Expletives
echo off the walls of North Santiam Hall 207 as a dragon systematically roasts
and devours six valiant heroes, bringing their month-long quest to an end.
But
that’s just another day at LBCC’s RPG (role-playing game) Club, where a
tight-knit group of friends spend their afternoons exploring mystical lands of
wonder, conquering formidable foes dwelling in dank dungeons, and desperately resisting the urge to kill each other’s characters along the way.
Starting
summer term, the club will be meeting every Monday from noon to 3 p.m. in Red Cedar
Hall room 116.
“I
just love the flexibility of tabletop role-playing games,” said club
representative Nik Geier. “You can do whatever comes into your imagination, so
there’s a huge amount of tactics and improvising.”
Geier
has occupied the role of club leader and game master since the beginning of
spring term, mostly running campaigns through the tabletop staple “Pathfinder.”
“We’ve
played other games. A member actually developed her own gaming system after a
manga she liked, so for a while we traded off between that and 'Pathfinder'.” We
also dipped a bit into the 'Serenity' RPG, and that was a lot of fun,” said
Geier.
Although
a mutual love for role playing is what first brought the RPG club together, the
friendly atmosphere is what keeps its members coming back.
“I
love the gaming, but the best part is just getting together with friends and
having a good time,” said member Jordan Eade.
“We
laugh together, we share the joy of victory, and it’s basically a second
family,” said Nicholas Carrol.
But
the RPG Club is always looking for new players, and its long-time members are eager
to accommodate anyone unfamiliar with the hobby.
“Just
hold no preconceptions, jump in with both feet, and ask for as much help as necessary
from a veteran player,” said Mattie Guilliams.
Phil
Rezanow is one such veteran, with over 20 years of tabletop gaming experience.
“I'm
easily the oldest person in the group at 40, but the group was very welcoming
and I leave each session excited for the next week,” said Rezanow.
Wow, that title is an impeccable example of whorish
clickbait, isn’t it? Add only a number, and the words “that will blow your
mind,” and it’s downright Buzzfeed worthy. So before I take an ouroboros adventure
up my own ass, let me put this on record:
I love “Star Wars.”
I loved “Star wars” before I ever saw “Star Wars,”
with fond adolescent memories of collapsible plastic lightsaber duels that left
welts for days. And by adolescent, of course I mean from the age of five, to
two weeks ago.
I view bitching about midi-chlorians as a respectable
vocation, and “Knights of the Old Republic” ushered me into the tar-pit that is
western RPG gaming, a pastime that is far-and-away the most time-exhaustive
leisure activity of my life, with the second being sleeping.
And now that we’re all good and sad about my aversion
to standing, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of why I think the original
trilogy is a Rancor of an overhyped beast, an opinion that brings me no self-gratification.
Yet it won’t go away.
First, I’d like to change my previous statement from
“I loved ‘Star wars’ before I ever saw it” to “I saw ‘Star Wars’ before I ever saw it.” According to IMDB, “A
New Hope” is the most referenced film of all time, so it’s no wonder why essentially
every scene was spoiled for me by the time I got around to putting those
botched Special Editions into our family’s lone VCR. I remember the “Luke, I am
your father” twist being spoiled during “Toy Story 2,” Mel Brooks’s “Space
Balls” lampooned away most of the other mysteries, and everything else about
the film I inferred from dialogue in Kevin Smith movies and episodes of “South
Park” (my parents weren’t the most attentive).
It was inescapable. “Star Wars” was like air, lingering
in every conceivable corner of pop-culture.
Forget about the series’ uber fanaticism (although
I’ll get to that later), this is the apex film franchise of two entire
generations, perhaps only recently usurped by “Harry Potter” and the Marvel
Cinematic Universe.
It’s too massive of a pop-culture cornerstone to not be overrated. At some point, you
have to look at all of the countless toys, shirts, and assorted baubles and
trinkets plastered with Darth Vader’s mug shot and ask yourself, is any strip
of celluloid worthy of a $30 billion empire?
And the fact that Lucasfilm was swallowed by Disney
doesn’t help either. That company has approved business practices so evil
they’d turn Lex Luther’s pubes grey.
This blizzard of merchandising means that “Star Wars”
no longer belongs to any single niche group. And at this point, the real
weirdos are those who don’t consider themselves fans of the franchise.
“When I meet people my age, men especially, less so
women, there’s this sense we share that those movies shaped our childhoods,”
said Stephen Rust, an English and film instructor at the University of Oregon.
“For some reason, things like comics, and “Star Trek,” and even “Harry Potter”
have been viewed slightly more in terms of nerd-culture. While you can admit to
being a “Star Wars” fan without falling into any nerd-grouping.”
“Star Wars” has an accessibility that is unmatched by
any of its nerd-culture contemporaries, stemming from the elegance and simplicity
of its narrative. So many elements of the original trilogy are timeless,
drawing on ancient mythological storytelling as way to create something enjoyable
regardless of age or upbringing.
And there lies the problem
“Star Wars” is nowhere near the be-all and end-all of
filmmaking; it’s the foundation on which understanding of storytelling can be
built.
And yet still, the American Film Institute lists “A
New Hope” at #13 on their 100 greatest American films ever made, surpassing
such arty darlings as Stanley Kubrick’s “2001 A Space Odyssey” (at 15) and F.W.
Murnau’s “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” (at an astonishingly low 82).
I know it’s futile to complain about the order of a
movie list. AFI has created it with the help of 1,500 film experts, all who are
far more knowledgeable than myself, but there seems to be a disconnect here.
“Star Wars” is the rudiments that should lead to more complex work, and I feel
like I just watched “Chopsticks” edge out “The Rite of Spring.”
But really, the AFI list is an anomaly, as the
scholarly perception of “Star Wars” has always placed somewhere between
mindless entertainment, and the impetus for the decline of films-as-art. Contrarian
critic Pauline Kael dismissed it entirely, describing its absence of beauty and
lyricism (whatever the hell that means), while film historians cite the trilogy
as the birth of popcorn intensive summer blockbusters.
If cynical cinephiles
ruled the world, the release of “Star Wars” would be remembered as an
historical event akin to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Worse in fact,
because at least that led to “Take Me Out.” Until recently, the most recognizable
canonical aspect of the “Star Wars” legacy was a Jamaican CGI comic relief
character.
So when I write “’Star Wars’ is overrated” I’m
speaking strictly on a blue collar level. About the accumulation of love over filmmaking
history, and when comparing quality against cultural impact, the original
trilogy is almost inarguably overrated.
But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The saving
grace of its overexposure actually comes from those fanatics I mentioned
earlier, devoting years of their lives to creating fan-fiction, costumes, and
other creative works in devotion to the series.
When considering the expanded universe, with its
volumes upon volumes of story arcs encapsulating thousands of years of
fictional history, it isn’t out of bounds to say that the blind admiration this
franchise inspires has resulted in more creativity than any other.
Then Disney came along and etch-a-sketched the shit
out of it, but no matter.
Along with “Star
Trek,” “Star Wars” is the dawn of fandom, and a niche phenomenon that has evolved
into something much more.
During the release of 2014’s “Boyhood,” many critics assumed the film’s main character (a bratty, teenage, aspiring photographer with a surprisingly punch-able face) was meant to be a surrogate for the film’s writer and director, Richard Linklater.
However, Linklater was quick to deny this in interviews, as he told Rolling Stone Magazine, “I was an ex-jock. I had to make a choice which side of me to show, and I bet on the ethereal, arty guy as a more interesting kid.”
In hindsight, accusations of a creator stand-in should have been reserved for his newest film, “Everybody Wants Some!!,” as its central character seems to fit the ethereal jock role quite nicely. The movie is now showing at Eugene's Bijou Art Cinemas.
In the fall of 1980, Jake (Blake Jenner) is an up-and-coming baseball star moving to Southeast Texas for his freshman year of college, bringing with him only a knapsack of tawdry clothing, and an impossibly diverse vinyl record collection. (I mean, seriously? The Talking Heads and Crosby, Stills and Nash? My suspension of disbelief will only stretch so far.) He rooms in a small house on campus with his teammates, a ragtag group of college prospects, as they spend their nights embarking on testosterone-driven quests for sex and alcohol.
Billed as a spiritual successor to Linklater’s 1993 film “Dazed and Confused,” “Everybody Wants Some!!” shares that film’s inescapable sense of nostalgia, attempting to capture the early '80’s through the thickest pair of rose-colored glasses.
As it's still early into the decade, many of the more persistent trends of the '70's seep through. Meaning, disco fortunately isn’t dead yet. Only dying, and relegated to on campus dance clubs, which apparently are magical wonderlands where 18-year-olds are offered free beer, and people unironically wear some of the most kitsch shit ever manufactured by sentient life. Yes, '70’s fashion is still in full swing, as we haven’t yet stocked every Goodwill from coast to coast with discarded bellbottoms and tins of mustache wax.
The decade to come is only hinted at, as the boys partake in a “Wayne’s World”-esque car ride singalong to The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rappers Delight,” and perform some cathartic moshing at a punk-rock concert. Of course both hip-hop and punk will become homogenized into American culture by the decade’s end, but here they’re still very much esoteric. As the team’s slack-jawed catcher puts it, “I don’t know man, I kinda like Van Halen.”
Like any place filled with unchecked alpha males, the team’s house immediately descends into an environment of competition and machismo pride. Be it “Whose ping-pong skills reign supreme?” or “Who can achieve the most biblical bong rip?” every facile interaction is taken as an opportunity to assert male dominance.
Their banter of back-and-fourth bullshitting is brilliant, and it makes “Everybody Wants Some!!” Linklater’s most consistent comedy since“School of Rock.” Though the director receives much of his props from Sundance kids who won’t shut up about his career long meditation on the human perception of time (or some bullshit, i dunno), this is a reminder that he’s also the man who gave us the funniest Jack Black performance ("High Fidelity" notwithstanding). Even if dialogue between teammates can be incredibly crass, peppered with antiquated misogyny and homophobia, it rarely feels forced or inauthentic.
The opposing voice to Jake’s macho surroundings is Beverly (Zoey Deutch), a theatre major with strawberry auburn hair who reciprocates his appreciation for poetry and music and, essentially anything not involving a jock strap. On the surface, she checks every box of the manic-pixie-dream-girl archetype, but Deutch’s on-screen affability and Linklater’s deft script both assist in circumventing the trope. She ends up feeling like an actual person, rather than a crutch devised to move the story forward.
Linklater has proven to have a knack for writing animated dialogue between two equally well-educated souls. His “Before” trilogy is a fan favorite among weepy cinephiles (myself included *sniff) for exactly this reason, and he employs this same conversation technique with Jake and Beverly. Neither of them are experts in the heady topics they attempt to explore, but they both have an aptitude and awareness that captures the “I’m a college freshmen and I have ideas damn it” mindset. It can be assured that Linklater has spent enough time participating in intelligent discussion and, more importantly, has listened, as opposed to waiting to talk.
Jake’s “jock or artist” dichotomy becomes the crux of the entire picture. This inner conflict isn’t exactly original, but what differentiates “Everybody Wants Some!!” from other such coming-of-age films is that Jake's transition from youth to adulthood feels almost ancillary. Unlike “Dazed and Confused” or “American Graffiti” that emphasize the importance of character choices, “Everybody Wants Some!!” is about the discovery that choices exist in the first place. We only witness the three days leading up to Jake’s fall term, closing out just shy of his first classroom lecture. As a result, his revelations are unobtrusive. He’s someone cautiously approaching a crossroads, and we view him just before his crucial pivot.
But what direction will he turn? Here’s hoping Linklater gets around to answering that someday.
Maybe in another 23 years.
5/5
At a Glance:
Title: “Everybody Wants Some!!”
Director: Richard Linklater
Starring: Blake Jenner, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Glen Powell, Wyatt Russell, Will Brittain, J. Quinton Johnson, Temple Baker, Juston Street
Richard Linklater's "Everybody Wants Some!!" is a consistently pleasant time-capsule, complete with a talented cast of soon-to-be known young actors.
See it at Eugene's Bijou Art Cinemas at 3:30 and 8:30.
