Books
23.
Caliban's War, by James S.A. Corey and 24.
The Butcher of Anderson Station, by James S.A. Corey
I mentioned on Twitter recently that Jim Holden is the least interesting character in the Expanse series, which is unfortunate since he seems like a common point-of-view character across the full-length books. To my surprise, whoever is managing the James S.A. Corey Twitter account messaged me back to say that they're aware of this complaint and that it's "the danger in having a character whose arc takes place across a dozen books instead of one book."
Nonetheless, it doesn't change the fact that Holden, for all his faults, is still the least interesting character in the series so far. It's not as if Holden doesn't experience change; he became due to fear and depression a more violent person after the events of
Leviathan Wakes, and he reverts to a more reasonable person after he is called out on his behavior by Naomi in
Caliban's War. Amos, Naomi, and Alex aren't expected to change much, since they're secondary characters, and we had some character development for Amos in
Caliban's War.
This caused me to wonder why Holden seemed so uninteresting. It could be that's almost painfully naive about the idea of information transparency; he's called out on it respectively in
Leviathan Wakes and
Caliban's War by separate characters, but his convictions lie in everybody knowing everyone so no one can hold dark and terrible secrets. If he changed this aspect of his personality, however, he would be a fundamentally different character. It could be that he's an Earther amongst a crew of Belters and Martians, yet there's no conflict among the crew based on their different backgrounds. It could be that the crew of the
Rocinante is almost too well-functioning. You could justify their tight connections by citing their shared trauma, but when Holden empowers Naomi, Alex, and Amos to question his right to be their captain, there's very little tension in the scene even though it's structured to be a pivotal moment in the crew's relationship. Perhaps that's why Holden seems so uninteresting; he only faces external conflicts that can be solved at the point of a gun. He never has to convince anyone, particularly the people closest to him, to see his point of view. The crew of the
Rocinante might be too well functioning to be interesting or dramatic.
It also struck me that the authors haven't exploited the ironies that shifting perspectives can so easily create. Chrisjen Avasarala, in particular, should have access to information that Holden and his crew lack. This is not explored. Irony can create tension; as they stand, the Expanse books have plot momentum, but very little tension.
Beside irony, shifting tensions should create characters that have different voices. I thought that the authors achieved this in Leviathan Wakes because Miller and Holden felt like different characters. And the pacing of transition between characters felt better realized in
Leviathan Wakes; when Miller commits a shocking act in
Leviathan Wakes at the end of a Holden chapter, we skip back a few moments in time in the following Miller chapter to go through Miller's thought process to understand why he did what he did. We don't get this type of insight into characters in
Caliban's War; it's almost as if the scope is too large for the authors to execute this. Bobbie Draper's chapters felt very much like Prax's which felt like Avasarala's which felt like Holden's; we aren't invited to see the events from a different character's perspective. Instead, the shifting perspectives in
Caliban's War felt like they were designed to keep the plot moving across a larger stage.
Someone compared Avasarala to
The Thick of It's Malcolm Tucker, but the authors don't have Armando Iannucci's creative use of profanity. I had hoped that the inclusion of a more political character like Avasarala would give greater insight into Earth culture and politics in the Expanse series, but we get very little beyond paint-by-numbers politics. Avasarala's nemeses, Errinwright and Admiral Nguyen, are practically one-note.
"The Butcher of Anderson Station" is a short story about the induction of Fred Johnson, the titular Butcher of Anderson Station, into the Outer Planets Alliance. It's a taste of the world that gives us some background on how Fred became the OPA's face, but it doesn't work unless you have read about Fred's boarding action on Anderson Station in Leviathan Wakes. Still, I'm not sure I gained any insight into Fred Johnson after reading "The Butcher of Anderson Station."
I mentioned elsewhere that the Expanse books make perfectly fine beach space opera. The plot moves, and the authors know how to craft a hook for the conclusion to guide you to the next book in the series. After nearly 1300 pages by these authors, I've come to the conclusion that what I want - deeper exploration of the politics and culture of Earth, Mars, and the Belt - aren't going to be the authors' focus. The series seems to be building to a point where it can either become something similar to Iain M. Banks's Culture series, or it could be a pulpier, more action-oriented series of books. Either progression is fine, though I'm banking on the latter.
Movies
36.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
I needed an objective opinion on the film, which is why I was glad that my wife watched it with me. She's seen the two previous X-Men movies by director Bryan Singer, but she hasn't seen
X-Men: The Last Stand,
X-Men Origins: Wolverine, or
The Wolverine. She hasn't read the books that were the source material for the film. And she'll put up with some nerd films (we saw
The Avengers and
The Dark Knight Rises together), but she has a limit (she won't see
Godzilla, and she didn't see
Captain America: The Winter Soldier).
I needed the second opinion because the future, dystopian sections of
X-Men: Days of Future Past looked terrible, as if the film couldn't hide the fact that it was all computer-generated or on a soundstage. There might have been an intent to juxtapose the dystopian future with a troubled but more realistic looking past in order to create the contrast and to emphasize that the dystopian future should not have happened.
I needed the second opinion because the balance between the film's future and the past sections felt wrong. Some of the imbalance could be attributed to the actors' weight: on one hand, you have Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman and the weight of
X-Men,
X2: X-Men United, and
X-Men: The Last Stand, while you have James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence and the weight of
X-Men: First Class. Between Stewart and Jackman and Stewart and McKellen, you have relationships that have carried multiple films. McAvoy, Fassbender, and Lawrence have only had one film's worth of history in the viewers' minds.
I needed the second opinion because the character arcs were truncated to the film's detriment. (For simplicity, let's call McAvoy's Charles Xavier "Charles," Stewart's "Professor X," Fassbender's character "Erik," and McKellen's character "Magneto.") Charles's character arc, from disillusioned drug addict to hopeful educator, felt shortchanged; recovering from as deep a hole as Charles was in should have been a greater struggle. It felt far too easy for Charles to become Professor X. Erik's arc didn't feel as shortchanged, but then Erik of
First Class was always closer to Magneto of
X-Men and
X-Men United. His arc didn't feel shortchanged because there wasn't far for him to go. The real waste was Jennifer Lawrence's performance as Mystique. Her emotional journey deserved more than the film could afford to give it, since it already ran 2 hours and 11 minutes, and it had to serve a lot of masters in the process. There's no room for any of these actors (and that's not even counting McKellen, who gets practically nothing to do, Ellen Page and Halle Berry) to play, and I can't help but feel that they're all overqualified and wasted.
I needed the second opinion because the film delivers exposition in some of the most abrasive and heavy-handed ways I've seen in a film this year. Between Professor X telling Jackman's Wolverine how the process to send Wolverine's sub-conscious self back in time will work to Nicholas Hoult's Hank McCoy telling Wolverine why Charles was depressed, the film loves to tell.
I needed the second opinion because there's no way that Quicksilver should have been the best part of the film. Evan Peters's performance is charming, fearless, and funny. Yes, we should have gotten a nod that he's changed his portable music listening device (couldn't have been a Walkman, since they weren't available at retail until 1979, and there weren't many portable audio players commercially available around in 1973) so he could actually hear it while he operates at superspeed. But he's the coolest character in the film, and he has the best realized sequence in the film (violations of Newtonian physics notwithstanding).
Plausibility is the enemy, so we are invited to ignore Quicksilver's violations of Newtonian physics, the idea that the US military or Washington DC police wouldn't send aircraft to the White House after it had been enclosed by RFK Stadium, the collateral damage that falling chunks of steel and concrete would inflict on Washington DC as it levitated to the White House, and the idea that there would be an military-industrial demonstration on the White House lawn.
I needed the second opinion because the only emotional resolution of the film comes from seeing Wolverine interact with Professor X in a brighter, less robot-filled future. The film isn't interested in Charles's, Raven's, or Erik's journey's; it's focused on Wolverine, specifically the Wolverine who gets to interact with the stars of the older X-Men films. I suppose this makes sense; Singer would be interested in his versions of the toys in his movie rather than the ones that Matthew Vaughn developed in
First Class.
I needed the second opinion because Singer surprisingly didn't try to weave allegory into
Days of Future Past. There are some light references to the unintended consequences of a nation's expansion of its security apparatus, but nothing like
X-Men United's coming-out scenes with Bobby Drake and his parents. There's no moral conflict;
Terminator 2: Judgment Day showed us that is possible to make the unwitting architect of humanity's destruction into a sympathetic character, but there wasn't even an attempt to give Peter Dinklage's Bolivar Trask a second dimension, much less a third. The film wears out the Mystique-in-disguise gimmick fairly quickly because it's used the same way again and again.
I needed the second opinion because I thought this was a worse film than
X-Men United and
First Class, and I'm having a hard time understanding why all the film critics seemed to rave about
Days of Future Past.
X-Men United is defined by its action setpieces and the humor sprinkled throughout; there are shots I still remember from
X-Men United.
First Class is defined by the first half of the film, but especially Charles and Erik in the context of the 1960s, and especially the scene where Wolverine delivers a great F-bomb to Charles and Erik that gets paid off in
Days of Future Past.
Days of Future Past might be notable for the Quicksilver scenes and for the controversy around Bryan Singer that broke right before the film was released.