While “The Curse of La Llorona” may have angered real world healers and scholars with their promotional stunts, the horror film brought good fortune at the box office. It was the lowest opening weekend movie in the “Conjuring” franchise, but that didn’t stop it from topping the charts on a horribly awful weekend. It was the worst box office weekend since 2005 with theaters only pulling in $112 million in ticket sales.
The Warner Bros. horror
film based on a Mexican legend about a woman who murdered her children and
wanders the world looking for them brought in $26.5 million according to studio
estimates Sunday, putting it in the top spot on its opening weekend — the last
before “Avengers: Endgame” arrives to dominate.
“The Curse of La Llorona”
ended the two-week
reign of “Shazam!” in the top spot. The DC Comics superhero comedy was
second with $17.3 million, continuing its strong run with a three-week domestic
total of $121.3 million and giving Warner Bros. a 1-2 finish.
The inspirational
“Breakthrough,” the first release from 20th Century Fox since Disney acquired
the studio, was third with $11.1 million, a respectable opening for the
modestly budgeted faith-based film.
The reign of “La Llorona”
will not last. Its top finish came on a quiet Easter weekend as studios cleared
a path for the wildly
anticipated “Avengers: Endgame,” the Disney and Marvel juggernaut that
should disintegrate all competition for several weeks to come.
Easter weekend saw very
few new releases — and none with large budgets — giving smaller films like “La
Llorona” a chance to sneak in a few dollars.
“Putting this movie in
this sweet spot right before the opening of ‘Endgame’ really paid big dividends
for Warner Bros.” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore.
“It was a brilliant stroke of scheduling to place a horror movie right there.”
The film overcame grim reviews (32% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) to win over audiences. Some scholars and critics also harshly criticized the film for a marketing campaign that involved using traditional Mexican healers for “spiritual cleansings” before screenings.
It was one of three horror
films in the top 10 over the weekend — “Pet Sematary” and “Us” were the other
two — at the end of a winter-spring stretch that along with Halloween has
become a heyday for the genre.
Next week, even though it
will still be April, summer essentially begins for Hollywood as Disney looks
for “Endgame” to have possibly the biggest opening of all time.
“The summer season usually
doesn’t start until the first weekend of May, but Marvel can bend the calendar
to their will,” Dergarabedian said. “They can say, ‘We’re going the last Friday
in April, here’s your summer.’”
The receipts for “Captain
Marvel” surged in its seventh week this weekend. It brought in $9.1 million to
put it past $400 million in domestic box office, with audiences likely wanting
to take in a small piece of the Marvel cinematic story before “Endgame.”
The comedy “Little” was
fifth in its second week for Universal. “Dumbo” finally crossed the $100
million threshold as it faded to sixth in its fourth week of a disappointing
performance for a live-action Disney release.
The Curse of La Llorona and Breakthrough
North American Box Office
Estimated ticket sales for
Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Where available, the latest
international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included.
1. “The Curse of La
Llorona,” $26.5 million ($30 million international).
2. “Shazam!” $17.3
million. ($22 million international).
3. “Breakthrough,” $11.1
million.
4. “Captain Marvel,” $9.1
million ($6.5 million international).
5. “Little,” $8.5 million.
6. “Dumbo,” $6.8 million.
($13.7 million international).
7. “Pet Sematary,” $4.9
million ($5.5 million international).
8. “Missing Link,” $4.4
million
9. “Us,” $4.3 million
10. “Hellboy,” $3.9
million.
Worldwide Box Office
Estimated ticket sales for
Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore.
Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are
also included.
With the decade long saga of “Avengers: Endgame” coming to an end, directors Anthony and Joseph Russo are asking fans one big final favor. Please don’t spoil the highly anticipated film’s sure to be mouth dropping ending. In today’s world, that is a big ask as there’s always one person who loves to spoil it for everyone else.
That leads us to another thing with today’s world where true leaders are far and few between. Marvel’s superheroes could teach many of today’s so-called people in charge a thing or two about what makes a real leader. It’s the iconic characters that make these movies the $1 billion prizes that they are. Heroes like Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow have enriched the comic book genre, providing consumers with not only action and humor, but fine examples with how to be efficient leaders.
According to some experts in this area, here are the top leadership traits that can be learned from the original six Avengers.
Tony Stark/Iron Man:
Iron Man, played by
Robert Downey Jr., is a billionaire capitalist who went from being a weapon’s
dealer to a world leading clean energy innovator in Marvel’s cinematic
universe. Gregory O’Gallagher, founder of Kinobody and a renown fitness Youtuber,
cited Tony Stark’s “crazy confidence” as his most valuable characteristic.
“Iron Man has crazy
confidence and he leads his people with it. It’s almost over the top, but it’s
grounded in reality,” O’Gallagher said. “He’s highly intelligent and very calm
even when he is in the face of danger. So people look to him for answers
because he seems to have it all together.”
Steve Rogers/ Captain America
Chris Evans’ “Captain
America” may be the heart and soul of the team, but it is his determination
that defines him, according to Stephen G. Sainato, personal coach and founder
of Extraordinary Coaching & Leadership.
“Leaders never give
up. Leaders never give in. Leaders are 100% committed to their mission. For as
long as they’re breathing, leaders keep moving forward no matter what,” Sainato
said. “Whatever dream you have, whatever calling you hear, whatever mission
you’re on … it’s possible. The journey won’t be easy and you’ll most
assuredly get knocked out a few times. Get back up. Never give up. Keep moving forward.
It’s possible and it’s worth it!”
Thor
Chris Hemsworth’s
“Thor” has been reinvented in recent films. 2017′s “Thor: Ragnarok” humorized
the character and last year’s “Avengers: Infinity War” picked up where Thor’s
last outing took off. When it comes to what leadership traits the “God of
Thunder” possesses, Sainato thinks there are two: self-care and celebration.
Thor is known for his pride and making it clear that he comes from royal blood.
But with Thor’s joyful attitude comes a warrior who does not stop until he wins
in battle.
“Self-care allows us
to serve, contribute, and fight at a greater, more effective level,” Sainato
said. “Great leaders also recognize when it’s time to celebrate a victory (a
form of self-care) and enjoy the fruits of one’s labor.”
Natasha Romanova/Black Widow
Scarlett Johansson
will play the super spy “Black Widow” for the seventh time in “Avengers:
Endgame.” The critically acclaimed actress recently spoke on her character’s
story arc, saying: “She [the character] is someone who’s
understanding of her own self-worth, and that is powerful to see a woman on
screen represented that way.”
The Black Widow
character, who will be getting her own movie, has had a mysterious past in the
Marvel cinematic universe. However, it is a past that is hinted to be flawed
and troublesome.
It is Black Widow’s
decisiveness that makes her a great leader, according to Connie Dieken, a Fortune
500 leadership communication coach and acclaimed author. “Today’s leaders, not
unlike super heroes, have the opportunity (and the responsibility) to influence
major change in their organizations,” Dieken said. “Most chief executives are
fully capable of making extraordinary gains with the challenges they face — and
I believe they want to. To do that, like Natasha, they must embrace that change
begins with them.”
Clint Barton/Hawkeye
Jeremy Renner’s
“Hawkeye” has always been more of a second thought, overshadowed by some of his
team’s more lucrative superstars. Yet that all changed when Renner was notably
absent from last year’s “Infinity War,” with co-director Anthony Russo promising a
“long play” vision for the character, which will be revealed in “Endgame.”
Fans realized just
how important Hawkeye’s hustle is to the Avengers and it’s because of the
character’s drive that Sainato thinks he’s such a strong leader. Although he
only fights with a bow and arrow, his resilience is critical to the Avengers
team.
“Leaders recognize
that when they step in the ring, a fight will be awaiting them,” Sainato said.
“Leaders are valiant warriors prepared to get knocked down and put their lives
on the line.”
In the words of
Hawkeye: ”[It] Doesn’t matter what you did, or what you were. If you go out
there, you fight.”
Bruce Banner/Hulk
The traits of “The
Incredible Hulk” are not traditionally thought of when describing a good
leader. He is a hero with an aggressive temper, who often loses control and is
not communicable. However, O’Gallagher thinks that the Mark Ruffalo character
actually stands for something much deeper than rage: ambition. For example, the
Hulk does not stop until his mission is complete. Although he may be extreme
with his anger, he stops at no cost to achieve what he is striving for.
“People want to be on
his side because his anger could be used to his advantage. He gets work done.
His anger represents something deeper like an ambition,” He said. “Perhaps it
gives you a sense of ease and comfort. So it provides more confidence and
protection.”
Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame directors, Anthony and Joseph Russo, tweeted a letter on Tuesday written to their fans.
“This
is it. This is the end,” the brothers said. “The end of an
unprecedented narrative mosaic spanning eleven years and eleven
franchises.”
Marvel’s
Infinity Saga began in 2008 and “Endgame” is the 22nd film in the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, which features characters such as Iron Man, Captain
Marvel and Black Panther.
“Because
so many of you have invested your time, your hearts, and your souls into these
stories, we’re once again asking for your help,” the Russo Brothers said.
“When you see Endgame in the coming weeks, please don’t spoil it for
others, the same way you wouldn’t want it spoiled for you.”
And, of
course, the directors had to reference last year’s rollout of “Avengers:
Infinity War,” when they started the hashtag #ThanosDemandsYourSilence.
“Remember,
Thanos still demands your silence,” they said.
“The Curse of La Llorona might have failed with healers and scholars who felt the Warner Bros. and New Line promotion of the film was “offensive and demeaning,” but that didn’t keep it from outperforming at the Easter weekend box office. The movie topped box office charts with $26.5 after opening in 3,372 theaters in North America.
It’s the latest horror film to outperform expectations, proving that the genre is far from dead. It also proved to be critic-proof as it received a 32 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It was the worst box office weekend since 2005 with theaters only pulling in $112 million in ticket sales. You can be sure that any big films were not put in the week ahead of Disney and Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” which will easily make all kinds of history when it opens April 26.
The promotion for the movie “The Curse of La Llorona” using traditional Mexican healers for “spiritual cleansings” before screenings of the horror film is drew strong criticism from healers and scholars who say the stunts were offensive and demeaning.
Leading up to the Friday
release of the movie based on a Mexican folktale, Warner Bros. invited healers
known as curanderos to give audiences cleanings called “limpias.” The studio
also dispatched Cuban-born, Los Angeles-based healer Salvador Gata to “bless”
an audience before the March 15 premiere at SXSW at The Paramount Theatre in
Austin, Texas.
In addition, photos posted
on social media show images of supposed healers providing ceremonial cleansings
in front of posters of “The Curse of La Llorona,” then celebrating as if
attending a party.
“I’m working on the movie
La Llorona and am looking for a curandero to do limpias before my movie
screenings,” publicist Nahir Wold wrote San Diego-based curandera Grace Sesma
in an email. “Let me know if this is something you would be interested in
doing!”
Sesma said she ignored the
invite until she started seeing photos of purported limpias at screenings
online. That angered her and she posted the email on her Facebook page.
“I found it quite
shameful,” Sesma said. “It heightens the fear factor around a traditional
practice and commodifies and exploits our culture just to get people to see
their movie.”
But Miguel Franco, a
curandero based in Los Angeles, said Warner Bros. wasn’t looking for
stereotypes when the studio invited him several times at various events for the
movie.
“Working at press junkets,
offering my services to people from all walks of life, including several
well-known people, influencers, and media has allowed me to share my gift with
people who normally would not have sought me out,” Franco said. He called the
experience “overwhelmingly positive.”
Wold did not immediately
return emails and phone messages left by Movie TV Tech Geeks.
Tonita Gonzales, an
internationally known curandera based in Albuquerque, called the promotion an
“outrage and an appropriation” of Mexican American culture.
“The limpia is a cleansing
that helps people see the holy that’s within them,” Gonzales said. “To us this
to promote a movie, especially during (Easter Weekend), is disturbing.”
The production hired
curanderos as consultants to make sure the curandero in the film was portrayed
accurately and with sensitivity, Warner Bros. officials said. The studio
declined further comment.
“The Curse of La Llorona,”
starring Linda Cardellini and Raymond Cruz, centers on the Mexican folklore of
La Llorona, a crying female spirit who takes children. Cruz, who plays a
curandero and protector in the movie, is one of many Latino actors featured in
a cast that includes comedian Paul Rodriguez and Marisol Ramirez, who plays La
Llorona.
Curanderismo is the art of
using traditional healing methods like herbs and plants to treat various
ailments. Long practiced in Native American villages of Mexico and other parts
of Latin America, curanderos also are found in New Mexico, south Texas, Arizona
and California.
Anthropologists believe
curanderismo remained popular among poor Latinos because they didn’t have
access to health care. But they say the field is gaining traction among those
who seek to use alternative medicine.
A limpia is something
performed for those suffering from trauma like sexual abuse, Sesma said. “It’s
not supposed to protect you from being scared at the movies.”
University of New Mexico
professor Eliseo “Cheo” Torres, who hosts an annual conference in Albuquerque
on curanderismo, said the tale of La Llorona has nothing to do with curanderos,
even if there are curanderos in the film. “I don’t see the connection and this
probably will be offensive to those practicing traditional healing,” Torres
said. “Whoever put this promotion together likely has no idea what they are
doing.”
Andrew Chesnut, the Bishop
Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth
University and a scholar who has studied spiritual practices in Mexico, called
the movie promotion “reprehensible” and harmful.
“It will only serve to
further stigmatize curanderismo as something to be feared” since it’s
associated with a scary movie, Chesnut said. “That’s dangerous, especially
because of the climate that Mexican immigrants face right now.”
It’s a tough
time to be a fan. I have two shows that I absolutely adore, and both of those
shows delivered a gut punch last week that left me reeling. The Magicians season finale saw the
death of one of my favorite characters (and half of my favorite ship) and it
was both excruciatingly well done and absolutely heartbreaking (and maybe a bit
problematic too). The very next night, Supernatural
aired its penultimate episode of Season 14. I was already raw from the
anticipatory grieving about Supernatural
ending this time next year, and then The
Magicians ripped me apart, so I went into watching “Jack In The Box” with
more trepidation and dread than anticipation.
To those of
you saying hey, why can’t you just watch the Show and love it? Let me just say
that I would give ANYTHING to be able to do that right now. I DO love it, I
will always love it. What I really want to do is squee about it all the time. But last week’s episode left me feeling sad
and vaguely sick to my stomach, so there’s not a lot of squee to be had right
now.
I always go
back and do a rewatch before I write my review, but today I found every excuse
not to. Have to run out and pick up the ham for tomorrow’s dinner. Have to
grade some papers. Have to clean….and water the plants (we have lot of plants,
that’s a 30 minute job)…have to….
Finally I couldn’t put it off any longer, and the rewatch made me feel
every bit as sick to my stomach as the first watch did. I guess you can say
that means the episode was well done, because it was clearly crafted to be
upsetting (just as the episode before was crafted to be very sad), but when I
don’t want to watch it, I’m not sure that’s the level of upset the Show was
going for.
There were
lots of times back in the day when fandom would all go online after a rip-you-apart
episode of Supernatural and post tons
of icons (predecessor of gifs) saying “Damn You Kripke!” The Show has never played it the easy way,
and it has never been lollipops and rainbows. It’s a story filled with tragedy,
but it has also always been a story with hope and with characters I loved
fiercely, who were often heroic in the face of tragedy. Terrible things have
happened to our heroes over the years, and they’ve had to make terrible
decisions to save the world and each other, but this episode was particularly
hard to swallow. I’m well aware that my emotions (like most of the fandom’s)
are heightened because we know we have only 21 episodes left of this story that
is so important to us. That makes every episode that doesn’t hit quite right
for me seem even more upsetting than it would have before we knew the end was
imminent. So with that in mind, here are my thoughts on ‘Jack In The Box.’
We’ve known
the episode title for quite a while, so everyone knew that Jack was probably
going to end up in that goddamn box, but
I for one didn’t want to believe it. The Ma’lak box was so profoundly upsetting
to the fandom when Dean was determined to get in it, and his nightmare so horrifying,
that the thought of Jack in that box was almost unthinkable. So I guess I chose
not to think about it. Still, as the ‘Then’ segment started, a chilling dread
began to settle over me. Please Show, don’t go there. Please?
We open with a memorial service for Mary in the bunker. The AU hunters and other people who’ve hunted with her are there, her photo (or rather Sam Smith’s photo) and John’s journal on the table. Sam (Jared Padalecki), Dean (Jensen Ackles), and Cas (Misha Collins)join the group but only Dean speaks. He’s carefully composed, makes a joke even, while Sam stands silent, nodding in agreement.
Dean: We lost our mom once before…
It’s
something important to remember when you look at Dean’s behavior in this
episode. There’s this thing with grief that’s called the “fishhook effect”. A
new loss “hooks into” all the old loss and pulls it up like a fish snagged on a
line, so that the pain of the new loss brings up all the pain of the old one
and it’s overwhelming. That’s what happens to Dean here, I think. Unlike Sam,
he remembers the horrible pain of losing his mother as a four year old,
something that has shaped his life ever since and left him with a reservoir of
anger that he’s channeled into making him an often ruthless hunter.
Dean
expresses their gratitude that they got to know her and what she was really
like, a smart and stubborn hunter who couldn’t cook worth a damn.
Dean: Mom, you weren’t here long enough….
But we’re glad for the time we had.
There’s a
weird and jarring moment in the middle of all this where AU Bobby suddenly
appears and tosses a hatchet across the room to kill one of the guests, who
apparently is a wraith, but WTF? It was all very odd.
AU Bobby
says what we’re all thinking – that maybe Dean is like him, “bein’ teary in
public’s not my style.”
That’s for
sure because Bobby doesn’t seem very torn up at all for someone who was maybe
kinda sorta having a bit of a thing with Mary.
At any rate,
it’s soon clear that something is up with Dean. Sam suggests they open Ketch’s
bottle of Scotch and hang out and talk about Mom.
Dean: (almost coldly) Talk about Mom?
Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?
Ouch.
He boxes
things up with steely motivation, like he thinks he can just box up his grief
over losing his mother (again).
Courtesy of
that grief and loss course I’m currently teaching, Dean and Sam struggle to
understand each other in this episode or to be there for each other because
they have two very different styles of grieving. Sam is an intuitive griever –
he wants to express his grief and share his feelings, eager to take in the
comfort of others. Dean, on the other hand, is an instrumental griever. He
keeps his feelings to himself and tries to DO something instead – like plan a
memorial and box up his mother’s things. Neither can help the other right now,
and that’s heartbreaking.
Cas, Sam and
Bobby break out the Scotch, but disagree about what to do about Jack.
Cas: We need to find Jack…and help him.
Bobby: I liked the kid… but if his human
side is gone, he’s an unstoppable monster who don’t know right from wrong, and
he needs to be put down!
Bobby sets
off to do just that, and Dean takes off saying he needs to get out of there.
When the next scene opens, we see that Dean has parked the Impala in the woods
and is sitting alone on a fallen log. He looks around one last time to make
sure nobody is watching him, and then he finally breaks down. Jensen Ackles can
make you believe grief like no one else, and he sobbed for real here. I can’t
help but wonder if he was crying real tears knowing he will be losing Dean
Winchester soon, the way so many of us keep crying. At any rate, it was a heartbreaking
scene. Ackles talked about it at a recent convention, saying that it was a
brutal scene to film because it was cold and pouring rain and they needed to
shoot from above so there couldn’t be any shelter for him. It sounded like it
took a long time to film, so it’s sort of a shame it was so short. It got the
point across though. Dean is hurting – BAD. He just can’t let anyone know it.
And what is
the most common ‘cover’ emotion when someone is hurting that badly? You guessed
it. Anger.
When Dean
returns to the bunker, Sam tries again to talk to him about their shared loss.
Sam: How’re you feeling?
Dean: What’re you working on?
He avoids,
evades, won’t go there.
Sam tries
again, saying that he can’t stop thinking about Mom. Sam is trying to work
things through, come to some kind of terms with Mary’s death. He wants to take
solace in knowing that Mary is in Heaven – in a great place. With John.
Dean: (coldly) Know what else? There
wasn’t even enough of her left to try to bring her back.
Oh Dean.
You’re in a bad bad place right now.
He’s clearly
grieving – we KNOW he’s grieving – but it’s all channeled into anger right now.
He keeps thinking of his mother incinerated, and you can see what it’s doing to
him.
Sam is also
in a bad place, trying to come to terms with the loss of the mother he finally
got a chance to know, only to have her taken away again too soon. He keeps
trying to reach out to Dean, but Dean just can’t express his grief or even hear
Sam’s.
And that
hurts.
Meanwhile, Jack sits alone at a train station, perhaps as a metaphor for how badly he wishes he could escape and get away from the disaster that his life has become. He begs his mother to tell him what to do, but all he has is Lucifer tormenting him, telling him that Sam and Dean never loved him and that they hate him now.
Oh Jack.
I complained
last week that I wasn’t able to ‘go there’ with Show when Mary died, because
they just hadn’t given me enough time with her or reason to feel a bond with
her. I know some people feel that way about Jack, and in truth, I at first was
doubtful that I’d be able to go there with him either. We got more time with
Jack and saw a bit more reason to feel affection for him (or to understand the
Winchesters’ affection for him) but it could have been more. I didn’t entirely
buy the swiftness with which the Winchesters accepted him as “family” – they
toss that term around too easily these days, it seems, and Lucifer’s son was an
unlikely adoptee. I questioned bringing in a younger actor, as though somehow
Sam and Dean and Cas were too “old” and the Show needed a teenager to be on the
CW. They mostly traded on Alex Calvert’s ability to make Jack appear naïve and
eager to please, but Calvert did such a nice job of making Jack appealing that
I ended up buying into Jack despite feeling a bit manipulated into it. I was at
times aware that the Show was almost certainly setting us up to accept Jack so
they could turn him darkside, but apparently not aware enough to be totally
prepared for it.
Cas goes to
Heaven looking for Naomi’s help in finding Jack, only to discover Dumah is in
charge with Naomi locked up because she let the Empty invade. (Heaven is just
seriously full of assholes, honestly.)
Cas tells her about Jack, which is probably a terrible mistake (It is).
Dumah goes straight to Jack, telling him everything he wants to hear (the accident wasn’t his fault, he can still make the world a better place and even save Heaven and then Sam and Dean will be happy with him.) It hurts to see how badly Jack wants to make things right, how naively he just believes Dumah and how coldly she manipulates him for her own gain. Angels really are dicks.
Look at the
hope on his face when he thinks he can redeem himself.
Jack turns
the anti-Heaven pro-rationalism professor into a pillar of salt, clearly
feeling good about what Dumah tells him is doing good. It makes it very very
clear that Jack really is horribly dangerous, and yet the emotion I keep
feeling is sympathy for him anyway, I can’t help it. He really doesn’t get it.
That, of course, doesn’t make him any less dangerous.
Dumah
installs him on his father’s throne in Heaven and tells him to listen for
people who want to be angels.
Sure enough, he hears a congregation who is praying about going to Heaven and appears to them with the news that he can do that. They’re appropriately in awe of Jack and his shadowy wings – but then the not-quite-as-pious pastor comes in and tries to shut it down, and Jack shuts him down. Once again, Biblically – this time infested with worms that come popping out of him and EWWWW.
Rationally,
this is clear evidence that Jack is capable of doing unspeakably horrible
things to people. He has no empathy for the tormented man, just looks pleased
that he did what he’s “supposed to do”. It’s crystal clear that he has to be
stopped, but once again, I also feel bad for how badly he’s being manipulated
and how his desire to do what the Winchesters would approve of is making him so
vulnerable to that manipulation.
He gleefully
makes angels out of the congregation, which was confusing – how come he could
do that? All he needed were vessels? Angels true form isn’t human anyway, so I
don’t…. Head scratch.
This whole
story bit is reminiscent of Cas’ Godstiel stint, where he too thought he was
doing the right thing by playing God. In this show, everyone wants to be God.
Except God!
Back at the
bunker, Castiel tells the Winchesters that the angels will help them find Jack.
Dean is understandably skeptical. Smart!Sam finds the professor turned into a
pillar of salt, and then Show makes me pissy.
Dean: Why does that sound familiar?
Really,
Show? Dean absolutely has known about the story of Lot in the past, and has
even referenced it. Grrr.
They visit
the poor worm-infested guy, and both Sam and Dean are clearly impacted by the
horror of what Jack did. Also, tiny
shallow detour – the boys look nice in their Fed suits.
That leads
into one of the scenes that was so hard to watch. Dean tells Sam that he knows
what they need to do – put Jack in the Ma’lak box.
Me: Oh God, they really are going there…
Sam doesn’t
want to, protests that there’s no way Jack will go along with that, but Dean
persists and tells him why Jack will. Because they’re going to lie to him.
Despite his
rage, it’s not that Dean is entirely okay with this either. You can see him
close his eyes and steel himself for this, both what they’re going to do to
Jack and I think also that he’s going to try to convince Sam of something he
knows that Sam will not want to do.
Dean to Sam: Because you’re gonna be so damn
sincere.
Sam: What? Why me?
Dean: Because you’ve always been in his
corner.
It’s the truth.
And that makes it horrifying. Sam clearly does not want to go along with this
plan, but I also don’t think he can think of any alternative (and neither can
I). They know from what Jack is doing, as well as from how he killed their
mother, that he can’t be out there ripe for manipulation and capable of doing
very awful things. And Dean is so sure that this is the only way, I think Sam
goes along with it because he just doesn’t know what else to do. They are also both
unbalanced with grief – entire lifetimes of grief – and raw from the loss of their
mother at Jack’s hands. It’s a recipe for disaster and questionable decisions.
Meanwhile,
Castiel forces his way back into Heaven and has it out with Dumah, realizing
how she’s been manipulating Jack. Unfortunately instead of just yanking Jack
out of there as would have made sense, he leaves the room to confront her.
Cas: You’re using Jack to solidify your
power!
Dumah: I’m saving the world, I’m saving
Heaven.
What is it
with everyone getting power hungry and wanting to run heaven?? I don’t even
really see how Jack is solidifying her power, but anyway, she makes the mistake
of threatening to snap her fingers and take away John and Mary’s heaven if Cas
doesn’t step down.
And Cas
pulls out an angel blade and kills her. He can be as steely cold and determined
as Dean when he believes it’s the right thing to do.
I really
liked Cas in this episode – he was closer to early seasons Castiel than he’s
been in a while, badass and full of conviction. Misha Collins likes to joke
that they made Cas less of a badass because he’s not one, but in this episode
he absolutely brought it – this is not a Castiel that I would mess with! I was
thoroughly convinced of his genuine loyalty and love for Jack and his
willingness to do what it takes to try to save him.
The next
scene with Sam and Dean was hard for me to watch. Even on rewatch, when I knew
what was going to happen, I found myself wanting to fast forward through the
scene of Sam reaching out to Jack and manipulating him just like Dumah and
everyone else has been. Everything Sam says to Jack should be the truth – it’s
almost like he’s spouting the message of the Show itself – except it’s all a
lie. And that HURTS. I hated hearing Sam do that so much, it made my stomach
turn.
He tells
Jack they forgive him, that they’re family. That they need to see him – it’s
what their mother, and his mother, would want.
Sam: We just want things to be the way
they were before.
It’s exactly
what Jack wants, and Sam pulls it off perfectly, and my skin crawls to hear it.
Jack appears (smiling proudly): I’ve been making angels. I really missed you guys.
Oh Jack.
He tries to
explain about killing Mary, and his lack of a soul makes it all come out very
very wrong.
Jack: I regret it. The accident.
Dean and Sam
both flinch when he refers to their mother’s death in the unemotional and
impersonal term “the accident”.
Jack: She kept pushing…before I knew it,
it was all over.
Dean: It being the accident…
That was a
chilling conversation. This is the only time I felt like maybe this was the
only answer, because Jack is so off here. It veers close to the classic abuse
scenario, the whole “she wouldn’t shut up and I just snapped” non-explanation
and Jack’s simultaneous regret but lack of emotion about it. Without a soul, he
truly is scary. They maybe should have played that up a little more if they
wanted me to go along completely with what comes next.
Let’s take a
second to talk about how incredible all three actors were in this scene.
If Jack had
the capacity for empathy at that moment, he would have seen clearly that Dean
Winchester’s eyes are cold as steel. He keeps his voice carefully modulated
throughout this awful conversation, even forces the corner of his mouth up in
an almost-smile at times, but there is zero warmth in his eyes. They are the eyes
of someone who wants to destroy you, and if I were Jack I would be effing
terrified.
I don’t even
know how Ackles manages it, but you can see Dean’s every emotion as he
carefully maneuvers his way through this delicate negotiation with Jack. He’s
like a panther sizing up his prey and planning his every move, careful not to
give away his intention too soon, lethal strength tightly coiled until it’s
time to spring. It was absolutely chilling to watch, and because it was
directed at Jack, it left me shaking I was so upset.
The tension in this scene is brilliantly depicted by all three of the actors. Jared Padalecki is equally amazing as he manages to make Sam’s slowly breaking heart evident even as Sam resolutely sticks to the script and forces himself to keep going. He still does have empathy for Jack, and ironically it’s that remaining bit of genuine affection that convinces Jack that Sam and Dean are trying to do what’s best for him. And that, more than anything, got to me.
Jack
believes them. Alex Calvert was also brilliant, making Jack appear vulnerable
and human as he wrestles with his anxiety and doubt and decides to trust the
men he’s looked up to so much. He climbs
in, lies down, goes along with it all. As soon as he’s in, Dean springs into
action, locking the cover in place. He looks to Sam then, maybe for validation.
Sam closes his eyes, agony written all over his face. Even Dean looks a little shocked by what
they’ve done.
I think Sam
leaves the room then because he can’t stand what they’ve done. The door closes
and Jack is truly alone.
Inside the
box, the inevitable panic sets in, and Jack plaintively calls out for the men
he’s come to think of as fathers.
Jack: Sam! Dean! Are you guys still there?
Sam?
I was a
sobbing mess at that point, but even worse, I was sick to my stomach. The Show
has done way too good a job at making me care about Jack to allow me to feel
like lying to him and tricking him into a box all alone for the rest of his existence
is okay. Even if the logical part of my brain can see that it probably IS the
only option, all my emotions are railing against it.
Neither Sam
nor Dean are unaffected, but they also do not go back in the room to reassure
Jack.
I guess it’s
pretty clear I was that mom who wasn’t very good at not going back in the bedroom
to reassure my crying babies when they were supposed to be going to sleep
either, isn’t it?
Dean pours
them drinks. It’s not in celebration, it’s in an attempt to drown the sadness. Sam
doesn’t touch his.
Sam: So what do we do now? Go on with
Jack locked up in there forever?
Dean: We have to.
Sam: I don’t know if I can do that.
I’m clinging
to that one small bit of dialogue, that Sam hasn’t given up, that maybe he’s
determined to try to find a way to fix Jack’s soul – or something! I find it
hard to believe that Sam could live with knowing Jack was in there terrified
and alone forever, soul or no soul. I mean, I can’t live with it!
Cas returns
and tells Sam and Dean that Jack was being manipulated by Dumah, that he was
trying to do what he thought would please them.
He says they have to find Jack, and Sam answers that Jack is already
there.
Dean: He’s in the Ma’lak box.
Cas: NO.
Dean: And that’s where he’s gonna stay.
Cas: Sealed in a living death??
Dean: I think deep down he knows it’s
best….
Cas: No! You’re like Dumah…. Manipulating
him…
I was pretty
much team Castiel here. Although I think Dean’s comment is telling. He’s not as
unfeeling as he seems – he’s already trying to rationalize his decision,
telling himself that even Jack probably knows that it was the only way. After
all, he was willing to get in that box himself if it kept the world safe, so
it’s not a huge leap to convince himself that’s the best thing for Jack too.
At that
moment, perhaps predictably, in the box, Jack hallucinates the ever not helpful
Lucifer. He goads Jack, telling him he got played, that he can’t trust the
Winchesters and they don’t trust him. Jack looks so vulnerable here, a kid with
his cell phone clutched in one hand… I know he’s not a kid, he’s a powerful Nephilim without a soul, but…
Jack accesses all his power, and the bunker begins to shake, bathed in red light as the intruder alarms go off. Cas, Sam and Dean run through the bunker, walls shaking, to find the Ma’lak box exploded. Through the smoke, a shadowy figure with glowing eyes appears.
Caps by kayb625
Sam: Jack?
It’s a
reprise of that very first scene where Sam found Jack huddled in the dark in
the corner, only his glowing eyes visible.
Fade to
black. One more episode left.
The fandom
was ripped apart by this episode almost as much as my heart was. Some people
attacked Dean, going so far as to call him a monster who had locked up a naïve
child in a box. Some people attacked the writers, saying that Sam in particular
would never go along with such a plan. Other people attacked those people,
saying that anyone who turned on Sam and Dean had not been paying attention all
these years – that the Winchesters can be ruthless when they need to be and
that they had no other choice.
I just felt
sad. And still a bit sick. These are not my favorite writers, and some of the
dialogue particularly between Sam and Dean was so disjointed it barely made
sense. I don’t know if it was writing or editing or both, but they didn’t even
seem to be talking to each other at times. Talk about not being on the same
page – perhaps it was a bit of that literally.
I’ve feared
that Jack was going to be the “Big Bad” of the season all along, but I really
did not want it. I don’t like seeing Dean Winchester, the fictional character
I’m crazy about, so cold and calculating, even if it makes sense. I don’t like
the thought of anyone or anything trapped in that effing box for all time. I
don’t like Sam calling Jack family as a trick and a lie instead of with the
genuine affection he has had before for Jack. It’s all so horrible, and on top
of the grief I’m already dealing with, it honestly felt like too much. I’m not
sure I’m ever going to want to watch that episode again, and I rarely say that
about this Show.
I don’t
think Sam and Dean are monsters. I think, as always, they did what they had to
do. I don’t think what they did wasn’t close enough to in character to be
believable – I think they saw this as their only option. I think the depth of
their grief hasn’t begun to be explored, and that’s partly why this seemed so
hard to swallow. They just lost their Dad for the second time too, after one
blissful night of their entire family being together. Now their Mom is gone for
the second time as well, and it’s just too much. And this isn’t the first time
they’ve had to make an impossible decision to do what they thought would keep
the world safe. Or the first time they did whatever it took to go after a
‘monster’ who killed their mother. It’s just that this time, that ‘monster’
also saved Sam’s life, and Castiel’s life. That makes things a lot more
complicated than the YED, who definitely was not trying to “do the right
thing”.
I don’t expect
the Winchesters to be perfect. But much like when Dean killed Amy Pond, and
when he locked Sam in the panic room, I don’t have to like what he did. Do I
have another idea? Nope. But I still hated this one. And I don’t appreciate
that the Show signed on for a Supernatural
story line that has so much of the fandom furious at one of the characters who
makes this Show the amazing thing it is. Yes, I’m protective of a fictional
character, what else is new?
Can we go
back to me 100% rooting for the Winchesters and Team Free Will to fight off
something like the YED who we all can happily root against??
I’ve never
gone into a season finale worried that the Show will take me somewhere I
genuinely do not want to go. And I’m very aware that it’s our last “season
finale” – the next one will be the series finale. I so want to have a last
hiatus that makes me full of anticipation for the next, and last, season.
Usually my
favorite shows are my solace, my go-to place when I need to escape from the
stresses and the sometimes horrible stuff of real life. Right now, Supernatural and The Magicians aren’t able to be that. Here’s hoping next week
changes that at least a little.
It appears that Mark Zuckerberg might be getting what he asked for as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may be overseeing social media titan Facebook. Also, Arizona joins the long list of states that are finally banning cellphone use and texting while driving. I don’t know how many times vehicles have nearly collided into mine from someone texting while driving, and this one is much needed in all states.
Federal regulators are reportedly considering seeking some kind of oversight of Zuckerberg’s leadership of Facebook over the social network giant’s mishandling of users’ personal information.
Discussions between Facebook and the U.S. FTC officials about its data-handling lapses have touched on holding the CEO personally accountable, The Washington Post reported Friday. Zuckerberg controls a majority of Facebook’s voting stock and has run the company since starting it at Harvard in 2004.
The Post quoted two
anonymous sources familiar with the discussions. It said putting
restraints on Zuckerberg could send a message to other tech giants that the
FTC could hold their executives accountable for privacy misdeeds.
The FTC had no comment and
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The commission opened an
investigation into Facebook last year after revelations that data mining firm
Cambridge Analytica had gathered details on as many as 87 million Facebook
users without their permission.
The FTC has been examining
whether that massive breakdown violated a settlement that Facebook reached in
2011 after government regulators concluded the Menlo Park, California, company
had repeatedly broken its privacy promises to users, who now number 2.3 billion
globally.
The FTC decree, which runs
through 2031, requires that Facebook get its users’ consent to share their
personal information in ways that aren’t allowed by their privacy settings.
The Post previously
reported the FTC is considering hitting Facebook with a multibillion-dollar
fine. That would top its previous record fine of $22.5 million, which it dealt
to Google in 2012 for bypassing the privacy controls in Apple’s Safari browser.
Facebook has in the past
year been buffeted by media coverage highlighting what critics call a cavalier
attitude toward protecting user privacy and data — and in failing to prevent
the dissemination of hate speech and misinformation on the biggest
communications medium in history.
On Thursday, its Instagram
subsidiary said in a blog post that millions more users were affected by a
password security lapse than Facebook acknowledged when announcing the problem
nearly four weeks ago.
In the initial
announcement it had said tens of thousands of passwords were stored on the site
in plain text, meaning company employees could search them.
Arizona Joins Growing Number Of
States Banning Cellphone Use While Driving
The small
list of states that allow either texting while driving or hand-held cellphone use
is shrinking after the Arizona House on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a
cellphone use ban and sent it to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey for his expected
signature.
Arizona, Missouri and
Montana had been the only three states that hadn’t banned texting while
driving. Arizona will join 16 others that bans all use of a hand-held
cellphones while driving.
The 44-16 vote on the
toughest of three proposals debated by House lawmakers Thursday comes after
years of inaction by the Republican-controlled Legislature. The Senate earlier
approved it on a 20-9 vote. Ducey has pledged to sign the measure, which takes
effect in January 2021.
More than two dozen cities
enacted local bans that will remain in effect until then.
The House rejected a weaker ban on cellphone use but approved legislation that strengthens the state’s overarching distracted driving law on a 31-29 party line vote.
Bills to restrict phone
use while driving have been introduced for a decade but haven’t advanced amid
concerns by Republicans about creating a “nanny state” that overregulates
behavior.
Supporters of the ban
pointed to the death of a police officer in January after a distracted driver
lost control and struck him on a Phoenix-area freeway. Relatives of Salt River
tribal police officer Clayton Townsend and others who have died in distracted
driving crashes gave emotional testimony, carrying photos of their loved ones
around the Capitol.
The officer’s death gave
the proposal inertia that hadn’t appeared despite tearful testimony in recent
years by relatives of people killed in accidents caused by cellphone use, said
Republican Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, who carried the measure with Rep. Noel Campbell.
The hand-held phone use
ban bars drivers holding it unless the vehicle is stopped. Calls to 911 would
be allowed. Police could issue warnings until 2021, when they could begin
writing tickets carrying fines of $75 to $149 for a first offense and up to
$250 for a second.
The second enacted
proposal doesn’t explicitly ban texting, but rather outlaws any behavior that
isn’t related to driving if it causes an “immediate hazard” or prevents the
driver from controlling their vehicles.
Democrats opposed the
distracted driving measure, saying it could lead to racial profiling by
allowing officers to stop a driver on a pretext. But Republican Rep. John
Kavanagh, a retired police officer, said a rogue officer can always find a
reason to stop a driver.
Kavanagh said he supported
both measures, because some distractions aren’t caused by cellphones and
officers need the enforcement option.
“Cellphones so consume
your consciousness that you don’t even realize how long it has your
attentions,” he said. “So a cellphone bill will take care of that problem. But
we need this bill too.”
Several lawmakers talked
of deaths or serious injuries of their family members or friends. An emotional
Republican Rep. Ben Toma recalled how his younger sister died years before
cellphones became popular when a driver distracted by a newspaper hit her with
his car.
“There is no doubt that
being on your phone while driving can be a significant distraction,” Toma said.
“But this is a much broader issue. If this bill does nothing more than save one
life we should support it.”
Judi Dench is one of those interviews you truly look forward to as you never quite know what she’ll say. If you’ve watched her on her numerous “Graham Norton Show” interviews, you’ll know what I mean. So, getting a chance to chat with the living legend was a real thrill. Unlike many stars, she doesn’t come with the usual ‘canned’ PR answers, and if you hit her with the right question, you’ll get her giggling and really letting herself go.
She discusses playing a very complicated agent, along with her upcoming “Cats” movie where she’ll be playing Old Deuteronomy. I was even able to get her to rate her “Goldeneye” M role.
Dench is back in the world of espionage — but her latest role is a far cry from James Bond’s unflappable spy chief, M.
In “Red Joan,” to be
released Friday in Britain and the United States, Dench plays an elderly
British woman whose quiet suburban life is upended when police come knocking to
accuse her of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
An indignant Joan insists
she has done nothing wrong. But as she is questioned, flashbacks reveal a
complex tale of love, loyalty and misplaced idealism.
Dench played M in seven
Bond films, from “Goldeneye” to “Skyfall.” She says she is fascinated by spies,
who are often first-rate actors.
An enduring source of
intrigue for Dench is the “Cambridge Spies,” a group of high-ranking British
intelligence officers that fed information to the Soviet Union for years. The
double agents, who included one-time MI6 counterespionage chief Kim Philby,
fended off suspicion with upper-class charm.
“There’s some footage of
Kim Philby meeting the press at a flat and saying ‘Of course I’m not (a spy),
you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick,’” Dench said in a phone
interview. “It’s the most wonderful bit of acting you can possibly see.” She
recommends the clip to young actors for study.
Directed by stage and film
veteran Trevor Nunn, “Red Joan” is based on the true story of “Granny Spy”
Melita Norwood, a civil servant living in the London suburbs who passed nuclear
secrets to Moscow for decades. When she was exposed in 1999 at the age of 87,
she expressed no regrets, saying she would do it all again.
The fictional character of
the movie’s title is Joan Stanley. Played as a young woman by Sophie Cookson,
she is a bright physics student in wartime Cambridge who becomes involved with
the quest for an atomic bomb, and with a charismatic revolutionary (Tom
Hughes).
Dench says Joan is
convinced she is acting in the name of peace, by “evening up” the nuclear arms
race.
“After Hiroshima she said,
if everybody had the same armaments, it wouldn’t happen. It would prevent the
other side from using them,” Dench said.
Then “she just got on with
her suburban life, and it obviously hadn’t occurred to her that it was an act
of treason.”
Dench feels some sympathy
for Joan’s argument. She can recall the early Cold War years, when the horrors
of World War II were still fresh and the prospect of nuclear annihilation
seemed all too real.
Dench was 5-years-old when
war broke out in 1939 and remembers huddling at the bottom of the stairs as her
home city of York in northern England was bombed.
As a young actress, she
protested against nuclear weapons, though was never a big political activist
like some contemporaries.
“I remember sitting in
Trafalgar Square during Ban the Bomb, with Vanessa Redgrave,” Dench said. “I
think Vanessa got arrested and had to say to the police, ‘You can’t arrest me,
I’ve got a matinee today.’”
Now 84, Dench shows no
sign of retiring, though she is picky about the parts she accepts.
“I don’t want to play
anybody who is my age and is dropping off the perch,” she said firmly. “The
last thing I want to play is somebody who’s being looked after in a care home.”
Her recent work defies
typecasting. Dench recently played William Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway,
in Kenneth Branagh’s “All is True.” Next up, she’ll be Old Deuteronomy in Tom
Hooper’s big-screen adaptation of the musical “Cats.”
The film offered Dench the
chance to make up for a bit of past bad luck. She was cast in the 1981 stage
production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s feline hit, but had to drop out.
“I snapped my Achilles’
tendon, so they delayed the opening,” she said. “And then when we went to the
New London (theater) to actually open it, I was in plaster and I fell off the
stage. So I knew then that my number was up.
“So it was nice to come
back in a circle and be part of it. It didn’t put me off ‘Cats’ for life.”
Dench was kind enough to shoo the
film’s PR person (who was hovering closer than a moth to a lightbulb) out to
answer some fun questions.
MTTG: Unlike Bond’s M, you made accused spy
Joan Stanley blend into her suburban London existence in “Red Joan.”
Why?
Judi
Dench: I
wanted somebody part of the background. She quietly lived her life, adored her
son, and never suspected for a moment that any of her past would ever come out.
Joan is part of the landscape. So no one would say that strange woman down the
road must have a past of some kind.
MTTG: Your hair is just so perfect, so I’m
almost afraid to ask if that’s a wild Joan wig. But is it?
Dench: That’s a very, very good wig
and they were very good about NOT keeping it in pristine condition. You know
you get the look of (Joan) right when you look in the mirror and you don’t
particularly recognize yourself. It was very nice to take off the end of the
day. But I haven’t seen the film since I’m so allergic to seeing myself.
MTTG: You don’t watch your own movies?
Dench: I don’t see myself on film.
When I do, I’m terribly conscious of what I chose to do and not to do in a
moment. And I always am irritated. I like to watch it quite a long time
afterwards when I have forgotten all the questions I had to ask myself in the
moment. So I can look at it much more dispassionately. I’ve never even seen
“Room With A View.”
MTTG: Are you up to viewing the Bond films
yet?
Dench: I watched a bit of (1995’s)
“Goldeneye.” That was lovely. That was the first one that Pierce and
I did together and we were both frightfully nervous.
MTTG: So how does your M rate?
Dench: There were things I would have
done differently. Which is why the theatre is so wonderful. You do a
performance, someone says something, so you change it a bit. You have a bit of
a chance to get it better. Once it’s up there in celluloid, it’s there forever.
MTTG: In one “Red Joan” scene,
you’re really into cutting the shrubs …
Dench: (Interrupting) Are you going to
ask me what the people who owned the house thought? I did it very carefully. I
thought I nicely trimmed their shrubs.
MTTG: The owners no doubt now have a sign
that says “These shrubs were trimmed by Dame Judi Dench.” I aimed to
ask if you had real garden skills or was that award-worthy hedge-cutting
acting?
Dench: Do you think they are showing
people around the garden now? You never know. But I’m frightened of worms, so I
don’t do gardening. I have someone who does it for me. And I’m looking at a
huge magnolia right now. It’s wonderful.
MTTG: The “Cats” movies cast
trained together in groups to perfect their feline skills. How was that for
you?
Dench: It had been groups. But by the
time I came on board, I was private cat-trained. The cat trainer came down to
the house, which is wonderful. I was able to be a cat here in my own room.
MTTG: So can you do cat now?
Dench: Do I ‘do cat?’ That’s a
terribly funny question. Like, do I speak French? No, you don’t ‘do cat.’ That
would take years and years of practice and even cat school. You have to be
very, very serious to ‘do cat.’
For many of us, Marvel has always been a part of our lives, and the “Avengers” franchise is no different. Ten years is long chunk of our lives, but many of us have devoted ourselves to it now to see it all end with “Avengers: Endgame.” I don’t know how I feel about that yet, but it will definitely be quite a noticeable absence. Maybe not as big as for “Supernatural” fans who’ve got hit hard when Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins announced the end of the CW’s longest-running show, but it will be felt.
I can only have fingers crossed that I get picked for that CableTV Marvel Watchathon contest as that would be a great memory to have watching every Marvel film with my family here at Movie TV Tech Geeks. Yes, I’m still pitching to land that gig as it just shows how great the MCU Avengers world is at bringing us geeks together.
About five
years ago, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige found himself on a retreat in
Palm Springs plotting the future for the wild, experimental “cinematic
universe” that he helped start in 2008. He wanted to do something
that they hadn’t done. He wanted an ending.
And after a quick pitch to
Robert Downey Jr., he, directors Anthony and Joe Russo and screenwriters
Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, started plotting a way to bring this
saga to a close, brainstorming whenever they had a moment — even in between
takes of “Captain America: Civil War.”
Anyone who saw “Avengers:
Infinity War” knows they weren’t kidding around either. Thanos literally
dissolved half of humanity, including Spider-Man and Black Panther in an event
known as “the snap” that’s inspired tears, memes and more
fan theories than the internet can hold. Talk about a
cliffhanger.
Endings are a rarity in
the franchise movie-making business; especially when one’s popularity has only
multiplied as the movies of Marvel have. But Marvel Studios, which has never
shied away from a little rule-breaking, is taking a sledgehammer to that old
“don’t leave money on the table” maxim, and audiences will finally be able to
see how they do it when “Avengers: Endgame” opens nationwide on April 25.
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige
″(Ending) is
not a scary word,” Feige said. “It’s a necessary word.”
What exactly that means
for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is something of a state secret. Feige
said that this will be “definitive,” though.
“People can debate and
discuss what that means before they see the movie,” Feige said. “But for us
that means bringing to a conclusion the first three phases, the first 22 films
in the MCU, so that everything thereafter is a new start.”
So “new” in fact that
Feige won’t even discuss what’s to come beyond the July release of “Spider-Man:
Far From Home.” He won’t confirm reportedly in-the-works projects like the
“Black Widow” stand-alone, “The Eternals” or “Shang-Chi,” or talk about plans
for the 20th
Century Fox properties like “Deadpool” and “X-Men” that are now under his
purview.
They have the next five
years mapped out; they’re just not letting audiences peek behind the curtain
until after “Endgame.” It’s that big.
“How we leave ‘Endgame’
will help define where we’re going for many people,” Feige said.
But how does one talk
about a movie that no press has seen and no actors or creators are allowed to
discuss in detail? Well, carefully and cryptically.
We know some things. That
the heroes left like Iron Man (Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans),
Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo)
and War Machine (Don Cheadle) are dealing with the devastating loss post-snap
while trying to figure out what to do with Thanos. A helpful “Avenge the
Fallen” campaign served as a reminder of who survived and who didn’t (some of
the dusted were even a surprise, like “Black Panther’s” Shuri). We also know
they have a new weapon in Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, who Samuel L. Jackson’s
Nick Fury managed to page before dissolving into dust.
Will characters die,
though? Probably. Will the ones lost in “the snap,” remain gone? Unclear
(although some who have upcoming movies, like, say Spider-Man, won’t). But the
cast and filmmakers aren’t giving anything up, or even commenting on the fact
that this might be the last of Evans as Captain America, which the actor himself tweeted about months ago.
“I still don’t know what
happens in this movie,” said Larson, who actually even filmed her scenes in
“Endgame” before “Captain Marvel,” which came out earlier this year.
Filming proved an
emotional experience for many of the actors, a lot of whom have now been
working together for almost a decade or more.
“I was pretty teary-eyed,”
Evans said. “This is the culmination of a really long endeavor. It kind of wraps
up the journey for a lot of these characters.”
It led to a
lot of reflection, about where they started and how they’ve grown. Johansson
noted that she’d been developing her character for 10 years now and is excited
that Black Widow has evolved from a “sexy secretary” type to a more fully
realized woman.
Brie Larson, Robert Downey, Jr and Jeremy Renner
“The whole shoot felt
pretty nostalgic,” Hemsworth added. “We were constantly talking about when it
all started to how we pulled this off and what we were a part of.”
But he also admits he was
“kind of happy to get off the set.” An eight month shoot can wear even on Thor.
And indeed the shoot was
grueling. The directors, who did “Winter Soldier,” ″Civil War” and “Infinity
War” said it was the hardest of their life.
“This went far beyond
anything we’d ever done before,” said Anthony Russo. “There’s a reason why
movies aren’t made this way normally.”
But that this was
unconventional was also the draw.
“I think the only reason
we stuck around, is because they were committed to an ending and we’re
deconstructionists,” said Joe Russo. “We like to take things apart and see the
ramifications of what happens. ‘Winter Soldier’ the good guys became the bad
guys, ‘Civil War,’ we divorced the heroes, ‘Infinity War,’ we killed half of
them. We like to smash it and look at how you can put the pieces back
together.”
And no one,
not even Feige, regrets putting the MCU on this one-way path. That’s not to say
he never second guesses himself, however.
Two weeks before “Infinity
War” came out he had a moment of panic about the snap.
“That ending was one of
the reasons why we wanted to make the movie. That’s how we sold it to Disney.
We were confident in it,” Feige said. “But then a week or two weeks before the
film came out, I went, ‘Oh no. We’re killing all these people. What if the
audience totally rejects it?’”
Speaking just a few weeks
before “Endgame” is unleashed on the world, Feige has found himself in a
familiar spot.
Feige said: “It’s not
until the movie is completely finished, which ‘Endgame’ is now completely
finished, when you can’t touch it any more that you go, ‘Wait a minute: Should
we have touched it more?’”
Marvel’s Box Office Hits
Marvel’s
Avengers are back to save the world, and the box office.
“Avengers: Endgame”
arrives in theaters on April 26 with the conclusion of the fight between the
galaxy’s greatest heroes and Thanos, who wiped out half of all life at the end
of last year’s “Avengers:
Infinity War.” It’s one of the year’s biggest releases, and one that many
theater owners are hoping will draw huge audiences after a sluggish start to
the year at the box office.
It is the 22nd film in the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, a collection of movies that kicked off with 2008′s
“Iron Man.” Since then, Marvel films have earned $18.6 billion at the box
office, with the four “Avengers” films accounting for nearly $5 billion of that
haul. Seven of the films, including this year’s “Captain Marvel” and last
year’s sensation “Black Panther,” have earned more than a billion dollars
worldwide.
The following is a look at
how Marvel has built its cinematic juggernaut, with the film’s title, release
date, domestic gross and total worldwide
box office, as compiled by Comscore:
Marvel Box Office Breakdown
“Iron Man,” May 2008,
$318.6 million, $582 million
“The Incredible Hulk,”
June 2008, $134.8 million, $263.3 million
“Iron Man 2,” May 2010,
$312.4 million, $623.7 million
“Thor,” May 2010, $181
million, $448.7 million
“Captain America: The
First Avenger,” July 2011, $176.7 million, $371 million
“Marvel’s The Avengers,”
May 2012, $623.4 million, $1.52 billion
“Iron Man 3,” May 2013,
$409 million, $1.2 billion
“Thor: The Dark World,”
November 2013, $206.4 million, $645 million
“Captain America: The
Winter Soldier,” April 2014, $260 million, $714.3 million
“Guardians of the Galaxy,”
August 2014, $333.2 million, $773.3 million
“Avengers: Age of Ultron,”
May 2015, $459 million, $1.4 billion
“Ant-Man,” July 2015,
$180.2 million, $519.3 million
“Captain America: Civil
War,” May 2016, $408.1 million, $1.15 billion
“Doctor Strange,” May
2016, $232.6 million, $677.6 million
“Guardians of the Galaxy
Vol. 2,” May 2017, $390 million, $863.6 million
“Spider-Man: Homecoming,”
July 2017, $334.2 million, $880.2 million
“Thor: Ragnarok,” November
2017, $315 million, $854.2 million
“Black Panther,” February
2018, $700 million, $1.3 billion
“Avengers: Infinity War,”
April 2018, $679 million, $2 billion
“Ant-Man & The Wasp,”
July 2018, $217 million, $623 million
“Captain Marvel,” March
2019, $387 million; $1.06 billion
Avengers: Endgame – Who Will Die? Who Will Survive?
“Avengers:
Endgame” is only a week away from its hotly anticipated release on April 26,
and oddsmakers already think they know which superhero is going to get the ax —
er, the hammer.
“Endgame” will begin where
“Infinity War” left off, with half of the universe vaporized, and data compiled
by US-Bookies.com suggest
that nobody is expecting a happy ending this time, either.
The most likely
to survive the (possible) carnage, they say, is Black Widow (10/1 to be
slain). Captain America’s odds of perishing are even, while Iron Man (2/1) and
Thor (5/1) are hot on his cape.
The most likely to come
through victorious after Black Widow are Hawkeye and The Hulk, both at 8/1.
You can’t legally bet on
the outcome of a superhero movie in the US, although betting on the Academy
Awards was made legal in New Jersey this year. US-Bookies.com created its
“Endgame” odds using data compiled from international countries where they can
bet on Spidey all day long.
Samsung might be feeling a little 2016 deja vu with their Galaxy Fold that’s already being reported to break by some people. While it doesn’t officially go on sale until April 26, 2019, you can be sure they’ll be jumping on this quickly. Thankfully, no one has experienced an exploding battery as with the Galaxy Note 7 back then, but when a company is touting a smartphone or ‘phablet’ that you can fold, it better not break along that fold.
Some of
Samsung’s new, almost $2,000 folding phones appear to be breaking after just a
couple of days.
Journalists who received
the phones to review before the public launch said the Galaxy Fold screen
started flickering and turning black before completely fizzling out. Two
journalists said they removed a thin, protective layer from the screens that
they thought was supposed to come off, but was meant to stay.
But reporters from The
Verge and CNBC said they left that layer on and their screens still broke. A
CNBC video shows the left side of the inside screen intermittently flashing,
and the right side as unresponsive.
The phone was “completely
unusable” after two days, CNBC reporter Todd Haselton wrote.
The long-anticipated
folding phone is about the size of a standard smartphone when
folded, but can open up to the size of a small tablet. The phone is designed to
work whether closed or open; when open, the single screen display is bisected
by a crease.
Samsung promises the screen can withstand being opened and closed 200,000 times, or 100 times a day for five years.
The Galaxy Fold goes on
sale April 26 in the U.S. for $1,980, making it one of the most expensive
phones anywhere — particularly if it isn’t as durable as promised.
Samsung acknowledged it
had heard reports of the screens breaking and said it would “thoroughly inspect
these units in person to determine the cause of the matter.”
A company spokesman also
said it would make it clear that the top protective layer is necessary to
prevent scratches.
The company had a
disastrous rollout of a new phone in 2016 with the Galaxy Note 7, which Samsung eventually recalled because
its batteries were catching on fire.
Amazon, Google End YouTube Feud
Amazon and
Google are ending their nearly 2-year spat, agreeing to bring their video
streaming apps to each other’s devices.
Back in 2017, Google pulled its
popular YouTube video app from Amazon’s Fire TV after the online shopping giant
refused to sell some Google products. Amazon has since started to sell Google’s gadgets on its site.
Amazon said Thursday that
YouTube will appear on Amazon’s Fire TV devices and smart TVs in the coming
months, but did not give an exact date. Other YouTube apps, such as YouTube
Kids and YouTube TV, will be added to Fire TV devices later this year. In
addition, Amazon’s Prime Video streaming app will be added to Google’s
streaming devices and TV’s that use Google’s operating system.
“We are excited to work
with Amazon,” said Heather Rivera, YouTube’s global head of product
partnerships, in a written statement.
Zoom, Pinterest Rack Up On Stock
Market
Investors
are giving unicorn technology companies Zoom and Pinterest a rousing reception
in their debuts on the stock market.
Zoom Video Communications,
which makes video conferencing technology, soared 81% when it opened for
trading after pricing its initial public offering at $36. Pinterest, which lets
users share images of crafts and other projects, jumped 25% after pricing its
IPO at $19.
The high-flying market
debuts come less than a month after ride-hailing service Lyft began trading. In
what might be a cautionary tale for other anticipated tech IPOs, Lyft shares
surged on their first day but have since plunged back below their original
offering price.
Other high-profile
companies such as Twitter and Snap had strong initial trading days but then saw
their stock prices fall substantially in the subsequent months. Then again,
there are companies like payment processor Square, which public at $9 per
share, rose 45% on the first day of trading and now sell for around $70.
San Francisco-based
Pinterest is on track to raise more than $1.4 billion on its first day of
trading. The company has more than 250 million monthly users. Revenue, mainly
through advertising, reached $736 million last year and the company posted a
loss of $63 million.
Zoom, also based in San
Francisco, is poised to raise more than $456 million through the sale of shares
and a private placement. The company had $330 million in revenue last year and
profit of $7.6 million, making it one of the few profitable technology
companies going public this year.
Drones Helping Flooded United States
An arsenal
of new technology is being put to the test fighting floods this year as rivers
inundate towns and farm fields across the central United States. Drones,
supercomputers and sonar that scans deep under water are helping to maintain
flood control projects and predict just where rivers will roar out of their
banks.
Together, these tools are
putting detailed information to use in real time, enabling emergency managers
and people at risk to make decisions that can save lives and property, said
Kristie Franz, associate professor of geological and atmospheric sciences at
Iowa State University.
The cost of this
technology is coming down even as disaster recovery becomes more expensive, so
“anything we can do to reduce the costs of these floods and natural hazards is
worth it,” she said. “Of course, loss of life, which you can’t put a dollar
amount on, is certainly worth that as well.”
U.S. scientists said in
their spring weather outlook that 13 million people are at risk of major
inundation, with more than 200 river gauges this week showing some level of
flooding in the Mississippi River basin, which drains the vast middle of the
United States. Major flooding continues in places from the Red River in North
Dakota to near the mouth of the Mississippi in Louisiana, a map from the National Weather Service
shows.
“There are
over 200 million people that are under some elevated threat risk,” said Ed
Clark, director of the National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a flood
forecasting hub.
Much of the technology,
such as the National Water Model , didn’t exist until
recently. Fueled by supercomputers in Virginia and Florida, it came online
about three years ago and expanded streamflow data by 700-fold, assembling data
from 5 million river miles (8 million kilometers) of rivers and streams
nationwide, including many smaller ones in remote areas.
“Our models simulate
exactly what happens when the rain falls on the Earth and whether it runs off
or infiltrates,” Clark said. “And so the current conditions, whether that be
snow pack or the soil moisture in the snow pack, well that’s something we can
measure and monitor and know.”
Emergency managers and dam
safety officials can see simulations of the consequences of flood waters
washing away a levee or crashing through a dam using technology developed at
the University of Mississippi — a web-based system known as DSS-WISE . The
software went online in 2017 and quickly provided simulations that informed the
response to heavy rains that damaged spillways at the nation’s tallest dam in
northern California. The program also helped forecast the flooding after
Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana that year.
Engineers monitoring
levees along the Mississippi River have been collecting and checking data using
a geographic information system produced by Esri, said Nick Bidlack, levee
safety program manager for the Memphis district of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers. The company produces mapping tools such as an interactive site showing the nation’s
largest rivers and their average monthly flow.
On the Mississippi River,
flood inspectors use smartphones or tablets in the field to input data into
map-driven forms for water levels and the locations of inoperable flood gates,
seepages, sand boils or levee slides, which are cracks or ditches in the slopes
of an earthen levee. Photos, videos and other data are sent to an emergency
flood operation center in real time, allowing Corps officials to visualize any
problems and their exact location, instantly informing the response, Bidlack
said.
“If people in the field
have concerns about something, they can let us know to go out there and look at
it,” Bidlack said. “There’s a picture associated with it, a description of it,
and it helps us take care of it.”
Corps engineers are
increasingly flying drones to get their own aerial photography and video of
flooded areas they can’t otherwise get to because of high water or rough
terrain, said Edward Dean, a Corps engineer.
“We can reach areas that
are unreachable,” Dean said.
The Corps also now uses
high-definition sonar in its daily operations to survey the riverbed,
pinpointing where maintenance work needs to be done, said Corps engineer Andy
Simmerman. The Memphis district uses a 26-foot survey boat called the Tiger
Shark, with a sonar head that looks like an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner and
collects millions of points per square inch of data, Simmerman said.
The technology has helped
them find cars and trucks that have been dumped into the river, along with weak
spots in the levees.
“These areas are 20 to 80
feet underwater, we’d never get to see them without sonar,” Simmerman said.
“The water never gets low enough for us to see a lot of these failures.”
During recent flooding
near Cairo, Illinois, a culvert that should have been closed was sending water
onto the dry side of a levee. The sonar pointed engineers to the precise
location of a log that was stuck 20 feet deep in murky water, keeping the
culvert open. Plastic sheathing and sandbags were brought in to stop the flow and
save the land below.
“The sonar definitely made
a difference,” said Simmerman. “A big success.”
Attorney General William Barr worked to paint a rosy picture of Donald Trump Thursday morning hours before the Robert Mueller report was released, things are looking much different now. You can read the full Mueller report here to see how wrong Barr was. Beware: if you plan on printing this out, be ready to replace that ink cartridge as there are plenty of redacted pages.
Barr has stated that a version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report with fewer redactions will be made available to a small group of lawmakers.
In a letter to Congress on
Thursday, Barr says the second version of the report would be given to the
“Gang of Eight,” the top-ranking House and Senate lawmakers from both parties
who can view sensitive classified information. The chairs and ranking members
of the House and Senate judiciary committees will also receive it.
Barr said all redactions
would be removed from that version of the report except those relating to
grand-jury information.
The attorney general said,
“I do not believe that I have discretion to disclose grand-jury information to
Congress. Nevertheless, this accommodation will allow you to review the bulk of
the redacted material for yourselves.”
Democrats want the full
report released.
Donald Trump Did Meddle In Russia
Probe
Public at
last, special counsel Robert
Mueller’s report revealed to a waiting nation Thursday that
President Donald Trump had tried to seize control of the Russia probe and force
Mueller’s removal to stop him from investigating potential obstruction of
justice by the president.
The report said that in June
2017, Trump directed White House Counsel Don McGahn to call the acting attorney
general and say that Mueller must be ousted because he had conflicts of
interest.
McGahn refused — deciding
he would rather resign than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday
Night Massacre of Watergate firings fame.
For all of that, Mueller
said in his report that he could not conclusively determine that Trump had
committed criminal obstruction of justice.
The Justice Department
posted a redacted version of the report online Thursday morning, 90 minutes
after Attorney General William Barr offered his own final assessment of the
findings.
The two-volume, 448-page
report recounts how Trump repeatedly sought to take control of the Russia
probe.
Mueller evaluated 10 episodes
for possible obstruction of justice, including Trump’s firing of FBI Director
James Comey, the president’s directive to subordinates to have Mueller fired
and efforts to encourage witnesses not to cooperate.
The
president’s lawyers have said Trump’s conduct fell within his constitutional
powers, but Mueller’s team deemed the episodes deserving of criminal scrutiny.
Mueller reported that
Trump had been agitated at the special counsel probe from its earliest days,
reacting to Mueller’s appointment by saying it was the “end of his presidency.”
As for the question of
whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016
presidential campaign, Mueller wrote, “While the investigation identified
numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and
individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient
to support criminal charges.”
Mueller also said there
wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge any campaign officials with working as an
unregistered foreign agent of Russia.
The report included an
appendix that contained 12 pages of Trump’s written responses to the special
counsel. They included no questions about obstruction of justice, as was part
of an agreement with Trump’s legal team.
Trump told
Mueller he had “no recollection” of learning in advance about the
much-scrutinized Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and a Russian
lawyer. He also said he had no recollection of knowledge about emails setting
up the meeting that promised dirt on Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
He broadly denied knowing
of any foreign government trying to help his campaign, including the Russian
government. He said he was aware of some reports that Russian President
Vladimir Putin had made “complimentary statements” about him.
Trump said that his
comment during a 2016 political rally asking Russian hackers to help find
emails scrubbed from Clinton’s private server was made “in jest and
sarcastically” and that he did not recall being told during the campaign of any
Russian effort to infiltrate or hack computer systems.
Trump’s legal team called the results “a total victory for the president.”
HBO Not So Happy With Donald Trump Using Game of Thrones For Vindication
“Though
we can understand the enthusiasm for ‘Game of Thrones’ now that the final
season has arrived, we still prefer our intellectual property not be used for
political purposes,” said HBO in response to the president’s meme.
In response to Thursday morning’s press
conference on the Mueller report, President Trump once again
invoked Game of Thrones.
Tweeting a meme inspired by the hit HBO fantasy saga,
Trump’s post resembled the title font of Game ofThrones and contained the message: “No
collusion. No obstruction. For the haters and the radical left Democrats — Game
Over.” The meme also included a picture of Trump.
Attorney General William Barr discussed the Mueller report on Russian
meddling in the 2016 election on Thursday ahead of the public release,
announcing that the special counsel found “no evidence of Trump campaign
collusion with the Russian government’s hacking.”
The Justice Department released a redacted version of
the special counsel’s report later Thursday morning. Trump’s campaign said the
results “fully and completely” exonerate the president. (Read the the
full, redacted report here.)
“Though we can understand the enthusiasm for Game of Thrones now that the final season has
arrived, we still prefer our intellectual property not be used for political
purposes,” said HBO in a statement to media
outletson Thursday.
Trump’s Twitter reply reiterated his approval of the
long-awaited findings.
Over on NBC News, White House correspondent Hallie
Jackson called Trump’s reaction to the news conference a “pre-report
release victory lap,” noting that the president “clearly liked what
he saw” from Barr.
“As we were watching it, I couldn’t help but think that
the President must be thrilled and it appears he is,” said Jackson.
“He is tweeting now, a riff off of the popular television show Game of Thrones writing simply, ‘game
over.’… This is the President’s pre-report release victory lap, if you will.
His administration is clearly trying to set what they believe is the narrative
for this even before anybody … has had the chance to see the content of the
report itself.”
Trump first borrowed the HBO trademark late last year
when the president delivered a warning to Iran about reimposing all U.S.
sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal. The meme warned,
“Sanctions are coming,” a reference to the famous phrase from the
series, “Winter is coming.”
“We were not aware of this messaging and would prefer
our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes,” said
HBO in a statement at the time to media outlets.
In the months since Trump started using Game of Thrones inspired imagery, HBO has taken no
formal legal action. If claims of trademark dilution or infringement of trade
dress were pursued, Trump would likely defend his posts as fair use of
intellectual property in a culture where memes have spread wildly on social
media.
The final season of Game of Thrones is
currently airing on HBO.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the last episodes of Season 14 and the entirety of Season 15 of Supernatural are going to be a master class in grief and loss. It’s impossible for me to experience the show, the conventions, the fandom or anything else related to the Show without the spectre of its ending coloring my reactions.
That was very much in evidence at the convention in Chicago last weekend and in last week’s episode, the aptly named “Absence.” Supernatural’s absence? That’s pretty much all I can think about right now!
Coincidentally, I’m in the midst of teaching a graduate course in grief and loss to a bunch of counselors in training, so I’m immersed in current research and theory about what sort of things we experience as a loss and the myriad ways in which we grieve them. In a way, that’s making what’s happening with Supernatural and its fandom easier to understand, but in another way, it’s tempting me to grab onto one of the coping strategies for grief that sometimes comes back to kick you in the butt – denial, avoidance, intellectualizing, call it what you will.
I’ve been doing a lot of all three, and let me just say up front that it probably influenced my reaction to this episode. As fandom used to say all the time back in the day to acknowledge and validate differing points of view, your mileage may vary.
In fact, my
friend Laurena (who helms the Winchester Family Business) and I spent the con
weekend together – and boy, did we ever have different perspectives on
‘Absence’! Then again, we’ve had different perspectives on Mary Winchester all
along. And while we’re both mired in anticipatory grief about Supernatural ending, that meant we had a
very different experience of this episode.
Let me say
at the outset that I think director Nina Lopez-Corrado (whose work is
incredible) and writer Robert Berens (who has written some amazing episodes)
did an excellent job of taking the story where it needed to go. The actors all
did an amazing job bringing the emotions that needed to saturate the story.
That said, as a viewer, I was unusually reticent to go where they wanted to
take me. (Laurena, on the other hand, fell down that rabbit hole and landed
HARD).
I watched
the episode on Thursday night after a long day of work, and then did a re-watch
when I returned from the Chicago convention on Monday night. My second viewing
was also impacted by having “Sammies with Sam” at the con – that is, a little meet and greet with
Samantha Smith while we ate delicious PBJ sandwiches. I love Samantha and I
loved hearing her insights about Mary and about the Show. It was quite clear
that she too was grieving, and that shared grief changed my experience of the
episode on rewatch a bit. Suffice it to say, this is an episode review that was
extraordinarily complicated!
We start off
with Sam and Dean returning from the events of 14.17, glad to be home and to
share beers as they traditionally do. Dean expresses his relief about Sam being
alive in typically minimizing fashion, making a joke about “another miraculous
Sam Winchester survival” – when we know he was completely undone by those few
minutes of Sam being gone. But that’s
Dean.
Sam and Dean
acknowledge Jack’s role in saving the day and say they’re glad to have a get
out of jail free card, and if you didn’t know that Jack was on his way out
before, you certainly did then. No show can have a consistent character who’s a
get out of jail free card for long, since it dilutes the urgency of everything
that happens. RIP Jack. (sobbing)
The opening
scene is well done, the sense of dread slowly growing as the boys try to find
Jack and Mary, and then Mary’s phone ominously rings at the other end of the
table.
The brothers
call around to see if anyone knows what’s going on, hanging onto hope and
optimism that we, the viewers, know is tragically not going to hold up. Dean
talks to Cas on the phone, and Cas finally tells him that he thinks something
is wrong with Jack, and how he killed Felix.
Cas: I was going to tell you, but… I don’t think Jack is well, Dean.
Dean: Hangs up.
Ouch.
Nobody on
this show will ever learn that keeping those sort of worries to yourself never
ends well.
Meanwhile,
an anguished Jack is having flashbacks of his time bonding with Mary after
trying to outrun what he’s done by flying all over the world (but still
carrying a cell phone lol).
Even more
distressing, he’s also having hallucinations of Lucifer, much like Sam did back
in the day. (Because Show will never let Lucifer be gone no matter what,
apparently). It’s Hallucifer who confirms what we already mostly know.
Lucifer: You killed Mary Winchester. You
can’t come back from that.
Jack insists
it was an accident, but Lucifer just smirks.
Lucifer: Sure, tell Sam and Dean it was an
accident. It’s not like family isn’t everything to them…
Poor Jack.
Alex Calvert has done such an incredible job of portraying Jack that I came to
love him even though the writing has been on the wall since the beginning that
he would eventually go darkside in some way and break everyone’s hearts, including
mine. Jack’s character arc has been well done, playing out organically over
time so that our affection for him feels genuine and earned. I’m not looking
forward to what’s to come at all – in fact, I’m dreading it. Part of me is
grateful that this Show can still make me care so much, but part of me is just plain
dreading it. As Laurena and I discussed at length over pancakes yesterday
morning, we are already grieving so much about losing the Show in real life
that additional grief over the fictional narrative almost seems unbearable.
It’s not like in previous seasons, where we were joyous about the Show
continuing and the cons continuing and the fandom continuing. Now we’re dealing
with real loss and grief, and I’m not so sure I want my heart to be ripped out
by the Show too.
Everything is different now, and I don’t know if TPTB has realized that yet. Everything.
Sam and Dean
try to track down Jack, thanks to Smart!Sam’s tech skills. In the Impala, Sam
tries to defend Jack, saying that he must have thought he was helping (by
killing Felix). Dean is already in lashing out mode, snapping that he doesn’t
care about the damn snake and refusing to see the possible human parallels. The
boys find Nick’s partially incinerated corpse, and then they find an ominous
and large area of scorched earth. Director Nina Lopez-Corrado gives us a
beautiful crane shot, looking down on the angelically produced wasteland area
illuminated by Sam and Dean’s flashlights.
Uh oh.
Meanwhile,
Castiel is also having flashbacks of his own bonding time with Mary when he was
hunting with her. I don’t even know when that happened (early on clearly, but
did we know about it?) but it’s a nice, quiet scene in which Castiel tries to
reassure Mary that Sam and Dean are glad she’s back.
Cas: They’re happy. Finally they don’t
have to be so alone.
Mary: Castiel, they were never alone.
That was a
beautiful little scene, showing both Castiel’s genuine empathy for the brothers
and confirming what we all know – Sam and Dean have always had each other.
I wish we’d
gotten to see more of Mary and Castiel, because I think they from what little
we did see that they could relate in a unique way. Both were thrust into a
world that they don’t quite fit in, and both had to struggle to find their
place in it. It’s nice to see a flashback of that now, but it would have been a
lot more powerful if we’d seen it develop organically, the way Jack’s story arc
did.
Dean and Sam
meet up with Cas in the cabin, and Dean says what most of us were thinking
about Nick’s death.
Dean: He probably deserved it.
When Castiel
comes in, Dean immediately turns his back on the angel, angry and in full
lashing out mode. That’s Dean’s customary way of handling his grief at first,
so I appreciated the character continuity, as well as the way Jensen Ackles
makes it all thoroughly believable.
He lashes
out at Cas, needing someone to blame.
Dean: If he did something to her, if
she’s…. Then you’re dead to me!
Sam looks
shocked, and Dean justifies his outburst.
Dean: He knew and didn’t tell us!
Castiel
looks almost as anguished as Jack himself about what’s happened, and Misha
Collins does a great job showing us that.
Cas: I was scared… I believed in Jack. We
were a family and I didn’t want to lose that.
Dean remains
unmoved, and Cas looks close to breaking down.
Cas: I failed you. And I failed Jack, and
I failed…
Dean: Don’t even say her name!
Sam doesn’t
say anything here, but his anguish is just as clear. Unlike Dean, he doesn’t
lash out and he struggles not to blame Cas (or even Jack), but it costs him
because he has no defense, and his sadness shows on his face thanks to Jared
Padalecki’s wonderful acting. All three
actors did a wonderful (painful) job in this scene.
They call
Rowena, who has transitioned to 90% ally at this point (which I’m fine with),
and she yanks away their last bit of denial.
Rowena: I don’t know where she is, but Mary
Winchester is no longer on this Earth.
Dean loses
it, picking up a chair and smashing it. Sam flinches at that, looking close to
tears.
Then he does
what he knows to do. He turns to his big brother.
Sam: So what do we do?
Dean: What we always do when we lose one
of our own. Fight to bring them back.
Oh, Dean.
That is so
true, but so often it doesn’t end well. And of course we know that it won’t
this time, because there’s no way Mary Winchester would have so many emotional
flashbacks in this episode if she was coming back.
Let me stop
at this point and talk about where I was on first viewing, because by this time
I was certain that the episode was Mary’s goodbye episode. Hence the black and
white flashbacks. Knowing that did two things. First, it took away any suspense
about whether they would succeed in bringing her back. Second, it gave me a
handy dandy way to intellectualize about the episode so I didn’t have to feel
too much. I usually roll with this Show and let it take me where it wants to,
even if part of me knows where I’m being taken. This time, I didn’t want to go.
And that meant I didn’t roll with it; instead, I felt vaguely emotionally
manipulated and a bit resentful of that. It’s as though I dug my heels in and
said no way, Show, I see what you’re trying to do, but I’m not falling for it!
Not the best
way to watch an emotional goodbye episode, btw.
Part of my
resistance was that I’ve been frustrated with how they portrayed Mary all
along. I was excited by the potential of having the Winchesters’ mother back
and all that would entail to explore, and I was on board with her not being the
idolized version of ‘Mom’ that a son who lost her as a four year old or a son
who didn’t remember her at all would have constructed. Sam and Dean struggling
with Mary as a real person, flaws and all, was a great idea. Samantha Smith did
a great job with a complicated character and worked hard to show all her sides.
Unfortunately, Mary’s character arc sometimes went places that I absolutely
could not follow, and thus I never came to love her as Sam and Dean’s mother. I
see what they were going for in making her so freaked out by her abrupt return
from Heaven that she couldn’t deal with her sons, but leaving them and joining
up with their enemies was a bridge too far for me to travel. WHAT?
There are
always practical constraints to deal with, including how many episodes Samantha
Smith was hired for, and that meant constantly finding (lame) reasons for Mary
not to be there with her sons and for
her sons. I realize they’re grown men who don’t need to live with their mommy,
but they were all hunters, and it would
have made sense for them to try to protect each other more. Anyway, I didn’t
bond with Mary. So when this episode suddenly decided to throw in flashbacks of
times that might have made me bond with her, I just felt like it was too little
too late. The flashbacks themselves were well done, but I can’t form a bond
with a character organically in one episode when I already know you’re taking
her away anyway! Sigh.
(Laurena, on
the other hand, was totally on board the Mary Winchester train, so she went
exactly where Show was trying to take her, and ended up in a puddle on the
floor.)
On second
viewing, understanding my own resistance, I watched the flashbacks just for
what they were, and tried to allow the understanding that they contained to
seep in a little more. I also knew that Samantha had struggled a bit herself,
and had worked hard to understand Mary despite her flaws, and I respect
Samantha so much that I worked a bit harder too. It’s not what I want to have
to do, but there you go. It’s almost the last season, after all.
The
Winchesters set out for Rowena’s to try something desperate, but Jack gets
there first. Once again, Alex Calvert is magnificent. As he orders Rowena to
try to bring Mary back, his desperation is very clear – and that starts to make
him seem truly dangerous for the first time.
Ruth Connell
is also amazing in this scene – we as the viewers watch Jack through her eyes,
and as she becomes more and more concerned, so do we. Rowena is another
character whose evolution has been gradual and organic. I believe her
transition into someone who is allowing herself to care a little bit, after
centuries of walling herself off to prevent being hurt or abandoned again. She
cares about Jack and she cares about Sam and Dean and Cas, and that gives her
the courage to go against even a Nephilim in order to try to help both him and
them. She stalls long enough for Sam and Dean to get there, but Jack whisks her
and the Book of the Damned away to the bunker to grab all the ingredients – for
a necromancy spell. Oh Jack.
Meanwhile,
Cas tries to contact Naomi to find out what happened to Mary, but Duma arrives
at the sandbox instead.
Duma: Why would you want to bring Mary
back? She is at peace. In Heaven. Mary Winchester is complete. You and the
Winchesters may not be, but she is at peace.
Me: Shades of Buffy! Don’t do it, Cas!
Misha again
did a wonderful job in this short scene. Cas knows that’s the right thing to
do, but he also knows how much it will hurt Sam and Dean – and his expression
shows all of that pain as he rails against accepting that Mary is gone and
should not be brought back.
Meanwhile, Jack
is having more flashbacks about bonding with Mary, this time her teaching him
how to handle a knife. Samantha said this was a great scene to film with Alex,
because he really was fumbling the knife and she sort of hoped that he wouldn’t
get too proficient with it, so it would play out as very real – and it did!
I do believe
Mary’s bond with Jack, because oddly we saw that relationship evolve more than
we saw her relationship with her actual sons.
The
flashback transitions into Sam’s (which was odd – I had a moment of wait, whose
flashback is this?) I think all of fandom gasped in joy to see the return of
Sam’s beard of brotherly grief ™ – which Jared partly grew back in a weekend
and then makeup filled in a bit!
We finally
see a scene between Mary and one of her boys that has her
explaining/apologizing for her erratic behavior when she returned, and a
touching moment with her and Sam.
Mary: Things got complicated….I got
complicated. Parenting is always something you feel like you’re failing at. But
then you look at them and they’re amazing. The bravest, kindest, most heroic
men on the planet.
She cups
Sam’s face and Samantha Smith pours all the love that we should have seen from
Mary all along into that gesture and that look, and Sam drinks it in, and it’s
a lovely moment. (One I wish we’d seen during the past several seasons instead
of in flashback in her last episode).
One of my
favorite scenes in the episode is the next short quiet scene with Sam and Dean,
because it shows where they are right now as brothers and just how well they
know each other. Dean is still lashing out, wanting to blame Castiel because he
doesn’t know what else to do with all that rage.
Dean: Cas should have told us.
Sam: Dean, it wasn’t just Cas. We knew
too. But Jack had a good heart, a good soul… And that’s on me too, I decided
for him to bring him back and you warned me…
Sam’s
admission, accepting some of the blame and quietly challenging Dean’s blaming
of Castiel, is so gentle that it gets through Dean’s defenses. Sam knows his
brother so well that he knows what will get through to him and what will not.
And Dean hears him – and instinctively defends his brother (even from Sam
himself)
Dean (sitting down across from Sam): You didn’t know.
Sam: He’d become our family.
Sam regrets
that his own grief didn’t allow him to be there for Jack after Maggie and the
AU hunters were killed.
Sam: I dumped Jack on Cas and just left.
Dean can
now, after hearing Sam take responsibility, own up to his own part in this
tragedy.
Dean: I did it too. With Donatello. It was
a warning, I just couldn’t see it.
I got
emotional at the end of this conversation because it was such a well written
and well acted scene. The psychological dynamics were complex, but played out
in such a genuine way between two people who know each other so incredibly
well. Thanks for that, Mr. Berens.
While Sam
and Dean work through their anger and grief and blame, self and otherwise,
Rowena tries to convince Jack not to go through with the spell. Unfortunately,
Jack’s alter ego in the form of Lucifer keeps nudging him in the other
direction. (Admittedly Mark Pellegrino excels as Hallucifer, with all his
snarky manipulations)
Rowena tells
Jack that the last thing they need for the spell is Mary’s body, and Jack goes
to a whole other level of desperate, knowing that Mary was incinerated. He
insists on doing the spell anyway, though Rowena tells him that what he brings
back won’t be her.
Jack: Then help me!
Rowena: (resolute) I won’t.
Lovely
Rowena moment showing both her courage and her newly directed moral compass.
Jack zaps
her back to her place none too gently, and she immediately calls the
Winchesters to tell them what Jack is trying to do.
Rowena: I fear your boy will bring back
something terrible.
Jack tries, and special effects gets some kudos, and eventually, Mary’s body is lying on the ground.
Sam and Dean
arrive and run to the spot, Sam calling out for Jack. Jack turns to them,
defeat and sadness written on his face.
Jack: It didn’t work.
Dean runs to
his mother, cradling her in his arms and saying “Mom, Mom…”
It’s clear
to him, and to Sam, and to us, that she’s gone.
Dean then
has his flashback, a small and silent scene of him driving Baby, Mary asleep on
his shoulder. Dean looks at her fondly, then turns his eyes back to the road,
his expression saying entire pages of dialogue about how satisfied he is to
have his mother there and be able to take care of her.
In the
present, Dean looks to his brother, the only other person who will understand
and share his grief. The expression on his face killed me, helpless and almost
beseeching, wracked with grief.
Sam drops to
his knees beside his devastated brother and wraps his arm around Dean, his
other hand anchoring Mary. The little family cling to each other in their
sadness, another crane shot making it a powerful tableau of loss and grief.
So much of
what this Show is all about.
Jack, meanwhile, sits alone slumped on the floor, only Hallucifer for company.
Lucifer: They’re never gonna trust you again.
And that means you can’t trust them…
Oh Jack Jack
Jack, I hate where this is going.
Flash
forward and Sam sits at the bunker table, sorting through the few family photos
that the Winchesters have. There’s Mary with young Dean and baby Sam, and young
Sam and Dean (which fandom knows is actually a behind the scenes photo of Jared
and Jensen between takes).
Castiel
joins him and tells him the truth, Dean listening from the doorway.
Cas: She’s in Heaven. And she’s at peace.
He tells
them that Duma let him in, let him see. There’s a great shot of Mary’s two
lifetimes on the door to her private heaven.
Cas: She’s with John. There’s no sorrow,
no guilt. Just joy.
Caps by kayb625
Sam also has
an update. Jack apparently brought back a shell, a replica, incapable of
holding life.
In other
words, this is really the end.
Sam again
turns to his big brother.
Sam: So what do we do now?
Dean: What we always do.
The pyre
burns at the hunter’s funeral.
Sam steps
forward and puts the photo of Mary he’s chosen in the flames.
Dean stands
apart, stoic.
Cas tries to
go to him to offer comfort, but Sam puts out a hand and stops him, shaking his
head as yet another crane shot pulls up to show the brothers and the angel and
the Impala flanking the pyre.
Then we get
a montage of Mary moments (which again struck me as manipulative on first
watch, or maybe too over the top, even though it made sense to include them
here)
Cut back to
the bunker and a close-up of the table where Dean and Sam carved their initials
– and there is now another set of initials there, MW.
I’m sure that was conceived of as the final tear jerker of an ending, but for me, that also didn’t work. The ‘DW SW’ initials are iconic to the Show and to the fandom. I know countless fans who have that tattoo. It means something, and part of that meaning is from the discussion Sam and Dean had when they carved them, about their legacy. It took on even greater meaning when Jared and Jensen said that they too were emotional during that scene, thinking about their own legacy as actors in a show that has changed people’s lives.
It’s based on the initials that the brothers carved into the Impala as children, and symbolizes the way they’ve had to live their lives, with only each other to depend on for the majority of the time. I understand that Sam and Dean would want to memorialize their mother in some way, so maybe it even makes sense for them to want to add her to the bunker table as a grief ritual – but for an already grieving fandom, that felt like a knife in the heart. And not in the way it was intended.
Jensen and
Jared spoke about the initials a little bit at the convention this past
weekend, saying that they also were surprised by that (they weren’t in the
scene and hadn’t known it was going to happen). They understand that the
initials are iconic as well as the fandom does, so I think it was also a bit
jarring to them – a reminder that the actors aren’t the ones writing the show.
I was left
with a feeling of trepidation that’s way deeper and more real life than I’m
usually feeling as we get ready for the penultimate episode of Season 14.
Please, Show, you don’t have to destroy iconic things in order to get an
emotional reaction out of us right now – we have enough real life loss to deal
with already. Can we keep that in mind as we head into the final season?
Tech giants Apple and mobile chip maker Qualcomm have decided to drop and settle a blockbuster financial dispute centered on some of the technology that enables iPhones to connect to the internet. Naturally, it’s for an ‘undisclosed’ amount, but you can be sure Apple’s payment could probably feed a third-world country.
The surprise truce
announced Tuesday came just as the former allies turned antagonists were facing
off in a federal court trial that was supposed to unfold over the next month in
San Diego. The resolution abruptly ended that trial.
Apple had been seeking at
least $1 billion while Qualcomm was seeking $7 billion for unpaid royalties it
contended it is owed for its patented technology in the iPhone. Apple’s key
iPhone suppliers wanted another $27 billion from Qualcomm.
The settlement requires Apple to make a payment to Qualcomm, though the amount wasn’t immediately revealed. It also includes a six-year licensing agreement for Qualcomm’s technology.
Feds Can’t Figure Out Broadband In
Rural America
There is a
way around the notoriously sluggish internet in West Virginia. You just need a
car and some time.
Kelly Povroznik can tell
you, when she happens to get a good signal. She teaches an online college
course so hampered by unreliable connections that she has had to drive a
half-hour to her brother’s place just to enter grades into a database.
“It added so much
additional work for me, and I just don’t have the time,” said Povroznik, who
lives in Weston, West Virginia. “I just kept wanting to beat my head into a
wall.”
Across rural America, a
bandwidth gap separates communities like Weston from an increasingly digital
world where high-speed internet has become a fundamental component of modern
life, putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to economic growth and
quality of life advancements.
A $4.5 billion federal
grant program earmarked to expand wireless internet in rural areas was supposed
to address the problem, but it’s on hold while the Federal Communications
Commission investigates whether carriers submitted incorrect data for the maps
used to allocate grants.
The broadband maps deemed
Weston, a city of about 4,000 people, too well connected to qualify for a grant
— even though the problems there are obvious to anyone who’s tried to send
emails from their phones or gotten lost because Google Maps wouldn’t work.
FCC Commissioner Jessica
Rosenworcel concedes that the agency doesn’t know for sure where the needs are
most acute, calling it “embarrassing” and “shameful.”
“Our maps simply do not
reflect the state of deployment on the ground. That’s a problem,” Rosenworcel
said. “We have a digital divide in this country with millions of Americans who
lack broadband where they live. If we want to fix this gap and close this
divide, we first need an honest accounting of high-speed service in every
community across the country.”
Lawmakers across the
country are concerned that flawed, carrier-submitted maps on cellphone and home
internet connectivity are crippling the effectiveness of various grant
programs. In February, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin joined 10
other senators in pushing the FCC for more accurate baselines.
Disagreements over the
data have led to wildly different figures on high-speed internet availability
nationwide — and a growing sense that the government just doesn’t know.
On one end, the FCC says
more than 24 million people lack access to broadband at home. On the other, a
recent study by Microsoft — which is pushing its own approach to extending
broadband to rural areas — found that 162.8 million Americans don’t use the
internet at high speeds, a problem that may point to cost of access, as well as
lack of availability.
Part of the discrepancy
has to do with how the FCC collects data. The agency considers an entire area
covered if a carrier reports that a single building on a census block has fast
internet speeds. Experts say this method allows carriers to attract more
customers by advertising larger coverage areas. Critics argue that it is a poor
way to determine internet speeds and have long called for more granular data.
Complaints about the
wireless map have poured in to the FCC. The Rural Wireless Association, a trade
group, asked the agency to investigate data submitted by Verizon and T-Mobile,
suggesting the companies overstated coverage. The companies have denied doing
so.
The February letter from
Manchin and the other senators implored FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to use
crowdsourced data and public feedback to create more accurate maps. Some of
them have since introduced legislation to force the FCC to widen the scope.
Federal lawmakers from New
Hampshire sent a separate letter, saying the FCC was forcing cash-strapped
local governments there to disprove overstated claims made by carriers in the
agency’s formal process for challenging the mapping data.
All told, only about 20
percent of the 106 carriers, government and tribal entities who could have
challenged the FCC’s wireless map data actually did so, according to the FCC.
The whole process
frustrated Manchin, who told the AP in an email: “As long as we continue to
rely on carriers just telling us what they cover, we will never have a complete
picture that depicts the real-world experiences of West Virginians.”
The FCC put the grant
process for the $4.5 billion program on hold late last year as it launched an
investigation into whether one or more major carriers violated rules and
submitted incorrect maps. The investigation is ongoing.
Christopher Ali, an
assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, said the
looming mapping question leaves the government flailing blindly at a problem
that prevents it from meeting the needs of rural America.
“We can’t fix a problem
when we don’t know where it exists,” he said, “and at the moment we don’t know
where broadband deserts exist.”
Povroznik
knows they exist in Weston, where she had to come up with work-arounds —
including jumping in her car — to cope with spotty connections that disrupted
her ability to field questions submitted by students online. She saw some
improvement after switching service providers.
“In this technologically
advanced world that we live in, it shouldn’t have been as difficult as it was
for me to get this situation resolved,” she said.
It’s only a matter of hours now before Robert Mueller’s report comes out redacted on Thursday, and bookies are jumping into the action. John Lester at Bookmaker.eu has laid out all the possible reactions from Donald Trump to take bets on. Trump is already reacting as expected by tweeting out rants against Mueller while trying to make sure that the Notre Dame cathedral fire doesn’t take press coverage off of him.
Below are the latest odds on the Mueller report for all you itching to get in on the action.
How many times will Trump tweet (retweets don’t count) on April 18, 2019, EST?
Over 11.5 -115
Under 11.5 -115
How many times will Trump tweet the word, “exonerate”* on April 18, 2019 EST?
Over 1.5 +140
Under 1.5 -170
*Includes exonerate and exonerated
Will Trump tweet the word “coup” on April 18, 2019 EST?
Yes -230
No +180
How many times does Trump tweet the phrase “Fake News” on Thursday, April 19, 2019 EST?
Over 1.5 -160
Under 1.5 +130
How many pages in the Mueller report have no redactions?
Over 225 -120
Under 225 -120
Will the IRS produce any Trump tax returns to Congress* on or before April 23, 2019?
Yes +400
No -500
*Includes any Representative or Congressional Committee
Will Mueller testify before any Senate or House committee on or before June 15, 2019?
Yes -115
No -115
The president isn’t waiting to find out if he can beat those odds or not.
As Washington counts down the final hours until the publication of the redacted special counsel report — now expected Thursday — Donald Trump stepped up his attacks Monday in an effort to undermine potential disclosures on Russia, his 2016 campaign and the aftermath.
He unleashed a series of
tweets focusing on the previously released summary of special counsel Robert
Mueller’s conclusions — including a crucial one on obstruction of justice that
Trump again misrepresented — produced by Attorney General William Barr.
“Mueller, and the A.G.
based on Mueller findings (and great intelligence), have already ruled No
Collusion, No Obstruction,” Trump tweeted. “These were crimes committed by
Crooked Hillary, the DNC, Dirty Cops and others! INVESTIGATE THE
INVESTIGATORS!”
Press Secretary Sarah
Sanders repeatedly tried to make the same case on TV talk shows on Sunday. But
the political battle is far from finished over the special counsel’s
investigation of Russian efforts to help Trump in 2016 and whether there was
cooperation with his campaign.
Democrats are calling for
Mueller himself to testify before Congress and have expressed concern that Barr
will order unnecessary censoring of the report to protect the president. The
House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, is poised to
try to compel Barr to turn over an unredacted
copy as well as the report’s underlying investigative files.
The Justice Department
announced Monday that it expects to release the redacted version Thursday
morning, sending
the findings of the nearly two-year probe to Congress and making them
available to the public.
Mueller officially
concluded his investigation late last month and submitted the confidential
report to Barr. Two days later, the attorney general sent Congress a four-page
letter that detailed Mueller’s “principal conclusions.”
In his letter, Barr said
the special counsel did not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump
associates during the campaign. However, contrary to Trump’s false claim,
Mueller did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice.
Instead, Mueller presented evidence on both sides of that question. Barr said
he did not believe the evidence was sufficient to prove that Trump had
obstructed justice, but he noted that Mueller’s team did not exonerate the
president.
Portions of the report
being released by the Justice Department will be redacted to protect grand jury
material, sensitive intelligence, matters that could affect ongoing
investigations and damage to the privacy rights of third parties, the attorney
general has said.
The scores of outstanding
questions about the investigation have not stopped the president and his allies
from declaring victory.
They have painted House
Democrats’ investigations as partisan overreach and have targeted news outlets
and individual reporters they say have promoted the collusion story. The
president himself seethed at a political rally that the whole thing was an
attempt “to tear up the fabric of our great democracy.”
He has told confidants in
recent days that he was certain the full report would back up his claims of
vindication but was also convinced the media would manipulate the findings in
an effort to damage him, according to two Republicans close to the White House
not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. In the waiting
game’s final days, the White House continued to try to shape the narrative.
“There was no obstruction,
which I don’t how you can interpret that any other way than total exoneration,”
press secretary Sanders said on “Fox News Sunday.”
While the president
unleashed his personal grievances, his team seized on any exculpatory
information in Barr’s letter, hoping to define the conversation in advance,
according to White House officials and outside advisers who spoke on condition
of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss private
deliberations.
The victory lap was
deliberately premature, they said.
But Trump’s inner circle
knows there will likely be further releases of embarrassing or politically
damaging information. Barr’s letter, for instance, hinted that there would be
at least one unknown action by the president that Mueller examined as a
possible act of obstruction. A number of White House aides have privately said
they are eager for all Russia stories, good or bad, to fade from the headlines.
And there is fear among some presidential confidants that the rush to spike the
football in celebration could backfire if bombshell new information emerges.
Trump and his allies also
continue to attack the origins of the Russia investigation, portraying it as an
effort by Democrats and career officials in the Justice Department to bring him
down.
“The Mueller Report, which
was written by 18 Angry Democrats who also happen to be Trump Haters (and Clinton
Supporters), should have focused on the people who SPIED on my 2016 Campaign,
and others who fabricated the whole Russia Hoax. That is, never forget, the
crime.” Trump tweeted Monday.
His long-asserted
accusation — though not supported by evidence — that his campaign was spied
upon was given new life last week when Barr, testifying before Congress, said
he thinks “spying did occur” in 2016.
Barr may have been
referring to a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained in the fall of 2016 to
monitor the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, who has
not been charged with any wrongdoing. The warrant was obtained after Page had
left the campaign and was renewed several times. Critics of the Russia
investigation have seized on the fact that the warrant application cited
Democratic-funded opposition research, done by a former British spy, into the
Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Barr later softened his
tone to “I am not saying improper surveillance occurred.”
The attorney general’s
comments have frustrated Democrats, already anxious for the release of the
full, uncensored report and concerned that Barr may withhold pertinent
information. The report could provide new information that could prompt further
investigations or even consideration of impeachment proceedings, a tricky
political calculation since Mueller did not conclude there was collusion or
obstruction.
The Russia probe began on
July 31, 2016, when the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into
Russia’s efforts to influence the presidential campaign and whether anyone on
the Trump campaign was involved. That probe was prompted by former Trump
campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos’ contacts with Russian
intermediaries, including a Maltese professor who told the young aide that the
Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails.
