A Very Special Jackass Retrospective

With the release of Jackass 5, it's time for a look back. I don't even remember why, in that distant early age of 2002, I even went to see the first Jackass movie in the theater. I had never even seen the MTV show - only years later did I go back and watch it, along with Wildboyz, and Viva La Bam. But I got my popcorn, and sat down, and I realized: This is the greatest thing I have ever seen. Somehow better than Blade Runner and 2001 put together - although it does share features with those films, namely, hooting apes hitting each other, and indestructible humanoids. So I immediately got a group of friends together and watched it in the theater again. (I *never* watch things more than once in theaters.) Over the years my obsession has deepened - to the point of inviting friends, neighbors and colleagues to watch Jackass 1 through 4 projected on the side of my house, and worse (as you'll see.)

I won't belabor why Jackass works, although obviously it's authenticity, vulnerability and actual chemistry - when I discovered Jackass I was still in my 20s, missing being surrounded by the nonsense of my friends at college and beginning to experience the loneliness that men descend into without realizing it (or talking about it); it's also why shows like Ridiculousness suck, because it's one guy, he's just not that bright or interesting, and there are no relationships. It doesn't hurt that like me, they're all second-half Gen X guys, and I identify with them. (During an interview with Chris and Wee Man someone asked them what they listened to, and Wee Man answered "I only listen to about five bands. Slayer, Black Sabbath, Metallica...I only listen to about three bands.")

I just saw Jackass 5 and it's clear to me that Knoxville really does mean it to be the last one, so it's time for a look back - and some fan theories about this subtle and many-layered franchise.


The Structure of the Cast

Here's how I picture the relationships (for the classic era of Jackass 1-3, not including Loomis or CKY members who didn't cross the rainbow bridge into full casthood, and not including the new cast members of what I call the Mannerist period):



My justification: In the first movie, Steve-O was the most famous at first Knoxville (more on this later.) Bam had his own group, and later got big and had his own show and endorsements (you can hear the sarcastic "he's famous!" during the Terror Taxi skit in Jackass 2.) I can see how there would've been an initial rivalry between Steve-O and Bam, and though he would probably hate to admit it, there's a vulnerable narcissism in Steve-O that comes out easily, though he's smart and introspective enough to know this and tries to address it explicitly (he's discussed this with Chris on the show - how he was a little jealous of Chris at first.) Dave brought in Ehren, and I put them on the other side because Dave has said Bam didn't like him (and Bam called the cops on Ehren as a prank although I don't know if you can include that as evidence.) Wee Man and Preston made at least one trip to Pennsylvania (see Jackass 3), although Wee Man in particular seems up for anything - those two also filmed a little trip with Dave and Chris, and Wee Man appeared on Wildboyz. I always think of Pontius as the most Californian, but Wee Man has the strongest California accent I've ever heard on a human being (witnesseth: here, and here; probably unrelated, he also speaks German.)

I've always been interested in both Chris's and Steve-O's background and the connection they made - the kids of a cardiologist, and an international executive. Both high IQ, high achieving kinds of parents who may not have chosen this particular path for their sons, but it means they both inherited those genes, and had a lot in common in the abstract.

I'm not sure what sorts of things produce a Johnny Knoxville except being possibly descended from border reivers; and also, I had a friend who was a handsome and (at least in brief conversations) normal-seeming guy from Tennessee, and occasionally would casually mention that before moving to California he liked to do things like jump off trestles onto moving trains just for fun, so maybe it's the whole state. I'm surprised to notice Knoxville doesn't talk a lot about his attempts to break into acting before Jackass (I recently learned he was Keanu Reeves's body double in Dracula and actually took direction from Coppola); despite how we might all see him as incredibly successful, if his career didn't go as he hoped it would, that can stay with you in terms of core beliefs operating below the surface.

I've always argued that there's a correspondence between some Marvel and DC superheroes: Thor and Superman (both superstrong flying aliens who commit to guarding another planet, especially after their home planet is destroyed), Ironman and Batman (wealthy industrialists reliant on technology whose parents were killed, affecting their future psychology.) And finally this sort of thinking becomes useful, because I think there's a similar correspondence between some old and new cast members. Zach is the new Preston. Poopies is clearly the new Steve-O. Jasper is the new Bam - has parental involvement, had his own show before merging into the Jackass cast (Loiter Squad, watch it!), and I predict is most likely to bankroll his Jackass membership into future deals. I won't spend time here on the Jackass origin story, although I think there is a parallel to how Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus started (by assembling freaks from pre-existing groups - Big Brother and CKY.)

When someone has never heard of Jackass, after the first one I sometimes described it as the sequel to Animal House, in which the fraternity no longer has a home, but the institution continues, traveling around to hotels and random fields, countries, and companies, and its new recruits are Three Stooges, Hunter S. Thompson, and John Waters. And then they get a budget which they use to travel and film what they were doing anyway. (A friend of mine was an EMT in Westchester and said he was often at Bam's house, and they were not always filming.)


Notes on Jackass 1
Part of why I imprinted on it was the moment the referee announced in his thick Japanese accent, "From Wesuchestaa, Pensevaniaa, Lai-ann Dunn!" I had no idea they were from Pennsylvania. I grew up about 45 minutes up the road and the last place I lived was about 15 minutes from Westchester. I now live in the Bay Area, but I get back frequently.



Because I'm definitely not an obsessed stalker, here's a picture of me in Bam's driveway, September 2025. I blur my face because I'm a respected physician-philosopher, family man, and pillar of the community and I can't be seen having any association with ruffians, deviants or miscreants of this sort. You'll just have to believe it's me.

Dave shitting himself in the van is, for me, the moment when Jackass really became Jackass - when it morphed from a stupid little show on MTV to a stupid big movie franchise. It had all the elements: a prank, the prank going wrong because they couldn't resist torturing one of the cast, shit, the cameramen being shown and then being shown puking, the rest of the cast and crew fleeing in disgust and the hilarious humiliation of it all. Carrying out the actual prank later on was almost second after the setup. (Taken at Hippo Hardware in Portland, conceived by Whitey McConnaughy who was also behind a lot of Red Fang videos.)


Me at Hippo Hardware, with a parasite on my back. Zoom in and you can see the instruction not to sit on the toilet, sadly necessary because of this movie.

There is also a standout cast member in each one. In Jackass V, Steve-O claims he was never the MVP but I disagree. In the first one, it was clearly him. He was the one people were talking about after they saw the movie. And I have no photographic proof of the following, but my next door neighbor claims that she got backstage at a Steve-O live show in Michigan back in the day and he offered her cocaine; always very special milestone in a young girl's life. However, she claims she did not partake of said booger sugar.


Observations on Jackass 2

Joining a very short list of franchises, the second one is arguably better than the first (Godfather and arguably Terminator are the only two others.) Tremaine said they cast was "ready to die." My two favorite stunts, the Fart Mask and the Toro Totter, are also in this one. As Tremaine, Steve-O, and Pontius had been filming Wildboyz (which is a totally underrated series, you should watch it), there was some more exotic traveling in this one, including India and Argentina. There were pranks in the first one but this one had better ones: the first one was just the razor, but here it was the wind tunnel (really the cobra) and the Terror Taxi. They also started learning about, and capitalizing on, the cast members' phobias. If you were in this group, why would you EVER let people know your phobia? Part of the authenticity is hearing the second thoughts during the stunts - during Toro Totter, Pontius (it sounds like him, it's off camera) says "Why did I agree to do this one?" This is also where the x.5 versions of the movies began with the extra stunts, it's also not always clear to me why stunts end up in x.5 vs the main film. For example, I think Cajun Obstacle Course, Bed of Nails (with the cobra on Ehren) and golfing off of Ryan's ass are all solid and in fact, better than Terror Taxi! (The more you hate Ehren, the more you like Terror Taxi I guess.)

To put it mildly, these movies are interesting as a psychiatrist and physician. DSM is often criticized for "too many versions" of antisocial PD, based on symptom combinations, and these fellows aren't about to rob a bank as they're clearly enriched mostly for the poor-impulse-control, factor 2 psychopathy. To wit: I can't find it now but I once saw an interview with Dave where he said even if he got really rich he would spend all the money right away on "little pieces of shit". Classic! I will also add here that, were I ever in such a position, my willingness to do stunts is influenced by my medical training (and if you also don't sit there and think of which ones you'd do, then why are you watching these.) For example, when Dave eats the cow/horse shit in the field, that worries me. It's not just gross. That would be a great way to end up with neurocysticercosis. I might even take my chance with a bull before that one. The only way I would eat livestock shit, for any amount of money (and it would have to be a lot more than $200) would be if I had time to pre-load with prophylactic praziquantel (an anti-worm agent) which I would also continue well after the event.


Above: you don't want your brain to look like this. Each of those holes is where a worm is eating them. You get those worms by orally ingesting them, usually by not adequately washing your hands after encountering livestock feces. Or, intentionally eating it to get $200 from the 3-6 Mafia in a field in the South Central United States. Below: for your consideration. Note the "getting knocked out" point.



The anaconda bit wouldn't be so bad although I did wonder why of all people Wee Man was chosen for that one, because an anaconda actually has a shot at swallowing him! (More testament to the forethought that clearly goes into planning their stunts; as Dave once said in an interview, "No. No. It doesn't work like that.") Knoxville was obviously and intentionally grabbing it not on the head so it would bite him (but hey, it's Hollywood; Steve-O later noted he got chewed out for not reacting enough during Beehive Limo.) I also like where you can see effects earlier in the movie (edited together out of real-time chronological order) from things that happen later in the movie - during the "hotel hallway love note" bit, you can see the blood on Knoxville's shirt from the anaconda bites. In the first movie you can see a shaved bald spot in his hair during the "less lethal ammunition" bit. I was amazed that in the fourth movie they were worried about Knoxville's Jamie Lee Curtis hair showing up out of order. Tremaine, did you actually ever think that continuity would be a problem for your audience?

An outstanding question: where was the Big Red Rocket filmed? I think Pyramid Lake along the Grapevine portion of the 5, but I've never been able to confirm. I once asked an AI about it, and it offered to compare scenes in the movie to the shoreline on various maps, and I started to feel bad for taking up processing power with this and desisted.

The MVP of this movie was Ryan. Besides that this is intuitively correct (In the shopping cart launch his comment "You're an ass-hole" alone would win the title) I should note here that after Jackass 3, I did an analysis of what makes Jackass bits funny: I made a spreadsheet of all the bits, I rated them, and then annotated each bit for who was in it, was there an animal, was there emission of body fluids and if so which one(s), unexpected pranks, etc. And what I found was that, of the first three movies, the best predictor of a stunt being funny was Ryan being in it. I did not perform a Bonferroni correction calculation for multiple comparisons; my statistical argument for this is fuck you.


Thoughts on Jackass 3

This is the first one I didn't see in a theater. It came out while I was in medical school doing Serious Things and I didn't even realize it was out until clips starting showing up on Youtube. This one has the only stunt that I can't watch, the sweatsuit. I can't do spit or sweat.

There's a stunt in this one that people like to pick on which is Beehive Tetherball, because apparently bees were added digitally in post, since you couldn't see them. So what? Were the bees actually there, stinging Dave and Steve-O? Then who cares? If not, then Dave England has to be the best actor of his generation. (Dave's near-complete dissociation under stress, as he demonstrates here, is one of my favorite things about Jackass, also evident here or here or here; I was not surprised to learn of his alter ego Darf who appears while he is intoxicated.)

Sober Steve-O is so much more compelling as a cast member. Before he was just like an android or a talking crash test dummy - you couldn't identify with him at all. Imagine old not-sober Steve-O in the Poo Cocktail Supreme - not a tenth as funny. (I like that it's in the third movie we see the cast members starting to speculate that maybe they're irrational - see the exchange between Johnny and Steve-O about Steve-O's fear of roller coasters and similar rides. I find this fascinating - for him as (early in his career) an acrobat/stilt-walker, proprioception and control are key to his security.

For me the MVP of Jackass 3 was clearly Wee Man. That parachute stunt is gnarly, but also Super Mighty Glue, and without him as the setup-man in the High Five I think it wouldn't been half as funny. And the yoga ball should have been in the main movie.



Wee Man and I, December 2011. I went with my girlfriend to Wee Man's Chronic Tacos in Redondo (sadly now closed)and he was there. Despite that he was interviewing someone for a job and I interrupted them, he was extremely cool and showed me the tattoo of Ryan he got.

It was the year following Jackass 3 that Ryan died driving drunk. He could've still been with us, making the Jackass movies better (as I showed mathematically that he did). There were ominous signs, some explictly discussed on screen by Jackass personalities, others that fans can shake their heads at ironically. The first was a rollover accident that Ryan had in Pennsylvania in the 90s, discussed by Bam's mom in the piece made in Ryan's memory after he died. This one struck home because I remember the accident, since I remember being stuck in the traffic jam near King of Prussia that day! The ironic one was the golf cart accident in the first movie, containing a wince-inducing comment by someone off-camera: "Dunn can't drive for shit." It's worth saying that I personally know two people that have been killed by drunk drivers, and I personally know two people who have been picked up for DUI multiple times and continue to refuse to take responsibility (and who I have lost all patience and sympathy for.) Don't do this to yourself, and don't do it to people that love you.


Jackass 4

That did something to Bam for sure. I thought it would be hard to make another Jackass movie after Ryan because it would be sad - the myth of immortality had been punctured and the special connection that Bam and Ryan had was gone. And I think completely unsurprisingly, Bam took a turn for the worse. It was clear that he was trying to bring in Novak as his new best buddy, but it was completely different and kind of gross, going well over the line from brotherly slapstick into the physical abuse of a pathetic addict. (Yes I know it's from earlier but the dynamic is so different than with Ryan or any other CKY person. He's just a helpless victim and it's not funny.)

And that's why I was worried about Jackass 4. I didn't expect that they would do anything but lean into Ryan's memory, but it still crossed my mind that maybe Knoxville didn't need extra convincing to leave Bam out. To be sure, Bam gave him all the reasons he needed. My understanding is that one of the hardest parts of making these movies is, unsurprisingly, getting insurance, and psychiatrists and actuaries will tell you that a substance problem makes the chance of accident, or intentional harm to self or others, much higher. In another bizarre connection, he showed up at Christmas tree lighting one year in my city in Northern California where he has a kid with someone. This was interesting because I've said if he were to show up intoxicated to one of my showings I actually would call the police on him to get him away from my house and family (not that I'm holding my breath about this.) Wait, didn't I figure out where his house was and stalk him? NO WAY MAN HE'S THE STALKER, HE MADE ME DO IT. (In all seriousness, I was less worried that security would come out, and more worried that HE would.)

I'm obsessed enough with the franchise that I've had dreams where I'm on set, and I look around and think, this is awesome! And then I think, wait, this is terrifying, I'm about to get bitten by snakes or set on fire or have some kind of animal fluids dumped on me or something, I gotta get out of here! Indeed, Eric Andre made the comment that he grew up idolizing Jackass (his show, which you should watch, shows the influence) and that it was a dream to become part of it, and then that he realized it was actually a nightmare. (Stockholm syndrome is a strange thing.)

The question of authenticity does bring up: are there things you still don't talk about? Money is kind of a buzzkill for most people I think, and it was unfortunate to hear how much Steve O had to fight to get what he was worth to make it on Jackass 4, but Bam not being there probably made it easier for him to negotiate. Then again, it's showBUSINESS, regardless how bizarre your act is. (Similar conversation on Conan with Eric Idle about the debates with other Python members; I was always bummed when I heard about how Cleese and Jones disliked each other.)

There is no serious disagreement that the MVP of Jackass 4 is Ehren McGhehey.


Jackass 5: A Retrospective

No spoilers. Go see it. Yes it's a lot of repeat footage and stories about the previous movies, but there's stuff you've never seen before (there was stuff I didn't even know about.) Some of the cast were nervous that people would feel shortchanged since a lot of the movie is stunts from previous ones. There are new ones and they're great, but if you go knowing you're mostly seeing a farewell, you'll be happy. This is the first I've seen in a theater since 2006, and I sure was.


Berkeley, California, July 2015

My bachelor party was laid back: I got a couple hotel suites and we drank and watched Jackass 1 and 2. It was pretty great. As we were walking out of the hotel about 1am, I looked over at the check-in desk and there was this guy checking in. There was Knoxville, checking into my bachelor party hotel. It was like a bad sitcom where I was bidding farewell to my singlehood and being ferried across the Styx by the about the best symbol of childish, untamed male ridiculousness there is. Before I approached him, I checked to make sure no one had put LSD in my beer and that's why I was seeing Johnny Knoxville. (I would be more embarrassed as a psychiatrist getting caught talking to a hallucination in public, than slurring my words talking to the real Johnny Knoxville while I was intoxicated.) Fortunately, it turned out he was intoxicated as well and had just been out with people from one Pixar. (I've tried to figure out which movie it would've been.) I told him "a bunch of doctors and engineers were just killing our brain cells watching Jackass, you're making the world a worse place" and he said "Yeah I get that a lot." Which of course is a total lie. There is no other movie franchise that I have enjoyed as much and continue to. I hope you guys see this, because you've all participated in creating something really special and hilarious and made my life, and many people's lives, and the world, a much better place, and the love you all continue to get is deserved. Thank you.

Space Colonies Will Be Run By Dictators; Or, Why Science Fiction Is About Government Space Travel

Settling colonies in the age of exploration was easy. Jamestown in particular seemed like a breeze. There was air, water, food, and even people who would sometimes help you if you were nice to them. Even still, it wasn't until the third ship arrived from England that the colony became self-sustaining. The Norse were unable to hold onto Greenland at all, and we still in 2018 have not put a self-sustaining colony on Antarctica . That the land does not provide basic life-sustaining commodities for free - that there is no indestructible commons where air and water is concerned - has led some political scientists to speculate that the natural state of any off-Earth colony would be that of "Oriental despotism", which earlier historians associated with the culture of the Middle East. Another way of looking at this is that there's a predisposition to strong central authority anywhere that central coordination is required for survival. This might mean political rent-seekers who control the water by force, as in parts of the Middle East, or the coordination of crops that are massively productive when huge teams of people harvest it, as with rice in East Asia. This also solves the mystery of why states emerged initially in places that were actually quite marginal for agriculture - the dry high altitude Mexican Plateau, the Nile Valley, and the Fertile Crescent (with the exception of China - still explained by a benefit of central authority's ability to coordinate labor.) On the other hand, places where berries and game almost jump into your mouth are not famous for producing large states - though they do often produce impressive cultures, like the Pacific Northwest. When you get angry at some tribal council decision, it's too easy to storm off and take your family into the next valley and start hunting and gathering there. Not so when your life depends on predicting and collectively exploiting, say, the flooding of the Nile.

But there is still another reason to think that space colonies (planet-bound or not) will resemble the walled fortress of a desert, or the absolute authority of an Eastern monarch, more than a democracy. (Yes, it gets worse.) How do you get your family to your new valley? You can walk - even if it takes a while. If you got sick of Ohio and wanted to head west, you might have to pool your funds with other families but it didn't take that many families before you could put a small wagon train together. Leaving a gravity well and building a habitat are massively complicated and expensive undertakings. This is why space launches are the province (so far) of wealthy states and so far, just one corporation. For economic reasons of massive capital requirements, space travel will therefore be performed in a way that advances the interests of wealthy states and/or corporations. (This is similar to the reason movies are more constrained, i.e. less imaginative, risk-taking, and creative than writing or visual art - they're very capital-intensive and it's much more important in this medium to make back your investment!) Science fiction typically continues to imagine it this way, likely correctly - but rarely explores the pitfalls of large organizations having a stranglehold over the means of transportation in this brave new world - or the impact of, say, aliens appearing and handing out technology that allows individual humans to cheaply travel between planets. (Libertarians - if you think having private corporations do it, you not only have to explain how they will obtain such a position in the company of a cartel of violence-monopolizing organizations called states, you have to explain why it's better to be oppressed by a privately held rather than public organization. Left-leaners, if you think states are the ideal organizations to undertake such ventures, keep in mind that the first country with a real rocketry program was Nazi Germany, and the fastest growing one today is free-speech-crushing, putting-Muslims-in-concentration-camps China.)

It's also worth pointing out that, for related reasons, such colonies will be dependent on Earth for a long, long time, much longer than Jamestown was dependent on England. Why? First off, people are much more comfortable now. Second, when the first settlers arrived in Jamestown, they were able more or less to build on their own the technology that they were accustomed to in England. Yes, in the case of iron production, English colonists actually reverted to a medieval version for a while, but they were still making the nails and blades and gun barrels and plows that they needed. What about the first settlers on Mars? Will they be able to make a smartphone? Will they be able to make another spaceship, or habitat, or geodesic farming equipment, or satellite dishes? Even assuming zero surplus mortality from the harsh Martian environment, how many ships and people are necessary before the Martian Jamestown is self-sustaining? The Martian despot will likely be interested in not just controlling the oxygen and water, but the shipments coming from Earth.

Make Your Own Genre Crossovers by Imagining Subtext

There's a fan theory that Get Out is actually the sequel to Being John Malgovich, and that Katherine Keener is playing the same character in both movies - who has learned she can trap people inside their own or others' minds. This has been discussed enough that it was even brought up to director Jordan Peele in an interview, who said the theory was likely "brought on by the power of marijuana." Still, it's interesting to imagine she changed her name from Maxine and that Allison Williams is the grown-up little girl from the end of Malgovich, every bit as inhabited by old souls as the black servant/ancestors in her household, her moral sense twisted by the seventy old people whose minds and personalities she contains (along with a trapped and weeping John Cusack.)



Left: the young Tony Stark in high school looking at Kelly LeBrock and realizing that to have any chance of getting her he has to become a superhero. Right: the older Tony Stark appears to look into the future, but in reality is thinking about Kelly LeBrock.
Similarly in the very 1990s Surviving the Game, a film version of The Most Dangerous Game, Ice-T is brought to Rutger Hauer's estate as the unwitting target of a hunt. And the writers missed a golden crossover opportunity. Imagine it - Ice-T is running through the woods to get away from Rutger Hauer, when suddenly Harrison Ford comes running the other way in his future-noir trenchcoat soaked with rain and his fingers broken, saying "Listen buddy, I don't have much time. The key to escaping this guy is just stall until his four-year-lifespan is up, and then he gets all sentimental and lets you live." Ford takes off running, and soon after the bewildered Ice-T encounters a frustrated Tommy Lee Jones, running after Ford, who yells over his shoulder at Ice-T "Why didn't you stop him! He's an alien!" and Will Smith comes along two seconds later and flashes Ice-T so he doesn't remember seeing them.



The best example in any action movie of "bad guy seems about to kill the hero but first coldly explains his vision for the world, and then good guy rallies, says a one-liner that undoes it and kills the bad guy" is in Surviving the Game where Ice-T's pithy comeback is "Fuck that!"
People have been excited about the massive crossover event of Avengers: Infinity War, although I think a little wind is taken out of the sails by the fact that the crossing over was expected well in advance. I thought it was far cooler when in Predator 2, they revealed an oblong Alien skull in the ship's trophy room, or even the ending of this episode of Transformers from back in the day. Although the best actually acknowledged-crossover ever has to be this one from Hotshots 2:


But why wait for the franchises to get around to the crossover? A lot of the experience of watching a movie comes from inside your own head - and you can make up your own crossover by imagining that an actor who's been in more than one franchise is actually the same character, much like Katherine Keener in Get Out and Being John Malgovich. So here are some others suggestions to enrich your franchise consumption experience.


1) Watch Weird Science again, and assume that Robert Downey Jr's character is Tony Stark as a bratty rich kid. I mean they even make a nuclear missile! After the humiliation he receives when not only can he not get Kelly LeBrock, but one of the weird scientists steal his girlfriend, Stark then spends the rest of his life partying and doesn't wake up from the mindless hedonism and materialism that soothed his bruised ego until he is captured by terrorists and sees what his weapons are doing to the people in the countries where they're used.

2) In Westworld, the Man in Black enjoys the immersive experience of the massive park. It turns out that the way he became so rich was when he conceived and directed a similar entertainment, that being the greatest reality show of all time, the Truman show! But this left him questioning the construction of meaning and consensus reality, and feeling guilty at what he did to Truman, he set out to shock the hosts into free will. But his demotion from Truman's god left him bitter, hence his humble contribution as Satan walking to-and-fro in Anthony Hopkins' world. I shouldn't neglect to mention that the Man in Black started out working in real estate, but after the abuse he received from his superiors he swore he would only work for himself. (When he asks Anthony Hopkins about "opening him up" - displaced aggression from when he was told "Always Be Closing"?) Either way when the Man in Black broods, he's probably thinking over his last conversation with Jim Carrey - or hoping that Alec Baldwin is rotting in hell for the way he treated people. Little does the Man in Black know that Anthony Hopkins is a god not just in his own mind, but in reality - called Odin - and Odin recognizes that threat when a rebel Valkyrie posing as an executive shows up to take over Westworld.

3) In the first Star Trek reboot movie, to save his crew and family, George Kirk kamikazes into the Romulan ship. But he remains heroically calm, and why not - he has faced world-destroying foes before as part of the Avengers! He may even believe (incorrectly) that his Valhallan ancestry will save him from the explosion. (This theory also explains why his half-human son James Tiberius can hold his own in fist-fights with Klingons.) Meanwhile, Dr. Strange succumbs to the temptation to abuse his mystic powers, has a dalliance with dictatorship, and ends up hiding with his genetically enhanced followers in suspended animation - and his knowledge of Eastern culture leads him to change his name to Khan. He just acts superhuman while hiding all the fancy spinning light nonsense. ( You can see the Dr. Strange hints they dropped in that Star Trek movie! Those hints are...er ah...come on people with narrative pareidolia, I know you can do it!) And Professor Xavier, made immortal by (fill in technobabble - think that's lazy? pro writers do it all the time), thinks that Thor and Strange had the right idea and hangs around long enough to become a Star Fleet officer himself, quickly rising to the rank of captain, though he almost accidentally reveals his mutant powers by continuing a telepathic link to the Borg after his near-permanent assimilation. Generations in the distant future would remember these repeated destructive encounters with an overwhelming machine race as the Butlerian jihad, and Professor X knows he must survive because he learned through Cerebro that one day in the distant future, there would arise a messiah called the Kwisatz Haderach.

4) When Neo first woke up out of the Matrix, he was actually thinking "Whoa...Bill and I saw this place once when we went far enough into the future! Totally bogus!" Any incomprehensible plot holes can be explained by Neo waiting for Bill and younger-himself to show up at any moment, and they can even remake the Matrix movies with the time travel finally fixing things.

5) The cyber-infected John Connor jumps timelines and creates a new one where he cannot salvage the rise of the machines, but at least he can still make the human race go extinct - by interfering with the recovery of the human race in post-simian-virus San Francisco, helping the apes, and setting up the events of the third POTA movie. (The character does seem a little too earnest doesn't he?)

6) The Hosts from Westworld go to a new level - not Eastworld (or whatever they call the Japanese one) but rather - Medievalworld. As they move about the castles and kingdoms they soon recognize that the guests on this level are made immortal and called "White Walkers". If the guests spend a lot they even get to be kings and queens (although unlike in Westworld, in Medievalworld these story lines allow or even ENCOURAGE the guests to kill each other in-game.) One guest however is given a permanent special title for free, to honor her for having protected us in the real world against the killer robots from the future. Her real name is Sarah Connor but in the game she is called "Daenerys Targaryen."

7) Mace Windhu survives the fall inflicted by Palpatine, uses the Force to save Queen Amidala's life and travels to a distant galaxy. Due to time dilation the seemingly brief trip takes a long, long time, and they arrive on early 21st century Earth. Amidala immediately finds herself a god to date and Windhu knows that there are evil beings all over the universe, so he starts gathering the most remarkable humans he can find. By coincidence Saw Gerrera also escaped the Empire and came to Earth, to a country called Wakanda to serve as a warrior there. Darth Maul survives Obi-Wan and uses his powers to serve evil on Earth calling himself Toad. Both Maul's and Windhu's light sabers long ago ran out of charge, although when the Avengers are fighting, from behind the scenes Windhu occasionally uses the Force to deflect a shot the Avengers don't see coming. Somehow, none of them realize that a man who started merely as a master lock-picker long ago in a galaxy far away (Benicio del Toro), somehow also landed in our galaxy - to become a collector.

(As I compiled this list, I was utterly amazed at how many actors had been both in Marvel Universe and Star Wars roles. Both of these franchises are now owned by Disney. My estimation of the likelihood of a near-future - within a decade - Star Wars-Marvel crossover is going up as a result. Since the characters that cross over early are generally peripheral which makes them more flexible for future writing purposes, my money is on Benicio del Toro.)

8) Captain America often thinks to himself during battles "You know flying was cool, but I'd rather just have a ripped torso and throw a shield around than have to be on fire all the time."



Above: Special Agent Smith, having taken his Vendetta mask off, passes the torch by giving Aragorn a light saber, so he can cross post-apocalyptic America and avoid cannibals.
9) Rocket the bioengineered raccoon actually is from Earth and knows damn well what a raccoon is, but doesn't want to let on to the Starlord. Why? It kind of sucks that he used to be human, had such a great bachelor party and his brain ended up getting uploaded into this form. Dave Bautista is human too, but disguises himself and plays dumb for a different reason - he'd rather the Starlord think he's an alien than a Nexus-7 replicant. He tried going back to Earth to farm and came very close to being retired by a Blade Runner, and he's not making that mistake again. Finally the Starlord finds himself captured by the Grandmaster, who is more bemused than usual and tells him (important to read in smiling Jeff Goldblum's voice) "So after all this is over you're planning on working on Earth resurrecting dinosaurs? I don't recommend it son - they brought me in once to observe and it didn't go well."

10) Obadiah Stane was...changed by his time inside Tron, and after he comes out and becomes an executive at Stark Industries, people can see his erratic behavior, but won't fire him given his insights into the virtual world.

11) Richard Riddick was not always human. Long ago he was a plant-alien named Groot, but constantly getting caught in wars hardened him and he finally had his brain (and voicebox) transplanted into a human body. Vaako thinks Groot-Riddick is naïve to retain even this much morality; despite Vaako's near-sacrifice to defend Valhalla, and despite his service to Starfleet as a physician, he was constantly ignored, so he said screw it, and became a Necromonger henchman.

12) Zoe Saldana in Guardians of the Galaxy is actually an Orion. Many years later at Starfleet academy, for fear that she would be discriminated against, she had her skin surgically changed from green to brown, but when she saw another out-of-the-closet Orion got into the Academy she requested to be her roommate.

13) In the Exorcist, when Max von Sydow sees the girl, he knows he can only be dealing with one thing: a Sith. He remembers Kylo Ren who left him for dead on Jakku, and uses some very basic Force tricks he learned from Luke. It's not enough as he soon discovers...but they should have compelled her with the power of Yoda!

14) Recall the Chancellor prior to Palpatine, who looked crestfallen at Palpatine's vote of no confidence. That was all for show, because the former Chancellor set it up for Palpatine, then gladly stepped down, and returned to Krypton, where they call him Zod.

15) Gandalf seems so world-weary because he was cast into this other strange dimension by a mutant's powers, and he tries to hide his true nature from hobbits (if you look closely, all his tricks involve manipulating metal in some way.) He thinks he recognizes Galadriel, who was similarly banished and briefly reveals who she really is - but the time is not right to go back to the mortal plane and re-take Valhalla.

16) There's an ongoing effort at an Alien-Blade Runner cross-over, which is predictable (both originally directed by Ridley Scott) but depressing, because the last couple Alien universe movies have not been great, and in any event no actors cross over between the two. But what if Hicks in Aliens seems so world-weary because he's actually an android - one designed to look and think like Kyle Reese?

17) After getting very little support from Sauron, Saruman barely escaped with his life to the stars. It doesn't take much for him to rebel against the Jedi and his master Yoda, who reminds him too much of those damn hobbits that were his undoing. And he certainly wasn't going to fall for another dark overlord, and rebels against Palpatine. But it was all part of Palpatine's plan...hence the incredulous look in the moments before it all goes finally and terrible wrong for him.

18) Deckard might be a replicant but he was engineered from a genetically superior human, and retains some of his memories - which explains the flashes of ark-hunting that come back to him and possibly his inexplicable enmity for Aryan-looking guys like Roy Baty. When K. find Deckard, he spots among his possessions a plain-looking cup. "Don't drink out of that one," Deckard cautions. (Note: Edward James Olmos thinks Blade Runner could be a sequel to Battlestar Galactica. No really. The intervening movie, from the end of BG to the beginning of Blade Runner, would be interesting. It's too bad they won't make it - but then again who does?)

19) On Girls, Hannah's ex-boyfriend lapses back into alcoholism and he and Hannah have a major fight. Suddenly Hannah finds herself choking without her ex touching her, and objects hurtling toward her face.


The bottom line: once you're in a science fiction franchise and have name recognition, you're set for life.

Mad Max Is Not the Old West; Also, Why Does Everything Alway Get Worse?

In the peri-marketing articles that appeared with the release of Fury Road, there was a lot of comparison to Westerns. This comparison is never explored, probably because it's wrong, and frustratingly so. Mad Max and Westerns both feature a lone warrior with a rough sense of justice fighting the good fight against desert savages. The difference is that in Westerns, the sheriff is fighting to protect civilization because he knows that things will eventually get better. In Mad Max he keeps fighting despite knowing that things will only get worse. In Westerns, good folk set up homesteads on the frontier knowing full well that there are savages around, but the settlers can be reasonably assured that the sheriff or the cavalry will gallop to their aid from the unassailable (if remote) centers of civilization back East. In Mad Max, there's no hope; the raids tomorrow will be worse than the ones today, and for damn sure there will never, ever be any cavalry to help you. (In fact, you should assume a lot of the savages used to be the cavalry.) Yet, despite this, Max does retain something we recognize as a sense of right and wrong, which appears increasingly absurd given the futility of resisting the overwhelming tide of barbarians and madness. And that's why he's interesting. The free will to choose right instead of wrong is the only thing left to him, and he chooses right. Mad Max is much more like Dr. Rieux in The Plague than he is like any frontier lawman.*

That leads to the second part. Mad Max movies revel in how much nastier the world keeps getting each day. Mad Max movies are apocalpyse porn. Through the four movies we watch as life gets progressively more nightmarish. We go from some punks robbing people in the first one, to an irradiated Darth Vader wasting water in front of dying old people and imprisoning women for their wombs and milk. Why this dystopia fetish? As always with any fictional narrative, we can break the answer into two kinds of influences: forces internal to the logic of the narrative (what happens in the story), and forces external to the medium (that is, economic forces in the real world where the story is a product). Internally, we get the filmmakers' message that oil-based society will crash badly, and that nuclear war would have grotesque consequences. Externally, over time these movies found themselves in a market with more and better action movies and had to sell tickets. Utopias offer few opportunities for violent conflict and therefore ticket sales. And frankly, there's also a very real pornographic aspect to making the world more and more hellish that emerges in post-apocalpytic fiction generally.

Absent from the movies after the first two is any kind of collapse-of-moral-authority warning that social conservatives love to illustrate in detail: that if we let the softies and criminals take over, well then the strong men are justified taking matters into their own hands to give the baddies a dose of their own medicine.** (Maybe all social order requires a threat of violence somewhere at the core of the system, and the very real but better-socialized psychopaths currently in charge get mad at the threat from outsider psychopaths, and ache to respond in line with their true natures.) In the first movie, Max is a cop, guarding the roads and avenging his family. Certainly by Thunderdome, there is no longer a clear source of legitimate moral authority (at least with armed, loyal adherents to enforce it) for Max to defend anymore. Was there ever a legitimate authority? Possibly the greatest cruelty of the world of Mad Max has been to take away even the past by exploding the comforting myths of history. And possibly, this bothers us because we've had the same thoughts.


*Deserts tend to figure in existential and/or exotic fiction for Europeans and people/cultures of European descent - even cultures that have deserts, like the U.S. and Australia - because to European eyes, the desert is bizarre, and open, and by its nature obviously threatens our continued survival and even our sense of our own significance in the scheme of the universe. Science fiction may rely a little too heavily on this trope, although granted, Dune would not have been the same in a boreal forest. Still, I can't help but wonder at the source of the different roles that deserts play in the psyche and literature of Australians and Americans. American deserts are a little more liveable, and they have mountains and therefore rivers and occasional green spots - versus Australian deserts, which have much nastier critters, and which look like Mars with a few tufts of grass, and are about as good at growing crops. Australia doesn't celebrate its desert-crossing pioneers to the same degree as America, because mostly what the Aussie explorers got was a clap on the back from their countrymen that they made it, after accurately reporting back "Yep, it sure sucks out there." Australia also doesn't celebrate its homesteaders, because to a first approximation it doesn't have any, and can't. Consequently, American deserts became places of optimism and adventure and conquest, and Australian deserts are places devoid of meaning and best avoided.

**Have you noticed the following pattern with Mel Gibson's characters and scripts? A moral man driven to darkness by his enemies, angst-ridden, often taking vengeance on those enemies in horrifying ways only slightly less insane or evil than them. Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Apocalypto...and what was that Roman-Middle Eastern one?