everything, everywhere reviewed at once

 honestly the thing that has held me back from reviewing this movie sooner even though i saw it in theaters is that i just didn’t think i would have anything to say about it that you haven’t heard a few hundred times from other people, like i just don’t really think i have a very unique take on it? but after seeing it a second time (at over 35,000 feet on the back of a headrest, so not exactly the overwhelming visual spectacle it was the first time i saw it), i realized that it’s not just a great movie, it’s one that i genuinely find very personally meaningful, so i can’t really just write a little blurb about it when i write an end of the year post or whatever.

so, yeah, my entrypoint to this movie was basically “i love michelle yeoh.” i also happen to love scifi/action movies, and i like the idea of multiverse stories, though now that the mcu has gotten their hands on that one some of the shine has certainly worn off. i also generally end up loving martial arts movies when i’m prompted to watch them, though they also aren’t something i generally actively seek out, which i probably ought to fix at some point.

but, again, the main thing that got my butt in the seat was being an unabashed michelle yeoh stan. so luckily for me this movie is not only a tour de force of her kicking the crap out of everyone around her, it’s also designed to absolutely live or die with the enormous feats of acting it’s asking from her. and, appropriately enough in a movie whose central thrust is about choosing life and love in the face of overwhelming pressures to choose death and despair, she delivers everything the movie needs and then some.

this is a mindbending scifi/action movie, but at its core is some of the most intensely personal stuff you can possibly imagine. the everyday stresses that bury the joy of life. a marriage falling apart. contemplating ending one’s life. just… grappling with the fact that the world is bigger than we are, that we are puny. taking all of the above to its logical extreme and concluding that nothing matters, that there’s no point in caring about anything. walking right up to that brink… and then coming back from it in the most resounding way.

there are so many things to love about this movie. but i think the moment that will forever be seared into the deepest parts of my movie fan consciousness is when the protagonist’s husband pleads with his wife to stop fighting. when one of his alternate universe versions explains to her that being kind and trying to set people at ease isn’t naivete, that he doesn’t know less about the world than she does, that it’s a conscious choice. that it’s the way he fights.

this is probably starting to sound like hippie-dippie liberal bullshit, but what keeps it from being that is what the protagonist does with this. she turns around and keeps fighting, but it’s like… it’s like… well, i don’t know what it’s like! i’ve never seen anything like it before. it has the rhythm of a martial arts fight, but it’s just her throwing all the things that are missing from her opponents’ lives at them. she fights them with love. she fights them with caring. but she still fights. because she needs to save her daughter. because nothing’s going to get in her way.

i’m actually struggling to put into words how i feel about this moment, and it’s just a tiny part of the movie? and it actually doesn’t even end up being the lynchpin of the movie after all, because there’s another reversal where her daughter almost gets her to let her go, and at first it seems like it’s the right thing to do, but she has to try one more time. she has to tell her that she matters to her, and why. she has to tell her that she loves her. and if she walks away from that, that’s her decision, but it’s not going to be because she didn’t fight for her.

love is kind, but it isn’t meek. love is mighty. love is resilient. love doesn’t go away when it isn’t convenient. love gives us the strength to fight. love can be how we fight. sometimes that means punching assholes in the face, sometimes that means telling someone something they don’t want to hear, sometimes that means just being there. what matters is that we never stop fighting.

i still don’t think i’m really bringing anything new to the table here, i still think it’s pretty unlikely that everything i’m saying hasn’t already been said better by others. the reason i still feel like it bears repeating is because this movie matters to me. i am not arrogant enough to think that some nobody writing a glowing review of this movie is going to make one iota of a difference in the grand scheme of things… but i think this movie would want me specifically, and you specifically to do it anyway. because no matter how much it might seem like nothing we say or do matters, it does matter. because the universe is infinite but it is not uncaring, and even if it were uncaring we can choose to care.

choose to care. i am literally begging you. there is very little else we have control of. it’s true that the world and its problems are bigger than us. we’re puny and we’re insignificant. but what we think, what we say, what we do matters. it all matters. all of it matters. everything matters. even if it only matters to one person, it matters.

i’m going to talk about math for a second, and i’m probably going to bungle this explanation. please know that my beautiful mathematician fiancx is shaking vir head at me for getting this wrong if so. and ve will kick my ass, but not in highly choreographed martial arts fights, more of the tying me to the bed and whaling on me with a cane kind of kicking my ass.

… see, the funny thing is that’s not actually entirely unrelated to the movie because there’s some super explicit bdsm stuff in it? BUT ANYWAY let’s not get sidetracked.

so, here’s my understanding. do you know what infinity plus one is? infinity. do you know what infinity plus two is? still infinity. do you know what infinity plus infinity is? STILL infinity. again, if i’m understanding this correctly. (from what i understand there are big infinities and small infinities but those are all ultimately still infinity? so they’re like the same but not the same? idk oh no my fiancx is getting the ballgag let’s move on.)

so, my point is this. yes, the universe is infinite. it’s probably the biggest infinity we can begin to comprehend.

but what if you, yes, you also contain an infinity? because as far as i know, the soul has never been measured, never been quantified, from what i understand it cannot be quantified. there is something, some unseen force, that makes you you, that makes me me, that makes us us.

i don’t know if this is making any sense, but what i’m getting at is this: i believe each and every one of us also contains an infinity. and if that’s true, the fact that the universe’s infinity is bigger than yours does not matter. an infinity is an infinity.

you matter as much as the universe. s-rank

star trek: the next generation, season 7

7x01 “descent, part 2”

this is yet another two-parter where part 1 was far & away the better part! like, i do love how genuinely effective dr. crusher was in command of the enterprise. she was a strong & decisive leader in a very difficult situation, and it’s a pretty great moment for a character who doesn’t get very many of them! but the rest of the episode is kind of just our heroes shuffling back & forth between a cell and a torture chamber, and data eventually breaking free of lore’s control to help them escape. hugh also helps.

like, idk, it’s not a bad episode or anything, but it really doesn’t feel like it delivers on the promise of a newer, scarier borg threat whatsoever. a lot of people complain that voyager nerfed the borg, but tng clearly got there first. b-rank

7x02 “liaisons”

when worf complains about the dress uniforms looking like a dress, riker pivots gracefully from chastising him for expressing a sexist attitude to teasing him that he would look great in a dress, and the evidence that i am objectively correct that they’re totally fucking is just getting hard to ignore at this point.

picard’s part of the episode is basically a toned down version of misery by stephen king, and it’s genuinely unpleasant to watch. worf & deanna’s parts are much better in every way. on the whole, though, it all adds up to be just one of the most mediocre episodes of tng ever apart from that wonderful cold open. c-rank

7x03 “interface”

wait i lied this is one of the most mediocre episodes of tng ever.

i kind of always underrate how bland season 7 is. like, it’s not season 1 bad by any stretch of the imagination, the show is just on much more solid footing by this point so there’s enough going on in the periphery that things are never really gonna get that dire again. but my goodness did this season get off to a rocky start. c-rank

7x04 & 7x05 “gambit”

the only truly noteworthy thing in this entertaining but forgettable two-parter is the conversation data & worf have towards the beginning of part 2 about worf’s duties as acting first officer.

it’s a fantastic scene for both characters. i especially really love how data fully communicates what he needs to communicate professionally, and then & only then does he pivot to the personal. and in this context he again demonstrates what an unbelievably good boy he is by saying straightforwardly that he apologizes if his actions have “ended his friendship” with worf. worf, not to be outdone in the goodest boy department responds that if anyone has jeopardized their relationship, it’s him, and he fully commits to doing better both personally & professionally. guys… i just… i’m fucking in love with this scene.

other than that, we get a part 1 that’s pretty heavy on action scenes with both a scene of ship-to-ship combat and a pretty hard-hitting phaser firefight, and a part 2 that’s pretty heavy on the various people on the mercenary ship picard & riker find themselves on betraying each other or lying to each other over & over. the most notable of these is probably the lady who is, i think i have this right and i refuse to look it up to check, a vulcan separatist pretending to be a vulcan intelligence operative pretending to be a romulan mercenary. it’s fine, it’s fun, but like i said, one of the more underwhelming two-parters of the series. b-rank

7x06 “phantasms”

this is extremely silly, and i’m kind of hard-pressed to argue that it’s good in any sort of objective sense, but i also kind of don’t give a shit about that if you haven’t noticed?

somebody pass a slice of the cellular peptide cake with mint frosting? b-rank

7x07 “dark page”

this is probably the best lwaxana performance ever, but the episode is just thoroughly not fun to watch. and like, i know there are plenty of example of tng episodes that aren’t exactly fun to watch that are nevertheless among my favorites, but “let’s plumb the depths of repressed trauma in a recurring character for no real reason with no lasting effects” is just super not it. c-rank

7x08 “attached”

it’s cool that we finally get some canon exploration of the status of picard & crusher’s relationship, and they did it in a fun scifiy way, but i’m still going to continue to headcanon that they’re going to pound town on the reg and it’s entirely possible that jean luc is wesley’s father as a result of the consensual kink cuck scenes he & “best friend” jack & their mutual lover bev ran. and all the initial weirdness between picard & crusher is a result of them both finding their relationship more difficult without their mutual sub, who both of them are grieving over in their weird, stuffy, repressed white ways.

hey, while we’re here, can we just real quick talk about the fact that it’s fucking weird that gene started off both of the show’s female characters having weird, unresolved sexual tension with the show’s top ranked male characters? that’s weird, guys. i’m sorry. it just is.

“hey wait, tasha was also a main character.” a) [thor meme] was she? b) the first time we get any actual backstory for her it involves the phrase “rape gangs,” so not really helping your case that this shit isn’t seriously weird.

anyway, who gives a shit about that actual main plot stuff, the best thing about this episode is riker just being thoroughly done with the two factions and kidnapping both of them to the conference room to yell at them about how over them he is. b-rank

7x09 “force of nature”

i’ve been increasingly appreciating data as neurodiverse representation on this rewatch in a way that i never used to, but you can just absolutely tell that geordi is the neurotypical friend because he decided the best way to see if he wanted a cat was to borrow data’s and do absolutely no research about cats? like, he’s just mystified by shit that is common knowledge about cats among the general population, let alone stuff that you can find in the article about cat ownership that is probably the first or second google result?

oh and the main plot of the episode is interesting i guess? though literally the only times it comes up again is in the next few episodes there are like two lines of dialogue stating that the enterprise is given permission to exceed warp speed limits due to the urgency of whatever situation they’re going to, and it literally never comes up again.

also like, 90% of the episode is actually some of the most well-written allegory the franchise has ever done about climate change, like the bit about going through official channels just leading to a bunch of delays while the destruction continues is just so real, but then in the very last scene just in case there’s anyone in the audience who doesn’t know what this warp drive stuff is an allegory for they have the guy from the planet that’s threatened literally say that the subspace anomalies are causing climate change on his planet, and i just couldn’t stop myself from laughing. b-rank

7x10 “inheritance”

hey remember two seasons ago when we gave data a weird mommy issues episode? oh, you do? shit, we were hoping you wouldn’t. c-rank

7x11 “parallels”

this is always one i look forward to. like, i love worf episodes and i love alternate timeline episodes and this is both.

i love the sort of “main” alternate timeline that worf ends up in for reasons that i’ll get back to later, but i also love the process of getting there like all of the little jumps in reality that worf keeps going through. they start small at first but are still unnerving, and eventually it gets to the point where it feels like reality is literally gaslighting worf and i just love the slow escalation to get to that point. it’s just a much different kind of episode than your garden variety alternate future episode or mirror universe episode or whatever. the variety is this episode’s real killer app.

but yeah i love that the somewhat stable, drastically different reality worf kind of settles in is the alternate future where the best of both worlds “mr. worf… fire” cliffhanger actually resolves with the borg cube destroyed at the cost of captain picard’s life, making riker’s promotion permanent. like, this is almost certainly the most interesting & significant “what if?” turning point in the show’s run, and getting to see the fully-realized captain riker who’s been doing it for three years since then just scratches a very specific narrative itch.

there’s also just so many wonderful little touches here like captain riker telling prime universe captain picard that it’s good to see him. it’s a great moment for jonathan frakes as an actor, and letting riker have that moment considering everything else going on around it is a great bit of writing.

having wesley crusher back as a lieutenant and tactical officer is an interesting touch, like it actually doesn’t feel like a super great fit for him at all? but it does actually follow from what he was working on in “the best of both worlds” so i guess ymmv as far as whether you think that makes sense for him or not. and obviously i love the fact that a permanent captain riker picked worf as his first officer, like i love their relationship so much even apart from being a shipper.

but yeah this is for sure one of the best episodes of the show, and after a pretty rocky season up until this point it’s nice to see that the show still has this in it. not that there aren’t a few more great episodes ahead, but this is the first really resoundingly good one of the season. s-rank

7x12 “the pegasus”

although this is functionally another “someone’s past comes back to bite them” sort of episode, and i do think there was way too much of that in this season, this is by far the best of the bunch. partially because it’s riker’s former commanding officer who shows up to make things awkward rather than a secret family member or whatever. in general, though, the whole thing is less soap opera-esque and more star trekky.

there’s also a ton of political and military posturing with the romulans, a well-written triangle of tension between riker, picard, and riker’s aforementioned former captain, and most importantly a resolution that hinges on riker acting with integrity despite personal cost, so in other words will riker being will riker. and that’s just always a good thing to use as the fulcrum of your episode. a-rank

7x13 “homeward”

how many fucking times does captain picard need to learn this exact same lesson about the prime directive? i feel like we’ve done this one like five times now.

no, you shouldn’t let an entire planet die if you can easily do something about it? that is literally never what you should do, and if you feel like you’re backed into a corner where that’s the only thing you can do either your rule sucks or you’re applying it wrong? but either way, clearly don’t do that?

worf’s surprise adoptive brother is 100% right about the spirit of the prime directive vis-a-vis the letter of the prime directive, beverly is 100% right that choosing not to intervene is also a choice, and what’s more she’s made that argument every other time this has come up which is actually some of the best character writing she’s gotten so given how often i complain about her & deanna’s bad writing i do need to extend credit here. and she keeps getting proven right so idk why picard always has to go back to zero in these arguments.

the worst part is when the planet’s atmosphere dramatically dissipates and picard turns to the bridge crew and starts lecturing them on how what they’re seeing is tragic but necessary to uphold the federation’s values, and it’s just so gratingly tone deaf i just fucking hate this bit of writing.

because i think what best reflects the federation’s values in this episode is when that one guy escapes from the simulation and stumbles into ten forward clearly terrified and basically everyone rushes to help him & reassure him. deanna especially shines in this scene, and while i really don’t like where this plot eventually ends up going, chalk up another actually good moment given to one of the show’s women main characters.

the central plot between worf and his foster brother is just… not it, imo? it comes out of nowhere and goes right back to nowhere, because we’d never heard of this character before and we’re never going to hear about him again. on top of that the whole “grrr brothers grrr boys can’t talk about their feelings grrr” shit is just so not my vibe regardless. c-rank

7x14 “sub rosa”

yeah so i’m giving the episode where dr. beverly crusher fucks a ghost a passing grade, and i actually rather seriously considered giving it a higher grade. i’m sorry, i get why it’s so infamous, but if you’re approaching it completely seriously it’s just not nearly as bad as some of the show’s worst episodes, nor is it boring? and if you’re approaching it unseriously, which obviously you should because holy shit it’s the episode where dr. beverly crusher fucks a ghost???, it’s a lot of fun to clown on.

planet scotland is just a bizarre choice, and while we’re on the subject i’m sorry but scottish fabio is just not that hot? like, he’s just… a guy! everyone is acting like he’s this strikingly attractive heartthrob, but he’s just… super mediocre!

anyway yeah, this episode does totally deserve its reputation and i’m not trying to argue that it’s a good tng episode because holy shit i think basically every decision that went into it was bad and wrong? but it just doesn’t strike me as remotely hateable in the way you hear it talked about sometimes. c-rank

7x15 “lower decks”

this episode is incredible and i super wish we got this sort of thing more often? i loved following a different group of people than usual and just seeing that similar bond of camaraderie mixed with personal friendship.

i also loved how all four of them gave us a chance to see a different side of our regular main cast, whether it was worf taking sito under his wing and just being the absolute best boss, geordi realizing he was kind of being an asshole and doing a 180 to support taurik’s initiative, riker intimidating the fuck out of lavelle (though in fairness lavelle really needs to realize he isn’t will riker and he needs to find his own way imo), and beverly having to shoo her staff out when some top secret shit is going down but then bringing ogawa back in and trusting her to be discreet.

there’s actually a deceptive amount of moving parts to this episode but they all fit together so well it makes it look effortless. and there are just some truly fun moments like the intercutting between the junior officers’ poker game and the senior officers’ game, but there’s also some very serious moments. by the end of it you’re just left feeling like you have a much fuller appreciation for what life on the enterprise would really be like, and getting that plus all the serious espionage & grief shit just makes for one of the absolute best episodes of the series. s-rank

7x16 “thine own self”

the plot with data losing his memory but quickly recovering his critical thinking skills and using those to do some kickass science in the context of a pre-industrial society is definitely not the least compelling thing ever or anything, but i’m honestly way more interested in the b plot with counselor troi taking her bridge officer’s exam? there’s just some great character writing for both troi & riker in this subplot, and given how involved she often is in major decisions having deanna take that next step and attain a command-level rank is frankly a no-brainer. b-rank

7x17 “masks”

kinda a weird choice to do two “something weird is going on with data” episodes in a row imo? this is another episode that gets a lot of hate and i think i’m actually way more sympathetic to the haters this time around? but like no matter how dumb it is at least it’s not terribly boring? so like, it could definitely be worse. c-rank

7x18 “eye of the beholder”

it wouldn’t have taken much for this to sink to Very Special Episode territory, and there is a turn to camera moment when data asks geordi some pointed questions about suicide that is honestly kind of as on the nose as tasha serving up a just say no commercial to wesley in season 1? though unlike the 90s anti-drug moral panic, it does actually feel a bit more necessary to include something like this here? like, i still think it’s not handled great, but it just isn’t as offensive to my sensibilities as a viewer.

but like, the bigger difference is that this is just a fucking great episode. pretty easily the best deanna troi episode ever imo, and i’m also just always going to love star trek whodunits. b-rank

7x19 “genesis”

this somehow manages to be boring & totally off the rails at the same time, and that’s just the quickest way to lose me as a viewer. i know this episode has its rather loud critics as well as its rather strident defenders, but i’m just not interested enough to join either side. something this dumb should not be able to be this boring. d-rank

7x20 “journey’s end”

there is literally a straight line between this episode and the way chakotay was cast & written on voyager. it’s just so fucking racist. i know this isn’t exactly breaking news, but i wouldn’t feel right not saying anything.

also like, despite this ostensibly being about bringing wesley back to give him a sendoff, he weirdly just doesn’t have much to do in this episode? d-rank

7x21 “firstborn”

i really hate how often worf has to learn the same lesson over & over when it comes to fatherhood, especially when it feels against the current of the entire rest of his characterization? he’s just so reflexively supportive of everyone around him, constantly saying exactly the right thing to get them to rise to whatever challenges they’re facing, but with his son it’s like those traits just go out the window?

i really do appreciate that when push comes to shove we always see that his heart is thoroughly in the right place, up to and including owning up to his mistakes, but i feel like this is the third or fourth time we’ve had this exact same arc with him & alexander and i’m sorry no matter how well-written it always is, i have to dock it points this time for repetition. c-rank

7x22 “bloodlines”

it’s pretty weird that the same season that tng finally discovered it’s allowed to have continuity is the one where they ran out of ideas and just started throwing surprise family members at every single crewmember. especially when you consider shit like that “tng season 8” twitter account a few years ago which was just consistently throwing out bangers on the daily in spite of its parodic tone.

anyway, i’m sorry but i just don’t care about captain picard’s fake son and i can’t believe that fucking daimon bok of all people is the nemesis this show just had to spend one of its final episodes dredging up out of mothballs. you get the impression that the show was running on fumes at this point, but the next few episodes are gonna make it seem like it could’ve gone on for years. i just don’t get it. c-rank

7x23 “emergence”

this is some prototypical silly star trek shit, it’s exactly the kind of episode i always look forward to. it’s also our last “normal” episode before the series’ endgame kicks into high gear, so it was nice to get one last taste of lighter fare before things got heavier in a hurry.

in terms of “stupid shit is happening on the holodeck” episodes, i think the only time the show did it better were the two moriarty episodes. a fistful of datas is fun as heck, haters be damned, but i think this one definitely edges it out. seeing shit like a train interrupting data’s shakespeare rehearsal and later seeing him using analog controls on the train to control the ship or worf shoveling coal into the engine was just a ton of fun, and i really enjoyed the dumbass train full of stock royalty-free holodeck characters doing stupid shit. a-rank

7x24 “preemptive strike”

after its final season spent an awful lot of time flailing around not really knowing what to do with itself, tng does a sudden about-face to end on two (or three if you count “all good things…” as two episodes) of the best episodes of the series, leaving you feeling like they actually could’ve kept this thing going for another few years.

there are just so many things to love about this episode. a beloved character gets brought back to be given a proper sendoff in a way that makes it genuinely bewildering that they bungled wesley’s so badly a few episodes ago? the action scenes were unrivaled until the dominion war really got into gear. and the character writing is just next level.

the scene where ro makes her final decision to join the maquis and turns on commander riker is just so fucking perfect. her going out of her way to make sure he’s safe, and him sounding genuinely tender when she asks him to tell captain picard she’s sorry is one of those resoundingly awesome moments that easily could’ve been either rushed past or overblown in a worse show (or a worse episode of this show). instead, we get this stirringly perfect moment that never fails to make me tear up.

i’ve said before, and i’ll probably say again, that i’m kind of sad we didn’t get ro as a main character on deep space nine since that was apparently originally the plan for her character, but we got one of the absolute best episodes of any star trek series out of the wreckage of that plan, so it’s kind of hard to complain. s-rank

7x25 & 7x26 “all good things…”

i’ve thought about it a lot over the years, but i actually think i was right when i was a kid: this is the best episode of tng, and quite possibly the best episode of any star trek series. it’s also one of the greatest series finales in television history.

i know this isn’t the explosive conclusion (... despite three versions of the enterprise literally exploding) that many other shows would build towards, but what it is is just the ultimate embodiment of everything tng is. nearly every character is given a moment to shine as the show’s past, present, and future are not only paid tribute to, but honed into truly one of the most ambitious stories the show has ever told.

although it isn’t exactly designed to be a tearjerker, the last scene of the series never fails to make me cry at least a little bit. seeing picard sit down at that poker table and say that he should have done this a long time ago is just so perfect. and having all the characters explicitly discuss what they now know about the alternate future and how they want to avoid drifting apart the way they did and remain a family was just so fucking profoundly meaningful to me.

i think this is my biggest problem with star trek: picard. tng already had a perfect ending. anything that came after should have followed this spirit, should have treated this as sacred. and if you don’t think you can make compelling television out of that, first of all i think you’re just wrong, but second of all i think you’re better off leaving it alone.

tng ended on the highest of high notes. and as the titular idiom says, all good things do have to end, but sometimes when we’re damn lucky, they end this well.  s-rank

s-rank: 5

a-rank: 2

b-rank: 8

c-rank: 9

d-rank: 2

average: 2.96 (c-rank)

i thought about doing some kind of separate post doing a series retrospective, listing my favorite and least favorite episodes and all that tacky shit, but i think instead i’m just going to do all that here.

so, first of all, here are the final rankings of each season by average episode rating.

1. season 6: 3.65

2. season 5: 3.62

3. season 4: 3.31

4. season 3: 3.11

5. season 2: 3.04

6. season 7: 2.96

7. season 1: 2.23

next, my top 10 episodes.

1. “all good things…” (season 7)

2 (tie). the best of both worlds (seasons 3 & 4)

2 (tie). unification (season 5)

4. yesterday’s enterprise (season 3)

5. cause and effect (season 5)

6. preemptive strike (season 7)

7. a matter of honor (season 2)

8. the measure of a man (season 2)

9. the inner light (season 5)

10 (tie). chain of command (season 6)

10 (tie). lower decks (season 7)

my 10 least favorite episodes (ranked from worst to least worst)

1. too short a season (season 1)

2. man of the people (season 5)

3. code of honor (season 1)

4. up the long ladder (season 2)

5. hide and q (season 1)

6. the child (season 2)

7. symbiosis (season 1)

8. genesis (season 7)

9. journey’s end (season 7)

10. justice (season 1)

my 10 favorite relationships/friendships

1. riker & worf

2. data & spot

3. guinan & picard

4. guinan & ro

5. riker & troi

6. riker & picard

7. ro & riker

8. data & geordi

9. picard & worf

10. picard & crusher

and lastly, my top 10 favorite characters.

1. picard

2. riker

3. worf

4. guinan

5. ro

6. data

7. dr. crusher

8. troi

9. geordi

10. wesley

i always feels like such a privilege rewatching this show. it’s not a perfect series–its first and last seasons alone made sure of that. but it has one of the strongest cores of any show out there. although my first exposure to star trek was the tos movies and i glommed pretty hard on to them, tng long ago surpassed tos as my baseline for what “star trek” is, the version i subconsciously compare everything else to.

it’s bittersweet saying goodbye to the show once again. this is now the third time in the last decade or so that i’ve intentionally sat down and watched the entire series from start to finish. but i know i’ll probably find myself another excuse to rewatch it again in a few years. i just always seem to find myself back here, and i’m frankly pretty grateful for that.

for now, though, hailing frequencies closed, sirs.

glass onion review

“again, it’s like poetry, so that they rhyme. every stanza kind of rhymes with the last one. hopefully it’ll work.”

i’m so sorry, as soon as i realized that quote was actually super appropriate for this movie, i just had to.

i asked myself a few questions when i heard rian johnson was going to be making several knives out sequels. chief among them was how in the world he was going to catch this particular lightning in a second bottle.

i mean, obviously following a detective from case to case is nothing new in the murder mystery genre, like that’s kind of their whole thing, right? but knives out was no typical murder mystery. aside from the just absolutely immaculate filmmaking and the incredibly joyful daniel craig performance, the second movie was going to be missing a lot of the intangibles that made the first one so resoundingly perfect. (you know, unless it wasn’t.)

i knew glass onion would be assembling a similar powerhouse cast, but it just felt like the thrombeys were going to be a hard act to follow. and all their rich white bullshit was so integral to what made the movie so great, with blanc immediately glomming on to one of the few people intimately involved in the case who wasn’t a rich asshole. so that element was just going to be completely missing. (you know, unless it wasn’t.)

the setting, too. the setting was just such a fucking powerful mood. the whole “the guy practically lives in a clue board” thing was just going to be hard to match, right? (you know, unless it wasn’t.)

but maybe the biggest thing missing, as previously alluded to, was unquestionably marta. i’ve written before that while the structure of the movie owes a lot to blanc’s personality & method, the heart of the movie belongs entirely to marta. i sort of super liked the idea of marta becoming his watson in a more full-time way, but that obviously would’ve been a somewhat unrealistic move for her character, so i understood why glass onion wasn’t going to take that direction. but it was just a shame that the movie didn’t even have a character who was roughly analogous to her. so that dimension of the movie was just going to be completely missing. (... you know, unless it wasn’t.)

okay, i’m belaboring this and the solution is actually pretty fucking obvious. the same people who assembled all of those elements in the first movie were the same ones building this movie. i mean, duh. and yeah, nothing is ever going to be exactly knives out, but you sort of don’t want it to be, right? you want it to be something new, something that’s its own thing, but you still want it to have the same core, the same central spark, that made you love knives out. you want it to be of the same kind. at least, that’s what i wanted. and that’s absolutely what i got.

the structure of glass onion is superficially very different. at first given what we had heard of the plot and even from just absorbing the first act of the movie as it came to us, i started to think we were getting a much more traditional whodunit than we did in knives out? and moreover, rather than being in complete control of the situation and alternating between seeming exactly that in control or acting befuddled when it suited him, blanc seemed actually befuddled? and it was kind of terrifying?

it reminded me of my first experience watching knives out. for the entire first long stretch of the movie you just think you’re watching a pretty typical murder mystery. and then there’s that plot twist that hits you like a ton of bricks, and you’re just like, “well fuck, we’re in a completely different movie than i thought we were.” and given that that’s like kind of one of the biggest magic tricks knives out pulled, i really shouldn’t have fallen for it a second time??? but of course i fucking did because rian johnson is one of the absolute masters of sweeping you up in a story that weaponizes your expectations and taking joy in misdirecting you so it can later take even more joy in including you in the joke.

but the thing that really makes this tick is that we’ve once again assembled a cast of fully-realized characters. all of these people actually feel like they could be real people while simultaneously being positioned in relation to each other in such a way as to create the web of intrigue you need for a great murder mystery. there is so much thought put into every tiny aspect of each character, mirroring the overall attention to detail that’s devoted to the rest of the movie.

i think this is basically just as good as knives out, which i will remind you is one of my favorite movies of all time. i’ll obviously need to devote quite a few more rewatches to it before i can really say something like that with confidence, but it’s good enough that we literally went and saw it again in theaters the next time we were able to even though it’s going to be on netflix literally a few weeks from now. and i’m going to watch it as soon as it’s on netflix. more than once. it’s the kind of movie that absolutely rewards rewatching, just like its predecessor.

my expectations for this movie were sky high, and it met and exceeded those despite the inherent difficulty curve of trying to pull off something like this again. at this point i trust rian johnson like i trust very few other filmmakers. and while i know there are probably plenty of other movies he’d like to make, i kind of wouldn’t hate it if he just kept making new knives out movies once every two years or so. i will never get tired of these if they keep being this good. s-rank