousness Hollywood treats most of its tentpole releases in the last decade, but rewatching The Sound of Music reminded me of when going to the movies was an event. The best ones remained with you for the rest of your life, especially if it was a family affair when everyone took the time to get together for an evening to see the magic on screen. Apart from that, the sheer color, life, and beauty to The Sound of Music immediately resonate because they’re no longer modern conventions in movies anymore. Are the songs still schmaltzy and a bit lame if you actually sit down to contemplate their lyrics? Sure, but you never doubt for a second that this is a film which proudly wears its heart on its sleeve.

In fairness, many film critics even in 1965 thought that The Sound of Music was overly sentimental, sickeningly saccharine, and an old fashioned relic out of touch with the polarized social climate of the world (has that really changed?). Read reviews by writers like Pauline Kael and you’ll walk away with the impression that this film was some kind of horrible war crime that pushed the art of cinema back decades. Kael called it a “sugar-coated lie that people seem to want to eat” in a scathing piece that supposedly got her fired from her job at McCall’s magazine, though her former editor denied this. It wasn’t just the notoriously grouchy Kael who felt this way, either. Joan Didion was less vicious, but criticized The Sound of Music as “more embarrassing than most, if only because of its suggestion that history need not happen to people … Just whistle a happy tune, and leave the Anschluss behind.”

60 years later, however, and I’d argue that we need the optimism of The Sound of Music more than ever. Yes, the story does border on manipulative with how it draws emotion out of the audience, but you’d have to be the most cynical person on the planet to believe that its intentions were ignoble. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer carry the picture thanks to their raw talent, but also because their interactions with the child actors are so undeniably charming. Andrews in her prime was truly a once-in-a-generation voice, while Plummer was simply one of the greatest actors who ever lived. When you pair them with kids who were perfectly cast and directed, I’m not sure how you couldn’t be enthralled.

As an adult viewer more familiar with the history of World War II, I now have a better understanding of the film’s anti-Nazi themes. Somewhat similar to Casablanca, there are undertones of resisting tyranny at a time when the world is content to do nothing. The sudden tone shift after the intermission from a whimsical musical to an anti-fascist picture is admittedly somewhat jarring, but with context it’s clear to me that The Sound of Music is about the last days of innocence in the 1930s before the world went to hell in a hand basket. It’s loosely based on the 1949 memoir about the actual von Trapp family, though emphasis really has to be placed on the “loose” part as director Robert Wise freely admitted to wanting to create an entertaining film over something that accurately documented history.

Now that I’ve seen The Sound of Music on multiple occasions, I don’t think you can dismiss its emotional pull as naive sentimentality. “Edelweiss” when we hear it the first time is about a father trying to reconnect with his children after shutting them out, but its reprise is when things really get powerful. Knowing that complete Nazi rule of Austria cannot be stopped at this point, Captain von Trapp refuses to cede his principles and instead chooses to leave his homeland with a mournful farewell. The lyrics take on a new meaning that things will be better one day and that the light can shine through the darkness. Given the world that we live in now, it’s a message we all need to hear.

And of course, The Sound of Music remains an everlasting technical marvel. Its latest release is a textbook example on how studios should treat old films with the proper 4K restorations they deserve. The breathtaking outdoor vistas look better than ever, and some of my favorite moments are actually the more intimate closeup scenes. Like many classic Hollywood movies of the era, the cinematography relies on soft focus to create a warm or “waxy” effect that elevates the emotions on screen. It’s the sort of natural visual flair that can only be done to this kind of effect on actual celluloid film. While a lot of things are possible today via digital manipulation in post, the old fashioned analogue techniques are basically a lost art now. I’m not saying that the industry should or even can go back, but rewatching these works restored to their full glory reminds us of what the best of the best once looked like.

So yes, I’ve finally come around to accepting The Sound of Music as part of the canon of great films. My Fair Lady and Singin’ in the Rain rank slightly higher for me when it comes to musicals, but The Sound of Music likely has the most universal appeal. Despite the very different cultural background my father originally came from, it having been one of his favorite films is a testament to how it reaches people worldwide. That also holds true here in Japan where the film is a beloved classic. It’s a bittersweet feeling knowing that Dad is no longer around, but I was happy to create new memories watching it with my wife this time. We certainly plan on showing it to our own eventual children one day. That’s the true beauty of The Sound of Music — it’s meant for every generation.

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Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

Note: This review is spoiler free.

Polished white tile floors and ceiling. Walls lined with posters advertising an assortment of jobs and services. A hallway that appears to go on forever. Unnerving ambiance. Wandering middle-aged salarymen. This mundane setting could describe any one of Japan’s hundreds of underground metro stations, but most today would associate it with The Exit 8.

This viral indie video game took millions of players by storm both at home and abroad ever since it hit Steam in 2023 with a simple, yet ingenious concept. Via the first-person perspective of an unnamed commuter, players are trapped in station passageway that has no end. To escape, you must spot “anomalies” each time you maneuver through the very brief stretch of walkable space which loops to the beginning again after turning a couple of corners. These anomalies can be as small as an out-of-place advertisement or as large as a literal tsunami heading in your direction. You turn back if you spot these curious differences, but keep going if nothing seems amiss. Master the right order and you’re home free out Exit 8.

Emerging from its humble origins as a solo project by a developer named Kotake Create, The Exit 8 quickly went on to become one of the most profitable indie games of all time. Its success was so massive, it spawned a sequel, manga adaptation, a light novel, and now a film of the same name. I was out of the country when Exit 8 opened in Japanese cinemas last August, but finally got around to it this week after it was made available for rental on Amazon. It was just announced for release in the United States on April 10, so I expect there to be renewed discussion pretty soon.

I confess to missing most of the initial hype around The Exit 8 and only played it for the first time earlier this year, though you can chalk that up to my habit of being late to the party for most things. I was already aware of all the memes and parodies spawned by the game, so the concept of a cinematic take on what amounts to a walking simulator that can be cleared in about 45 minutes left me quite skeptical. Against all odds, however, Exit 8 is not only one of the best film adaptations of a video game ever made, it even enhances the interactive source material it came from.

I’ve long believed that video games and films should typically stay as separate mediums without trying to ape each other too much. As interactive entertainment, the best games use that unique element to their advantage and tell immersive narratives via player control. Films, on the other hand, are passive media and come from over a century of tradition in photography, acting, and sound design to attract audiences to their worlds. Rarely do the two mix successfully. Video games that attempt to be like movies often end up as pretentious imitators at the expense of their actual gameplay, while movies that try to adapt games are usually made by people who don’t understand or respect the medium. Even if some cinematic aspects are competent, the interactivity no longer being present can destroy what made the video game worth playing in the first place.

Exit 8 avoids these pitfalls by telling an original story set in the game’s familiar setting while being clear from the start that this intended to be a film which stands on its own. Those who know the game will appreciate a few references such as the protagonist initially doing the same things as first-time players; he tries to open locked doors, takes pictures of his surroundings to remember the anomalies, and makes mental notes to himself. That’s really where the cheeky nods end, though. With a runtime of 95 minutes, there clearly needed to be more substance than what could be found in a standard YouTube Let’s Play video.

Director Genki Kawamura wisely chooses to focus on the inner psychology of his characters. The nameless protagonist, referred to as The Lost Man, initially could be a stand-in for the millions of Japanese commuters who take the subway every morning. The opening track is Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, one of the most famously recursive compositions in musical history. The ad nauseam repetition of doing the same monotonous routine each day between a dull job and lifeless home is the obvious initial theme of Exit 8. Much could be said on how that applies to Japan in particular, but the film’s story adds effective emotional tension by establishing the central conflict as being between The Lost Man and his estranged ex-girlfriend who finds out she’s pregnant right after their breakup. Exit 8 then becomes something more introspective about unwanted fatherhood, responsibility, and societal pressure.

The Lost Man’s journey through the infinite corridors of the metro station can be viewed as him literally being stuck in a time loop, but the more interesting interpretation to me is viewing the whole thing as a metaphor for his own spiritual and emotional journey. Perhaps less obvious to Western viewers are the subtle Buddhist themes. The religion, which plays a large role in Japanese society alongside Shinto, has the concept of samsara or the never-ending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Beings trapped in this dynamic are perpetually suffering, while the chosen few who manage to escape it achieve a state of enlightenment known as nirvana.

To reach nirvana, one has to undergo the Noble Eightfold Path. This centers around following the Buddha’s teachings in the following eight areas: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. An eternally repeating cycle of suffering and mastering eight principles to exit out of it? While no one behind the original game or film has explicitly confirmed the Buddhism connection as far as I’m aware, the similarities are too striking for it to be a coincidence. Exit 8’s short runtime means that things have to move ahead at a certain place, but pretty much all of these themes feature at some point throughout the film.

I won’t spoil how other characters play into these events or what visual surprises Kawamura includes. With that said, Exit 8 is a more thought-provoking film than your average cinematic adaptation of a video game. It even keeps much of the game’s visual language intact by going for an unbroken “one-shot” style of cinematography similar to Alfred Hitchock’s Rope and Sam Mendes’ 1917. There are obvious cuts and scene changes, but you never feel taken out of the illusion. Everything comes together smoothly by the end, and I walked away with the impression that Exit 8 was evidently made by people who cared. Kazunari Ninomiya, who plays the protagonist, is a gamer himself and actively worked with the director to ensure that everything players enjoyed was maintained.

With that said, Exit 8 isn’t perfect. Despite the intriguing themes, the characters themselves aren’t particularly interesting on their own. While the protagonist’s ordeal is palpable, I would have liked to see a tad more insight into his backstory beyond what was shown and the other characters get even fewer details. Some viewers may just find the whole thing too pretentious for its own good and the premise as more experimental rather than a baseline for a compelling film. Indeed, those who were more reserved with their assessment of the video game believed it was closer to a solid proof of concept and too brief to satisfy as a standalone work.

Still, Exit 8 regardless of medium is about audience patience and open interpretation. It’s admirable that Kotake Create attempted to do something few games apart from perhaps Hideo Kojima’s cancelled Silent Hill teaser P.T. ever explored with its creeping atmosphere of psychological horror in liminal spaces. Exit 8 as a movie expands upon that base with an engaging story, impressive cinematography, and effective sound design. Even with the interaction removed, it all largely works because the game and film are meant to be companion pieces to one another instead of the latter being a cheap pastiche of the former. With video game movies likely to replace superhero movies as the next big thing, Hollywood should take notes from Exit 8 on how to honor the source material.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

About ten minutes into Seven Samurai, one can see a young man walking through the streets of a bustling town. He is clearly a samurai, but not one of the titular main warriors in Akira Kurosawa’s jidaigeki epic. The character is nameless and unimportant the story; a mere blink-and-you’ll-miss-him background extra no one in 1954 would have paid attention to. Yet just a few years later, the man playing him would become known throughout Japan as Tatsuya Nakadai and later acknowledged worldwide as one of his country’s finest actors.

Over the next seven decades, Nakadai worked with Kurosawa again multiple times, as well as other acclaimed directors like Masaki Kobayashi and Keisuke Kinoshita. He acted alongside multiple generations of acclaimed Japanese actors from Toshiro Mifune to Hiroyuki Sanada, while also starring in Japanese stage adaptations of William Shakespeare and Arthur Miller well into his twilight years. Few Japanese performers from the mid-20th century successfully transitioned into the 21st, but Nakadai continued his appearances in film, television, and plays long after most of his contemporaries retired or passed away.

If one looks at most of the films Nakadai appeared in, he was often the sole surviving principle cast member due to him starting his career young and never ceasing to be prolific. Sadly, it was announced this month that Tatsuya Nakadai died of pneumonia at the age of 92 on Nov. 8, 2025. Among the last of Japan’s dwindling generation of silver screen icons who lived through World War II, his passing truly marks the end of an era. I’m not in the habit of writing many obituaries, but this is one of the few occasions I feel compelled to do so.

Western audiences will probably best remember Nakadai for playing opposite Toshiro Mifune in the Akira Kurosawa pictures Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and High and Low. Those films are stunning examples of his fidelity as an actor, skillfully pulling off roles from slick police inspectors to Edo era gun-toting gangsters. When Kurosawa turned him into the protagonist of his later jidaigeki films Kagemusha and Ran, Nakadai brought forth a powerful presence that commanded attention and made ancient Japan feel like a living, breathing place with human characters reminding us of our modern foibles.

Even more than his Kurosawa collaborations, my favorite films of Nakadai’s were the ones he did with Masaki Kobayashi. At the age of 27, he carried the entirety of The Human Condition trilogy released between 1959 and 1961. This nine-and-a-half-hour epic saga followed the tragic story of a Japanese idealist who begins World War II as a well-meaning, but naive labor chief of Chinese slaves in Manchuria to becoming a prisoner himself in the desolate Soviet POW camps of Siberia. It was a complex role that most older actors would struggle with, but Nakadai’s youth and commitment proved to be his assets.

Perhaps Nakadai’s best performance was in Harakiri, Kobayashi’s bitter attack on idealized views of the samurai class and a greater commentary on the dangers of dogmatic systems. The protagonist is a wandering ronin with a tragic backstory that slowly unfolds throughout the course of the narrative. What makes it all the more incredible is that despite Nakadai only being 29 at the time of filming, he convincingly plays a middle-aged samurai with an aura of bitter world weariness. The verbal back-and-forth he has with the antagonist played by Rentaro Mikuni proves to be just as thrilling as the film’s sword duels. To anyone wanting to get into Nakadai’s work for the first time, Harakiri is the place to start.

Despite these deadly serious roles, Nakadai off screen was described as one of the most approachable actors in the industry. He was known to be a practical joker when the cameras were not rolling and regularly made his co-stars laugh with humorous impressions. Not all his characters were fierce warriors or tormented lords, either. In the heartbreaking drama about Hachiko, Nakadai showed his warmer side as the loyal Akita dog’s departed owner. He even lent his voice for a few anime films like Belladonna of Sadness and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.

With over 160 films to his name, seemingly no role was too challenging for Nakadai to undertake. Whether his characters required physical action, deep pathos, lighthearted comedy, or a smooth tongue, it was practically guaranteed to be a knockout performance and often became the highlight of the entire picture. He was the kind of old-school Japanese movie star that no longer exists today. Tatsuya Nakadai’s passing closes a chapter, but what he contributed to cinema will live on for ages.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

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Note: This column is spoiler free.

In his lukewarm review of Tim Burton’s Batman, Roger Ebert called the 1989 cinematic take on the Caped Crusader a “depressing experience” and poised the question if the opposite of comic book is a “tragic book.” While I disagree with Ebert’s assessment of the film (I’m personally a big fan of Michael Keaton as Batman), I’ve always kept his review in mind with how seriously the superhero film genre has taken itself in recent years. Marvel and especially DC have opted to portray their characters in as drab a light as possible, following the same predictable story templates and seemingly forgetting that people read comics back in the day for their colorful worlds.

While it can’t escape all the tired modern tropes of the genre, James Gunn’s Superman is unapologetically a classic superhero movie that comes closest to the vision Richard Donner had for the Man of Tomorrow back in 1978. I wouldn’t consider myself a Zack Snyder hater by any means, but this brighter take is definitely what I prefer seeing of Superman. It gets the rebooted cinematic DC Universe off to a promising start, and the overall vibes are much closer to how most of the world views the iconic American hero. Well, it’s pretty debatable now if Gunn and DC still even consider Superman quintessentially “American” apart from scoring some culture war points, but more on that controversy later.

To get the good things out of the way, Superman wisely chooses to not waste the audience’s time with yet another origin story or a first act full of tedious exposition. Like any comic book you would take off the newsstand, the opening text brings everyone up to speed with this universe’s superheroes (referred to here as “metahumans”) and we cut to the action straight away. Arguably too much is happening, but I appreciated how Gunn sets up the lore and characters. The costumes look fantastic, the CGI is pretty good, and “fun” is the first word that came to mind as I was leaving the cinema. That’s what a Superman movie should be, right?

I wish I could end the review there, but the culmination of enough small nitpicks results in Superman being only a good superhero film instead of a great one which can be put in the same conversation of Spider-Man 2, The Dark Knight, Logan, and Richard Donner’s two films featuring the Man of Steel. The biggest flaw is ironically with Superman himself. David Corenswet looks the part visually with his rugged good looks, Hollywood physique, and the character’s trademark hair curl, but I felt taken out of the moment as soon as he opened his mouth. Apart from the voice being too husky and something off about the cadence, Corenswet in my eyes is closer to a good Superman cosplayer as opposed to an actor who convincingly embodies the character.

Like Sean Connery to James Bond and Hugh Jackman to Wolverine, Christopher Reeve will always be the definitive version of Superman. That’s obviously an impossibly high bar to follow, but what made his performance so memorable was Reeve convincingly pulling off the duality of the character. Many have argued that Batman is the real person and Bruce Wayne is the mask, but in the case of Superman, Clark Kent is indisputably the assumed persona. Kal-El is an alien from the planet Krypton and whatever civilian form he takes on Earth is meant to disguise that. Reeve certainly understood that assignment, but so did succeeding Supermen over the decades like Tim Daly and Henry Cavill.

In Gunn’s Superman, Clark Kent is only on screen for a few minutes and the ease in which people seem to accept Lois Lane dating Superman almost makes you wonder what the point of the character’s secret identity here is in the first place. I don’t think Corenswet is a bad actor, but I don’t buy him as the timid news reporter in what little we see. Even as Superman himself, he’s not necessarily that convincing as a the do-gooder boy scout either. He has his moments, but in other scenes Corenswet’s Superman comes across more as a whiny teenager who sulks and needs help from others rather than someone full of boundless positivity and optimism. A few of his lines could have benefited from additional takes.

Superman is admittedly difficult to write since he’s essentially a near-invincible demigod, but James Gunn seems to have wanted to be the opposite extreme of Zack Snyder in having him get beaten up as much as possible. The film was supposedly inspired by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman comic, though I don’t see much resemblance apart from a few aesthetic choices. Having read it in full before writing this column, I can confidently say that the two works are vastly different takes on Superman. Morrison understood the character’s psychology and personal flaws much better than Gunn did, which makes me wish it was closer to the film we ultimately got.

Instead, we’ve been delivered another James Gunn superhero movie warts and all. Taking a page from his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy for Marvel, you can expect quippy dialogue, humor that lands about two-third of the time, fast-paced editing, and charmingly bubblegum retro aesthetics. Gunn leans dangerously close to annoyingly cringe Gen X writing when his excesses aren’t reigned in, but Superman thankfully avoids having any notable eye-rolling moments. The Justice Gang (essentially the spiritual successor to the Guardians) consisting of Hawkgirl, Mr. Terrific, and Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern provides most of the comedy. Kendra Saunders, Edi Gathegi, and Nathan Fillion all have great chemistry together and I ironically enjoyed them considerably more than the titular protagonist.

If I sound overly harsh toward David Corenswet, I will say that I think there’s still plenty of time for him to get more used to the role in future DC films. He is by no means an awful Superman and I see further potential in him. What will undoubtedly be more offensive to purist audiences is a certain storytelling decision around Superman’s Kryptonian parents. I won’t get into it for the purposes of spoilers, but you can count me in the camp of fans who strongly disagree with what route Gunn chose. While it isn’t anywhere as bad as what Rian Johnson did to Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, it follows a similar pattern of Hollywood’s tedious obsession with “subverting expectations” and deconstruction.

On a more positive note, Rachel Brosnahan is exactly what I would expect from a Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult even moreso as Lex Luthor. While I wish we could have seen more of Clark Kent, this version of Lois has excellent chemistry with Superman. Hoult’s Lex is also a classically evil comic book villain with his piercing expressions and long monologues of wanting to destroy his nemesis. Morally complex antagonists are fine, but sometimes you just need a bad guy who is unapologetically a scoundrel just because he wants to be one. I look forward to seeing future Superman villains like Brainiac, the Toyman, and Mister Mxyzptlk appearing in this universe one day. Krypto as Kal-El’s canine sidekick is pretty cute too. He’s entirely a CGI character like Eagly in Gunn’s Peacemaker, but the effects are convincingly lifelike and a testament to how far the technology has come.

Despite all the genuinely good things Superman has going for it, the film couldn’t avoid controversy in the weeks leading up to its release. Coverage initially focused on the backlash from Zack Snyder stans who hilariously attempted a “boycott,” but I would chalk that up to a loud minority of teenagers and immature young adults having nothing better to do. The greater dispute came after James Gunn decided to turn his film into more fodder for a culture war via a comment to the press:

“We love our immigrants. Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants and if you don’t like that, you’re not American. People who say no to immigrants are against the American way.”

This unsurprisingly caused the MAGA movement to decry Superman as “woke,” even though the movie itself really doesn’t contain any kind of notable political posturing or preachiness. At the same time, something has to be said about Gunn attempting to have his cake and eat it too. Despite claiming that immigrants are “the American way,” Superman has no such references to the character’s iconic catchphrase and in recent years DC has moved toward eliminating it entirely. Both sides of this debate have a kernel of truth to them, but they’re missing the bigger picture.

Gunn is correct when he calls Superman an immigrant. The original creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both from Jewish immigrant families, and Kal-El being a literal alien outsider raised on American values makes the parallels difficult to ignore. You can find works analyzing Superman with that lens from decades ago, so it’s hardly a new concept. What Gunn and other liberals seem to be missing, however, is that Superman is an immigrant who assimilates. Endless compassion for outsiders is not a viable policy and as someone who has extensively written about immigration issues before, I’m not swayed by meaningless calls for “empathy” from elite celebrities who don’t have to deal with the consequences. It was a boneheaded move on Gunn’s part to wade into this debate in the first place.

You can’t go on about the “American way” when your film is quite lacking in the American way department. Gunn’s Superman follows DC as a whole trying to turn the character into a more universal, global hero. To give the MAGA side their dues, an argument can be made that too many in liberal Hollywood have become tone deaf and out of touch with the average American. You can certainly be critical of your own country, but you’ve lost the plot when it devolves into self-flagellation and this idea that one should erase Superman as an iconic hero representing the pinnacle of American values. As an American living abroad, I can confidently say that the rest of the world still associates Superman with the United States. That’s even one of the perceived reasons why the film is only showing modest box office returns overseas.

With all of that said, I’ll praise Superman for being an optimistic mainstream Hollywood picture after so much nihilism and cynicism. The pacing moves a bit too quickly for my liking and I’m not the biggest fan of Gunn’s ADHD-like approach to jumping from scene to scene, but his crowd-pleasing tone is what the character needs right now. I’m in general agreement with Chris Gore over at Film Threat that despite the film’s imperfections, it’s refreshing to see Superman spark some old fashioned comic book nerd debates over its storytelling decisions and that it will likely be most successful with younger audiences.

It’s also worth noting that it wouldn’t be a Superman movie without some blemishes and faults. Richard Donner’s Superman has an incredibly stupid ending and Superman II was infamous for being the odd Frankensteined result of two starkly contrasting visions because of its director switch, yet both are still regarded as classics. The less said about Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, the better. Superman Returns and Man of Steel have their dedicated fans, but few would argue them as being masterpieces. So really, James Gunn’s Superman is just following tradition. I’m glad that the new DC Universe has arrived with a generally respectable introduction. Whether it can stick the landing from here though is another question.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

True crime is one of my lesser-known guilty pleasures. Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been fascinated by strange disappearances, unsolved murders, and even a serial killer or two. There’s something about the unexplained and macabre that keeps me up at night, apart from when I’m not thinking about my next deadline or article to write. Geopolitics, Star Wars, and obscure foreign films no one has ever heard of aren’t the limits of my interests. I often wonder if that alleged photo of Tara Calico is real or not too.

At the same time, true crime is a lot like the horror film genre. You have to wade through a lot of schlock and terribly produced content to get to the stuff that’s worth your time. YouTube has gotten especially lazy with this sort of thing, with everyone and their mother fashioning themselves as an online sleuth who knows the answers to bizarre mysteries that aren’t actually mysteries. It’s reached the point where some channels don’t even try anymore — many are just AI voiceovers reading a script generated by ChatGPT. I’ll save my ire toward artificial intelligence destroying art and making everyone dumber for another day though.

Apart from YouTube and podcasts, the other main outlet for true crime is Netflix. Being a professional media company, overall standards for their documentaries are obviously higher, but there’s still plenty of rubbish programming. It seems that everyone has tried to ape the style of Making a Murderer, a popular series which came out a decade ago and was later revealed to have its own problems with bias. Many of these shows demonstrate considerable issues with how they frame their subject matter and some eschew the “true crime” label entirely. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story was a straight up dramatization of its titular cannibal serial killer, sparking controversy around whether it was exploiting the horrific experiences of Dahmer’s victims.

So it was with much trepidation that I dove into American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders expecting another tired Netflix true crime documentary with all the cliches, but walked away pleasantly surprised at what it accomplished. Across four episodes, director Zachary Treitz and his journalist friend Christian Hansen try to make sense of the mysterious 1991 death of Danny Casolaro. To make a long and very convoluted story short, the freelance writer had arrived in Martinsburg, West Virginia supposedly with the intention of meeting with a source who was to assist him on a story about “The Octopus” — a sprawling international cabal allegedly tied to the highest echelons of the U.S government with its fingers in everything from drug trafficking to assassinations.

If this spy novel-esque story couldn’t get any stranger, everything came to a screeching halt after Casolaro was found dead at the Sheraton. Housekeeping staff discovered him in the room’s bathtub with his wrists deeply slashed a dozen times and blood splattered everywhere. With no signs of a struggle outside the bathroom and a farewell note from Casolaro, police quickly ruled the affair a suicide. Yet even back in 1991, many who knew the intrepid reporter were not convinced and news stations across the country began raising questions around what actually happened.

For one thing, Casolaro was said to have been very squeamish around blood. He likely would have chosen a different method over something so gruesome if he was serious about taking his own life. In the weeks before his death, the man additionally told his family to not believe any reports of suicide. While none of that alone is proof of murder, police did not find the briefcase of notes that Casolaro constantly carried with him. Their subsequent investigation left out critical testimony from a witness who claimed to have seen someone visit his room and much of what he did during the final hours of life remains unclear.

Central to American Conspiracy is the parallel story of Christian Hansen who is shown dedicating over a decade of his life toward this case. Some viewers may question the decision to turn this documentary into a personal story, but it becomes apparent that there is a point. Whether Casolaro ended his own life or was murdered, his pursuit of uncovering a grand conspiracy and stepping on the toes of powerful people played a significant factor in his ultimate end. If he was indeed killed by some shadowy government organization, then it was because he ventured into a highly dangerous world. If he committed suicide, then it was the culmination of obsession driven or exasperated by mental illness. Either way, Hansen is aware that he too walks the same fine line.

After setting up the basic facts around how Casolaro’s body was found, American Conspiracy peels back the layers to several years previously with the Inslaw affair. A Washington D.C.-based tech company developed software dubbed PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information System) in the 1980s to assist prosecutors’ offices with their caseloads. The United States Department of Justice took an interest in PROMIS, but the firm accused them of illegally modifying the software for the purposes of surveillance. The two sides ended up embroiled in years of legal battles which Inslaw initially won, only for suspicious machinations behind the scenes to shift victory in the DOJ’s favor.

Casolaro’s investigation into the Inslaw affair supposedly revealed a greater web of connections tied to corrupt officials, contracted assassinations, and other unsavory transactions that sound exactly like the “smokey rooms and backdoor deals” image most associate with three-letter government organizations. Dubbing this network “The Octopus,” we learn of convenient deaths of inconvenient people, the possibility that multiple presidential administrations were in on the whole thing, and the exploitation of Native American land to facilitate illegal arms sales. The series could have easily devolved into another Netflix documentary after cheap sensationalism from here, but American Conspiracy instead proves to be something that is fully self-aware of what territory it’s entering. Treitz’s focus is on how deep the conspiracy could potentially go. The implications for this line of thinking are truly horrifying — there is no bottom to the rabbit hole for the committed.

One of the most disturbing scenes comes midway through when Cheri Seymour, a reporter who wrote the 2010 book The Last Circle on Casolaro’s death, is interviewed. She recounts a chilling meeting with Robert Booth Nichols, a wealthy businessman with possible CIA ties who is one of the key figures tied to The Octopus conspiracy. After telling her that “no journalist has done enough work to deserve to know” what happened to Casolaro, Nichols allegedly showed her the “real” version of the Zapruder film capturing the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the cut Seymour says she watched, the driver of Kennedy’s car suddenly turns around and shoots the president. After informing her that all public copies of the film are modified, Nichols dryly states, “Nothing is as it appears to be.”

Seymour and the filmmakers know that the above story is utterly ludicrous, but so should the audience. Nichols most likely showed a copy of the Zapruder film that he altered to discredit anyone who repeated what they saw. After all, no one can find this “real” version because it doesn’t exist in the public record. No one else apart from Seymour can verify that her meeting with Nichols ever took place. Say what occurred verbatim and you look like the unhinged one. Shut up about it and you’re back to square one — a catch-22. Or maybe none of this ever happened in the first place. American Conspiracy features many similar haunting anecdotes and tangents throughout its runtime, but it lets the audience come to their own decisions around who to believe and to what degree everything ties together.

Case in point, the Iran-Contra affair involved the Reagan administration illegally selling weapons to Iran in order to fund anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua. It’s a real political scandal written in the history books, but it started life as a conspiracy theory known only to a select few. Even after the subsequent fallout, Ronald Reagan continued his second term and Oliver North remains a successful political pundit who you can follow on social media. Like it or not, the public eventually got over what was a blatant abuse of presidential power and violation of congressional law. American Conspiracy suggests that Iran-Contra was possibly one piece of the Octopus web and it very well could be. Then again, the series also acknowledges that it isn’t hard to find threads between separate events if you look hard enough.

Unlike many other Netflix documentaries which are heavily skewed toward one conclusion, American Conspiracy is content to throw its hands up and acknowledge that it will perhaps be impossible to ever learn what went on in Casolaro’s room. Thanks to persistent FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, Treitz and Hansen gained access to new information which was never made public. These revelations give their series genuine value beyond any previous online investigations. The duo even consider the name of a possible assailant who would’ve had the skills, training, circumstances, and technical know-how to get rid of Casolaro. Due to several key witnesses and persons of interest having died in the ensuing years, however, this is still only speculation.

That may prove to be a frustrating coda for some viewers, but a true dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist is never really satisfied. By the end, Hansen himself has to decide when to call it quits and move on with his life or risk succumbing to the same obsession which led to Casolaro’s demise. Taking the red pill over the blue pill would not necessarily be salvation either. If there really is an octopus-like web of interconnected organizations and powerful men being controlled at the behest of the U.S. government, could anyone really stop them?

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

This piece was originally commissioned for The Spectator earlier this year, but never went to publication. It has since been reworked as an article exclusively for paid subscribers of Foreign Perspectives.

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Classic film franchises like Star Wars and Terminator have been run into the ground by greedy Hollywood executives with diminishing box office returns and critical reception. While new sequels to properties like these once generated great hype and excitement, these days you’re more likely to see thousands of cynically negative social media posts bemoaning the death of beloved IPs from fans.

Amid this environment of flopbusters and streaming services jacking up their prices, but hardly delivering on quality, George Miller’s Mad Max franchise has stayed consistently strong for 45 years. And that’s despite long waits between entries, the lead role being changed, on-set fights between actors, dangerous stunts that most insurance companies would balk at and expensive legal disputes.

Earlier this year, the 79-year-old Australian director once again crafted another worthy dystopian action roller coaster thriller with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the series’ latest entry which serves as a prequel and spin-off to 2015’s widely acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road. Despite generally strong reception amid critics and fans, Furiosa was unfortunately a financial flop and the future of the series now appears to be in jeopardy. Still, the film appears to be gaining new life on streaming services. I previously wrote about why Furiosa failed to impress at the box office and suggested several ways Mad Max could continue beyond the silver screen.

The journey to get here has been a long one. The original 1979 Mad Max was made on a shoestring budget with no intention of ever becoming a franchise. In retrospect, it’s a miracle that the right elements came together at the right time despite there being little promise of a hit. George Miller had previously been a medical doctor who later got into filmmaking with Bryon Kennedy whom he met and befriended while working in hospital. The gruesome deaths and injuries Miller saw from his profession, especially due to car accidents, were one of the main influences on the automobile violence later seen in Mad Max.

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Foreign Perspectives is gradually shifting into more paid content. Certain columns such as Bonus Perspectives and A Bit of Film and War will remain free for all subscribers, but articles like these will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

Deadpool & Wolverine is taking the world by storm, smashing R-rated box office records and being generally viewed as an entertaining crowdpleaser. I gave it a positive review last month, calling it a “love letter to what comic book movies used to be before the Marvel Cinematic Universe standardized the formula for better and worse.” Those who grew up with this era of superhero films will get far more out of Deadpool & Wolverine’s plethora of cameos than those who did not.

Indeed, the X-Men films walked so the MCU could run. Before Disney’s massive media franchise of blockbusters became the standard template for comic book movies, 20th Century Fox hit the ground running in 2000 with bringing Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s team of mutant superheroes to the silver screen.

Slickly directed by Bryan Singer and starring the likes of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, X-Men proved to cautious studio executives that superheroes could be taken seriously when adapted to film after being a success both with critics and with audiences at the box office. Well, mostly.

While X-Men and its sequel X2 were generally well-received, the quality of the franchise’s entries from the third film onward ranged from masterful to awful. The worst X-Men movies suffered from mismatched directors, poorly written scripts, and convoluted plots overstuffed with characters until the series eventually petered out in 2020 with Josh Boone’s utterly forgettable The New Mutants. 

Disney had bought Fox, and at this point the X-Men films almost felt like relics of a different age. James Mangold’s Logan and the Deadpool movies starring Ryan Reynolds were their last notable hits, being rare gems amid a sea of stale superhero films that audiences were (and still are) growing tired of. Deadpool & Wolverine is the most recent attempt to revitalize superhero films and is particularly notable for its adult-oriented R-rated content, but the road to get here was hardly a straightforward one.

Arguably the turning point for the franchise was 2013’s The Wolverine directed by James Mangold. Bringing the X-Men franchise to Japan, this film is largely forgotten by most of the public despite it being a more cerebral character study rarely seen in superhero pictures even today. This under-appreciated entry is one I’ve always championed, but moving to Japan twice since its original release has also given me a more informed perspective on how it depicts this country.

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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is excellent. Out of everything that has come out in the first half of 2024, it easily ranks as one of the best and is probably among the better films released in the last five years. A prequel and spin-off to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, it delivers similar levels of high-octane action, while arguably being the most fleshed-out and lore-heavy entry in George Miller’s Australian post-apocalyptic franchise.

But this isn’t a review of Furiosa. If you’re a long-time fan of the Mad Max series as I am, you were likely already there on day one and will probably be back multiple times. If you’re less familiar with these films, I still recommend seeing it, especially on the biggest cineplex screen you can. It’s the kind of movie that IMAX was made for.

Instead, I’m here this week to talk about failure. Specifically, why Furiosa is doing so poorly at the box office. Despite premiering on Memorial Day weekend, one of the most lucrative seasons for new Hollywood films, the Fury Road prequel only brought in a paltry $31 million, while as of this writing it’s earned a total of about $119 million against its $168 million budget. When you also factor in marketing costs, the film just breaking even seem unlikely.

Those are very disappointing numbers to put it lightly, but I believe multiple factors have contributed to Furiosa being in the current state it’s in. This puts the future of the Mad Max franchise in question, and while there is plenty of reason to be pessimistic, I don’t think all hope is lost either. Let’s start with a post-mortem of what went wrong.

“Mad Max” Without Mad Max

The first reason for Furiosa’s lack of resonance with potential audiences should be pretty obvious — it’s the first Mad Max film without protagonist Max Rockatansky. The “Mad Max Saga” subtitle was likely a conscious decision by Warner Bros. or perhaps even Miller himself to remind people what franchise Furiosa is part of, but in the end it seems to have done little to alleviate skepticism.

I’ll be honest, I too was initially apprehensive of Max being MIA in his own franchise. My own memory of Fury Road from the one time I saw it in 2015 was that it was a very well-made film, but that Tom Hardy’s Max felt sidelined in favor of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa. However upon watching all of the Mad Max films, including Fury Road, for the first time in nearly a decade, I realized that I was mistaken. Hardy actually has more screen time than Theron, while the story heavily relies on them both needing each other. That fits well with the film’s theme of cooperation being necessary for survival, so I no longer believe that Max was unimportant in Fury Road. Chalk that up to my own ignorance.

Furiosa too is about survival and its story does a good job conveying Furiosa’s harrowing journey from kidnapped child to the tough-as-nails officer in antagonist Immortan Joe’s army we later see in Fury Road. The film is not in any way “woke” nor is Furiosa an invincible “girl boss,” but I’ll return to that later. I found myself surprised that I actually did want to learn more about Furiosa’s backstory when I initially wanted to see another movie starring Max. By the end, I realized that Furiosa was not just a prequel to Fury Road, but also something that enhanced it with additional backstory and context. It avoids the pitfalls most prequels have with too much exposition and a lack of surprise since the audience already knows what comes next.

Since Furiosa is based on unused story material for Fury Road Miller wrote years ago, the two films have a close relationship with one another. The problem, which we are now seeing with the box office returns, is getting audiences to care. It’s the same issue Solo: A Star Wars Story faced with also being a prequel telling a niche story and being the least successful entry in its respective franchise, not counting the 2008 animated Clone Wars film. Most causal viewers are not interested in a Han Solo film without Harrison Ford, and I would bet that most never moved past the skepticism I held about a Mad Max film without Mad Max. Solo wasn’t a bad film and Furiosa is a very good one, but their quality doesn’t necessarily translate into financial success.

A Successful, But Sleeper Hit Franchise

Apart from Furiosa not focusing on Mad Max, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Mad Max itself isn’t the most popular franchise out there. Sure, by all accounts it’s very successful, and the second film in particular had a massive influence on how most post-apocalyptic dystopian worlds are depicted in media. You don’t get Fist of the North Star for example without Mad Max.

If we look at the numbers, we can see that easily the most profitable entry in the series was the first one. The film’s budget is estimated to have been around 400,000 Australian dollars, which is the equivalent to about $265,000 USD. Box Office Mojo records that the film made a little under $9 million during its theatrical run, but Wikipedia cites sources that claim it made a grand total of over $100 million, which we can assume is from theatrical re-runs and home video sales. The exact figures are probably never going to be known, but it’s clear that Miller and company went to the bank happy. The original Mad Max launched countless careers after all.

Mad Max 2 and 3 show a similar story. Miller’s sequel was given a higher budget of A$4.5 million and the threequel even more at A$12 million. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior went on to earn about $24 million USD worldwide and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome $35 million USD. While Mad Max: Fury Road took home the most in sheer box office totals at $380 million USD, keep in mind that its budget ballooned to around $185 million, which doesn’t include marketing costs. Fury Road ultimately did alright enough to satisfy Warner Bros., but we aren’t talking Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Avengers: Endgame numbers because Mad Max is simply not on the same level of popularity as those franchises.

Anecdotally, most people I talk to who have seen or heard of Mad Max are *only* familiar with Fury Road and have not watched the original trilogy with Mel Gibson. Fury Road did respectable numbers during its initial theatrical run, but it’s really only in the ensuing years has its reputation grown as one of the best action films of all time. Those who’ve seen Fury Road generally do seem to really like it, but whether or not that enjoyment would extend to spending money to go to a cinema to watch a prequel spin-off is another story.

Furthermore, Furiosa is divided into five chapters throughout its 2 hour and 28 minute runtime, which made me wonder if it would have been more successful as a limited television series. One common criticism that even people who enjoyed the film had was that the film was too long, and perhaps that too was another factor in those undecided about seeing it ultimately waiting for it to come to streaming. Some stories are too niche to get people to go to a cinema, but television at home can be a better format. While I’m not necessarily saying Furiosa should have been a television show, TV might end up being the only place Mad Max has a future in.

Rising Consumer Costs

Here’s another reason why no one saw Furiosa that you’ve probably figured out by now — movies are too damn expensive! Recent statistics place the average price of a ticket at the American chain AMC Theatres at nearly $12. In some of America’s bigger cities, prices can even approach as high as $20. Obviously this is going to vary from state to state and venue to venue, but it’s impossible to deny at this point that the cost of going to the movies has overall gotten more expensive in the last decade.

It’s not just the United States either. The United Kingdom faces this problem and so do we in Japan. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably noticed it too in your own country. There are of course ways to alleviate this via monthly memberships and student discounts if you live around venues that offers them like I do. Interestingly enough, Japanese chains like Toho Cinemas often lower the prices of showings past 8 p.m., which is in contrast to matinee tickets being cheaper in the United States.

But even with those tactics, that’s a lot of work just to see one film when most stuff that’s out in theaters hits streaming services at home in record time these days. I remember waiting six months or more for a movie to come to DVD as a kid, but times have long changed. Few apart from physical media psychos (I mean enthusiasts) like me even care enough to buy individual movies anymore. Everything now needs to be provided via a single service or the average consumer simply isn’t interested.

The price of the film ticket is only the beginning too. Cinemas make the bulk of their money from concession sales, which means that your drink and popcorn are often going to cost even more than the movie itself. Multiply all of that if you’re bringing the kids. IMAX showings cost more. Better seats cost more. Parking costs money. Gas costs money if you live far away. I’m very lucky to be within walking distance of many cinemas in Kyoto, but most don’t have that luxury and it’s completely understandable why so many are staying home to watch movies.

When you pair that with the reality that general costs of living are rising, is it really any wonder that less people are going to the cinema these days? There are exceptions such as the rare colossal moviegoing event like “Barbenheimer,” and I’m frankly still trying to understand how that one happened, but Furiosa was never going to reach that level of cultural reach in our post-pandemic world of media consumption. People have simply adapted to watching movies at home where it’s more affordable, more convenient, and less of a hassle. I’ll always prefer the big screen experience myself as a hardcore cinephile, but I’m fully aware that I don’t represent the average consumer.

The Hollywood Landscape

Finally, consider how most audiences think about the current state of Hollywood. Or more accurately, consider how people don’t seem to be thinking about Hollywood at all.

Many media outlets dubbed 2023 as the year of the “flopbuster” — absurdly expensive films that completely bombed at the box office and cost studios hundreds of millions of dollars. Movies are getting more expensive to make, but when the results are largely terrible sequels like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (see my review tearing it a new one here) and uninspired superhero junk like The Marvels, it should comes as no surprise that people aren’t showing up to waste their money.

I think that the term “woke” is greatly overused and misused at this point, but there’s undoubtedly a streak of ham-fisted agenda-pushing that audiences are sick of. Does anyone really want to hear Harvey Weinstein’s former secretary bragging about how her latest Star Wars show is the “gayest” ever? There’s nothing wrong with having political or social themes in media, but at least liberal anger in the 1970s gave us classics like M*A*S*H and All The President’s Men. The Trump years have given us, well, this cringe.

But what does this specifically have to do with Furiosa? While harder to prove than the other points I’ve made, I think it’s plausible that some people at least dismissed the film as another “girl boss” woke-fest which replaced a once-beloved male protagonist with a cooler, hipper female one. I cannot state this enough though, Furiosa is NOT that kind of movie. Yes, Max is largely absent, but Furiosa is given a compelling character arc that draws the viewer in and makes them want to keep watching. She’s far from flawless either. Throughout her journey, Furiosa gets severely beaten and suffers immense personal tragedy. It’s stuff that makes her come across as human and vulnerable instead of an invincible bore.

George Miller described himself as a feminist around the release of Mad Max: Fury Road, but one doesn’t get the impression from his work that he’s an agenda-pusher or even particularly political. Given that he’s pushing 80, the feminism Miller grew up around would’ve been the second-wave version. There were two strains of this feminism: the reasonable kind which aimed for equal opportunity of the sexes and the other kind that devolved into hardcore misandry — which is the root of some of the worst aspects of modern leftism.

I think it’s safe to assume that Miller hasn’t adopted the latter. His world of Mad Max is a brutal place for both men and women, which requires them to work together and see each other as equals. As she makes her way through the wasteland, Furiosa is taught by a new character named Praetorian Jack. Like her later partnership with Max Rockatansky, it’s an egalitarian one. Miller doesn’t belittle his male characters in Fury Road and Furiosa or make them useless in need of the better, faster, and stronger female character’s help — a modern storytelling trope I’m tired of seeing in films like The Last Jedi and the latest Indiana Jones.

So no, Furiosa is not woke. It simply came out at a time when enough people no longer trust studios to revive legacy IP and treat them with respect. George Miller’s lawsuit with Warner Bros. over unpaid earnings is the main reason why the film took so long to get made, when it really should have released a couple of years after Fury Road. But because it arrived after nearly a decade of uninspired Hollywood sequels, reboots, and remakes with tiresome political messaging, audiences don’t want to waste their money on yet another perceived dud even if Furiosa is actually worth seeing.

What’s Next?

Furiosa is probably going to cost Warner Bros. considerable financial losses, putting the future of Mad Max in jeopardy. The film is struggling just to break even, which is never a good sign. Its budget of $168 million isn’t the most expensive ever, but that’s still a considerable chunk of cash to spend on a niche spin-off to only a moderately successful franchise. Still, I don’t think that’s going to be the last word on Mad Max.

The strong reception among fans and critics will likely give Furiosa a second life on streaming and home video, ensuring that it continues to make some money back. Not to mention that it will probably take some awards for visual effects and makeup later in the year. If that campaign is successful, it may even return to cinemas in the future. Can you imagine a Fury Road/Furiosa double feature? It may not light the world on fire, but it would surely get at least some people to leave their houses and go to the cinema. The current trend of re-releasing old films for brand new anniversary screenings has been a surprise success, so let’s hope Fury Road gets one next year with Furiosa in tow.

Despite Mad Max not being a Star Wars or MCU-tier franchise, it’s clear that there are more new fans of these films than ever. The underrated video game has become somewhat of a cult classic and is regularly discounted through Steam sales. Considering that it and Furiosa share many similar concepts since their stories were developed at the same time, I have no doubt that the game will continue to introduce more people to the franchise. While nothing has been announced, a new video game would likely be successful. Furiosa was at one point even envisioned as a Japanese anime film, which shows that there is ample potential in other mediums to continue Mad Max.

George Miller has always been a big picture guy and his remarks over the years suggest that the story outline for his next planned entry, Mad Max: The Wasteland, is pretty much already done. It’s supposedly another prequel to Fury Road, but it will definitely bring back Max as the protagonist. Whether or not Tom Hardy will return after the tensions he brought to the set of Fury Road though is anyone’s guess and Miller has been somewhat coy when asked. Warner Bros. is probably not enthusiastic to start production on a new Mad Max film right away, so one can expect there to be a wait-and-see period before the cameras start rolling.

The way I see it, there are two ways the next Mad Max story can go down. Either give Miller a smaller budget and force him to do it more economically like in the old days or turn his proposed Wasteland film into a television series. Plans to bring Max to the small screen go back all the way to the 1990s, so it would not be an unreasonable proposal. The episodic format would give Miller ample room to flesh out his world even more than a two-and-a-half hour film, not to mention that Max going to new locations as a ronin-like figure would be perfect for weekly stories.

The elephant in the room is Miller’s age and if he would have the energy to direct such an adrenaline-pumping franchise as he enters his 80s. But if his overall career has proven anything, it’s that the man always takes his time with planning his work and doesn’t do something just for a quick buck. The fact that the director of Mad Max is also responsible for Babe, Happy Feet, The Witches of Eastwick, and Lorenzo’s Oil is a testament to how his flexible and eclectic mind works. I’m confident that he has at least one more Mad Max left in him, it’s only a question of format.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far as a new reader or free subscriber, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Note: This article contains spoilers for Avatar: The Last Airbender. I recommend you watch the show if you haven’t already before reading.

I always considered myself lucky as a late-generation millennial to have experienced what was arguably the last great era for 2D Western animation. If you were an American kid like me born in the mid-1990s, you likely watched television masterpieces such as Batman: The Animated Series and the twilight of Disney’s traditional animated fare like Mulan before the industry transitioned into 3D CGI.

On the small screen, you typically were either a Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon kid. While I did catch some episodes of Samurai Jack and The Powerpuff Girls, I was squarely in the Nicktoons camp with the likes of SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom, and Hey Arnold! being my jam.

But then there was the crowning jewel which blew all of them away with a level of storytelling quality that was above and beyond anything else — Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Taking inspiration from Eastern and Western animation, Avatar: The Last Airbender began as a sleeper hit when it first was broadcast in 2005 on Nickelodeon, only to amass a huge international fanbase that has kept the show alive as a definitive classic nearly 20 years later. Unlike other children’s shows at the time, it told a serialized Japanese anime-like narrative that required viewers to tune in every week lest they miss a vital episode.

If you didn’t ask your parents to record the newest episode on VHS tape (remember those?), chances are you were out of luck and wouldn’t be able to see it until a rerun. This was when internet videos were in their infancy with sites like YouTube just beginning and streaming platforms like Amazon Prime only a twinkle in Jeff Bezos’ eye, so patiently waiting for Avatar to air on television was a weekly ritual for my generation.

And now here we are in 2024 with the inevitable live-action Netflix adaptation of yet another beloved IP. Early previews do not look promising to put it lightly, but I’ve always argued that the success of Avatar could never be repeated because it was a product of a specific creative team made during a certain era. There are currently multiple sequel and spin-off projects in development, but even those leave me skeptical. Here’s why Avatar: The Last Airbender was so special and why some miracles can’t be pulled off twice.

An Epic Animated Saga

Avatar: The Last Airbender can best be described as an animated fantasy series with the scope of a Chinese epic like Journey to the West or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Set in an Asiatic alternate version of history, the world of Avatar is divided into nations based around the four elements: water, earth, fire, and air. Those within the Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Air Nomads who can control their nation’s respective element are gifted beings known as “benders.” However, there is only one person in the entire world who can control (bend) all four elements — the Avatar.

The Avatar maintains balance between all four nations and is the bridge between the physical world and the spirt world. When the Avatar dies, a new one is born into the next nation. The waterbender Avatar will be followed by an earthbender Avatar, then a firebender Avatar, then an airbender Avatar, and so on. This premise makes up the general lore of the series, with the viewer learning a new piece of information about this universe’s history and mythology as each episode goes on.

Avatar: The Last Airbender begins with the world seemingly having no Avatar at all. The globe is engulfed in a century-long war started by the Fire Nation which seeks to impose its will over the other nations through total conquest. After years of bloody battles with no resolution in sight, teenagers Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe accidentally release a 12-year-old airbender named Aang from suspended animation in a large block of ice while on a fishing trip. The first two episodes of the series reveal that Aang is indeed the next Avatar. He must accept his daunting responsibility to master the other three elements and bring an end to the Fire Nation’s war.

What immediately sets Avatar apart from other Nickelodeon shows is how high the stakes are and the grand scope of its sweeping narrative. I was seven years old when the series first aired, but even at such a young age I immediately had the sense that I was watching a grand story that would go to faraway places and be a trying quest for our heroes. While the lore is not quite as expansive as Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, it clearly takes inspiration from those franchises with how it portrays a rich universe and the possibilities for adventure. Avatar manages to follow all the beats of the hero’s journey without feeling cliche, and it basically introduced Joseph Campbell’s concept to an entire generation of children.

But while Avatar is indeed a show that aired on a children’s network, it never talked down to them or insulted their intelligence. The series drew in a considerable audience of adult viewers due to the breadth of its serious themes from war to totalitarianism. Previous Nicktoons like Hey Arnold! and As Told By Ginger did touch upon mature topics, but the large scope of Avatar made it stand out from anything that ever came before or since. And as the title indicates, Aang is the last survivor of his people, which provides fertile ground for some of the show’s most thought-provoking character developments.

How to Write a Character Arc

One of the central aspects of Avatar’s lore is the genocide of the Air Nomads at the hands of the Fire Nation. Following the death of Avatar Roku, Fire Lord Sozin sent his armies to attack the four air temples across the world in order to kill the next Avatar before he could end his plans for global rule. However, Sozin is unsuccessful because Aang ran away from his responsibilities and ended up being frozen in ice for a hundred years as the Fire Nation fruitlessly searched for him.

Generations later, Fire Lord Ozai banishes his son Prince Zuko and mandates that he can only return to the Fire Nation after capturing the next Avatar. This makes Zuko the initial primary antagonist of the series as he attempts to hunt down Aang. We at first are lead to believe that Zuko is little more than an evil firebender, but soon realize that his backstory is a complex one.

As Zuko grapples with trying to regain his honor, Aang feels immense guilt for not being around to protect his people from genocide. We must remember that both characters are children placed in incredibly trying situations, but their respective growth is a central aspect of the series which makes it so compelling to watch. Aang and Zuko are obvious parallels to one another, representing how a tragic childhood need not define someone for the rest of their lives because one is ultimately in control of their own destiny.

This attention to writing deep character arcs extends to the rest of Avatar’s supporting cast. Sokka learns to overcome his biases against women and see them as equals while also honing in his own skills as a warrior and leader. Katara, as the last waterbender of the Southern Tribe, faces a similar situation to Aang, while their budding romance is something that grows naturally over the course of the series. The group is also eventually joined by a blind girl named Toph who becomes Aang’s earthbending teacher. While fiercely independent and standoffish at the beginning, she comes to understand the importance of teamwork and cooperation.

Perhaps the most acclaimed fan-favorite character is Iroh, Zuko’s uncle who acts as a mentor figure throughout his banishment. Once a respected general, Iroh became disgraced after failing to capture the Earth Kingdom capital Ba Sing Se due to grief over the death of his son. Like Zuko, we first believe that Iroh is on the side of evil, but over time we see that he holds wisdom that transcends the brutality of the Fire Nation. He’s a weary old soldier who would rather enjoy his twilight years with a cup of tea instead of fighting for a cause he doesn’t believe in anymore while hoping that he can push his nephew to a better place.

Avatar had a stellar cast of voice actors, but I must single out Mako Iwamatsu’s fantastic performance as Iroh. It was one of his last roles before he passed away in 2006 of esophageal cancer, and the show presented a moving tribute to him in the tear-jerker Season Two episode “The Tales of Ba Sing Se.” While Mako’s death was obviously an unforeseen event, his last turn as Iroh in the season finale is only made all the more impactful given the dark note it ends on.

The writers behind Avatar smartly show that not all firebenders are bad people, while not everyone in the other nations are moral paragons. Characters like Jet and Hama will hurt innocent civilians in order to achieve their goals, while Ba Sing Se is revealed to be a North Korea-like society where uncomfortable realities around the war are suppressed and the secret totalitarian government maintains complete control. These nuances make the world and people of Avatar feel believable when many shows viewed by children hardly feature the same level of depth. I’ve really only scratched the surface of everything one could take out of the series. It’s something that demands multiple rewatches, and I always get something new every time I revisit it.

A Living, Breathing World

Each nation and its people in Avatar are represented by beautiful color palettes and expansive backgrounds that take inspiration from the likes of Hayao Miyazaki and other Japanese anime. This is also reflected by the unique flora and fauna, with the latter being based on interesting combinations of animals. What other show can you think of that combines turtles and ducks into turtleducks?

Furthermore, the four elemental bending styles are directly based on real Chinese martial arts. The graceful movements of the waterbenders are tai chi, the strong stances and punches of earthbenders are Hung Gar, the dazzling strikes of the firebenders come from Northern Shaolin style, and the quick acrobatic movements of the airbenders take inspiration from Baguazhang. Avatar’s showrunners regularly consulted with fighting instructor Sifu Kisu to help guide the many inventive fight sequences throughout the series, and that attention to detail shows.

Avatar even went above and beyond with its inventive musical score. Composed by Jeremy Zuckerman, the music is performed on traditional Chinese instruments which appropriately match the show’s setting. From the grandiose main theme to more pensive cues, what we’re given is a gorgeous and eclectic soundscape that pulls considerable weight in making Avatar’s world feel convincing and lived-in. Fans long demanded an official release for the music, and that wish was finally granted in 2023 when Zuckerman re-recorded his original scores with an actual orchestra starting with the first season.

The historical and cultural allusions seen in the four nations are another inventive aspect, but Avatar’s creators did not wish to make sweeping generalizations. While the Fire Nation embarking on an imperialist conquest of the rest of the world obviously mirrors the Empire of Japan’s actions during World War II, the aesthetics of the country’s buildings and clothing are closer to that of China. Similarly, the vastness of the Earth Kingdom includes not just Chinese influences, but also Korean and even Middle Eastern ones.

The strong Asian elements of Avatar: The Last Airbender often result in the show being classified as an “anime,” but this is technically incorrect as it is an American series. Despite its Japanese influences, Japan was ironically where Avatar saw only limited popularity. This is mistakenly assumed to be due to the Fire Nation’s similarities to Imperial Japan, but the real reason is because Western television animation rarely sees much success in the Land of the Rising Sun. The first two seasons aired in 2007 on the Japanese version of Nickelodeon, a premium satellite channel that went defunct years ago. The third season would not receive a Japanese dub until 2016 for online streaming services, but with most of the cast changed with different (and in my opinion inferior) voice actors.

Live-Action Troubles

Watching all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender will make it apparent that it was the result of all the right elements coming together, but it particularly works because animation allowed the show’s creators to come up with inventive visual storytelling that really couldn’t be achieved in any other medium. The critically-panned 2010 live-action film adaptation directed by M. Night Shyamalan only reaffirmed that notion.

Released two years after the conclusion of the original series, this adaptation titled as The Last Airbender to avoid confusion with James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar was, quite simply, a total disaster. By now Shyamalan’s trainwreck is the textbook example of what not to do when turning animation into live-action, having long been the subject of countless memes mocking its terrible interpretation of the source material. The Last Airbender attempts to cram the highlights of Season One into a single feature film, but trying to adapt 20 episodes into 100 minutes was always going to be a fool’s errand.

While the original Avatar inhabited a beautiful world full of rich possibilities, Shyamalan’s live-action environments are dull and lifeless. Despite having a production budget of $150 million, the visual effects are laughably terrible and a pale imitation of the visually stunning sequences that were produced in the animated series at a fraction of the cost. They couldn’t even pronounce Aang’s name right. While it’s easy to make fun of the child actors for their wooden performances, the fault really does lie with Shyamalan’s inept direction, and his recent output with hot dumpster fires like Old show that this is a consistent problem with the once-promising filmmaker.

It comes as no surprise that Avatar’s creators have publicly disowned The Last Airbender, with their involvement in the production having been minimal from the start. But this just speaks to the problems of most live-action adaptations and how they are often pointless retellings of stories better served in their original mediums. Some properties like Batman and Star Wars are flexible enough to be successful multimedia franchises, but Avatar: The Last Airbender truly is something that can’t really be done well in anything other than animation.

For example, this sequence from the series finale depicts an Agni Kai (“fire duel”) between Zuko and his sister Azula. At over 20 million views on YouTube as of this writing, it’s one of the most beloved scenes out of the entire show because it combines fluid animation, graceful movements, and fitting music into one magnificent display. The advent of modern CGI technology would of course make a live-action recreation technically possible, but something would inevitably be lost in the process due to the unnatural combination of real people and effects that aren’t actually there.

A Case of Sequelitis

Even if a live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender is unlikely to be successful, what about a return to animation and a continuation of the original show? On paper, that’s what The Legend of Korra was supposed to be, but the final result was a mixed bag that fell well short of what made the first series the timeless masterpiece it still is now.

Premiering in 2012, The Legend of Korra is set 70 years after the events of the first Avatar series. Aang has passed away and his successor is a 17-year-old girl from the Southern Water Tribe named Korra who trains with his son Tenzin to master airbending. In contrast to the feudal setting of the previous show, Korra features what is essentially 1920s technology like radio and motorized vehicles, with Republic City being the new primary location.

The large tech jump between shows was somewhat controversial, but fans warmed up to it over time. Korra generally features the same attention to detail that was seen in Avatar and it makes sense that the show’s creators wanted to do something different instead of another retread. The animation was upgraded and the larger budget allowed for high quality music performed by a live ensemble right from the outset.

Unfortunately, the new characters are simply not as interesting as the original Team Avatar gang we came to know and love. None of them are bad in any sense (though I always found Korra to be less likable as a protagonist compared to Aang), but there’s a noticeable feeling of the writing being less tight and carefully planned. Avatar: The Last Airbender was the brainchild of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, but the significant writing contributions of Aaron Ehasz on nearly every episode of the show was the important final ingredient that made Avatar what it was.

Ehasz had no involvement with Korra, and his absence is deeply felt. This does not in any way downplay the important roles DiMartino and Konietzko played, but some shows really do require a certain blend of contributors for everything to work. George Lucas may have planned the original Star Wars trilogy, but he still needed other writers, directors, and editors. It’s pretty obvious to me that the combination of these three writers is why Avatar was able to have such a winning blend of good ideas, while Korra felt less focused.

Korra’s problems also are the result of its rushed production and unexpected extension. It initially was meant to be a 12-episode mini-series, only to be given a second season of 14 more episodes. Following that, two more seasons were greenlit, bringing the total episode count to 52. The showrunners were at one point working on the second, third, and fourth seasons simultaneously with multiple new writers brought in. With that context in mind, it’s practically a miracle that Korra was finished at all, but its flaws are only all the more evident.

The Legend of Korra is ultimately not a bad show and it does expand upon the existing Avatar lore in interesting ways, but reaching the same level of greatness would have been tough under normal circumstances. Getting there on the pressure the showrunners were under was virtualy impossible. A decade after Korra ended, there are now plans for new animated projects under DiMartino and Konietzko’s Avatar Studios, but I continue to remain dubious that these will live up to the hype.

Political Revisionism

Another reason why I believe Avatar: The Last Airbender holds up so well is because of when it came out; namely during a time long before social media and when the Anglosphere wasn’t consumed by political culture wars around virtually every major film and television show. When Avatar aired from 2005 to 2008, the internet of course existed, but online discussion was limited to specialized fan forums. There was no Twitter discourse and certainly no posts like this, which would have probably sounded like a foreign language to someone from nearly 20 years ago.

While not an original observation by any means, I really do believe that the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016 lowered the overall quality of Western pop culture. It’s no secret that most of Hollywood leans left, but liberal anger toward Trump and the MAGA movement continues to surround much of modern media being produced today. There’s nothing wrong of course with creators using entertainment to express their political views, but there’s a difference between a thought-provoking story and unsubtle propaganda.

Avatar was made long before our current polarized era, but its creators are currently embarking on a bizarre move of weird political revisionism around the show’s themes. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, countless organizations, businesses, and entertainment companies responded with extreme overcorrection, often amounting to groveling apologies for things no one was really much offended over in the first place. Amid the general frustration of people being kept indoors during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Avatar came to Netflix and saw a newfound spark in viewership.

Unlike in 2005, we had social media in 2020. Millions of old and new viewers believed Avatar reflected modern times with issues like racial unrest and COVID-19, but did it really? In a comment to The Washington Post, Michael Dante DiMartino stated:

“The major issues in the stories — genocide, totalitarianism, systemic injustice, abuse — sadly, these have been pervasive issues throughout history and continue to be. The show is a reflection of our world. But now, we happen to be living through a time in which all these problems have been exacerbated.”

Needless to say, I strongly disagree with that framing. While George Floyd shouldn’t have been killed, the number of unarmed black suspects dying at the hands of white police officers is nothing close to a genocide. The swift trial and sentencing of Derek Chauvin has continued to be upheld, with even the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting his push for an appeal. I have always been critical of Black Lives Matter due to its blatant communist origins, and the revelations that its leaders have used its funds to buy mansions has only vindicated such scrutiny.

The creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender are entitled to their personal views, but their recent comments give me pause on whether future Avatar projects will demonstrate the same restraint the original show did. It didn't try to push any kind of political agenda or be a parallel to any specific contemporary issue because that would have immediately dated the series. Avatar was for everyone, but there is enough reason to fear that its upcoming sequels and spin-offs may only just follow contemporary trends and be unsubtle political posturing as a result.

More Live-Action Troubles

As of this publication, yet another live-action adaption of Avatar: The Last Airbender is set for release later this month; a brand new Netflix series that will adapt Season One of the show into eight hour-long episodes. Will things be different this time? Unfortunately, I highly doubt it.

The first sign of trouble arose in 2020 when Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko announced their departure from the live-action series. Citing creative differences, the duo in no uncertain terms stated that Netflix did not share the same vision and that they would be unable to come to a mutually agreed direction. This did not necessarily mean that the show was doomed to fail, but it was not a promising development.

Fan responses were more positive when the first full trailer debuted in November 2022, but I never was on the hype train. I strongly dislike this modern trend we’re constantly seeing of so many television series and films being absurdly dark. And I don’t mean dark content, I mean being literally dark to the point where you can hardly make out what’s on screen. The original animated Avatar knew how to use beautiful colors, while the Netflix adaptation is going for the same boring drab look you’ve seen a hundred times in other series like Game of Thrones.

And speaking of Game of Thrones, the Netflix executives seem to have no idea who Avatar: The Last Airbender is actually for in their odd attempt to appeal to that show’s audience. Because both, uh, are fantasy I guess. The new Avatar series will actually depict the genocide of the Air Nomads, an event that was only talked about in the animated show. While the genocide was likely not previously shown due to concerns over content appropriate for children’s television, the Avatar showrunners knew that it was more effective for the viewer to leave it to their own imagination. Take this haunting scene with Aang’s deceased mentor Monk Gyatso:

In the third episode of the series, Aang visits his home at the Southern Air Temple for the first time in a hundred years expecting to meet other airbenders, only to come to the brutal realization that all of his people have been killed. The shock of this hits him when he sees the skeletal remains of his teacher Gyatso surrounded by other Fire Nation corpses. We have no idea how Gyatso died, but it’s strongly implied that he sucked all the air out of the room, killing himself and everyone else in the process.

While brief, this one scene lets the viewer speculate both on how brutal the Air Nomad genocide must have been and how deadly airbenders could actually be in a fight despite being an outwardly peaceful people. This just begs the question for me — what could the live-action adaptation possibly do better in explicitly showing this? While I’m not against the genocide being depicted, I think its portrayal is unlikely to come close to the images we’ve created in our heads. Sometimes the most effective storytelling is what you don’t actually see.

Other announcements in recent weeks have only added more fuel to speculation that the Netflix writers really don’t understand Avatar. Sokka’s sexist attitudes seen at the beginning of Season One will be toned down, despite those traits being vital for his character growth. Aang is apparently going to be less distracted, even though that was also part of his transition from an immature kid to an Avatar aware of his responsibilities. Could the show still be enjoyable even with these changes? Possibly, but I think it’s become very clear why DiMartino and Konietzko wanted nothing to do with it.

So here we are over 15 years after Avatar: The Last Airbender ended. Since then we’ve had a horrible live-action movie, a very flawed animated sequel series, and soon yet another live-action adaptation that will inevitably just be an inferior retelling of a great story we’ve already experienced. Again I ask — what’s the point of all this?

It’s understandable that film and television primarily exist as an entertainment business to turn in a profit, but the last decade has resulted in audiences utterly tired of endless sequels, remakes, and reboots that serve as little more than cheap cash-ins. Avatar: The Last Airbender is just the next property in line to receive this treatment, and perhaps that was always inevitable given its sheer popularity.

But I do believe that you can have too much of a good thing, and Avatar never needed multiple live-action adaptations or an upcoming slate of *yearly* sequels that run the high risk of turning this franchise into the MCU or Star Wars in their current state of watered-down mediocrity. Success is something that all creators crave and a lasting legacy is only achieved by a very select few. Avatar: The Last Airbender has nothing left to prove.

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Ridley Scott’s 2023 film about the life of Napoleon Bonaparte was an unfortunate disappointment that largely failed to accurately depict the life of its titular subject.

Though admirable for being a rare modern Hollywood film to dedicate such a huge budget to a historical epic set in the 18th and 19th centuries, Scott’s take on the French emperor was frustrating for its blatant disregard of the facts and downright confusing for its odd casting choice of Joaquin Phoenix.

Phoenix passably looks the part as Napoleon, but he never feels confident in the role. I found him shockingly lifeless with almost no emotional depth, and we’re talking about one of the most monumental men who ever lived. Yet here he’s reduced to a bland, two-dimensional cardboard cutout who occasionally busts out a tantrum which Scott seems to think is a substitute for genuine human feeling.

Napoleon being such a controversial figure in today’s age meant that it was unlikely that any Hollywood movie would depict the man in a positive light, but the Napoleon in Scott’s world is such a petulant adult child, he’s far closer to the Bill and Ted incarnation than the actual general. The real Napoleon was highly intelligent and had a deep appreciation for art, science, and culture. We hardly see any of that here.

Stanley Kubrick famously planned to direct his own epic biopic of Napoleon, which unfortunately never came to fruition, though some of his concepts did end up transferring over into Barry Lyndon due to the similar time period. 2023’s Napoleon is a far cry from that vision, and it seems unlikely that anything close to what Kubrick wished to achieve will happen anytime soon. With that said, there have been far superior works adapting Napoleon Bonaparte’s life in the past.

Well-remembered today is Waterloo, an absurdly expensive epic 1970 war film which primarily focused on the final campaign that ended Napoleon’s military career in defeat. Though sometimes criticized for its pacing, the performances of Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, and Orson Welles are generally praised, as is the huge scale of the film’s military battles. While not perfect, it’s certainly far more historically accurate than Ridley Scott’s movie and holds up well as many’s go-to Napoleon on the silver screen.

Désirée in 1954 featured Marlon Brando’s take on Napoleon, though the rather obscure picture is remembered for little else other than his performance. Napoleon has also played supporting roles in films like War and Peace and The Count of Monte Cristo, but if one wants something that is more comprehensive in covering his overall life, the 2002 French television mini-series is probably the best we’re ever going to get.

When it comes to cinematic adaptations, however, nothing has come close to beating Able Gance’s epic silent film Napoleon. Released in 1927 when the silent era was coming to its end, Gance created a masterpiece that was years, if not decades ahead of its time with its scope, structure, pacing, and fast-cut editing. Running anywhere from under three hours to over nine depending on the version, Napoleon was intended to be the first of six films adapting the entirety of the emperor’s life.

Despite being a huge creative achievement and Gance’s magnum opus, Napoleon would be subject to numerous cuts, have its excised footage lost, and be surrounded by a plethora of complicated legal issues that still affect the film’s distribution status across multiple countries to this very day. Practically everything about the 1927 silent film Napoleon is complex and daunting, but it remains a thrilling cinematic experience unlike anything ever created before or since.

Eagle of Destiny

Abel Gance’s original script for his vision of Napoleon ended up being the size of a large novel, but he knew going into production that his intended plan for six films was never going to come to fruition. Despite this, it is clear that Gance put everything he could into his single Napoleon film, with its longest known cut being nine hours and 22 minutes, but more on that later.

Gance’s film begins in the winter of 1783 with a young Napoleon Bonaparte’s early years enrolled at military school and ends at the April 1796 Battle of Montenotte with his triumphant victory over the Habsburg monarchy and Kingdom of Sardinia in what is now modern-day Italy. With Gance’s wise choice to keep the timeline to this span of only 13 years, what we essentially have is a Napoleon Bonaparte origin story. There is no Egyptian military campaign, no self-crowning as emperor of France, no Waterloo, and no exile to Saint Helena.

The smaller scale allows Gance to provide more focus on the formative events which shaped Napoleon, while most other films would gloss over them due to time constraints. The opening scene for example features Napoleon’s legendary snowball fight with his fellow schoolmates. Despite the low stakes, Gance treats the event with the same zeal and intensity as if it was any one of Napoleon’s later battles. With fast-paced cuts, groundbreaking handheld camera work, and constant closeups to Napoleon’s facial expressions, it’s a whirlwind of activity that captures the audience from the very beginning.

As explained in this BFI piece, Gance came up with innovative ways to move his camera equipment, which we have to keep in mind today was meant to be immobile due to its sheer size. But Gance learned to overcome these limitations such as angling mirrors in front of his lens to create the illusion of movement or mounting the entire rig on a toboggans, horses, and cars. Such techniques are why Napoleon is still a completely watchable film almost a hundred years later. This was years before even Orson Welles pioneered cinematography with Citizen Kane, showing that Gance was always a man who thought about the future of his medium. Indeed, ambition and visions of the future are central themes to Napoleon.

Though the film is ostensibly about his early victories, the Napoleon we see is always thinking about glory and what lies ahead of him. The young boy takes care of an eagle during his time at the military academy. After he is bullied by other students in his dormitory who free the bird (the real Napoleon notoriously did not get along with his classmates), he is thrown out into the cold and weeps for the loss of his pet while lying on top of a cannon. Yet in one of the film’s most iconic scenes, the eagle returns to him, and Napoleon is struck with a new resolution to pursue success even in the face of bitter losses.

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If this year is any indication, it seems that audiences are finally showing tangible tiredness toward Hollywood’s latest wave of franchise films and summer blockbusters.

While Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and John Wick: Chapter 4 were respectable financial successes, the disappointing box office returns of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and The Flash show that studios can no longer rely on brand names alone to insure that their films profit off their ridiculously expensive budgets.

From director Gareth Edwards of Godzilla and Rogue One fame we have a completely original sci-fi film entitled The Creator which tackles questions around artificial intelligence, man’s relationship with rapidly advancing technology, and if machines can ever be socially regarded on the same level as humans. It’s familiar territory we’ve seen in works like Blade Runner and I, Robot, but does Edwards bring anything new to the table?

The answer is a resounding “eh, sort of.” For everything The Creator does well, it does so spectacularly, but its shortcomings are too obvious to ignore and it’s unfortunate that we probably won’t see anything further from the beautifully intricate world Edwards has created.

Set around the latter third of the 21st century, The Creator depicts a not-too-distant future where A.I. is an everyday part of life and humans live side-by-side with artificially-engineered beings known as simulants which display lifelike emotions and personalities. The film opens with a retro 1950s-style newsreel showing the history of this world, and we learn that AI accidentally detonated a nuclear warhead over Los Angeles. This leads to Western nations declaring war on AI, but Asian countries continue to accept them and represent a united eastern bloc referred to as “New Asia.”

Protagonist Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) is a military sergeant tasked with destroying “Nirmata,” the supposed mastermind behind the increasingly powerful AIs. He infiltrates New Asia undercover and marries the daughter of Nirmata (Gemma Chan) to get close, but the extended mission ends with her apparent death and Taylor being extracted back to the United States. Five years later, he’s told by his government that Nirmata is close to finalizing plans for a superweapon which could destroy NOMAD, an American space station capable of launching devastating attacks from anyplace in the world.

Taylor is shown proof that his wife actually survived, which is enough motivation for him to join the new mission and destroy the weapon. He returns to New Asia, but the “weapon” is revealed to be a young simulant girl (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) who has the power to remotely shut off technology. After learning that the child knows the location of his wife, Taylor finds himself conflicted on what side to take in the war for humanity’s survival.

The Creator boasts an intriguing premise, but above all has a world that feels lived-in and believable, which is what all good sci-fi should strive to achieve. If you’ve seen the previews, the comparisons to Edwards’ previous work with Rogue One are inevitable. Both even have the same cinematographer and co-writer, which almost makes The Creator feel like a spiritual successor. Sometimes it feels like Edwards is repeating himself at times, but it does help his case that his Star Wars film was easily the best-looking of the Disney era.

The locations we see in The Creator manage to achieve a dazzling contrast of modern technology with traditional living, something that can be seen even today with many Asian countries. Probably in a tribute to the cyberpunk anime classics like Ghost in the Shell and Akira, Japanese language and text can be found everywhere throughout New Asia, suggesting a la Blade Runner that Japan managed to achieve cultural and economic supremacy at some point in the future. Characters frequently speak in their own native languages, but everyone manages to understand each other due to automatic translators and shared lingua franca.

Touches like that make it apparent that Gareth Edwards put a considerable amount of thought in creating his universe. Just as George Lucas provided enough context for viewers in 1977 to understand the world of Star Wars despite starting from the middle of the story, we quickly get up to speed with the lore and timeline of The Creator. In the little of two hours we get to spend with these characters, I kept wanting to see more and learn more about the environments around them. Unfortunately, the story itself is where so much falls short.

While The Creator is touted as being a rare original IP in the sea of milked Hollywood franchises, there is actually very little new ground being covered with its narrative. The film even opens with the same “More human than human” line famously said by Eldon Tyrell to Rick Deckard in Blade Runner. While clearly intended as an homage, the problem is that Edwards struggles to move past the tropes and cliches we’ve seen countless times over the past 50 years of sci-fi cinema.

The film’s central debate is whether or not AIs can be accepted into human society, but Blade Runner and its sequel covered the concept of artificial people far better due to Replicants being visually indistinguishable from biological organic beings. Spike Jonze’s Her was a heartbreakingly beautiful drama about a romance between a lonely man and a female virtual assistant, which I found to be more believable than the relationships between human beings and AIs in The Creator. And of course if you’ve seen Star Wars, you already know the familiar story beats of a rag-tag group of underdogs attempting to take down a seemingly unstoppable empire.

Perhaps the worst cliche of The Creator, however, is it continuing Hollywood’s odd obsession with repeating the story of Dances with Wolves ad nauseam in a different format. Ok, we get it. Kevin Costner becoming more sympathetic to Native Americans was a fine message. I can accept that The Last Samurai was a unique exploration between the West and Japan. But after Avatar, do we really need yet another film about a soldier going native after gaining a heart and disobeying his orders? The parallels to the Vietnam War we see in The Creator in allusions to films like Apocalypse Now were probably intended to be profound, but they only end up being too on-the-nose because we’ve seen them countless times.

The Creator attempts to cram too much too fast into its 133-minute runtime, and I can’t help but feel that all of this would have been better suited for a limited television series in order to give its ideas and characters more room to breathe. The revelation around what actually lead to the nuclear explosion in Los Angeles which sets off the film’s events is largely glossed over in a brief throwaway line, while the implications of other story threads are barely explored. The original workprint was reportedly five hours long and like Rogue One it’s pretty obvious we’re only seeing a truncated version of the whole picture. One can only hope that #ReleaseTheEdwardsCut gains enough traction.

Despite an undercooked story, the cast is consistently strong. After this film and Tenet, I think John David Washington has a promising career ahead as a reliable leading man for hardboiled action flicks and sci-fi thrillers. He convincingly plays Sergeant Joshua Taylor as a weary and traumatized military veteran, while also having fantastic Lone Wolf and Cub-like chemistry with his child co-star Madeleine Yuna Voyles. Allison Janney as the ostensible antagonist was an interesting choice given her background in more comedic works, but she slips into the role well. And Ken Watanabe will of course always be a welcome addition to any film no matter what it is.

While no one in The Creator is really a bankable star, such measures were likely why the production was able to maintain a budget of “only” $80 million. It’s rather quaint that this is considered to be on the cheap side in today’s world of bloated Hollywood movies, but Edwards proves that you don’t need a small country’s GDP to get the job done. The visual effects ironically look far better than anything Disney has attempted with the MCU in the last few years, and it only illustrates how much of a waste something like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was. It’s the perfect example of how less can be more, while economical filmmaking is so much of a lost art.

But movies are ultimately a business and it seems that The Creator is struggling just to break even. For whatever reason, 20th Century Studios (which is owned by Disney) has chosen to largely bury the film with very little marketing. Considering how there was little in the way of notable competition in late September and throughout October, it is utterly bizarre that executives did not heavily promote The Creator. Even Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon with its gargantuan three-and-a-half-hour long runtime managed to do better at the domestic box office this month, which should have had less mass appeal in theory.

This means we likely will see no continuation of what The Creator started, though Edwards himself isn’t interested in a sequel. It would be nice to see an expansion of its themes with different characters, but the chances appear slim given the relatively low interest. While I can respect and appreciate The Creator, it’s not a film I can bring myself to truly love. Rogue One remains Gareth Edward’s best work so far and if you liked that you’ll probably find a lot to enjoy here as well, but he has yet to make his magnum opus. Better luck next time.

Disclaimer: While I went into this film without knowing anything about its plot, that likely will not be possible for most by the time it releases outside of Japan. This review thus contains light summary details out of necessity, but will not reveal major narrative spoilers. Since Studio Ghibli has not created any promotional materials outside of a single poster, images from Hayao Miyazaki’s previous works will instead be used throughout the piece.

One has to wonder what kind of dreams Hayao Miyazaki saw as a child and what major creative imagery stayed with him from his youth to his elderly years. That was what first came to mind throughout my time watching his newest work How Do You Live? — a film with no marketing, no advertisements, and no trailers. Just one poster.

Of course you’re probably asking, wasn’t Miyazaki’s last film at Studio Ghibli his last film? It’s somewhat a running gag at this point that the Japanese animation maestro always claims that his latest work will be his final one before permanent retirement, but he isn’t called the “Never-Ending Man” for nothing.

To be fair, The Wind Rises from 2013 actually did feel like the ultimate send-off to Miyazaki. That film was a fictionalized biopic about Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the Empire of Japan’s major aircraft used during World War II. As an old-fashioned drama about a single man’s life throughout many years, it came across as the perfect finale to Miyazaki’s own career and his last testament before passing on his legacy at Ghibli to a new generation of animators.

And yet probably because Miyazaki’s own desire for creative output is so insatiable, it turns out that he still has more to say. With production having started since 2016, How Do You Live? has been a film shrouded in mystery throughout its many years of extended development. It took much longer to finish than Miyazaki himself probably expected, but the final result is something that feels both like an epilogue to his entire 60-year-long career and an origin story to where his ideas for creation came from.

How Do You Live? opens in 1943 with a fire spreading through Tokyo in striking scenes not dissimilar to what Miyazaki depicted in The Wind Rises or even Howl’s Moving Castle. Our protagonist, a 12-year-old boy named Mahito Maki, loses his mother Hisako in the ensuing events and moves to the countryside with his father Shoichi, who runs an air munitions factory. Mahito’s dad has remarried with Hisako’s sister Natsuko (a situation not too uncommon in those days), but the boy remains apprehensive toward his pregnant step-mother and struggles to fit in with his new surroundings.

With its Pacific War setting, I first assumed that the film would be yet another historical fiction story with some slice-of-life elements, but we soon learn that not all is as it seems. Mahito is constantly watched by a grey heron that seemingly appears everywhere and speaks to him in his daydreams. He is additionally fascinated by a mysterious tower located on the grounds of his family’s mansion. After falling ill, Natsuko disappears into the tower and the grey heron beckons Mahito to follow her while also claiming that his mother is still alive on the other side.

This is where How Do You Live? becomes classic Studio Ghibli, and what we have is basically a greatest hits of all the concepts Hayao Miyazaki has explored in his previous work. A plethora of odd spirits and crazy colors like Spirited Away? Check. Themes of aviation and soaring high above the skies like Castle in the Sky and Porco Rosso? Check. A young protagonist coming of age and trying to find his way like Kiki’s Delivery Service? You bet. A castle like, well, The Castle of Cagliostro and Howl’s Moving Castle? You get the idea.

While it’s of course easy to poke fun at Miyazaki and Ghibli for constantly relying on the same tropes for decades, I don’t think anyone is going to really complain considering that they do them so well. How Do You Live? is no simple retread of Ghibli’s filmography either. Miyazaki presents what he has learned over his entire career and takes us on a trip down memory lane, while also introducing new creatures and sequences that stand strong among his best ideas seen in masterpieces like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. I expect the inevitable plushies of the bird characters to be hugely popular one day.

It’s also apparent that How Do You Live? is the director’s most autobiographical work. While younger than Mahito, Miyazaki was born in 1941 and thus has memories of the fire-bombings that devastated Japan in the final days of World War II. His father too owned a factory in the countryside which manufactured aircraft parts for the Imperial Japanese Army, allowing the family to have more affluence than the average household at the time. Like the film’s protagonist, Miyazaki was also distant from his father, but felt profound attachment to his mother. It’s well-known that he based the personality traits of many of Ghibli’s female characters on her, and How Do You Live? essentially shows us where all of that began.

Creation proves to be a pivotal theme in How Do You Live? The spirit world that Mahito enters in search of his mother is one of constant evolution, but it notably exists outside of the “real world” of adults who create war and make things harder for the next generation, hence the Pacific War backdrop. The film speaks to Miyazaki’s own lifetime of creativity, but in another sense it also urges the current audience of young viewers to not repeat the same mistakes of previous generations and instead create a better world. While I personally think that Miyazaki has been too heavy-handed at times with his messaging in other works and there are aspects of his worldview that I profoundly disagree with, How Do You Live? manages to strike a nuanced balance without feeling too preachy.

On a technical level, well, what’s there really to say? It’s a Studio Ghibli film and you know exactly what you’re getting, namely some of the finest animation produced by anyone in the world. While in the past few years we’ve been treated to anime works by directors like Makoto Shinkai such as Your Name which produced hyper-photorealistic settings, How Do You Live? is appropriately old-fashioned and feels right at home with the rest of the Hayao Miyazaki canon. It’s the first film of his to be shown in IMAX, and the bigger display format makes me glad I had a proper screening in a cinema. Characters look about as Ghibli-esque as you’d expect, while the backgrounds, clothing, creatures, and movement are all up to the same high standard we’ve seen since Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Ditto for the splendid orchestral music by Joe Hisaishi, who might as well be the John Williams of Japan at this point.

Many debated Ghibli’s decision to release How Do You Live? with no advertising, but the gambit ultimately paid off. The film is the company’s biggest opening yet, while word-of-mouth reviews and a slew of humorous fanart have been all the marketing needed. In our current world where seemingly every summer film needs to be a huge event with overstated hype and inevitable disappointment, it’s hugely refreshing to see a new work by an auteur director that comes out low-key and with the quality of the work itself being the only statement.

How Do You Live? is slated to have its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September under the title The Boy and the Heron, but I’m not too keen on the name. The original Japanese title encompasses the film’s themes far better and I’ll always refer to it that way.

The most of obvious question is what Hayao Miyazaki does from here. At 82 years old, he isn’t getting any younger and the long development of his latest work would have been a difficult task for someone even half his age. Studio Ghibli had not done a traditionally animated film since 2014 with When Marnie Was There and Miyazaki’s son Goro attempting to tackle 3D animation with 2020’s Earwig and the Witch did not see success.

Apart from a couple of short films and collaborative efforts like The Red Turtle, some even feared if Ghibli would never make another feature film again following Miyazaki’s announced retirement after The Wind Rises. Japanese tabloid magazines reported that studio co-founder Toshio Suzuki mismanaged company funds, but these claims remain unsubstantiated. Ghibli, however, is going through leadership restructuring and appears to still be in the game regardless of whatever politics are happening behind the scenes.

Like The Wind Rises before it, How Do You Live? really does feel like the end of a lifetime of one creator’s work, but I’ve always viewed Miyazaki as someone who could never stay put for long. Some directors like Akira Kurosawa and Martin Scorsese are destined to create for the rest of their lives, and I think that he falls into that category. I can easily see Miyazaki still working on films into his late 80s and early 90s, even if his leadership role diminishes with age. At the very least, he will very likely stick around to continue teaching a new generation of Studio Ghibli staffers.

How Do You Live? poses its titular question to younger audiences, but there is little doubt to me that Hayao Miyazaki still asks himself the same question every day.

With The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Last of Us HBO television adaptation creating significant buzz this spring, talk is brewing of the “video game adaptation curse” finally being broken.

After decades of horrible cinematic takes created by clueless producers and cowardly studios, some say we’re finally getting shows and films that respect the source material and it even proves that gaming is a “mature” artistic medium that non-gamers can now respect.

I personally don’t buy into it.

While the number of bad video game movies certainly outweighs the number of good ones, to suggest that better adaptations are a recent phenomenon is doing quite a bit of historical revisionism. If we’re talking Hollywood, have things really been that much worse compared to the many failed adaptations of novels?

The 1995 adaptation of Mortal Kombat is no masterpiece, but it has been a consistent cult classic and is far away from a terrible film (though the less said about its sequel, the better). The Lara Croft movies are perfectly serviceable Indiana Jones-esque romps, and I’m personally now a big fan of the 2006 live-action Silent Hill movie.

But what about those Rotten Tomatoes scores, you might ask? Apart from RT being a highly flawed metric to gauge the quality of movies, the majority of film critics aren’t gamers.

Arguments can be made that this shouldn’t matter since film and video games are two separate mediums, but I would wager that having little understanding or even a low opinion of video games is going to make someone who only consumes films to be more dismissive than they normally would be.

If we go to the other side of the world, we can see that the Japanese have been making video game adaptations since the 1980s, and there’s plenty of good stuff to be found. Mario had a perfectly enjoyable anime film a year after the first game on Famicom came out. The Street Fighter II animated movie is legitimately fantastic and perfectly captures the spirit of the games. This also doesn’t even include Steins;Gate, Persona 4, and the many other anime shows which have done their source material justice.

Out of all of them though, I’ve long been a champion of Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, a film that I believe is still the best adaptation of a video game for several reasons.

If you were one of the 154 million people who owned a Nintendo DS, chances are high that you played or at least heard of Level-5’s highly acclaimed puzzle adventure series Professor Layton. With addicting brainteasers, gorgeous artwork, charming characters, interesting stories, and high production values, it’s little surprise that Layton was among one of the handheld’s strongest franchises.

After a successful trilogy of games featuring the titular professor and his young assistant Luke Triton, Level-5 decided to do a George Lucas and make the next round of games a prequel trilogy. Chronologically set between the fourth title The Last Specter and the fifth title The Miracle Mask came a film entitled The Eternal Diva which hit Japanese cinemas on December 19, 2009.

From the outset, this shouldn’t necessarily work. How do you make a film based on a video game that’s highly reliant on puzzle-solving? Furthermore, wouldn’t wedging in a full chapter right in the middle of the story alienate people not familiar with the series? Eternal Diva surprisingly gets over both hurdles with little issue.

At the beginning of the film, we quickly learn who Professor Layton is, see his job as an archeologist and university teacher, and become aware of the fact that he’s often asked to consult on many criminal cases from the beginning of the film. Even if you’ve never picked up a Nintendo DS stylus in your life, the opening sequence does a swift job of getting the viewer up to speed.

While there are Easter eggs and references to in-game characters, for the novice it’s akin to reading a random Sherlock Holmes novel or short story. You don’t need to know every facet of Holmes and Moriarity’s relationship to know that they’re rivals, and the Professor Layton series works the same way.

Furthermore, one of the franchise’s greatest strengths has always been having fully animated cutscenes that are on par with any film or television show. The Eternal Diva just upgrades the animation further, and the puzzles are even still present too. There’s naturally far less of them to fit the runtime of a 100-minute film compared to a 20-hour video game, but they weave naturally into the narrative and give the viewer some time to figure out the solution with the characters on screen.

The story centers around Layton and Luke in the present reminiscing about a previous case set shortly after their first meeting. A famed singer named Janice Quatlane invites the duo to see her perform at the Crown Petone, but all those present are soon made to play a deadly game where one winner is promised eternal life.

Anyone familiar with the Professor Layton games will know that what follows is narrative full of twists and turns where no one is who they say they are, and the truth behind the mystery is an elaborate conspiracy. While The Eternal Diva’s story is perhaps not as engrossing as some of the games, I was pleased to see that it told an intelligent yarn that appropriately mixed scenes of mystery-solving, action, and even quieter, pensive moments.

The recent Super Mario Bros. movie did a good job capturing the overall spirit of the games, but if I had to offer any major criticism, it’s that it moved at such a breakneck speed it hardly gave the audience enough time to breathe. It succeeded on a technical level, but more time could have been spent on the pathos of its characters.

The Eternal Diva doesn’t have that problem, and that’s why I still believe it to be the best film adaptation of any video game. Like any good entry of a long-running series, it enhances the existing lore of Professor Layton and provides further context into what influenced the mentor-student relationship we see between the protagonists in the games which take place later down the line chronologically.

Despite having a relatively large cast of new characters who can only have so many minutes of individual screen time, the film’s writers do a good job of making each one feel developed and believable. All have different motivations for wanting to receive eternal life, which is the most compelling aspect.

Celia Raidley is a vain model who wants to keep her youthful beauty forever, and her being voiced by Kikuko Inoue is totally fitting as those are the kinds of roles she’s known for. On the other hand, Annie Dretche is an Agatha Christie-esque author who desires to write novels forever. Amelia Ruth, however, has far less selfish intentions and wants to save her dying grandfather by giving him eternal life. In just a few seconds each, we instantly understand what makes these characters tick, which is a sign of effective writing.

Without diving too deeply into spoilers, the film’s ultimate message is a surprisingly moving one about accepting the finite nature of life and how keeping the memories of those departed in one’s heart is its own form of immortality. If you’ve especially ever had to deal with the loss of a loved one, the last scenes will likely have you reaching for the tissues, which is something I doubt many can say most video game adaptations have achieved.

When it comes to the animation itself, The Eternal Diva easily surpasses the already high-quality production values seen in the games. While it isn’t quite on par with a Hayao Miyazaki or Makoto Shinkai film, the character models are all charming, the detailed backgrounds are beautifully painted, and the occasional use of CGI has surprisingly aged quite well for an anime released in 2009.

And speaking of Miyazaki, one can’t help but feel as if there’s some Ghibli influence throughout the proceedings. The makeshift flying vehicle Professor Layton makes feels very much inspired by what Lupin III uses in The Castle of Cagliostro, and the castle our heroes eventually arrive at reminds me of, well, the castle from Howl’s Moving Castle. Overall, P.A. Works did a good job and I think animation fans will be largely pleased with what they see.

With a title like The Eternal Diva though, music is obviously going to play a large role, and I can easily say that this is the film’s strongest aspect. Veteran singer Nana Mizuki, who voices Janice Quatlane, also provides the opening, insert, and ending songs, all of which are very memorable and actually integral to the story. Level-5 even put out an actual CD modeled after a vinyl record seen in the movie which features this content arranged into a short EP.

Veteran Professor Layton fans will get a kick out of the instrumental score, which is largely composed of tracks from the games arranged into a full orchestra. From the titular character’s French-inspired violin motif to the rousing track which plays during Layton’s battle with Jean Descole, it’s fantastic stuff that’s very effective in-film and also well-worth giving a standalone listen. The Layton games have always had beautiful music, but they truly soar when performed by an actual ensemble.

On the other side of the film’s audio, there’s the age-old question of whether one should watch this film in Japanese with English subtitles or dubbed into English. In short, you can’t go wrong either way. Professor Layton in Japanese sounds like your standard shonen anime with excellent voice actors, while the English dub feels just like how the games’ localization made the series akin to a quaint British novel.

Whether you prefer Japanese variety show celebrity Yo Oizumi as the good professor or the calming tones of Christopher Robin Miller’s voice, both continue the same quality of performance we’ve come to expect. The one disappointing part of the English dub is that major characters Emmy Altava and Jean Descole have different voice actors, but this is understandable in the context of the film having been dubbed long before the prequel games hit Western shores.

The Eternal Diva went on to be subtitled and dubbed throughout the world in various languages, but surprisingly only Europe received a Blu-ray release. The domestic Japanese DVD, however, features more extras including some fascinating behind-the-scenes footage of Level-5’s offices and the work that went into the film’s production. Overseas, it bizarrely even received a release on the 3DS eShop, which I suppose makes some sense given the series’ handheld origins.

Series creator Akihiro Hino announced at the time that he envisioned multiple films for Professor Layton, but The Eternal Diva was ultimately the only one we ever got. There were even a brief announcement of a potential live-action movie, but that too never came to fruition. Hershel Layton would eventually appear in animation again in the 50-episode anime sequel to the spin-off game featuring his daughter as the protagonist.

The game itself is often considered the black sheep in the series and many Layton fans including the present author ended up skipping it. Level-5 seems to have been banking on this being the new direction of the franchise, but low sales and the company’s overall financial troubles likely ended those plans.

For the longest time, many wondered if Professor Layton was gone for good, but the announcement of a brand new game from earlier this year calmed those fears. It appears to be a soft reboot of the series for newer players and is definitely the shot in the arm Level-5 needs right now.

Time has been kind to Layton due to fan nostalgia and if the new game is successful, I wouldn’t be surprised if more films or television shows came out down the line. The series benefits from being largely self-contained with each entry, so there is certainly potential for future stories that can take the lore and characters to interesting places.

Until then, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva ultimately strikes the right balance between being a faithful video game adaptation and an original story that appeals to a wide audience. Studios will undoubtedly explore various gaming IPs moving forward for future films, but Professor Layton already solved the puzzle of the right formula over a decade ago.