Post 2: Movie Meanings

It's REALLY difficult for me to pick a favorite movie. I like so many, and putting them on a scale of "Most Liked" to "Liked but not as much as others" seems fairly arbitrary. Plus, it probably depends on my mood. So lets pick TWO of my favorite movies (of wildly different genres) and talk about what they mean. We're gonna go with Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) (please refrain from mentioning the Ewok problem, I am already aware.) and The Nice Guys (2016). Wildy different movies. Epic Space Fantasy and Tongue-In-Cheek Buddy Cop films.

Return of the Jedi is superficially about Luke Skywalker and Co. finally defeating an oppressive militaristic Dictatorship. Magic powers and the laser swords and the Harrision Ford quips aside, it's stopping a dictator.

However, the method which this is accomplished says a lot more than what is accomplished here. Luke is told repeatedly by his mentors that he will have to murder his father to become a real Hero and to have any hope of defeating the Emperor himself. However, we see him beat Darth Vader in a duel, only to have the Emperor begin killing him with ease. It's clear that defeating Vader was not a solution. However, Luke didn't kill his father, and in fact, we see him deliberately cast aside his weapon and refuse to do so, not only defying the Emperor, but also his only two mentor figures. It is EXCLUSIVELY this decision that wins the day, because his act of compassion and mercy (and subsequent torture) is what shows Vader the straighter path. Luke's demonstrative willingness to do what is right leads Vader to do the same, and Vader himself defeats the Emperor. Luke becomes a Jedi through choosing compassion and rejecting violence and hatred, not through being the best warrior. It's a very different message than we are usually left with. Choosing Good is more important than Choosing to Win.

The Nice Guys is directed by Shane Black, who is a fantastic director. On the surface, it's about figuring out who murdered a porn star with Ryan Gostlin and Russel Crowe. It's funny, it's got gun shots, and it's a pretty solid detective movie.

Below the surface, we have a couple different meanings. Spoilers ahead.

First of all, the bad guy is the Car Industry, who kill a LOT of people to keep the fact that an aspect of their new cars is destroying the environment. That's pretty pro-environmentalism.

But more meaningfully, we first see Holland March (Ryan Gosling) sitting up in a bathtub, still clothed with the words "You will never be happy" written on his hand. We see his daily life as a private investigator who has recently lost his wife. He lacks some common sense (he winds up in the hospital after punching through a window, what did he think was gonna happen?) and he's a little morally grey (he takes money from an old woman who's gone senile) but he loves his daughter a great deal.  It isn't until half way through that we find out what he's really so down in the dumps. His wife died in a fire, and he blames himself because the fire was his fault. However, over the course of the movie, as he becomes friends with Jackson Healy (Russel Crowe) and his daughter becomes entangled in the investigation, he begins to seem less bitter, less closed off. At the climax, in a "blink and you'll miss it" moment, we see what the movie is really about, as March looks at his hand after they stop the bad guys, the writing on his hand is smudged. Now it says "You will be happy".