The Ultimate Disappointment That Is Star Wars: The Last Jedi

The Good: The animals, The final third is watchable
The Bad: Direction/Editing, Painfully forced humor, Problematic time aspect, Whiny Luke Skywalker, Evil is stupid, Ridiculous set-up, Plot contrivances
The Basics: Star Wars: The Last Jedi might well be the worst of the Star Wars films.


Like most Alpha Geeks, tonight I rushed right out to the first possible showing of Star Wars: The Last Jedi that I could find. The best possible way I can describe how truly disappointing Star Wars: The Last Jedi was is by saying this; on the drive home, I prioritized what I was excited about doing upon returning home and the list came out: 1. See my wife, 2. Reheat the nachos from last night, 3. Clean out the cats' litter boxes, and 4. Consider and review The Last Jedi. Without any spoilers, the simplest explanation for my antipathy toward Star Wars: The Last Jedi would be summarized with the idea that it took an hour and a half into the two and a half hour film for there to be a scene that was exciting and watchable. I know this because the local theater I went to has glowing clocks near the exits near the screen and as I waited for something good to happen in The Last Jedi, my eyes frequently drifted there.

Right now, it seems impolitic to criticize Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but I feel like I am on pretty solid ground with this one (outside just how I feel). Remember how people's initial reaction to Attack Of The Clones (reviewed here!) was overwhelmingly positive at the time? Have you ever gone back to A New Hope (reviewed here!) and caught just how whiny and annoying Luke Skywalker actually is in the film? Remember the feeling you had at the end of The Empire Strikes Back (reviewed here!) where it seemed like there were a ton of compelling directions in which the franchise could go? Have you ever watched a Star Wars trailer and just gotten excited by how it presented information? Well, The Last Jedi is getting praise that is likely to collapse when people actually let the hype fade and consider the actual work, Luke Skywalker reverts to his pathetic and whiny adolescent-sounding self, the film concludes at a place that is almost entirely impossible to create a compelling continuation to the franchise, and director Rian Johnson and editor Bob Ducsay created a film that spends its first hour and a half (at least) cutting as if it were one long trailer. The comparatively quick cuts - especially for reaction shots - feel more like a commercial or a trailer than it does a cohesive film.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi begins with an absolutely ridiculous premise and it sets up a film that has such a muddied view of time that it is almost impossible to take the film seriously. Following the destruction of the Starkiller Base in The Force Awakens (reviewed here!), the First Order has become more powerful and consolidated its power throughout the galaxy in such a way that the Resistance is on the verge of utter destruction. All this in the time it took for Rey to get to Luke Skywalker's planet where he has been hiding for the past thirty years. And, much like George Lucas beat to death the "there's always a bigger fish" idea in The Phantom Menace, Johnson is obsessed with illustrating "there's always a bigger ship." I can completely get why Supreme Leader Snoke would not bring his massive ship into the field with any frequency, but when the Rebel base is being bombarded, it is by a dreadnaught and Poe Dameron notes that it is not the only one. So, one has to wonder why the hell the First Order didn't have a dreadnaught near the vastly less-mobile Starkiller base to prevent their super weapon from being menaced.

So, the First Order is on the verge of wiping out the Resistance and Poe Dameron makes a daring, unauthorized, attack on the First Order dreadnaught that has come to finish off the rebelling force. Dameron is able to cut down the heavy weapons on the dreadnaught, but the Resistance bombers are effectively attacked. While a daring sacrifice allows the Resistance to take out the dreadnaught, the Resistance fleet is all but wiped out and when it comes out of hyperspace, the leaders are horrified that the First Order fleet - including Supreme Leader Snoke's massive command ship - are right behind them, picking off their vessels and harassing their final remaining command ship. Finn comes out of his coma and immediately asks after Rey. Rey, of course, is with Luke Skywalker, who refuses to teach the young woman the ways of the Force.

With Leia wounded, Poe Dameron demoted, Rey watching Luke wander through his days, and the last three Resistance ships running out of fuel and unable to make the jump to hyperspace because the command ship can track them, Finn and the Resistance engineer Rose go on a mission to find a codebreaker who can get them onto the command ship to disable the First Order tracking device. And Rey and Kylo Ren suddenly find they have a psychic connection and communicate and they debate with one another the nature of the Force.

Much like Thor: Ragnarok (reviewed here!), where the plot set-up is that the end of an entire world is imminent, but the film throws out joke after joke after joke, Star Wars: The Last Jedi belabors the humor and most of the characters - save Poe Dameron - sound nothing like they did in prior installments of the Star Wars franchise because they are joking so much. So, the Resistance in the galaxy is almost wiped out, but people sure are taking it with an amazing sense of humor. Except Luke Skywalker. Skywalker has become introspective, sad, a liar, and whiny . . . so whiny.

And while the first major joke of Star Wars: The Last Jedi lands, it completely recharacterizes the First Order as a bunch of idiotic buffoons. Evil is seriously stupid in The Last Jedi. Every major villain in The Last Jedi is tragically wrong at key moments of the film and it guts their credibility; how they have created an empire based upon dominance and slavery is beyond the suspension of disbelief.

And the time aspect of The Last Jedi is painful. With only hours of fuel left in their capital ship and the Resistance on the verge of utter collapse, Rey spends days and nights training, leaves a planet so remote that Skywalker successfully hid there for years, boards Supreme Leader Snoke's ship, gets captured and has a climactic battle with Kylo Ren; how the hell does that work?! And, on the subject of Rey, Daisy Ridley plays Rey as angry in almost every scene, so it's hard to believe she would not be an agent of the Dark Side.

What works in The Last Jedi are the themes. While Rose is abruptly saddled with a ridiculous romantic subplot, she is given a decent amount of character. She loathes the rich who profit off weapons sales and she has a real love of animals. The Last Jedi takes a nice divergence to illustrate that cruelty toward people and animal cruelty are directly analogous.

But for most of Star Wars: The Last Jedi the film oscillates between being painfully boring and an utter mess. One character speaks normal until his last scene where he suddenly develops a stutter, Leia does an impressive impression of Mary Poppins, and the physics of how Paige gets the control pad needed to activate the bomber's doors are troubling. How the Resistance gets trapped in a building with only one exit and entrance and, after they are sealed in, manage to get an entire force of soldiers out into the trenches in front of that door is a mystery.

Ultimately, The Last Jedi is a film that even the appearance of new, super-armored AT-ATs cannot save.

For other works in the Star Wars franchise, please check out my reviews of:
Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace
The Clone Wars
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 1
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 2
Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Rogue One
Star Wars - Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi
Caravan Of Courage - An Ewok Adventure

3/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Best Of The Pynchon Clones? Ship Of Theseus May Well Be It!

The Good: Poetics, Concept, Decent story
The Bad: Protagonist is virtually impossible to empathize with
The Basics: The basis for the concept novel S., Ship Of Theseus manages to stand up in an intriguing way on its own.


A few years back, as I was finishing another run-through of Fringe (reviewed here!), my wife learned of the existence of S.. S. is a concept novel, much like some musical artists make a concept album; more than a simple book, it was intended to be a layered artistic experience. Before she picked it up for me, my wife described it as an activity book for literate adults. The concept was a clever one; S. came within a slipcase that, once opened, included an artfully-made volume of a novel entitled Ship Of Theseus. This particular copy of Ship Of Theseus is filled with notes, additional pages and other goodies that are meant to be a story outside (and inside) the content of the novel itself.

Being on the road now, I finally had a chance to give the art project its rightful amount of attention. As I sat down to read, though, I found myself a bit torn as to how to approach the work. Ultimately, I settled up doing multiple readings (and dual reviews). In order for S. to work as a concept piece, there had to be some merit to the "source material," the book Ship Of Theseus. So, for my first reading through the project, I decided to read and evaluate Ship Of Theseus as its own literary work. Ignoring all of the commentaries and added materials, this, then, is a review purely of Ship Of Theseus, by novelist V.M. Straka, as translated by F.X. Caldeira.

Ship Of Theseus has merit as a literary work. Evocative of the works of Thomas Pynchon, Ship Of Theseus is a sprawling, often surreal tale that winds and wends with little clear purpose, less resolution and even less explanation of how the things that happen actually occur. Like works of Thomas Pynchon, the lines are poetic and the journey itself is often the real magic of the novel.

An amnesiac becomes conscious while loping through the Old Quarter of a harbor city in a nebulous time period before World War I. The man knows nothing, is soaking wet, and has pain throughout his body. He ends up at a bar, where he sees a mysterious woman and, while conversing with her after watching her for a long time, he is abducted. The man wakes up on a mysterious sailing ship and he is told by the lone crewman who speaks that his name is S. S. is shanghaied out to sea and is horrified that the crew of the ship appears sickly, each has their mouth sewn shut, and is preoccupied with a mysterious job belowdecks that they rotate into. When the ship nears land, S. is given the opportunity to escape when a waterspout appears to destroy the ship and he desperately swims to land.

S. finds himself in a factory city where the locals are picketing Vevoda Armament Works. Apparently, three of the workers have gone missing and the workers have organized to demand answers. S. is taken in by one of the leaders of the movement and is too slow to warn the leaders when he sees one of Vevoda's henchmen plant a bomb in the crowd. Framed by Vevoda's newspaper-printing lackeys, S. and his compatriots take to the hills and attempt to make it to a safer city. But Vevoda's men chase the group and S. escapes the slaughter . . . only to find himself back aboard the mysterious and mysteriously-reconstructed ship! While S.'s heart aches for the mysterious woman he met only once, he finds himself on a convoluted journey that takes him to a mysterious island where he is given a choice and a purpose; to seek his past or avenge the deaths of the workers!

S. is good in a weird way. The protagonist ages in irregular intervals, pines for a woman he does not truly know and has no real interest in his life before the book. But he observes the world and thinks about the plight of those he encounters and he has a curious nature as he tries to discover just what it is the sailors do on the orlop deck.

Ship Of Theseus is not a book for those who love complete answers and stark rationality. S. develops a clarvoiyant power, for example. How? Why (other than plot convenience)? That is not answered in Ship Of Theseus. But the use of his abilities and the way the narrative winds is surprisingly engaging. In fact, one of the few concrete sections in Ship Of Theseus is a very fractured portion late in the book that describes the movements and activities of one of the world's most competent assassins. Even the chase through the hills that S. endures with the workers is more florid and surreal than the assassination passages.

Ship Of Theseus is, however, plagued by a somewhat nebulous and unlikable protagonist. S. does not actually stand for much of anything; he has no clear or consistent convictions and his lack of curiosity about his past before the Old Quarter becomes frustrating late in the book. For the bulk of Ship Of Theseus, S. is buffetted around by people and events that he is only tangential to. He spends most of the book not even influencing the events he finds himself at; he just is in the wrong place at the wrong time and he is running from people who aren't even interested in him, specifically.

That said, Ship Of Theseus moves right along on the plot front and the story does crystallize in its final three chapters. Once S. gets a direction, he goes in it full-steam ahead and the book becomes a very fast read as it moves toward its climax.

Ship Of Theseus has beautiful and poet lines as S. contemplates his surroundings and mentally-debates philosophy. Straka places S. in an adventure where the nature of his reality - much like the boat he is on - continues to change, which is where the book gets its title. The exploration of identity and setting, philosophy and reality is poetically laid out consistently along S.'s journey.

Ultimately, Ship Of Theseus is a somewhat pulpy, but clever story of a man shanghaied by pirates on a potentially magic boat who continues to find himself getting into trouble whenever he escapes or returns to the ship!

For other book reviews, please check out:
V. - Thomas Pynchon
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Bad Twin - Gary Troupe

7.5/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Adam Nimoy Meanders Through Memories Of His Father And His Father's Iconic Character: For The Love Of Spock!

The Good: Some decent interviews and clips
The Bad: A lot of common knowledge, Incoherent progression
The Basics: For The Love Of Spock feels far more exploitative than informative or a true tribute to Leonard Nimoy and Spock.


When Leonard Nimoy died, it was a shock and left a deep sadness within the Trekker community. For me, Nimoy's death stung, but I had had the good fortune to meet the actor multiple times at various Star Trek conventions and even inteact with him. Indeed, when I first met Leonard Nimoy, I carried out a postumous wish of a friend who died before she could meet him and I wrote a short story about it. Leonard Nimoy's death is one of the few celebrity deaths that resonated with me personally, but the sting of his death was muted rather quickly when Adam Nimoy announced his plans for For The Love Of Spock. At the time, the project did not have a name, but director Adam Nimoy announced he was making a documentary about his father . . . and he went to Kickstarter to raise funds for the project. As a fan of Leonard Nimoy's works, as one who watched legions of fans repeatedly shell out piles of cash to get Nimoy's autograph at conventions (and knowing those companies paid Mr. Nimoy for his time and service), I was offended. Leonard Nimoy did not die a pauper and regardless of how much Adam Nimoy inherited (or not) from his father, it was in pretty poor taste to solicit fans for money to complete the project.

Apparently, I was in the minority view for such things and Trekkers once again shelled out and allowed Adam Nimoy to complete what could have been a vanity project on his father's life. For The Love Of Spock is a meandering documentary that vaguely follows the narrative of Leonard Nimoy's life, blended with stories about the popularity of the character Spock and self-referential bits about the documentary itself. Given that there are two autobiographies from Leonard Nimoy, there is shockingly little information that is unique to For The Love Of Spock . . . so what is truly new in the film seems mostly like therapy for Adam and Julie Nimoy to talk about their father.

Opening with a self-referential clip that explains how For The Love Of Spock came to be, intended as a tribute to Spock for the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek, Adam Nimoy had begun work on the project before Leonard Nimoy died. After a brief biography of how Leonard Nimoy - who had never held an acting job for more then two weeks and was working as, essentially, a jack of all trades in order to make ends meet for his family while pursuing his passion of acting - was hand-selected by Gene Roddenberry to play Spock, the documentary transitions into an exploration of the character. Featuring interviews by William Shatner, George Takei, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Jason Alexander and Chris Pine and others, For The Love Of Spock discusses the dynamics of the character with how Nimoy portrayed the logical character against the more emotive Kirk and McCoy.

Adam Nimoy infuses himself into the documentary as it progresses. Adam Nimoy discusses the effect of popularity of Star Trek on the Nimoy family - mostly admitting repeatedly that his father was a workaholic who was barely around. Adam Nimoy's infusion of self into the narrative leads to some weird dead ends within the narrative, like his inclusion of a letter from the early 1970s where Leonard Nimoy wrote to Adam about his relationship with his own father after the two had a fight. Adam Nimoy then declares he was a deadhead at the time, puts up a video of Nimoy singing his song "Bilbo Baggins" . . . and the way he uses it seems like a way to subtly mock him. The weird infusion of Adam Nimoy talking about himself allows Adam Nimoy to promote himself - showing his first Star Trek convention, describing his father's support of him in being an entertainment lawyer, etc.

But the lack of a coherent narrative, any sense of linear development, quickly wears thin. For The Love Of Spock leaps from Star Trek into Nimoy's theatrical career after Mission: Impossible. But before discussing Star Trek: The Motion Picture (referencing the Animated Series, but not the aborted Phase II project!), Adam Nimoy leaps ahead to discuss directing his father in an episode of The Outer Limits . . . which came well after Leonard Nimoy had established himself as a director. In addition to having shockingly little new information, For The Love Of Spock starts to feel disengenious about the life of Leonard Nimoy.

Neglected in For The Love Of Spock is the period of Leonard Nimoy's life where he purposely attempted to distance himself from his experiences in Star Trek. Nimoy wrote his first autobiography, I Am Not Spock long before writing I Am Spock - which Adam Nimoy is shown reading and listening to in For The Love Of Spock. And then Adam Nimoy tosses in, late in the film, weird mentions of his personal conflict with his father and Leonard Nimoy's alcoholism.

The result is a documentary that very sloppily shifts from discussing the character of Spock and detailing the life of Leonard Nimoy. Adam Nimoy's late shift to discussing his estrangement seems incredibly self-serving as having so much material for people discussing Spock and Leonard Nimoy, there is an abrupt shift to only Adam Nimoy discussing his relationship with his father. In other words, despite its other narrative problems, there is a wealth of information and sources for so much of the information about all other aspects of Leonard Nimoy's life and the cultural impact of Spock . . . but then only Adam Nimoy's word for what went on in his relationship with Leonard Nimoy. And it is somewhat weird to see Adam Nimoy opening up to Zachary Quinto where Quinto asks some of the most pointed questions of the documentary. Similarly odd is that during that section of For The Love Of Spock, there is no material wherein Leonard Nimoy's second wife is given a voice in the documentary. The film climaxes not with any sort of tribute to Leonard Nimoy at any number of the Star Trek conventions that were done following his death . . . but rather with a Burning Man tribute from 2015 to Nimoy?!

So much of For The Love Of Spock is similarly sloppy or contradictory. I am a big enough person to admit when I am wrong, but with For The Love Of Spock, my impression before the fact was definitely right. This barely-documentary is more exploitative than it is revealing or engaging. For those who want to know about Leonard Nimoy's life, picking up either (or both) of his autobiographies is a far better use of one's time than For The Love Of Spock.

For other documentaries based on Star Trek, please check out my reviews of:
Trek Nation
Trekkies
The Captains

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Worth The One Viewing: 10 Cloverfield Lane Is Interesting!

The Good: Performances, Mood, Plot development
The Bad: Limited concept appeal, Lack of genuine complexity, Mediocre characters
The Basics: 10 Cloverfield Lane is a clever glimpse back into the universe created in Cloverfield that works surprisingly well on its own!


Cloverfield (reviewed here!) is one of those films that I watched when it first hit theaters, reviewed, and spent no time beyond it considering. When the very first movie poster for 10 Cloverfield Lane was posted online, I rolled my eyes and thought that Cloverfield was a film that did not really require a sequel, so it seemed odd that the studio had bothered to make one. I wasted no time rushing out to see 10 Cloverfield Lane in the theaters (because one of the few things I recall about Cloverfield was nauseating angles on the big screen).

Now on Blu-Ray and DVD, I decided to watch 10 Cloverfield Lane because I like John Goodman and his presence in the film gave it an instant credibility. Besides Goodman's presence in the film, all I knew about 10 Cloverfield Lane before I sat down to watch it was that it was a very different film from Cloverfield. I envied the ambition of making a very different type of film from the "found footage" science fiction film to continue the franchise.

Michelle packs up a box of her possessions, leaves her engagement ring behind and drives off into the night. When her fiance calls, the call is disconnected moments before Michelle gets into a car accident. She awakens in a concrete room, an i.v. in her arm and her knee in a cast, handcuffed to the wall. After she manages to recover her smartphone from across the room, she is visited by a man who brings her food, crutches and the key to the handcuffs. He tells her that he intends to keep her alive and, despite what she says about her boyfriend, that no one is looking for her.

The man is Howard and he has a fully functional bunker where he is prepared to live out the catastrophic event that has occurred outside. Howard believes that there is either a chemical or nuclear attack, which has poisoned the air outside (as evidenced by two dead pigs within sight of the airlock door on the surface). Howard, Michelle, and a man named Emmett (who has a hurt arm) adapt to life in the bunker with Emmett revealing to Michelle that he saw what he believed was the attack and he fought to get into the bunker. Emmett helped Howard build the bunker and he believes Howard can help him survive. Michelle, convinced she heard a car above her bunker room, is unsettled by Howard. She remains unconvinced of the horrors outside until she tries to leave the bunker when a crazed woman, with a bloody face, tries to get into the bunker. Howard admits that he was responsible for Michelle's car accident and the two begin to bond over things like Michelle stitching Howard's head wound and going through the box of possessions Howard rescued from Michelle's car. After bonding for a bit, the bunker is shaken by something on the surface and Michelle has to go into the air ducts in order to restart the air filtration system. She is spooked, though, to find a message scratched into the glass of a window in the filtration room and an earring, which seems to belong to a local girl that Emmett knew went missing. Michelle and Emmett scavenge a shower curtain from the trash chute to build a contamination suit and gas mask to leave the bunker.

10 Cloverfield Lane is essentially a film that tries to keep the viewer guessing as to the nature of Howard's bunker. Is he a benevolent rescuer who accurately foresaw the potential of an impending apocalyptic event or is he a nutcase conspiracy theorist who has abducted Michelle? That type of film truly hinges on the characters in the film being interesting enough to carry long scenes of people simply interacting to make the viewer care as to what happens to them. 10 Cloverfield Lane does that well-enough to be watchable. There are plenty of moments in the film where the viewer is able to be immersed within the narrative of the three survivors in the bunker as opposed to simply thinking, "I wonder how this fits in to Cloverfield?"

John Gallagher Jr. is very good as Emmett. Gallagher might well be best known for his clean-shaven, upstanding, articulate character from The Newsroom, but in 10 Cloverfield Lane he plays a laborer who feel like he missed his chance to accomplish something. Emmett fought to get into the bunker and he plays fearful and ambitious and the character is just clever enough in some of the key, tense, scenes to be plausible. Gallagher is able to portray the wide range of emotions for the sometimes simple character very well.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is fine as Michelle, but the truth is that Michelle is a very simple character. Most of Winstead's performance and time on screen is designed to make the viewer fearful for Michelle and Winstead does everything she needs to to make the viewer care. Michelle is vulnerable and the physical contrast between Winstead and Goodman is significant enough that the viewer worries instantly for her safety. As Winstead bugs out her eyes and breathes frantically, the concern the viewer has for Michelle intensifies.

10 Cloverfield Lane features a predictably diverse performance from John Goodman as Howard. Goodman has the range that keeps the viewer unsettled, wondering just who Howard actually is and what his motives actually are. Goodman plays Howard as alternately reserved and exhibiting a dangerous temper. Howard is an interesting foil for Michelle and Goodman finds the balance to play him to make him seem like someone who was shellshocked, but smartly prepared.

Ultimately, 10 Cloverfield Lane plays out as a somewhat predictable mindfuck. The film makes a final scene left turn from the drama-thriller that preceded it, but it works and is, at its worst, watchable.

For other works with John Gallagher Jr., please visit my reviews of:
The West Wing - Season 4
Jonah Hex
The Newsroom - Season 1
The Newsroom - Season 2
The Newsroom - Season 3

5.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Consequences Of The Classic: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Packs A Lot In (For Adults)!

The Good: Decent story, Excellent character moments, Some good moments of performance, Special effects
The Bad: Moments of direction, Busy
The Basics: Largely satisfying, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has more character punch for the new and beloved characters from the Star Wars universe!


As cinematic anticipation goes, it is hard to imagine a film with more pressure to perform than Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (reviewed here!). Telling the backstory of Anakin Skywalker was the promise of fleshing out a universe that had been defined by effect, rather than cause. Indeed, one of the most common oversights made by casual viewers of the first film in the Star Wars Trilogy is that the Senate is dissolved by the Emperor, ending the Old Republic. The original Trilogy is about effect and beginning the prequel Trilogy was the promise of cause. As much as I allowed myself to get excited about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the truth is that in many ways it had the potential to be merely a vanity exercise.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a chance to see old friends and see the effects of the familiar story on a galaxy far, far away. But with the fall of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor who led to more than twenty years of tyranny in that galaxy is, in truth, a satisfying enough end for most fans. There was a tremendous amount of hype surrounding Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but the real risk in continuing the story of Star Wars following the events of Return Of The Jedi (reviewed here!) was that the story would not be strong enough to justify the continuation. After all, the nostalgia element of seeing how the beloved characters of the original Star Wars Trilogy aged and developed is not nearly enough to hold a full film, if they are not the focus of it.

Fortunately, Star Wars: The Force Awakens finds the right balance.

In fact, Star Wars: The Force Awakens offers something that George Lucas's original idea for a "space opera" lacked and that is a sense of impact, consequences and adult relationships between most of the characters. Prior to watching the film, I was speaking with friends who were with us about the color motifs in the original Star Wars Trilogy and I pointed out that Luke Skywalker wearing black throughout Return Of The Jedi was intended as a visual cue to viewers that during the final battle between Luke and Vader, the viewer is supposed to believe that Luke Skywalker could actually go over to the Dark Side and join the Emperor. I noted that the film had absolutely failed to portray Luke in a convincing way where that turn to the Dark Side seemed like a legitimate character development (indeed, the idea that the dramatic tension at the film's climax was supposed to suggest Luke could go to the Dark Side only became clear to me through one of the commentary tracks on one of the DVDs; and that was after decades of watching the movie!). The brilliance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is that the film's dramatic tension is such that throughout the film there is the feeling that, truly, anything can happen.

Opening thirty years after the Battle Of Endor and the fall of the Empire, Luke Skywalker has gone into hiding and the First Order has risen in its place. The First Order is hunting Luke Skywalker to eradicate the last trace of the Jedi from the Galaxy and on the planet Jakku, they may well have found the means to find him. On the desert planet Jakku, Poe Dameron is given a map to find Skywalker and when the First Order descends upon the village he is at, he puts the map into the droid BB-8. The First Order is led by the aspiring Sith Kylo Ren, who takes Poe back to his star destroyer for interrogation. In slaughtering the inhabitants of the village, one of the Stormtroopers breaks his conditioning and realizes just how wrong the First Order is and he refuses to kill anyone there. While that Stormtrooper rescues Poe from the star destroyer and flees the First Order, on Jakku, a scavenger named Rey finds BB-8. When the freed stormtrooper, named Finn by Poe, crashes near Rey, Rey, Finn, and BB-8 flee Jakku in a piece of junk . . . the Millennium Falcon!

The Millennium Falcon is rescued in space by none other than Han Solo. Rey and Finn describe their predicament to Han Solo and Han Solo is not eager to get involved, until a deal he is in the middle of goes south. Han reveals that Kylo Ren is his son and that he was being trained by Luke Skywalker when he turned to the Dark Side and ruined Luke's attempt to rebuild the Jedi. When Han, Finn, Chewbacca, and Rey attempt to get BB-8 to the Resistance through Maz Kanata, the First Order arrives to capture them. They kidnap Rey. Han reluctantly returns BB-8 to the Resistance, which forces him to reunite with Leia, with whom he is estranged. Under the orders of the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke, Kylo Ren and General Hux activate a new planet-destroying weapon, which wipes out the last traces of the Republic. While Han Solo, Finn, and Chewbacca work to rescue Rey, the Resistance launches an assault on the Starkiller!

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a film that is packed with both the sense of consequence and the fearless idea that the familiar people from the previous story have aged and developed. Han Solo and Leia Organa had their relationship and it was torn apart by the loss of their son, which is a depth of realism that was noticeably lacking from their prior, flirtatious, relationship. Antagonism is a great way for characters to spark chemistry, but it is not exactly viable for a relationship and Star Wars: The Force Awakens allows Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford to play their characters in a more weighty way.

They are balanced by Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega), who are new characters who are given enough backstory to intrigue and enough character to compel without feeling overly expository. It is easy to make comparisons between Rey and Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Luke, Leia and Han in A New Hope, especially when easter eggs, like Finn picking up the target training droid from A New Hope while on the Millennium Falcon, keep popping up throughout the film. Boyega is entertaining as Finn and Ridley plays conflicted remarkably well for Rey. Throughout Star Wars: The Force Awakens, both characters oscillate between being analogous to Luke or Han, which keeps viewers guessing as to which one will actually be the character who awakens the Force within them!

Despite the title, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is not nearly as much about the rebirth of the ancient religion as it is about the corruption of Kylo Ren and how the First Order has grown in power in the absence of Luke Skywalker. The viewer is completely missing the rebirth and second slaughter of the Jedi; Star Wars: The Force Awakens explores the consequences of that, not the actual events. There is no great confluence of the Force in Star Wars: The Force Awakens; there is just a new New Hope that gets access to the Force.

Director J.J. Abrams does a decent job with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, if for nothing else than not using too many lens flares. There are shots he does that are clear homages to A New Hope, Alien, and Star Trek and most of them are good. However, there are several shots that Abrams does not linger on long enough for the viewer to appreciate or he focuses too tightly on, so the scope or action is harder to discern than it ought to be. But, of course, Greg Gruenberg makes an appearance!

Ultimately, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is more adult, clever and character-driven than the prior Star Wars films, which is a treat for those who grew up on the Star Wars film and wants something weightier than a simple space opera.

For other works in the Star Wars franchise, please check out my reviews of:
Star Wars - Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
The Clone Wars
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 1
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 2
Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Caravan Of Courage - An Ewok Adventure

8.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Not The Rip-Off Of The X-Files It Initially Appeared To Be: Why Fringe Succeeded!

The Good: Great long plot arc, Most of the acting, Quirky lines, Most of the characters
The Bad: Anna Torv is not the strongest lead, Some of the bottle episodes are less compelling/requires a lot of trust for the investment
The Basics: With one hundred episodes, Fringe The Complete Series builds up to a conflict between our universe and an alternate and becomes embroiled in plots to save the world from invaders from parallel realities . . . and malicious, future, humans!


I have been starting out 2014 by finishing off some television series’ that were long-running or that had my attention, lost it, and I found again to finish off. One of those shows was Fringe and, to date, it represents the best investment of time and attention for my returning to. Fringe, now available in a compact full series bundle pack, was the fourth major television series J.J. Abrams was affiliated with (though, unlike Felicity, Alias, and Lost, Abrams neither wrote, nor directed a single episode of the series) and it represents one of the few television series’s in recent memory that requires a tremendous amount of patience and attention. Fringe, which initially seemed like a second-rate rip off of The X-Files, takes a long arc and while the five seasons each have fairly distinctive concepts, the entire series is actually one long story. To wit, one of the apparent throwaway episodes in the middle of the first season is not paid off until the last few episodes of season five!

Fringe is a series that is greater than the sum of its parts and works better when one sits down and binges on the hundred episodes, as opposed to meandering through the series with weeks between each episode. Fortunately, the new 20-disc Blu-Ray set allows viewers to do just that. Fringe The Complete Series us basically a compilation set of:
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
and Season 5

Fringe opens with a plane setting down, its entire crew killed by a mysterious flesh-eating virus. The multi-organization task force includes the FBI, Homeland Security, CIA and others. One of the investigators is Olivia Dunham, another is her lover from a different intelligence organization, John Scott. While investigating the plane and the virus, Dunham learns that the virus bears a similarity to one created years prior by a scientist who has been institutionalized for seventeen years. Enlisting his next of kin, Peter Bishop, Olivia and Peter spring the apparently insane scientist Walter Bishop. When John Scott is struck down by the virus, Olivia allows Walter to give her an untraditional therapy that allows her to enter his mind.

The cases that follow have Olivia investigating strange biological occurrences and physics anomalies that are forming an intricate pattern of destruction, all of which seems centered around Walter Bishop and his old scientific partner William Bell (and the company that sprouted up after Bishop was institutionalized, Massive Dynamic). Olivia’s history with Walter Bishop is soon revealed as she uncovers a painful truth; Olivia was one of the subjects of Walter’s experiments – in her childhood she was part of a clinical drug trial for a drug called Cortexiphan. Cortexiphan was designed to allow children to develop incredible powers and Olivia’s soon manifests – she can perform limited operations using thought alone and she was trained to be a solider in a war that seems inevitable with an alternate universe. The source of Walter’s social awkwardness is also quickly revealed; he suffered a tremendous loss in his past and to try to save the world from himself, he had part of his brain removed. Walter’s history with the alternate universe is deeply entwined with the alternate universe and his son, Peter, which Olivia slowly uncovers and has to accept as they work intimately together.

Fringe is a clever series in that it tells a story, steeped in consequences of events from long before the series began (which, fortunately, we get to see!). The extensive backstory of Walter, Peter, and Olivia comes together in a compelling way and then develops into a story for a very intense struggle that is very compelling. As Peter and Olivia wrestle with consequences of Walter’s scientific explorations in the past, Walter is tormented by the man he was . . . and an alternate version of himself from another universe whom he wronged years prior. The series is filled with strange creatures (like worms that gestate in people and burst out a la Alien), bizarre medical anomalies (like spontaneous scar tissue forming over people’s eyes and mouth), and physical aberrations (such as a bus’s occupants suddenly being caught in amber, freezing everyone inside in a form of suspended animation) and character drama that have surprising realism to them. The contrast of things like Olivia wrestling with Peter unwittingly developing a relationship with her alternate version plays off the fringe science freak of the week stories well.

To better understand Fringe, it helps to know who the characters are. For the bulk of the series, the principle characters are:

Walter Bishop – A classic mad scientist, he is shaken and socially awkward. Having spent seventeen years in St. Claire’s mental facility, he returns to his Harvard laboratory where he is legally under Peter’s care and assisted by Astrid. He has a brilliant mind, but one that is scattered and leaves him socially awkward. He slowly comes to understand that his experiments on people and (especially) children in the past has immense consequences on both our universe and another universe he invaded years prior,

Olivia Dunham – A by-the-book FBI investigator (her illicit relationship with John Scott notwithstanding), she opens up to extreme possibilities when she sees the evidence of Walter’s work carried on by Massive Dynamic in his absence. She has a sister and niece whom she is very protective of and she develops a relationship with Peter. Horrified to realize that Walter used to experiment on her, she slowly remembers the nature of those experiments and uses them to empower her,

Astrid – She is the straight-laced assistant of Walter who puts up with having to milk his cow and the fact that Walter cannot remember her name. She is a competent agent, but is largely used to question Walter’s theories so he can explain them, but she is an invaluable member of the Fringe team,

Nina Sharp – The power behind Massive Dynamic, she is the only person who knows where the reclusive William Bell has disappeared to. She tries to recruit Olivia and acts as both antagonist and aid to the Fringe Team,

Philip Broyles – The leader of the Fringe Team, he is an FBI bureaucrat who slowly opens to the extreme possibilities under consistent attacks by followers of a document written by William Bell. Trying to stop the terrorist David Robert Jones, Broyles encounters more strange phenomenon that lead him to fight for funding for the Fringe Team,

Charlie Francis – Olivia’s partner at the FBI, he is attacked by one of the creatures the Fringe Team discovers and tries to help Olivia through her loss after John Scott dies (and subsequently appears to Olivia),

and Peter Bishop – A swindler and con man, he faked his way into classes at M.I.T. Found by Olivia in Iraq, he reluctantly comes back to the United States and he holds Walter together. Made a consultant with the FBI, he quickly develops feelings for Olivia and slowly comes to accept that Walter is not the root of all evil. He is shaken when he learns the truth of his past, but makes a conscious choice to live in our universe, even when it causes him to be erased from time.

Amid the main characters are Observers, bald men who have an inhuman understanding of time and space. One of the Observers saved Peter’s life as a child and events now seem to be building to Walter being forced to repay that debt.

The performances in Fringe are, unfortunately, erratic. Anna Torv, who plays Olivia Dunham, is a painfully weak lead for the series. She starts the series stiff and it takes quite a while for her to come into her own. In fact, it is arguably not until the alternate universe version of Olivia is introduced that Torv manages to show off her acting chops. Given a very different way to play the character, Torv slowly warms up to be a decent protagonist.

At the other end of the spectrum are Joshua Jackson and John Noble. Jackson plays Peter and he plays the character wonderfully. Jackson plays a credible con man and he does so with the charisma needed to land the role entirely realistically. Noble is incredible as Walter Bishop. John Noble is funny and able to get through the technobabble expertly. As he plays Walter slowly coming back into reality, John Noble illustrates more depth and talent than almost anyone else working on network television. Noble emotes with his eyes deep sadness that plays perfectly to the character’s sense of remorse for the past. As the series goes on, he is able to play Walternate and his past self with a range that is great.

On DVD and Blu-Ray, Fringe The Complete Series is loaded with bonus features from deleted and extended scenes to featurettes that both illustrate the making of the show and how various elements are tied together over the seasons. The Complete Series Blu-Ray set does not include any exclusives that were not in the prior season sets.

In the end, Fringe is actually the effective embodiment of what J. Michael Straczynski sought to do with Babylon 5 (reviewed here!); it is a novel for television that develops over the course of its hundred episodes to tell a deep, transformative story that puts the characters at the beginning in a completely different place by the end.

For other shows that originally aired on FOX, please check out my reviews of:
Family Guy - Volume 10
Glee - Season Three
House, M.D. - Season 4
Arrested Development
Kitchen Confidential
Wonderfalls
Firefly
The Lone Gunmen
Millennium
Ally McBeal
VR.5
The X-Files
Ned And Stacey - Season 1
Friday The Thirteenth: The Series
The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr.
War Of The Worlds - Season 1

7.5/10

For other television reviews, please be sure to visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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If This Is What It Was All Leading Toward . . . Fringe Season Five!

The Good: Good story, Good character work, Decent acting, Intriguing plot direction
The Bad: Video tapes?!
The Basics: With only thirteen episodes, Fringe comes to a powerful conclusion that makes it (almost) all worth it.


For all my complaints about Fringe when the show first began, Fringe actually developed extraordinarily well over the course of its five seasons. Unlike the staff of The X-Files (reviewed here!), who clearly had no cohesive idea of what the mythology of the show was when they began it, the writers of Fringe managed to tie most of the disparate pieces of the series together. In the fifth season of Fringe, the series took an immense leap forward and in the process, made the series – which wandered occasionally – come together in a way that was quite impressive.

Foreshadowed in a single episode from the fourth season of Fringe (reviewed here!), the fifth season of Fringe takes place in the year 2036. It is virtually impossible to discuss the final season of Fringe without revealing elements from the later episodes of the fourth season (so, read that as a spoiler alert!). The final season of Fringe has an oppressive opening credits sequence and it follows directly the events of the fourth season episode “Letters Of Transit.” In that episode, which was something of a non-sequitor in the fourth season, a young woman in 2036 was part of a team that released Walter Bishop, Astrid Farnsworth, and Peter Bishop from amber in a world where the Observers had taken over and oppressed all of humanity. Following the resolution of the alternate universe plot, Peter and Olivia get together and have a daughter, Henrietta. Etta was seen in “Letters Of Transit” and she was reunited with the former Fringe team members.

The fifth season of Fringe opens with Walter and Peter trying to figure out how to save the world from the oppressive reign of the Observers. They make a trip to recover Olivia, who they discovered was ambered while on an assignment from Walter. Back in 2015, shortly after the Observers seized power, Walter developed a way to stop them. Because the Observers can read minds, Walter scrambled the information in his mind and hid clues on video tapes in the lab and elsewhere in the country. Olivia was sent to get the device that would put Walter’s thoughts back in order when she was lost. While assembling pieces of the device that will save the world, Etta sacrifices herself for the team.

With Etta lost, Peter takes extreme measures to thwart the Observers. Realizing that the Observers have less of a biological advantage and more of a technological one, Peter removes the tech from one of the captured Observers and implants it within himself. He uses the tech to begin a hunt for the leader of the Obervers, Captain Windmark. Manipulating Windmark’s timeline puts Peter on a path to personal destruction as the Oberver’s technology begins to make him as emotionally disconnected as the enemy. With Olivia devastated over the loss of Etta and fearing that she is losing Peter and Walter terrified that he will become the unprincipled man who would lose Peter, the rebels against the Observers move to save mankind by traversing dangerous occupied territories, a pocket universe, and even the alternate universe.

From a continuity perspective, one of the most impressive aspects of the fifth season of Fringe is the return of Michael, the child found abandoned in a building in the first season episode “Inner Child.” “Inner Child” was one of the incongruent episodes that did not appear to gel with the rest of the series, but it turns out to be an exceptionally important episode when the subject of the episode pops back up and his true nature is finally realized.

The fifth season focuses heavily on Peter and Walter. Peter has a genuine arc as he reacts to the loss of Etta with a realistic sense of grief that drives him to transform himself. As Peter becomes able to manipulate time and space the way the Observers do, he loses his sense of attachment to Olivia, Walter, and humanity itself. He rationally understands how his brain is being altered and when he is forced to make a decision on how to proceed, it is one of the two big catharsis’s of the season. Walter’s arc, by contrast, is a bit more repetitive. Walter’s brain has been restored in order to allow him to think on a level needed to defeat the Observers. As a consequence of being able to process information again with the full potential of his genius and imagination, Walter begins to fear that he will become again the man who ruthlessly pursued science before in such a way that he simply uses people without regard to their inherent humanity. While the arc is performed well, the notion is repeated frequently, with little genuine development.

To better understand what is going on in the final season of Fringe, it helps to know who the characters are in this darkened future. In the fifth season, the principle characters are:

Walter Bishop – The most wanted fugitive of the Observers, he has a plan to defeat the enslavers of humanity. To that end, he begins watching videos he made of himself that explain the plan he had to save the world before he froze himself and his friends in amber to keep them from the Observers. Walter fears who he will become when his brain is restored and he begins to treat people differently than he had for the prior few years. He recovers powerful rocks, Michael, and other artifacts before finding the one other person on Earth who can help him assemble the device that will help liberate humanity,,

Olivia Dunham – No longer poisoned (or empowered, depending on one’s perspective) by Cortexiphan, she is estranged from Peter following the loss of Etta before they were all ambered. She aids Walter and clings to the memory of Etta after her daughter is lost. She becomes integral in rescuing Michael when he is captured by the Observers,

Astrid – Much more active than in prior seasons, she fires her gun quite a bit. While the rest of the team goes off in search of artifacts, she stays back in the lab more often than not and burns away the amber surrounding the tapes and other needed devices in the lab,

Nina – Head of the Science Division, she works around the Observers, but knows how to resist them. She only aids the team once or twice and when she goes head to head with Windmark, she protects Michael and shows the Observers just what humans are made of,

Broyles – Still in charge of the Fringe Division, he is not a Loyalist (a human ally of the Observers) and it is only now that he reveals to Etta how hard he has looked out for her over the years. He is forced to keep his distance from the Bishops in order to protect them,

Anil – A human resistance leader who works with Etta, he works with Peter and Olivia after Etta is killed. He provides Peter with a captured Observer, as well as weapons and other resources for the Resistance,

Captain Windmark – The Observer leader, he begins to feel uncharacteristic vengeance toward Peter and the humans he is surrounded by,

and Peter Bishop – A protective father, he is devastated by losing Etta so soon after he is reunited with her. He begins to neglect Walter when Walter needs him the most when he inserts Observer technology into himself. He slowly rekindles his relationship with Olivia, despite the distance his use of Observer tech causes between them.

In the final season of Fringe, the acting is wonderful. Lance Riddick, who barely appears in the season, plays Broyles as aged and tired with an expert variation of his physical presence from prior seasons. Blair Brown makes her infrequent appearances count as the wheelchair-bound Nina. Even Anna Torv makes Dunham interesting once again. Joshua Jackson illustrates some good range playing Peter as far less emotional when Peter uses the Observer technology. Playing the gradual increase in intelligence and decrease of emotion provides an interesting acting challenge and Jackson rises to the occasion well.

John Noble finishes the series with another exceptional performance. In the final season Noble gets to play both super-intelligent and emotionally vulnerable. Almost entirely absent in the final season are moments when Walter is crazy and spouting random, funny, lines. Noble reinvents the character well and makes the viewer care once again in the tragic hero of the series.

On DVD and Blu-Ray, the final season of Fringe looks great. The bonus features augment already wonderful primary programming and help give those going through Fringe withdrawal a little something extra to enjoy after the show ends. Finally the people who work with J.J. Abrams finish a show well!

For other final seasons of J.J.Abrams or science fiction shows, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Lost - Season 6
Alias - Season 5
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Season 7
Angel - Season 5
The X-Files - Season 9

8.5/10

For other television reviews, please be sure to visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Fourth Season Of Fringe Keeps The Story Going Well!

The Good: Intriguing continuity, Good character work, Decent acting, Intriguing plot direction
The Bad: Some predictable moments/bottle episode issues
The Basics: Over the course of twenty-two episodes, Fringe Season Four explores an aberration in the timeline after Peter Bishop was erased.


There are few television series’ that I return to with such enthusiasm as Fringe. Before picking up Season Four of Fringe, I rewatched the entire series, which was helpful because the fourth season does not simply pick up where Season Three (reviewed here!) left off; it has frequent allusions to the first two seasons and to get the most out of it, one has to see those prior seasons. The fourth season might be a very minor slip from the quality of the third season, but it is still hard not to argue that Fringe is one of the rare shows that gets better and better as the series goes on. Fringe is a series that truly takes its time to develop and evolve and the fourth season is essentially a love story that explores the power of love and how loneliness and loss can leave people shattered to their core.

With twenty-two episodes, season four of Fringe reestablishes the Fringe multiverse as a place where the integral character – Peter Bishop – never existed. While this fundamentally redefines the series, the re-emergence of Peter Bishop into the altered multiverse creates new and old conflicts. The surprise of the season is how well it works, though parts of the season build up to nonevents (Peter Bishop spends most of the season trying to get back to “his Olivia,” implying that he is in a third universe, when the concept of the season is that the two universes are the same as in the prior two seasons, but as altered by Peter’s removal from the timestream). The fourth season of Fringe also added Lincoln Lee – played by Seth Gabel – as a main cast member. Lincoln Lee had previously only been seen (with one exception late in the third season) in his Alternate Universe version as a leader on their Fringe team.

With a bridge between the two universes formed and a peace accord reached, the distrust between the leaders of both universes grows in the wake of Peter being removed from the timeline by the Observers and his integrating with the machine left by the First People. In our universe, Lincoln Lee’s partner Robert Danzig is killed by new, organically-based shapeshifters. The reclusive Walter Bishop blames his alternate and Lee starts working with Olivia Dunham and her FBI Fringe team. The tensions between both sides rise when the Other Side seeks help from our side in dealing with a serial killer (whose counterpart teaches forensic psychology) who steals people’s happy memories as he kills them. Agent Dunham finds herself re-experiencing moments of time and she and Walter begin seeing a strange man flashing in and out of existence before them. After Dunham has a dream that includes Peter Bishop, Peter Bishop appears in a lake in New York.

Instantly suspicious of Peter Bishop, Walter and Olivia become convinced that the impossible man cannot truly exist. But when Peter is able to help expose information about how the new shapeshifters work and he recognizes their creator, David Robert Jones, he instantly becomes invaluable to Walternate. With Walternate desperate to stop the infiltrators and David Robert Jones and Peter desperate to return to his native universe, Olivia begins experiencing migraines. Jones needs Olivia to re-develop her talent and someone close to Olivia is working with Jones to dose Olivia with cortexiphan. Jones’s endgame seems to include radically altering the human genome and breaking down the barriers between the universes. With shapeshifters infiltrating the other side’s Fringe Division and Peter searching for a way home – using aid from the Observers – Olivia experiences a deep betrayal which allows her mind to break through the temporal barriers set up by the Observers. As the rebooted Olivia makes a conscious decision to sacrifice her memories for the love she had with Peter, Jones accelerates his experiments that put both universes in peril.

The fourth season of Fringe has a number of stories that deal with love. Peter’s love for Olivia made it hard for him to be completely erased from the timeline and the love others had for Peter helped subconsciously suck him back into normal existence. The stories of Peter and Olivia are blended with serial killers who use pheromones and a man who developed a time machine that kept his wife in a loop that preserved her mind before she succumbed to Alzheimer’s. The fourth season of Fringe is smart enough to not simply be working back to its beginning; the universes were both fundamentally altered by the removal of Peter Bishop from the timeline, but that did not change how both Walter and Walternate lost their Peter and even Peter’s return does not restore Walter’s memories or rewrite the cases that Peter was not a part of before his return.

That requires a fundamental rewrite of the backstories of several of the characters and stories that were in prior seasons – Walter was removed from the asylum by Olivia and has been under her care for years, Olivia was raised by Nina Sharp in both universes – which makes for an enjoyable twist for viewers who have been watching the prior seasons. Knowing minutae about prior seasons makes a big difference as the season progresses – the show revisits an early Fringe case with the new universe alteration which is fun and understanding what happened to Colonel Broyles’s son that allows the Alternate Broyles to be exploited is not made explicit in the later episodes. Even details like the Alternate Olivia managing an impossible shot (she was an Olympic sharpshooter in the Alternate Universe in the prior timeline) are covered by having prior knowledge from earlier seasons.

What I found fascinating was how the minor characters who seem insignificant are given the freedom to develop over the course of the season. At the outset of the fourth season, it seemed like the producers and writers had absolutely no idea how to use Nina Sharp, but when she pops back up, she takes on a real significance (though in one of her most important episodes, the reversal is painfully predictable for fans of spy thrillers and science fiction). Astrid and the Alternate Astrid are given a surprisingly wonderful episode and when they share scenes it’s actually a treat to watch. Even Lincoln Lee has some cool moments as he has an understated, unrequited love for Olivia that gets crushed with Peter’s return.

To better understand what is going on in the fourth season of Fringe, it helps to know who the characters are and how they were redefined for the season. In the fourth season, the principle characters are:

Walter Bishop – Having tried to save his son twenty-six years prior and nearly precipitating a war between the universes when he abducted the Alternate Peter, but he died when the ice broke beneath him upon his return, he is on edge because Olivia has the power to have him remanded to the asylum. Terrified that Olivia will return him to St. Claire’s, he struggles with leaving his Harvard lab where he lives. Otherwise, he uses Astrid as his eyes and ears on all missions. When Peter appears, he is suspicious and refuses to accept him as his son. As he gets to know him, though, he does things like share the gifts he had bought for Peter after Peter’s death,

Olivia Dunham – Suffering from time loops and migraines, she was raised by Nina Sharp after she ran away from the Cortexiphan experiments as a child. She does not trust her alternate and she has custody of Walter. She distrusts Peter, but soon starts to rely upon his intel. When she is dosed with massive amounts of Cortexiphan, she begins to remember the alternate time line and her feelings for Peter Bishop make her feel something she did not expect,

Astrid – She leaves the lab to act as the eyes and ears of Walter, relaying all information to the Fringe scientist. She encounters her alternate self and has compassion for her unemotional counterpart. She is the consummate professional, even keeping her father at a distance from the work she does,

Nina – Still in command of Massive Dynamic (given the temporal reset), she raised Olivia Dunham. When Olivia makes the conscious choice to follow love, she implores her “daughter” to form a new bond with her,

Broyles – Professional as always, he runs the FBI Fringe Division. He is continually mystified working with Peter and Olivia, but is integral to keeping the peace with the alternate universe,

Lincoln Lee – An F.B.I. agent whose partner is killed by a shapeshifter, he is slowly brought into the fold of the Fringe Division. He becomes fascinated by how his life and the life of his alternate diverged. He is more reserved and less confident than his counterpart and working with Dunham slowly opens him up to feelings that make him want to stay in one place (which he never wanted to do before),

Peter Bishop – Phasing in and out after his existence is nullified, he is restored to the timeline through acts of love and an unexpected technology. When he finds that no one knows who he is, he appeals to Walter to explore the possibility that he actually exists and figure out how. When David Robert Jones resurfaces, he exposes him as the man behind the organic shapeshifters. Making a deal with Walternate to get him back to his native universe, he struggles to accept what the Observer (September) tells him about his existence. He loves Olivia and is cautious about making the same mistakes as he did in the past with the Alternate Olivia. He assists on cases that he is familiar with from the original timeline and works with the Fringe Team to save both universes,

Alternate Broyles – Almost instantly exposed as an ally to David Robert Jones, he runs the Fringe Division, though it takes some time for his weakness to be revealed. When Olivia is captured, he has to make a choice as to how to best save his family and his universe,

Alternate Astrid – A statistical expert, she has no real social skills. Even so, she crosses over to meet the other Astrid when her father dies and she does not know how to deal with it. She falls in love with liquid coffee,

Alternate Nina – Unsurprisingly devious, she has allied herself with the most dangerous person in the multiverse and she is prepared to use Olivia to reach their endgame,

Alternate Olivia – Distrusted by Walter for an incident where she replaced Olivia for some weeks, she works closely with the Alternate Lincoln Lee in investigating Fringe Events in the other universe. She tries to make peace with Walter and herself, but shows no attraction to Peter. Working with Walter, she comes to suspect the mole in the Fringe Division,

and Walternate – The chief suspect in the organic shapeshifter conspiracy, he takes a huge risk to trust Peter when Peter Bishop reappears. Otherwise, he takes a back seat as the Director of the Department Of Defense to investigate the shapeshifter conspiracy. As David Robert Jones moves to collapse both universes and create a new universe in his image, Walter opens himself to believing in extraordinary events in order to try to save his universe.

The fourth season of Fringe is dominated by performances by the second-tier actors. Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, and John Noble are all predictably wonderful as their primary and Alternate characters, but none of them truly give viewers anything we have not already seen before. Seth Gabel becomes a surprisingly good addition to the cast as Lincoln Lee. He plays the primary Lincoln with a subtle romantic underpinning for Olivia that plays well over the course of the season. Gabel plays off himself expertly in the scenes he shares where he plays Lee and Alternate Lee. The creates two characters so distinctly different that when Lincoln Lee becomes obsessed with the question of where the two diverged, it seems perfectly natural for the viewer.

Of the long-term cast of Fringe, Jasika Nicole might well have the best role to showcase real emotional range and depth. Nicole plays Astrid and at the outset of the season, she has a much more active role in Fringe. Nicole also plays the Alternate Astrid and the other version of Astrid is downright robotic. When the two interact, the episodes are funny and their relationship is clever and well-defined. It offers Nicole the chance to play a truly different set of characters and that gives her a chance to shine (and she does).

On DVD and Blu-Ray, Fringe The Complete Fourth Season is loaded with bonus features from deleted and extended scenes to featurettes that both illustrate the making of the show and how various elements are tied together. The fourth season has great primary materials and the bonus features drive up the value of the Blu-Ray set.

Ultimately, season four of Fringe might be an extended play for the people who are already fans of the show, but it has some resonating themes and moments of greatness that make it worth watching and worth sticking with the show for.

For other works with Jared Harris, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones
Lincoln
Tales Of The Black Freighter
Mr. Deeds
Dead Man

7.5/10

For other television reviews, please be sure to visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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