The Stalking Moon

The Stalking Moon (1968)

For a film which at first seems akin to the traditional captivity narrative, there is a surprising lack of shunning in The Stalking Moon (1968). Sarah Carver, a white woman who was held captive by Apache Indians for ten years, conceiving, giving birth to, and raising a son during that time, is not shunned by the soldiers who find her, nor by the scout who offers to escort her to safety. She is not shunned by the Apache women of her tribe, who stand by as mere set dressing as Sarah chooses to rejoin white society and ask the Army's help in fleeing from her Apache husband, who's on a murderous rampage to reclaim his son. She's given some contemptuous looks at a stagecoach station, where one man makes some hostile comments about Indians, but ultimately this is not a movie concerned with the more complex ramifications of the captivity scenario.

"You can't escape
The Stalking Moon"

The Stalking Moon instead presents itself as a horror thriller, the type where a deadly and inexorable hunter kills everything on its way to a final showdown with the film's protagonist. When this threat is in the form of a giant shark or a masked psychopath, its relentlessness is not questioned — it's a one-dimensional killing machine with no profound motives. But from the viewpoint of the early 21st century (post-Little Big Man, A Man Called Horse, Dances With Wolves, post-Elián González), when that threat is an American Indian who will stop at nothing to reclaim his son, he's not so much a horrific threat, just a dedicated dad. Granted, this father, an Apache named Salvaje, kills every white person along the way, even those not directly connected to his quest. But after decades of films that have changed the portrayal of American Indians in Westerns, this murderous rampage is more understandable, arguably excusable, to today's audience.

I would almost say that this is the main reason the film fails as a thriller, and that it does so only in a modern context, if it weren't for other, more fundamental problems it has in setting up its thrills. The suspense leading up to the eventual confrontation with the film's protagonist, the scout, Sam Varner (played by Gregory Peck), is diminished by one of the techniques presumably intended to build it, namely that Salvaje is not seen, even briefly, until he reaches Varner's homestead for the climactic fight. Successful horror movies often withhold from view the face of the killer but give you increasing glimpses — the silhouette of Norman Bates on the shower curtain in Psycho, for example, or the first flashes of fin and teeth in Jaws — or force the audience to see through the killer's eyes in POV shots. The Stalking Moon does neither, and while we await the arrival of Salvaje, we don't necessarily fear it. (The evident trappings of classic Westerns also dull the tension: in the final showdown, the good guy almost always wins.)

"Aim the gun, dammit!"

The deliberate teasing of the audience also works against the film. The first time Varner leaves his home — and therefore Sarah and her son — only to find that the Apache has taken advantage of Varner's absence to attack, was an acceptable (albeit predictable) contrivance. But when Varner does this again, and nearly a third time, suspense is replaced by amazement at how this man ever found work as a scout. Furthermore, as Salvaje — who arrives in a less silent manner than Sarah (and the movie's poster!) indicates he will — comes through the door of Varner's homestead, Varner is waiting for him, rifle at the ready. But Varner hesitates and waits until the Apache can see him before even lifting his gun to aim. Sure, this delay creates tension, but strains credibility to the point of annoyance. (In his 1969 review, Roger Ebert recalled "mentally urging" Varner to "Aim the gun, dammit! Shoot him!" My reaction was the same, only audible.)

Peck's portrayal of Varner is a bit stiff (more so than the usual Peck), and I'm not convinced that his character really thinks through his offer to bring Sarah and her son home, nor that he is genuinely moved to do so. For me, the emotional high point is when the boy, realizing his father has come for him, runs from Varner's house and tries to reach his father's hiding place. The bond between father and son that this scene implies is stronger than any other interpersonal relationship in the film: that between Sarah and her son, who seems indifferent towards his mother, between Varner and petulant junior scout Nick, who barely conceals his hurt at being left by Varner when the elder scout retires, or between Varner and Sarah, who are paired only out of sympathy and necessity.

Varner's homestead

The Stalking Moon is a nice-looking movie, though, with some fine location shooting. My favorite is Varner's homestead, an idyllic frontier Eden, one of the nicest locations I've seen in a Western. It would have been nice if the scenery had been backed up by some depth to the characters, particularly the Apache pursuer — insight to his thoughts about retrieving his son, about his original abduction of the boy's mother, about his vendetta against the white settlers — and perhaps an ending that reunited him with his son. That would have been interesting.

X-Men: First Class

James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender

When we first see the adult Erik Lehnsherr — the super-powered mutant who will become the villain Magneto — in X-Men: First Class, he's a multilingual globe-trotting assassin hunting down the man who tortured him years before in a Nazi death camp. This seems a suitable origin for a character who eventually turns against humans and comes to believe that mutants should rule over them. (George Lucas, take note: this is how you turn a character to the dark side!) What is not so suitable is that in Magneto's own origin story it is revealed that before there was Magneto, there was . . . another Magneto. Perhaps not the Magneto, but an evil mutant named Sebastian Shaw, who has his own dangerous powers, dangerous motives, and a dangerous team of evil mutants similar to the one the aged Magneto commanded in the previous X-Men movies. This is the disappointing thing about X-Men: First Class, because the interesting possibilities of such an origin story — in which the future Magneto befriends and then parts ways with his future rival Charles Xavier — are abandoned in favor of the team-vs.-team formula of the previous three X-Men films.

This is particularly surprising because First Class uses as its backdrop the Cuban Missile Crisis, a historical event weighty enough to provide sufficient threat and conflict for any super team. Given the novelty of the period setting and the possibilities inherent in the blending of history with fiction, it is puzzling why the filmmakers decided to eclipse the drama of Magneto’s supposedly unique origin with a villain who is essentially the character we know Lehnsherr will become, a character we have seen plot against humanity and be defeated before.

The other major figure is Charles Xavier, destined to become Professor X, a man committed to protecting humans regardless of how poorly humans treat mutants. The younger Xavier portrayed by James McAvoy is less restrained than the serene elder portrayed by Patrick Stewart in the other X-Men movies. Because his mutation — the ability to read and influence other peoples' minds — is not readily apparent to the outside world, Xavier effortlessly enjoys human society, winning drinking contests and hitting on women with a practiced pickup routine. Consequently, he is detached from the pain felt by mutants who, like his friend Raven, a scaly blue-skinned shape-shifter, must work hard to conceal their difference in order to be accepted. We see in Xavier a genius with a lot to learn, and though we can assume the events at film's end will humble him somewhat, we never see a true epiphany.

We do get to see Xavier, supposedly a professor in earlier films, actually teach in First Class — he helps Lehnsherr develop his powers of magnetism to astonishing levels, and watching him show a young mutant named Banshee how to fly is the film's highpoint of fun. The role of cool Nazi hunter suits actor Michael Fassbender very well, maybe in part because he played one so well in Inglourious Basterds, though certainly his own multilingual European background and good looks make him a natural for such a role. He keeps Lehnsherr's childhood trauma just under the surface at all times, unpacking it as needed to great effect and making Lehnsherr the most tortured — and most appealing — character of the film.

See also: Iron Men

Tron: Legacy

Beau Garrett as Gem and Garrett Hedlund
as Sam in Tron: Legacy

In the original Tron, video game programmer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is unwillingly transported to "the grid" — a virtual world representing a corporation's computer network. Flynn needs not only to escape, but to recover evidence that proves his work has been stolen by a corrupt CEO (played by consummate baddie David Warner). Flynn succeeds, returns from the digital world, and becomes head of the company. Tron: Legacy picks up years later, as Flynn (once again played by Jeff Bridges) returns to the grid and becomes trapped by an anthropomorphic computer program named Clu, which was created by Flynn and tasked with perfecting the virtual world. Flynn is subsequently presumed dead by the outside world, until his son Sam, a young boy at the time of his father's supposed demise, now a man of 27, is sucked into the grid himself. After finding his dad, the two must figure a way out.

This time, however, the threat is greater than loss of intellectual property. According to Flynn, any attempt to escape the grid would give Clu a chance to escape as well. Should Clu succeed in doing so, the results would be catastrophic to the real world. We're never told what kind of threat Clu poses, nor is it explained what kind of transformation would occur should a program enter the real world, whether it would retain its digital construction in the same way Sam (who at one point is shown bleeding during one of the gladiatorial games staged by Clu) appears to retain his organic physicality in the grid, or be converted to a biological entity, thereby losing any digital traits that would prove a threat or benefit to our world. Such questions are ignored in this film, as are explanations as to how Flynn and Sam were digitized in the first place. The emphasis here is on visual action and imaginative adventure, much in the same manner of the original Tron or another of Disney's "science fantasy" films, The Black Hole (glimpsed early in Tron: Legacy on a poster in young Sam's bedroom).

The father and son relationships, not only between Flynn and Sam, but between Flynn and his other self-styled creation, Clu, at times suggest something deeper at work, even if nothing substantial surfaces. The shots of Clu addressing his digital followers recall Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi films, but also Apple Computer's famous "1984" ad, and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs himself. Though look beyond these superficial likenesses and not much comes into focus. Is it technology that's oppressive, or just the pursuit of perfection? Are we becoming more and more dehumanized as we put more and more of ourselves onto our own "grids," our own virtual worlds of Facebook, Twitter, et al.? It's unclear if the film is making any such assertions, but in the end, as in the original, it feels as if it probably wasn't intended to.

Tron: Legacy owes something to the original film, of course, but also to the Matrix films, which owe a fair share to the original Tron themselves. The super-slick visuals, beautifully stylish virtual-world avatars (Olivia Wilde as Quorra and Beau Garrett as Gem are particularly striking), and impossibly acrobatic slow motion fight shots recall the virtual world of the Wachowskis' films, even as those films recall the virtual world concept of Tron. Quorra is very much like Trinity, and Michael Sheen's Castor — the proprietor of a chic nightclub whom Sam must seek out in order to find the way off the grid — echoes Lambert Wilson's turn as the Merovingian. It's as if Tron had been re-processed by the Wachowskis and came out The Matrix, and Tron: Legacy, in turn, is reaping the rewards of its own influence.

Most like The Matrix are the simultaneous feelings of triumph and (perhaps unintended) uncertainty at the film's end. Sam is told that he will be able to change the world — the real world — once he returns, much in the same way we expect Neo to change the relationship between the real world and the Matrix. In the end, however, we're left wondering just how Sam will do so, or if he really needs to at all.

Iron men

Being one of the last people on earth to have seen Iron Man 2, I may also be among the last to notice the nice tribute to sci-fi classic Silent Running during the final fight scene, in which Iron Man and War Machine (Tony Stark's friend Rhodey, also in a metal suit) battle robotic "drones" inside a geodesic bio-dome before fighting bad guy Ivan Vanko, decked out in his own super-charged suit of armor (and whose defeat echoes the demise of the villain in another film, the not-classic-but-persistent Predator). This is the second time in as many films that Iron Man has been challenged by a villain whose exceptional abilities are duplicates of his own, and it begs the question: "If the only villains capable of challenging Iron Man need to be outfitted in hi-tech battle suits, what kind of variety can we expect from future Iron Man films?"

The repetition in Iron Man 2 can be rationalized in a number of ways. With the advanced technology available in the world of Iron Man, it would perhaps not be surprising that Stark's suit would be co-opted, or at least imitated by, the military. This would require lots of invention and experimentation, a conceivable by-product of which could be criminals trying to unseat Tony Stark's alter-ego by salvaging scraps of the tech race into amateur super-suits. Perhaps, but also maybe boring. It could more generously be seen as the de facto terms of the Iron Man world: If you are going to be a hero or a villain, you need an iron suit, and what differentiates anyone is how they use the suit, or at least what modifications they make to it. Such a world would have the uniformity of robot anime, where giant robots like Mazinger team up and battle with...other giant robots.

But in the Marvel movies released so far, this is not the case. Unique villains are funneled through each film franchise at super-speed. Spider-Man, for example, has taken on Sandman, Venom, and Green Goblin 2 — all in the same movie. Each of these characters had very different abilities — one was genetically altered, one was the instrument of an alien life form, and one relied upon hi-tech weaponry — and each posed a different threat to Spider-Man, testing him in different ways. So far, it seems that any challenge to Iron Man must be made with the same form of energy and technology that drives his own abilities. But if variety dictates an end to metal-clad opposition, are there any foes worthy of Iron Man? Moreover, since both Iron Man films hint at a possible Avengers movie, what hope do any bad guys have against a team that includes not only the seemingly indomitable Iron Man, but the Norse god Thor and the...well, incredible Hulk, along with the relatively second-string abilities of Giant-Man, Wasp, and Captain America?

Since world-devouring baddie Galactus has already been used in The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, I imagine the only serious challenge to a team of super-powered super-heroes would be...a team of super-powered super-villains! It remains to be seen whether budget or strict adherence to the continuity of previous Marvel movies will preclude my Dream Team of Loki (who seems to be included, according to IMDB), Red Skull, Dr. Doom (I forget what happened to him in the FF movies; rather, I didn't make it through the FF movies to find out), and the Absorbing Man (I don't even know if he's current anymore — I just liked him as a kid), though I hope Iron Man, at least, is given an opponent whose flesh and blood is a match for his own nuts and bolts.