Hereditary: How Guilt and Blame Create Hope

Six months into 2018 and we’ve been given one sucker-punch of a horror movie in Hereditary. To call it effective would be an understatement—it’s gross, it’s gruesome, it’s horrific, and it’s absolutely bleak. It’s a movie with no safety net. And it’s brilliant for it too, because it hides this bleakness right in the title. Hereditary. This is a movie born with a disease, one it cannot shake no matter how hard it tries. It’s fated to end the way it ends.

Except, maybe it isn’t. Fate is certainly its biggest theme, but there’s nothing satisfying about a pointless struggle. To be sure, there is a cruelness to the film that most horror movies lack, but I never got the impression it was outright nihilistic. Fate is a theme, but the film isn’t hopeless.

Hereditary shares two other big themes alongside fate: blame and guilt. It’s in these two equally negative emotions that the movie finds its hope and ultimately, the idea that maybe fate could have been bested had the characters not entered the film already broken.

Annie begins the movie feeling blamed. She doesn’t know from what exactly, only that she holds this defensive view of her family, like they’re out to get her. It’s a lens we spend half the film with until we later find out that the blame is actually guilt. Annie once tried to murder her children during a bout of sleepwalking. It’s something she claims was an accident and becomes defensive of. She didn’t mean to, so it’s not something she should be distrusted for.

The problem is, Hereditary is still a movie operating on fate. There are no accidents. Somewhere deep down, Annie wanted to kill her children, and she’s afraid she still wants to kill them. It eats at her.

It means the movie begins with the family already divided and everything we see divides them further. When Peter has a nightmare that he’s being strangled, he wakes up and blames his mother. Why wouldn’t he? She’s tried to kill him before.

Hereditary becomes a balancing act between what the characters do and what they know. Every action in its two-hour runtime has a sinister cloud hanging over it, as if the characters are all struggling to overcome their natural instincts. There is the fated choice to make, and then there is the right choice to make. They always find themselves making the fated choice because they don’t trust each other, but there’s always the option—the hope—not to.

For example, Annie knows her Peter is going to a high school party filled with drinking. He lies; she calls him on his lie. Yet she forces Charlie to go with him, Charlie who is allergic to peanuts, too young to be there, and more than likely possessed by Paemon.

They both know they’re making a mistake, yet they make that mistake anyways.

Charlie’s death was a crossroad for the family. It could have brought them together to grieve as a unit, or it could have divided them further. Ultimately it divides them further. Peter feels blamed for Charlie’s death, and he feels guilty too since he was driving the car. We as the audience know it wasn’t his fault though. We saw Paemon’s symbol on the light post.

Annie, meanwhile, blames Peter. She lashes out at him, and instead of trying to console her son, drifts even further away from her family. Answers are to be found not in communication with one another but to the dead. If Charlie’s ghost can tell her everything is alright, then no one will have to feel guilty about anything. She won’t have to blame Peter for her daughter’s death, and Peter won’t have to feel guilty.

It’s a destructive viewing because it removes introspection and personal growth. The characters have the option to make the right choices, to tackle the emotions they are feeling and grieve, but Annie isn’t willing to do that. Peter isn’t either. Upon Charlie’s death, he avoids the problem and goes to bed. Someone else can deal with it in the morning. After the funeral, he finds solace in solitude and drugs, spending a lot of the movie getting high with his friends.

Ultimately, this lack of dealing with problems is what puts Paemon into Peter.

Guilt is what propels Annie to try and fix the problem, but it’s something she attempts to do by herself. She goes to burn the book believing it will kill her. It doesn’t, and its destruction doesn’t stop Paemon either. All she manages to do is kill her husband—the one person trying to keep the family together—and causes herself to snap.

There’s an argument to be made that the climax of Hereditary is Annie’s final attempt at saving Peter. She still believes this is her fault and by killing her son, she’ll have saved him from being possessed. After all, it’s not the first time she’s tried to kill him. It’s more destruction and more division. It’s the easy way out, of not taking responsibility for what she had done.

It’s what fate wanted.

At the end of the movie, Peter is possessed. He looks at his new congregation as Paemon, and between confusion he seems to look relieved. Killing Charlie was his fault, but this, this was not. He cannot feel guilt for this. He cannot be blamed for this.

Hereditary is a movie filled with loss and grief, yet it’s also a movie where no one apologizes. Characters make mistakes that result in death and emotional trauma, and no one apologizes. Everyone feels guilty and everyone feels blame, but those emotions are only allowed to stew into something destructive, not be released in catharsis. Grief is buried into more grief, and fingers are pointed to avoid taking responsibility.

Had someone just said, “I’m sorry,” the end results of this movie could have been avoided, and that’s where the hope lies. I spent the entire movie hoping someone would just say, “I’m sorry,” and mean it, because that little act would have allowed the family to admit responsibility for their mistakes, grieve as a unit, and then do something about it.

Why Alien: Resurrection Isn’t a Bad Movie

I’ve had a long history with the Alien universe, starting when I was around five or six with the Kenner toys and a secret viewing of the second film that scared the hell out of me. It’s one of two things that I’ll dub myself a fanboy for, and I’ve managed to find the good in anything associated with it, including Aliens: Colonial Marines and the two Aliens vs Predator movies. The first two films are spectacular in pretty much every respect, but unlike some—or most as the Internet leads me to believe—I quite like the third and fourth installments as well. And, because it’s Halloween, I thought it might be a good time to re-watch Alien: Resurrection (the most despised of the four movies), and defend it.

Because guys, it’s not a bad movie.

I will, of course, fully admit that Alien: Resurrection isn’t a great movie. It’s…well, strange as hell, perhaps one of the strangest movies I own. I think that works in its favor though. The Alien universe has the pleasure of never repeating itself. The first movie is straight horror, the second is an action flick, the third is more of a thriller, and the fourth is a dark comedy. Of the four, Alien: Resurrection is the odd man out, because while the other movies had little elements of humor, the setting and universe don’t conclude themselves to comedy.

We’re looking at a monster that literally rapes its way into existence, and there’s nothing funny about that.

And really, Alien: Resurrection isn’t funny at all. It tries often, but it never succeeds. Yet in that failure, it becomes something really bizarre and interesting, and I find that to be its biggest strength. Watching Alien: Resurrection is like watching a fever dream, one that’s oddly coherent yet still filled with illogical dream logic. Everything makes sense, yet nothing makes sense at the same time.

The beginning sequences are unsettling, with Ripley’s clone being taken to an operation table so a queen alien can be removed from her chest. When that’s a success, the doctors decide to keep her alive as a social experiment of sorts. She knows nothing, yet memories from her past keep flashing back, memories she shouldn’t have. She also has a new set of attributes: acidic blood, heightened strength, and a high tolerance for pain.

The first half hour or so of Alien: Resurrection is just strange, though it’s less in the plot department (which I admit is ridiculous) but in the way everyone is acting. From the doctors to General Perez to Ellen Ripley herself, it’s like none of the people are real people but only pretending at it. The way everyone moves, talks, acts, etc is all just off. Ripley has an excuse for this; she’s a clone and relearning pretty much everything, but that winds up making her seem like the only normal person in the whole space installation.

This dream-like quality never leaves the movie, though the crew of The Betty seem to be outside of it at first. There’s a natural rhythm to them that everyone else lacks, and when they show up, they become this strange glimpse of normalcy in an otherwise illogical place. Yet as the movie progresses, even they become stuck in this dream world, one where Johnner (Ron Pearlman) makes bad jokes after seriously twisted scenes and Christie (Gary Dourdan) acts like he’s an unstoppable badass in an action movie.

Whatever movies The Betty’s crew thinks they are strolling into, it means little when the Xenomorphs break free and start killing everyone.

Alien: Resurrection isn’t really a scary movie. It’s unsettling throughout, but not because of the creatures themselves. At this point, it’s hard to find them scary. They’ve been in three other movies, numerous comic books, some regular books, and even video games. We’ve all seen, killed, and even played as them enough to find a comfort in their designs and lifecycle. Watching them slaughter everyone this go around is more fun than anything else, yet it’s the way everyone acts that makes the whole package seem unnerving—and no, it has nothing to do with the screams or terror.

For example, when a Xenomorph runs into an escape pod, General Perez throws a grenade in to kill it and everyone else. He then gives a salute that’s so earnest you start to wonder if he thinks himself in a different place or time, and then gets attacked. An alien bites out a chunk of his skull, but instead of flopping onto the ground and dying, he reaches back and pulls out a bit of his brain. He looks at it.

I imagine this sequence was supposed to be funny, yet I found it really creepy. Like I said, so many characters seem to be acting as if they’re in a different movie and just don’t know what to do, or worse, are stuck like marionettes on a string and are forced to participate in their own demise.

Ripley is the only one who really gets it, but she’s also off her rocker the entire film. She also knows that the last time she dealt with the aliens, she wound up dead. It’s honestly kind of great, and Sigourney Weaver’s performance is wonderful. The way she moves, talks, and touches everyone is just so strange, and her new relationship with the Xenomorphs is also really fun.

As she says, “I’m the monster’s mother.”

One of the things I like most about Alien: Resurrection is how it works with the source material. Ripley’s quest has always been about motherhood in some way, and those tables are flipped on their head here. I wish the movie actually did more with this concept than just force her to kill her own children, but it’s still interesting and, like everything else, unsettling. There’s something a little tragic in the final, climactic battle when she kills the Newborn.

The plot too works with the source material. Every Alien movie (and most of the comics and games too) prior to this one has involved some human entity trying to capture and control the Xenomorphs, and we as viewers all know how that will end up. Alien: Resurrection finally gives us that story, and I find catharsis in it. To be sure, I think the idea is handled a bit better in the old Dark Horse comics, but it’s nice to see it on the big screen regardless. It’s nice to get to shout, “I told you so!”

Even bringing Ripley back from the grave works with the original source material. The theme throughout the series is that the aliens are inescapable. Ripley spends every movie running from them and only escapes through death. As it turns out, she can’t even escape them that way. She’s forced back into the realm of the living, and she’s brought all her old demons with her. This fact isn’t really talked about in the movie, yet it’s there, and I find it really important and really tragic too.

Some characters deserve rest, and Ripley is one of them. It’s a shame the universe won’t let her have that.

Those are the big nods, but there are little ones too. Ripley falls through the floor and is captured by the Xenomorphs like Newt was in Aliens, only now Ripley has to save herself since no one wants to go back for her. When everyone gets to The Betty and leaves, there’s still an alien on board, and like in Aliens it comes down to Ripley, an android, and the monster. The nice thing is, Call comes away mostly unharmed while Bishop didn’t. I’m sure there are more little references throughout too that I missed.

The last big part of Alien: Resurrection I want to talk about is the Newborn. I get that some hate the creature, but honestly, I love his design. Like I said earlier, after three other movies, a bunch of comic books, and even some video games, the Xenomorph isn’t scary. Alien: Resurrection needed to come up with something new, something seriously screwed up, and it did.

The Newborn hits the uncanny valley for me. It’s clearly a monster, yet there’s enough emotion in his face to make him seem more than the sum of his parts. He stumbles around like a child, and when he isn’t being a destructive monster, he even interacts with the world like a child. He croaks and chirps in a cute manor, but he also bites the heads off of deranged scientists. Also, his eyes and the human-skull face he has going on freak me out.

I admitted in the second paragraph of this write-up that Alien: Resurrection isn’t a great movie. It isn’t. Despite all the things I like about it, it’s still a crazy mess of bad pacing, has more tonal issues than an unturned bagpipe, and in general, tries to do a bit too much with itself. It wants everything, from horror to comedy to serious drama, to deep themes, and it just can’t have it all. I don’t think anything can, at least nothing confining itself to a two hour runtime.

But damn it all, I do like the flick. It isn’t a bad movie, and in fact, I think it’s quite good. It gets under my skin in ways that the other movies simply cannot, and you can chalk that up to an accident of poor acting or directing or whatever, but I certainly think it works.

I also think it’s a movie worth watching. Sometimes the strange films just need to be seen for the sake of seeing something strange.

Attempting to Explain Prometheus

Intro

God knows the Internet doesn’t need another essay on Prometheus, but I’ve been on a bit of a bender recently and I’d like to write my thoughts down. Prometheus scratches the Literature itch that poems and novels sometimes do, the kind I’d debate for college classes in the form of ten-page essays. I find such textual based arguments enjoyable, though I do acknowledge that I’m by no means the societal norm.

Before I start waxing poetic about the movie, I want to talk about the original script. Before Damen Lindelof and Ridley Scott made the changes they did, Jon Spaihts wrote a direct Alien prequel. The movie featured facehuggers, a version of David a bit more cold-hearted and evil than the one we got, and Xenomorphs aplenty. It was the movie fans wanted, though it wasn’t the movie Ridley Scott ever promised we’d get. The Engineer died at the end and left a handful of Xenomorphs to kill everyone, and Shaw had to survive, much like Ripley did in Alien and Aliens.

I’m glad we did not get that movie.

Such a movie would have been great, don’t get me wrong, but the horror delivered in that movie would have completely replaced or overshadowed the questions and the point of Prometheus. We’d have gotten a horror movie—and I’d have loved it I’m sure—and not the film Prometheus turned out to be.

Since there are so many things to talk about, I’m just going to section this essay off. It’s simply easier, and honestly, I don’t know where I might go in terms of discussion.

The sections are: The Engineers and Xenomorph Comparisons, Did the Engineers Create the Xenomorphs, The Black Goo, Why the Engineers Changed their Minds, and an Outro

 

The Engineers and Xenomroph Comparisons

Before I can even begin talking about the movie, I need to discuss the Engineers and the Xenomorphs.

But before I talk about either of them, I should talk about the story of Prometheus. Prometheus is the Greek Titan who created humanity. He sculpted us out of clay, and at a point in our primitive culture, he gave us the gift of fire. He went against the Greek pantheon to develop us and give us intelligence, much like Satan went against God to give Adam and Eve the gift of knowledge. Bestowing fire (knowledge) upon mankind was frowned upon, and so Zeus captured and chained Prometheus to a rock where every day an eagle would eat his liver.

The story of Prometheus is important for a few reasons, the most obvious being that the Engineers created humans much like the Greek Titan did. The ancient carvings show that the Engineers continued to come to earth and bestow knowledge of themselves to the primitive humans. The common trope of such science fiction is that the advanced aliens helped humans develop in forms of civilization and culture, much like how Prometheus gave the fledgling humans the knowledge of fire. But, the idea of sacrifice is present throughout both kinds of myth, both Greek and film inspired. Prometheus was chained to a rock to forever be tormented by a hungry Eagle, and in order for the Engineers to create life, one must first die.

The Engineers themselves are a kind of perfect being. To be sure, they look scary, falling so far into the uncanny valley that I’ve had nightmares about them, but they hold a kind of perfection in their form. They are white (this is thematically important and has nothing to do with race), they are muscular, they are hairless, and they are tall. They do not slouch, they are powerful, and they are intelligent. They resemble a kind of Olympian hero.

That the Engineers consider themselves Gods is a simple fact. The frightening face carved into the top of their temple resembles not a deity or a chimera, but an Engineer. The giant stone face in the ampoule room is that of an Engineer. The murals on the walls of the ampoule room feature Engineers. The corridor leading from the temple to the underground ship plays host to statues of Engineers.

In short: the Engineers worship themselves.

We can’t really blame them for this. Look at their accomplishments. They’ve seeded a universe with life that will eventually grow sapient; they’ve created technologies that dwarf human invention in this futuristic scifi world. They literally are Gods with a capital G.

But they respect the sacrifice and the price it takes to create. If we look at the Engineer in the opening scenes of the movie, he is giving himself up in a ceremonial fashion. He jettisons his robe and kneels down to open the vial containing a black substance that will destroy him. He solemnly drinks it of is own free will as a spaceship flies away. In the extended version of this scene, other Engineers are gathered around him to watch, and the whole ordeal resembles a religious ceremony.

As David says, “big things have humble beginnings.” One Engineer for a race of creatures. For a race of humans.

The Xenomorphs are the antitheses of the Engineers. If the Engineers are Gods, then the Xenomorphs are a race of Satans bent on destruction. In terms of appearance, the Engineers are the Olympian hero while the Xenomorphs are monsters of our worst nightmares. They realistically resemble nothing earthlike, being jet black in color, possessing large arching skulls, two sets of jaws, six fingers, and every other attribute fans of the Alien series are familiar with. The Engineers hold the pinnacle of creation and intelligence; the Xenomorphs operate under extreme instinct and base needs. Physically, they are opposites.

And they differ on a philosophical level. The Engineers must sacrifice themselves to create life; The Xenomorph must sacrifice an other to create life.

In religious myth, this would pit them against each other. The Engineers would be the ambivalent gods sacrificing to create and spread knowledge and the Xenomorphs would be scary devils destroying everything in their wake. Yet this is not the case. The Engineers themselves are by no means ambivalent as we see in the film, and the Xenomorphs are too chaotic and primal to be evil. They simply are what they are.

Let us go to the murals and statues located in the Engineer pyramid. The first mural we see is this:

a picture that should remind everyone of a famous painting.

There are two things to note here. First, the Engineers worship themselves as seen in other artwork. The fact that this painting exists means they are also worshiping something involving the Xenomorph. There are two ways to look at that. First1, the Xenomorph is a creature they found, something just as perfect as themselves yet opposite and therefore something to be worshiped. Second1, they created the Xenomorph as perfect and are worshiping something they made. Both arguments seem plausible. Second, the difference in paintings is quite obvious. In the first painting, the Engineer is subjugating the Xenomorph while the Fresco painting shows equality between God and Adam.

The difference is in motive.

The entire ampoule room is set up as a kind of alter room for the Engineer’s ego. The center piece is a sculpture of one of their heads, the walls are filled with paintings—some involving them—and the floor is evenly spaced with ampoules of black goo, their highest creation. There are ampoules aplenty in the cargo areas, yet this room holds them in perfect formation.

As we see later on in the movie, the black goo held in these ampoules does something quite different than the black goo of the first ceremonial scene. This second black goo is a kind of mutagen, and it creates the kind of destruction we expect from the Xenomorph. The first mural we see is that of the Engineer subjugating the Xenomorph, and since the black goo is as destructive as the Xenomorph, then the entire room must be the glorification of the Engineer’s capability of harnessing the Xenomorph’s destructive power. The Engineers have manufactured and controlled the chaotic destruction of the Xenomorph, and this is their highest achievement, not that of creating man.

If man were their highest achievement, we’d have seen murals of mankind interacting with Engineers. Instead we get the opposite, manmade carvings and cave paintings of humans worshiping the godlike Engineers.

But, the Engineers were unable to actually control the Xenomorphs as we learn. There is a spill of some kind, and the humans show up thousands of years later with all of the Engineers dead and mummified. Even the lower creation, the humans, wind up foiling the Engineer’s godlike plans. Janek crashes his ship into the Engineer craft and Shaw causes the Engineer’s death. Prometheus gave mankind the gift of fire and knowledge, yet after a few thousand years, we no longer believe Prometheus was ever real. He was simply a myth created by a folk looking for answers where they could find none.

Creations have a mysterious way of getting away from their creators and destroying everything. Such is the way of things.

 

Did the Engineers Create the Xenomorphs

This is a question that has been around since Alien. The Derelict contained an entire nest of Xenomorph eggs and one lone pilot who died because of them. We don’t know the pilot’s intent, but it is later said that the beacon that drew the Nostromo was a warning and not an S.O.S. Either way, the Xenomorph is described as the “perfect killing machine,” and through Geigeresque stylization, looks to be a mix of biological and mechanical parts.

However, my answer to this question is “no.”

First, let’s look at the Xenomorph. Though the creature is descried as “perfect,” and though it is featured in Engineer murals, it logically isn’t perfect. Its lifecycle is drawn out and cumbersome, and during three stages of its life (if we count the egg) the creature is highly vulnerable. Though a walking biological weapon the facehugger might be, it as a creature holds no offensive capabilities other than jumping and infecting. It cannot infect from long range, it isn’t very big, and its only means of defense—acidic blood—comes from being attacked. It must hide, wait, and then attack, and after it attacks, it must hope that it isn’t spotted before implanting an egg. The chestburster phase has even less defense, being but a small snake with sharp teeth. It’s not until the fourth phase that the Xenomroph comes into its destructive power.

And really, a creature that starts off as an egg only to birth another kind of egg with legs is wholly redundant.

Perfection is highly subjective, but the Xenomorph is not perfect. The Engineer himself isn’t perfect either, being very much mortal. But the idea of perfection isn’t about the physicality of these creatures. The Engineer’s philosophical view involves creation and sacrifice, and both he and the Xenomorph do this, but in different ways. The Engineer must die to create while the Xenomorph must kill to create, so to the Engineer, the Xenomorph’s form of creation is perfect.

The murals on the walls of the ampoule room are the only clues we get about the Engineer’s relationship with the Xenomorph, but I think the clues are enough to yield an adequate answer.

We’ve already looked at the first mural.

The second mural is this one:

the third is this one:

The second mural was only glimpsed at, but it was included in a Prometheus artbook. It is, clearly, an egg. The hands holding the egg appear to be that of a Xenomorph, though they are missing some fingers. The Xenomrophs in the Aliens movies feature six fingers while that one holds only four.

The third mural is that of a Xenomorph, though it also looks a bit different from the ones we saw in Alien and its subsequent sequels.

This all goes back to previously stated information. The Engineers worship themselves as seen by the artwork in the pyramid, and this ampoule room must be very important given the volume of artwork present and the evenly-spaced vials of black goo. The entire room is a glorification of a kind of achievement, and going by the first mural of the Engineer holding down a Xenomorph head, that achievement is controlling and dominating a chaotic race.

The Engineers are creators, yet we see no artwork of any of their other creations in this religiously-inspired room. There are no humans or other alien races, because at this point in their history, creating life and seeding planets aren’t achievements: they are simply things that the Engineers can do.

But taking a race of creatures that are the complete antithesis of themselves and finding a way to bend and control them? That is an achievement. There is no logic in creating a philosophical opposite to yourself that you cannot easily control, subjugating that creation, and then glorifying that achievement. The Engineers have rather large egos, but they can’t be blamed for that given the scientific wonders they have accomplished; however, I don’t think their egos are so big as to glorify what would be a fake accomplishment. There’s simply no point. It’s really only plausible that they found the Xenomorphs and bent them to their will in some fashion. That’s at least worth a mural.

The fact that the mural Xenomorphs look different from what we are used to seeing is also significant. If the Engineers can create life, then surely they can alter and mutate existing life, and the black goo in the ampoules does just that. We don’t know what the true Xenomorph looks like, be it that in Alien with its six fingers and tail, or that in the murals located in the ampoule room. What we do know is that the Engineers found them, conquered them, and that they can mutate existing life. So, either the murals depict the original Xenomorph being subjugated by Engineer science, or the murals depict what the Engineer created and controlled based off of the original Xenomorph.

There’s plausibility in both answers.

The thing is, the answer isn’t important. One of the major themes throughout the Alien movies is the inability to control the Xenomorphs. Always the Weyland Corporation wants a sample for their own nefarious needs, and always this backfires, creating an outbreak and widespread death. This continues in Prometheus. The Engineers thought they were able to conquer the Xenomorph, even had artwork depicting their achievements and prowess of this, but in the end, they failed. There was an outbreak—as there always is—and the Xenomorphs, in whichever form the mutagen altered them, escaped and killed everyone.

You can find chaos, you can alter chaos, and you can try to control chaos, but in the end, chaos will always revert back to its original, primal instincts. That is the Xenomorph, regardless of form.

 

The Black Goo

The black goo is both an amazing plot device and an amazing substance within the movie. It’s seen interacting six times, and each time it does something slightly different. Yet, I believe it has a consistency.

The black goo is a mutagen, as explained in the commentary, and I believe its function is that of liquid Xenomorph. Carrying actual Xenomorphs would be cumbersome and dangerous, and carrying a cargo of unhatched eggs is equally dangerous as seen on the Derelict in Alien. But, liquefying the pure chaotic essence of the Xenomorph and carrying it in vials is less cumbersome and not as dangerous, though still dangerous as we see in the movie.

Plus, finding a way to liquefy the Xenomorph essence is worthy of murals and self praise, which is the purpose of the ampoule room.

The first instance of black goo is in the very beginning. An Engineer drinks it, dies, and seeds life on Earth. I believe this black goo to be a different substance than what we see later in the movie. First, it acts completely different than the other black goo we see; second, the black goo in the ampoule room plays devotion to the Xenomorphs and Engineers, not humans or the spreading of life throughout the universe.

The second instance is the dead Engineer head. The characters bring it back to the ship and comment that it has some kind of organic substance growing out of it. When we look at the ghostly footage of the Engineers, this one was chasing the others and eventually fell over, its head then getting cut off. When the head is activated with some kind of electric substance, it sends the black goo into overdrive and causes the head to explode. Whatever the goo was going to do, it clearly wasn’t good or stoppable, as seen by the fleeing Engineers in the recorded footage.

The third instance is the black goo infecting some worms found within the pyramid. They turn into these snakelike, reptilian creatures with the ability to infect. They act like primitive facehuggers, even possessing the acid blood we expect from Xenomorph relatives. One wraps around Milburn’s arm (a homage to the facehugger wrapping its tail around a victim’s neck) and then dives down his throat to suffocate and impregnate him. Much later in the film, a wormlike creature (a kind of chestburster) flies out of Milburn’s dead mouth and slithers away.

The fourth instance is Charlie’s ingestion of a single drop of this liquid in an alcoholic beverage. We never see what will happen to Charlie, but I don’t believe he was going the route of the Engineer in the beginning of the movie. While the Engineer in the beginning drank a cup and Charlie only a drop, the difference in their weight, height, and muscle mass should have equated the two doses to a more equal amount.

That, and when Charlie looked into the mirror he saw a wormlike creature burrowing out of the bottom of his eyeball.

Worms are small and not complex when compared to humans. The worm simply mutated, having swum around in the black substance. But to be ingested by a large and complicated organism, the black goo would surely have a different, yet similar effect. Charlie was beginning to fall apart and crack, and I can’t help but wonder if he was slowly creating facehugger-type creatures within himself, acting as an egg. He was generating some kind of foreign substance, as seen by the worm in his eyeball.

The fifth instance is Shaw’s pregnancy. The black goo infected Charlie, creating some kind of foreign wormlike substance, and he sent that into Shaw when they had sex. Shaw’s baby grows quickly, similar to the rapid growth of a chestburster, and eventually acts like its own kind of facehugger later in the film. Like Charlie, Shaw becomes a kind of egg, generating a foreign substance.

The sixth instance is Fifield’s monstrous transformation, and this is the hardest to put down. In an alternate take of his antagonistic scene, he looks more akin to a Xenomorph, with a head that arches backwards and a skin much blacker in color. This can be found here. However, that isn’t what we get in the movie so it isn’t canon, though this alternate version makes much more sense to me and to the black goo as a whole.

Fifield’s infection is slightly different as it’s immediately introduced upon his death and mediated through his helmet. While it doesn’t turn him into a Xenomorph or a kind of reproducer of them, it does give him some characteristics of them. He becomes chaotic, violent, and very hard to kill. His mutation recalls images of the infected Engineer chasing down his companions before collapsing and having his head lopped off. That Engineer didn’t appear very Xenomorphic either, but his demeanor was that of Fifield’s: chaotic and violent.

What would have happened to Fifield and that infected Engineer remains a mystery as they are prematurely killed. But, given the imagery in the ampoule room and the characteristics of the other black goo infections, we can easily assume that these two infections would have lead to something Xenomorphic in nature.

 

Why the Engineers Changed their Minds

The Engineers created humans, yet the final climax and reveal of Prometheus is that the Engineers want to destroy their creations. They built us, they helped us grow as a society, and then they abandoned us only to want to come back and remove us from our home. Shaw desperately asks why as David is talking to the last Engineer on LV 223, but her question is never answered.

Damen Lindelof and Ridley Scott purposefully left the answer to this vague. Lindelof’s reasoning is that this ending prompts more discussion and publicity for the movie, and this is surely the case since people are still discussing it long after its release. But, he also believes that leaving the answer vague is better, since no answer is more mysterious and scary than an answer.

I believe him.

Look back at Alien and the Space Jockey. Even after rewatching that movie over and over, the Space Jockey remained scary because of his mysterious nature. What is he? Why is he on a ship filled with Xenomorph eggs? Where was he going with this cargo? How is he stuck to this chair? What does the chair do? Where is the Xenomorph that blew out of him thousands of years ago? The mystery was the best part of him, and there was an outcry from fans when they found out Prometheus would be about the Space Jockey. Such a movie would ruin the mystery that had been present for the past 30 odd years. Whatever Ridley Scott delivered, it wouldn’t be as good as what fans came up with and debated.

The mystery is what made the Space Jockey scary.

This same conundrum can be said about the Engineers and Earth. They changed their minds, and we aren’t to know why because any answer given would be unfulfilling. The movie is bad because there is no concrete resolution to this most important question versus this movie is bad because the Engineer’s motive for destroying the Earth is silly and nonsensical. The former is preferred over the latter.

If you watch the deleted scenes, David originally had a lengthy conversation with the Engineer regarding Weyland and eternal life. The conversation is interesting, but it strips away the power and mystery of the Engineer. It kills everything the movie did to establish the character. The conversation turns a godlike creature into another alien in a universe filled with them.

But, David puts it best when he asks Shaw if it even matters. To his android brain built upon logic, it doesn’t matter. The Engineers made us, they were unhappy in some capacity, and they want to try something new. An answer wouldn’t change their minds; it would only give us some useless reasoning before we all died. Blind luck saved the human race, not a plea for redemption. That’s what matters.

Shaw operates under the impression that the Engineers seeded Earth with life for a reasonable reason. Charlie feels the same way. When David asks Charlie why he was made, Charlie responds, “because we could.” David then remarks about being disappointed, and Charlie ignores the comment, not fathoming the idea that the Engineers created life on Earth simply because they could. By all accounts, we assume the Engineers had a good reason for seeding Earth because one must die, but we only know the smallest fraction of their culture and nothing about the way they think or view the universe. To them, Earth could simply be an experiment, and the black goo is a prime variable.

For a movie about searching for God, the characters hold a religious faith that the Engineers have some kind of purpose behind their plans. Charlie is an atheist in the movie, so his quest for a scientific creator replaces the religious quest for a God. But, he holds more faith than Shaw who is religious as seen by the cross she wears around her neck, a cross she never gives up despite evidence that God did not create mankind and therefore Jesus isn’t a mortal deity. Charlie is the first character to take his helmet off, putting faith in ancient technology. When he finds all of the Engineers dead, he’s completely crestfallen. Shaw looks to keep progressing as their team found the biggest scientific discovery imaginable, but Charlie can’t get past the fact that his faith in these aliens was completely destroyed. He acts like a religious follower who just found out God doesn’t exist.

Both operate under the guise that these star maps were invitations and not simply accurate star maps. Knowing nothing of this race, they assume the Engineers are friendly and want visitors, despite the fact that the Engineers have interstellar travel and can visit Earth anytime they want. They have faith in an ambivalent creator and not an apathetic experimenter, which is what the Engineers seem to be. The two presume answers for questions no one else asks, perhaps questions better left unasked. Do we realistically want to know who created us and why? What happens when that answer isn’t what we wish it to be? In Prometheus, everyone dies. I cannot fathom what society would do if this question was answered, but the outcome would be both grand and terrible.

Ignorance is bliss.

That is, I think the point of the movie. The question isn’t answered because the answer both doesn’t matter and shouldn’t be sought. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer hidden within the movie.

Let us once again return to the first mural:

If you look closely, you’ll notice two things. In the lower right corner is a picture of a facehugger. The entire Xenomorph lifecycle is depicted in the ampoule room, worshiped for itself and for its subjugation. In the lower left corner is a bipedal figure being facehugged. It’s unclear if this bipedal figure is a human or an Engineer, but given the ego of the Engineer and what this room represents, I think it’s that of a human.

The Engineers went around and seeded the universe with life for whatever purpose suited them. Then, they found the Xenomorphs, creatures that need hosts to reproduce, the perfect antithesis to creation, one who doesn’t need to sacrifice itself to create life. They found a way to control these creatures, make them their own. The only thing left to do is allow them to reproduce and fill the universe, creating a universe with the perfect creatures of light and the perfect creatures of darkness. Humanity did nothing wrong, we just weren’t perfect. The Engineers are Gods, the Xenomorphs are antiGods, and us lowly humans are apes.

The Engineers continued to show up on Earth and watch us and presumably guide us and bestow knowledge as per the Titan Prometheus. But, humans hold a different philosophy to creation than the Engineers. We don’t bodily sacrifice to create. We don’t hold life in such a sacred fashion as the Engineers do, and that must make us look like blasphemers.

Look at David. He was created by Weyland because Weyland wanted a son, and to see if he could create an android. Weyland created David for reasons of power and greed, and he is very much still alive. In a deleted scene, he considers himself a God and on the same level as these Engineers, but what does he know of sacrifice? He lives, yet he’s afraid of death and seeks eternal life on the guise that he deserves it for his abilities. The Engineer philosophy of creation cries at such blasphemy! It’s no wonder the Engineers wanted to use our self-absorbed planet as host to a more perfect and chaotic race, a race of creatures who understand the need for sacrifice.

David states it best, “Sometimes in order to create, one must first destroy.” Only to the Engineers and Xenomorphs, the qualifier isn’t “sometimes” but “always.”

That is, I think, the answer to this purposefully-unanswered question.

 

Outro

There are so many other things worth discussing in this film, but I’ve gone on long enough. I could write another handful of pages on the religious imagery alone in the film, the parallels between characters, and the general cinematography. There are simply so many things to look at and ponder (did you notice that after Shaw gives “birth” to the squid monster, she goes back and does exactly what Charlie does in front of that mirror, only in the opposite direction? (did you notice that the ships sent out to seed life are completed circles while the ships sent out to destroy are broken circles?)).

I absolutely love this movie.

I could go on, but I’ll end here.

R.A. Salvatore’s The Last Threshold: Book Discussion

Before I begin: SPOILER WARNING! I will be discussing The Neverwinter Saga, focusing primarily on The Last Threshold and the ending to that novel. If you are currently reading the Dark Elf Legacy or plan to, then leave this blog post for a different day.

To say that R.A. Salvatore has been a significant figure in my life is to simply say the truth. If I go into my room and look at my bookshelf, I have a full line of books devoted to his work, and another three on the shelf above. There are 23 in total, all of them somewhere between 300 and 450 pages long. Ten years ago, sometime in October of 2003, I was browsing through Barnes and Noble and saw a book with an elf killing an army of orcs. The novel was aptly titled The Thousand Orcs and, judging it by its cover, I purchased it. Ever since 2003, I’ve averaged at least one novel with Drizzt Du’Urden (I pronounce the name Drizzit Du’Urden because that somehow makes more sense to my ears) a year, though those years of 2003 and 2004 were the best because I had a massive backlog to read.

Through good times, through bad times, and through times of apathy, Drizzt Du’Urden and his companions have been there for me, and adventure was promised and swiftly delivered in every novel. Orcs? You bet. Dark elves? Hell yes. Dragons? Of course. Pirates? Arg matey! Trolls, giants, undead, goblins, barbarians, demons, devils, assassins, magic? I think I’m missing a few yet!

But the Neverwinter Saga was winding the life of Drizzt Du’Urden down to an ending. Friends fell, and a hundred years passed leaving Drizzt and Bruenor Battlehammer left in a world gone cold and cynical. Bruenor met his end in the stone halls of Gauntlgrym, defending his long lost dwarven home from devils and worse. He went out perfectly. Bruenor’s death left Drizzt alone, and after more than 20 books, I was finally looking at an ending, at closure.

That meant and still means much, but it gets complicated.

Here is where The Last Threshold comes in.

Over the course of the Neverwinter Saga, Drizzt lost the last of his old companions and found a new set, but these new characters are quite different from his old. Drizzt operates under the philosophy of “The world, like my moralities, is black and white” and his old companions felt the same way. This new group of stranded peoples, however, does not think in such a simple manor. Dahlia and Artemis Entreri are exceptionally cynical, the latter being an assassin with a long history, Effron is half demon and a necromancer besides, and Afafrenfere and Ambergris are outcasts from a different guild of contract killers. They are a far cry from Drizzt’s old friends in a world that has grown far different than what it once was.

Drizzt’s black-and-white morality is starting to seem out of place now, and that is the heart of the Neverwinter Saga.

Drizzt’s philosophy has always been a naïve thing, but one that has always made some level of sense given his character’s long history and turbulent past. When I was younger and just starting my journey with Drizzt Du’Urden, I enjoyed the simplicity Drizzt’s eyes allowed—that the world might have bad people, but there truly are good people to help counter them: that evil can be overcome—As I’ve grown older, and hopefully more wise, I’ve come to see a certain kind of hope to Drizzt’s views on life. His world has gone greyer, but he won’t let that change himself. He is true to his person. To remain optimistic when pessimism is the easiest route is profound to me, for I’ve grown into quite the cynic over the years. Drizzt, at least, has not allowed himself to be beaten down.

Despite all of this, I never once expected Drizzt Du’Urden to have a happy ending. He constantly puts himself into danger for the sake of others, and he only truly lives when he is on some kind of adventure, fighting some evil foe or force for the honest sake of doing what is right. His life is always in jeopardy. Drizzt isn’t the kind of character who can simply settle down and call a place home; the road is his home and the road is dangerous, filled with monsters, thieves, and introspection.

And truly, I knew Drizzt was going to die when Bruenor Battlehammer died three novels ago. The only question was “how?”

That answer is complicated, and one that makes The Last Threshold a complicated book.

Five books ago, Drizzt lost his wife Cattie-Brie to the Spellplague, a kind of magical natural disaster. However, Cattie-Brie’s death was far from natural, even in that context. The last image of her is her physical person riding away on a ghostly unicorn, the symbol of the goddess Mielikki. Drizzt and Bruenor chase after her, but they do not catch her and she vanishes from view and Toril. She is taken to her own special heaven, a beautiful forest where she enters a state of limbo, singing, dancing, and waiting.

Drizzt and Bruenor spend the hundred years that pass between The Ghost King and Gauntlgrym searching for Cattie-Brie, for rumors of a fleeting forest with a dancing witch begin to filter to them from around the world. They are unsuccessful.

Until The Last Threshold where Drizzt Du’Urden finds the forest and hears his wife for the first time in a hundred years.

Here is where I thought his journey would end. Here is where closure would happen.

Drizzt stayed in the forest, asleep, for the better part of 20 years before it evaporated around him, leaving him and his companions alone in the frozen wastelands of Icewind Dale. They awoke confused, and Drizzt awoke with the profound feeling that the forest was truly gone for good and Cattie-Brie was out of his reach forever.

This is significant. The Neverwinter Saga, and more importantly The Last Threshold is many things, but the two most important facets of these four books are Drizzt coming to terms with the changing world around him and how his philosophy fits within it and Drizzt overcoming his previous losses. He does both of these things, and after the forest disappears, he decides to forgo the road and live the remainder of his days in Icewind Dale.

He tells his companions this, though more importantly he tells Dahlia this. Dahlia is a rather tragic character, one who suffered rape at a young age and still bears the mental scars. She is reckless in everything, and she has this habit and ritual of bedding dangerous men. She literally kills her relationships when they threaten to end in an attempt to both kill her sexual past and in an attempt to finally die. She has adopted battle as her form of therapy.

Dahlia’s reaction is to attack Drizzt, but this reaction doesn’t feel natural. While Drizzt is overcoming much of his own mental and emotional scars, The Last Threshold sees Dahlia do the same. She kills the demon that raped her many years ago, she finds actual friends and companions, and she comes to terms with Effron, her half demon son. Like Drizzt, her mental journey seems to be over, so when she attacks him, it doesn’t feel right. It feels forced.

Drizzt refuses to fight back. He has traveled with Dahlia for quite some time now, and they spent much of the Neverwinter Saga as lovers. He has, or thinks he has, and understanding of Dahlia, and his philosophy demands he help her, not kill her. He stands still as she advances, but instead of stopping mid swing, which Drizzt believes will happen, she knocks him upside the head and off of a cliff. Drizzt falls, breaks his ankle, and suffers what is probably a rather nasty concussion.

In a short ironic twist, it is Artemis Entreri who saves Drizzt from Dahlia. The assassin drags the crying elf away, but when he comes back, Drizzt is gone. The book fast forwards to Bruenor’s Climb, a notable spot in Icewind Dale, and there Drizzt looks into the sky, hears Cattie-Brie’s voice, and dies.

This is unsatisfying for a handful of reasons, the first one being that Dahlia in no way could actually kill Drizzt Du’Urden. To see him lose and then end here is distasteful to say the least. But the more important reason for this death being disappointing is that Drizzt’s philosophies are proven to be naïve and wrong. He has this worldview for 23 books, and it is what drove him forward. Yet at his end, this worldview that is based on doing what is right is what ultimately kills him. I would appreciate the irony in any other series, but it feels out of place here.

And so I began a series of mental gymnastics because after 23 books, I didn’t want to end disappointed. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to make an ending work in my own mind, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, but the need is never good or fun. I understand that the best ending, that the right ending, might not be a good or happy, but no endings should be unsatisfying.

Cattie-Brie and Regis both died in rather spectacular ways: they were carried off by an agent of Mielikki. Drizzt’s death too is quite spectacular when scrutinized. He fell off of a cliff and broke his ankle, and when he awoke, he was on a different cliff. His new companions could not find his corpse, yet Drizzt was incapable of moving.

Like his wife, Drizzt wasn’t killed but instead was taken by his goddess.

The Neverwinter Saga was all about moving on and accepting the self, and Drizzt did all of those things. The only thing he had left to do was end his relationship with Dahlia, then he would truly be done with this arc of his life. The replacement of his friends wasn’t the start of a new journey, it was the forced need to continue the old journey. But that wasn’t right, and it did an injustice to Drizzt’s old companions. He saw this, he accepted this, and he did what he thought was right.

Had Dahlia attacked him or not, Mielikki would have come to take Drizzt away. That is the real ending, and one that is much better than naïve-induced failure.

That is an ending I can accept.

But there is another problem. R.A. Salvatore isn’t done with these characters. The last three pages of The Last Threshold are a look into the next book, and Drizzt is very much alive there. What appeared to be the end of Drizzt’s life is simply the end of one chapter of that life, and R.A. Salvatore is not only bringing Drizzt back, he’s also bringing his old companions back as well.

They are all chosen by their gods, and their gods are not done with them yet. The first chapter of The Last Threshold brings this into light, and the plot summary of the next book confirms it.

To the defense of R.A. Salvatore, he’s writing within a property: Dungeons and Dragons. Wizards of the Coast want this, I would imagine, and I’ve recently learned that certain oddities and twists within The Dark Elf Legacy did not come from the author of the novel but the owner of the property. That is a sad thing, and the corporate side of this series of books strikes much of the magic away.

It seems that other authors who write in Forgotten Realms are doing the same as Wizards of the Coast make new changes to their Dungeons and Dragons property. The novels that coincide with the game must be kept up to date with the game. This is to keep a single continuity, and that is something Wizard’s of the Coast prioritize over my enjoyment of the Forgotten Realms books.

Here, Ignorance would have been bliss. That ship has sailed though.

As a reader, I am left with a choice. To end at The Last Threshold is to see Drizzt die and join his friends in the afterlife. To end at The Last Threshold is to find closure in a series of books that measures far over 20 when certain side projects are factored in.

To buy the next book is to commit to many more.

I don’t know what to do. I started reading The Dark Elf Legacy when I was in high school, confused, stupid, and a young teenager. I am now a young adult working on my own novel, a video game, and with aspirations to start a business. The end of Drizzt’s chapter marks the end of my own, and I find that to be somewhat profound. A coincidence to be sure, but one that is hard to avoid.

To stop is to move on in more ways than one.

And yet, I’ve had minor dealings with R.A. Salvatore over Facebook. He’s nice, and he’s given me hours upon hours of enjoyment. I’m loathe to stop. The idea that Toril will go through another major change is enticing, and the fact that the gods themselves are coming into play is even better. To combine Dungeons and Dragons fantasy with something akin to the Greek pantheon is a recipe for insanity, and one I surely don’t want to miss out on.

I don’t know what to do. My temporary solution is to wait, since the next book won’t be out in paperback until October 2014, but I think it might be fun to reread the series. I’ve actually only ever read each book once, so to marathon through all 23 would be quite an event. Most of the novels have melted into that rose-colored world of nostalgia, and rereading them would be more than just rereading about Drizzt’Du Urden and his friends. I would, in a way, be rereading about myself, and evidently that self is sentimental.

Surely that is important.

My friends are in limbo right now. To stop would be to kill them; to continue would be to revive them. I do believe the world is better with them alive, but that is a selfish thought. They have earned rest, and I have much work to do.

Surely that is important too.

Marlfox: Book Discussion

On September 14, 2013 I started working on a novel alongside a video game. Well, I’m still working on that video game, but I finished the first draft to that novel last week (January 10, 2014). It took me over 100 days, 231 pages, and 146,000 words.

After I finished it, I reread Marlfox by Brian Jacques because that felt like the right thing to do.

It is because of that book that I wrote the first draft to The Ninth Life.

I’ve blocked out most of my early adolescence, but the two things that I remember are Redwall Abby and my general lack of friends. The former made up for the latter.

Redwall Abby is an interesting place, and had you asked me in sixth grade, I would have told you it was magical. Here is a world populated by talking animals that carry around swords and axes and knives and fight for justice, peace, and their home. Here is a world that is both charming and fun, filled with songs and feasts and adventure!

I devoured the Redwall books. I recall reading the 400-page Taggerung in two days. The bottom shelf of my second bookshelf is nothing but Redwall books, holding 17 of them, almost all of them battered and worn from multiple readings.

So it’s no wonder that my first novel is populated by talking animal people. Those were the characters that truly got me into reading. This was the kind of setting that made me go, “oh my God, look what books have to offer!” Redwall Abby might no longer be magical, but the feelings of wonder it inspired were.

When I think back to mostly-forgotten seventh grade, I remember starting a fantasy story filled with talking animals. I picked up a blue notebook, fresh from Target, and wrote, “Chapter 1.” I can’t recall how far I got, but I know it was at least ten notebook pages. Maybe more.

What I do recall is my grandma coming over, picking it up, and then yelling at me for writing something with such terrible language and violence.

I stopped writing that story.

But I’m an adult now and my grandma’s opinion on language or content aren’t apt to stop me from doing something. She probably wouldn’t like The Ninth Life, but that’s okay. I didn’t write it for her. I wrote it for me and because Kitgazka came into my mind and asked me to tell his story. That’s all there is to it.

I can name a great many authors that influenced The Ninth Life, but I have to start with Brian Jacques. He’s had one of the biggest impacts on me as a person, and all because he wrote a bunch of fantasy novels for children.

Life is strange, but usually in the best of ways.

I suppose it’s now time to discuss Marlfox, but that’s hard to do. I reread the book, but it’s still heavily tied in with this bright nostalgia that I really can’t shake. There is this Redwall book, and then there are the 16 others that I own, and they all fit together even though Redwall Abby is the only thing that truly binds them.

I purchased Marlfox sometime in sixth grade. I remember seeing it in a Target store and being instantly gripped. There is a shadowy fox covering himself with a cloak and holding a giant axe on the front cover, and the back cover plays host to two squirrels, a vole, and a shrew, all holding weapons. I had to have it.

The first chapter is violent, and the book doesn’t ever really stop being violent, even when there are great pauses in action.

Mossflower Wood is being invaded by Marlfoxes and their army of water rats. The foul villains are looking to loot treasures to bring back to their castle, and Redwall Abby looks like it should play host to plenty of treasures. They are spotted and accosted by three different groups: the Swifteye family, Log-a-Log and his army of wandering shrews, and the Noonvale Companions. All of them set off to warn Redwall of this new infestation.

They all arrive right before the Marlfoxes attack. It’s a hard battle with losses on both sides, but eventually the Marlfoxes get into Redwall Abby and steel the tapestry of Martin the Warrior. Three young heroes set out to retrieve it while the rest stay put to defend themselves against the Marlfox siege, the villains now bent on revenge for their fallen brethren.

It’s a simple plot for what really is a simple book. I’ve read plenty of children’s books that are so much more than children’s books, but this isn’t one of them. Brian Jacques created a fun world, but he is not Lewis, Tolkien, Pullman, or Rowling. He didn’t achieve that extra something.

The world of Redwall is fun, but it isn’t truly realized. There are inconsistencies and little things that plague it and take away from what could truly be a magical place. The sizes of the larger creatures (badgers mostly) aren’t always the same, the sizes of anything are never truly understood, the movement of time isn’t ever fully realized, and the sapient animal creatures inhabit a world with normal animals.

The latter is one of my biggest issues with the series, and one I wondered about even in my youth. Marlfox mentions sapient frogs with families and language, and then introduces a hedgehog name Soll who has a pet frog that can fit in his paw. There is the sapient osprey named Megrew and then there are waterfowl which act as nothing more than food.

It’s something I should probably overlook, but I just cannot.

Brian Jacques operates under this 1700’s mentality that abilities are genetic. A warrior will beget warrior children, a villain will give birth to evil children. The young heroes that set out for the tapestry don’t have any formal training in swordsmanship, yet that’s okay. Their parents and friends are warriors and so they must be as well. Perhaps this is more to do with them being animals, so the ability to fight is a metaphor for animalistic instincts, but I had a problem with it all the same. Whenever Dannflor was chastised by his father for making mistakes in battle, I wanted to throttle Rusval for being so foolish. Dann has lived a quiet live at Redwall Abby where he hasn’t needed to learn how to swing a sword, so it’s not his fault that he’s bad at it.

Coincidence plays a rather large roll in Marlfox as well. A children’s story this may be, but when Songbreeze wanders off and finds her long-lost grandpa, their lost boat, and an army of hedgehogs in the same day, that’s just bad writing. There are other moments where characters wake up at the right time or accidentally do things and catch the enemy right before the day might be ruined, and it’s all rather trite. Here is a world where the good guys will always show up at the last second and save the day.

This carries on to the spirit of Martin the Warrior, a wandering ghost who founded Redwall Abby long ago and appears in dreams to pass on information that could not be learned elsewhere. He’s a convenient plot device.

The biggest issue with Marlfox and its other Redwall brethren is the black-and-white morality between all of the characters. All of the villains are super evil, and all of the heroes are super heroic. This kind of thing can be fun—see Voldemort—but in this case, it’s lazy. The Marlfoxes are all evil because they need to be. They even address this a few times with lines like, “A true Marlfox enjoys deceit and violence.” There are no nuances to them; they are simply what they are and that’s just how things are.

Likewise, there is a “specism” that populates the world Redwall Abby lives in that has always bothered me. Cute creatures like mice and squirrels are always good; ugly creatures like rats and ferrets are always evil. Badgers are always good simply because, and anything truly carnivorous is always evil with a few exceptions (also simply because). This mold is never broken, and the few books that try to break it chicken out and stoop back to normal levels by the end. I wondered about this when I was younger—mostly because the villains were usually cooler animals—but it truly bothers me now.

And yet, I had fun rereading it. It’s a charming book that reminds me of The Hobbit or the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring. Even during dull moments, the creatures moving around and living are just fun to watch, even if what they do might only be done for the sake of moving the plot along. There are plenty of songs and feasts, and I even laughed at most of the jokes, despite being an adult now.

Florien Wifflechop might be the best character in the novel, even if he’s the comic relief. He doesn’t overstay his welcome, and he has moments were he goes beyond his role of joke-maker. I laughed when he was trying to give sword lessons to a group of cooks, and I felt quite proud of him when, after the first major fight, he took control of burying the dead. He’s the most well-rounded character in the book, and I wish others had been just as realized.

The journey of the young warriors to find the tapestry is really just a series of small adventures until they reach Castle Marl, but it’s a fun journey. They find some interesting creatures, escape some trying battles, and in the end, they free a bunch of slaves and succeed. Their return home is quite emotional, heralded by a short song about the importance of home and cheers from loved ones.

It’s a good ending. A satisfying ending, even if success was never in doubt.

As a kid’s book, Marlfox and its Redwall brothers are quite strange. They aren’t short by any means, averaging 300-400 pages each, and the vocabulary within is quite large. I didn’t run into any words I didn’t know, but I ran into some I didn’t expect. Dialogue is heavily accented, and I wonder how hard it is to read for the targeted audience (I recall having issues with mole-speech when I was younger). There are plenty of plotlines going on at once, and the passages are fairly descriptive, neither of which are what I expect from a book aimed at children.

The same can be said for the content: Marlfox is a dark book at points. The Marlfoxes keep slaves and Brian Jacques isn’t afraid to kill off side characters. The losses of battles are never terribly high, but they do exist. A happy ending is always in order, but bad things can and do happen; the heroes need to earn their happy ending.

Perhaps that’s why I loved them so much when I was younger.

I have this scene my mind goes to when I’m truly struck with nostalgia. Its summer and the world outside is made of brilliant greens and blues. I’m in a chair by a window, and there is a cat sleeping on my lap. I’m holding some kind of entertainment—either a book, a Gameboy Advance, or a Nintendo Power—and not truly paying attention to the world outside, but still I’m enjoying the atmosphere summer is creating. It’s a perfect day.

Reading this book made me think of that scene. It sent me back in time to a point in my life long forgotten and just made me happy. It’s not a good book, and yet it kind of is. It does what it wants to do and acts how it wants to act with no regrets. It’s childish and kind of stupid, but it’s fun and charming too.

I’m tempted to pick up one of the others, though I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. This book went from “perfect” in my mind to flawed, and I don’t know if I want this series to change in that way. I like these books being perfect or close to, even though I know very much that they aren’t.