The Legacy Syndrome: The Bad has Been Broken and We're All the Better For It

Gonna find my baby gonna hold her tight
gonna grab some afternoon delight...

In GOODFELLAS Henry Hill's (Ray Liota) description of fellow gangster James Conway (Robert DeNiro) included the following poetic and memorable line in a movie chalked full of poetic and memorable lines:

"Jimmy was the kind of guy that rooted for the bad guys in the movies."

Well, as it turns out, a great many of us are more similar to the psychotic Jimmy than are probably willing to admit, though not for the reasons you'd suspect.  There are many characters that have existed in various media from folk tales to reality TV ("Don't laugh!  This ain't reality TV!") that have embodied the antihero, which has become a cultural buzzword that has come to dominate the communal conscious.  In fact, if one were so inclined, one might effectively argue that the Age of the Hero is over and we are currently living in the Age of the Antihero.  While depending on whom you ask, the term "antihero" has either become another worn out, meaningless word like "awesome," or "epic," or "transvestite hooker" or a fundamental addition to the parlance of our times.  I fall somewhere in the middle, like the meat of the philosophical manwich.  The term "antihero" - much like "postmodernism" - can be part of an effective arsenal to intelligently contribute to various ongoing cultural dialogues with other free-thinking citizens as long as it is used sparingly and treated with the proper respect and care and not paraded out in front of friends and family in order to appear cosmopolitan and learned - much like a transvestite hooker.

You see, the reason that Jimmy and I and probably a lot of you can relate to the antihero is because most of us pretty much are antiheroes in our own life narratives.  Basically, the antihero is the protagonist of a narrative who does not embody attributes typically considered heroic such as altruism or selflessness or sacrifice... ness or the tendency when fucking a person in the ass to provide the goddamn common courtesy of a reach-around.  These individuals are typically self-centered, though they do have some sort of "code of (dis)honour" that anchors them and keeps them from drifting so far into the dark waters of moral ambiguity that those in the audience can no longer relate to or sympathize with them.  The fact is, most people are assholes most of the time, sometimes deliberately and sometimes through no fault of our own.  Most of us aren't heroic supermen who always do "the right thing" and, in fact, aren't always sure of what the right thing is or if there even is a right thing.

The archetype of the antihero was most recently exemplified in the quite excellent television show BREAKING BAD, which chronicled the misadventures of high school chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin Walter White (Bryan Cranston) as he cooked crystal meth in order to provide a nest egg for his wife and two children after he passed on from the lung cancer with which he had recently been diagnosed.  With help from former student Jesse (Aaron Paul) (of course you realize that I'm going to have to punctuate the rest of this article with random, emphatic exclamations of "Bitch!") and a host of wacky characters, including crazy Latino drug dealers, calm and collected Latino drug lords, sadistic Latino hit men, a dismembered Latino head-turtle-bomb, and his (not Latino) DEA brother-in-law who has no idea his wife's sister is married to the greatest thing to happen to crystal meth since somebody created a terrible drug using incredibly volatile and harmful chemicals (for some reason) that gets you high for a little while but ultimately basically rots your face off from the inside.  And they say innovation is dead.

I am the one who knocks... And occasionally the one who
sits surrounded by fat stacks of cash and stares menacingly
in case somebody happens to walk into my field of vision.
I mean, from that exact angle, I will scare the shit out of you.

Much like Tony Soprano, Walter White was a character who, on paper, is the kind of guy that beating to death with a tire iron would literally and quantifiably make the world a better place.  But in the context of the narrative of BRAKING BAD, it's seductively easy to sympathize with Mr. White, yo, because he's presented not as a desperate man engaged in increasingly depraved and destructive criminal activities but as a man with untapped potential a little down on his luck who is now properly motivated to solve increasingly complex problems.  We see things through Walt's eyes, so we see the production of crystal myth from a clinical (yet passionate) perspective as an entrepreneurial enterprise, a business.  He's like the little kid selling lemonade in homemade stand in front of his house who transforms into a soft drink magnate with a multinational corporation unleashing sugary drinks en masse to an unsuspecting yet willing public.  He's a businessman, an entrepreneur, who, with the right application of talent and motivation, can rise through the ranks and carve out his own sizable piece of the pie.  It's a twist on the same philosophy that gave rise to the trope of the American Dream.  Walter White is relatable because he's a projection of how so many of us would like to see ourselves; the underappreciated genius who given half a chance could excel - really fucking excel - at something and assert themselves and establish themselves as somebody to remembered for that one Great Thing who is also a part-time badass with a heart of gold (sort of like Han Solo).  

For some, the dialogue surrounding BREAKING BAD - especially the final season - revolved around a moral analysis or commentary on Walter's actions.  However, discussions about the morality of Walter White and especially of whether he was "a monster" (or "the devil" if you want to be dramatic like Jesse, bitch) are, at best, tangentially relevant to the mythology of the show.  Besides the incredibly useless and unhelpful endeavor of trying to categorize people according to essentialist notions of "good" and "bad" - as if people could only ever wholly embody one of these two alignments - from the very outset of the series, it was clear that BREAKING BAD was never a morality tale.  If it were, then it would have explored the (tens of ) thousands of lives ruined or severely harmed through the recreational (?) use of the thousands of pounds of methamphetamines that Walter and Jesse produced over the course of five seasons (or two years in BREAKING BAD time).

The only way to read the show and not be considered a soulless, sociopathic asshole is as an analogy or some kind of Western mythos.  Just as we in the audience were meant to sympathize and "cheer for" Tony Soprano in THE SOPRANOS, it was obvious that Vince Gilligan and the gang wanted the audience to sympathize with and cheer for Walter White.  Throughout the narrative, everything that transpired was ultimately filtered through a prism that bent the audience's perception to match that of Walter's.  Everything that happened in the show would always be shown in relation to Walter.  And if you were to interpret BREAKING BAD on a purely literal level and still garnered any enjoyment out of it, you would be a quantifiably terrible human being.  The shit that Walter White - not to mention almost every other character on the show - did could be classified somewhere on a sliding scale of moral reprehensibility.

Some might point to Walt's literal partner in crime Jesse as the show's moral compass and heart, but people seem to forget several important facts.  One, Jesse was the catalyst for Walter's transformation into the chronically knocking and dangerous drug lord Heisenburg, bitch.  Without Jesse's street connections to crack into the very competitive illegal drug market, Walter's plan to cook and sell meth might have ended as merely the insane ravings of a madman.  Two, Jesse spent a great chunk of the series as a degenerate junkie who was constantly engaged in criminal activities related to the distribution and ingestion of various mind-altering substances.  Three, despite his initial objections, Jesse ultimately guns down an unarmed man in cold blood.  Yeah, he felt guilty after, but curiously not guilty to actually turn himself in or, you know, face the consequences of his actions in any meaningful, mature way.

Walter's wife Skylar might also be seen as the moral yin to Walter's yang, but she, too, also existed in an ethical twilight zone.  While some spewed forth extremely vicious vitriol against Skylar and the actress playing her (Anna Gunn) for some reason, I never hated the character as some seemed to.  Skylar seemed kind of annoying sometimes, which was natural because we were seeing her from Walt's point of view as someone who was questioning him and impeding his ability to manufacture and sell poison to faceless users who could have included schoolkids and nuns for all he knew.  The worst part about Skylar wasn't that she was annoying; it was that she seemed to exist independent of any sense of agency and simple as an entity for Walt to lie to.  She only got more interesting when her own twisted morality was revealed.  Not only did she have an affair with her boss, she was also complicit in covering up and enabling Walter's rise to drug power.  Also like Jesse, despite her later reservations about her questionable decisions regarding her (admittedly limited) involvement in the drug trade, she also wants to get out scott free and avoid any actual consequences if she can.

For some, the foil to Walter's villainy was Hank's unquenchable thirst for justice.  But a closer examination reveals that Hank was also an asshole, just an asshole of another variety and caliber.  Hank wasn't exactly a  lighthouse of morality guiding everybody through stormy seas to a safe haven.  In the family proceedings prior to Walt's descent/ascent into the role of drug kingpin, Hank was the big swinging dick of the gang.  However, in the fifth season when he finally discovers that the drug lord Heisenburg is actually his seemingly mild-mannered brother-in-law, Hank becomes obsessed with bringing Walt down not for any moral reasons but because of wounded pride and the challenge to his alpha dog status.  If Hank was going the Robocop route to Serve the Public Trust, Protect the Innocent, and Uphold the Law, then he would have gone to his superiors right away with all of his suspicions and/or evidence even at the potential loss of his job, which he (probably) likely figured would be forfeit for, you know, being a top-ranking DEA agent who has been unable to identify a drug kingpin sitting right under his nose for almost two years like some kind of 70s style high school teacher mustache.  See, that's the very definition of nobility: sacrificing of oneself for the common or greater good.  But Hank wasn't interested in serving the greater good, only his own ego.  The real issue with Hank was that he was simultaneously A) envious of Walt who succeeded to a far greater extent in his chosen field than Hank ever did (or as it turns out, would) in his own and B) suffering from wounded pride for having been "one-upped" and outsmarted by Walter there by stripping Hank (in Hank's mind anyway) of his superior social status.  (Also, Hank eagerly admitted that he didn't give a shit about Jesse when he was working as an informant and would gladly have sacrificed him if it meant bringing down Walter.)

Hail to the king, baby.

All of the main characters were antiheroic to some degree, showing inclinations towards both socially positive and negative decisions and acts.  The point of the show wasn't to depict some epic battle of good versus evil.  No, ultimately what BREAKING BAD was all about was legacies and the establishing and passing on thereof.  Walt himself summed it up best when he declared to Jesse that he was "in the empire business."

This is another reason why it's easy to sympathize with Walter and others like him.  The need to establish a legacy, to do that one great thing that will live on in the collective memory of as many people as we each deem are necessary after we've all gone up to that great meth lab in the sky.  It's a form of immortality in a way to have something you created and built up stand as a monument to your memory long after you are gone.  It's one thing to be remembered, but it's another thing entirely to have somebody stand in the shadow of your creation and stare up in awe and wonder; if this monument, this achievement is so magnificent, how much greater must be the one who created it?  Creating a legacy is not just an effort to be remembered but the ability to differentiate oneself sufficiently by creating something unique that nobody else could have.  To look upon one's works and despair as was encapsulated in Shelly's poem Ozymandias recited to chilling effect by Walter White at the beginning of the (quite excellent) BREAKING BAD episode of the same name.  When your creation is so monumental that even its ruins inspire awe and wonder, then you know you've maxed out your legacy points.

For some reason, contemporary storytelling has relied on the trope of the criminal empire to address this concept of legacy in regards to empire building, otherwise known as the SCARFACE effect.  Bitch.  This, in part, is what has lead to some misinterpretations of BREAKING BAD and similar narratives as morality tales.  I think the key to viewing the trope of the criminal empire as containing the DNA of Shakespeare's famous dramas and tragedies.  In reality, those involved in the upper echelons (and lower echelons for that matter) of the drug trade are generally terrible people who would just as soon shoot you as shoot you full of their product.  But as metaphors or analogies, they represent a more visceral kind of empire building where one man or woman can rise to the top through sheer force of will (and a lot of bullets or exotic poisons).  It's a tantalizing proposition because in that dog eat dog (or man hit other man with Pontiac Aztec) world, one's rise to power is ultimately dependent upon the pure strength of that individual.  The concept of the criminal empire has been romanticized, and its a pill we can all swallow (bitch!) because through these narratives each member of the audience is enticed to see themselves as that exceptional individual.

A criminal empire is also enticing because it is an underworld with a unique and privileged membership and clientele.  It's appealing because if you have access it's like a secret fraternity.  You feel empowered because you have access to another world that other people can't even see even though it's right there in front of them.  It's a backstage pass of the highest caliber.  One can't help but feel a certain high not only from being able to traverse across boundaries between worlds most people can't even see but also to wield clandestine power right under the unsuspecting noses of all of those without that access.  There's nothing quite like being the werewolf in sheep's clothing, so to speak.

Huh, so that's what a donkey show looks like.

The other appeal in seeing legacy and empire in this sense is that it is a template of individual talent and ability that can be applied to various situations in our own lives.  From the pseudo-fatalist perspective, an individual rises to emperor status through the proper application of one's natural or unnatural gifts.  The problem with looking at people's talents as "callings," that is some kind of cosmic force urging us down a particular path is that people always assume that callings are noble of purpose and divine in spirit.  If the Calling Theory were true, we'd have to accept that just as many people were called to do as much shitty stuff as good.  When Walter finally admits to his wife Skylar in the final episode that he embarked on his little adventure mostly to satisfy his own ego and need to establish a legacy, he also admits that he was really good at cooking meth and he really enjoyed cooking meth.  If you're going to subscribe to this kind of fatalistic concept of individuals being called upon by some Entity to be really, really good at something, then you're also going to have to eventually confront the fact that all talents are not distributed equally across the spectrum of whatever prevailing moral philosophy is being used to measure their relative worth.  I mean, odds are, given the sheer odds, most of us are probably (and evidently) really talented at really useless stuff or really terrible (in the pejorative sense) stuff.

Which leads us back to the archetype of the antihero, bitch.  In order to balance out our most likely problematic talents and self-centered legacy- and empire-building tendencies, we like to try and embrace some sort of moral code (actually, it's more of a guideline).  A twisted moral code no doubt, but a basic set of rules and general lines in the sand that we continually convince ourselves that we will not cross in our pursuit of legacy.  In our relatively antiheroic lives, we need some kind of anchor to hold onto some semblance of what we consider to be humanity, some kind of redemptive quality to keep us from going all the way over the edge in our own minds or in the minds of others.  In a way maintaining a code is like maintaining some sort of karmic balance, a check mark in the Cosmic Ledger to show that despite all of the shit we bring into this universe, we also haven't completely extinguished all light either.  It's OK to be the scoundrel so long as you help blow up the occasional Death Star.

BREAKING BAD was that rare specimen; a critically acclaimed and popular television show that didn't overstay its welcome and try to milk another four or five seasons just for the sake of making a couple more bucks. The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, as they say.  It was the perfect proof of concept that it's OK to break bad, just as long as you do it well, and no doubt its legacy has been secured for the foreseeable future.

May you (and I) go and do likewise.

Amen, bitch.

Rating: BREAKING BAD is 10/10 = One Head Who is the One Who Knocks

Mass Effect 3: Mass Affection. In Defence of Greatness and Mass Market Appeal. Hate, Love, and the Apocalypse

Good things come in threes.

I remember once in high school an old English teacher of mine once told the class that there are three sides to every story: your side, the other's guy's side, and the truth.  Of course, that was about a week before he got busted as a drug mule for what turned out to be an affiliate of a major Columbian drug cartel (I won't tell you which one—you know how bashful they can be).  While for most his exposure as such a grotesque beast of burden cast a great deal of suspicion and scrutiny on his credibility, for me it lent credence to his worldly wisdom.  The drug mule was a strange beast to be sure; however, anybody willing to risk incarceration or possible drug overdose preceded by depraved, lewd, and indecent acts of debauchery in its purest form by forcefully swallowing latex bags full of extremely potent chemical or biological compounds was not a creature to be taken lightly.  One must either be batshit crazy, quantifiably stupid, incredibly brave, impressively desperate, or some combination thereof.  However, it is typically out of one of these four emotional and psychological states from whence some of the most pure forms of truth are distilled, and so I looked upon the words that were spawned in his crack-addled brain and passed up through his no doubt Vaseline-lined throat with the same reverence others reserved for high holy men or Black Friday deals.  For those in the know, the drug mule is one of the most sacred of beasts, and the wisdom it dispenses is invaluable and readily available but only for those listening with the right kind of ears.

While truth is a realm of subjectivity sovereign in its own right, it can be bolstered by quantifiable, empirically measurable evidence and the proper rhetorical appeal.  Indeed, the proper leveraging of logic, emotion, or character could quite effectively change one's vantage point of the truth in remarkable ways.  Though currently serving out his twenty year sentence in some deep, dark hole in an undisclosed penitentiary facility, carefully hidden away from the impressionable eyes and ears of Civilized people, and as far from the sun as Icarus by the end of his fateful solar encounter, that teacher still speaks to me today.  I think back on the valuable lesson he taught me about subjectivity and intellectual and philosophical relativism whenever I engage in discourse with my fellow man, strive to find beauty in both the natural world or in the artistic endeavours of humankind, or try to deal with the myriad breeds of unconscionable assholes, pricks, douchebags, and cocksuckers who populate our nation's roads and highways without resorting to ROAD WARRIOR-style tactics by running them off the road, beating them to within an inch of their lives with their own rusty tailpipes before handcuffing them to their cars and leaving them with just a hacksaw to free themselves before their cars - which I've lit on fire - explode, engulfing them in a purifying conflagration and reducing all but their femurs and a few stray molars to ash and coming back later to urinate on their charred remains then salting the earth so no plants would grow, thereby marking the spot of their grizzly demise with a morbid reminder to others of their ilk not to replicate their particular brand of motherfuckery. 

The road to enlightenment can sometimes be a winding path.

For me, one of the pit stops along that path came in the form of a particular artistic endeavour given life through the distinctly (post)modern medium known as the video game.  Mass Effect 3 was the final game in what was for me a monumental trilogy that rivaled the best of the best in any genre or medium.  Though those in certain circles would snicker or outright mock people who claim to be inspired by a video game (or in this case, a trilogy of video games), in a world where people draw inspiration from shitty pop songs, overpaid sports stars, or even chains of retail shopping outlets and the number of deaths by autoerotic asphyxiation are on the rise the potential for experiencing any shame or embarrassment others would attempt to force upon me for claiming any degree of spiritual or intellectual enlightenment due to my engagement with a video game is diminished to a mathematically incalculable value, and my self-esteem can remain thoroughly intact, subjectivity being what it is.  And subjectivity was foremost on my mind as I popped Mass Effect 3 into the game tray of my Xbox 360 and I began the final leg of a journey that began some five years previous.

It was in the wake of a highly popularized public outcrying that I waded back into the universe with which I had become so enamored after experiencing the two previous installments of the Mass Effect series.  Though there had been a four-year gap between my playing Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, I ended up playing Mass Effect 3 a mere three months after ME 2.  A month later, I began my second playthrough of the entire trilogy, so suffice it to say I was well and thoroughly hooked despite the seemingly intense backlash over the ending of ME 3 by a very vocal conglomerate of "fans," who went so far as to start petitions and hold bake sales as part of a grassroots movement to change the content of a piece of art they claimed to hate yet couldn't stop talking about.

I couldn't help but be slightly curious - and admittedly a little apprehensive - about the ending to what would come to be the final installment in one of my favourite trilogies of anything of all time, though my mind didn't dwell too long on the potential shitfest that the makers of the game could have made of the ending.  Was the entire ME trilogy just a dream?  Was the Illusive Man just a Tyler Durdenesque-inspired hallucination of Commander Shepard?  Did it turn out that water was the one weakness that the alien invaders had?  Was there a bomb implanted in his rib cage?  Did they turn it into a musical with Shepard singing showtunes like "They'll Never Make a Reaper Out of Me?"  Well, it turns out most of the "controversy" came from the last 15 minutes or so of gameplay for a number of reasons, which I will address a little later.  From my point of view, though, no matter how bad the last 15 minutes of a minimum 90-hour journey could turn out to be, only the most hardcore devotees of masochism would allow 15 minutes of an endeavour they hated to invalidate the other 80 hours and 45 minutes of the endeavour that they previously enjoyed.  Even if the last 15 minutes of ME3 were as terrible as the detractors made them out to be - which they weren't by a long shot - why would you dwell on what you hated at the the total expense of what you loved?  

Besides which, most people who hated the ending to ME3 complained that what made it so bad was that it was supposed to be the culmination to the entire trilogy and it did not satisfactorily tie up all of the intricately woven plot threads.  But that's only if one considers the last 15 minutes of ME3 to be the ending of the series.  In actuality, the entirety of ME3 was the culmination of the entire series and a solid chunk of the story was devoted to tying up and resolving large, overarching plot threads introduced in the first two installments.  Like ME1 and ME2, ME3 was exactly the game it needed to be.    

Reapers?  Why don't we just inception them?
There's no problem that can't be solved with
a little inception... Did I mention inception yet?

If the games were to be categorized by genre, the first Mass Effect would be a sweeping action/adventure, Mass Effect 2 was a classic heist, and Mass Effect 3 was a sprawling war epic.  It would basically be like (for instance) having STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE, INCEPTION, and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN together as part of one cohesive trilogy of awesomeness.  Or maybe THE GODFATHER, HEAT, and BRAVEHEART.  The point is that amidst all of the swirling chaos in, around, and through our universe, these three seemingly disparate narrative styles were somehow able to congeal into something coherent and compelling.

ME3 is the culmination of a five-year-and-some-odd-month endeavor on the part of Bioware (and subsequently EA) that ultimately delivered one of the most engaging narratives in one of the most engaging media ever available for public consumption and digestion.  Mass Effect 3 delivered on the setup of the first game with the arrival of everybody's (least) favourite organic/cybernetic/monstrous/magically delicious giant squid (for some reason?) robot monsters known as the Reapers and their countless, horrific minions.  It takes them a while (largely due to the efforts of one notoriously first nameless Commander Shepard and his ever-changing roster of ultimate badasses) but they finally arrive in full force with the sole intent of wiping out all sentient life everywhere in the galaxy, basically guaranteeing some end-of-life-as-we-know-it-we're-all-going-to-die-so-what-difference-does-it-make/pity/nostalgia/lonely desperation sex for countless fortunate and unfortunate souls throughout known space.  However, all hope is not lost as chinks in the Reapers' claims to godlike immortality and ubiquity start to show like so many poorly explained facial scars, and Shepard sets out one final time to unite various factions throughout the galaxy to make one final stand together (all the while holding back the urge to dickishly scream totally deserved "I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO, BITCHes!" at all of the assholes who treated him (or her) like Chicken Fucking Little when he (or she) tried to warn them about the Reaper threat years earlier).  Complicating matters is the pro-human terrorist/extremist organization known as Cerberus who have their own agenda that involves stopping the Reapers while at the same time establishing humanity as the ultimate big swinging dicks of the galaxy.

Once again, though, what makes ME3 tick is not so much the story (although that is important), but the character building and character interactions.  ME3 successfully combines some of the classic RPG elements in the form of weapon and armour upgrades that many fans felt were missing from ME2 along with the functional shooter elements that many felt were lacking from the first game.  Although I didn't necessarily feel that these elements were as lacking as other seemed to, ME3 does feel quite balanced in this respect.  It easily has the best in-game combat mechanics of the entire trilogy, and the special abilities especially feel refined.  As Little Bill aptly observed in UNFORGIVEN while recalling the tale of Corky's death, having a big dick just ain't going to cut it in a real world combat scenario when what you really need is a gun and the wherewithal to use it.  I typically play as a Vanguard class, and I feel like it wasn't really given its due until ME3 where I could totally use the biotic charge, then either Nova or shotgun the shit out of some Reaper minions and still hope to survive a surprisingly high percentage of the time.  For those who haven't played any of the Mass Effect games, that last sentence probably reads like Greek (or like Klingon for Greeks), but for those of you who are in the know, basically I felt like a biotic god.

Wait, you were actually going to let me go into that room first?
What kind of asshole are you?

Again, though, the truly immersive element of the experience had to do with developing relationships and emotional bonds with individuals that felt less like characters and more like autonomous agents.  And yes, sometimes sexy autonomous agents.  Despite the sense of urgency woven through the wartime narrative, there is still ample time to engage with old friends and make some new ones.  Obviously there's going to be a bigger payoff for somebody who has played the first two games and imported a save file, but even for someone just stepping into the series it's easy to lose yourself, not unlike Eminem and his immortal lyrics and accompanying phat, juicy beats.  Actually, a great deal of the payoffs for long-time players hinge largely on who survives the suicide mission in ME2.  I discovered this only after losing Thane and Mordin in my first (and, unfortunately, cannonical) play through and then going back and saving them on a subsequent play through after hearing about how awesome their story resolutions are in ME3 on countless internet forums.  They are indeed highly emotional, and Thane's story in particular struck me in the gut harder than a dodge ball in gym class.  Two of the major sub-plots involving the the resolution of the krogan genophage and the quarian/geth conflict also pack much more of a punch if you have some old friends along for the ride, and also serve to highlight how great the series could be when it was firing on all pistons.

The most important element to any combat training: striking a suitable
action hero pose.

One noticeable difference that true believers will notice going from ME2 to ME3 is the substantially smaller squad of allies, though the vast majority of them are returning friends, and those that didn't make the cut this time around still pop up throughout the story.  One interesting addition to Shepard's posse is EDI, the Normandy's artificial intelligence from ME2 who now gallivants around in sexy robot form and finally allows pilot-extraordinaire Joker to get some lovin'.  The only completely brand spankin' new squadmate (unless you opt for some of the fancy DLC) is James Vega, who I can only assume is the great great great latino grandson of Vincent Vega.  While it might have been nice to have some other old friends as playable squad mates (Wrex!  Fuck yeah!) or maybe some new races like a batarian or a volus (or maybe the real hanar that Blasto was based on), it was pretty kick-ass that most of your squad was still comprised of dudes and dudettes who had been with you since the very beginning.  The smaller squad size also means that there was enough time to flesh out each character and give them each their due.  My default squad in ME3 ended up being Garrus - the Brad Pitt to my George Clooney - and Tali, the love of my Shepard's life (lives?) and memorably sloppy drunk.

I would've made a sexy chick...

Also once again the romance aspect that has become somewhat ingrained as part of the Mass Effect mythos plays an integral part in creating emotional affect and drawing the player into the world.  Though it is possible to rekindle some old romances with people who have moved on from the Normandy, romances with main squadmates are definitely more fleshed out.  Luckily for me my digital heart belongs to Tali, who is one of the main crew and whose romance is hugely satisfying.  (Although, once again, there was a huge backlash when we finally get a small glimpse of what Tali looks like under all of that very form-fitting armour which turned out to be a modified stock photo of some random model.  Again, I don't understand what the fuck people were complaining about.  Many of the main characters in ME were created based on real life human models, and nobody gave a shit.  Maybe it was because, much like completing a trilogy, it is extremely difficult to satisfy all of the competing expectations of a diverse fan base, or maybe it was because of the old Greek adage "Haters gonna hate.")  Romancing Tali had the added benefit of yet another layer of meaning (and an increase in the stress-o-meter) in the Rannoch mission and the resolution of the quarian/geth conflict.  Although it seemed pretty clear from some of the narrative beats that the writers were pushing for Liara to be the main love interest for straight male Shepards and the lesbian Shepards (LezShep?)  (for example, the scene where Liara comes to your quarters to record your deeds for posterity in her beacon dealy).

On the topic of romance and sexuality, ME3 was notable for the mature way in which it dealt with homosexuality, specifically with the addition of shuttle pilot Steve Cortez.  Perhaps the most noticeable thing about Cortez's sexuality is that it's not noticeable at all.  That is to say, Cortez wasn't some stereotype token character who was defined purely by one attribute.  He wasn't the "gay guy"  WILL AND GRACEing it up.  It was just fucking great how in one of the earliest conversations Shepard has with him, Cortez mentions losing his husband in combat, and there's no, like, double takes like "Oh, I didn't know you were, ah, you swung that way," or any of that stupid shit.  It's mentioned, and it's part of who Cortez is, but it's not dwelt on unnecessarily and doesn't feel like the totality of his character.  It was pretty fucking cool that with all of the conflict in the future, at least we had matured enough as a species not to discriminate based on sexual orientation and the like.  I mean, there was still some space racism to overcome (looking at you Ash...), but at least we'd made some progress.

Being a wartime narrative, ME3 definitely had an air of finality about it.  For those who bemoan ME3 as less engaging than, say, ME2 with its stand-out final Suicide Mission (which, depending on how you play, may or may not be aptly named), I feel it necessary to point out that the third game is even more harrowing because it is itself a ten plus hour suicide mission.  I didn't realize until I did some research on the interwebs, but it is apparently possible throughout the course of the game to lose almost your entire main squad, but also most of your old friends who turn up in supporting roles.  It's not necessarily as in your face as ME2's Suicide Mission, but there is still that ever-present, looming sense that the decisions you make matter in respect to your squad, and there's no guarantee everybody's going to even make it far enough to say a proper goodbye.

Which, again, brings us back to the apparently divisive ending of ME3, which also, ironically, contains one of the arguably best-loved and most emotionally engaging scenes in the entire trilogy.  Before we go on to meet the Star Child (as he is somewhat disparagingly referred to), our Shepards must deal with the Illusive Man (Cerberus's top dog, if you'll excuse the pun (for those of you aware of Greek mythology)) which also results in the death of Captain/Councillor/Admiral Anderson.  The scene is in turns touching, sobering, and gut-wrenching as you are forced to say goodbye to a father figure you weren't even quite sure you had until that point.  It's one of those great, subtle threads woven throughout the ME trilogy that you don't even really think about, but when Anderson tells you with his dying breath "You did good, son.  I'm proud of you," all of the sudden you look back through the series and realize that the threads of that parental bond had been woven into the fabric of the narrative and it's even more emotional because it's like you're losing a loved one that you're really just seeing for the first time.

I swear to god if you mention midichlorians I will fucking strangle you.

(A slight detour must be taken here to mention the important role that music plays throughout the series.  Again, I don't know if Bioware and EA just lucked out or if they used some sort of biotic magic or advanced AI, but the music for the entire series was perfect.  From the very first shot in ME of Commander Shepard making his way to the bridge of the Normandy accompanied by the strains of that majestic theme to the final scenes depicting the consequences of Shepard's Final Choice punctuated by those bittersweet notes, the music seemed to fit the scene more perfectly than Miranda's greased-up pants hugged her legendary ass.  There's too many great tunes to mention here, but a few standouts were ME's From the Wreckage, the Suicide Run score (Jack Wall's a fucking genius) and anything from the Lair of the Shadow Broker during the assault on the shadow broker's ship.  Like the icing on the cake or the blowjob on the blowjob, the music of the ME trilogy really epitomizes the old "soundtrack of our lives" cliche and shows how every element of the series worked together to elevate it beyond the standard science fiction fare.  Even all the naysayers out there can't deny that even up until the bitter end, the music in the series never faltered for a second.)

Aaaaaaand, we're back.  After finally reaching the Citadel, dealing with the Illusive Man, and getting punched in the gut with Anderson's death, Shepard is asked to activate the Crucible, which he at first seems unable to do.  Shepard is then greeted with with what turns out to be the manifestation of the Reaper's collective consciousness who takes the form of a dead child that's been haunting Shepard's dreams and provides multiple choices based on differing philosophical viewpoints about the galaxy and the nature of life itself.

Now, a lot of people didn't like the Starkid as they refer to the holographic Reaper manifestation that, admittedly, has a lot of exposition to get through.  There were a lot of issues, a few of which I will tackle in my usually persuasive manner momentarily.  However, in the interest of open dialogue, I will allow that while I didn't think there was anything fundamentally wrong with the ending of ME3, I can see how the execution of the whole Starkid concept might have turned people off.  While a lot of people hated the Starkid or thought that since the idea was that the Reaper consciousness was manifesting itself in a visual form based on Shepard's unconscious that it should have taken on varying forms of dead friends like Mordin or Thane or the Virmire victim(s).  But I liked the fact that out of all the people that Shepard had lost (or potentially lost) that it was this random kid who stuck with him the most.  One, because the image of a dead kid is pretty powerful and can represent a lot of deep philosophical ideas like the death of innocence, a future cut short, etc.  Two, because it's just random enough to be believable.  That's the thing about your unconscious; you don't really have any control about the seemingly random connections it makes and what will stay with you.

While I don't disagree with what the Starkid said, I do believe he could have said it more eloquently.  The way I look at the reason Shepard was given the power to choose at the end was indicative of lager philosophical themes regarding how we view the biological and the technological.  The Starkid was an advanced artificial intelligence, but he was still technological in nature and bound by certain existential constraints.  He explains that he was originally programmed to try and determine an ultimate solution to ensure the continued existence of organic life in the face of possible extermination from the technology they created.  The Starkid's solution was a cycle that resulted in the extermination of all sentient life in the galaxy every 50,000 years so as to prevent the complete extermination of all organic life due to escalations in violence between sentient species and the technology they create, especially synthetic life forms (dem robots).  There's a certain chilling logic in the decision the Starkid made to preserve life.  It's basically a galactic pruning to ensure that nothing grows too wild and chokes itself out.

That's our perception of how a machine might work out a problem like the one presented to it.  Like a mathematical equation.  No emotional influence in the decision-making process, just a numbers game.  Then along comes Shepard who to the Starkid represents a previously unaccounted-for variable that causes him to try to recalculate.  Now, the three choices he eventually presents Shepard with - Destroy, Control, or Synthesis - represent three more mathematically possible alternatives.  However, the only catch is that each of these options works out to the exact same calculable chances of success.  The even bigger catch is that this same calculable probability is also exactly the same as the course that the Starkid originally chose, i.e., the Reapers and the harvesting of billions of sentient beings.  Now, as a computer program whose basis for understanding the universe is rooted in pure logic, the Starkid is forced to choose among four options with an equal chance of success, or four sets of variables that will produce the same answer.  After having already chosen a course of action based on previous information, and faced with three new choices that pose an exactly equal probability of success, the synthetic, perfectly logical lifeform reaches an impasse.  There is no logical reason to deviate from the original course of action; however the Starkid also acknowledges that other paths are available.

So what does he do?  He turns to the variable.  This is where our perception of our own decision-making heuristics come into play.  As organic beings we have existential constraints of our own, but they are perceived to be different than what those of technological beings might be.  In the case of choice, we are able to transcend logic with an emotional or "gut" response.  Typically, I'd be all about logic (yeah Spock!), but logic is a system created by imperfect beings and so, like all other systems, is bound to be imperfect.  There are times when logic cannot help you because logic is only useful in decision-making when one choice can be quantifiably demonstrated to be better than all of the others.  However, when faced with multiple choices that will result in different outcomes each of which cannot be quantifiably proven to be more desirable than the others, then what's a poor AI to do?  See, a lot of gamers watching that final scene assume that the Starkid just randomly gave up guardianship of the galaxy to some space-Jesus super-soldier and abandoned his mandate merely to service the narrative.  However the way I read it - and the way I believe it was intended to be read - was that Shepard was never in complete control, as nobody ever is.  The three choices that the Starkid give Shepard are basically the last variable in the equation and Shepard's agency is to provide a value for that variable that the Starkid cannot.  Both Shepard and the Starkid are meant to represent the strengths and weaknesses of their respective Classes of Being (i.e., organic and synthetic).  Both are conscious, both are sentient, both are different, but neither is perfect or complete.  In that sense there's a sort of twisted harmony that exists between Shepard and the Starkid, and in a weird sort of way demonstrates how the biological and the technological compliment one another and balance each other out.  Yin and yang, darkness and light, Cheech and Chong.  I believe that if the writing for the scene had more elegantly expressed these ideas, there might not have been the backlash that there was from a very vocal section of the gaming community.    

The problem is, some people were trying to argue that the ending of ME 3 was objectively bad, which simply isn't the case.  Though I've read and watched countless critiques of the ending from across the world wide web, not one of them has been able to adequately demonstrate quantifiable bad-ness.  Oh, people cite specific examples of aspects they don't like as evidence that they don't like it, but I haven't seen a single logical argument to support the theory that it was objectively terrible, although there are many who have tried.  And honestly, what were people expecting?  Perfection?  What does that even mean?  And what the fuck makes them think they deserve perfection?  What have they done to earn it?  What would they do with perfection even if they found it?  They'd thoroughly squander it and shit on it's legacy.  But, I digress...

The following are just a few of the major points that detractors will try to present as hard "evidence" that the ending to ME3 sucked bigger thresher maw cock (if they even have cocks) than Jar Jar Binks, but which are merely subjectively interpreted to be "flaws."  I'm fine if some didn't enjoy the ending for whatever reason, but just don't try to argue that all of these elements can somehow be conclusively proven to be awful.

1. I Didn't Get to Find Out What Happened to All of The Characters

Perhaps it's because you spend your days trying - with varying degrees of success - to suck your own dick that you get wrapped up in your own little world.  First of all, it's not necessary for the conclusion of any narrative to find out every little detail that happened to every character ever.  In fact, ambiguity, when used effectively as a narrative device, is like a great stripper in that it leaves you wanting more but it excites the imagination with all of the wonderful Possibilities.  Now, though I'm saying I liked the ending, I will by no means try to argue that it is perfect or that ambiguity was wielded with the razor-sharp precision it could have been.  However, Shepard did get a chance to say goodbye to everyone, and it left the door open for people to build their own "head cannon," which is a term that is being bandied about these days with increasingly nauseating frequency.  

Honestly, while on one level it might have been cool to see how all of Shepard's friends spent their retirement years (and maybe see some hot krogan sex), on another hand it would have sucked major quads.  I want to know, but I don't really want to know.  It's actually pretty unnecessary and quite contrary to the spirit of the series where the real focus was on the journey and not the destination.  I didn't really want the LORD OF THE RINGS-style twenty different ending.  It was a great contrast to Shepard's own story and the breaking of the Reaper cycle.  Shepard sacrificed him/herself so that everybody else (who survived the slaughter and horror) could get on with their lives.  To me, it was along the lines of the TERMINATOR 2 ending, where our futures haven't been written yet, and there's no fate but what we make, etc., etc., etc.  People talk about it like they were owed some sort of resolution to all of their squadmates' stories, like having everything wrapped up in a nice little bow would have somehow made the story better, which simply isn't the case.  I will readily admit that the ambiguity could have been wielded with a steadier hand, but as it stands it's not terrible.  Life isn't about resolutions;  it's an ongoing process.

Also, on a meta level, not knowing what happens to the surviving major and minor characters is also in keeping with the players' immersion in the world through their Shepard avatar.  Once Shepard dies (I know in the control ending, Shepard's consciousness or essence "lives" or continues on in some form, but it could be reasonably argued that that is a new being and not the mortal Shepard to whom so many of us became attached) the player's connection to the world is also severed.  The fact that we got anything at all along those lines in the EC endings is a bonus of sorts, but not at all necessary to the story.  

2. Deus Ex Machina

This is a phrase which is getting thrown around a lot these days, which I see as both beneficial and extremely fucking annoying.  It's one of those phrases that people can throw around when critiquing any kind of art form with a narrative structure and sound impressive because it's Greek and big and important sounding without actually having any fucking clue as to how it's used and people are just supposed to buy that shit. 

Though there literally was a "god out of the machine" in Mass Effect 3 in the form of the Reaper AI, it was not a form of deus ex machina in the sense of a contrived plot device that violated the internal logic of the story (as the good people over at tvtropes.org remind us, tropes are merely tools).  The Reaper AI (not-so-affectionately referred to as the Star Child) in no way violated the internal logic of the story of either Mass Effect 3 or the Mass Effect series in general.  The entire trilogy was about peeling back layers and delving deeper and deeper into the Reaper mystery.  

The narratively internal precedent for the Star Child was set by the geth, and in particular Legion in ME 2.  Legion was obviously operating as a semi-autonomous individual like the rest of the characters in the game and, indeed, like the rest of us existing outside of that game world, yet he was still comprised of and connected to a network of sentient AI programs.  So the Star Kid was a synthetic AI, semi-autonomous agent working on behalf of the Reapers, but Legion was a Synthetic AI, semi-autonomous agent working on behalf of the geth.  Wow.  That's strange.  It's almost like thematically and structurally the Star Kid and Legion were actually fairly parallel.  It's almost like the Star Kid adhered to the internal logic of the narrative universe to which he belonged.  Weird.  It's almost like he wasn't contrived at all.

The other key to deus ex machina is the fact that the random, seemingly-out-of-nowhere plot device is used to save the main character from certain doom.  Again, in all but one ending, Commander Shepard is shown to be definitively dead, and even the ending where he "survives" is ambiguous.  No matter what you do, Shepard is pretty much fucked and the people that do survive are left with a long and winding road to survive the few months and years after the Reaper Wars, let alone to rebuild.
 

3. The Ending Was Too Dark/I Didn't Get to Ride Off Into the Sunset with my In-Game Love Interest

That's not an objective criticism.  That's something that you disliked about the ending because you're a fucking retard.  Probably the same fucking retard who claims to like the second entry in a trilogy the best (e.g., THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, THE DARK KNIGHT, etc.) because it's so dark then complains if the third entry in the same trilogy ends up being dark. 

On the other hand, I can appreciate wanting some sense of catharsis at the conclusion of a narrative, and for most people that comes in the form of an Oh-I-Was-In-Great-Peril-And-Was-Willing-To-Risk-My-Life-To-Save-The-Day-But-Ended-Up-Surviving-So-I-Could-Ride-Off-Into-The-Sunset-style ending.  Which is fine sometimes.  There is a very blatant irony that many detractors of the ME 3 ending seem blissfully ignorant of, and that is that their very complaining that got EA/Bioware to release the Extended Cut with the fourth ending where you could tell the Star Kid to go fuck himself and just continue the war through conventional means (i.e., shooting your enemy with bigger, and bigger guns) and end up sacrificing the trillions of lives you were trying to save.  This is, in fact, significantly darker than the original three endings in which the player/Commander Shepard SAVES THE MAJORITY OF GALACTIC FUCKING CIVILIZATION.  For so many who claim to be fans of the Mass Effect series, they sure overlook a lot of what made Commander Shepard an engaging and inspiring character/avatar including his selflessness.  In the context of the narrative, it's only depressing that Shepard dies to Shepard.  But there are trillions of other people who now get a chance to live their lives.  Shepard (the character) would be fucking ecstatic to know he had helped saved people's lives.  Motherfucker.

(Also, were people really that surprised that Shepard was fated not to survive this thing?  I mean, they already killed Shepard off once and in bringing him back established him as the saviour archetype.  I pretty much assumed that Shepard was going to die in the finale, and I thought that the game developers were going to throw audiences for a loop by actually having him/her survive.)

4. What About Dark Energy?  That Would Have Been an Awesome Ending

Fuck you.  The whole "Dark Energy Argument" stems from the shake-up of the Mass Effect development team in between ME 2 and ME 3 that resulted in the departure of ME 2 lead writer Drew Karpyshyn.  He was replaced on ME 3 by one Mac Walters who, along with Casey Hudson, the project manager, took the brunt of the criticism for ME 3's ending.  There seems to be a fairly significant segment of ME fans who seem to cling to this idea that if Karpyshyn had stayed on as lead writer, they would have gotten exactly the game they wanted and/or felt they were entitled to.  However, Karpyshyn in his own words tried to inject some reason into the debate:

"I find it funny that fans end up hearing a couple things they like about it and in their minds they add in all the details they specifically want. It's like vapourware - vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It's perfect until it comes out. I'm a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it probably wouldn't be what people want it to be."

Karpyshyn hit the nail right on the head.  Because people were so subjectively, emotionally invested in the story, there would have been absolutely no way to objectively deliver a satisfying conclusion that would have appeased all the fans.  The other issue is that the very nature of the narrative - that is, the multilinear, multi-variable, multiple-possibility, multiple-choice, branch structure - made wrapping it up a daunting task.  While the structure made it a fucking awesome game to play, the writers kind of painted themselves into a corner where they had to tell a definite ending to an open-ended story.    

5. The Whole Synthetics Versus Organics Thing Made No Sense/Didn't Match Up With The Rest of the Trilogy

Which would be true... except one of the main threads of the entire Mass Effect series was the ongoing tension between "synthetic" and "organic" life.  Right from the very beginning, for those players with memories longer that those of fucking goldfish, the conflict between organics and synthetics was front and centre.  The main antagonists of the first Mass Effect were the geth, who were the synthetic lifeforms that had evolved from the advanced robotics/AI created by the quarians.  The Reapers were all synthetic (although they seemed to use processed organic material in their manufacturing/reproductive process) and were involved right from the beginning.  All of Shepard's crazy visions in the first game involved flashes of killer robots.  There were constant mentions of the Citadel and council races banning the development of AI for fear of the same conflict that had nearly wiping out the quarians happening on an even wider scale.  There was EDI in ME2 and ME3 on her quest to becoming self-aware and the initial fear (articulated perfectly by Joker) that "unshakling" EDI from her programming restraints would lead to dire consequences for humanity or organics in general.  I mean, thematically, it made about as much sense as any motivation that the Reaper's were going to have because while they at first made it clear that their reasoning was beyond our comprehension, it either had to turn out to be a bluff to scare the shit out of us, or never be explained because human writers, who by definition can't ever possibly explain something that is inexplicable to human beings or, if they somehow found their way around that paradox, have it understood by a human audience. 

6. There Was No Final Boss Battle Like in My Other Favourite Video Game Titles

Remember Earthbound my children.  While there was a final boss battle, it was radically different from anything else at the time.  I remember I was almost dead before I figured out that I had to "Pray" for all the support of the people I'd met along the way.  I didn't even notice the lack of a boss battle until nimrods on the internet started bitching about it.  Which is a real shame, because I realized there's an entire generation of Lost Souls who have had these video game tropes so ingrained in their hearts and minds that their worldview is sent into disarray if every narrative beat and medium-specific affordance doesn't conform the established stereotypical expectations.  I want there to be variety and unexpected twists.  Besides, the ME trilogy was never about the boss battles; it was about making choices, and morality, and (mitigated) agency.  Besides, who would the boss have been?  The Reaper elder Harbinger who proved to be the bane of Shepard's and humanity's existence in ME2?  I fucking loved the fact that Harbinger didn't say a goddamn word to you in the third game.  It showed he/it was past the point of playing games and it no longer deemed you worthy enough to even speak a word to.    

7. The Reapers Weren't as Badass as We Were Led to Believe

Consider the fucking source on this one.  The Repaers are an ancient race of cybernetic space squids, but they are based on a fusion of technological and organic components not magic.  They wield superior firepower and, arguably, intelligence, but it was established in the first Mass Effect with Sovereign that even though the bastards were tough, they were not invincible or infallible.

Now, many point to the scene in ME were Sovereign talks to Shepard and spews some pretty badass and somewhat ominous dialogue that establishes how powerful the Reapers are:

"We are eternal.  The pinnacle of evolution and existence.  Before us, you are nothing.  Your extinction is inevitable.  We are the end of everything."

If you were to hear this in Sovereign's terrifying voice through a hologram projected from a giant seemingly unstoppable space monster, you might at first be inclined to believe such a thing.  However, if you were planning a full-scale assault on your enemy, wouldn't you want them to believe you were all-powerful demi-gods, more powerful than Kevin Sorbo and twice as handsome?  If you're in the Reapers' position, you already have the upper hand because your enemy knows literally nothing about you.  So what are you going to tell them?  That you're just big and tough but with enough firepower, yeah, you could probably take me down?  Or that you're a fucking unstoppable force of nature with no weaknesses like Xena, warrior princess?  Of course the Reapers are going to start talking smack like "You exist because we allow it.  You will end because we demand it." (The perfect retort to almost any situation.  Just ask my parole officer.)  They're going to use fear and terror to demoralize their enemy.  So the reason the Reapers don't live up to the reputation of ultimate badassery that was established is maybe because they were exaggerating to maintain the upper hand psychologically.

8. Joker Would Never Have Abandoned Shepard so Easily

Now, both of my play throughs included the Extended Cut DLC, which showed Joker somewhat hesitant to make the jump to FTL speeds after Shepard activates the Crucible, but even if the original non-extended ending (don't worry, it happens to a lot of guys... I've heard) doesn't show that reluctance to leave behind an old and dear friend, it's not an inconsistency and it doesn't make Joker look like a complete sack of shit.  Joker's mandate - which comes from the eponymous Commander him/herself - is to protect the crew of the Normandy at all costs.  Joker is Shepard's friend, but he's also a military man and (as far as I can tell) not a total asshole.  The truth is, Joker knows practically nothing about Shepard's status or what's transpiring in the Citadel during the climax of the game, but what he does know is that some bad shit is going down that could possibly spell certain doom for the Normandy and her crew.  Joker has no intel on which to base a rational decision on what he might be able to do to assist Commander Shepard if indeed he could help at all.  But what he does have is a responsibility to his fellow crewmates, lover, and friends to A) carry out his orders/follow established protocols that will ensure the highest possible chances of survival for the greatest number of people and B) not jeopardize the lives of people he cares about based on wild suppositions and guesswork.  Plus, for a great many players, Shepard's own love interest is among those on board the Normandy, and Joker can probably console himself with the fact that he wasn't a total asshole who unnecessarily risk the life of the person Shepard cared about most to prove what a hard hero he was.    

9. My Choices Didn't Matter/I Had No Real Agency (Like in the Last Two Games)

Largely, in real life, your decisions don't matter.  At least not in the way some people might suggest.  We are largely not in control of our own fates, and whether or not it was intentional on the part of EA/Bioware, it's a genius fucking meta-theme with serious philosophical implications.

In that respect, ME3 is unique philosophical exercise.  We've been sold a myth by various time travel narratives and multiple universe theories that there are an infinite number of universes to account for all possible outcomes of a situation.  Chaos theory, butterfly effect and all that jazz.  The allure of seeing existence this way is that it paints us all as autonomous agents who not only have free will, but whose decisions as a result of that free will have significant repercussions, which by extension is proof of our own significance.  But there are three main problems or fallacies to viewing life and existence this way.  One, not every situation in your life is going to have an infinite number of possibilities.  You are limited both by time and space and a whole host of other forces you have no control over.  Madness is like gravity.  You jump from the top of the Empire State Building and 100 times out of 100 I will guarantee that you will never pass through a random wormhole into Scarlett Johanssen's secret orgy pit and end up making love to a two-headed triceratops before discovering John Lennon frozen in carbonite.  Two, some shit just does not matter.  It makes no fucking difference to the Universe whether you had Fruit Loops instead of Captain Crunch for breakfast or whether you wore the red sweater instead of the blue one or you jerked off with your left hand instead of your right for a change.  Sometimes the choices we make will "matter" in the BREAKFAST CLUB sense, but most of the time our decisions don't matter that much to anyone or anything, sometimes even ourselves.

Which leads us to fallacy number three, and that is that not everyone is that fucking special.  One of the great things about the Mass Effect series is that it allowed you to experience that feeling of cosmic specialness through the avatar of space Jesus Commander Shepard, whose decisions seemed to have an impact on a galactic scale.  While this vicariousnous is part of what makes the experience so engaging, it also highlights the fact that most people most of the time have absolutely zero impact on the outcome of events.  Because most people are not special.  There is likely nothing very special or unique about you at all.  Which is kind of depressing, but also kind of great.  Because when those fucking moments come along where you actually do experience that transcendence of true agency, it makes it all the more potent.

One of the flaws that a lot of detractors of ME3 will bring up is that it seems like some of the decisions you made through your Shepard avatar actually had little impact in the game.  One of the key examples is that saving the rachni queen in the first game seems to have a negligible effect to letting her die and (seemingly) completing the genocide of an entire species.  Although this may have been the result of some of the weaker links in the writing of the game, it's also fucking brilliant in highlighting the fact that sometimes no matter how special we want to see ourselves, a great deal of the time we are not in control of jack shit.  The corollary to the Three Existential Fallacies I outlined is that sometimes multiple paths might eventually lead to the same destination.  Even if you are some sort of uber-soldier with telekinetic powers, incredibly good looks, and the ability to cheat death on a seemingly hourly basis, shit is still largely beyond your control on the larger scale.  Again, this creates anxiety in many people who might have a hard time dealing with insignificance in the face of a terrifyingly vast universe (though hopefully populated by at least a couple of very sexy alien species).  This is, in fact, the very state in which every one of us exists as we all hurtle inevitably towards the death that we each owe.  And it's fucking scary.  Ultimately, if we believe that we are in control, then - at least for a second - we can convince ourselves of our own immortality.  Acknowledging one's own demise can be a frightening prospect, and so we create these myths of control and agency to keep ourselves from going apeshit crazy every day and doing something insane and irresponsible like watching the latest Adam Sandler shitfest of a movie, kicking toddlers in the groin, shooting up a post office, or voting Republican.

This also has to do with a large part of why the haters point to the lack of agency.  To borrow a term from Magic the Gathering, it's something I will dub Plainswalker Syndrome.  Basically, because players are able to play through the Mass Effect games multiple times and make different choices or, to really make sure they don't get laid, watch other people's play throughs on YouTube and the like, they become omniscient super-beings who are actually able to traverse the different plains of existence or multiple dimensions for Commander Shepard et al.  To put it another way, if you could only play through the games once, and any time anybody tried to tell you or show you other outcomes you instead heard EDI's sultry voice tell you how to service her data port or saw Liara slowly stripping off her already skintight "armour," then you wouldn't fucking know any better.  It's only when you're actually able to compare the various outcomes in the various multiple universe that the myths of agency and free will are revealed as exactly that: mere constructions that don't actually dictate how things turn out most of the time.  Omniscience is a terrible gift when it reveals that in a lot of cases, we are all afflicted with a terrible case of futility in the face of a universe that largely doesn't give a fuck how important we'd like to think we are.  I'm not arguing against free will and agency and I'm not arguing that everything is beyond our control; what I am saying is that in the Grand Scheme of Things, there are usually any number of factors beyond our control that severely limit those capabilities.  The most we can usually hope for is a slight shift in trajectory and not a major course change, although I am of the mind that those moments can occur, they are just extremely rare and precious and can't - and shouldn't - be commodified and passed around like ecstacy at a rave (if those are even still a thing in late 2013).

The point isn't to lie down in a ditch somewhere and give up because most of the time our choices are probably not as powerful as we had originally intended.  The point is to keep fighting no matter what because you never know when those choices are going to count.

That takes me back...

Love it or hate it, the Mass Effect trilogy (or at least , the first Mass Effect trilogy) is over now in the narrative sense.  For me it has come to epitomize the very best that the science fiction genre has to offer and how we can take cultural influences and use them to inspire the creation of something new without reverting to mere imitation.  Sure there are comics, an animated movie, and even a fourth game in the works, but ME3 and its two older siblings will forever occupy a place of honour in my mind palace.  I also credit the ME trilogy with my own personal science fiction renaissance.

After finishing ME3 for the first time, I immediately went back and played through the entire trilogy again.  But I still felt that the Void in the centre of my being had not been filled.  So I started hunting down any and all movies or TV shows anywhere along the same lines or themes as Mass Effect.  I started with stuff like SUNSHINE and SOLARIS, then TITAN A.E., and even a detour with PANDORUM and RED PLANET.  I eventually found my way to FIREFLY and SERENITY, which turned out to be fantastic (even though I was confused and disoriented by not hating a Joss Whedon creation) though not exactly as cathartic as I'd hoped what with the series having been abruptly cancelled and all.  When I think of the cultural forces that have and will continue to inspire me both creatively and personally, I will always consider the Mass Effect trilogy as one of the primary deities in my own personal pantheon.  I'm proud of you, Mass Effect 3.  You did good son.  Final verdict:  I give the Mass Effect Trilogy a 10/10 = One Head Completely Free From Any Form of Reaper Control or Indoctrination Whatsoever        

Thrown for a Loop... TK Freaks Unite

One of the staples of the postmodern era is a higher level of self-consciousness or as the narrator in 300 would say, a "heightened sense of things."  This is often indicated by the prefix "meta" which indicates a greater or higher level of awareness marked by self-reflexivity and and impetus for deconstruction.  There are some who argue that the term "postmodern" itself has become (or always was) devoid of meaning.  I used to think along those same lines until I was in the middle of deconstructing postmodernism and realized that I had already breached the cultural event horizon.  The thing is, we can't help but be postmodern because the tenets of postmodernism have become so ingrained in our collective consciousness that we can't escape their influence, much like the side of the road we drive on, the fact that all movies based on video games (so far) suck goat balls, and the seemingly neverending and incredibly deadly war between Coke and Pepsi.  So yes, the boundaries of postmodernism are arbitrary, but so are any of the meanings we conjure up and attribute to anything.  

Perhaps one of the most clever deconstructions of postmodernism (a cleverly meta moment) came from The Simpsons when Moe revamped his bar and tried to explain the concept to Homer and the bar gang:

"It's pomo" 

(blank stares) 

"Postmodern" 

(blank stares) 

"Yeah, alright, weird for the sake of weird."

Though simplistic, it is still an accurate analysis.  Postmodernism is about deconstructing meaning, but it also about defying or denying the supremacy of meaning.  Making something "weird for the sake of weird" is an example both of this defiance of essentialism and of a heightened sense of self-awareness.  Postmoderism in and of itself is neither a good or bad thing - much like a gun.  It's what we make of it that's important.  So as long as the gun is pointed at some animal that will feed your family or at Andy Dick, then everything is as it should be.  Meaning all depends on relativity - the who, why, what, when, and how.

I can't really rail against postmodernism, because whether we like it or not, we are postmodern.  However, just like even the finest wine when consumed in excess will turn Ghandi into Charlie Sheen, postmodernism is not without its adverse effects.  The smoking gun of postmodernism is a sort of joyless sense of pretentiousness.  Basically, it boils down to the seemingly inescapable fact that a growing segment of the population would rather be "right" than be happy.  People don't want magic - they're too busy rushing to pull back the curtain and strip search the magician looking to see how the trick is done before the show is even over.

It struck me recently when, after watching the movie LOOPER and reading people's reactions online, how widespread this tendency had become.  Any piece of art is bound to have its detractors, but there seemed to be an undo amount of commentary on "plot holes" and "inconsistencies" relating largely to the time travel aspects of the film.  A great number of people seemed to be caught up in the minutia of determining whether the mechanics of time travel that the movie presented were "accurate," as if there were actually some objective quantitative evidence against which to weigh the movie's depictions or their own assertions.  And it seemed that a lot of people just couldn't get passed this to see what a great movie LOOPER actually was.    

The plot of LOOPER follows the exploits of Joe, a specialized assassin in a future who kills random, anonymous people sent back from even further in the future (30 years to be precise) by gangsters because time travel will be instantly outlawed after its discovery, probably for a lot of very good reasons (which you can think up, write down in an itemized list, and share with your friends to show them how clever you are if that's your particular cup of tea).  These assassins are called loopers because as part of their contract they will eventually be called upon to kill their future selves thereby "closing their loops."  Of course, shit hits the fan when Young Joe inadvertently lets Old Joe escape, although you can't really blame him because if your future self turned out to be Bruce Willis, realistically, what fucking chance do you have?  (Also, I just have to point out that the makeup and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's impeccable imitation of Willis' mannerisms helped to both establish continuity of the character and also cross the threshold of the uncanny in a creepily effective way.)

Would you fuck me?  I'd fuck me.  I'd
fuck me hard.

Young Joe then embarks upon a mission to kill his future self, while Old Joe sets out to kill the kid who will eventually become the Rainmaker who is a huge crime boss in his time who kills his wife and sends him back in time to die.  Oh yeah, also some people have developed telekinesis, which turns out to be fairly integral to the plot of the movie and is often overlooked in favour of the other major sci-fi element of time travel. 

Right off the bat I want to make it clear that I loved and will continue to love LOOPER.  It made a decent splash at the box office, but I have the feeling it will end up more as a cult sci-fi movie like EQUILIBRIUM.  Which is cool, because it doesn't detract at all from LOOPER's awesomeness (and may in fact add to its mystique and allure) and because of all the potential for unprotected sects. 

I'm going to bet that odds are, if you hated this movie, you have become a victim of excess postmodernism.  This is not true for everyone, hence the qualification of "Odds are" that I added to the last sentence.  There are all kinds of reasons people love and hate artistic endeavours (or love and hate in general).  Some art will speak to some people but not to others.  If LOOPER didn't "speak" to you, I have no problem with that.  However, I do have an issue with people actively seeking to deprive themselves or others of pleasure for no good goddamned reason.  As always, you're free to love or hate whatever and however you see fit.  The point of this analysis is to try and inject some pleasure into your life.  This is not so much a dissection of a single artistic endeavour, but a call to love.  Or, if you don't have a lot of time, then at the very least a decent fuck.

One of the main issues so many people seem to have with LOOPER is the many plot holes and inconsistencies that seem to be related to the time travel aspects of the story.  This is a prime example of sacrificing happiness for the sake of "being right."  We all have to prove to our friends and family how fucking clever we are all the time.  As a culture, we seem to have this chip on our shoulder about proving that we're somehow more special than the guy sitting next to us, like somehow we can rise above the masses.  Go against the grain.  Be your own man or woman.  Well guess what: If you're watching a mass-produced piece of entertainment then proliferating opinions about it, screaming into the dark abyss of the Internet or pestering friends and coworkers with your running commentary, then you are most assuredly one of the faceless masses.  There is nothing unique or special about you in this context. 

Which is absolutely fine.  I'm going to do you a solid and help ease the burden you might be carrying around on your beleaguered shoulders.  I'm here to tell that sometimes—most of the time, in fact—it's OK (and largely unavoidable) to be one of the masses.  Just another faceless face in the crowd.  You don't have to prove how smart or special or anything else you are to the people around you.  You don't have to be special all the time; most of the time it's OK to just "be."  Plus, you seem like a really pretentious asshole stating something that most people already know and then trying to pass it off as an original thought.  Seriously, think about it.  You can thank me later (money and/or blowjobs will be fine).

Are there going to be unresolved issues in any narrative that deals with time travel?  Of course there are.  We know that already.  Two examples of excellent movies that used time travel as one of their main narrative devices, BACK TO THE FUTURE and TERMINATOR 2 (the first TERMINATOR works too, but come on), are rife with temporal paradoxes and "inconsistencies" yet still kick a metric tonne of ass.  Are there temporal logical fallacies at play in LOOPER as well?  Undoubtedly.  That's not the issue.  The issue is: Does the conception of time travel within LOOPER adhere to an internal logic established within its own universe? And as we can see with the infographic below, the internal logic "makes sense" as a series of loops or successive timelines, each one built and influenced by the actions or inactions of people in the one before.  The timeline in LOOPER is multilinear, not so much in the sense of alternate realities existing simultaneously, but in the sense that each timeline is successive; the characters in LOOPER are moving in two temporal "dimensions" instead of one: both forward through time and laterally across time.  I found the infographic below pretty helpful visualizing it. 

The important thing to keep in mind, however, is that in any narrative text it is less important how the specific mechanics of time travel work than how time travel functions as a narrative device.  I.e., How does time travel function to advance the plot.  In TERMINATOR 2, for example, time travel is at once supremely important to the plot yet not important at all.  It is important inasmuch as it is the driving force that brings all of the characters together and is the precipitating cause of any and all conflict and drama and narrative that follow it; however, the temporal mechanics of how time travel is possible are completely irrelevant to the subsequent actions of the characters and the specific themes of the movie itself.  And there are all kinds of logical fallacies and temporal paradoxes that many very clever, very right people have pointed out over the years since the film's release. 

But none of that shit matters because time travel was used to serve the larger picture, and enough dots were connected that any (willing) audience could fill in enough of the blanks in order to suspend their disbelief.  And I mean, time travel should have been a major fucking concern.  I mean, hulking, near-indestructible, autonomous, potentially self-aware cyborgs require a great deal of suspension of disbelief even in this day and age with so many advances in cybernetics that have not even come close to touching what was depicted on the screen.  And at least with cyborgs it's stretching the boundaries of what is already, theoretically and practically, possible.  With time travel there's not even a proof of concept available to indicate that any living organism could actually travel through time or that time travel at all is possible.  Yet, most moviegoers who watched or watch TERMINATOR 2 will just brush off the whole time travel part like it's no big fucking deal.  Describing the movie to a friend, most people would probably be inclined to gloss over the time travel deal, even though it is by far the most implausible yet integral part of the entire narrative.

 

Some would argue that it's because TERMINATOR 2 is a quantifiably better movie than LOOPER, which is true, but only by a matter of degrees.  James Cameron did an excellent job of kind of sweeping time travel under the rug with some narrative sleight of hand in TERMINATOR 2 and kind of avoiding discussing the whole thing.  LOOPER spends a little more time exploring time travel, but not by much, and (in my opinion) satisfactorily addresses a lot more of the nuances than either BACK TO THE FUTURE or TERMINATOR 2.  It's all about probability and possibility and the shades of grey rather than the blacks and the whites of it all:

  

Old Joe: My memory's cloudy. It's a cloud. Because my memories aren't really memories. They're just one possible eventuality now. And they grow clearer or cloudier as they become more are less likely. But then they get to the present moment, and they're instantly clear again. I can remember what you do after you do it. And it hurts.

Young Joe: So even when we're apart, you can remember what I do after?

Old Joe: Yes, but this is a precise description of a fuzzy mechanism. It's messy.

And much like TERMINATOR 2, LOOPER has a much more important science fiction trope to deal with.  In fact, it really surprised me how little audiences talked about how telekinesis (referred to as TK in the movie) played an integral part in LOOPER.  Discussing LOOPER without mentioning telekinesis is like discussing TERMINATOR 2 without talking about cyborgs.  The fact that Cid (the kid that would eventually grow up to be the Rainmaker and who Old Joe is trying to kill) is, as Young Joe so elegantly puts it at one point, a "TK [telekinetic] freak" is incredibly important. 

In LOOPER's mid-future, where Joe is still young, neckties are no longer in style, hookers are still hot, and hoverbikes exist but are notoriously unreliable (due, no doubt, to the continuing general decline in North American craftsmanship), some people are also starting to develop limited telekinetic powers.  This is fucking huge news!  This is a key evolutionary development.  It's akin to when some of our simian ancestors started walking around on two legs.  The fact that what seems amazing to us in the audience is kind of taken in stride by the characters is significant in that it speaks to director Rian Johnson's ability as a filmmaker (i.e., subtlety) but also that it is a commentary of sorts about apathy and complacency.  I mean, the fact that people can MOVE THINGS WITH THEIR MINDS would be an insane cultural development.  At first.  But then, it would probably become mundane and everyday, like, for instance, the Internet.

More importantly, through Cid and his enhanced abilities (most dudes can barely levitate a quarter while Cid can throw around trucks and tear people apart), telekinesis becomes symbolic of the human potential for great and terrible deeds.  In LOOPER, Cid grows up to be the Rainmaker and uses his telekinetic powers to rise through the ranks of the underworld and exact his revenge on the world which stole from him his innocence, happiness, and hope.  But it doesn't have to be that way.  Cid has this incredible power that in and of itself is not evil or good.  It's the fact that Cid apparently experienced a shitty childhood and lost everyone who loved and cared for him that causes him to, in turn, perpetuate that cycle of violence and hate.  Telekinesis serves as an avatar for the power and potential of all of humanity, both individually and collectively.  Each of us has an incredible power to either create or to destroy, the only question is: Which of those two tendencies will be nurtured and validated? 

     

That's some pretty heavy-handed shit, I know, which is why it's a lot more palatable and accessible through sci-fi tropes like telekinesis or time travel.  Getting back to the whole time travel issue, though, it ultimately serves the same purpose in  LOOPER as it does in TERMINATOR 2, which is to bring the characters together and drive the plot forward.  It poses an interesting "What if?".  What if you or your child would become the future leader of a human resistance movement that was targeted by an enemy comprised of large, Austrian-accented cyborgs?  What if you could sit down at a diner with your future and/or past self?  What would you do?  What would you say?

This is another issue with the time travel narrative device.  As is so often the case in Life, we don't know what we don't know.  Because time travel is purely theoretical at this point (and potentially—as far as we know—at every point) it's all speculation.  And the thing is, it's fun to speculate about that sort of shit.  So any "plot holes" that an audience might point out when analyzing the mechanics of time travel are just as speculative as the original conception of it proposed by the filmmakers.  All of the sudden after watching a movie that involves time travel, people suddenly become leading experts in quantum mechanics.  Most layman analyses are based on a pretty limited, linear view of causality that many people can't seem to get away from and is insufficient to form a coherent argument.  The point is that nobody really knows how time travel could or would possibly work, so shut the fuck up for a minute, sit back, and leave yourself (and others) open to the possibility of enjoyment and happiness.  If you feel the absolute need to analyze the mechanics of time travel, then at least consider the context.  The important thing to consider is not how the time travel in a movie functions in relation to your abstract, limited notion of how time travel would be "in real life" but whether or not the narrative maintains internal consistency and whether or not enough of the dots are available for the audience to connect to be able to suspend their disbelief.  In the case of LOOPER, I believe that as a narrative device time travel functions absolutely perfectly and there are no glaring internal contradictions or plot holes related to time travel.  

And anyway, since when did plot holes become the benchmark for determining the quality or relative worth of a narrative endeavour such as a feature film?  The good folks over at How it Should Have Ended point out all kinds of movie "plot holes" that in no way detract from my enjoyment of those films.  One of my favourite videos is the STAR WARS one in which they point out the glaring plot hole at the end that would have, could have, and should have spelled doom for the rebel alliance.  In short, the Death Star—you know, the one with the giant, planet-destroying laser—very slowly has to travel around a moon that it could easily destroy with its PLANET-DESTROYING LASER to get a clear shot at the planet that is home to the main rebel base.  The delay inevitably gives the rebels one last chance to ultimately destroy the empire's Orb of Demise, make it to the oft-parodied victory award ceremony, and show up in the sequels.  Despite this pretty obvious and bone-headed oversight, I still love me some STAR WARS.

If you look hard enough for inconsistencies, plot holes, and incongruences in any movie or narrative text you will find them.  Guaranteed.  That doesn't "prove" that a movie is bad.  All that proves is the axiom that because humans are imperfect and flawed any system that they create will also be imperfect and flawed.  It also proves that as a culture we are embracing more of the negative aspects of postmodernism.  As a general rule, people are becoming less willing to suspend their disbelief.  Instead, we embrace cynicism as a means unto itself.  We are becoming more willing to sacrifice long-term happiness for the instant gratification of being right.  Instant gratification is great if it's also sustainable gratification.  But the "instant" in the term "instant gratification" is an apt descriptor for our current culture because it doesn't just denote the speed at which gratification occurs but also its typical duration.  Instant gratification is typically fleeting at best.  Unfortunately, this philosophy is more in keeping with the current corporate and political zeitgeist that encourages robbing from our future to pay for the present.  It's an ugly fucking cycle, and it's tough to break.  Which is where one of the main themes of LOOPER comes in. 

    

As is clearly implied by the title of the movie (LOOPER), one of the main themes is that of cycles.  This is where the time travel motif becomes so important and really demonstrates the real genius of Rian Johnson and his work.  The "natural flow" of time—as far as we know and as we currently perceive it—is linear, going from point A to point B, from unlife to life to death.  In LOOPER, "natural" time is disrupted and "loops" or cycles are created only through the artificial interference of humankind.  The genius here is using the time travel motif as a metaphor for other cycles human beings create.  Cycles of violence.  Cycles of pain.  Cycles of suffering.  Cycles of hate.  Cycles of exploitation.  Cycles where we repeat the same mistakes over, and over, and over again, leading to more of the same shit.

Say "Yippee ki yay motherfucker" one more time.
I dare you.  I double dare you....

The cycles hamper progress.  The timeline is staggered and can no longer move forward unimpeded.  In short, we fucked up.  And it's not about disrupting the natural cycles or natural order.  There is no natural order.  Order is a human construct.  The problem occurs when the cycles we create perpetuate violence and hatred and exploitation.  The point being made here is about how the selfishness and shortsightedness of individuals and groups perpetuate these cycles and how it's a cumulative effect.  The real problem with greed and hate and anger is not necessarily that they tend to self-perpetuate but that they tend to accumulate.  Unless, of course, we do something about it.

One of the so-called plot holes that a lot of people have been perpetuating has to do with the events at the end of the movie and is, again, related to the idea of time travel.  Just as all the shit is coming to a head and Old Joe is about to kill Sarah, thereby setting in motion a key precipitating incident that will contribute to Cid's downward spiral into hate and revenge, Young Joe has this sudden revelation:

"Then I saw it.  I saw a mom who would die for her son.  A man who would kill for his wife.  A boy, angry and alone.  Laid out in front of him, the bad path.  I saw it.  And the path was a circle.  Round and round.  So I changed it."

Awwww, hell's yeah.

After this epiphany, Young Joe—whose gun (bearing the clever and accurate historical nickname "blunderbuss" ) would be useless in dispatching Old Joe due to its limited effective range of 15 yards—turns his weapon on himself, which, in effect and practice, resulted in the death of both Joes, Young and Old.  Now, I've read a lot of online posts and comments questioning Young Joe's decision to kill himself in order to stop Old Joe.  The most common alternative suggestion I've read would be for Young Joe to have instead shot off his hand (presumably the right hand in which Old Joe was holding his gun) so that Old Joe couldn't kill Cid or his mother. 

Of course, some other clever person pointed out that Old Joe would still be left with one good hand with which to pull that trigger and 30 years of practice.  Though I'm about to present the argument as to why it was so important that Young Joe kill himself in order to save Cid, I would first like to point out that following the disfiguring-one's-present-self-to-hinder-the-shooting-ability-of-one's-future-self line of argument, it would have been far more logical for Young Joe to blind himself instead.  Then again, both the maiming and the blinding would have prevented Old Joe from escaping Young Joe in the first place, or subsequently shooting up diners and hideouts full of bad guys, in which case Young Joe would never have even met Sarah and Cid, in which case Cid still grows up to be the Rainmaker and Young Joe was never in the field and hence never blinded himself… and all you've got is another fucking temporal paradox motherfucker.

Cleverness and paradoxes aside, it was extremely important that Young Joe die and not just die but die by his own hand.  Early on, LOOPER establishes a pattern or cycle of selfishness in both Young and Old Joes and in the culture in which he/they live(s).  When a friend of Joe's fails to "close his loop" (i.e., kill his older self sent back through time) Joe reluctantly helps him by hiding him in the floor safe in his apartment.  Their boss, Abe (Jeff Daniels, yeah that dude from DUMB AND DUMBER), who was sent from the crime syndicates from the future to watch over their operations in the past (don't even try, it will hurt your head just thinking about it), questions Young Joe, offering him amnesty in exchange for his friend.  As part of his interrogation, Abe poses the following rhetorical question to Young Joe: 

"Ask yourself: Who would I sacrifice for what's MINE?"

Young Joe's first response to this particular conundrum was to sacrifice his friend, Seth, to perhaps one of the worst, most horrendous deaths imaginable.  Though there's all kinds of reasons it wouldn't work, the particular brand of temporal torture and execution of Young Joe's friend presents an incredible visual and another intriguing "What if?". 

(It's truly terrifying to watch Old Seth slowly deteriorating for several reasons.  First, not only do Old Seth and the audience understand that in order for this to be happening Young Seth is undergoing incredibly gruesome and horrifying torture, but the criminals performing this torture have to have some sort of medical procedures in place to keep Young Joe alive (and potentially conscious) for as long as possible.  Secondly, as Old Joe later establishes, as each new event moves through the spectrum from possibility to plausibility to probability, it becomes (painfully) integrated into his memories.  So not only do the terrible, painful memories of forced amputation and mutilation come flooding to Old Seth, so do (presumably) 30 more years of memories of having to live with those deformities.  The true horror in Old Seth's on-screen disintegration as he desperately tries to save both he and his younger self from years of pain and suffering is the fact that he is completely aware of all of these implications.)  

Later, Young Joe is essentially faced with the same dilemma as Old Joe is trying to kill Sarah and Cid.  Thanks to Old Joe, Young Joe has a literal truck full of gold that he can go and use to live in peace and happiness for the rest of his life, and, with Cid's death, he would no living enemies who could possibly threaten his prosperity.  All Young Joe has to do is walk away and let Old Joe kill the kid and his mom.  But this time, Young Joe pulls a 180 and completes the journey from total selfishness to complete selflessness.  He could have tried to be clever.  He could have tried shooting off his own hand instead.  But that would have completely negated the point of the movie and Young Joe's character arc.

Two major themes at play in LOOPER—the perpetuation of negative cycles and self-sacrifice—are beautifully woven together by the end of the movie.  It's not that Young Joe had to kill himself to break the cycle.  It's the fact that he was willing to.  It's not advocating suicide and death as a means to break cycles of violence and hatred, but rather the willingness to act.   He saw that it was within his power to act to save another human life through his willingness to sacrifice his own.  He wasn't trying to fucking game the system any more. 

It was the Young Joe at the beginning of the movie who was hoarding away half of his silver (precious metals being the unique, standard form of temporal currency and a sleek integration of some classic Judeo-Christian imagery) and hiding it (quite ineffectively, apparently) from his employers.  It was the Young Joe at the beginning of the movie who would have been the asshole who would try to find a loophole like shooting off his own hand.  He was the selfish prick—just like all the other selfish pricks around him—who wanted to have his cake and eat it too.  He would have been the one to continue to risk other people's lives for the chance to further his own ends. 

But by the end of the movie, he's changed.  Young Joe's sacrifice represents the willingness to go all in.  The fact that he was willing to do something utterly selfless for another human being was a sign of maturity.  The point of LOOPER was to show how half measures and "clever" solutions are never going to break these negative cycles.  If we want to see positive change, we have to be willing to do what is necessary.  If we want this shit to stop, we have to be able to allow for another person's happiness and well-being, even if it means risking our own. 

And that's what is so powerful about the story of Joe's redemption in LOOPER.  Joe is established to be a pretty despicable human being.  He kills people for money, is a hardcore drug addict, and sells out his only friend to save his own neck.  Old Joe, despite getting over the drugs and leaving his violent life behind him thanks to the love of his life, is still a selfish bastard who proves himself capable of some pretty heinous and despicable shit.  I mean, he does show some remorse for shooting some kid in the face, mostly, it turns out, because it was the wrong kid, and he's still intent on blowing away the child who will grow up to become the shit-disturber and mob boss known only as the Rainmaker.  The conversation between Young and Old Joe in the diner does an excellent job of summing up the self-centred attitude that—apart from a knack for violence—seems to be the only common thread in Joe's life:

  

Old Joe: This is a piece of indentifying information on the Rainmaker.  He's here.  He lives here now.  In this county.  And I'm gonna use this to find him.  And I'm gonna kill him.  I'm gonna stop him from killing my wife.

Young Joe: Fuck you.  And your wife.  None of this concerns me.

Old Joe: This is gonna happen...

Young Joe: It happened to you. It doesn't have to happen to me. You got a picture right there in my watch?  Let me see.  Show me the picture.  As soon as I see her, I walk away.  I'll fucking marry someone else.  Promise.  So when I see that picture, that fog inside your brain should just swallow up all the memories, right?  She'll be gone.  If you give her up, she'll be safe.

Old Joe: Give her up?

Young Joe: Yeah, give her up.  You're the one who got her killed.  She never meets you, she's safe.

Old Joe: You don't understand.  We don't have to give her up.  I'm not gonna give her up.  I'm gonna save her.

At first, the notion seems sort of altruistic, even noble.  The dude just wants to save his special lady.  But then when Old Joe is challenged on the issue, it turns out that it's not just about saving his wife, it's about saving his wife to gratify his own desires.  Which is the exact opposite of altruism and nobility.  It's not that he wants to save his wife's life, he wants to save his wife's life so that he can live happily ever after with her.  It's a pretty thin fucking line to walk, but what Old Joe really wants isn't to save the life of the woman he loved but to save his own life and save himself the pain of losing her. 

Young Joe isn't any better.  One of the coolest "What ifs?" in LOOPER is "What if I had the chance to sit down and talk to my future/past self?"  What kind of shit would I ask my future self?  What kind of shit would I tell my past self?  Would we reminisce?  Talk about what could have been?  I certainly never would have thought that there would be any tension or animosity.  I mean, if you can't even get along with yourself, then who the fuck can you get along with? 

Old Joe: How's your French coming? 

Young Joe: Good. You gonna tell me I ought to be learning Mandarin? 

Old Joe: I never regretted learning French. 

[in French]

Old Joe: I know you have a gun between your legs.

[in English]

Old Joe: No?  Well, you'll get it eventually.  Obviously. 

Young Joe: All right, listen.  This is a hard situation for you, but we both know how this has to go down.  I can't let you walk away from this diner alive.  This is my life now.  I earned it.  You had yours already.  So why don't you do what old men do and die?  Get the fuck out of my way. 

Old Joe: Why don't you just take out your little gun from between your legs and do it?  Boy.

Young Joe is so fucking self-centred that he can only see the world from his point of view. He can't even fathom the possibility that one's own life is never truly one's own. He's more than willing to borrow from his future to pay for his present, even to the point of bankruptcy. Instead of helping Old Joe find and kill the Rainmaker, which in theory—and as far as he knew—would guarantee a happy future for himself, Young Joe give his future self the verbal equivalent of the middle finger. He's only worried about instant gratification in his immediate future, not the fact that he could potentially save his own life and perhaps live another fifty or sixty years instead of the thirty years Old Joe has on him—in relative peace and contentment, mind you—for a good portion of it.

Of course, the animosity between Young Joe and Old Joe also brings up questions of identity. Is the "me" from thirty years from now really still me? I mean, there's an obvious continuity of self as each individual inhabits the same body and perceives the world through a single stream of consciousness built upon the memories and experiences as constructed and interpreted through an individual perspective. But on the other hand, thirty years of experiences and memories and interpretation and reinterpretation of one's own life narrative will unquestionably have an effect on one's perception and identity. So in one sense you are always the same person because of the continuity of accumulated experience, but in another sense you are never the same person today as you were yesterday because each new accumulated experience affects how your interpretation and perception of yourself and the world around you.

 
Currently, being closer in age to Young Joe, I tend to watch the diner scene in LOOPER from his perspective (I'm sure the 61-year-old me will watch that same scene very differently), and it's actually kind of scary. Sitting across from your Old Self would be a chilling reminder not only of your own, eventual mortality—highlighted in this context, of course, by the fact that Young Joe is on a mission to kill his older self—but of the fact that long before you even reach The End the You that you know will cease to exist. Tomorrow you will wake up mostly the same, but slightly different. In thirty years, the You that wakes up will still be You, but a different You. The You that you know today will have become assimilated into another being that both is and isn't You. That You are just another memory, another step on a very long and winding staircase for all the Yous who come after. In that way, every day is a sort of mini-death. It's a frightening prospect to lose oneself, but part of our existence as human beings means that we are subject to incremental change and the continual loss of self. Every day we gain a wealth of experience but only at the inescapable sacrifice of an earlier fortune.

But, until the end of the movie, Young Joe can't see past the present moment. That's why his epiphany at the end of the movie is so powerful. He is finally able to see past the moment and past himself. A clear sign of emotional maturity, Joe—for perhaps the first time in his life—considers the consequences of his actions and the effect he has on the lives of people around him. He can see and finally admit to himself how he is contributing to the cycle of violence and accept responsibility for his actions. He can finally conceive of a world without himself and in the process consider the lives of the people who will be there long after he is gone. The real tragedy of Joe isn't that he had to (or felt he had to) die in order to help another human being; it's that his first true act of love and selflessness coincided with his death. Finally, he'd broken his own cycle of selfishness and self-centredness, and, though he found redemption, he also lost out on any potential happiness because it had taken him so long to get there.

LOOPER was a poignant reminder to us all not to make the same mistake.

It was also a movie that was, ultimately, all about hope. LOOPER makes the case for individual agency even in the face of what could be considered overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The very fact that Old Joe existed must have caused Young Joe to consider questions of predestination as it did for me and as I'm sure it did for a lot of very clever people out there. The fact that Joe was able to overcome these doubts and keep fighting is a powerful assertion of the power of human agency. If cycles of hate and violence and suffering are human constructions, then humanity also has the power to demolish them. In this sense, I can't help but be reminded of the theme from another great sci-fi movie that there is no fate but what we make. Overall I give LOOPER a 9.5/10 = One Head Levitating in the Middle of a Cornfield Because of a TK Freak