The Perils and Pitfalls of Waifuism in “Bioshock Infinite”

[Warning: This blog post contains SPOILERS. If you somehow haven't played Bioshock Infinite, maybe don't read on. Also, you should play Bioshock Infinite, so I have more people to bitch about this game to.]

I recently had the pleasure of replaying my favorite “train wreck” game of all time, the gonzo anti-imperialist Bioshock Infinite. After shelling out a horrifying fee of $60 for the remastered “Collection,” I was eager to find out if the game (now in 1080p!) held up since its 2013 release. The answer was both “yes, God yes, this thing is brilliant” but also simultaneously “no, dear God no, bury this thing deep in the Earth’s crust, and seal away its creepy toxicity forever.”

Let me explain.

Since 2013, we’ve seen some intense shit. The world was hardly innocent back then, just a year after I’d gotten out of college. The Syrian civil war was already spiraling out of control. Just around a year before Infinite came out, we were reminded that the West has its own share of pointless horrors. One year after the game's debut, a pair of spree-killers in Las Vegas mounted an abortive "revolution" in a Wal-Mart, which sounds morbidly comic until you realize they were motivated by goddamn Clive Bundy and his stupid cows, and that their "revolution" was founded on Alex Jones broadcasts and neo-Nazism. Sound familiar? If this incident is completely off your radar by now, you're forgiven--it was merely one of dozens of spree killings in 2014. Four years ago we were already so buried in violence it was impossible to keep track.

This kind of atmosphere must have informed Bioshock creator Ken Levine's mind, in the years leading up to BS: Infinite's release. Ken thought it was time to address, through the medium of video games, the division and chaos in America. This was a really great idea... in concept. In execution, his grand vision was mired in bizarre creative bungles and the fact that Ken Levine is way, way up his own butt when it comes to literally everything.

        Pictured: An actual video from the inside of Ken Levine's butt. My God, it's full of niche game ideas!!

That's not as much of an insult as it sounds, I promise. I adore Ken Levine, I think he's the closest thing to an actual genius in video games outside Hideo Kojima or Bloodborne's Miyazaki (no, not that Miyazaki.) He's clearly intelligent, an outside-the-box thinker. But the problem with outside-the-box thinkers is that sometimes they go so far outside the box they disregard common sense, ignore clear and obvious flaws with their creations, and insert fictional crushes in their AAA video games.

 Jesus, it's like the Uncanny Valley had a baby with 1990s Disney. What was he thinking?

Again, let me explain.

Irrational Games was the unexpected darling of the video game industry, back in ye olde 2010 when Infinite was first announced. A beautiful but ultimately misleading "gameplay" video in 2012 served as proof of concept: Levine and co. were crafting an elaborate dystopia (again) that would involve the player using magic superpowers (again) and making weighty moral choices (again.) It was too big to fail. Hype intensified until finally, the full game was released after several worrying delays which nearly tanked potential sales.

And at first, when it was released, people loved it. It was every bit the weird, new, different experipeople had expected--while many elements were missing from the final version, it remained a bizarre, gory romp through a fictional city with lots of bullets flying and fanatics screaming. I loved it.

But it has a problem. And that problem is called... Elizabeth.

Elizabeth is an AI companion, a complex and engaging character who drives the narrative of the story. She's  capable of opening dimensional rifts, which is a clever method of spicing up combat that otherwise would get dull and repetitive. When a firefight starts dragging, you can just open a portal and pull a machine-gun turret through, and presto--the tables are turned! That feeling of outsmarting the enemy is crucial to Bioshock gameplay, and it was present and accounted for.

Yet... There's something off about Elizabeth. What could it be? Is it her visual design, cribbed from Beauty and the Beast?

 "Be our guest, be our guest, Infinite fails the Bechdel test..."

 Nah, that's not it. Is it her buggy behavior, like when she smiles at the player after delivering several accusing lines about how VIOLENT and EVIL your character is? Nah, that's forgivable too. After all, you do tear people's heads off with a pinwheel in this game. Elizabeth kind of has a point when she calls you a murderer, and passive-aggression makes a lot of sense for someone who's spent their life locked in a tower.

No, the problem with Elizabeth is that she was conceived from the ground up for the player to get attached to her. And not just in a comradely, "gosh-thanks-for-saving-me-from-robot-George-Washington" kinda way. No, Elizabeth's design and voice acting (and her sudden change to a "sexy" costume mid-game) is all engineered to draw in male fans who are attracted to her. And this is where the game starts to fall apart.

Because at a certain point, Levine (and by extension, some portion of the dev-team) started caring more about making Elizabeth appealing, than about making her a character, and this single-handedly turns the game from a wild alt-history ride into a painful slog, complete with dozens of cringe-worthy moments.

Let's start with the elephant in the room. Elizabeth is 17. She is, for all intents an purposes, an innocent child at game start. You rescue her from a secluded tower, making this the weirdest Tangled fanfiction ever put to screen, and immediately traumatize her by murdering a bunch of sky-racists right in front of her.

Now that's what I call foster parenting!

Okay, well... Not the healthiest start to any relationship, platonic or otherwise. You follow this up with more murder. And more, and more, and more. Somehow, in between these massive bloodbaths, Elizabeth starts to care for you. She sees you as her savior--and that cracks open a can of worms so loaded with unspoken context and damsel-in-distress undertones that I'm not even gonna get into it, here. Suffice to say, Elizabeth's feelings for you are based on Stockholm Syndrome at best. At worst, she seems like your unwilling prisoner. The game does try to grant agency to her, but given her actions in the game are all pre-scripted, she ends up feeling more like a Westworld "host" than a real human being. Some of that can't be helped--this was an experimental NPC, after all, and Irrational was going out on a limb by creating her. She's an untested prototype, a bundle of code written to be as realistic as possible... which, given the limitations of the Unreal engine, isn't very.

And yet, despite all of this, I really like Elizabeth. Even though her dialogue feels canned and her design is simpering and helpless, she's still fun to travel with... if a little obnoxious. Her character "arc" is all over the place as she starts a doe-eyed waif, then switches to femme-fatale by getting a haircuit, and then there's that part of the game where you meet a future version of her, who's been tortured for decades and... she's pretty much the same? But with wrinkles? Also, because this game borrows the "multiverse" approach from Rick and Morty, there are infinite versions of her across infinite timelines--some of whom we actually see in the game. And honestly, it's kind of hard to get invested in her story, when there are infinite duplicates of her out there. Why care about the peril of a character, when there are 1,000 other versions of her that are perfectly fine? And why can't we go to one of those universes?

"Th-th-there's infinite Elizabeths out there, M-Morty! It gets fuckin' excessive, Morty! They're gonna drown you in the climax of the game! It's real--BRRURRP, it's real fucked up Morty! It makes no sense!"

Anyway. Like it or not, Elizabeth is the beating heart of the game. All the gameplay, all the Vigors and gear and cool cinematic moments, would ring hollow without her. You can see why Ken Levine fought tooth and nail to keep her in the game, despite several attempts by the publisher to push her out. Without her, BSI would be just another shooter. A very pretty, well-lit and atmospheric shooter, but nothing more.

And fighting for "weird" game elements is Levine's strength. He excels when he pushes boundaries--even when some boundaries should probably remain un-pushed. Take for example, the scene where you help Elizabeth, who later turns out to be your daughter [spoilers] to lace up her corset--and the game gives you a realistic view of her shoulderblades, the whole time. Who asked for that scene? Was it you, Ken?

It totally was.

Also, why does she stay in the corset after that scene? It looks really painful. Do they not have T-shirts, in Columbia? People steal Jimi Hendrix songs from the future in this game, and they can't get Liz a nice Rolling Stones tee? God dammit.

Guess I'll just listen to the AMAZING soundtrack for the fiftieth time. Fuck you, Ken. Fuck you for making me love this game so much.

The core problem with Elizabeth isn't the voice acting (which is excellent) or the big moments featuring her (and there are LOTS of these, almost to the point of saturation.) The problem is that Levine is over 50 now, and even when he was making this game, he was an older white male gamer building the "perfect companion" for other white male gamers. As a result, Elizabeth's design and mannerisms come off as strongly pandering to that demographic.

And an infinite multiverse, this feels lazy. Where's our studly dude companion, for the ladies? Where's our Furiosa Liz, with a skyhook for an arm and a badass buzz-cut? Hell, if this is a game with multiple realities, why can't we select Liz's gender and outfit at the beginning, choosing from all of her infinite counterparts to create a custom compadre? Yes, I know, all this would be hellishly expensive to program and rig. But anything would help to make her feel like less of a... "targeted marketing" product, shall we say.

She feels like a diplomatic overture to horny, lonely gamer guys. "Buy our game, and you'll get a cute female companion! You can murder whoever you want, she doesn't care! Well, she does, but she can't do anything about it because she's a walking plot device and Ken worked REALLY hard on her and wrote her into every scene without considering how dated and creepy it would look five-plus years later, so deal with it!"

 "If you think THAT'S bad, wait till I hit you over the head with these endgame twists!"

I'll stop there, before I drown everything with impotent nerd-rage. But the point is, Elizabeth is both immersive and flawed, just like the game-world she lives in. She might be a digital fetish object, and a borderline-Mary-Sue whose powers wax and wane comically with the requirements of the "story." But she's also a surprisingly strong emotional anchor for the game's rebellious spirit--and honestly, I would help her zap people with lightning, any day of the week.

RIP, Liz. Your game could have been better, but it was truly ahead of its time.

Melkor the Manbaby Part 3: End of the World (And I Feel Fine)

Okay, guys. This is it: the final Melkor entry. Honestly, I'm not even sure what to do with the blog, after this. It might be impossible to top Melkor's complete domination of my life, right down to the way I see the world. If you've stuck with us so far, thanks! Here's our recap:

As an experiment to explore the ideas of manhood in video games, I built the most whiny emo bitch-baby I possibly could inside of "Dragon Age: Inquisition." I then set him loose to vomit his pathetic, simpering awfulness across the game-world--pissing off Varric, Cassandra and the whole damn gang with his priggish attitude and "WHY WON'T ANYONE DATE ME" dialogue.

"I'm such a NICE GUY, I don't understand why Cassandra won't go out with me!"

Since I started this series, a lot's happened. And I mean, a lot. Since my last entry back in December, we've had yet another mass shooting perpetrated by a violence-obsessed loner. Yet another entitled asshole, taking out his deluded aggression on the innocent.

Oh, and this happened.

And this.

Wait! Let's not forget terrifying shit like this.

Yeah. There were so many earth-shattering acts of hubris and aggression since Part Two that... honestly, I'm just gonna stop while I'm ahead here.

Anyone not living under a rock should see the fact America has a violence problem in its male population. Yet, how to solve that problem? Nobody seems to have the answer. Finding it may be the central project of my generation--on top of fixing the damn government and making sure our national monuments don't get fracked. But I digress! You didn't come here for an op-ed. You came here for... ENTERTAINMENT!!!

"Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?"

Since our last entry, Melkor's antics continued. He successfully wooed Cassandra (somehow), gotten Iron Bull's buddies killed (oopsies) and nominated Vivian for Fantasy Land Supreme Court--accidentally. A lot of mistakes, but hey, at least he has a totally dope lightsaber spell now!

"Vwoom! VWOORM!" "Sir, they've started ethnic cleansing in Orlais again." "Sorry Cullen, I can't hear you over how AWESOME I look right now!"

It's been a trip. There is a considerable amount of grinding in Dragon Age, and let me tell you, the carpal tunnel is real. But the good news is... The fight is over. The end has arrived.

At long last... I have finished the main campaign.

I've beaten DA: Inquisition once before, but it was a hollow victory. My blundering forays into the lore, brainless political mistakes and things like "having a life" got in the way of properly finishing the game. And let me tell you, there is a lot to finish here. A true completionist could spend thousands of hours exploring every inch of Thedas, uncovering every secret.

Honestly... Fuck that noise.

I enjoy the game's minutiae quite a lot, but it's the character development I'm drawn to, not hundred-page summaries on elven history. And I got what I was looking for.

Nothing says "character development" like a massive army of murder-goons, on the march to their next bloodbath!

Let's crunch down some of the big game-changers leading up to the end, shall we?

1. After lots of arguing, I finally managed to make friends with Spock Solas, our elven magic expert. Of course, he turned out to be an ancient elven wolf-god and possible villain for the next game, but hey. At least we had some nice chats.
2. Blackwall turned out to be some random asshole. This was extra-shocking because I'd been having Melkor look up to him--only to have his trust betrayed! Juicy and painful. Good writing.
3. Leliana, my long-time favorite character from Dragon Age: Origins, turned into a total goddamn sociopath by the end. Well... Okay. Guess who's NOT going to be Magic Pope, Leliana? That's right, you. No more coffee, either--I'm cutting you off.
4. Melkor finally, finally, finally proved his love to Cassandra! All it took was lots of flattery and patience, to break through her crusty exterior--plus the Dragon Age equivalent of dirty magazines. Don't ask.
5. Melkor finally got to prove who was the edgier edge-lord by fighting Corypheus, lackluster main villain. To prove his superiority, Melkor brought a B-team of Varric, Dorian and some random guy named Cole to kill Corypheus, and holy shit it fucking worked!! Okay, Cole died like 8 times during the final fight, but we did it! We killed the ancient evil! Begging the question... What comes next? Not for the franchise, but for our team? It's hard to kill an elder god, and then just retire and do brunch on Sundays. We are a crack squad, dammit! We do NOT brunch! (Although honestly, part of me hoped the crew would get a Breakfast Club-esque moment, after the credits.)

Admit it. You'd watch 'Breakfast Club: Dragon Age Edition.' You'd watch it, and cry like a baby.

To my surprise, the post-end-game was just... more of the same. You finish the game, have a brief quiet party with your friends in the castle, and then you get right back to business. There's a small montage of how the game-world turns out, and your love interest (in this case Cassandra) chats with you about the future of the world, blah blah BLAH. But saving the world--perhaps not shockingly--just leads to more politics and problems. The world is changed, but not always improved, by your actions.

And that's what I like about this game. It's truly a world for our time--the game starts with a magical act of terrorism, and you spend at least half of the campaign trying to stop people from killing each other, due to religious differences. This is heavy stuff, and it's dealt with realistically. You need slow, patient, calculated moves to stop the chaos.

And Melkor wasn't patient or calculated. At least... Not at first.

Definitely not at first.

As we covered in the previous entry, the act of leading changes a person. It can destroy them, or it can build them up. Melkor began his saga as an overgrown man-child, snatching up Templar recruits and whining about his elven heritage. However, as the game went on, I found myself making more and more responsible decisions because it seemed logical for Melkor to make them at various points during his development.

Sure, he screwed up. A lot. Empress Celine got assassinated under his watch, and his aggressive, insecure behavior nearly drove several people away from the party. But over time, as he grew to fill the roles of Inquisitor, my make-believe manchild became more of... well, of a man. It was fascinating to watch.

And this played throughout every second of his character development.

Part of this is due to the amazing writing of Dragon Age. The dialogue options in the game are simple, but they branch out into hundreds of different choices and reactions, many of which influence how the Inquisitor is seen by his party. Is he worshipped as a god? Feared as a dictator? Or perhaps, just maybe, loved as a good friend?

Okay, we admit, he doesn't have the MOST friendly face out there. More of a Ramsay Bolton than a Jon Snow, if I'm honest. But hey, some people are into that! Scary, scary people.

I think I struck a balance between all of these. While Melkor offered kind advice to that random spirit/demon teenager thing and earned the respect of the party's more serious members, he also had a man brain-wiped for defying his will and forced Blackwall to stay and lie, after he'd learned of the Warden's betrayal. Oh, and he also drank an ancient elven well of spirits like it was sweet, sweet Flavor-Ade. The guy is flawed, for sure.

But he's also developed in leaps and bounds from the simpering, grumpy chauvinist I started with. The Melkor who confronted the Disturbed logo guy Corypheus during the game's climax was a stronger, more self-assured version of his former self. And hopefully, I can continue that trend during post-game. Providing I can even boot the game without the disc exploding from over-use.

You know how long it took me to get these accessories? A LONG TIME. That's how long.

One thing I found especially odd during Inquisition was the romance. People are pretty unnerved by romance in video games, and rightly so--they have long been a source of weird, creepy fantasies for gamers without a love-life, and the programmers in charge of making them are not always interested in spelling out what a healthy relationship looks like. And yes, Bioware is famous for SAUCY RAUNCHY PIXEL SEX between the player and whatever NPC receives his/her affections. But unlike Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age Origins, which had unhealthy and tasteless approaches to romance (you literally romance people in Origins by bribing them until they love you) Inquisition was tasteful and smart about its writing. The mannequin-like makeout sessions are still super weird, though. Not recommending those.

It's weird, this played through the entire sex scene with Cassandra. Phil himself was hiding in the bushes, as an Easter egg. Great game, Bioware.

So after endless hours being sucked into the world of Dragon Age, was it worth it? What did I learn along the way? Well, I learned that people are way too accommodating of unstable people in power, that's for sure. Once someone reaches the top of the totem pole, they can easily be surrounded by yes-men and make horrible mistakes--or worse, succeed at malicious agendas. Given the way Melkor had started, I was honestly sure he was going to cause a genocide by the end of the game. Luckily, his friends steered him away from abuses of power.

Speaking of power, it wouldn't be an obnoxious think-piece if I didn't link this post to guns somehow, would it? Magic in Dragon Age is very similar to guns in America: It's easy to get, it's politically divisive, and you can straight up kill the fuck out of someone with it if you're unstable or just feel like being an asshole that day. 

Pictured: One of Melkor's many sad, ham-faced victims. Not pictured: the charred mass of his corpse, which we left smoldering in the road, without any sort of proper burial.

Melkor did misuse his magic several times, along the way. But in the end, he chose discipline over wanton violence, working with Knight-Enchanters to improve his skill and get himself under control. He also dealt with his anger... mostly through dragon-hunting, which is tragically not an option to American youth, since we hunted our dragons to extinction ages ago.

In the end, Melkor did the right thing: he focused his aggressive nature and persecution complex towards productive stuff, and dealt with his issues. He even wound up with the girl of his dreams, after finding out you can't "win" girls like they're prizes. All in all, I think the experiment was a success. I created a deeply flawed person, watched him grow and eventually, save the world! And I think that kind of progress is possible for everyone... but only if we share the responsibility of improving ourselves, and our own personal "kingdoms" along with us.

And there are limits to this experiment. At the end of the day, DA: Inquisition is just a video game. I can't solve the world's problems with armchair psychology and funny GIFs. If I could, you bet your ass I would be all over that.

If funny could save lives, Filthy Frank could have stopped Fukushima. THINK ABOUT IT!

Instead of a solution, all I can offer is advice: the next time you sit down to blaze through Monster Hunter, or Star Wars Battlefront, or In the Name of the King or whatever--think about the world you're inhabiting, for a little while. Does that world teach you and inspire you to make the real world better, or is it just an escape you've run to because the real world is unbearable? If the real world is unbearable, why the hell do you feel that way, in the first place? What's causing it--and what can you do to change it, right now? How many Melkors can you reach, and prevent future awful catastrophes?

I don't know if you can make a difference. But I highly encourage you to try. Because if we all gave a shit and acted on it, the world would be a better place.

I guess this would be a good place for a mic drop.

Thanks for reading, guys. Tune in next time for... whatever comes next.

END OF PART 3

Staring at the Wall: 'The Last Jedi' Meets Zen Buddhism

**Warning: This post contains movie spoilers. If Disney has not yet herded you at gunpoint into seeing the Last Jedi, you might get spoiler juice on your new pantaloons.**

By now, a significant portion of the world has seen Rian Johnson’s fun, rollicking and utterly bizarre Star Wars entry, The Last Jedi. It’s sold over a billion dollars in movie tickets worldwide, and has Star Wars fans bitterly divided over its content. Is it genius? Is it garbage? Personally, I’ve seen it and I don’t really care whether it fits the ‘canon,’ whether Rey is a Mary Sue, or whether Punished Luke Skywalker’s beard is the right shade of grizzled. What I’m more interested in is the movie’s strange, unexpected and seemingly accidental themes of Zen Buddhism.

As an amateur Zen scholar, I can’t promise a balanced and detailed exploration of these themes. But I did want to lay them out, in case people had missed them. And it seems they have. The reigning debates over the movie involve whether a “hyper-spaceram” would work, what Kylo Ren’s pec routine is, and… uh, this. (Trigger warning, for murdered Porgs.)

Was the 'Star Wars' fandom always so full of sociopaths? Damn, guys. Talk to your Patrick Batemans sometime.

So… Yeah, not exactly a movie provoking high-minded philosophical discussion. And yet amongst the pop-culture swill, I sense a great disturbance. As if a thousand Buddhist references cried out, and were silenced by a fan arguments and more goddamn Porgs. Seriously, fuck off with the Porgs! I'm sure the kids in the audience loved them, but they creeped me out! Those black, dead eyes stare into my soul!!!

(Real talk for a second? I didn't like TLJ very much. It's a fun movie that tries to be too many different things, and succeeds at... well, none of them. It's like Rian Johnson crammed every fan-fiction idea he ever had into it, leaving zero time for plot and characters. Or dialogue. I know, I know, Star Wars has never had good dialogue. But at least somebody skimmed the Force Awakens script with a red pencil, once. Did they fire that intern, or something? Is that why we got "I sense the [character] conflict in you, Ben Solo!" Wow, much dialogue, very realism. When the SNL skit for Force Awakens has better writing than a billion-dollar movie, you know something's not right.)

I rest my case.

Moving on. So the entire gist of Luke Skywalker and Rey's arc is one of master and student, right? The transmission of knowledge is a big theme here. Even George Lucas, whose personal 'vision' turned the prequels into nonsense, understood the basic relationship between master and pupil as a part of the hero's journey. And that's great, in theory. But since the OT we've been deluged by Mr. Miyagi types in media, characters who exist simply to pass wisdom to their students, usually right before dying in a noble moment of self-sacrifice. (See: Obi-Wan.) It's become a cliche--a useful storytelling tool, but still a cliche.

Enter The Last Jedi. It's silly, it's weird, its pacing makes a Fast and Furious movie look slow and gentle. But one thing it gets right is Luke's relationship with Rey as a teacher. Namely, that he's a huge jerk about the concept of teaching her. His whole attitude is "Fuck off, kid."

And guess what? That's totally a Zen thing.

Stay with me, now. Let's hop in a time machine and zoom back to the 5th century, in the foothills of Western China. Zen Buddhism was called Chan during this period, and its practitioners were very few. One of them was a guy named Bodhidharma, who I've covered in blog posts before. By all accounts, Bodhidharma was a really grumpy guy. Unlike the peaceful, tranquil Buddhas in popular culture, he was a cranky bastard--he only left his life to become a travelling monk because he was mad people hadn't heard of Chan in other parts of China. I mean, look at this guy! He's basically the original Grumpy Cat!

"The hell is a 'meme'? Buzz off."

Not exactly a cheerful dude, was Bodhidharma. But luckily (or unluckily) for his students, he was also a genius at meditation. Unlike other brands of Buddhism, his version was designed to help "point directly into one's own mind, see into one's true nature, and attain Buddhahood."

Sounds pretty Jedi, huh? Well, it should. The parallels between Star Wars' order of Force monks and real-life Buddhism are so strong that entire books have been written about them. And rightly so--even though Lucas lost his mind since the OT, his original concepts for the Jedi were similar to Buddhist aesthetics. Some of this got toned down for the franchise, but some of it stayed, while other ideas of his were... tastefully edited.

"No George, we can't make C-3PO 'sexy.' Stop asking."

When Rey tries to get Luke to teach her, he repeatedly tells her that she has no idea what she's asking for. He slams the door in her face, over and over. He drinks weird alien milk and scowls at her, a gesture designed to mock her and probably the audience as well. In short, he acts pissy, short-tempered and mortal... just like Bodhidharma.

And like Bodhidharma, he forces his student to wait. And wait, and wait, until the student is forced to reach inside herself and find the patience and focus needed to deal with the blank wall that is their teacher. That focus helps them, on their journey towards enlightenment. In practical terms, it's a great way to teach the student how this whole "mentor" thing is actually going to work. The teacher is not your friend, they're not your surrogate father figure or your wise happy-Buddha idol. They're here to do a job. And if you don't like it, you can GIT AWT.

Learning isn't easy, it usually isn't fun, and quite often it hurts. Just like when Luke gets zapped by training droids in A New Hope, learning to master yourself is painful. And scary, and frequently depressing. Speaking of scary...

Let's talk about the Spooky Hole. Oooh, spooky!

"So it's a hole full of evil?" "Yep." "What do you do with it?" "I throw beer cans in it."

The Spooky Hole is a creepy gulf at the bottom of Luke's monastery-island. It's intentionally similar to the dark-side cave in Empire Strikes Back, and Rey gets a similar scene as she faces her internal fears there. Except while Luke faced the specter of Darth Vader, Rey faces... herself.

There's no Buddhist cliche older than "defeating yourself." But Last Jedi does it in a novel and kind of disturbing way: the cave traps Rey in a line of clones of herself. (Almost an "Attack of the Clones" amirite? Too soon, huh? Yeah, too soon.) They all act as one, and she has no way of knowing whether she's the real Rey, or just a copy of a copy of a copy. The scene's pretty hokey, but it stuck with me, because at the end of this confrontation she reaches a wall.

Beyond that wall, she's hoping to see the faces of her parents. But in the end, she just sees herself. Bodhidharma famously meditated in a cave for nine years, and when his student asked to join him, he pretty much responded like this:

 

"ALSO THIS CAVE IS OUT OF TOILET PAPER! PLEASE BRING ME SOME!"

 To him, the act of gazing at a wall was the greatest act of enlightenment one could do. One of his successors, the Buddhist writer Tanlin, quoted him as saying: "Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls, the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved even by scriptures are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason."

Heavy stuff! Which is why it's so surprising to see themes like that, in a movie full of silly pop-culture space battles. There are Buddhist themes all over TLJ, even when Luke pokes Rey's hand with grass as she's meditating and says "There's the Force! Do you feel it?" When she says yes, he smacks her hand for being a dumb-ass, much like instructors in a Zen monastery use a "warning stick" to get their students to focus. Themes of facing yourself, and non-violent resistance, even show up in the final scenes: when Kylo Ren goes after the seemingly invincible Luke Skywalker on Krayt, he discovers he was only fighting an illusion--the real Luke was Jedi-mind-tricking everyone from light-years away. What a tweest! Kylo Ren was slashing and chopping at his own issues, his own anger and his own delusions. The only one he was harming was himself.

I don't know what the next Star Wars is going to look like. It's possible the non-Zen, non-mindful leaders of our world will reduce us to nuclear ash before then. But I'm excited to see if these themes continue--maybe even excited enough to buy a 3-D ticket, next time.

You're never going to get me to see SOLO, though. Don't even try it.

You blow up my Extended Universe, and give me THIS? Fuck off, Mickey. Fuck straight off.

Until next time, in a galaxy far, far away!!

Tired of scrolling Facebook at the office, or in class? Looking for more of my weird stuff to read, or just a distraction from our weekly political crisis? Well, feast your eyes on this! I've crafted an elaborate video game meta-narrative that might get me sued by Guy Fieri! Read it quickly, before I'm destroyed by copright lawyers!!