“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
In a fit of insomnia-induced masochism, I rewatched Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (“ultimate edition,” 183 mostly joyless minutes) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (242 stodgy minutes). I had no plans to watch either film, and certainly had not planned to waste the rest of a late evening and all of a sleep cycle on them. HBO Max is chock-a-block with excellent movies from Warner Bros.’ extensive film archives, so I could have watched any number of better films without leaving the app.
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
But this is the behavioral/marketing psychology of basically everything we consume, be it food, medicine, entertainment, whatever. Every company has decided that everything is a lifestyle brand now. Parasocial relationships fill the social void in our car-based, deadeyed commuter culture. Spend thirty seconds in the comments of a social media post from literally any big company or entertainment property, and you’ll find a provincial little culture war being waged where one side is the people who’ve made that brand part of their identity and the other side is every other person who made the mistake of wading into the comments.
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
Fun times! And it is unavoidable unless one makes tremendous effort to see the fnords, which is, frankly, fucking exhausting. And the insidious part of everything being a lifestyle brand is that one can feel even more isolated in this world if one detaches, so one must weigh the pros and cons of getting into or actively avoiding such a fandom (hatred is just as valuable as love when it comes to social media and clicks). I’ve mentioned this multiple times over this series, but I’ve cut superhero culture out of my life other than when I occasionally watch one of the movies. No Disney+, no tie-in games, nothing. On social media, muting every possible related keyword is front-loaded on effort but pays dividends when you never have to see all of your friends and colleagues voluntarily generating marketing buzz for the next installment of _insert_random_franchise_.
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
So I had finished rewatching two Spielberg-produced box office behemoths from the 1980s, Gremlins (1984) and The Goonies (1985). The success of films like these and of George Lucas on the toy/licensing front are two progenitors of this current era of everything being a franchise and a lifestyle brand. But both films are gross, messy, human, and daring in ways that the franchise films will never be. So my rock-block of 80s absurdity ended, and in the “what to watch next” on HBO Max was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (for sanity’s sake, henceforth BVS). So I gave in and rewatched BVS, which got better on this viewing, mostly because I focused on the acting and zoned out on the very long, very ugly finale. And then I numbly clicked on ZS Justice League, through which I dozed off and on over its four hours.
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
And just like that I was hooked again. I felt the fandom or addiction or compulsion or whatever you call it as though time was a flat circle and I’d come back around to the beginning. I thought about Wonder Woman (2017) and Aquaman (2018) and how much better they are. So I should rewatch them, right? And then thought maybe I should give Doom Patrol (2019–present) another chance, surely? And the Keaton Batman 4K discs are just sitting there on my shelf. And… cripes. Log out.
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
I play Magic: The Gathering, and have done so off and on since 1994. That’s a long time to spend on a luxury hobby! And the company has gotten more galaxy-brained as the ownership shifted to Hasbro. The number of set releases tripled. A rarity was added, skyrocketing the cost to play. Doofuses who played when younger were now adults with incomes, so the old cards became a speculators market, which skyrocketed the cost of staples of older formats (look up the phrase “Reserved List” if you care. I don’t have the energy to explain it.). Then a new design philosophy was espoused which utilized similar methods of engagement to social media as described above (everything should generate love and hate; to be lukewarm is to be a failure), which resulted in the game becoming objectively less fun as the power level increased and every decision in a game could be invalidated by a lucky draw. Then a new digital client was created, which increased the number of games that people could play and, to be frank, Magic gets more frustrating as one plays more of it, with so much natural variance baked in.
So I uninstalled the digital client, sold most of my cards, and kept enough that I could play occasionally in person. I had to disconnect because the whole dynamic felt like an addiction.
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
I’m not staying in the doom-and-gloom zone. I promise. I picked up a new hobby around 2016, and it was the most healthy decision that I’ve likely made since I became a vegetarian (2007ish?). I mentioned in the 2015 installment that I was nerd-shamed. Some backstory is needed.
I was getting frustrated with living in Pittsburgh. I’d left all of my friends behind when I moved out of Columbus, and the people that I knew here were apparently only friends with my ex-girlfriend and not me, so when our relationship ended years before, everyone stopped returning my messages. Cool cool. I eventually met my amazing wife-to-be and things were great, but I still wanted to have some local friends of my own. So I started looking for events on Meetup. It was good to an extent, but I hadn’t found any activities that really grabbed me. I’d played Magic in some gaming stores, but it is hard to socialize when playing (and for the cognoscenti, I can’t stand EDH/Commander, which is nominally the “social” format). I decided to try roleplaying games again, something I had not done since about sixth grade. I played Dungeons and Dragons for about a minute back then, and loved it, but was forbidden to play during one of those 700 Club / moral panic moments (as mentioned way back in the 1986 installment).
Toward the end of 2015, I signed up for a Deadlands (?) event at a gaming store that will remain nameless, and the host of the event confirmed time/date/materials via a series of emails, so I was all set. But I got there and the guys set up to play said they knew nothing about the Meetup, and once I found the guy who did acknowledge that he set up the Meetup event, he then claimed that he’d never talked to me. Then they said that there was no room to join their game. They just straight-up stonewalled me and refused to let me sit in. It was a frustrating moment, as I’m a knot of anxiety most of the time, so even going to the place was a lot for me, and for these dorks to do that after I’d cleared it beforehand… argh. I was set to delete Meetup, but I calmed down and pressed on.
Months later, in 2016, I ended up talking to some folks planning an “old-school D&D campaign” (meaning AD&D/2nd edition, if I recall correctly). We couldn’t get our schedules aligned, but I’d recognized the name of one of the respondents from some Magic card trades a few months back. We met in person and ended up starting a D&D campaign and it was awesome. The social aspect of D&D is on its own tier compared to videogames or Magic: roleplaying games are basically just frameworks for bullshitting and joking around**. And the baseline requirements to play are significantly smaller than other games, as most of the rules are available on line for free and there are digital dice-rolling and character creation apps/sites. (One person gotta be the DM, but that’s a whole different story.)
It was great, it was filling a void in my life. I was so happy that I’d pressed on and found something that worked. And D&D resulted in meeting a lot of new people, making new friends, and trying out other roleplaying game systems that I liked more (Call of Cthulhu; Powered by the Apocalypse). The headache of scheduling never goes away, and Hasbro also owns D&D, which means a neverending release schedule, but unlike games like Magic, the fear of missing out (FOMO) is small. I’ve bought several D&D rules supplements but they likely represent one-tenth of the books published for D&D Fifth Edition.
Having friends is great. 10/10, would recommend.
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
So I guess that I have to talk about Doctor Strange now. It’s a Marvel movie, which means it is owned by Disney and has all of the prerequisites: origin story; seeds planted for sequels and tie-ins to other movies; an eye toward the Chinese box office by avoiding topics that would threaten a boycott or censoring (moving Kamar-Taj to Nepal rather than Tibet; explicitly defining spectral forms so there is no chance they are interpreted as being ghosts). I already talked about lifestyle brands above. Let’s move on.
I saw Doctor Strange twice in the theater. I really like it! I was predisposed to like it, maybe, because I’ve always loved the idea of Doctor Strange. I like the aesthetics of his comics, I like the doofy sorcery stuff. I like that his powers spring from knowledge and discipline. That’s my shit. Anyone who knows me knows that I’d almost certainly be a wizard, monk, or a paladin if D&D classes were real. But beyond just liking Strange’s vibe, I also think that the movie is well made and thrilling. The psychedelia of the Mirror Realm is awesome. The bending of reality makes for very cool fight scenes. The magic looks dope as hell on screen. Dormammu and the Dark Dimension look awesome. The freakin’ villain is played by Mads Mikkelsen! And of all of the Marvel movies, this one has the most moral ambiguity, so there are stakes even when doing the seemingly right thing. The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) protects the Earth realm from invaders by using the forbidden power of the Dark Dimension (robbing Peter to pay Paul, in a way). Kaecillius (Mads) kills some monks and steals some forbidden rituals, but he is doing so because he believes that allying with Dormammu will make the earth a better place with less suffering. Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor!) is morally rigid to the extent that it alienates him from other defenders of Earth, and it just takes the smallest of pushes to send him into villainy. Strange must break rules and sacrifice himself infinite times to achieve victory over Dormammu. This movie slaps, is what I’m saying.
And that’s not even mentioning that Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Benjamin Bratt supplement this cast. Holy moly!
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
So it is hard to not be sucked into the powerful marketing strategies of these massive companies. Engagement is their number one means of creating income, so even hating a thing keeps you paying attention to it. You gotta learn how to consciously uncouple and not let these titans of marketing affect you at all. But conversely, it is hard enough to meet people as an adult unless you are in a bowling league or something, so you must engage with something if you want to have friends. I was lucky to find roleplaying games as my means of engagement. I hope that you have a means to be around other people, or if you don’t, that you someday find a healthy way to do so. Life on earth is too short to spend it railing on social media at casting decisions for the twelfth TV series tie-in to the MCU’s Phase IV rollout.
Other 2016 candidates: Star Wars: Rogue One; Moonlight; Hell or High Water; The Nice Guys; Central Intelligence
** The other component of D&D is its extremely ponderous combat system, which occupies about 75% of the rules. I attribute D&D’s lasting success to the fact that it is both a means for improv/roleplaying and a way to do very meticulous wargaming. My disinterest in the wargaming part has caused friction when I’ve played with people for whom that is the juice.
I turn 40 in December. To commemorate the milestone, I’m writing 40 short biographical essays pertaining to a movie per year of my life.